Affiliate marketing is a system employed in online business whereby a website owner, who is considered the affiliate, is paid a commission of the revenue generated by links from the business owned by the owner of the website. It is considered as one of the best online business models. However there can be affiliate marketing fraud. The owner of the website is called the affiliate and the business owner is called the merchant. The business owner has several affiliates such that by having several affiliates, the owner can tap into a large market with limited advertisement. 
There are a few important factors involved in affiliate marketing, and each party involved is responsible to take steps to prevent or eradicate the risk of a fraudulent act or breach of the agreement.
A successful affiliate business has high standards as it must be careful to protect customers’ privacy, keep customers’ private information safe, and deal effectively with complaints.
The main concern of an affiliate is to ensure that there are few or no fraudulent acts and that customers are satisfied with the service rendered, which makes the affiliate marketer happy and successful. The more customers become satisfied customers, the more money the marketer makes.
Every affiliate marketing business must come up with an appropriate means of customer support. They provide a good customer care after purchase. Customers can raise their concerns and complaints. The affiliate marketing business must ensure that customers get satisfactory support from both the business owner and from the affiliate’s company. It must also be able to provide information concerning complaints and answers to queries within a reasonable time frame.
The affiliate marketing business must also have policies in place in case of an employee being involved in misconduct or fraud. For this matter to be reported, the customer concerned must provide a good form of evidence, such as a receipt or proof of purchase. In extreme cases, the business can even report them to law enforcement agencies. If there are several complaints against an employee, the business should be cautious as to determine if the employee is indeed involved in fraudulent activity. If so, the employee should be dismissed without delay.
* What is the best way to identify a fraudulent act ?
There are a few ways in which to detect a fraudulent act by an affiliate marketer against his own website.
* If customers are unhappy with the affiliate marketer, they can use tools to voice their dissatisfaction. He can use surveys to learn the attitude of the target niche. If the survey reveals that a large percentage of visitors is unhappy, this means that a large number of customers are actually unhappy because they are dissatisfied with what they are being sold.
* If customers are unhappy with the affiliate products or services that are being offered, they can use tools to find out what they dislike about such products. If a large number of respondents use such language, it means that a large segment of the website is unhappy with the products. This can be an indication of a fraud committed against the website.
* If customers are reporting problems with the products and services, this can be an indication of fraud against the merchant. If this happens frequently and with enough numbers, it is an extremely good sign that fraud is taking place. The business must immediately suspend all such sales in case such crime is serious enough to effect service and payments to be suspended.
