Ratios: click through cookie vs. initial click cookie
 

Can you all take me to school on this please? I want to understand why it is preferred to have hosted galleries that do not cookie the user until after he has clicked through.

Why not cookie him from the initial click. It seems to me, that it's possible to lose a sale by not setting the cookie on the initial click. I think I understand, stats look better on sales to click throughs instead of sales to total clicks. But still, there is a chance to lose the cookie/sale.

As an affiliate I see it as a trick sponsors play on naive affiliates, making the sponsor ratio appear better. Cookie has to be on click for me

I agree with you. If and when I promote something, I hard code the link and set the cookie right away.

As a sponsor, my hosted galleries are set up for the "better ratios", not as a trick though, but because that's what all of the affiliates seemed to want years ago.

It's called slippage (sort of).
The sponsor gains name recognition you get squat for that.

This has been around in sales for eons. A salesman can be free advertising for a product when he doesn't close the sale -- introducing both the product and the seller's name (brand) to the consuming public.

That sounds like what a corporate machine would do. Pay people to sit around a table and devise plans to eek out dollars here and there. Interesting.

So sponsors do this for that reason then, and not because the affiliates want to have better ratios?

Am I wrong, when I thought that for the most part, affiliates wanted better "click through" ratios, and would risk the "slippage" for the ratios?

Affiliates who prioritize ratios over sales are confused, and cannot see the wood for the trees

1000 clicks to landing page
200 clicks to tour (some access touchpoint)
12 clicks to buy page
4 sales

You can track it or stack it any way you want to.

What is to stop me from saying
or 50:1?
Realistically 1000:4 is 250:1

Most cookies are deleted within 7 - 10 days --70% they say ...

The other side of the coin is how they can pay such a high percentage for sales -- this is part of the reason why.

When you say this, you are saying that the programs are able to pay 50 and 60% (high percentage), because of the cookie expiration. That's the trade off or part of the trade off?

This is starting to clear up for me... I just don't understand why affiliates would have wanted the click through ratio hosted galleries, just for pretty numbers? Or were there other reasons?

I just remember, in the mid 2000's, my coder was changing all of the hosted's in the cash program with click through links. I always thought two things, people wanted prettier urls and people wanted click through ratios versus initial click. Is my mind foggy to recall this? Did in fact affiliates demand click through ratio linking or did my coder sneak one in on me?

epc (earning per click) and CLV (customer lifetime value) is what matters to the smart affiliate.

if 1 in 120 customers convert and the CLV is $100 that is better than
if 1 in 100 customers convert and the CLV is $64
from the affiliate's side

from the sponsors side he pays the affiliate a flat rate a rev-share % or a PPS.
in a PPS the CLV is what matters. What a sponsor (end-seller) pays out has to be less than the

(CLV-(less fixed + production costs)) -retained gross profit margin

(CLV-COGS)= pre-tax gross profit per average customer acquisition

The more sales you get for 'free', without paying a sales commission (revshare), or an advertising cost, (CPC, network ads ...); the higher revshare percentage (or amount (PPS)) you can pay out for affiliate sales. Your own profit margin can subsidize the revshare rate to remain competitive in the marketplace.

The more slippage you have (or create) the lower your actual customer acquisition cost paid to affiliates is :2 cents:

Wow... that is some deep stuff! It makes sense.

Agreed,

all I really care about is EPC. But it took a few years.

Phil, get it through your head, ccbill is fucking you over. End of story.

Get a better setup if you're serious about sales.

Was that necessary? I wasn't complaining about sales, I was wanting to know something. Knowledge is power...

The reason I always liked it as an affiliate is I can get 1k+ people to look at a hosted gallery but never click onto the site. So should I not promote that site cause it's not working or try different hosted galleries? To me, the galleries are me trying to sell them on going to your site but the ratio that matters to me is if I can get people to your site will they join.

So in a perfect world, I would like to see raw and unique to the actual site.

Proof or BAN that CCBill is fucking over affiliates