Will Criminals In This Industry Bring It Down?

[RawAlex]

it is also why everyone is watching that CJ lawsuit as well. Most program owners never considered that their affiliates make up a potential class for a class action suit. I think companies like AFF are risking finding this out at some point. One successful suit will lead to tons more.

I don't think you will find a single program out there that doesn't have some sort of either overt defect in their tours (such as losing codes or accidental hard code links), engages in shaving / milking / affiliate adjustments, or purchases traffic / knowingly accepts traffic from sources that interfere with the affiliate / program relationship.

Example, if you run a program, and you pay zango to pop up on your signup pages, you are competing directly with your affiliates and in fact are attempting to profit from their work without paying.

Example, if you run a program, and you are aware that an affiliate is doing the same popup over join with Zango...

Example, if your software has the potential (coded into it) to shave or modify affiliate stats to reflect anything other than the true sales...

Example, if your program is coded to lose affiliate links in certain cases or has hard coded links to replace your affiliate links in certain manners.

My favorite one right now is the "pop over" tour. You click your affiliate link, you get the tour, you click any link on the tour, and the next page is opened in a new window, and the original window is blurred and redirected to another program or site without your affiliate code. If your user has a popup blocker, you could end up losing 100% of your sales.

There are so many ways that programs work AGAINST their affiliates, and each of these methods brings potential for class action.