Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

We focus on retail and consumer brands we can stand behind. Common categories include food, wellness, specialty products, and general retail e-commerce. We are selective and do not take programs that conflict with our values or that we would not be comfortable promoting.

John Philpot Curran stated in 1790, "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance..." How does this relate to fraud in affiliate marketing programs? Simply put, we can have the best tools and reports, but if we don't use them, we will never detect fraudulent activity.

The first step in an affiliate marketing anti-fraud strategy is prevention. The second is constant review, or as Ronald Reagan said, "trust but verify."

Prevention starts with carefully selecting who can join the program, requiring manual review of each application. Next is ongoing vigilance — this step never ends. It involves regularly monitoring reports for sudden changes in CR, AOV, or sales revenue, whether up or down. This process helps detect signs of cookie stuffing, forced clicks, or fake order injection. Potential issues are first spotted at the reporting level, then followed by affiliate-specific investigations, often in collaboration with the merchant, who has deeper insight into the orders and customers involved.

We conduct monthly analyses and collect data on each affiliate active in clicks and sales. For those with sales, we track metrics such as CR, AOV, clicks, orders, and revenue. This allows for quick comparisons, especially against program averages. AOV is especially useful here, while CR indicates the quality of their traffic.

Combined with historical data, this question is usually addressed with facts rather than emotion.

Most affiliate networks can offer higher commissions when an affiliate brings in a "new to file" customer. This level of tracking and the extra commission serve as strong motivators. We also recommend adding more content, review, and comparison sites, as well as some influencers when appropriate, since they tend to drive more new customers. Lastly, if you use coupons, create special codes for new customers or first orders only.

Most likely, yes. We've worked with programs that ran on "auto-pilot" with no management or, even worse, on "auto-approve" for anyone who applied. The latter often attracted many fraudulent applications and bad actors. Using a gardening analogy, such programs need heavy weeding to make room for productive affiliates to grow and thrive.

To rejuvenate an overrun or stagnant program, we run basic performance reports on past affiliate data. It doesn't take long to identify the producers from the weeds and begin corrective action.

Our recommendation is to immediately terminate all bad actors and personally reach out to those worth retaining. It’s like a failing restaurant under new management — let the public know it has changed so they can give it another chance. Once they are aware of our involvement and the metrics reported to affiliates return to reasonable ratios, trust can be restored. This process takes several months and is necessary to shift the program back into growth mode.