If you will lift your brows and cast a careful look on our online services industry, you will find countless affiliate programs and marketing agencies. The figures are very disproportionate as one good affiliate program can serve hundreds of publishers. Still, we have thousands of programs and many of which are created just to entice the publishers and exploit their resources.

Affiliate programs are provided by premier marketing agencies, merchants themselves and by affiliate networks. By signing up for an affiliate program provided by any merchant, you share a direct relationship with your partner or merchant. In case of third party services, like those provided by affiliate marketing agencies and networks, you have representative to pledge your case. In any case, the publisher runs a risk of falling to the wrong merchant or affiliate program.

There are quite a few ways wherein the merchant can take advantage of the affiliate. These are:

Merchant or Network not paying anything: This is one kind of exploitation where merchants or networks promise to pay the affiliate, but do not. The reasons provided are earnings less than threshold amount, click frauds reported from the affiliate, reversal of any sale or purchase, unqualified leads or simple refusal from the agency. The remedial procedure is to go for proper credibility check of the agency by interacting with them and interacting with any other affiliate that you may find.

Merchant or Network pays, but not on time: In this kind of exploitation, the merchant or network may make unnecessary delays in transferring the amount or commissions. Some reasons might justify temporary delays, like online transactions or delays due to intermediary channels. Still, whenever you go for an affiliate program make sure they provide timely payouts and also check the frequency.

Merchant or Network pays, but pays less: In this kind of exploitation the agency will provide a number of reasons for paying you less. Often, the affiliate programs have complaints about reversal rates and deductions from their earnings. This usually happens when the affiliate is unaware of terms and conditions and does not bother to consider such situations.