I help administrate a few affiliate programs and one of the most asked questions is how long is the lifetime of the cookie. I normally set it to the longest time the system will allow but that is never a guarantee the referrer will walk away with the sale. Competition is bad enough but with more and more users blocking cookies… that’s not a rosy picture. You know what’s worst? People are deleting cookies faster than you can say “pay me”.

So what’s an affiliate to do? I’ve noticed – as I’m sure you have – that many savvy marketers are beginning to offer something extra only if a customer purchases from their (affiliate coded) website. I find that can be quite effective because you can now track conversion and even build your very own ‘customer’s list. But of course this won’t work for every affiliate program out there and the affiliate program has to have some kind of reporting mechanism back to the affiliate like an order number so you can verify to give the goodies or not. Plus, the commissions would have to be really nice in order to justify that extra work. But if you have all those elements in place, there’s one way of making sure you bring the sale.