Affiliate Cookies - First Click, Last Click or? Doing Research...

i personally use Nanacast for my affiliate program and i've set it to use the lifetime referrer option which really incentivises affiliates to continue promoting and rewards them properly for their efforts even down the line in the future.

i know for myself as an affiliate it's made me more loyal to those who i have promoted for in the past if i continue to get comms for products that my referrals buy in the future too.

nanacast has a slight variation in the lifetime referrer thing though (to my understanding). it still uses the last click option too.

so, what i understand of the nanacast option is this:

1. you click through my aff link & buy
2. i get comms
3. i get comms for any future purchases as long as you don't arrive via someone else's aff link, in which case my 'relationship' with you ends and the other person gets the new comms

Just to clarify your thoughts.
It's "Last Click" that leads to cookie stuffing and Amazon's cookie is just a standard "Last Click" that expires in 24 hours.
One other thing about an Amazon cookie, you get a higher comission on a product if the product that was clicked on is purchased.

A session cookie would only work from when you first enter a site until you leave it. If you go back later, it should start a new session. A website may also expire a session on its own if the client is idle too long.

And about Nanacast, it's just a "Last Click" cookie that dosen't expire.

Now my thoughts, something that doesn't depend on a browser's cookie would be good. Some people turn them off and others clear out their cookies regularly.

cookie stuffing can exploit both "first in" and "last in" systems. I have managed a few fairly large affiliate programs in my days, and cookie stuffing is just one of those things you have to proactively fight against as an AM.

One feature that works pretty well is a coupon based system in which a merchant can give out "coupon codes" that act as affiliate id's. Usually these coupons also give a discount for using the coupon code so the buyer has a solid incentive to use them. hostgator has a system like this and it does pretty well for them. It can easily work in conjunction with normal tracking systems.

As an affiliate who can generally make a few sales for a merchant, I look for way the customers can go around my affiliate cookie. If they can easily signup for the affiliate program and buy via their own link, thats a big turnoff. That is a huge problem with clickbank at this stage. Their "last in" affiliate cookie coupled with the fact that lots of people have CB affiliate accounts makes it awfully tempting to "go around" the referring affiliate.

I like to see a system that takes precautions to make sure affiliates can't buy through their own link. Essentially "lock your car doors so you keep the honest people honest" not really to prevent a determined thief.

Your definitions are about right.

Amazon used to use session cookies, and I would not promote them for years on account of that. These days, they use a 24-hour cookie as far as I understand.

I have set aside my reservations about promoting affiliate programs that use session-cookies.

As an affiliate, Lifetime Referrer and First Click cookies look very attractive if I get the first click.

But the reality is that most programs I promote are Last Click cookies, and that seems to me to be the best way to do cookies. After all, why should the person who couldn't get the sales conversion get the commission on any sale where I was able to pre-sell the offer effectively enough to close the deal?

If I cannot get the sale on the first click, chances are that I will never get the sale.

And if the affiliate who sends the person back to the website can get the sale, then he did a better job at pre-selling than I did, and he deserves that commission instead of me.

If there are repeat sales in the equation, I would like to see lifetime commissions, but only if the return purchase came naturally and not predicated by another affiliate.

The only fair way to do it is to give the person who generated the sale credit for the sale.

And so long as the purchase is a subscription, then lifetime commissions for that person make sense.

If it is a new product, and no other affiliate was involved, then it would be nice of you to offer the lifetime commissions and I would be inclined to promote you more often.

Here's what I hate about that.

Joe Idiot sends someone a blind email that says "OMFG CLICK HERE" and Bob Customer clicks it. He gets Joe Idiot's cookie from your website, then sees you're selling some product or other that he doesn't want.

Bob Customer comes and bitches at me about how marketers are all teh suck because Joe Idiot tricked him into clicking on that link. I say "wait, that's Incansoft, they make awesome software. Let me tell you all about this badass product they sell that you would love." And I spend 45 minutes selling your product to Bob, because you are awesome and I love your product. Finally Bob says "you are right, I would love that product," and I give him my link to your site.

But Joe Idiot's cookie is still on Bob Customer's machine, so Joe Idiot makes a commission and I don't get squat.

Both of these seem fair to me. I prefer session limited, myself, because I believe an affiliate should be doing a good enough pre-sales job that the customer buys almost immediately. I wouldn't complain about cookies that last longer, however - if clicking on another affiliate's link overrides the current cookie.

See my first example, but add the additional problem that there's absolutely no way for me to ever make a commission from your site for customers who have already been referred.

The best option, in my opinion, is to have three affiliates of record.

When you click on an affiliate link for a product, TWO cookies are set: one for the specific product, which expires in maybe a day, and one for the overall site which expires in a week or so. The specific product link is a last-click cookie, overridden on every affiliate referral.

The overall site cookie, however, is a first-click cookie: until it expires, no other affiliate can override it for the site in general.

Meanwhile, when the customer purchases for the first time, the referring affiliate is saved.

So let's say Bob comes to your site through Joe's link and buys a product. Bob is now Joe's customer. If he continues to come back through bare links, Joe gets the affiliate commissions, just like a lifetime system.

Now Eric sends Bob to the site with an affiliate link to BigAwesomeProduct. Eric's cookie gets set for both BigAwesomeProduct and the site as a whole, so if Bob buys anything on the site, Eric will get a commission.

Then Gary sends Bob to the site with an affiliate link to BigAwesomeProduct. Gary's cookie is set for BigAwesomeProduct, overriding Eric's cookie, but not for the site as a whole because Eric's cookie has not expired. Now Gary will get the commission if Bob buys BigAwesomeProduct, but if he buys something else Eric will get the commission.

Tomorrow, Gary's cookie for BigAwesomeProduct expires, so Eric will get the commission if Bob comes back and buys BigAwesomeProduct - or, indeed, anything at all.

But when Eric's cookie expires, and Bob comes back to buy BigAwesomeProduct, Joe gets the commission because Joe was the original affiliate.

This hybrid system lets affiliates get "lifetime commission" without stomping all over the other affiliates and preventing anyone else from ever making a commission. Basically, it lets referring affiliates earn commissions from peripheral sales, without "stealing" from more recent affiliates. So it's to your benefit to promote and refer early, but it never becomes completely pointless to promote at all.

Most truly lifetime programs are not using cookies to connect the original affiliate with additional sales. These lifetimes programs are more like the sitesell.com affiliate program that uses a database system to connect the dots.

Long dated cookies (over 90 days ish) are one of those things that just don't work out very well in practice for lots of reasons.

however, it is possible to mix a database system with a "last in" affiliate cookie system.

like Caliban suggests, additional sales that have no referring affiliate get credited to the affiliate of record in the database. In this case, new products that are sold via the merchants list would make additional sales for the databased affiliate.