By Brad Waller
[Editor's Note: Brad starts by quoting from my article.]
One thing that annoys many webmasters is the thought that they may attract a life-long customer for a company but be paid commission on only ONE sale. After visiting Amazon.com or eToys.com the first time, the customer will simply remember the name and go directly there.
Will there be a trend in 1999 towards more companies paying for repeat visits? I sought an answer from Jaffer Ali, who keeps his finger on the pulse.
In August last year Jaffer announced proudly that PulseTV.com was tracking sales from dual sources - the referring URL as well as a cookie. "As long as the cookie remains 'active' the affiliate will receive 20% on subsequent visits by consumers even on additional sales generated from our e-mails."
Actually, the solution is rather easy. Assuming you can track the initial
sale to an affiliate, all you have to do is mark that account as a referral
from that affiliate. At EPage, each and every user ID has a database field
for the referral. If you recall my note from a few months back, all you
have to do is use the referral code and every time that user pays us money,
the original referring site will make money, no matter where the customer
came from for the current sale.
Any program that can't track subsequent sales has a hole in their database.
You always want to know the source of good referrals, so you should have
this anyhow. Sites may choose not to pay for repeat sales, but any site
with an associate program should have the ability to permanently track the
originating referral through user ID data.
Brad Waller waller AT ep.com
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[Editor's Note: PulseTV abandoned its affiliate program. EPage is still going well.]
