'Shaving' Leads: The Silent Theft
What is it?
'Shaving' (or scrubbing) is the unethical practice where a merchant or affiliate manager manually deletes a percentage of valid leads or sales from the tracking system before calculating payouts. For example an affiliate drives 100 sales but the merchant deletes 20 of them claiming they were 'fraudulent' or 'returned' simply to pocket the commission money.Why merchants do it
It creates an immediate artificial boost to ROI. By not paying for 20% of your acquisition costs your margins look incredible on paper. Some shady affiliate networks even do this automatically to their own publishers to increase their spread.The Reality: You Will Get Caught
Professional super-affiliates are not flying blind. They run their own tracking software (like Voluum or RedTrack). They know their historical conversion rates and EPC (Earnings Per Click). If their data says they sent 100 conversions and you only pay for 80 they will notice the discrepancy immediately.
- The Forum Blacklist: Affiliates talk. If you are labeled a 'shaver' on forums like STM or AffiliateFix your program is dead. No quality affiliate will ever run traffic for you again.
- The 'Trash' Traffic: Once you burn the good affiliates the only ones left are scammers who will send you bot traffic. You trade gold for garbage.
The Ethical Approach
Be transparent about your validation criteria.
- Define 'Qualified' Leads: Clearly state in your terms: 'Leads are only paid if the user verifies their email' or 'Sales are paid after the 30-day refund window.'
- Share Data: If you reject a lead provide the reason (e.g. 'Duplicate IP' 'Failed Payment'). Proof builds trust.
DijiPilot Academy Access Required
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Curriculum: 4.9.6 - Reality Check: The Dark Side of Affiliate Marketing (Difficulty: Advanced | Path: Scale)
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