If you have your own affiliate program, once affiliates start to sign up, even if you're automatically approving them, it's a good idea to audit your network on a regular basis since the FTC is now making marketers responsible for the actions of their affiliates.

Therefore, if any of your affiliates should get out of control, it might very well cost you a lot of money.

It's likely you've had hundreds of affiliates sign up for your program including hobbyists, spammers, web-masters and other marketers. Thus it's very important to review each one regularly to make sure their methods for promoting you is acceptable to your company and, most important, legal.

Here are a few tips when screening:

1. All affiliates should have an active web site. If not, it's possible they could be spammers.

2. The affiliate site content should relate to your products or services.

3. The site should have an appropriate level of content and not be one of those spam sites that filled with nothing but ads.

4. Be careful of misuse of content and make it clear to your affiliates what type of content they can use on their website.

Affiliate Fraud

Affiliate fraud has been increasing, which makes it even more essential that you screen your affiliates on a regular basis. There are two main types of fraud:

Malware: Software has been developed and installed, usually as part of a free download. When someone clicks on the affiliate link, the original affiliate ID is replaced with the fraud's affiliate ID.

Fake purchase: If your product is of high value that pays a large commissions to affiliates, you may notice some questionable parties sign up, then use a stolen or fake credit card information to attempt to purchase products through their links.

Communicating with Your Affiliates

The best affiliates are usually very busy and they may forget about your services and products. In time, your offers could end up in less visited areas or even deleted.

Therefore, it's very important to maintain contact with your affiliates, especially with the best performers. Don't wait for them to contact you because this usually means they're registering a problem or complaint. By taking the initiative, you demonstrate how much you're interested in the partnership.

You don't need to wait until you have a new product as an excuse to contact your power affiliates. Even a quick note just to ask them if they need anything is better than no communication at all. This is also a good opportunity to request feedback on your program.

Managing a successful affiliate program is certainly not an easy task that can be completely automated. However, keep in mind that happy affiliates are always going to be more productive, and the more money they make — the more money you will make.

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