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Some shams are glaringly obvious. One being a BIG link right in the middle of a sales page inviting potential customers to join the affiliate program. The affiliate spends lots of time and money driving potential customers to a site. Then, the merchant interrupts the sales process and invites the customer to NOT make a purchase, but to sign up as an affiliate instead. Many prospective customers do sign up, then buy through their own affiliate links for an instant discount!

Clearly, a better system than the one just described is to invite the customer to become an affiliate AFTER he makes a purchase. This could be done on the thank you page, or in a follow-up auto-responder.

Some affiliate rip-offs are due to shoddy tracking systems. I've lost LITERALLY tens of thousands of dollars in commissions when the affiliate tracking systems "dropped cookies" or failed to track orders properly. Most affiliates who fall victim to this are never even aware of it happening.

Then there are the merchants who have RIDICULOUS time frames that they'll pay for a referral. They know that with bigger ticket items, they often need to follow up for perhaps months, so they only give credit for the order if the customer buys during some shorter time period after that first visit.

There is also a lot of technology being brought into play that allows affiliates to steal from each other. I've fallen victim to that, too. I was once shocked to see an iframe pulling another affiliates' link into a section of one of my webpages. Exactly HOW that got there I'll never know, but I was driving traffic to my webpage and making sales for someone else.

There are literally dozens of ways that affiliates can steal your customers right off your site, or at least prevent you from getting credited with sales resulting from your hard work. It's probably too dangerous to cover those methods here. One of the most eye-opening books I've read on dirty tricks that are played in the affiliate marketing games is called, "AdWords Black Book." It reveals stealthy ways of generating an unfair advantage using Google AdWords (TM), but it also shows what goes on in the bigger world. . . beyond AdWords.

Adwords Black Book was only released in limited quantity (only a total of 500 copies), but if it's still available it's at: https://paydotcom.com/r/5547/williec/201591/ If it's already off the market, you'll undoubtedly see discussion on online forums about some of these dirty tricks.

As an affiliate marketer, you just need to be aware that you may be working very diligently to generate sales, and then have them stolen right out from under your nose. This can be done through software that you download and install on your computer. This can be done through code embedded in webpages that you visit. This can be done through browser settings or coding. It is important to make yourself aware of all the possibilities.

When you really look at all of the ways that your affiliate commissions can be stolen from you, it may shock you that you make ANY commissions on certain products. In fact, it may explain why you DON'T make commissions on certain products.

So what does this mean to you? It means that, as an affiliate, you need to be very diligent. You need to research and understand the ways that you can be ripped off. By understanding what's going on out there, you are better prepared to take preventative measures. This is the best way to ensure that you are properly rewarded for your hard work. Without educating yourself, you're taking a real gamble when you spend money advertising affiliate products.