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Our affiliate program Jumbo does use cookies to distinguish raw vs. unique clicks, however the sales are tracked by passing the affiliate information through the tours and join form by hardcoding.
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Wow. Glad to see this got a little attention. Yes, I agree that passing through the affiliate id through the tour and hardcoded tours are both great ways of protecting your traffic from cookie-less surfers ON THEIR INITIAL VISIT. Anyone that takes this extra step is definately improving the situation, but it remains a fact that a significant number of surfers will come back to sites they liked LATER... not joining right away, but checking out several places and then deciding where to spend their money. Short expiration cookies and pass through variables will NOT give you credit for these returning sales. Hardcoded tours sound good, but do we really need a hardcoded tour for every sponsor/affiliate relationship to assure sales are paid? Is that the only way?
The system we use helps, but is not 100% accurate either. We log the surfers IP as a backup to the cookie, so on join form load, if a cookie does not exist, the IP is checked and credit is granted up to 5 DAYS after initial visit. But hell, IPs change more often than underwear in many cases and you can still lose sales there... PLUS as a sponsor I may sometimes be paying out for sales you didnt' send!! (esp with AOL's f'd up proxies) I really would think there would be a programming solution, but I just can't seem to come up with anything better....
