Chargebacks911® COO Explores Affiliate Fraud in Monthly Newsmax Column
Affiliate marketing can be an incredibly lucrative source of traffic to eCommerce sites. Unfortunately, a significant share of it is fraudulent, as Monica explains in her latest feature for Newsmax Finance.
Affiliate marketing is a form of performance-based marketing. It relies on affiliates serving as a third-party advocate of an advertiser’s product, driving traffic and sales to the advertiser’s site. In return, the advertiser pays a commission based on the resulting sales.
According to industry trends, affiliate marketing produces about 16% of all eCommerce sales. That sounds great, but as Monica reveals in the piece, about 2% of all performance-driven transactions—one in every 50—is probably fraudulent.
“It’s a widespread problem,” Monica explains. “In fact, one study from 2016 found 38.1% of partners in the Amazon affiliate program engaged in fraud! Nearly one in every five conversions to the site were associated with an affiliate identified as having committed fraud in the past.”
Are affiliate marketers really that untrustworthy? Not really. Monica suggests that most affiliate fraud probably results from affiliates engaging in behaviors they don’t even realize are harmful. In the piece, Monica provides insight on the most common sources of bad affiliate traffic, plus five tips to help advertisers vet their affiliates and ad networks and prevent those common mistakes.
