I love speaking at Affiliate Summit. I know it’s weird, but I enjoy putting together presentations about what I know, what I have experienced, and how others can learn from my mistakes.

Next week at Affiliate Summit East in Philadelphia I will be speaking on a panel. I already had my presentation put together when I came across a transaction in my Commission Junction reports that would be the best news I could ask for. A sale for $135,000 with a commission of $6,790. For most solo affiliates that sale would be over a month of work for them and a cause for celebration. For me, it was just a perfect example for my presentation: Fighting Affiliate Fraud from All Angles.

Although fraud isn’t exactly a fun topic, it’s a necessary one in our industry. As an affiliate, I feel it is my obligation to be on the lookout for fraud and work with my merchants when I see it. In the especially egregious example above, it was clear to me as soon as I saw the transaction on my rewards site that it was fraudulent. I used clues like how long the person had been a member, the lack of other transactions in their account before making one this big, the items they supposedly bought, etc. Sure–there might have been a 1% chance the sale was legitimate, but I would rather play it safe than sorry with my merchants.

Whether you are an affiliate, merchant, or network, we have some great tips for how you can both prevent fraud as well as take care of it quickly when it occurs. We’ll talk about everything from incentive sites to monitoring your brand. We have real-life examples that we will share with you and show you how we dealt with them. Plus, we’re leaving plenty of time for Q&A at the end to help you deal with your own problems.

We all stand to lose when fraud happens, so we all need to work together to try to prevent it.

Here’s the information you need if you want to attend:

Session Title: Fighting Affiliate Fraud From All Angles
Day: Monday 19th, 2013
Time: 11:30am-12:30pm

Learn how merchants, CPA networks and affiliates can all work to minimize fraudulent transactions and keep programs profitable. Examples, data and tips from a range of programs and niches.

Experience level: Intermediate
Target audience: Merchant/Advertiser
Niche/vertical: Fraud

Tricia Meyer, Owner, Sunshine Rewards (Twitter @sunshinetricia) (Moderator)
Michael Esposito, Affiliate Manager, Costume SuperCenter (Twitter @mjesposito13)
Samantha Murphy, Co-Founder and CEO, Marathon Ads, LLC (Twitter @MarathonAds)

(This Session is Open to Networking Plus, VIP, and All Access Pass Holders Only)

Below is a video interview that my fellow panelist, Mike Esposito, did with Todd Farmer that gives a little bit more information about his part of the presentation.

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