One of the biggest problems that affiliate program managers have is believing that their job is to manage affiliates (and not the affiliate marketing channel, or the program). Such approach, coupled with two destructive assumptions:
(1) that, by extension, an affiliate program manager is smarter than an affiliate
and
(2) that all affiliates are prone to fraud
…can bury an affiliate program. In this short video from Affiliate Summit West 2010 I explain this in details:
In the above video you will also find my favorite definition of “affiliate marketing”, and real-life illustrations of how not to do things. Enjoy!