How the tracking works

Commission rests on someone being able to prove the purchase came from you. Your entire payment depends on a technical system you do not own.

Link or code

A tracking link attaches an identifier to the visitor. A discount code is typed into the checkout. The code works even when the link was never clicked: someone saw the film, looked the brand up themselves and typed the code in. The link loses that sale.

The attribution window elsewhere

The window is how long after the click a purchase still counts as yours. If it is short you only get the impulse purchases that happen immediately. If it is long you also get the ones who thought about it for a week.

Last click usually wins

In most systems the commission goes to whoever was last before the purchase. So you can be the reason someone heard of the product at all and still lose the payment to a voucher site that happened to come in between.

Five questions to ask before you say yes

1. How long is the attribution window?
2. Does first or last click count?
3. What happens to the commission on a return or cancellation?
4. When is it paid out, and is there a minimum payout threshold?
5. Can you see your own statistics, or do you just get a number from them?

Read the terms

The answers are in the affiliate terms. That nobody reads them is exactly why they look the way they do.

How our own system answers

If you take jobs through us the following applies, and you do not have to ask:

1. Attribution window: we have no click window. Your link and your discount code apply until the company sets an end date on them, and the date is on your results page. A click window requires a cookie on the company's own site, and we cannot set that.
2. First or last click: neither. An order belongs to the code it carries. No voucher site can come in between and take it.
3. Returns: the commission is clawed back. It stays pending during a return window, usually thirty days, and is released only once that has passed.
4. Payment: after the window and after the editors have approved the row. No minimum threshold.
5. Your own statistics: yes. You and the company see exactly the same numbers, and every number is labelled with where it came from.

What we cannot measure, and say plainly

We cannot see views on a film that sits on the company's own account until they connect that account to us. We also do not see purchases in a physical shop, or purchases where neither link nor code was used.

And one limit worth knowing, because it applies to every system: we measure which orders carried your code. Whether the same customer would have bought anyway, without having seen your film, no order feed can answer. Anyone claiming otherwise is selling guesses as facts.

The full description is on the tracking page, the same text the companies read.