It is hard enough to make money with affiliate programs, now with folks deleting cookies daily you never get paid from sales generated from your traffic. But now we have an ADWARE vendor who wants to steal all the cash from publishers by simply eliminating webmasters from the payout process. Can someone explain how money can be made if thieves never pay webmasters for the traffic they generate from your sites? Are affiliate programs worth anything that depend on 30-90 day cookies to give credit to the webmaster on traffic if computer users delete cookies daily? How do webmasters deal with gettting ripped off by those who simply highjack their traffic and never pay them money earned. There has to be a better way than depending on cookies that are erased daily by more and more computer users. http://www.mediapost.com/eNewsletters.cfm?s=259401&Nid=9403&p=247162
It a conspiracy Anthony. No doubt about it. Maybe we can get Michael Moore to do a documentary about it I read your article. BTW when is Shawn going to allow you to post a live link. It's a pain in the ass cuting and pasting your links into browsers all the time. But there is nothing in the article about the cookie problem you are railing about. Where did you read about the cookie conspiracy?
That actually is a problem I've had with affiliates on several different sites I'm running; they've complained that people they know ordered from their site had delete cookies and lost the credit. Nothing around it that I can see though.
well 30 60 90 days.... they either buy now or ones site needs to be god enough to have them come back trough your site rather than any affiliate. Some tests (limited to some of our sites) have shown that with the right aproach bookmarking / favourites can be driven very high - one site is running at about 6%+ thus one is sure visitors return and are guided throug our site rather than going directly to affiliates. For afffiliate products that may require "thinking" time I rather run these as PPC model than relying on any markers set. M
Bob, how are we going to make money in this business, that is the question? You run ads based on cookies to get paid and folks erase the cookies and you get nothing, there has to be a better way. Maybe a model based on your traffic x a monthly fee to run banners would be better, the same way you buy an ad from a magazine. Yeah, I agree Compar, it is a cons"piracy". Bob, you started the campaign to get my live links taken away and everyone followed you, I could not care less about live links. As I have mentioned to members, go on strike, make signs and picket in front of Shawns front door in the morning before he leaves for work. After you guy's do this for a month or so, I am sure Shawn will take care of this problem for the members. Bob payback is a bitch, that is why I started my "Ban Compar Campaign", I think I can pull this off as well as getting John Kerry Elected this fall. You and GWB are going down in November!
Anthony does have a point. Advertisers have a right to know how effective their advertising is, but all the same they should pay just for the traffic. Does the newspaper get paid only when someone uses a coupon? Most certainly not. You see the problem is the publisher's job is to send traffic to your site. It's up to the those running the ads to convert on that lead. It's a just a clever way for those running the ads to take advantage of webmasters. Whether or not people are deleting cookies seems irrelevant, because the advertisers should just pay for placing an ad like in all other media.
Joel, that is why we need networks of webmasters set up with traffic stats, until webmasters get some sort of co-op set up that can track traffic to pages and charge based on CPM views we will never really make any money off of affililate advertising programs. This model of placing a tracking cookie on a users computer is faulty, since users are removing cookies on a daily basis with new software. It is the same old story, we promise you will make money, but in fact those making the promises are the ones making ALL the money, just using poor old webmasters in the process.
You guys are comparing online traffic with newspaper readership, which is fine, up to a point! Newspper adverts are strictly controlled, they are also hard to get into (I am talking about adverts for larger companies run via ad agencies). We had a paper, and, before the agencies would consider using us for their clients, we had to prove our worth. It took us almost 12 months of quality control before the agencies would place adverts with us. You can either have it easy to get into, but with no sure fire way of getting paid, or you can have it harder to get into, but you will certainly get paid. There is a trade off in advertising, always has been, always will be. For every dishonest advertiser, there are 100,000 dishonest webmasters (I think I am being kind to the webmasters here). Advertisers have gone down the route of pay per sale because of the huge amount of money that they were fleeced of during the boom years of web advertising. Fact is guys that the current pay model is as a result of this behaviour. So the sins of the father are being paid for by the son, so to speak. IN newspapers, there are organisations like VFD (we had to get scertified under this scheme to get agency work) VFD = Verified Free Distribution. Until there is some form of recognised industry standard with websites that can prove to ad agencies that the traffic coming to a website is verified as genuine, then it is going to be a hard slog! Ad agencies will not risk their income from the ads they place by placing them with bad sites. It will take them a long time before they grasp how the web works, until then, they wil stick with their proven and safe methods of watching their ass!
Yes Old Welsh Guy, you are right about a few things but "pay for sale ads" are what we are talking about. We place banners for Amazon or whoever on our sites, when someone clicks on the ad they place a tracking cookie on that users computer, if that user deletes his cookies on a daily basis like more and more are doing, how do you think webmasters get paid on the sale if the guy buys the thing next week from a bookmark in his computer? With the cookie gone, you get zero for bringing the customer to the vendor since he has no idea where the guy came from. I guess these companies really do not care, because they could put the affiliate code in the URL that is bookmarked, but I would bet few of them do this because webmasters really hold little power in this regard. Pay per click ads have to be better than affiliate programs that depend on cookies for a webmaster to get paid. All I am saying is there has to be a better way.
Old Welsh Guy - what part you from? My grandfather immigrated in the 20's from Cardioff (<--spelling)..he always told me where I am a Rees to ensure I make it over to his homeland and visit. Have not made it over yet but hope to with my family...just curious of you have some info on cardioff as far as a link etc. PM me of you wish. Thanks.
I'd like to see some stats from sites that have affilliate programs (if they keep this kind of data), as to when over the life of a cookie people typically purchase (if they do). Personally I purchase same day on most items because when I need / want something I go looking for it. Like I said I'd like to see some stats, from now and from before the apparent rush to delete cookies, maybe there are very few purchases made later in the cookie life anyway and the real problem you have is the product/service just isn't selling...?
Some things like web hosting are not purchased the same day, if someone clicks on a banner on your website and goes to the site, bookmarks the site and gets back to ordering down the road, unless the code is in the URL you will never get credit. How many programs are set up like this?
Good point anthonycea - I overlooked that. Blame the junk ads that pop up all the bloddy time after you visit some sites. I delete them every now and then when the ads keep popping up. I can't seem to get rid of the ones from an ebay aff though - I registered with ebay in the hope that would get rid of them (maybe my logic wasn't great there) but it didn't work. If these friken ads didn't pop up I would just leave the cookies there.
Anthony I hear exactly what your saying, and agree it stinks. Like someone said, if you place a coupon in a newspaper then the paper gets paid for that space regardless of the coupon take up rate. There has to be some intermediate level of auditing on suitable sites, as big compnies are wasting millions, while small webmasters get ripped off for what is a job well done. If I were an ad agency, and I was as I used to be, not the new ethical me lol. I would steer the market toward payment via time sensitive cookies, then pay a company to develop and market a cookie blooker and remover, Hey, it would save me a fortune, and would cover the R&D costs in no time at all.
Dominic, go to www.download.com and download ADAWARE and SPYBOT 1.3 because you have some SPYWARE AND ADWARE ON YOUR BOX. Do you run these programs?
anyhony - as easy as it is to forge and over right cookies imo people erasing there own isnt the main problem.
Its very hard to make money from affliates , you cant do anything until you have clients or sales. You have to have a market base to sell those stuff and get 10-15 % comission on each. Regards