[SOLVED] affiliate program.. ideas to stop people cheating...

[Dragen]

Hi,

I'm thinking of running an affiliate program for my site.. allowing people to add links to me and each time someone follows the link they get a point.

The obviouse problem here is abuse of the system by the user clicking hundreds of time..

I'm thinking of using an IP ban, so it gets the ip and if a user with that ip has already clicked during that day, then it doesn't count it.

What other methods could I use to try and ensure that people can't cheat the system?

 

Thanks

 

 

EDIT: just realised this might be in the wronf forum... sorry if it is!

[steelmanronald06]

You've just about nailed it on the head.  That is just about the only way your going to stop people from cheating.  Most people will only go so far as to do just that, and others might grab a proxy.  If they do, there is really no stopping them. Here is what _I_ would do:

 

Create the system like you have in mind.  Each IP address gets one unique click per day. Then have a page on your site, that the affiliates know about, that they can go find their link on and see how many times their affiliate has been used.  However, get two columns in your database:

 

Unique Clicks and Clicks

 

The unique clicks will determine what you wanted it to in the first place, but when people go to view their lilnk on your site, show them the Clicks column and not the Unique Clicks column. Then when they click again and see that they made their link count go up they will think that they can do that a few times and call it good.  Just don't tell them there is a secret Unique Click behind the scenes that actually does the affiliate work, and they won't ever bother to use a proxy because they will think that your not checking the IP Address.

 

Hope that made sense.  Early in the morning for me and I've had no coffee.

[Dragen]

ah yeah! that's a great idea..

 

Thanks