Paid On Results have decided to publish the Affiliate Sales Tracking Methods Report for all to see. We hope that a pie chart will make it visually clear just how big a piece of the pie Affiliates who are not using Paid On Results are missing out on when it comes to Affiliate Sales.

The pie chart represents all of the sales that happened during September 2009. You will note that we use the term Advanced Cookie as we like to make it clear that, although cookie based tracking is the default for every network in the world, some have better cookie set-ups than others. At Paid On Results we believe we have the very best set-up with regards to cookies therefore we have termed ours “advanced” so as to distinguish ourself from networks using inferior cookie tracking set-ups.

In September 2009, Paid On Results recorded 9.18% additional sales that affiliates using some other Networks would have missed out on. Check how much money you made from Affiliate Marketing in September and ask yourself if an extra 9.18% additional income would have been significant for you or not.

If we take 1,000 sales as base line (some of you guys make 10,000+ sales in a month) this is what it would work out at in real sales, I will be rounding up and down on the sales numbers.

• Advanced Cookie – 908 sales
• Flash Cookie – 62 sales
• IP – 14 sales
• Customer Base – 6 sales
• Network – 3 sales
• Other 1 – 6 sales
• Other 2 – 1 sale

Consequently, in real terms, if the network you are with only uses cookie based tracking then you are missing out in 92 sales in every 1,000. Interesting when you think about it like that.

How Tracking Works at Paid On Results

The majority of sales are checked for tracking in the following order, Advanced Cookie then Flash Cookie, IP, Customer Base, Network, Other 1 and finally, Other 2. “Other” tracking methods are named as such as we do not wish to give away any secrets about our techincal capabilites. So while our Advanced Cookie accounts for the lions share of the sales tracked, if it didn’t exist then it doesn’t mean 90.82% of sales will disappear, but that the other tracking methods would step in and record the majority of these.

Thing You Should Note

All tracking methods can be blocked or cleared, but the most common to suffer from this is the standard cookie. Also, the type of sites people visit also determines how frequently they clear their tracks. If a Network is subject to cookie blocking software, for example, a standard cookie set-up the same across 2 networks could track differently depending on if one network is blocked by a popular software program or not. This is why it’s important for Networks to offer alternative tracking methods so that as many sales as possible are correctly tracked.

Please feel free to quote this research in any articles you maybe writing, but please link back to the source, thanks.