I could not find information about it on the Amazon site: 1. For how long is the Amazon cookie active? 2. Does an affiliate get commission only for the product he/she linked to or for all products that were bought in the time the cookie was active? 3. What happens when a customer clicks on one link, gets a cookie from Affiliate #1 and one hour later clicks another link and gets a cookie from affiliate #2 - which affiliate will get the money? I am a bit confused, can you help Thanks!
1. 24 hours 2. You get commission on anything they buy from Amazon while they are cookied with your link, not just what you link to. 3. Not sure, but I would think it over rides your cookie since they clicked on somebody else's.
Thank you J1218 for the information, Yes - 24hours is not much, I wonder why they do it like that. do you work with the Amazon affiliate program? Can one make money due to the short life span of the cookie? The positive thing as Amazon's is that they have sooo many products so one can spread to different affiliate areas.
@dpcambo and justPlugIn: While the 24 hour cookie does suck, the idea is to target people who are already very close to the end of the buying cycle. For example, targeting product names is good because if someone types in the name of a product exactly, they probably have some sort of interest in buying it. Plus, like you mentioned justPlugIn, Amazon has thousands of different products and once you get somebody onto their site, they might end up buying something completely unrelated to what you sent them there for. Think about when you go to the mall for a new shirt, you may not buy a shirt, but you walk out with a new pair of shoes and a hat or something. I have actually just started with Amazon's program myself. You can follow my case study by clicking the link in my sig. I did a ton of research on it though from people who are making a good amount of money with Amazon so I feel like I have a good idea of what to do.
Amazon's 24 hour cookie isn't so hot but the conversion rate is better than other online retailers simply because people trust the name. Plus, people end up buying all tons of crap on Amazon and you get commissions on stuff you're not promoting. This year, about 1/3 of my Associates commissions are on stuff I didn't even recommend. I mostly do tech blogs, but I've gotten commissions on all kinds of weird crap like knitting books and random DVDs.
Thank you for the information you were willing to share. I hope I will be able to give back to this forum from my experience one day soon.