Whether you are an affiliate or an affiliate hopeful, you’ve most likely heard about cookies. After visiting a website, a cookie is sometimes stored on a visitor’s computer to track information about the visitor. In affiliate marketing, this is how affiliate programs track visitors who click on affiliate links. The success of clicks on these links depends upon ad copy, image placement, and also cookie length. Some people, however, have learned to abuse cookies with cookie stuffing, like with the case of Shawn Hogan who used this blackhat method to make over a million dollars a month.
Let’s break down the basics of cookies and how they apply to you as affiliate marketers.
What’s Stored in Cookies?
A multitude of information can be stored in a visitor’s cookies such as his or her IP address, visit duration, date and time of visit, your affiliate ID, and even your website name. This is the information that affiliate programs use in their analytics to help you and their companies track clicks, conversions, and calculate overall return on investment (ROI) of your affiliate marketing campaigns.
How Do These Cookies Work?
Let’s say you have a review site for the Amazon Associates program, and someone visits your site and clicks an affiliate link. A cookie will be dropped on their computer to keep track of whether they make a purchase or not through your affiliate link. If a sale is made through this link of yours, then Amazon will award you with a commission.
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