Comment by unreal37 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unreal37 | Hacker News Reader

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They're not "afraid" of getting scammed. They get scammed often.

Affiliate marketers often use shady techniques to get the click. It's a tale as old as time.

Wasn't there some browser extension years ago that was inserting it's Amazon affiliate link into webpages?[1]

A large amount of the spam we receive in our email is ulimately just some affiliate trying to earn a commission. Affiliates don't have ethical rules they need to follow.

It's very, very hard to find the "old days" true affiliate that drives any significant traffic. It's way more profitable for affiliate marketers to force users to open a new browser window which drops a cookie without the user having any true intention to buy, with the aim to scoop up the commission any future purchases.

I mean if you can trick a million people into clicking a link, you can make money as an affiliate. Or you used to be able to do that.

[1] https://www.perimeterx.com/resources/blog/2016/hijacking-use...

> It's very, very hard to find the "old days" true affiliate that drives any significant traffic.

The shame here is that Louis Rossmann is that type of "old school" affiliate. I buy equipment because he talks about it in detail. Otherwise I might just pick up whatever is at Microcenter, etc.

Shouldn't those activities create patterns which are easy to detect?

A million visitors and just one sale -> Something is wrong

Mostly repeat customers -> Something is wrong

How would a scammer bring in a steady stream of new customers?

> How would a scammer bring in a steady stream of new customers?

Spam email campaigns. Or google ad campaigns. Twitter bot spam.

There’s lots of ways to get people to click on Amazon links and make money. Especially because I think Amazon gives you the 4% of anything they buy in the next 24 hours or some period. Since a large percent of humans have Amazon accounts and buy stuff pretty recently if you can just get your affiliate cookie on their browser, you could make quite a bit.

That would create exactly the obvious patterns I mentioned. Low conversion ratio and many repeat customers.

With new customers I mean customers who have not bought before.

There are very few new customers for Amazon. Everyone has an account.

The affiliate program is trying to drive increased purchases.

My initial post (maybe you did not see it) was about why other retailers don't make compelling affiliate programs.

Why not show a box to users on the website saying, "It looks like you came from xyz, we'll pay them 4% of this sale. Is it wrong? Click here to report it."

Because that has a non-zero chance of customers exiting out of the sale. I’m guessing they measured the lost sales against fraudulent affiliates and chose fraud affiliates.

People are funny and the slightest distraction might skunk the sale. Not for most, but for a few percent.

I watched my grandmother purchase something online and it was revealing how much time it took and how much she struggled. Something that took 10 seconds for me took her 15 minutes. Amazon wants those sales too.

It would be better to pose the question after the sale is complete, imo. Ask the costumer which partner, from a list, contributed to get him/her to decide for the product.

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