Affiliate Marketing Tips: How Do Cookies Work

Copyright (c) 2011 Andrew Holtom

Cookies play an important part in affiliate marketing and it's important to understand all that you can about them as this could impact your income. It's essential that you know that you are getting credited for any sale that you send through to a vendor. Here I'm going to share with you some information about cookies that you may not have been previously aware of that could affect your income.

Many affiliate vending programs use cookies in order to keep track of affiliate sales. Cookies are a piece of technology/code that is placed on the computer of an internet user when they click on the link of an affiliate marketer. If the internet user then goes on to make a sale, you will be credited with the sale and you will earn the commission.

Every affiliate vending program will set up their cookies in a different way. For example, some cookies have been set to expire within a set time frame - quite often 30 days. Others will just continue for the lifetime of the computer being used, or until the file has been deleted. Some computer users use cookie blocking software, so even though they only found the product through your link, when they buy it - you unfortunately won't get credited with the sale.

As an affiliate marketing professional, you'll need to understand what the cookie policy is of the vendor that you are promoting for. This will determine how likely you are to get paid for a sale. For example, Amazon has decided to only keep their cookie active for one hour. This means that if your sale does not occur in that first hour, then you will not get credited with any commission for that sale.

As technology evolves, cookies can still be monitored and tracked, even if an internet searcher decides to delete them from their internet browser software. Clickbank used to receive many complaints from their affiliate marketing professionals about not being credited for sales that they had accumulated. It seems that they have managed to overcome this issue and tracking cookies can still be relied upon for sales.

To be sure that you are going to get paid for your affiliate marketing efforts, I always advise people to check their cookies and also the site of the vendor for any changes that may affect your income. When you are relying on this income to pay your bills, you cannot afford to take any chances with it.

My closing advice to you is to check how long cookies last for vendors. If they expire relatively fast, ie even within 30 days, you might want to check out another vendor for better conditions. Internet marketing can take a fair amount of effort and you want to ensure that you are getting paid for your energy.


------

Andrew Holtom is an experienced and accomplished online marketer. Andrew enjoys introducing newcomers of how to successfully make money online. Visit http://www.webmarketinformation.com and grab a free 94 page guide to starting your own online business.