Clicking any hop link sets a cookie in the buyer's browser that expires in 6 months, so any item with affiliate sharing enabled that buyer purchases from you during the lifespan of that cookie would earn the referring affiliate a commission.



We do have an undocumented hack that allows you to change the duration of your affiliate referral cookies. Wherever you enter a hop link landing page URL, you can add a space and a number of days (minimum 1 day) after the end of the URL, so any cookie set by that link will expire after that number of days -- e.g., to have the hop link set a referral cookie that expires after 30 days, you'd enter your hop link landing page URL like so:



http://www.example.com/page.html 30



Since affiliates using our system would tend to expect our 6 month default cookie expiration, you should be quite clear with your affiliates if you will be altering this. A good practice is to have an affiliate recruitment page on your site where you place your actual sign-up link along with any special instructions or other terms such as a nonstandard cookie expiration, then have any other affiliate recruitment links on your site or elsewhere pointing to that page; then, enter the URL of that page as your More Information URL (in Seller Admin > Affiliate Program Settings), so affiliates can find it easily again via the More Info button in their Affiliate Admin.

Hello,



I found this discussion useful. I have some questions please:



1) Is this advice about the undocumented hack still current?



2) If I change the landing page URL as described above, do the affiliates have to also update their links or can they continue to use their current links?



3) Is this the correct format to change the cookie to 12 months? (below)



http://newmamawelcome.com/ 365



4) Does the 12 months start from the date I change the URL or does it work backwards - i.e. if a 'lead' had previously clicked the affiliate link before I changed the URL, would it still track them for 12 months or does it only apply to those who clicked AFTER I made the change?



5) Does this hack work for product specific affiliate programs.



6) Please confirm do I make the URL change in the URL field underneath the title 'affiliate share' where it says 'affiliates links will link to a page on your website (recommended)'



Thanks for your help. Sorry I just want to make sure I've got this all absolutely right!

Cheers,

Catherine

Hi Cahterine,



Here's the answers to your questions:



1 - Yes, but since our new admin is almost done we'll probably have official settings for this in the near future.



2 - No, all affiliate links will remain the same and keep working. No need for updates.



3 - Yes, that's correct to create a year-long cookie. You can see in your post that the browser interprets only the first part as a whole link, entering a space and then a number keeps that number value separate and our system will be able to understand it.



4 - Unfortunately there is no way for this to work backwards. A cookie can only have the settings it was created with, we cannot remotely access them to update them if you make a change in your account.



5 - Yes, if you plan to use product specific settings be sure to enter the cookie length in them as well



6 - Yes, that is the correct place to enter your landing page URL.