We inherited an affiliate program reporting $500,000 a month in revenue. Clean dashboard. Strong numbers. When we audited it, nearly all of it was fake.
Two problems everywhere: brand bidding and cookie stuffing. Affiliates were buying the brand's own name in paid search and capturing customers who were already converting. Other partners were dropping cookies on users who had never interacted with the offer, then collecting commission on sales they had nothing to do with.
We cut them all. Revenue dropped to $60,000 a month.
That's a difficult conversation to have with a client. But the $500K was fiction. The $60K was real: actual customers, actual affiliate-driven acquisition, actual economics we could build on.
From there we rebuilt with legitimate media buyers, editorial publishers, and performance-driven content partners. The program is back to six figures a month and climbing. This time the revenue belongs to the affiliate channel.
Three things that catch this early:
Switch your attribution setting to credit only when the partner drove the click, not every checkout where their code appeared. Most platforms call this "Always Credit" and have it on by default. Turn it off.
Audit branded keyword rankings monthly. If affiliates are outranking you on your own brand name in paid search, that's the first sign of bidding abuse.
Watch for abnormal conversion rates by partner. Cookie stuffers show inflated conversion numbers on little to no traffic. It's the easiest signal to spot once you're looking for it.
Clean programs are easier to scale. Inflated ones collapse the moment someone actually looks at them.
Want to scale your affiliate program? Book a free strategy call here.
Talk soon,
Fred