Is it safe to pay affiliates per registration?

Or will cheaters rob me blind?

[limitup]

I'm thinking of starting a small affiliate program and paying a fixed amount for signups/subscribers. Say 50 cents for name and email. Most likely it would be double opt-in where the user will receive an email and have to click a link etc. to "activate" their account or whatever.
I'm at the point now where I'm trying to decide if I should offer this via a network, or just do it myself. I don't have a problem with the tracking or payments, etc. I'm mostly concerned with fraud.

I don't trust the "sophisticated anti-fraud prevention mechanisms" touted by most of the small networks so I'm thinking of just doing it myself. I figure, how much worse can it be. If I go with a double opt-in model, is it still possible for unscrupulous affiliates to rip me off with bogus signups?

From a technical standpoint I can require the user to click a confirmation link in an email, and I can track IP addresses. Is this enough to curb fraud? Most likely I will only offer this to select sites that I pre-screen, people I know, etc. which should help to because scammers who I assume go looking for these types of programs won't be able to just signup at my site and start getting paid.

Anyone have any input, suggestions, ideas, words of wisdom, etc.?

[rfung]

I think you're taking reasonable safety measures to prevent signup fraud. From a standpoint of a fraudster, they can do pretty much the same actions as a regular valid registration would generate (i.e. go to the site, register, check email account, click on link) so IP tracking would probably be a good measure - fraudsters would have to go to a different computer or network, or risk having too many registrations from one single IP.

Since you'll be personally screening the affiliates I think all in all that should be your first line of defense.

OTOH, have you considered advertising in related websites, and/or adwords?

[limitup]

Thanks for the reply back. The other thing is that I would only payout per unique email address, so if a person wanted to manually signup a bunch of times they would have to use different computers or an anonymous proxy system, etc. and they would have to use a different email address each time. Plus I would probably use one of those "enter the security code" type systems to prevent automated systems as well.

On a related note, does anyone have any idea what the networks do to prevent signup/registration fraud?

As far as advertising on related sites etc. I am going to be doing some of that too, but that is usually CPM or CPC stuff. I really like paying for performance, and I've had really good luck with it in the past in terms of developing consistent revenue and cashflow without constantly having to find new places to advertise, track the ads to see if it's making money or not, etc. etc.