Affilaite Credit at CCBill

[papagmp]

Just spoke with Patrick at CCBill and thought this would be of interest.

Every system has to set a hierarchy on how to handle affiliate credits and to the best of my knowledge, this is the way that CCBill currently does it.

Cookies and IP’s are treated in basically the same manner.

Assuming this all happens during the period the cookie is active. (3 days is default – all GMP sites are set to at least 120 days)

Affiliate #1 sends a customer to my pay-site - the customer buys a membership - affiliate #1 gets credit

Affiliate #1 sends a customer to my pay-site - the customer does not buy at that time - bookmarks the site - returns via bookmark - affiliate #1 gets the credit

Affiliate #1 sends a customer to my pay-site - the customer does not buy at that time - returns to the site by typing the URL in his browser - affiliate #1 gets the credit

Affiliate #1 sends a customer to my pay-site - the customer does not buy at that time - returns to the site by searching via Google (or nay other SE) and clicks on the pay-site in the results - affiliate #1 gets the credit

Affiliate #1 sends a customer to my pay-site - the customer does not buy at that time - returns to the site by searching via Google (or nay other SE) and clicks on affiliate #2’s site (LL, FS. Gallery, Blog, etc..) - then clicks through to my pay-site - affiliate #2 gets the credit

If the customer returns after the cookie has expired, no affiliate credit is given.

In summary,

Because we consider our affiliates a critical part of our marketing team, we believe 3-days is way too short of a period and have set CCBill cookies to expire a minimum of 120 after the last visit through an affiliate link.


What can I do as a pay-site owner?
1. Be sure to provide clear “bookmark” links within my tour
2. Extend cookies to a period longer than 3 days
3. Allow affiliates to optimize tours to get the sale on the first visit whenever possible
4. Listen to the needs and concerns of my affiliates

Am I missing anything?