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For PPV stuffing, you quickly realize that some programs just plain don’t work at all! While others bring the cash rolling in. Mileage will vary with different techniques…but for the techniques I talk about in the PPV Stuffing Series, there is one ‘prime’ determinant of what makes a network stuffable, and what doesn’t.
In order to “discover” this we’re going to take a look at the CJ match.com program. This is a program I’ve never seen a single return from stuffing. Lets find out why.
This is our affiliate url:
http://www.dpbolvw.net/click-xxxxxx-xxxxxx/?sid=CnCqg8dJcv
I have made an output dump of running this url via livehttp headers…and combed through it cutting out all the “junk”. I’ve noted all mentions of p3p policy, cache control, expiration dates, and set-cookie functions, as well as all of their requesting URLs. These all can be clues in isolating the exact cookie(s) that determine your commission.
So, once you have a list of this ‘clean’ pull. Your browser has been cookied with an affiliate cookie. Next, go search around for Match.com review on google, and find somebody ELSES affiliate link. Open it and comb through the http header dump, looking for the same information.
Pay special attention to the set-cookie lines, and see if there are any promising looking cookies that did NOT get set this time.
1) I know that match.com is not giving me commissions for traffic stuffed while on their site.
2) After combing through their cookies, I tested multiple patterns of affiliate links
Clear Cookies -> My Affiliate Link
My Affiliate Link -> Someone else’s
Direct Homepage -> My Affiliate Link
3) Watching the set-cookie function, I came to the conclusion that this set of cookies is the one being set by match.com for tracking commissions.
Set-Cookie: Match=CCount=1&CDate=2/16/2011;
Set-Cookie: dMatch=CCount=1&CDate=2/16/2011;
Set-Cookie: MatchSession=CDTF=2/16/2011&UMID=9c4ad
Set-Cookie: SECU=TID=525572&ESID=7908af0d-9206-4
4) Now the test…from a clean browser, go directly to their webpage…watch in livehttp headers as these four cookies get set. Now try out an affiliate link…you will notice that the affiliate link does not set it’s cookies, because match.com has already set their own ‘inhouse’ cookies. Thus, if you are targeting this network with PPV traffic bidding on their own URLS, you will get nothing. Ever.
I feel like this must have a strong affect on whitehat affiliates too…if your audience has ever been to match.com…you get Zero commission…doesn’t matter if your site provided the information that lead to them purchasing. You get nothing. I would think that Match.com should be releasing this info to their affiliates, nowhere in their programs does it tell you that your traffic must not have visited match.com before making their purchase in order for you to get credit.
Perhaps their homepage cookies expire in a day like the other affiliate cookies? Perhaps not…that would be a good thing to test Next time we discuss how to work around this little inconvenience. |
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