Hello, I am pretty new with affiliate programs. I found this article from Michael J. MacDonell (I believe he is also a member of this forum) http://www.whymostfail.com/report.html. I wonder about your opinion about it, because it has created some doubts about entering into this adventure. Thanks for your feed-back.
Yes cookie tracking isn't perfect. The affiliate tracking cookie can be wiped out by the user or over-written if the user returns later to the merchant through another affiliates banner. Affiliate tracking is definitely not a perfect science, but works well enough so that you can be very successful with affiliate marketing. Another way you can track sale is to have the merchant assign you a deticated 800 number that would track your sales, although you usually have to be a pretty big producer to be given this.
Join an affiliate program that sets the cookie to the "last referrer". Meaning that the affiliate who converts the visitor to a sale gets the credit regardless of what site they visited "first". That is how our cookies work and I'm told that most clickbank products use that cookie setting method as well. Hope that helps with your decision.