Affiliates realities and myths

We want to be honest with you about the state of affiliate tracking systems and technology since we've worked as affiliates for manyadult companies and have learned the "ins and outs" about how these systems work. Therefore we'd like to share some facts and realities about affiliate tracking systems. Our system uses both cookies and IP's.

COOKIES AND IP ADDRESS TRACKING

People often ask how efficient and reliable it is to track referrals solely by setting cookies and IP addresses. The answer to this is complicated, but one thing is for sure:

If the referral makes a purchase during the intial visit - the commission will ALWAYS be made.

Now - after the person leaves the site it's still a good bet that the commission will be made when they visit hours, days, maybe even a month later. Just remember that making the commission will be contingent upon either the cookie being present or the IP address being the same as the one that made the initial click through. For more information about cookies please visit cookiecentral.com

Here are some facts to think about:

• Netscape Navigator can only hold 300 cookies. Straight from netscape.com: "When the 300 cookie limit or the 20 cookie per server limit is exceeded, Navigator deletes the least recently used cookie." Thus, if someone is a heavy internet surfer they could rack up 300 cookies easily in a couple of weeks.

• If the surfer has cookies turned OFF, then of course the cookie isn't registered.

• If the person deletes their cookies in Netscape or Explorer, the cookie is gone.

• If a person switches browsers, the cookie only remains in one browser.

• Some IP addresses remain the same even if the surfer logs off and then back on (which is my case). But many are different each time you log in, some even change dynamically during the same login - like AOL. To register a commission the IP addresses have to MATCH. But remember:

• Cookies can last up to a year or more.

• Many people have the same IP address every time they sign on the internet.

• This type of tracking is successfully used by many of the top affiliate program websites - for example: amazon.com, befree.com, LinkShare.com, etc...!

We tell you this because of the nature of the internet, even the most sophisticated tracking system isn’t perfect. So much relies on the consumer browser and how his preferences are set. As in life, nothing is perfect -- but we try our hardest and are continuously trying to improve the system. Bottom line, the majority (say 75%) will be tracked and if they buy you’ll be getting your commission. But, tracking isn’t 100% and we fell better explaining this here and now.

TsmPublishing

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