Let's discuss cookie/ip hash time-outs for revshare programs
 

What's considered a fair cookie/ip hash timeout for revshare programs that only
have recurring membership options to their sites.

Let me explain for the people who don't quite understand what I mean.

You promote program X. A surfer clicks an affiliate link code on your site and
gets send to program X. A cookie and/or an ip hash entry is stored with your
affiliate ID.

If the time out is set to for example 3 days then the affiliate (you) will be
credited for a signup on that site if this surfer signs up WITHIN 3 days. If he signs up
after 3 days the surfer will be considered an unique visitor.

NOTE: I'm discussing reasonable time out for revshare with RECURRING membership options ONLY.

So if the surfer signs up within 3 days you'll get credited.
You'll also get credited on ALL his rebills.....regardless of the cookie time out
as with rebills cookies are irrelevant.

For livecams where people buy credits that's another story.....

Personally I would say if an affiliate sends a surfer and the guy doesn't sign
up within 3 days there's no need to credit to keep the cookie longer coz if
he signs up after 3 days.....he didn't got back to the site because he
bookmarked the site after the affiliate send him the first time to sign up
a week later.

Discuss I'm curious about your opinions and will decide our cookie time out
based on the results of this discussion.

Thanks for your input GFY:thumbsup

Oh I forgot to add....if the surfer visits another affiliate site and clicks a link
that sends him to the same site....cookie data is updated with the last affiliate
that send that surfer......so even if the cookie never expires the first affiliate
you wouldn't get credited but the second (last) affiliate that send the surfer
to site will.

in some aspects, putting a cookie that lasts more than a day is being generous.

I think over all a 3 to 5 day cookie is the best way to go, but its up the the program ( Owners ) to decide.

Yup I agree...but a lot of affiliates don't exactly understand what the cookie
time out settings mean....and they feel like they're being scammed which is
why I made this thread...and to see what's the general stance is on this :thumbsup

bumperidooh

I prefer to see a 7 day (1 week) minimum.

On a related note I have some ccbill programs which have links to their other sites on the join form. I'm planning on testing things out a bit later this week to ensure that if a user clicks on one of those links I still get credit for the signup as I should. This sort of thing is also an issue. It is possible for programs to overwrite the cookie set with my affiliate code with their own default cookie if the surfer enters through the main url later on. That sort of thing is not okay with me.

my thoughts exactly.

here's another bump for good biz discussion :upsidedow

Is there a reason as to why you would like to see 7 days? The other issues
you mention won't apply to our program....no traffic leaks, no links which lead
to loss of credit by overwriting/resetting cookie data, etc, etc.

:thumbsup

I think 3 days is pretty good; 7 days is incredibly generous.

I do have a personal feeling, though, about the cookie being forced from the last update: If somebody went to a site, surfed to another site, and clicked through, and lost the original cookie because it was destroyed, well, I don't know. That seems to have a lot of potential for spam targets to monopolize the whole program.. or is that the point?

We use a double system using 1 a cookie and 2 an encoded string based on
ip and some other surfer variables which is stored server side. We compare
these 2 to prevent, detect and report malicious cookie manipulations
like for example zango does.....so if the 2 don't match up the server stored
entry is being used for tracking and we're being alerted for possible fraud.

:thumbsup

It seems like a decent amount of time. You may have people who work six days a week and only surf porn on their day off. If I sent them seven days ago and they bookmarked your url or made a mental note of your url, I'd like to still get credit for sending them. IMO affiliates already lose quite a bit in commisions due to the above. As webmasters we are dealing with porn everyday and are used to it. But I seriously doubt most of our customers are surfing for porn everyday. They have jobs....and wives. :winkwink: If you look at paysite customers this is seen in the figures as well. The average customer isn't logging in to the subscribed paysite everyday. Usually once a week at most and more often once or twice a month if even that.

Absolute minimum: 3 days.
Preferred: 7 days or more.

Ok I'll take this in consideration....I understand your point....though I do feel
it to be unlikely that a guy goes searching for a porn site today but waits a
week before signing up.....porn is an impulse product....guy sees site....dick
gets hard....swings out card, signs up.....jerks off and revisits next time he's horny.....
but I understand what you're saying.

All in all it doesn't make that much difference for the program owners....I guess
coz on our own campaigns we'll use a seperate ID that sets a cookie
if surfer goes through there.....:thumbsup

Wow we had it set for several months since the day we launched. There was some discussion on this some time ago that lead us to believe affiliates still wanted to see at least 3 months.

I believe that's mostly due to people not quite understanding how this works
and what it implies for them.....they're mostly afraid for being cheated out
of sales. :thumbsup

One day cookies are an insult to affiliates. The sponsor is pretty much saying if you can't close the impulse sale, then you deserve nothing.

I guess it also depends what type of subscriptions you're selling. If you sell
recurring only....there's less options to have negative effects on shorter cookie
time out than if you sell non recurring or time based subscription products
like VOD tickets or time based access passes to webcam stuff for example.

That's why I started this thread to find out what's the fair period for this instead
of just deciding for you :winkwink:

The idea is if the surfer didn't sign up from the first time he clicked a link, but does sign up the second time, that the second person he clicked through is the one who convinced him.

Personally mine are set to 30 days, I think that's reasonable as people like to come back when they have the chance again, especially to see if the tour has been updated with new scenes and what not. The average surfer (especially the ones who pay for porn) aren't online 18 hours a day like us :winkwink:

I'll throw this in. If a sponsor values their affiliates, why not set the cookies to the max 255 days?

One thing I hate to see are revshare programs pay out regular revshare on the non-recurring billing option. That option needs to pay out PPS, and it needs to be higher than 50% to account for rejoins.

If my referral chooses monthly, maybe I'll make $50 off him. But if he chooses non-recurring and just keeps rejoining each time that expires, I only made $13 or whatever.

Even I myself have learned of a new site (adult or non-adult) through a link and then later on, sometimes months later, went back and signed up through the main url. Alternatively I have also typed the site name in google in order to find it again. If I can think of six times year that I have done this as a webmaster, I'd bet my right leg that a lot of surfers do the same exact thing quite often. :pimp

because it's too far fetched and beyond reasonable perhaps? Though the
consequences wouldn't be dramatic for the program owner..but both have
to make some money in order to succeed.....255 day is just being greedy
from an affiliate standpoint I think :winkwink:

I understand your point...but in our case we won't have a non recurring billing
option....it's all recurring or nothing :winkwink:

Good discussion here.....love the input from you guys....keep it going :thumbsup

this is a good post , nice one SG

Good point....but would the surfer rather remember the site he got sent to...
or rather the site that sent him there :winkwink:

I often don't remember a certain site I'm looking for but I do often remember where I found it

ill keep this post up if it falls , or gets overwelmed by the contest thread whores threads

Great point and I'll second it. This is especially a concern for me with many ccbill programs..

Another thing I was hoping for is a way to send the surfer to a join page which only offers recurring billing. I find that a very large % of ccbill customers tend to take the non-recurring option (if offered) which cuts greatly into my revenue per click.

OT: did you get my ICQ?

I know I can rely on you Mr Links :thumbsup

Aight, that's secure enough! :thumbsup

Agreed, but at the same time, this is easily abused, if you don't have a system as above. Blindly overwriting cookies based on referral code is bad; that's the only thing I'm saying.

:)

The reality probably is that the majority of surfers would more than likely have clicked another affiliates link within 255 days anyway so the sale goes to them instead.

I promote a few sponsors that set it to 255 days. Maybe I have been spoiled :)

You could be spoiled or it depends what type of products are being offered.

Insane long cookie time out settings could mean that the program owners
would have to payout affiliate percentages on SE traffic if a surfer comes through
a SE while previously months ago he visited the site once through
an affiliate link....

shit the theads is dipping i bump it

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:thumbsup

Program has 255 day cookie.

Surfer goes to Hans' TGP in January, clicks a link, says screw it.

Surfer goes to my review site in February reads the review, clicks the link and buys.

Who should get the sale?

You and you will :thumbsup

minimum for a cookie: 3 days imho.

maximum for that server side stored info: half an hour. (Otherwise you are encouraging cookie stuffing attacks).

We are just talking about your standard adult paysites here, offering 30, 60, 90 and 180 day subscriptions.

Obviously the percentage they are paying out on SE traffic isn't enough to worry them - yet!

The way we do it server stored data time out is identical to cookie data
as both are being compared to verify cookie data is not manipulated.
Anything that gets changed to the cookie would result in negative match
with the server side stored data which results and cookie data getting ignored
and we're getting alerted for possible fraud. :2 cents:

Ok they're either being very generous then.....or they haven't considered this themselves yet :winkwink: I personally feel 255 days is overdoing it....but kuddos to programs who offer this......right now I'm contemplating a month
even though from my own stance I feel that with a month I'm being very generous :winkwink:

It's funny sponsors say there's no problem with cookie beeing 1 day, affiliates want more. 3 days is way too little. 2 weeks minimum if the program is honest. Cookie is overwritten anyway, so what's the problem with keeping the cookie?
Surfer - site 1 - site1cookie - 2 days later - site 2 - site2 cookie overwrites site 1 - sale - site 2 gets the surfer. It's how it should be.

Truth is many surfers bookmark the site if they like it, and come back a week later (during the weekend maybe), or next month when the paycheck hits, or in few months when that loan on the card is finished, and buys then. But the incentive for this was the day that he boomarked it. Program owner knows this, and thus the incentive for short cookies. You get the sale, you dont credit anyone.

The problem is SE traffic...as program owner you'll end up paying affiliates
for a quite a bit of SE traffic with very long cookie time out settings

so a big CJ owner loads your site (using his ref code) in a tiny iframe... next an honest affiliate sends you the same visitor (using a link on his blog/gallery/...)... your system detects the difference between the new cookie and the info stored on your server and credits the CJ owner who never sent you any real traffic?

Not all sponsors have that.

Why's SE a problem? You do track refferers? If it's coming from google, you overwrite the cookie with yours. Plus, you shouldn't even be credited for SE in a timespan of a week or so, since he obviously looked for more references of your site because he saw it somewhere else (an affiliate). Maybe he was looking for reviews or something, but the spark that sent him to your site is that affiliate.

no referrers won't match....affiliate would be credited

we don't use anything that uses a default program owner cookie....to reset
cookies based on whatever referrers visitors come from. The SE issue I mentioned as an example if cookie time outs were set to a year for example
not for week :-)

You can't use referrer matching to credit webmasters if the cookie is jacked.. I could be sending through a redirect script on another domain (which I do), and not even close to all referrals show up.

And what u-Bob said, is correct.. This works and I have never seen an affiliate system that can stop or detect it if the Webmasters doesn't want them to.

We don't use refferer matching to credit webmasters. We compare cookie
data with the hash data we store serverside....this also includes referrer
info from when the cookie was set.

That said....what u-bob mention did get me thinking....and I'll have to further
investigate to be sure we're not vulnerable for such type of an attack. I can't
say we're not at this point.......so THANKS u-bob for the insight...I hadn't
thought of this myself yet.... :thumbsup

I will get back on this with an answer on how we think to tackle this problem :winkwink: