Right about now I’m on the road driving from the SF Bay Area to Eugene, Oregon to visit my in-laws.  Next week is my vacation, full of cold & rain while doing the yearly holiday visit with the extended family.  This week has been great with all the last minute holiday preparations.  I had a great Christmas, and I hope everyone out there had a terrific holiday.

Most people who didn’t take any extra vacation days are probably back to work today, so check out what you might have missed while making your last minute treks to Walmart for more bows and stocking stuffers.

• It’s not just awards season for the movies; ShareASale Performance Awards were announced on Monday.  Congrats go out to Scott Jangro, CSN Stores, Nicole Beidler, Checks Unlimited, GreenPlanetSearch, Missy Ward, and Melanie Seery for taking home top honors.
• The acclaimed BlueShirtNation, BestBuy’s internal employee social network, is radically changing according to co-founder Steve Bendt.  I’m interested to see where they take it.
• The Performance Marketing Alliance has finally settled on a Mission Statement.
• AffiliateTrust.org has been mentioned this week on Scott Jangro’s blog and the Affiliate Thing podcast.  From what I can discern from reading their About Us page, they’ve basically formed to help combat black hat or shady affiliate practices.  Which is definitely a good thing.  Take some time (as will I) to educate yourself by reading more.
• Are you making resolutions this year?  Missy Ward isn’t.  More power to her!

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Click Fraud:

• The deceitful practice of posing as pay-per-click traffic for the purpose of generating false revenue by the affiliates serving the ads.  In PPC advertising terms, it generates a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link.

This, like the click bot, gives black hat affiliates an unfair advantage over the honest affiliates paying for legitimate traffic.  The black hat, or unethical, affiliates click on the links repeatedly or from proxies to pose as interested traffic that boosts the click rates that increases how much the affiliates get paid, but in reality these clicks shouldn’t count because they’re not individual web users interested in the product or service being advertised, which is what the merchant is essentially paying for.

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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

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Affiliate Fraud:

• Bogus activity generated by an affiliate in an attempt to generate illegitimate, unearned revenue.

Commonly referred to as Black Hat activity, unfortunately there are lots of tactics that unethical affiliates can use to generate revenue.  Click fraud, redirects, adware, software programs, tool bars, etc.  There are many active affiliates out there that are working to bring ethics to the forefront of the affiliate marketing community.  Some great resources if you’re interested in reading up on what’s going on today in the affiliate industry regarding ethics and fraud, check out:

1. Affiliate Fair Play
2. UNEthical Affiliates Sub-Forum at ABestWeb
3. Parasiteware Sub-Forum at ABestWeb
4. Cookies, Adware, & Spyware Forum at 5 Star Affiliate Programs

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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

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