Affiliate cookies are used to track who sent a lead or sale and therefore who to send the affiliate commission to.

But how long do they last?

Well – as you might expect – there’s no one size fits all answer. So you may need to delve deep into the small print to find out what applies to any given affiliate program.

For instance, an Amazon affiliate cookie lasts for 24 hours. And like a lot of affiliate programs, Amazon won’t give you credit for buying through your own link so you can’t use it as a way to get an extra few percent discount on your purchases.

With other programs the affiliate cookies usually last a lot longer.

Clickbank’s cookies last for 60 days from the first click.

But there’s a catch with their system and a lot of other systems.

If another affiliate sends a click after yours and that new click ends up clinching the deal, the most recent affiliate to send the click gets the commission.

Some affiliate programs think that’s unfair and set the affiliate cookie so that the first person to send the click gets the commission, even if other affiliates subsequently send the traffic.

That’s not particularly common but it can happen. You’ll usually find the information deep in the affiliate terms and conditions page.

There’s a few more catches you should be aware of

Cookies on the web are a bit like cookies in a jar at home.

They don’t always last.

They’re stored by the browser.

But how long they’re stored for varies.

Some users are a bit paranoid about the amount of information that’s stored on their computer so they clear their browser history (including the cookie you were hoping would earn you a commission) regularly. So they set their browsers to clear the cookies every time they close them down.

There can be good reasons for doing that – the adverts that follow you around once you leave a site (that use a remarketing pixel which in turn triggers a cookie to be saved) can be annoying if you share your computer with someone else – or even if the screen is within view of other people and you were hoping to keep a birthday or Christmas present secret.

And if your affiliate cookie is set when the person is browsing incognito or privately (different browsers have different names but it’s the same thing in practice) then the cookies and other history get cleared as soon as the incognito window is closed.

Grr.

Which is why some of the better affiliate programs don’t just rely on cookies

For instance, a hypnosis program I promote uses extra systems to help ensure that their affiliates get credited with the sale.

They also have a 365 day cookie that’s extended every time the customer returns.

And – in common with this program and doubtless quite a few others – they store your affiliate cookie against the customer and use it in the follow up emails they send out.

I like companies that realise how important affiliates are in the sales process.

Warrior Plus (the sales system I use for most of my products) goes some of the way to doing this for my affiliates but doesn’t currently store a universal cookie so that they get credited on new products – unfortunately my affiliates have to send a click for a new product before the system realises. But at least the system gives me the option to sign affiliates up for new products I create so that saves them the extra few clicks that would otherwise be involved.

You won’t necessarily know all these seemingly small details initially.

Some of them are hidden away in the small print which no-one ever reads.

And some you only find out at a later stage.

All you can really do is tip the affiliate cookie odds in your favour

One way to do that – assuming the program allows it – is to cloak your affiliate links.

There are quite a few different plugins in WordPress that make this easy. I use WP Shorties mainly because that’s what I’ve used for years. Lots of other people use Pretty Link Lite which works in a similar fashion.

These plugins allow you to create your own cloaked affiliate links which you can then use on your website, in reports you create and in your emails.

That last option is a good idea.

Whilst Aweber and GetResponse and most other autoresponder companies offer a click tracking option, I prefer to use links on my own sites. Always assuming that I cloak the links at all – not something I do every time by any means.

There are a couple of reasons I personally don’t like using the option supplied by the autoresponder companies:

• If their site goes down for any reason – and they can get targeted by denial of service attacks – then so do my links.
• I’ve experienced variable ability to click on the links and so have some of my subscribers.

That, along with being naturally cautious and occasionally a control freak, means that I prefer to be in charge of links that could earn me money.

So the real answer is “it depends”

There are lots of factors involved in how long your cookies will last.

Most of them are outside your control – all you can really do is check that your affiliate links are correct and send traffic.

Some sales will slip through the net.

But (maybe amazingly) most of the time the system works and you get commissions from the traffic you send to various offers.

And if you’d like help with your affiliate marketing, check out this page.