jonstark - 3:22 am on Jan 27, 2005 (gmt 0)

tsinoy: I'm afraid I can't give you an answer other than trust your instincts. For as long as I've been affiliate marketing I've suspected fraud on the part of merchants and affiliate networks - leads disappearing at the end of the month with no explanation, sales having super high rates of returns or just not converting like they should, but I wasn't able to prove it until lately (not coincidentally, I got more hardcore on tracking and studied everything that happened). In your particular case, are you saying that you're able to track your visitors up to the point where they actually try to buy from the merchant, and then 8 of 10 don't convert? That seems very suspicious to me. If the visitors have first seen the product and the price, and are clicking on a 'buy now' button or somethingm, than that doesn't seem right. However, if I've misunderstood what you're saying and you're talking about 8 out of 10 clicks that come through your site don't convert, that could be on the up and up.

inasisi: Thanks, I never knew that before. Cool, something new to try out with overture. :)

ralent: I will start a new thread on that, giving good details of how I caught the fraud and seeing what everyone else's experiences have been with this. In my case I caught both the merchant and the affiliate clearinghouse both committing the fraud. We're still working on nailing down who took what, but it looks like the larger portion of stolen sales/commissions was perpetrated by the affiliate network. This is one of the biggest affiliate networks on the web, not some fly-by-night, and from my dealings with them I get the feeling this is business as usual. I've been really upset by this discovery, especially because ostensibly affiliate networks should be protecting our interests. We drive their sales, technically they work for us, not the other way around. They don't have some divine right of kings to steal our money and should have some accountability. The most alarming thing about this discovery though is the reaction of most other affiliates when I tell them about it. Very few are even perturbed, most just shrug and say 'well, that's sort of the cost of doing business'. If this is our attitude, than no wonder the affiliate networks feel they can rip us off. We deserve it if we don't do something... Anyway, you can see I'm passionate about it, but it shouldn't be in this thread, so I'll start another. :)