An important consideration in examining affiliate programs that claim to pay lifetime commissions is how referrals are tracked. The simplest (and least dependable) method uses cookies, small pieces of information that your web browser saves on your computer about web sites you’ve visited. Cookies can have an expiration date attached to them, and affiliate programs using cookie method will often either set expiration date far into future (say 10 years?) or set no expiration date at all, which is where claim of lifetime commissions enters.

There are several problems with cookies. What if your customer places an order from their computer at work instead of home where your cookie is located? The answer, of course, is that you will not receive any commission. You can also expect to receive no commissions if your customer switches from Internet Explorer to Netscape or buys a new computer. The few years that pass between new computer purchases in this day and age hardly constitute a “lifetime” in my book. On top of that if your customer goes through link of one of your competing affiliates, that affiliate’s cookie will replace yours.

Isn’t there any other way to track a referred customer? Some programs track by IP address, specific number that uniquely identifies your computer so that you can communicate with other machines on Internet. This option can provide a little more dependability. A new computer doesn’t necessarily spell end of your commissions as long as new computer uses same IP address as old computer. Of course, that’s still assuming your customer has a fixed IP, and this generally only happens at work. Most home computers are connected to Internet over a phone or cable line, and a service provider will potentially assign them a different IP address every time they turn on their computer.