I haven't done affiliate screening for a few years, but here's a couple resources.
Besides the obvious things you want to screen out like affiliates that have adult content, gambling or whatever - one of the main things you need to check is whether it's a fraud affiliate. So you need to try to determine if the affiliate is really who they say they are.
I had a big Chinese fraud right joining a bunch of networks and programs pretending to be Linda with 5 Star. Used all my Whois info so had all my personal contact info and used it. So unless you call to screen affiliates it can be hard to tell who's really applying.
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The non PC version is simply don't accept affiliate requests from Africa, Turkey, China and the Phillipines.
Sadly (for the legitimate good guys who happen to live in those countries), that will cut out 70% of your fraud problems.
Would I find that out using IP location lookup of their site? If so, that wouldn't always work. My site is hosted in the USA even though we're based in Australia.
I could ask them, but I may not get a straight answer. Are there any other ways?
Edit-----------never mind, I just read Phony Affiliates Prevention Guide for Managers and now have lots to check.
A phone call is a pretty good way to not only verify the affiliate, but also establish a relationship with that affiliate.
Very true novelco!
Quote:
Originally Posted by aj7877
Would I find that out using IP location lookup of their site? If so, that wouldn't always work. My site is hosted in the USA even though we're based in Australia.
That's your site IP which is completely different. An affiliate could have 10 sites on 10 IPs in 10 different states.
The IP we are talking about is the IP of where you are physically located when you visit a site. It's the affiliate's IP (generated by their ISP) as opposed to the IP of their web site (generated by their host).
__________________ Linda Buquet :: Affiliate Recruiting, Promotion & PR
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SOme my steps are this, in no particular order:
step 1: verify the IP address that they are signing up from matches the country they claim as there mailing address.
step 2: make them list the website that they use, and do a visual check of it, go a google search on the domain name, look at the people who link to the site.
Step 3: is there email address using the domain name they list? if there email address is something like ladyluck0314876872@SOme Free Account then there may be something wrong with the people.
A phone call is the sure fire way to scope them out as well.
SOme my steps are this, in no particular order:
step 1: verify the IP address that they are signing up from matches the country they claim as there mailing address.
Just so you know some affiliates have their browser setup to appear they come from another country for very legitimate reasons, not saying you point this out because it's a automatic red flag, but just wanted to chime in and add that i personally regularly use an US IP address.
Because it gets frustrating checking out landing pages and then get the "This offer isn't available for you area, etc" type of messages.
I've set my FireFox language settings to US as well to not have to select United States each time i make use of Google's keyword tool.
So straight of the bat if you would check my browser headers it would look out of the ordinary (when checking against my physical mailing address), and a good possibility i still have my US IP enabled as well.
I have only ever had a single fraudulant affiliate who passed a basic fraud points system. (And he was more dumb than pure fraudulant).
Free email address = -1
Free website = -1
From Nigeria, Turkey, China, Phils, India = -2
Invalid phone number = -4
Applied from proxy ip = -2
Can't write English = -1
Invalid address = -1
Address that is on Google = -3
Has a "shonky" website = -1
Email address doesn't match domain = -1
There are a bunch of other things to look for, but if your affiliate applicant loses more than 4 points you should start worrying.
Remeber though, that you will get a few false positives with a system like this.
I use the trusty phone call as a way to screen affiliates, unless I personally invited them to join my affiliate network.
Most of the time, I find that phone numbers are bogus and that results in an automatic rejection!!
You can try emailing them as well, but most fraudsters will have access to a valid email account and will write back. Look for broken English and you can immediately smell a scammer!
Screening New Affiliates - how do you do it?
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