At the moment, over 90% of attempted email delivery is spam. And it's actually down from the past few years. On the plus side, good spam filters block most of it.

There's not a lot most of us can do about bot spam and the like. Fortunately, places like Spamhaus handle that pretty well. Without them and companies like them, we'd never be able to find the "ham" amidst all the gelatinous pink goo in our mailboxes.

There's one kind we can do something about: Affiliate spam.

You know what I'm talking about. These guys trade email lists, scrape addresses off websites, and generally just abuse the hell out of any contact info they can get. The worst are the creeps who sell their customer lists.

You'd be surprised at some of the sellers who've been caught doing that.

When I asked the subscribers to my newsletter if they'd be interested in a tutorial on fighting this stuff, the response was a loud "Hell yes!" A lot of the folks who replied said it was the biggest chunk of the spam that got past the filters and into their mailboxes.

Yeah. Me too. And I have pretty good filters.

Without getting into the technical end of things too much, there's a reason that this tiny percentage of spam that's sent is so successful in getting to the inbox. It doesn't have the fingerprints the filters use to spot bad mail.

Affiliate spammers generally use their own hosting, rather than infected machines. They don't generate a lot of bounces. And the volume doesn't trigger close examination by most systems.

Before I show you how to track and report it, I want to explain something.

If you buy something from someone and that person sends you email about their products, I don't consider that spam... As long as there's a working way to unsubscribe from the list.

If you unsubscribe and the mail doesn't stop, that changes things.

If you buy something from Joe Schmoe and Jane Doe starts sending you mail, claiming it's because of what you bought from Joe, that's probably spam. I say "probably" because of the way some affiliate programs are set up. With instant pay affiliate set-ups, the money may go to the affiliate, but you've bought from the person or company whose name is on the sales page.

Don't confuse those two.

If you put your address into a form to sign up for a list and just decide you don't want the mail any more, that's not spam. Even if they're sending you 2 or 3 emails every day.

The responsible thing to do is to use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the messages. Reporting mail you asked for just to be spiteful is rude, ignorant, and damaging to every legitimate emailer out there.

Don't be a jerk.

On the other hand, if the unsubscribe doesn't stop the mail, report away.

You'll often see people saying it can take up to 10 days to remove you from a list. That's bull. They're taking advantage of the 10 day requirement in CAN-SPAM as an excuse to keep mailing you as long as they can get away with it.

It's possible there could be more mail in the queue before you unsubscribed, but that should be delivered the same day. If the mail continues for more than 24 hours after you unsubscribe, report it.

When I use the word "spam" to describe email, I'm referring to UBE. Unsolicited bulk email. You didn't sign up, and it's sent to a bunch of people.

The classic in the affiliate space is someone who bought or traded for a list and then sends you mail every day. All from someone whose name you won't usually recognize, for products in the Internet marketing niche.

It's very common for these folks to add you to 3 or 4 lists and send you mail from each every day. They use different names in the From fields, but you can figure out pretty quickly that they're all the same person.

Those people need to be chased into an acid bath with a whip made of razor wire.

That kind of spam damages everyone who sells through the systems they use. Usually WarriorPlus, JV Zoo, or Clickbank. They can get systems blocklisted, get sellers who aren't aware of the spamming and who don't approve of it kicked off their platforms. And they make anyone else who them in legitimate ways look suspect.

Not to mention the addition to email fatigue. You can only open just so many emails you didn't ask for before you stop reading anything that ain't from Mom.

Plays hell with open rates.

Using the approach I'm going to show you here puts real pressure on these twits.

If they're spamming a Clickbank product, or one that's sold through another affiliate system and not set for instant payments, you can stop them from making any money with the spam.

Even if they're set for instant payments, this approach creates pressure on merchants to be pickier about how they approve affiliates. (Clickbank doesn't require affiliates, but they also don't pay quickly, so they're not part of that consideration.)

If someone gets nuked off WarriorPlus or JV Zoo for spamming, they have to start all over with another account. They won't have any sales, which means a lot of responsible merchants won't approve them.

There are ways around that, but they're risky. Plus, they require more brains than your average whackamole spammer can muster.

So, how do you do it?

First, keep in mind that the majority of these folks use redirects. Links that point to one domain and then get re-pointed to another link or domain.

Redirects by themselves are not bad. Most marketers use them, and they serve useful and legitimate purposes. They let people track how many visitors they send to an offer, for example. That helps them choose which kinds of things their subscribers are most interested in receiving, which helps everyone involved.

Spammers normally use them to hide their affiliate IDs. It's how they can send 4 emails from 4 different names and not be immediately identified. The redirection is usually invisible to the end user, so the spammers think they're safe from discovery.

Here's how you unmask them.

Copy the link from the email and go to http://www.wheregoes.com, paste it into the form and click "Trace URL." It will then show you every hop in the chain, including the affiliate link.

If they used a redirect, you'll see something like this:

Note that I changed the domain in the original links, the affiliate IDs, and the bit.ly identifier. The goal is to show you how it works, not get focused on a single person.

See where it says JV Zoo? That tells you where to send the complaint. The rest is interesting, but not important unless you want to spend the time reporting them to their web host or list provider.

You don't need to spend time trying to figure out who the affiliate is based on the links. In fact, it's probably better not to. You're just reporting spam, not going off on a vendetta.

Unless you know how to be sure what is and is not going on, just send them the data. Don't make it personal.

Address an email to, in this case, abuse [at] jvzoo.com. At the top, put something like, "Spam from an affiliate at your system. I did not sign up for this email and have no idea who this person is. The link in the email redirects through this chain."

Then copy the results from the page at Wheregoes.com into the message.

Below that, copy in the full content of the spam, headers and all.

PLEASE: Don't get insulting or demanding. It's not their fault that some idiot bought your address and is wasting your time. They don't want the spam going out any more than you want to receive it. It's not good for anyone but the spambags.

By the way... those JV Zoo links are how you can tell if it's the same person emailing you under different names. (Same is true no matter which platform they're using.)

The affiliate ID can't be faked if they want to get paid.

Keep in mind that no responsible provider will take action against someone based on a single complaint. And they shouldn't in most circumstances. Too much room for mistakes or malice to do that. But it doesn't take a lot of reports for them to know if action is needed.

If you submit a link through Wheregoes.com and all it shows after the lookup in the link you pasted in, the affiliate is probably using a framed link. If that happens, you need to look at the page source. In Windows browsers, that just means you hit CTRL-U. (Hold down the control key and tap 'u.') Or go to the browser menu and look for "View Source."

If the affiliate is using a frame, you'll see a line like this near the top of the HTML code:

In that example, the affiliate link is the part in quotes after src=. The place to send the report would be abuse [at] warriorplus.com.

Instead of mentioning redirects, you'd just say "The link in the email goes to a framed page that links to https://warriorplus.com/o2/a/xxxxx/0."

Then, again, paste in the full content of the spam.

This is the complete message, including the parts that don't normally show when you read a message. It includes things like Received lines and Message-ID headers.

Seeing that is possible in every email client I've ever used. In Pegasus Mail, you just open the message and hit the backspace key. (Yes, I'm spoiled.)

In Gmail, click on the downward pointing "More" triangle to the right of the subject line and click on "Show Original." Copy and paste everything that shows in the resulting page into your spam report.

Yahoo mail is annoying. You get the headers by clicking on "More" and then "View Full Header." You'd copy that into the spam report and them go back and copy the message body in. Dumb set-up, but that's what's available.

If you use another mailer, just look for something that sounds like "view original" or "View full headers/source." It's there.

That's it. It really is that simple. No high tech skills needed.

To add the company to the report, just CC abuse@ list-provider-domain-here on the original complaint.

Again, you're not going to get someone shut down with a single complaint in most cases. Just be careful to only report stuff you are certain is spam.

Why not just hit the "spam" button?

You can do that, sure. It won't do anything useful in the long run, though. When the spammer changes web hosts or domain/user names, they'll be back in your inbox. In the mean time, since some email providers track redirects, you may well be hurting delivery from the affiliate platforms, along with whatever list host the spammer may be abusing.

And the spammer keeps getting paid.

If you just hit the spam button, the only person in the chain who is almost guaranteed NOT to get hurt in this scenario is the spammer.

Not the ideal outcome, eh?

Why not just unsubscribe?

With spam, that won't do much good. They'll just upload your address to another list and send you more under a different name.

And they'll keep getting paid, which encourages them and others to spam more in the future.

If you want to stop affiliate spammers, you go after them at the profit point - the affiliate network.

Now, there is one other thing you can do. You can find the contact info for the merchant whose product is being spamvertised and send them a message about it. Sometimes they'll reject the affiliate when that happens.

Just be aware that they don't have access to all the info and stats the affiliate system or list host has. Because of that, they may be reluctant to act. That doesn't mean they want spammers promoting their products. It could just mean they're not ready to nuke an affiliate based on a comment from some random person on the Internet.

That's not an entirely unreasonable position.

Still, it doesn't hurt to report things to them. Just remember to always be matter-of-fact and stay calm. Just like the other parties involved, the smart ones don't want spam sent on their behalf. It hurts them in the long run.

The short form version

When you're sure it's affiliate spam, grab the link from the message. Paste it into the form at Wheregoes.com and click "Trace URL." If it shows you a redirect chain, past that into an email to abuse [at] whatever domain is indicated.

Then paste in the full content of the spam, including all headers. Hit send.

If the Wheregoes check shows only the original link, view the source of the page at that link and get the affiliate link from the frame code. Explain that the affiliate is using a framed page to spam, and paste that link in, followed by the full content of the spam.

If they're using a list host like Aweber or Infusionsoft, add abuse [at] the list host's domain to the CC field before sending the email.

Yes, there are other things you could do. Really, though, they're generally more complicated and time-consuming, and less likely to get results.

This process is quick, easy, and effective if enough people do it.

Happy hunting!

Paul

This was written for subscribers of TalkBiz News. To sign up for the newsletter (it's free, and comes with some cool "signing bonuses"), go to http://talkbiz.com