Does Amazon store cookies on people who bought through your affiliate program?

I've been reading the varoius forums on Amazon Associates and found the following interesting question.    

Does Amazon store cookies on people who bought through your affiliate program? Here is the senario: User comes in the 1st time through your link, and doesn't buy. One week later, user types in the amazon main website url, and buys from there. My question is: Do you get credits for that?

This question is the most fundamental to any affiliate program.  Ultimately any affiliate program is not going to survive if it is not able to establish a trusting relationship between a merchant running the affiliate program and the publisher driving traffic to the merchant. The affiliate needs to feel 100% comfortable that they will get compensated based on the terms of the agreement.      

Having taken another look, I see that the Amazon Associates Operating Agreement dated August 17 2006 does not fully address this question.  Thus, let me address this critical question here.

When you build any link to Amazon.com from Associates Central, Amazon tags the link with your Amazon Associates ID.  When you click on the link you may end up on a page with a very long URL.  Typically, you will see one of the parameters on the URL called "tag".  This is the tag that specifies your Associates ID:

If you click on any link on this page, you will redirect to a different Amazon.com page but your tag will be replaced with the Session ID that looks like 102-8430161-8248922:

It does not mean that your tag is no longer associated with this transaction.  Amazon still "remembers" your tag and it is now associated with the entire session that this customer has established on Amazon.com.  Because your Associates ID gets attached with the Session ID and the Session ID gets passed from page to page in the URL, the customer does not even need to have his cookies enabled for your Associates ID to be linked with this session -- until the customer closes his browser.  If the customer comes back to Amazon within 24 hours of the initial click, even if he types "http://www.amazon.com" in his browser, Amazon will attempt to re-esatblish the original session from the customer's cookie.  If cookies are enabled, the session tagged to your Associate ID will get re-established.  If the cookies are not enabled, a new session not tagged with your Associates ID will be established.  I find that about 85% of the users run their browsers with cookies enabled.

From the moment a customer clicks on a link on your site and ends up on the Amazon site, his session will last for 24 hours.  Any purchases during this period will be credited to you as an affiliate as long as:

1.  A purchase is made in the same browser as the original click within the 24 hours of the first click, OR 2.  Customer clicks to Amazon, exists the browser and comes back to Amazon directly within 24 hours while his cookies are enabled.

Lastly, there is one more way you can get credited with the purchase even if the purchase is not made within the first 24 hours of the click.  If the customer adds an item to his cart within the first 24 hour period, those items may be purchased within the next 90 days and you will still receive affiliate credit for those items. 

So, the answer to your original question is:  If the user doesn't buy on the first visit and then comes back one week later to buy, you will not get credited if the user hadn't added the purchased item to the shopping cart within 24 hours of the original visit.  If the user had placed the item into his shopping cart, then you will receive the affiliate credit.

Gene Kavner

P.S. Go Tigers!

Comments

[Tony Greene (DP)]

With this post you have me thinking very much about dropping the 'zon from my sites. Thanks for the info. Cheers!

[Bokuno]

I'm curious about the converse: if a customer has saved items in his Amazon shopping cart (placed there while NOT tagged with your associate ID), and then purchases the saved items after following a link from your associate site, will you get credit for the sale of those saved items?