I am not sure if you can drop your own eBay affiliate link cookie for certain period of times. Whenever you use affiliate link of eBay, the cookie automatically drop to user's computer and expires after seven days unless user clear cookies or click on some body else affiliate link in seven days. I will be happy to know more if you can drop your own cookie for certain period of times using eBay affiliate links. Not to mention you can not drop your own cookie as per ebay affiliate policy- Thanks. Dennyboy
@ DENNYBOY - slow down.... I was asking 'when does the user get our CJ cookie when using our widgets?'. And the answer is... there's no cookie until the user hits eBay.
lol..I wasted my 5 minutes by going to CJ and copy- pasting policy.. No offend but please check your question again..it confuses me. You are right there is no way you can drop a cookie until user hits ebay by clicking on widget or affiliate link. Dennyboy
'No offend', but please read my question again I initially thought (for a few minutes) that maybe, just maybe, the user would get our cookie by simply playing around with the widget. This would have been cool. But it's not the case. The user can click on the widget as much as they like without getting a cookie. Unless they hit the View and Bid button (or any other button that takes them OFF your site), then there's no cookie.
I could be wrong.. and would love to hear about other testing.. but I think the only button that will drop a cookie is 'View and bid'. I ran the live http headers while clicking on eBay logo, 'Copy this widget' or 'Create your own here', and they did not go to rover, and I didn't see the cookie that we want to see. I was hoping for magic 'drop' of the cookie while navigating around the widget. hanji
I wonder if you can simply add it to the query string to the base URL base=http://togo.ebay.com/togo/&lang=en-us&mode=search&query=your+search+term&pid=123456790&sid=widget Code (markup): Also, I think people should be using the swfobject.js to display the widget or some browsers <cough>IE</cough> will prompt the user to click the object to activate it. Also with swfobject, you can display alternate ad or text if the browser doesn't support Flash or this version of Flash. You can download the javascript here, and see a simple implementation here. hanji
That was probably a dumb assumption on my part You're right hanji - the only time I got a cookie (using FF cookie viewer) was when I clicked View And Bid ... I didn't test all the widgets, I was just guessing that maybe they have "View more items like this" kinda buttons on other widgets.
Yeah.. I think I'm going to have to give the widget a thumbs down for affiliates. I think it's great to promote products on eBay if you're a seller maybe, but for us, it'll hurt in the end I think. I don't even really want to test it on a site that has clicks daily.. maybe I'll run it for a week or something to see if I get a dip or increase in clicks. Kerosene, are you running it on anything worth while for testing? hanji
No PM sent I agree with you. I think the widgets could be a great idea, but at the moment, they're just a distraction for users. Especially considering that all it takes is ONE CLICK on a normal auction item to drop a cookie.
Worst part ..I don't like is , it takes time to load widget. If you have couple widget on your site then it will be harder to load your site for average internet speed users...
Its about time for a spicy thread! Really good point about how it could hurt us. The second I heard about it I felt like it was a special secret! I guess since someone could go through the entire widget and not click because they do not want to buy the item, it sucks. At least now they click to get more information. Then even if they don't bid on that you get anything in the next 7. Its really nice when you get something off the wall or a larger purchase. But yeah. Thread of the Week!