Affiliate Marketing Issues
When affiliate marketing was in its nascent stage there wasn’t much control over what affiliates were doing. Affiliates abused their positions by using false advertisements, forced clicks to get tracking cookies set on users' computers, and adware, which displays ads on computers. Several of the affiliate programs were badly controlled and lacked regulation.
Adware
Affiliate marketers today have taken steps to fight AdWare. Affiliate marketers became aware of the issue earlier than the merchants. They noticed that adware often overwrote their tracking cookie which resulted in a decline of commissions. Affiliates who do not use adware became furious by adware, since they were being cheated of their commissions. Adware does not provide any useful content to the often unaware user that has the adware running on his computer. Affiliates discussed the issue and decided that the best way to cut off adware was by discouraging merchants from advertising via adware. Eventually, affiliate networks were also forced by merchants and affiliates to take a stand and ban adware publishers from their network.
Email Spam
In the beginning the affiliates used spam to promote the programs in which they were enrolled. As affiliate marketing has progressed many affiliate merchants have refined their terms and conditions to ban affiliates from spamming.
Search Engine Spam / Spamdexing
Many affiliates have converted from sending email spam to creating large volumes of auto-generated WebPages often using product data-feeds provided by merchants, each committed to different niche keywords as a way of SEOing their sites with the search engines. This is sometimes referred to as spamming the search engine results. Spam is the biggest threat to natural search engines whose aim is to provide quality search results for keywords or phrases entered by their users.
Sites made up mostly of affiliate links are not appreciated as they do not offer quality content. Affiliate marketers must create real value within their websites with nothing but links leading to the merchant sites. Affiliate links work best in the context of the information contained within the website.
Lack of Self Regulation
Affiliate Marketing is motivated by entrepreneurs who are working at the forefront of internet marketing. Affiliates take advantage of new emerging trends and technologies. Very often most affiliates fail and give up before they become big due to the trial and error method of work. This is why the affiliate marketing industry is not able to self-regulate itself beyond individual contracts between advertiser and affiliate.
Threat from CPA Networks
Traditional Affiliate Marketing is resources intensive and needs a lot of maintenance, which includes the management, monitoring and support of affiliates. Affiliate Marketing is an alliance between advertisers and affiliates. On the other hand CPA Networks eliminate the need for the advertiser to build and maintain relationships to affiliates, because that task is performed by the CPA Network for the advertiser.
Another issue that has come up is the term ‘affiliate marketing’ as it is often and wrongly confused with network-marketing or multi-level marketing. "Performance Marketing" is one alternative term that has been used. There have been other recommendations but nothing concrete has come up till now.