Forum Moderators: skibum
So I asked a buddy who had never been to the affiliate site to go visit. He did - entered the site and then closed it without the full page loading - then he placed a test transaction - wham - same thing - another magical refereal without any clicks.
So, any explanation for this? Cookie stuffing?
You are not scammed. You just helped moving money from one person to another.
You did not lose anything, did you?
Sounds like it. Any iframes on the page?
wouldn't an iframe set a warning for a third party cookie (or not set the cookie at all)?
If this isn't the case, then isnt' there an opportunity to exploit the system by putting an iframe to the merchant with the cookie, and 'prep' unsuspecting client computers with a bunch of affiliate codes..?
ops..one of those things I shouldn't mention in public? :)
Whatever the technique employed it is effective - and costs us money.
Why: I own the store and when someone buys from me via an affilaite I pay % of the sale to the affiliate. So, if this affilate is droping cookies, iframing or whatever else, the *** is costing me money.
I'm paying the affiliates to bring me traffic and sales - not to lure customers for other reasons to their site only to sneak that affiliate code onto their system to get paid for nothing.
The offending affiliate had since emailed me and since then the effect is no longer reproducable? So, I think a little toggle switch in the software that say - behave well - was switeched and off he goes.
What I would imagine though is that the affiliate program that he is going through should be able to detect this type of activity.
I mean this guy has something like 7 orders that he 'helped' me with in last month! So, if he is doing this to other vendors (and he has a big site) then the people that run the affiliate program would surly see a drop of traffic (sales) from this guy when his system goes in 'behave' mode -- hence ability to detect the scam.
The thing that comes to mind is collusion between the offending affiliate and the affiliate program -- they both profit - one from pure affiliate fees, the other from getting 30% of their payout. So, no real reason for the affilate programs to really go after these guys aggressively.
So, how can small business protect themselves again these types of site? Run your own program?
Thanks.
[edited by: eelixduppy at 9:42 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2009]
Any advice of decent networks with low scam rate?
