Amazon are to the Affiliate Marketing world what James Brown was to Soul, they pretty much invented it (no letters please, I’m being colourful to illustrate a point).
I did want to clarify something this week though about Amazon and their method of tracking commissions. Most affiliate schemes work on a cookie system whereby when a user clicks through from an affiliate site (say MrDaz.com for example) into a merchant site (Dixons for example) the cookie is dropped on the user’s machine so that if the user makes a purchase MrDaz.com is credited with the commission.
Nice and simple so far.
Cookies generally last 30 days, so if the user returns to Dixons at any point during that time period and makes a purchase, MrDaz.com still gets the commission. However, most affiliate schemes work on a last come, last served policy… so if that user then visits another Affiliate site (say Shoemoney.com for example) and clicks on a link to Dixons, Shoemoney.com would get the commission, even though the user had first found Dixons from MrDaz.com.
It’s OK, it’s a fair system. Honest.
With Amazon however there’s no Cookie policy. Amazon work on session IDs, so if a user clicks on a link on MrDaz.com and goes through to Amazon and looks at the Commando Collector’s Edition DVD (great choice by the way), but then leaves Amazon and returns the next day with a direct link, or via organic search on Google, MrDaz.com will NOT get the commission.
Sucks.
But hey, they invented the game, we have to play by their rules.
Darren Jamieson, aka MrDaz, is the Technical Director and co-founder of Engage Web and has been working online in a career spanning two decades. His first website was built in 1998 and is still live today.
