Last Cookie
Last Cookie Before Initial Signup Wins
DAP uses “Last Cookie” to award commissions.
So if someone (who has never purchased anything from you before) clicks on the affiliate link of Jack, and then a few hours (or days) later, clicks on the affiliate link of Jill, and then goes on to purchase your product, then DAP awards the commission to Jill, whose affiliate link was the one clicked most recently.
So, in general, to protect your affiliates, you shouldn’t be promoting your site generally on the web using your own affiliate link (as DAP admin). That way, you never compete with them for commissions on your own site.
However, using your own affiliate link works great, say, when you’re marketing in specific markets, like say on Adwords. Even though Adwords allows you to set up and track goals, using a special affiliate can help you figure out exactly how much revenue you have earned through this affiliate.
So, for Adwords marketing, you could create a new user called “Adwords Affiliate” and then use this user’s affiliate link as your landing page URL. Of course, you could also customize this affiliate’s link to land on any page of your web site (or any site for that matter) by adding the text “&p=yoursite.com/anypage.html” to the end of your standard affiliate link, like this…
http://YourSite.com/dap/a/?a=1234&p=yoursite.com/googleoffer1.html
LifeTime Affiliates: Cookie Not Relevant
Once a member has signed up and is attached to an affiliate, then it’s that same affiliate who will get lifetime commissions for all purchases made by that member, for life. Once an affiliate is assigned to a user, it cannot change again for life. So after someone has become a member and is credited to an affiliate, it does not matter what cookie they have on their computer when they make a purchase – the credit will always go to original affiliate that they’re already attached to.
