Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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I was reading some posts on the Wicked Fire forum this morning and came across one where somebody was looking for advice on his new blog. So I went to check it out.

Great - another mongrel that thinks it’s acceptable to celebrate and encourage fraud.

One of his posts explained how affiliates could scam affiliate programs that pay for leads and accept incentivized traffic:

Step 1: Sign up for affiliate account with Copeac/Commission Junction/Performics etc.

Step 2: Find a pay-per-lead offer that doesn’t mind incentivized traffic and apply for it.

Step 3: Set up some sort of package that would be downloaded by many on a p2p network or a bittorrent. Could be porn, free hacked software, whatever you think will get a lot of people to sign up for it.

Step 3: Zip up your bundle and password protect it. Have a txt file in the bundle that explains that the password is the 5th word of the first paragraph after they fill out your lead form. Once they’ve filled out the lead form - you get paid for the lead - they get their porn/software/whatever and everyone is happy.

He attributes the great idea to fellow Wicked Fire member, SEOdave.

In case any aspiring dregs think this is some new, clever idea, it’s not. The affiliates at the bottom of the barrel have been engaging in this sort of thing for a long time.

I caught on to it over six years ago and chronicled it in ClickZ.

Same scam. Back then, it was some smart kid that was going to Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Well, not so smart, because I caught him. I went to the administration at his school with the evidence I’d compiled.

The long and short - he was ultimately suspended from college for a semester for his handy work. Mom and dad must have been so proud.

So where do we go from here? Perhaps this can be the catalyst for the affiliate networks to start working together for a universal affiliate blacklist.

In the meantime, affiliate managers ought to audit their affiliate programs and ban the bums (well, you should have been doing that already!).

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