Your Affiliate Link..

6 replies
I read somewhere that if someone hit your affiliate link first but did not buy they could come back later and buy the product at a later time and you could still get the commission.

I remember reading that there was a way that you could have a cookie on your affiliate link to the product and would get the sale, if you had a cookie on the link and if the person came to a link that was not yours you could still had the cookie on the affiliate link you could still be credited the commission.

How does this work
and where can I go to learn this technique?
#affiliate #link
  • Profile picture of the author stackman
    You are partially correct. However, it's not you who is setting the cookie on the user's computer -- it's the affiliate product site. They also set the time limit on the cookie.

    Let's take Amazon as an example. If someone comes to your site and clicks on an Amazon affiliate link on your site without buying. They can go back to Amazon to buy anytime within 24 hours and you'll get the commission. In fact, they can buy anything on Amazon's site within that time and you'll get the commission on whatever they decide to buy.

    Some affiliate product providers set much longer timeouts on their cookies. Amazon's is very short.
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    It all has to deal with "cookies". Cookies are just text (.txt) files (think Notepad in Windows Operating systems). I could tell you how to find them but you probably wouldn't know where to go or how to spot them.

    But if somebody hits your affiliate link, and they receive their cookie.... and then later clears their browsing history (along with cache, cookies, sites, etc).... then you WON'T get credit for a product that they go and buy.
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    • Profile picture of the author gjhabs8
      How do you set up the "cookie" in your affiliate link?
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      • Profile picture of the author Brent Stangel
        Originally Posted by gjhabs8 View Post

        How do you set up the "cookie" in your affiliate link?
        You don't. The cookie is set by the product site.
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    • Profile picture of the author trevord92
      Originally Posted by Randall Magwood View Post

      But if somebody hits your affiliate link, and they receive their cookie.... and then later clears their browsing history (along with cache, cookies, sites, etc).... then you WON'T get credit for a product that they go and buy.
      A few affiliate programs use extra systems - not just cookies - to try to get over the problem of clearing browser history or using a different browser or even just using privately/incognito. I'm not sure how successful those attempts are but even if they only save some sales it's good news.

      Some affiliate programs set the cookie for the first person to send the click, most work on the idea that the most recent person gets the sale.

      Some vendors keep your affiliate link attached to the enquiry or in their backend system so you can get commission from the follow up emails they send out. One program I'm in cross promotes between 3 programs and I get commission on any of those. Another program cross promotes on about 60 programs and, again, my affiliate ID is locked in. Those kind of programs are nice and can bring in unexpected but welcome extra commissions.

      In theory it should all be explained on their affiliate page but in practice that isn't always the case.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alex The Lion
    The cookie is set by the affiliate website or service. You don't need to do anything to your link, it's already done for you.
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