There are ways to legally and conveniently spy into what other affiliates are doing, and it is a system that is gaining lots of popularity in the affiliate marketing business. To spy and learn from your competition as an affiliate or a vendor is the best way to outdo the said competition.
By tactically copying your competitors profitable pay per click marketing (PPC) or article marketing otherwise called BUM marketing, you can actually tap into their revenue source. Every affiliate marketer must stay in line with the changes and development in the affiliate business or kiss their campaigns goodbye, and one way of doing this and doing it properly is by copying what the top affiliate marketers are doing, how they do it and then simple duplicate what they do.
What worked in affiliate marketing a few years back might not work today which is why you must keep you're abreast of the changes, stopping others from outbidding you, out writing you, recruiting more than you and ultimately making much more money than you. If you don't fight back you might as well wave goodbye to your campaigns, conversions and profits eventually.
To be a part of the affiliate marketing business and stay in, especially digital product business like PayDotCom, ClickBank and others you must be able to perform better than your fellow affiliates or vendors. How you do this is by knowing exactly what moves they are making, how they are making these moves. You should be able to reach efficient affiliates quicker and recruit as quickly as possible if you are a vendor.Some marketers have very long affiliate lists and massive campaigns deep in the market with huge data that they have taken years to gather - only to wake up and find a newbie swoop in and take these data from his eyes in a very legal and automated fashion.
Many affiliate marketers believe data mining is a new system but in actual fact it isn't new at all, there are affiliate marketing tools that fast-track affiliate data mining and do research for you within a matter of seconds as against gathering information manually and using up months on end.
Since using some spy tools many affiliate and vendors have been able to identify their own mistakes by spying at how it is been done by their competitors who are making sales. These recruitment automation and competition destroying advantages are... well... ANY marketer's dreams come true really. These tools are not really black hat, they simply fast-track data mining and do research for you within a click or two that would usually take you months!