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Setting up a good IVR (interactive voice response) call flow can pay dividends for your business because it can keep more customers on the line and route more of them to the exact resources they need without delays. Below, we’ll explore 12 call flows that you can implement in your […]
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The finance team has created a revenue dashboard inside Google Sheets to track the company’s sales performance over time. The dashboard has data tables and charts showing overall revenue and regional performance trends.
Here’s a screenshot of the Google Sheets dashboard:
The finance team wants to send a snapshot of this dashboard to the company’s management every Monday morning. They would like to automate this process so that the screenshot is captured automatically and sent via email without any manual intervention.
Let’s see how we can easily set up this automation with the help of Email Google Spreadsheets add-on. You can define the area of the Google Sheets dashboard that you want to capture, using the A1 notation, and the add-on will automatically take a screenshot of that area and send it via email to the recipients.
Open your Google Sheets dashboard, go to Extensions > Email Google Sheets > Open to launch the app. Click on the Create Workflow button and move to the Email step of the workflow.
Go to the Email step of the workflow and specify the email addresses of the recipients. The subject and body of the email can include markers that will be replaced with the actual values from the Google Sheets dashboard.
For instance, if you wish to include the value of a cell in the email, you can use the marker {{SheetName!A1}} where SheetName is the name of the sheet and A1 is the cell address.
Expand the Markers section of the Email body and click on the Image marker for the sheet whose screenshot you want to include in the email. The marker will be added to the email body.
The format of the screenshot marker follows this pattern:
{{ Image:SheetName!SheetId,A1:B10 }}The SheetName is the name of the sheet, and A1:B10 is the range of cells that you want to capture in the screenshot. The SheetId is the unique id of the sheet that is used to identify the sheet in the Google Spreadsheet. The id will not change even if you rename the sheet.
Once the message is ready, click the Preview button to send a test email to yourself. Here’s how the email will look like:
If everything looks good, click the Continue button and set the schedule for the workflow.
Do you want to list your upcoming scheduled posts in WordPress?
Showing a list of future scheduled posts to your users can generate a buzz around your content and encourage visitors to return to your website. This can help you improve user interaction and engagement on your blog posts.
In this article, we will show you how to easily display future upcoming posts in WordPress, step by step.
If you have been running a WordPress blog for a while, then you will know that publishing posts at a certain time can get more people to read them.
However, you can’t just sit around and wait for the right time to hit the publish button. That’s why WordPress has a built-in scheduling feature that lets you schedule posts to be published later.
This can help you focus on creating content and managing your editorial calendar like a pro.
Once you have scheduled the posts on your site, it is also a good idea to show a list of these upcoming articles to create hype around them and increase engagement on your blog.
Displaying future scheduled posts can be especially effective for content like serialized stories, product launches, or event announcements.
It may encourage users to discuss upcoming topics in the comments section, sign up for your newsletter, or even pre-register for events.
Having said that, let’s see how to easily list upcoming scheduled posts in WordPress.
You can easily show a list of scheduled upcoming posts on your WordPress site by adding custom code to your theme’s functions.php file. However, making even the smallest error while typing the code can break your site and make it inaccessible.
That is why we recommend always adding custom code using WPCode. It is the best WordPress code snippets plugin on the market that makes it safe and easy to add code to your website.
First, you need to install and activate the WPCode plugin. For detailed instructions, you can see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Note: WPCode has a free plan that you can use for this tutorial. However, upgrading to the pro plan will give you access to more features like a cloud library for code snippets, a CSS snippet option, advanced conditional logic, and more.
Upon activation, visit the Code Snippets » + Add Snippet page from the WordPress dashboard and click the ‘Use Snippet’ button under the ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ option.
This will take you to the ‘Create Custom Snippet’ page, where you can start by adding a name for your code snippet. The name is only for your identification and can be anything you like.
After that, choose ‘PHP Snippet’ as the Code Type from the dropdown menu on the right.
Next, you need to copy and paste the following custom code into the ‘Code Preview’ box:
function wpb_upcoming_posts() {
// The query to fetch future posts
$the_query = new WP_Query(array(
'post_status' => 'future',
'posts_per_page' => 3,
'orderby' => 'date',
'order' => 'ASC'
));
// The loop to display posts
if ( $the_query->have_posts() ) {
echo '<ul>';
while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) {
$the_query->the_post();
$output .= '<li>' . get_the_title() .' ('. get_the_time('d-M-Y') . ')</li>';
}
echo '</ul>';
} else {
// Show this when no future posts are found
$output .= '<p>No posts planned yet.</p>';
}
// Reset post data
wp_reset_postdata();
// Return output
return $output;
}
// Add shortcode
add_shortcode('upcoming_posts', 'wpb_upcoming_posts');
// Enable shortcode execution inside text widgets
add_filter('widget_text', 'do_shortcode');
After that, scroll down to the ‘Insertion’ section and choose the ‘Auto Insert’ mode.
Keep in mind that you will still have to add a shortcode to show a list of upcoming posts on your WordPress website.
Finally, scroll back to the top of the page to toggle the ‘Inactive’ switch to ‘Active’.
Once you do that, simply click the ‘Save Snippet’ button to store your settings.
Display a List of Scheduled Upcoming Posts in the Sidebar of a Classic Theme
To display a list of upcoming posts in the WordPress sidebar, visit the Appearance » Widgets page from the WordPress dashboard. Keep in mind that this option will only be available if you are using a classic (non-block) theme.
Here, you need to click the add block ‘+’ button in the top left corner of the screen to open the block menu.
From here, drag and drop the Shortcode block into the sidebar section. After that, add the following shortcode into the block:
[upcoming_posts]
Next, click the ‘Update’ button at the top to store your settings.
Now, you can visit your WordPress site to view the list of upcoming scheduled posts in action.
Display a List of Scheduled Upcoming Posts in the Full Site Editor
If you are using a block-based theme, then the Widgets menu tab won’t be available for you. In that case, you need to visit the Appearance » Editor page from the WordPress dashboard.
Once the editor opens up, click on ‘Pages’ and then simply choose a page where you want to add the shortcode from the options on the left.
The page of your choice will now be launched in the full site editor. Here, you must click the add block ‘+’ button to open the block menu and add the Shortcode block to the page.
After that, just add the following shortcode into the block:
[upcoming_posts]
Finally, click the ‘Save’ button at the top to store your settings.
Now, simply visit your WordPress site to view the list of scheduled upcoming posts.
Apart from displaying upcoming posts, you may also want to show a list of recently published posts on your WordPress site.
Doing this can help introduce visitors to new content and encourage them to explore your website more.
You can easily display a list of recent posts in WordPress using the Latest Posts block in the Gutenberg editor.
After that, you can further customize this block by adding post excerpts, author name, publication date, or featured image.
For more information, you can see our tutorial on how to display recent posts in WordPress.
We hope this article helped you learn how to list future upcoming scheduled posts in WordPress. You may also be interested in our tutorial on how to bulk schedule posts in WordPress and our top picks for the best WordPress popular posts plugins.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to List Future Upcoming Scheduled Posts in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.
You want your call center to be prepared to tackle any challenge and come out safely on the other side. While many may brush over their business continuity plans and adopt a so-called “agile” approach to potential disasters, having a plan in place will make all the difference when facing […]
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With the decline of industry and post-colonial exploitation, Europe should aim to become a global leader in the tech and service industry. But as the EU increasingly complicates the process for startups to thrive, the economic outlook appears bleak.
If you've missed recent AI news, Claude Opus now outperforms GPT-4 in most areas, making it the preferred tool for performance-focused users, many of whom are canceling their OpenAI subscriptions.
However, thats only good news if you are not located in Europe. Due to European Union (EU) regulations, Anthropics Claude 3 is inaccessible within its jurisdictions. This is only a minor example of how the EU inadvertently stifles innovation and jeopardizes its own economic future. This article examines the EU's absurd approach to the digital age, the challenges innovative companies face within its borders, and the necessary changes to prevent the loss of economic stability.
One thing the big 5 of tech (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft) have in common? Their American roots. But not only the biggest players in tech are US-based companies. The list of unicornsstartups valued over $1 billionshows that the US is home to 656 out of 1229 global unicorns, or 53%. China follows with 168, or 14%. Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and all other EU countries combined account for just 8.8%, or 108 unicorns.
All 27 EU countries together only represent 8.8% of startups valued over $1 billion
Can you name one European tech company that has brought forth significant innovation in the last decade? Nokias heyday is long past, and Europe has since lost its innovative edge. Once the heartland of the industrial revolution and global industry, Europe has outsourced its manufacturing sectors long ago. Today, only a fraction of Europeans actually produce anything. German car manufacturers are losing ground to Chinese competitors, and all of them put together value far less than Tesla. Not to mention centuries of post-colonialism finally coming to an end, which will deprive certain European countries of resources that were never actually theirs, yet they felt entitled to and became used to them. E.g. there is not a single gold mine in France, yet the country boasts the worlds fourth largest gold reserves.
Teslas gross revenue vs. other car producers | Source: Hedonova
With no industry, no substantial progress in the tech sector, and growing resistance to post-colonial exploitation, the European economy has lost its pillars. If Europe doesn't redefine itself and fill the vacuum left behind with innovation, it may lose whatever is left of it's economic significance within our lifespan. As someone who has been operating various businesses out of various European countries for 10+ years, I can provide some hints on where the problems lie and how Europe could become a better breeding ground for startups.
Let's look at the central problems:
1) Over-regulation. The EU is predominantly a service economy, and innovation must be the driver of such an economy. Regulation hampers innovation. Entrepreneurs in Europe require a significant amount of time to keep up with new regulations, implementing them, etc. Good tax advisors and lawyers are a must, even for small or one-person companies. Not to mention the loss caused by tight restrictions e.g., due to limited insights because of the GDPR, or a loss of time/progress because of limited access to tech such as Claude. EU legislation such as the new AI Act restricts the deployment of innovative tech for personal and business use across Europe. Absurdly, the same representatives who voted for this legislation, on the pretext of protecting Europe from the dangers of AI, also voted to give themselves dystopian rights e.g., mass-surveillance with real-time facial recognition. This should leave citizens enraged, but for some reason, the heavily subsidized European media hardly mentions such issues, and interest groups find it difficult to raise attention.
2) Tax burden. Income taxes and mandatory social insurance account for half of most people's income in most EU countries. On top of that, VAT rates of 17-27% apply to most purchases. Entrepreneurs are additionally burdened with numerous other fees and taxes, ranging from additional wage costs to tourism tax. All counted together, the total tax burden is shamefully high and makes it extremely difficult for new companies to grow past a certain point. While I believe that the social contract is what makes Europe great, we are facing a situation in which fewer and fewer tax-paying individuals sustain an ever greater tax-fueled apparatus. Some might say the system is factually already broken, and it is only a question of time until the rest of it crumbles under the strain of the inverted age pyramid. Worst of all, much of the tax money is not even used to pay for pensions, education, or social services. A substantial part of the cake is wasted on non-transparent subsidies, crooked government bids, and other forms of cronyism. Otherwise, Europe wouldnt face a poverty rate above 20%.
Combined, the high tax burden, inefficient use of tax money, and an endless forest of new regulations make it much more difficult to successfully operate a company from inside the EU. Hence, for startup founders, especially in the tech sector, Europe is unappealing, and anyone who does their research will go to the US, Hong Kong, Singapore, or elsewhere to start their company.
These developments make me wish the EU would go back to regulating the bend of bananas and stay out of the innovation sector. However, beyond all cynicism, it is clear Europe has managed to build a system that also has many favorable aspects such as strong workers rights, modern and accessible health care, and great infrastructure. These elements are no obstacles to innovation per se. The question is whether we need a plethora of bureaucrats in Brussels who regulate industries they dont understand, grasp power with dystopian surveillance tech, and squander our taxes.
My recommendation to EU institutions would be to shift their focus towards reducing bureaucratic barriers and strengthening economic ties between member states. And, for heaven's sake, ensure transparency regarding the exact allocation of every tax Euro! This approach would help create a more hospitable environment for startups and individuals alike. As it stands, Europe is moving in the wrong direction and failure to recognize this issue puts the economic future of the entire Union at stake.
This article is a sponsored by Maze
How do product teams conduct user research today? How do they leverage user insights to make confident decisions and drive business growth? And what role does AI play? To learn more about the current state of user research and uncover the trends that will shape the user research landscape in 2024 and beyond, Maze surveyed over 1,200 product professionals between December 2023 and January 2024.
The Future of User Research Report summarized the data into three key trends that provide precious insights into an industry undergoing significant changes. Let’s take a closer look at the main findings from the report.
Trend 1: The Demand For User Research Is Growing62% of respondents who took the Future of User Research survey said the demand for user research has increased in the past 12 months. Industry trends like continuous product discovery and research democratization could be contributing to this growth, along with recent layoffs and reorganizations in the tech industry.
Emma Craig, Head of UX Research at Miro, sees one reason for this increase in the uncertain times we’re living in. Under pressure to beat the competition, she sensed a “shift towards more risk-averse attitudes, where organizations feel they need to ‘get it right’ the first time.” By conducting user research, organizations can mitigate risk and clarify the strategy of their business or product.
As the Future of User Research report found out, organizations are leveraging research to make decisions across the entire product development lifecycle. The main consumers of research are design (86%) and product (83%) teams, but it’s also marketing, executive teams, engineering, data, customer support, and sales who rely on the results from user research to inform their decision-making.
As Roberta Dombrowski, Research Partner at Maze, points out:
“At its core, research is about learning. We learn to ensure that we’re building products and services that meet the needs of our customers. The more we invest in growing our research practices and team, the higher our likelihood of meeting these needs.”
As it turns out, the effort of conducting user research on a regular basis pays off. 85% of respondents said that user research improved their product’s usability, 58% saw an increase in customer satisfaction, and 44% in customer engagement.
Connecting research insights to business outcomes remains a key challenge, though. While awareness for measuring research impact is growing (73% of respondents track the impact of their research), 41% reported they find it challenging to translate research insights into measurable business outcomes. Other significant challenges teams face are time and bandwidth constraints (62%) and recruiting the right participants (60%).
With the demand for user research growing, product teams need to find ways to expand their research initiatives. 75% of the respondents in the Maze survey are planning to scale research in the next year by increasing the number of research studies, leveraging AI tools, and providing training to promote research democratization.
Janelle Ward, Founder of Janelle Ward Insights, sees great potential in growing research practices, as an organization will grow a research mindset in tandem. She shares:
Trend 2: Research Democratization Empowers Stronger Decision-Making“Not only will external benefits like competitive advantage come into play, but employees inside the organization will also better understand how and why important business decisions are made, resulting in more transparency from leadership and a happier and more thriving work culture for everyone.”
Research democratization involves empowering different teams to run research and get access to the insights they need to make confident decisions. The Future of User Research Report shows that in addition to researchers, product designers (61%), product managers (38%), and marketers (17%) conduct user research at their companies to inform their decision-making.
Teams with a democratized research culture reported a greater impact on decision-making. They are 2× more likely to report that user research influences strategic decisions, 1.8× more likely to state that it impacts product decisions, and 1.5× more likely to express that it inspires new product opportunities.
Now, if more people are conducting user research in an organization, does this mark the end of the user researcher role? Not at all. Scaling research through democratization doesn’t mean anyone can do any type of research. You’ll need the proper checks and balances to allow everyone to participate in research responsibly and effectively. The role is shifting from a purely technical to an educational role where user researchers become responsible for guiding the organization in its learning and curiosity.
To guarantee data quality and accuracy, user researchers can train partners on research methods and best practices and give them hands-on experience before they start their own research projects. This can involve having them shadow a researcher during a project, holding mock interviews, or leading collaborative analysis workshops.
Democratizing user research also means that UX researchers can open up time to focus on more complex research initiatives. While tactical research, such as usability testing, can be delegated to designers and product managers, UX researchers can conduct foundational studies to inform the product and business strategy.
It’s also interesting to see which tools and techniques product teams use to gather user insights. Maze (46%), Hotjar (26%), and UserTesting (24%) are the most widely used user research tools. When it comes to user research methods, product teams mostly turn to user interviews (89%), usability testing (85%), surveys (82%), and concept testing (56%).
According to Morgan Mullen, Lead UX Researcher at User Interviews, a factor to consider is the type of projects teams conduct. Most teams don’t change their information architecture regularly, which requires tree testing or card sorting. But they’re likely launching new features often, making usability testing a more popular research method.
AI is reshaping how we work in countless ways, and user research is no exception. According to the Future of User Research Report, 44% of product teams are already using AI tools to run research and an additional 41% say they would like to adopt AI tools in the future.
ChatGPT is the most widely-used AI tool for conducting research (82%), followed by Miro AI (20%), Notion AI (18%), and Gemini (15%). The most commonly used research tools with AI features are Maze AI (15%), UserTesting AI (9%), and Hotjar AI (5%).
The tactical aspect of research is where AI truly shines. More than 60% of respondents use AI to analyze user research data, 54% for transcription, 48% for generating research questions, and 45% for synthesis and reporting. By outsourcing these tasks to artificial intelligence, respondents reported that their team efficiency improved (56%) and turnaround time for research projects decreased (50%) — freeing up more time to focus on the human and strategic side of research (35%).
While AI is great at tackling time-consuming, tactical tasks, it is not a replacement for a skilled researcher. As Kate Pazoles, Head of Flex User Research at Twilio, points out, we can think of AI as an assistant. The value lies in connecting the dots and uncovering insights with a level of nuance that only UX researchers possess.
Jonathan Widawski, co-founder and CEO at Maze, sums up the growing role that AI plays in user research as follows:
Looking Ahead“AI will be able to support the entire research process, from data collection to analysis. With automation powering most of the tactical aspects, a company’s ability to build products fast is no longer a differentiating factor. The key now lies in a company’s ability to build the right product — and research is the power behind all of this.”
With teams adopting a democratized user research culture and AI tools on the rise, the user researcher’s role is shifting towards that of a strategic partner for the organization.
Instead of gatekeeping their knowledge, user researchers can become facilitators and educate different teams on how to engage with customers and use those insights to make better decisions. By doing so, they help ensure research quality and accuracy conducted by non-researchers, while opening up time to focus on more complex, strategic research. Adopting a research mindset also helps teams value user research more and foster a happier, thriving work culture. A win-win for the organization, its employees, and customers.
If you’d like more data and insights, read the full Future of User Research Report by Maze here.
At WPBeginner, we have been on both sides of affiliate marketing as affiliate marketers and as businesses running affiliate programs.
With over a decade of expertise, we have encountered all types of affiliate marketing scams and frauds.
While most folks in the affiliate business are honest, hardworking people, there are always people trying to make a quick buck at the expense of others.
Here, we’ll discuss some of the top affiliate marketing scams and how to avoid them. We’ll talk about it from both perspectives as a business owner and as an affiliate marketer.
Affiliate marketing scams try to steal from businesses by pretending to be affiliate marketers. Similarly, they may also defraud unsuspecting affiliate marketers by pretending to be a legitimate business.
Thousands of people make money online with affiliate marketing. It is a lucrative industry worth over $17 billion (Source).
Due to the low barrier of entry, good payouts, and higher returns on invested time and resources, it attracts many businesses and marketers.
However, this success also attracts many bad actors who want to profit by scamming and defrauding affiliate marketers and businesses running affiliate programs.
For these reasons, affiliate marketers and businesses may struggle to distinguish between legitimate opportunities and scams:
However, this can be mitigated by carefully researching an affiliate program’s terms and conditions. Before signing up, you can also look for the common shady tactics scammers use.
Here are some of the most common affiliate marketing scams you should avoid.
Scammers often target affiliate marketers to promote illegal or dubious products with little to no payout in return.
Here are some of the most common scams targeted at affiliate marketers.
Get-rich-quick schemes are perhaps the industry’s most common and longest-running affiliate marketing scam.
They promise affiliate marketers a much higher commission for promoting their products with dubious promises and big claims about earning potential.
These scams can be harder to identify. Many niches in the affiliate industry offer higher incentives, and it is not uncommon to make big claims even by legitimate businesses.
These scams differ because they often sell questionable products with little to no value. These programs have their terms and conditions set up so that they end up paying nothing to the affiliate marketers.
How to Identify This Scam:
These businesses often make big promises of incredibly high earning potential. They are often selling dubious products with little to no value. Their affiliate program is not transparent, and terms and conditions are often vague or have hidden clauses to avoid any payment.
Another common scam targeting affiliate marketers is fake products. These scammers would sell a cheap (and often illegally obtained) copy of a legitimate product by a recognized brand.
However, often, they don’t even deliver the cheap copy and just steal money from the customers.
Another variation of this scam involves digital products. After customers have paid up, there is no product to download or access, and the company’s customer support is non-existent.
On the other end of things, these scammers will also simply refuse to issue any payment to the affiliate marketers, meaning they get money for nothing.
How to Identify This Scam:
Fake products are often shown by copying an existing brand or business. Their pricing would be lower than the actual products to lure customers into believing they are getting a cheaper deal. Do your research about the product, search for real reviews, or dig into background information of the business.
Pyramid schemes or they’re modern name, multi-level marketing (MLM) are scams dating back to pre-internet days. It is still effectively used to target innocent people.
They target affiliate marketers by asking them to recruit investors into often imaginary, fake, or shoddy products. Marketers are promised a commission on each new sign-up that their recruits or people they bring in make.
Eventually, it becomes impossible to find new recruits, and the whole scheme fails. These scammers then go ahead and launch the scheme with different names.
Even if there is a real product being sold, a MLM company floods the market with affiliates, meaning no one makes any meaningful money and saturates the market.
How to Identify This Scam:
These scams often ask you to promote a fake business or product like a get-rich-quick scheme, dietary supplements, or cheaply made fake products. You will be promised higher payouts when people you bring in recruit more people. You may also be asked to deposit a joining fee, which they may label as an investment.
Another common scam is to ask for you to pay a fee to join an affiliate program. These pay-to-join programs will claim that they run an exclusive affiliate partnership program, and in order to ensure that only serious marketers join their program, they need you to make a small payment.
Such programs will pretend to sell high-value items and promise to offer unrealistically high commissions.
All genuine affiliate programs are free to join. It is possible that some affiliate programs may require you to demonstrate product knowledge or industry expertise, but they would never ask you to pay them in order to promote their products.
How to Identify This Scam:
The most obvious sign of this scam is that they will ask you to make a payment. Some may even want you to pay with Bitcoin so the transaction can’t be reversed or traced back. If you are asked to make any payment just to join an affiliate program, then it is most likely a scam.
Another popular scam is when you are asked to promote a fake guru or social media influencer. These fake influencers or self-claimed gurus often pretend to be experts in something and typically sell courses and 1-on-1 training sessions.
You may be asked to bring in unsuspecting customers and will be promised a lucrative commission when they sign up for the course, follow the influencer on social media, or join an email list.
These scammers would then sell customers useless courses with little to no value. They would refuse to pay affiliate marketers by not recognizing any leads or conversions they bring.
On the other hand, there are legitimate experts in various industries selling online courses and mentorship programs. This makes it harder for affiliate marketers to distinguish between legitimate businesses and scammers.
How to Identify This Scam:
These scammers usually have no track record of their supposed expertise. Their testimonials would sound phony and unverifiable. They would use pushy tactics to make sales, and most of their followers on social media profiles would be bot accounts.
Another way scammers target affiliate marketers is by using phishing tactics to steal sensitive information.
They create fake websites or emails that appear to be from legitimate affiliate programs, tricking affiliates into providing login credentials or personal information.
Besides fake websites and emails, scammers may also target affiliate marketers on social media websites and messaging apps. They may use brand images of popular affiliate platforms to deceive victims into believing that they are talking to an official account.
How to Identify This Scam:
Ensure that you are visiting a legitimate website. If you are unsure, then close your browser window and try to reach the actual website manually. Any email account asking you to visit a website should be sifted through. Don’t provide any login information to any fake website.
If you are a business running an affiliate program to generate more sales, then you may be targeted by scammers in a number of ways.
Here are some of those common scams to look out for:
Scammers may target a business by generating fake sales using stolen credit cards, dummy payment accounts, and other fraudulent techniques.
Once a sale is generated, they are qualified for commission. However, your business may pay a refund or chargeback on the fake transaction.
More sophisticated scammers may even attempt to manipulate your conversion tracking data to credit them for more sales.
How to Identify This Scam:
The easiest way to detect this scam is by monitoring your refund and chargeback requests. However, this could be due to customers being genuinely unsatisfied with their purchase.
You can look for patterns to detect fraudulent activities causing higher refunds. Compare the refund rates of suspected affiliates with other affiliates to detect suspicious activity.
This is a sophisticated affiliate marketing scam targeting businesses that run an affiliate program.
Here is how it works, the scammers use phishing tactics, malware, and popups to install cookies with their affiliate tracking IDs on unsuspecting users. After that, when users visit the website and make a purchase, these marketers earn a commission.
These cookies are often set never to expire unless a user deletes all cookies in their browser. The user would have never interacted with the affiliates’ content and wouldn’t even be referred by their URL.
How to Identify This Scam:
This sort of scam is harder to identify. However, depending on your affiliate management program, it may automatically detect fraudulent activities. You also need to monitor your conversions in Google Analytics to find suspicious URLs and activities.
Many affiliate programs only allow marketers to send traffic from a pre-approved list of websites, and any conversions not originating from their approved websites are discredited.
Another problematic affiliate scam that affects businesses is Google Ad Keyword Hijacking.
Basically, the scammers sign up for an affiliate program and run Google ads on brand keywords or keywords where your business may already be advertising.
This increases your cost to bid on those keywords, and you end up paying additional commission to a source of traffic that you could have acquired yourself by running the ads.
An even more problematic situation arises when these scammers first redirect the users to their websites before sending them to yours. This makes it harder for you to detect fraudulent activity for a longer period of time.
How to Identify This Scam:
Monitor your top keywords for PPC ads on Google. The easiest way to do this is by using a search marketing tool like Semrush.
Another way to identify this scam is to monitor your website traffic and look for unusually high-traffic sources. You can also carefully monitor affiliate activity to look out for unusually high conversions, sudden jumps in referral traffic, and other signs of suspicious activity.
Fake leads can be a problematic affiliate scam for businesses paying affiliate marketers to bring in leads.
Scammers can generate fake leads using sophisticated techniques like stolen user data, unverified leads bought from third-party sources, or simply paying someone to create fake user accounts.
More sophisticated scammers may even send bot traffic from their legitimate-looking websites. These bots then fill in forms with fake user data to submit a lead.
How to Identify This Scam:
One way to thwart fake leads is by requiring customers to double opt-in. Another way to detect quality leads is by reaching out to customers.
If more leads appear to be non-existent, you can dig deeper and find the affiliate accounts sending those leads.
Look for your affiliate reports to find patterns like a website sending a specific number of leads per day could be a sign of fake leads.
Businesses running pay-per-click affiliate programs are vulnerable to click fraud. Scammers can use a wide variety of techniques to generate fake clicks and traffic.
Some of these techniques use automated bots to click on links. These bots may use IP spoofing and appear as legitimate traffic in your analytics or affiliate marketing reports.
Other scammers may use click farms, where scammers pay pennies to click farms where actual humans click on links as part of their job. These click farms may use hacked computers worldwide to generate those clicks.
How to Identify This Scam:
Monitoring your Google Analytics reports can help you look for signs of click fraud. You can look for suspicious traffic sources, traffic coming from random places, low conversion rates than the industry average.
Keep track of IP addresses to look for signs of click fraud. Your affiliate management software may also provide tools to detect and prevent click fraud.
Another common scam targeting businesses is when an affiliate partner registers similar domain names or misspelled URLs.
For instance, if a business’s website is a stargardeningtools.com, the scammers may register stargardiningtools.com or similar domains.
This scam is also called domain squatting. It can be easily tracked by looking at referral domains in Google Analytics. However, some of these affiliates may set up dubious redirects to ensure that the squatted domain doesn’t appear as a referral domain.
How to Identify This Scam:
You can track most such tactics by regularly monitoring the referral domains in Google Analytics. Also looking for traffic sources that look suspicious can be helpful. Sometimes, these traffic sources may not have any content promoting your products and services.
Following are some handy tips that will help you avoid common affiliate marketing scams both as a marketer and as a business.
1. Join Reputable Affiliate Platforms
Join the top affiliate networks and platforms to work with top businesses, best products, and legitimate affiliate marketers.
Platforms like ShareASale, Impact, and Amazon offer a large number of products and businesses to promote. They also help businesses partner up with the best marketers, handle payouts, and prevent fraud.
However, these programs cost money and may reduce the profitability of your business.
Luckily, there are platforms like AffiliateWP. It is the best affiliate tracking and management software that runs on top of WordPress.
AffiliateWP comes with easy affiliate management, advanced fraud detection, easy payouts, and no middleman fees.
Another excellent alternative is EasyAffiliate. Similar to AffiliateWP, it runs on top of WordPress and allows you to manage and run your own affiliate program.
2. Monitor Your Website Traffic
Whether you are an affiliate marketer or an affiliate manager, monitoring your website traffic regularly helps you detect and prevent fraud and scams.
The easiest way to do this is by installing MonsterInsights. It is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress and helps you easily track your website traffic.
MonsterInsights has features like eCommerce tracking, conversion tracking, outbound link tracking, and more. Plus, it helps you easily see where your traffic is coming from and what those users do while visiting your site.
3. Use Better Link Management Tools
As an affiliate marketer, you will need tools to manage all your affiliate links easily. This helps you insert links easily and increase your earnings, but it will also help you track link performance and detect your clicks.
This is where ThirstyAffiliates comes in. It is the best affiliate link management tool for WordPress and allows you to easily manage and track all your affiliate links.
ThristyAffiliates helps you detect broken affiliate links, track link clicks, set up redirects, and cloak affiliate links.
Another excellent alternative is PrettyLinks. It is a link management tool for WordPress. It allows you to shorten affiliate links, cloak links, manage all your links, and easily insert them in your website.
For more on this topic, see our complete affiliate marketing guide for beginners.
The following are some of the most commonly asked questions about affiliate marketing scams by our users.
1. Is affiliate marketing risky?
Affiliate marketing is just as risky as other type of marketing strategies. Due to the increasing number of fraudulent activities and scams, it may give an impression of being risky. However, most of these affiliate marketing scams can be easily avoided. Affiliate marketing still provides excellent opportunities for publishers to make money online and businesses to promote their products and services.
2. Is affiliate marketing similar to pyramid schemes?
No, affiliate marketing is not similar to pyramid schemes. Unlike pyramid schemes, affiliate programs are free to join, and affiliate marketers are paid to bring in customers. However, some pyramid schemes may present themselves as an affiliate program in order to appear legitimate.
3. Is it possible to avoid affiliate marketing scams altogether?
Yes, it is possible to avoid affiliate marketing scams by joining reputable affiliate platforms and carefully selecting affiliate marketers, products, and businesses that you work with.
We hope this article helps you avoid common affiliate marketing scams. You may also want to explore these low online business ideas or take a look at these additional ways to make money online.
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The post Common Affiliate Marketing Scams and How to Avoid Them first appeared on WPBeginner.
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