Forum Moderators: skibum
After an extended livechat with a linkshare rep (awesome feature, the one thing that has kept me live with linkshare), I have found out that each merchant sets a return days number. This number represents how many days later your visitor can purchase or signup and you still get credit. Ex: the return days are 14, your user has 2 weeks to signup or purchase for you to get credit.
On this particular merchant, my return days are set to 0, which means if they don't signup immediately on the first click-through, I don't get credit. I now see where the problem lies, exactly.
To find out what return days are on your merchants, go to the "Your Account" tab and select the merchant you want to check. Click on the program level description, the one with the radio button checked. (It is the one you are using if there are more than one.) That takes you to the program description page. On the left hand column under commission is your return days.
To find out if you have missed any commissions due to leads/sales being after the return days set, run a "sales and activity" report on ONLY that merchant. On the report screen, click the link under the report that says "Don't see a sale? Click Here" It will show what your users did after the return days. This tool seems buggy, it stopped at 39 for me, and won't list the past 3 1/2 weeks at this time, but still gives a good general idea of what you're missing out on.
I just tried it out on a couple important merchants, and saw major sales that I didn't get credit for even though these merchants have retun days set to 1. The strange thing is that most of the missing sales have a process date 1 day later than the transaction date. I don't know if this means it was 1 calendar day later, but I didn't get credit because it was more than 24 hours, or something else.
I had expected there to be a lot of missed sales because I had already observed the correlation between the order/click ratio and the number of return days from the merchant program description.
I recall that most merchant's offer 0 return days, and quality merchants in this category typically have a 3-8% order/click rate for me. On merchants with at least a few return days, this is on average double. And a few that offer a high number of return days have even better ratios.
Now that we can see the missed commssions, what do we do about it? Do we use it to try to push the merchant's into offering return days?
Now sure enough, the order/click ratio has dropped, and I find that they now have 0 return days.
They must have dropped the return days a couple months ago when they also cut commission rates in half. :(
I think that is from the merchant uploading stats/reports the day following the activity.
They way I took it, 0 return days means the user must signup/purchase during that session. If they come back 30 minutes later, you don't get credit. This way of thinking falls in line with my conversions drop.
>Do we use it to try to push the merchant's into offering return days?
Well, I just took them off my site. I called the program manager, and she said she had already talked with her COO, and they can't change it "at this time." okey dokey, I can't promote your program "at this time."
This is really sad, especially for sales % affiliates. How often do you purchase something from a site as soon as you see it? I never have. It should be at least one or two weeks, bare minimum.
IMO, LS should have the same type blanket policy as CJ. CJ is 45 days for all merchants.
Actually, CJ has gone to a similar system, but they call it "cookie duration," and it is not hidden like it is on LinkShare. Also, you are notified through CJ system mail if one of your merchants changes the duration.
Discussion here [webmasterworld.com]
