[raz32dust]

How is there no better way to track conversions in a standard way by a third party? This whole win relies on the fact that the affiliate manager let out the real policy. She could have just said that there were no conversions, and the author would basically have no recourse?

[mtlynch]

Author here.

Yeah, that was my initial thought too, but thinking about it more, I understand why that doesn't exist.

Merchants are the ones paying the affiliate platforms, so the affiliate platforms don't have incentive to create features designed to increase power of the affiliates at the expense of the merchant.

Affiliates in this space don't seem to be very discriminating. The only communities I've found for keto affiliate marketers are the groups run by the merchants themselves, so it's not like they're searching for information about which merchants are honest or not. I think the general trend is to try a merchant, monitor how much they pay you, then move on if the dollar amount is too low.

[raz32dust]

Yeah, makes sense. It would be hard to gain initial traction and the business model can be tricky. But the merchants also of course get value from the affiliates, so once it catches on with affiliates, they could demand merchants to use this service for checkouts for trust and verification, if it is lightweight enough. Could just be javascript like google analytics or piwik.

[swyx]

this is the real question here. how is the state of affiliate marketing so bad that affiliates have to trust without any means of verification the very people inclined to scam them?