I have been reading some of the threads about affiliate programs, cookie tracking, and getting paid for affiliate referrals. A number of people I respect on this forum have also given me advise about my program and increasing the affiliate cookie from the 3 day default set by CCBill. This is causing me some distress due to:
Most people who sign up for porn do so immediately (stated in many GD threads)
Many people do not allow cookies to be accepted while browsing or are not going to accept cookies from a porn site (norton default, IE default, and personal experience)
CCBill does not track session, IP, browser digest or any other means of identification if the cookie is set to more than 3 days. (When the expiration value is greater than 3, no extra data will be logged to CCBill’s database, so the cookie will be the only means of tracking a referred sale. If the surfer does not accept the cookie, the system will not be able to track them.)
So, for you hard working affiliates, would you rather have a longer cookie and no additional tracking or a 3 day cookie with other means to ensure your credit for a sale (within 3 days) if a sufer blocks the cookie?
I am open to doing either way but can’t do both. The main thing is that affiliates sending hard earned trafic get paid. IF I extend the cookie it will most likely be for 14 days only. A surfer should know if they are going to join a site within 14 days.
I am finding that webmasters make sales AFTER a 14 day cookie. As an example, I had an affiliate that was marketing Broke Straight Boys tour #2 and I asked him to switch tour #1. He was still making sales as “bookmarks” right up until the 30 day cookie expired and he had changed all his links in his ad management software program. This was a fairly large affiliate so the data does have some mathematical justification.
Why can’t you just do 30 days with both a cookie and other means of ip tracking.
Badpuppy / PuppyCash uses the 30 day cookie expiration, along side the matched IP address, which we keep on our server for the 30 days, so even if cookies are turned off, we can catch most all of those and match them up so the affiliate is paid for the sale. We like Intense Cash have many who sign up that are right at that cookie / IP expiration date.
Hmmm…I would go with a 30 day cookie from looking at others’ perspectives. I’m not a paysite owner, but I would think that 3 days is a tad short. Perhaps CCBill will amend this in the future? Let’s hope so.
Don’t know if I’d say it would be a draw - 30 day cookies are pretty standard. But 30+ days won’t lose you any affiliates like a 3 or 7 day cookies might. If you want it to be a competitive selling point you probably have to go to 90 or 180 day cookies…
i went from a 3 day cookie to a 90 day cookie. made so close to no difference. i theorize that while webmasters miss out on some sales because of the shortness of the cookies, that they end up with sales they wouldn’t have gotten if the cookies were longer because surfers had cookies set from the last site that referred them. keep in mind, though, that’s only a theory. i have no way to test it unless someone can think of a way.
btw, when i consulted with some straight companies that used NATS, i saw a lot of surfers come back multiple times without signing up. they’d come back for days or even weeks before joining. it wasn’t the majority of people, but it was a surprising amount of them - or at least, surprising to me. i haven’t had access to NATS for gay programs, but maybe someone who uses it can tell us what they see.
Interesting that this thread has been resurrected.
Since this was posted I have changed my cookie to 30 days, began offering a 5% webmaster referral program, and implemented a monthly bonus tier system allowing affiliates with as few as 15 sales a month to increase their percent share.
Iâve also begun to explore additional tools to assist affiliates based on other recent GD posts. As those are readied, Iâll post them in the appropriate spam/announcements section of the forum.
My gut says the same thing and other threads have said as much but I’m willing to try things different if it’ll help affiliates sign up and make sales.
