It is a natural phenomenon, that every positive breakthrough in any field opens doors for fraudsters to find ways for its abuse. The same holds true for affiliate marketing. The online advertising and promotional services offered by affiliates and online affiliate networks has made the Affiliate marketing industry lucrative, and hence has attracted cheats to commit frauds and make money. Frauds committed in the name of affiliate marketing are called Affiliate Frauds.

Affiliate frauds affect not only the merchant, but also the consumer as well as the affiliates and online affiliate networks. The credibility of this medium is questioned and the affiliate marketing networks also face the risk of losing merchants/advertisers, as the merchants face the risk of losing their customers.

The most common methodology used by fraudsters is posing as an affiliate and luring merchants to post advertisements on their sites. Though this kind of cheating is easily detected, but merchants do tend to lose on valuable time and prospective customers. Similarly using software that replaces links of legitimate affiliates and online affiliate networks to divert traffic from their sites is another widespread affiliate fraud.

Copying the style and content of a popular site and then signing up with the same affiliate as the original site is done to confuse customers and divert traffic from the original site. Spamming is another nuisance that has afflicted the affiliate marketing network industry. Due top this problem, e-mails from legitimate affiliates also get labeled as spam.

Affiliate Marketing Networks need to take up the responsibility of thoroughly screening the affiliates before registering them. Similarly merchants/advertisers should check the background of an affiliate before striking a deal. Continuous monitoring of affiliates merchants and online affiliate networks is also essential. Communication channels between affiliates should be open along with constant interaction with the merchants to learn and discuss ways to deal with Affiliate Fraud.

Laws dealing with affiliate networks in UK and in may countries across the world are quite strict and may take legal action against fraudsters and cheaters if discovered. The increasing use of online affiliate networks as a prominent feature of search engine optimization services makes it all the more essential to arrest the growth of Affiliate Fraud before it cripples the growing affiliate marketing industry.