BizSugar.com › Online Marketing › How Web Advertisers Can Avoid Being Ripped Off

If you use an online affiliate program to generate sales, you may not be getting what you pay for. You may be paying referral fees for business you would have gotten anyway. But how can advertisers be duped if they fork over a commission only when a sale is made?

A new Harvard Business School research paper by professor Ben Edelman explains the deception, which essentially involves the affiliate taking credit for a sale that would have likely occurred without intervention.