digitaldivas

I think it's alot and that fucking sucks Maybe 30 percent traffic does not get cookies referred.

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Ron Bennett

Affiliate programs by and large have an incentive to not track all sales; broken / flawed tracking leaves more for the "house".

Programs using NATS and other 3rd party tracking tend to be more reliable, but even with that, tracking relies a lot on the affiliate operator who can use various underhanded tactics to cause tracking to be dropped / altered, along with using the old tried and true method of traffic leaks.

Rambling on, but the above relates to your comment ... many old time programs relied on embedded tracking codes that didn't depend on cookies at all, and supplemented that with IP tracking and other heuristics.

Just relying on a cookie alone is bad form, but somehow became the standard, because it was easy and works good enough, but often not well - the perfect out for shaving ...

Affiliate programs who solely rely on cookies can say with a straight face they don't shave, which is technically true ... and yet the reality is they are in effect shaving by their use of a known very flawed tracking method.

With all that said, what's an affiliate to do other than being more selective in who they promote / pushing for better tracking...

Well, some things to try are...

Checking for cookies and encouraging their use (show more content to those who offer to turn cookies on) ... and/or checking for 3rd party cookie acceptance (method often requires having multiple domains) along with checking cookie data persistence and dynamically generating pages based on the cookie / browser privacy level one appears to be running ...

For those users running default privacy, generate pages with links to programs that utilize traditional cookie tracking methods ... while for those users who appear to be rejecting / refreshing cookie data and/or running adblock, etc generate pages to programs that may not be as profitable, but have better tracking and/or to programs that may be not as targeted, but more likely to convert on the spot.

Ron

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Domagon - Website Management and Domain Name Sales

jerryb

Sponsors do what most everyone on here would do if they had a mega-paysite. They do everything they can to maximize THEIR profits. A lot of FREE crap on the internet had hindered signups and program ingenuity has helped reduce your signups.

IMHO sponsors should have lifetime cookies AND most of all should pay affiliates EVERY 30 DAYS regardless of amount of income. I have a sponsor or two that will pay you if you only have 3-4 dollars coming. I highly respect those sponsors and promote them well.

I will drop a sponsor instantly also if they raise their minimum payouts (i.e. from $100 to $200). Most affiliates that are NOT whales will drop a sponsor that sits on $78 for months and when you get to $96 all of a sudden you are on a $200 minimum.

I wish somehow there could be a boycott of sponsors that DO NOT PAY EVERY 30 DAYS REGARDLESS OF AMOUNT IN THE BANK. I don't believe a buck or two for the check and/or eft will break them. In fact, it will probably get them more affiliates wouldn't you think????

piece to all

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Angry Jew Cat - Banned for Life

Some mainstream networks how you the lapsed time from cookie drop to sale. It's a feature I wish was featured everywhere. It'd be really interesting to see what sort of time lapse you're looking at on adult sales. Isn't the cookie good for the duration of the "private browsing" session, then dropped at the end? So theoretically if that's the case you still have the opportunity to claim your commission should you make the quick sale. I'd bet you're losing a fair number of sales in the process though.

wehateporn

It means that often it pays to setup direct deals and skip the whole affiliate side. I do about half and half so as I have eggs in different baskets. Affiliate still very good overall though; I do love my weekly CCBill cheque

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SomeCreep

More now than in the past, but as for exact percentages, who knows.

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Webair Hosting

I use and recommend Webair for hosting.

u-Bob

like those "follow us on twitter" things some sponsors have been putting on their sites and fhg's

Angry Jew Cat - Banned for Life

My biggest pet peeve is "Order by phone" 1-800 numbers on affiliate shops. Like, fuck you douchebags. Fucking can't stand it when I find a shop that looks good to promote and there's gigantic 1-800 number for orders across the top of every page. There's got to be a huge portion of surfers who would rather order by phone who you're never credited a commission for...

signupdamnit

If you have been paying attention you'll know that it is very common for a sponsor to claim their non-affiliate ratios are 1:500 while their ratios for the affiliate program as a whole are 1:1,500. Gee, I wonder what could be happening there?

The truth is that it only gets worse each year. To be paid the same amount of money affiliates on revshare with programs who mainly rely on cookies should be given a 5% raise each year otherwise the effects of this is essentially a paycut.

But let's be honest. In 2011 most adult affiliate programs would be best classified as scams. This is true whether it's intentional or not. Affiliate programs started off as a good deal for the affiliate but over time they didn't keep up. Most changes served to benefit the program owner. Affiliates didn't band together and demand things be kept reasonable. Most affiliates don't even know what's going on. You're better off in most cases not being an affiliate. And it's probably only going to get worse because even today most affiliates are too stupid to realize what's happening and lack the balls to demand any changes.

digitaldivas

It would have to be a concerted effort on many affiliates parts. I didn't look at it from that side though, thanks for the perspective. ...And it makes total sense. So with the new browser default settings as well as some affiliates programs, both unknowingly or knowingly doing this, well, I fear that the concept of tgp, directories, etc, may have days numbered.

Imagine the net in 5 years, and the big boy directories and indexes, tgps, tgp2's going Offline, just because the business model is no longer profitable and then program owners would that much more be tied in to strictly SEO organic driven traffic, ie., google, bing, etc. ...I think 5 years from now, most affiliate owners would agree, looking back, that they were better off with us rather than without us

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seeandsee

stats must be tracken by URL ID and no problems then

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BUY MY SIG - 50$/Year

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digitaldivas

That would be a good first step

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camperjohn64

On my affiliate only sites, I put a redirect if there is no cookie that javascripts alert("cookies not set"); in a loop. Forces user to shut down IE and FF and lose all windows. Hey, I'm an angry sob when I don't get commisions.

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www.gimmiegirlproductions.com

wehateporn

If the affiliate side shoots itself in the foot by getting greedy, the smart TGP and directory site owners will just start doing private deals with paysites. The affiliate schemes cut out a lot of emails etc, but if the emails are going to bring 3 times the money, then we go back to emails. It saves those paysites from paying for an affiliate scheme

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Agent 488

aren't sales tracked in other ways besides just cookies anyway?

wehateporn

CCBill has the option to track by IP as well as cookie, but some sponsors don't select it

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cordoba

It could get much, much worse very soon, at least for us European webmasters. The EU keep talking about banning cookies altogether, or at least requiring that webmasters make them 'opt-in' - i.e. you have to actually get the consent of the surfer before you can leave cookies in his browser.

One of my mainstream sponsors has a 'flash cookie' tracking system that apparently isn't affected by the browser privacy options. But these will almost certainly be banned or restricted by the EU crazy gang.

digitaldivas

yeah i heard something about that. That would suck

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