Pay per conversion programs: How do you gauge and guard against fraud?

[Webwork]

Do you occasionally make a buy and see if it's reported? What if it's a $300,000 crane?

Is conversion compensation simply a matter of trust? When passing judgment do you simply 'play a hunch'? How do you know when your hunch is right?

Where are the independent PPC auditing agencies?

Other than trust is there a plausible tech fix for tracking conversions?

Pay-per-conversion fraud: How do you guard it and guard against it? Is the advertiser/affiliate helpless other than to pull the plug if they feel they are being gamed? Is the best the AM can do is to 'let the AM world know that XCorp is bogus'? Doesn't XCorp follow a predictable path and re-emerge as YCorp?

Is this as good as it gets?

[Procyon]

>>other than to pull the plug if they feel they are being gamed<<

I'm highly suspicious of one program I'm currently in. I have no conclusive proof of course, but if the current rate of "invalid credit card" transactions keeps up, I'll dump them. It could be bad luck, but somehow I doubt it. :)

I don't see any way of ever finding out if they are "gaming" me, so in this case I feel it is "affiliate beware".

[Webwork]

Is there an "affiliate program auditor" out there? A BBB for AM? A AM equivalent of the UL seal? Is ABW's "Trusted Merchant" as good as this market is going to get? (TT is DOA to my recent understanding.)

What forces will it take for an AM "audit and approval" company to emerge?

Wouldn't it be something if TrueTracker - in some variation - actually emerged?

Affiliates unite? A union is organized? Unlikely. They will just outsource AM to Malaysia? (Sssshhhhh).

What will it take? An Act of Congress to clean up things? Intervention by the FTC?

Is this as good as it will ever get? You will never actually know about your conversions?

Do you thing AMs will ever get to see the actual data relating to their site's referrals? Why not?

[growingdigital]

It's market regulated. If it doesn't work you dump it and move on. The Internet is still like the wild wild west. It's what makes it great, but also what makes it a dangerous place to do business.

That's why I send most of my traffic through CJ. I figure they want to get paid as much as I do.

I have had a lot of bad luck with in house programs which has forced me to abandon some of them. The merchants might have made a quick buck off of me, but long-term they damage their own business.

[imstillatwork]

holy crap webwork, you have more acromyns in their than the IRS!