idevaffiliate question

hello,

on one of my sites we recently setup idev and signed up some affiliates.

we offered affilates 40c per click to display text links on their sites. one particular affiliate has racked up around 1000 clicks in a day (registered on idev and my awstats) yet using chat4support (which tells me everytime a user comes on and their referrer) im not seeing any traffic from them even though they are recording around 1 click per 1/2 mins. i went to one of his sites and clicked my link, and my chat4support tracking picked it up immediately including the referrer so i know the link is okay. his alexa ranking is about 2.5m (i know this isnt an accurate tool to use but it doesnt suggest to me he'd get 1000 clicks to a below the fold and slightly irrelevant to his niche text link.

im planning on banning this affiliate, but at the moment im just wondering how he is doing it? it all looks legit and hes chasing for a faster payout, but there's no way a below the fold text link would be converting at what i think is around 100uvs a day.

Im stuck!

Any advice, help etc much appreciated!

Thomas

Looks like they may be trying to bot clicks through a proxy. (Since it seems that javascript isn't being executed, i.e. the chat4support tracker--meaning either they tailor to the non-javascript market OR are using a bot to send requests. Most definitely the second.)

I believe drkenneth is correct. from a b0t. side of things. its a very simple wget script going through a proxy that can do this. fairly simple to write. If i as an affliate determined you had no real tracking other then by source URL i would abuse the hell out of it.

That being said. ban his ass.

thanks guys, i've been looking at it for a few hours now and assumed it was bots from proxies, all his details checked out, high itrader at flippa, working phone number etc. weird. definitely will be banning. the thing that started the alarm bells ringing was the consistent pattern (ie about every 5 minutes all day).

Going forward though, what is a more accurate way to track who is sending shady traffic like this in terms of bot etc? Obviously with only 11 affiliates (none with really big sites) i was only expecting 1/2 clicks a day in total.

with PPC youre always going to have some fraud. thats the bottom line.
I am not familiar with idevaffliate. but if it only tracks via httpd log and or referal code.. you need to look into somthing else. ... though im fairly sure you can enable other tracking

Java session cookie is a good way to track. ofcourse someone could chocolate chip the bastard.... but that requires a higher level of knowledge.

Also, if youre not using a nulled script, i suggest you bring up the click fraud aspect int heir support forums. see what they have to say.