Affiliate networks: how are they implemented?

drywall_dan

How do affiliate networks work, at a technical level ? I am an experienced web developer, so no need to simplify. My current project has required me to do some research in the world of affiliate networks. I'm trying to figure out exactly how the existing ones are implemented, names such as rewardStyle, Rakuten, CJ Affiliate, Skimlinks, etc. First, the publisher side. They link to merchant websites with special links that contain a code that...

Originally asked by pablobm on Stack Exchange (webmasters) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

Merchant gets from publisher a referal code and tries to spread his cookie with his referral code to as much users as possible. User with merchant cookie comes to publisher (or to seller authorised by main publisher) and in case of buy, publisher gets by cookie to know, which merchant sent the buyer and makes a payout. The problem on this is the last cookie paradigm.

Full answer by Evgeniy: https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/a/116224 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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