White Hat

Within the context of Affiliate and Internet Marketing, a “White hat” would be an affiliate or partner that promotes within compliance and does not manipulate the system to their benefit.  They are contrasted with “Black Hats“, which would be an affiliate or partner, motivated by greed, that cheats-the-system to earn commissions through non-legitimate promotional methods or fraudulent activity.

Black hat

Also known as: Bad guys, cheaters, fraudsters, etc.

Wikipedia has a good, but broad, definition of “Black hat“:

A black hat is the villain or bad guy, especially in a western movie in which such a character would wear a black hat in contrast to the hero’s white hat. The phrase is often used figuratively, especially in computing slang, where it refers to a hacker that breaks into networks or computers, or creates computer viruses.

Within the Affiliate and Internet Advertising industry, a “Black hat” would be an affiliate or partner, motivated by greed, that cheats-the-system to earn commissions through non-legitimate promotional methods or fraudulent activity.

“We’re like Robin Hood. We steal from the rich companies and give to the poor, which is us. You know what, that’s not right, actually. Blackhat isn’t ‘theft’, theft is against the law. All we do is manipulate the system in a way that works to our favour. We don’t follow their rules, the real rules are within the system, and we make the system work for us instead of us working for it.”

The quote above, from a member of a Black hat Online Forum, probably best encompasses their general psychology. “we’re not stealing, we’re ‘taking advantage’ of the system created by greedy corporations”.

Also within the context of Affiliate and Internet Marketing, a “White hat” would be an affiliate or partner that promotes within compliance and does not manipulate the system to their benefit.