When does tracking begin?

Im hoping to clear up a couple of questions with the help of the GPWA crew.

I have learned over time that some affiliate programs ( casino extreme affiliates for one ) will only allow you to earn when a player downloads the casino software. If a players uses flash version of casino extreme, you dont actually earn a cent even when the player clicked on your banner to arrive at the casino extreme website. I guess thats why casino extreme is not on most websites lol.

But more into my question.

If a player clicks on a casino banner from my site, and as soon as they arrive they see the pop up, ( you know the one ) "download the casino software" popup, Does a player have to click on that pop up for me to get credit?

What if the player decides to browse the promotions or banking area of the casino before downloading? Am I still credited with the download and the deposit if one decides to deposit in the casino?

I only ask because Im trying to explain many affiliate program stats where I see 100's of clicks each month with 0 downloads and 0 deposits. I am lost as to why people would click on a banner and not even sign up.

Thank you

Puma

Hi Puma,

I am not an expert at this, but this is how I beleive it works;

Many affiliate programs will store a cookie within the users browser with a 'tracking ID' identifying you as the source of the visit. Wether they sign up with the download link or browse first, this cookie should still be detected later on when they do decide to download and register.

Cookies have varying lengths of expiration (I think 90 days is the maximum) so even if a user bookmarks the website and returns within this period you should still be credited with that player (although cookies can also be overwritten when referred by somebody else later on) These parameters will vary greatly between affiliate programs.

I managed to increase my download to registration ratio by adding 'nofollow' tags to all of my links, as most of what i thought were my visitors were actually search engines doing there regular crawls - these all get reflected in the stats.

Wow, Thank you, I never even considered that the hits to my links might be search engines. I wish google or yahoo would deposit via my links lmoa !

I also know that once in awhile i clean out my cookies with the program "crap cleaner" ( cc ) and it gets rid of just about everything.

Thanks again for the help

Puma