An affiliate network’s fraud prevention program is a bit like playing on the offensive line in football. If an offensive lineman is doing his job, you never hear his name mentioned by the announcers. If you do hear an offensive lineman’s name mentioned a lot during the game, it generally means he’s committing penalties or missing blocks and hurting the offense.

Similarly, if fraud prevention is successful, it tends to go unnoticed – because issues are eliminated before they ever happen. Just like a great offensive lineman is vital to a football team’s performance, having an effective fraud prevention program is a key to an affiliate network’s long-term success…

Filed under: Affiliate Tips, Industry News by Tom Wozniak
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A license? For a blog? Seriously? Yes, absolutely seriously. News came out this week that the city of Philadelphia has begun requiring bloggers that reside within the city to pay a one-time business privilege license for $300 (or $50/year).

Now, before we get too up-in-arms and jump on the “Why is Philly after those Poor Bloggers!” bandwagon, let’s take a step back and look at what apparently triggered this issue. The city has a business privilege license that applies to anyone “conducting commercial activity” based in the city. In practice, this would likely apply to any blog that attempts to drive revenue from banner ads, AdSense, etc. What apparently has happened is that local bloggers who made a little profit on their blogs claimed the revenue on their taxes (as they should) and this raised a flag when the city saw business revenue from these city residents (even it is was just a few dollars)…

Filed under: Industry News by Tom Wozniak
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Think about your relationships with Affiliate Managers at different networks. Are they all pretty much interchangeable or are there a couple of Affiliate Managers that you prefer to work with? What sets those relationships above the rest? Chances are, you have gotten to know those Affiliate Managers better than the others. Similarly, they have also gotten to know you and your business better than their counterparts at other networks. So, how can you improve all of those relationships and help grow your business even faster…

Filed under: Affiliate Tips by Tom Wozniak
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There is certainly no shortage of blogs, newsletters, and websites that touch on various aspects of the affiliate marketing industry. Just keeping up with what some of the more well-known bloggers can be a real challenge. But, it can be well worth your time to find a few newsletters or blogs that you find valuable and trying to check them out regularly. Here are a few interesting posts that I have run across over the past couple of weeks, in case you missed them…

Filed under: Affiliate Tips by Tom Wozniak
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The September issue of Wired magazine includes an article proclaiming the death of the web (The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet). After reading the article, I think the title may be a bit of an overstatement. The Web is Evolving. Long Live the Internet might be a more accurate title, but probably not as attention grabbing. All that aside, it is an interesting article for those of us in the affiliate marketing industry.

The main point of the article is that the web (the browser controlled delivery of content on the Internet) is in decline as the majority of Internet traffic is dominated by a very tiny number of websites (Google and Facebook being two of the obvious culprits) that are slowly closing down the open Internet. The argument is that the web will continue to shrink as more and more professional content providers seek to create ‘walled gardens’ (specifically apps) where they can hopefully generate a larger revenue stream than the more open web environment has produced. It is probably an oversimplification, but the argument could be boiled down to the idea that apps are going to bring about the downfall of the web as we know it…

Filed under: Industry News by Tom Wozniak
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