When you’re trying to maximize the sales potential of a product or service, there are few more effective methods than affiliate marketing. This $12B industry offers tremendous opportunities for business owners and affiliate partners. However, there’s a dark side to the underlying technology that makes it all possible. Fraudsters have been using their deep technical know-how in devious ways to steal revenue from affiliate programs. Often, they’re even able to mimic the behavior of real visitors. The highly technical nature of how they find ways to commit this type of fraud makes it very difficult to detect, but there are some red flags to watch for. Let’s look at five of these red flags so you can protect your business from affiliate fraud.
Indicators that There’s Affiliate Fraud Going on
So what are the red flags of affiliate fraud? Unfortunately, these warning signs are plentiful. To help you get started with proactively protecting your business, here are five red flags of fraudulent behavior in your affiliate marketing program.
Absentee Affiliates
Affiliates that ignore your emails or take forever to respond is a potential red flag. If you’re confronting an affiliate about fraud or other suspicious activity, this signal is even stronger.
Sales of Tougher to Convert Products
If you sell numerous products or services and some are tougher to convert, these could help identify fraud. When new affiliates suddenly start making sales of these products, that’s a red flag for fraud.
Increasing Chargebacks
If you begin seeing an increase in chargebacks from the same affiliate cohort months after their acceptance into your program, it can be a red flag for fraud. The challenge is that chargebacks from fraud usually come months later, while the affiliates were paid after only two weeks. Essentially, fraudsters can run their scam with little fear of losing commissions because of this time lag. This is why catching affiliate fraud early is so crucial.
Outlier Conversion Rates
When an affiliate suddenly starts hitting outsized conversion rates in comparison to your other partners, that’s a red flag for fraud. For example, if the average affiliate conversion rate is 10% and one of your affiliates keeps hitting rates of 40% and higher, that’s a strong sign they’re artificially inflating sales numbers.
Traffic From Suspicious IP Addresses
Traffic from known data centers could be a red flag for IP address fraud in your affiliate marketing program. This is one affiliate fraud method that’s frequently caught by an ad fraud solution like Anura.
How Do You Investigate Fraud?
So how do you know if an affiliate is committing fraud? Being proactive about managing affiliate fraud risks is the best course of action. The first step to protecting your affiliate program budget is understanding where the traffic to your offers is coming from. With Anura’s solution, you can investigate fraud in real time. Here’s how.
Proactively Manage Fraud Risks In Your Affiliate Marketing
How do you investigate affiliate fraud? Anura’s solution works by analyzing hundreds of data points about your affiliates and sales activity to see and block fraudulent acts in real-time. Integrate Anura on any platform so you can instantly respond to affiliate fraud.
Eliminate the Risks of Affiliate Fraud
Affiliate fraud is a costly problem that needs to be detected immediately. Fortunately, businesses like yours can detect and then protect themselves from it in real time. Anura delivers a powerful solution for businesses at risk for affiliate fraud. Our superior technology empowers you to act in real-time and save thousands in potential losses.
