Thanks for the post.

It’s a tricky issue because it’s almost impossible to ascertain who contributes most to the sale.

In this scenario:

1. Poor quality web ste with almost nil content has a link to your product. The visitor just happnes to click. The visitor then goes to:

2. Top quality web site that works hard to provide quality information, gain the visitors trust and provide in-depth analysis of affiliate products.

The visitor clicks through to buy based on the brand of the person/site they have just visited. They trust the site’s recommendation and buy.

With a lot of affiliate software the first person gets attributed the sale.

Which seems kind of wrong in this scenario.

BUT I guess you have to pick one way to do it and stick with that (there’s a strong arguement of course that the last person to refer gets the sale).

Regards

Brendon

I visited my own site before I did that and the affiliate software still tracked the affiliate purchase.

One issue I find sticky is what affiliate should get the payment if multiple affiliates both point the same lead toward a purchase.

Should that go to the first to send the visitor or the most recent? I can think of arguments both way on that…although I am not certain which is the correct one.

-Aaron Wall

However, you may be wrong about #2. I was reading MarketingSherpa’s Marketing Wisdom for 2006 ( http://inspirations.marketingsherpa.com/store/downloads/wisdom2006.pdf ) when I read an entry submitted by TemplateMonster. Until recently they had not run any PPC advertising on Google because they were already getting great organic listings. They decided to try it out by hiring a full-time employee to run their PPC campaign. The end result: profits increased 75%.