In Gay Porn recently did a great article on what a traffic leak actually is. I just recently visited the site to find the article. Not shockingly, nearly every article on the front page mentions sites with leaks.

So what is a traffic leak? A traffic leak is any means by which a program owner makes money on affiliate traffic without paying the affiliate. It is also any means by which a program owners sends affiliate traffic that neither the affiliate or program owner make money directly from. Examples of the first case include VOD theaters and DVD stores. Examples of the second case include links to review sites, link lists, and blogs.

In Gay Porn sums it up this way,

When a sponsor sets up an affiliate program, they are literally buying traffic from their participating webmasters. While there are a few click thru programs sill around, the most common method of compensation for an affiliate’s traffic is a commission for any sales made from his or her traffic. It is therefore totally inappropriate for a sponsor to use an affiliate’s traffic for anything other than it was intended. In other words, sponsors should not be using the traffic to make sales now, or in the future, without compensating the affiliate.

You can read the full article on what a traffic leak is here. If you want to see all the sites that InGayPorn has found that has leaks, you can find that here.

I will continue my crusade against the leaky sponsors. If you find a site with a traffic leak, please post a comment and I promise I will write a post about that site.