Have you ever been hit by a fake anti-virus alert on your computer? Do you know someone who has? More importantly, have you ever made money off those kinds of offers? The chances are that the number of people replying in the affirmative to these questions is disappointingly high. Fake AV software is perhaps the most visible of fraudulent activities online: it is incredibly … [Read more...]
Botnet of 13 Million Computers Smashed
On Wednesday Spanish authorities announced the arrest of three alleged ringleaders behind the Mariposa botnet. Mariposa is possibly the largest botnet yet discovered and consisted of an estimated 12.7 million computers. The extent of the virus-infection is staggering: more than 190 countries, over half of the Fortune 1,000 large enterprises and at least 40 major banks were … [Read more...]
Winning With Authority
It's all good - from online advertising being up 25 percent, according to the IAB; to online commerce on the rise 23 percent, according to comScore; to Google search queries that are up 41 percent, per Nielsen//NetRatings. It's clear that online marketing grew strongly through the first three quarters of 2007.However, as industries grow, so does the attention paid by state and … [Read more...]
Fair Play: Q & A with Kellie Stevens
Kellie Stevens is the president of AffiliateFair-Play.com, which is committed to providing a better understanding and interpretation of the behaviors that impact the affiliate marketing space. Stevens' goal is to create a fair and competitive marketplace, and she does this by focusing on the actual behaviors - not the technologies - leading to unfair competition and abuse in … [Read more...]
A Call to Action
Someone is hijacking your traffic and stealing your commissions. That someone might be a competing affiliate marketer, or worse, the merchant whose products you are promoting. To my dismay, I discovered that traffic from one of my sites was being diverted when a friend sent me some screen captures of that site's home page. The first screen shot showed my site open in a browser … [Read more...]
Out of Commission
How to Limit Commission Theft Find a trusted network and merchants. Ask other affiliates about their experiences with network partners, and if you are not being protected, take your business elsewhere. Likewise, if a merchant partner advertises via adware that is known to facilitate commission theft, you may be better off without them. Study your reports yourself for … [Read more...]
Marketing Muscle
Over the years stories about intimidation and goons knocking on the doors of various affiliates and search marketers have circulated at industry events. Some of these scary accounts have taken on a life of their own - much like a game of telephone where fact and fiction are often intertwined as the stories are told over and over again. The victims claim to have seen a variety … [Read more...]
Taking A Stand: Q & A with Brian Littleton
ShareASale is an affiliate network that has taken a hard stance on spyware, adware and parasite-ware by not allowing any downloadable applications into its network. That business model has won legions of affiliate supporters. ShareASale is growing, and is still considered the smaller, nimbler, more fun network - throwing memorable parties and playing host for standout social … [Read more...]
Leading the Way
Online lead generation gets no respect. Online lead generation affiliates less so. While the sector is growing by leaps and bounds - 290 percent over 2005, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau - people like Peter Martin and Robert Jewell just seem to drag its reputation through the mud. These guys had the honor of being sued by New York State Attorney General Eliot … [Read more...]
Denied
On a cold Minnesota afternoon, affiliate marketer Connie Berg checks her email fearing the worst: a message from a dream merchant saying her affiliate application for either iShopDaily.com or FlamingoWorld.com has been denied. You see, Berg's sites post coupon information - a once-hot commodity now shadowed by merchant belt-tightening and recent incidences of customers … [Read more...]
Clean Sweep
You're thinking of working with a merchant, but you don't want to be involved in any program that includes affiliates using questionable, if not illegal, practices. But how can you know for sure whose program is squeaky clean and whose is not?It's not easy to tell which merchants have clean programs. Maybe that's because it's not easy to pin down exactly what "clean" … [Read more...]
Stumped About Stopping Spyware
Tuan Le is mad. And when he's upset, he speaks quietly, deliberately and very thoughtfully. He's hardly a hothead. But nothing gets him more riled up, if you can call it that, than knowing he's losing a large percentage of revenue from his two affiliate Web sites to other affiliates that are acting in unethical and unfair ways. Le, who's been an affiliate for the last few years … [Read more...]
Being Ben Edelman
You'd be hard-pressed to find someone more knowledgeable or dedicated than Ben Edelman when it comes to the evils of spyware. The 24-year-old assiduously tracks the proliferation of adware from his own computer lab. He's a fierce critic of spyware practices and has testified in several high-profile adware-related lawsuits.Talk about overachievers: Edelman is a Ph.D. candidate … [Read more...]
Cyber Creeps
When thousands of consumers got emails asking them to help electronics retailer Best Buy combat Internet fraud, they were eager to help. But those who clicked on the link and entered credit card and Social Security numbers learned the ugly truth too late: They'd been had.The link took them to a "spoof" page that looked just like Best Buy's home page but was actually operated by … [Read more...]