3rd Party Affiliate Tracking Question..

Okay a quick question for both affiliates and program owners..

If using a 3rd party stats package, would you say it was best to provide affiliates linking codes like this..

http://www.paysitename.com/?affiliateid

Or like this..

http://www.sponsorname.com/?id=paysite/?affiliateid

I can think of pros and cons for both methods but im wondering if those of you who have used one or the other option could give some feedback to.

My main concern is making sure clicks that affiliates send are tracked 100% of the time and, hypothetically, lets say the server with the affiliate program on it goes down, using linking codes with sponsorname.com in the url is a bad idea but, at the same time, if the server hosting the paysites go down, using the individual site domains in the URL is a bad idea.

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

Regards,

Lee

It is nice to read Lee that you are concerned about tracking of your affiliates, especially since many sponsors still use cookies, not considering that most surfers protect themselves from such.

You wrote:

"My main concern is making sure clicks that affiliates send are tracked 100% of the time and, hypothetically, lets say the server with the affiliate program on it goes down, using linking codes with sponsorname.com in the url is a bad idea but, at the same time, if the server hosting the paysites go down, using the individual site domains in the URL is a bad idea."

I think Lee you are worry too much. If the server with your paysites goes down, I would think you would prefer no signups during the downtime, avoiding the quick refund demands.

I think this is dependant on the affiliate management script you use. And to alleviate concerns over downtime, you can look at a load balanced server solution on a multi homed high quality network.

cheers,
Luke