What cookie time is OK for YOU when it's about promoting RevShare paysites?
 

I know it's an old stuff, but let's have a poll on it

check this out, btw
http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...ad.php?t=58564

I promote mostly CCBill programs, as thats where most of the best fetish wear niche sites reside. I don't expect anything longer than 3 days, since that is the CCBill default when setting up the program. Longer is nice, but many of these site owners barely understand how it all works on the CCBill side so I don't get offended if they haven't changed it from the default.

That said, I do get pretty annoyed when I find it has been deliberatey changed to something shorter.

Everyone wants their cookies to live forever but I think that 30 days is reasonable.

What Art said!

While a year is nice, a month is a reasonable time in which if the surfer comes back, you get the sale..any longer than that and it's really tough to make the case that it's you and your stuff that sold him on getting that membership...
so I say a month is a good solid time frame too...

Can't see any reason at all that if the owner knows how to, the ccbill cookie should be less than 255 days, the maximum.

Re: it might not be your stuff that made the sale - well yes, it would be, as if another aff sent the surfer, *their* cookie would be the one on the customers computer.

I put ours to 30days ... thought it was a reasonable time - the 3day default definately should be expanded (i know i often take longer than that to decide what i want for breakfast lol)

I voted for 3 months or more. Even though a lot of people delete their history, including cookies, more often then they did in the past. I still think that lenght matters ;)

My stand on this is the same as always. A cookie should never expire... anything shorter than that, someone is taking your traffic and refusing to pay you for the surfer you originally sent to them.

If a webmaster sends someone to a tour and he gets interrupted by something before he can join but goes back later, or tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or whenever, I think the original webmaster who sent that surfer deserves a commission if he was the last affiliate who sent that surfer to the sponsor's tour.

Unless a surfers clicks another affiliate link which overwrites your cookie, there is no good reason for a cookie to expire aside from sponsor greed. The shorter the cookie life, the more the sponsor is demonstrating their greed. The sponsor is basically saying to you, "this is what I think all of your work is worth."

All traffic has some cost and therefore some value, even if only the time and work that went into building the pages or writing the posts which originally convinced the surfer to visit the tour page. Short cookies seem to say that the sponsor doesn't believe our traffic has much value to them. Which makes me think it may not be a very good idea to send our traffic to them either.

Seriously, is there any reason to use short cookies besides depriving the webmaster of an earned commission as early as possible?

i still think the 30 days is fine...
don't forget that on the flip side of things... the sponsor...does alot of work normally as well, getting SE listings, blogs, social networking, ect...where they link directly into themselves, and as such they may well be responsable for that signup from the guy who wasn't quite convinced a couple months before to sign up from your site...to now be sure he wants to sign up with the new info...and no new cookie since he came in directly...
so yea 30 days is a lifetime for the surfer, none of them remember what they saw a month before on some free site or gallery anyway...

30 days would be nice. Forever is what I would want.

The one day cookie business is just lame.

I always set the CCBill cooking for something really long. I think I have it set for 180 days over at FoxyAngel but really your cookie is only good until the surfer clicks the next webmaster's ad for a site.

Spot on mate.

So a surfer who can't afford to join straightaway, but knows he can at the end of next month bookmarks the site after clicking the affiliate's link, goes back in 31+ days (even a year later when just going through his bookmarks and clicks to see what it is that he saved but didn't remember to go back to), signs up, and the aff gets fuck all. If you aren't making a profit as a program owner (in this case we'll use ccbill) with cookies set to the maximum, there's something very wrong. No way should you need to have the cookie length at anything less than the maximum;

1) Affiliate trust/loyalty - affiliates are partners, and should be treated as such, whatever you can give them, give them.

2) See )1.

I'll take as long as I can get but I think anything more than about 3 days is being generous.

To many things happen over a period of time for me to feel I should get the credit for a referral 3 months old just because the person happened by my site once and clicked a link.

With surfer forums and social media there are just too many ways a surfer can find a site and just because he clicked a link on my site once doesn't mean I made the sale or deserve credit for it.

And it doesn't mean you didn't, and don't. Why should you not get paid on a sale that you possibly didn't generate, at the behest (fucking cant believe that's the only word coming into my head lol) of sales that you possibly did generate?

Jel, that imaginary creature that comes back a month later with enough cash..never met them...don't really believe they exist...i've met the week or til payday ones..but never the 31+ day ones....
so yea i still stick with the 30 day being fair...that's what i had on all my paysites and no one had a problem with it...
and i can tell you the unaffiliated signup was a rare beast anyway...very rare...porn is and will be an impulse buy..

I set the cookie to CCBill's maximum of 255 days on mine. We generated around 85% of the traffic on our own so affiliate traffic and signups were extra revenue, and I thought then and still do now that if an affiliate sends a surfer to my site I should pay them for their work if that surfer ever signs up, no matter how long it takes. I know it may not make logical sense to many, but it feels right and I believe using long expiration cookies helps keep sponsors from thinking affiliate traffic is somehow free.

That's truly the other part of the equation. We all know that some of our valid sales don't get credited to us for many reasons, from processors who scrub too hard to cookie eraser programs and the many browsers running in Safe Mode. So my thinking is a good sponsor will do every thing they can do to ensure that every single signup which can be credited to an affiliate is, in fact, credited to them.

JMHO/YMMV

Paysites, I would prefer as long as possible.

When you can into "products" I propably won't promote without at maximum cookie life. Take a look at the RealTouch thread, and the discussion about cookies.

Large ticket items generally result in the surfer checking reviews, checking competitive pructucts, best pricing, etc. And then the site gets bookmarked until a special occasion like anniversaries, Valentines Day, Xmas, etc.

I'm curious as to why you think this only applies to Revshare programs & not PPS?

Great point GG!!!
yeppers, it should apply to all...
alot of us hashed it out on the beach today about this very topic..it was a good one :)

I don't sell Amazon products but I've always wondered if when someone clicks on their site logo if that overwrites the affiliates cookie since its url is http://www.amazon.com/ref=gno_logo.

I didn´t bother about the cookie thing for my sites until I read about it in dizzys posting. I set my cookies to 30 days now and I wouldn´t have problems to set it to max.

The question is, does it matter? Of course there could be surfers coming back after 200 days or so. But are there really those surfers? I can´t answer the question because I do not have any numbers to make a decision.

On the other hand I think most surfers sign up at once and those who don´t won´t come back to the site after 200 days. So personally I don´t care about it and if I´m right, even a lifetime cookie wouldn´t change much if anything.

This is not 100% appropriate as I am talking as a webmaster rather than an ordinary hillman but: Occasionally I click on a sig on this board and see a sponsor that is no good for me at the time, but several months later I start a project, remember that sponsor and realise they will be ideal for my new project so sign up then. There has also been at least one incidence where this has happened over a year later. If I can remember who's sig I saw it in, I come back here and go through their sig to sign up. But more often than not, either they have changed their sig or I have forgotten who's post the sig was on. In those cases (if the sig is being used for a "refer a WM bonus") it would only be fair if the cookie was set for several years.

That's a damn good example ecchi.

yea... webmaster cookies are a completely different animal...we are beasts of a different breed for sure...forever on them does sound good..