For an experienced marketer, finding an affiliate partner to work with isn’t the difficult part, it’s finding the right partner. This is because the longer you’ve worked in affiliate marketing the higher chance there is of getting burned by false promises and outright fraud in performance marketing.
Add to that, fraudulent affiliate actions (i.e., fake clicks, leads, installs, and sales) are detrimental to a marketing budget and clawing back paid commissions can be nearly impossible. So preventing fraud from entering into your environment and campaigns in the first place is a much easier route.
There are often tell-tale signs that an affiliate will cause you grief down the line so spending the time to thoroughly answer these ten questions will help you qualify the best affiliate partners and possibly prevent you from working with a fraudster.
Affiliate Program Participation
Questions to ask: What other affiliate programs do they participate in?
There are certain qualifications that affiliate networks will impose on members as a form of quality control. This includes a lot of basics that you’ll need in your affiliates:
- Be at least 18 years old (or have a parent/guardian sign up on your behalf)
- Possess a valid tax ID or Social Security number
- Compliance with FTC guidelines on affiliate marketing
- Include proper disclosures about affiliate relationships
- Have a privacy policy
Being in good standing with other affiliate programs is a good indicator you’re dealing with a quality affiliate or at least one that meets some minimum requirements.
Site Longevity
Questions to ask: Are their sites new? If so, why and what’s their plan?
While brand-new domains don’t automatically equate to fraud, a collection of recent registrations should raise a red flag. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to legitimately establish authority, develop an organic following, and become a top-ranking site in mere days or weeks. Unless the affiliate has a proven track record of taking affiliate sites from zero to hero, it’s likely best to avoid brand-new domains.
There are several free domain age-checking tools you can use such as:
Quality & Unique Content
Questions to ask: Is their content unique? Does it speak to your audience?
Scraped, duplicate content from other websites is a clear sign an affiliate is taking shortcuts and won’t be a good fit. Part of the virtue of working with affiliates is that they have the access and engagement of the right audience for your product or service. If the website isn’t using original content, they are likely not doing a good job of engaging that audience.
Site Quality
Questions to ask: Are their sites complete and functioning? Are they quality-looking?
A good sign that your affiliate partner has attention to detail and will be good to work with is if their website is in good condition. You can look for things like:
- Broken links
- Unfinished but published pages
- Images not loading
- Dead-ends for users
- Misleading links
You have to question how they plan on sending you legitimate traffic if they’re currently failing to provide a quality user experience. You can look at their site manually or crawl it using a bot, regardless, ask about their plans for their website’s user experiences now and into the future.
Social Presence
Questions to ask: How active are they on social media? Do they have a social media manager or protocol?
Keeping up on social media, is a sign that an affiliate is active in promoting their site and will likely be a good partner. Look at the frequency, quality, and engagement of posts – they don’t have to be a social media master but they need to demonstrate a core competency of speaking to their target audience.
Publication Frequency
Questions to ask: How often do they publish? Do they have a content calendar?
Having stale content on a site, where nothing’s been updated in months or years, should be a warning that they probably don’t have a real, active, engaged audience or web presence.
You can use the Way-Back Machine to see how often a site gets updated and even see what the site used to look like and how it’s been improved. Always work with affiliates that have an active content calendar and an engaged audience
References
Questions to ask: Can they share references? Share examples of current campaigns?
Just like when you’d vet a person for job, examples of their work and references will go a long way in establishing trust with an affiliate. Look for relevant experience and ask how that prior experience can translate to success working together.
Be wary if they can’t give any examples of other monetization projects, current campaigns, or materials that outline how they plan to monetize traffic for a merchant.
Aligned Values & Guidelines
Questions to ask: Does their content align with your brand’s values? Will they comply with your specific campaign guidelines?
From a brand safety perspective, things like adult content, vulgarity, and deceptive language should be red flags if they don’t align with your brand’s guidelines and core values. Ask yourself if their content is something that you want your company and products to be associated with.
Marketing Tactics
Questions to ask: Do their marketing tactics comply with your network terms and conditions?
Things like banner farms, pop-unders, cookie stuffing, adware, comment spamming, etc. all fall into poor user experiences where a person probably did not mean to click on something or visit a page. If the traffic is real, it probably won’t convert. Research their tactics and be wary of ones that go against your service terms.
Get details on the affiliate’s methodology for performance marketing. Good affiliate partners will share their approach because they also want to find a good partner to deal with.
RSS Feeds / Widgets
Questions to ask: Are their sites full of RSS feeds/widgets with no real content?
Fraudulent publishers will try to make their network of websites look more legitimate than they actually are by adding multiple news feeds or other RSS feeds to them. At first glance, it’s hard to tell that there is in fact no real content on the site, just a collection of feeds.
A simple vetting process can significantly help to weed out fraudulent affiliates. Read more about Fraudlogix’s affiliate fraud solutions and how we can help you to prevent fraud.
