Affiliate Cookie Jar
Nowhere does there exist a plugin like Affiliate Cookie Jar. Affiliate Cookie Jar is a plugin that helps you supercharge your WordPress blog as an affiliate marketing machine by allowing you to “drop” targeted affiliate cookies in pages or posts (cookie stuffing). You can set a global cookie for your whole site, or designate a cookie per page or post.
Affiliate Cookie Jar works its magic by using Flash based, triple redirect code for added security. Affiliate Cookie Jar can set a percentage chance (click through rate) that a user will get a cookie and cloaks your affiliate link by encrypting the cookie code to stop link hijacking.
Ok, so I should tell you right up front – there are many arguments for and against cookie stuffing. I, for one, don’t see a problem with stuffing cookies on a site that specifically targets the product you’re selling. Stuffing forums and doing all kinds of blackhat stuff – that’s probably not too cool. Ok, carry on!
So, How’s It Work?
Glad you asked! It’s all very scientific… Affiliate Cookie Jar stuffs cookies with an encoded call to a javascript, which then embeds a Flash movie, which then calls a script that performs up to a triple redirect to clear the HTTP refer header, then drops the cookie on the user.
It also sets a local cookie to track if your user got the cookie or not so as to not oversaturate the cookie dropping.
Long story short, you boost commissions by dropping affiliate cookies in your blog posts or pages, all with the click of a button. Pure genius!
Tested On:
FireFox 3.6.6 - works
IE 8.0.6001.18702 - works
Opera 10.5 - works
Chrome 5.0375.70 - works
Safari 5.0 – doesn’t work (yet). Safari is set by default to not accept 3rd party cookies. But hey, Safari only has 4.77% market share 
Future Upgrades (in progress):
autoblogging compatability by setting links to tags, categories, or keywords.
Please provide feedback – love it, hate it, did you make some cash with it? This will help make the plugin better. I’d love a testimonial or two if you get some use out of it.
Wordpress Affiliate Cookie Jar
Enjoy!
{ 55 comments… read them below or add one }
Wordpress says it doesn’t have a valid header and thus won’t activate it!
Ivan,
Sorry for the trouble. Could you tell me what version of WordPress you’re using? I’ve tested on 2.9 and higher, and I’ve had it working with multiple themes without issue.
Patrick if i’m right i downloaded the plugin back in july and the site was making around $240-250 ,august 31 i had $950 in my account and it was the best feeling in a long time .
today is Friday 17 and made $533 already and still have 13 days to go and i’m sure that i will hit the $1000 mark because of this plugin.
I just don’t know how to thank you but you did an awesome job with this plugin man Even if you sell this plugin $1000 , I WILL BUY IT .
SrSoupy – fantastic! I’d love to see what sites you’re using the cookie on – maybe send me a PM and let me peek? Keep rockin’ that plugin and making the phat cash!
How do we use this with the clickbank Hoplink Shield?
Thanks!
Easy enough. You can create the “classic” clickbank link by using: YourID.VendorID.hop.clickbank.net or by using their HopShield option – a ClickBank link is a ClickBank link! Just insert that as the cookie to stuff, and you’re golden.
Whoa! Works with the hoplink shield. I new my site was being stuffed. I put this on on one product and my hops went from 0 to 11 in one day on one product! be great if we could add more aff links!! Awesome!
Of course it does! I would wager it’d work with links to your eZine articles (pump your views) and other links as well.
I have gotten lots of requests for being able to drop multiple cookies, but that’s dangerous. There’d always be one guy out there that would try and carpet bomb a visitor with a boat load of cookies, and that could ruin it for all of us. This is why I’ve kept it to one cookie per page/post.
Now, if a cookie gets dropped, then the plugin does write a cookie that keeps it from being dropped again for whatever duration you set – so theoretically, you could stuff a page with multiple cookies – the user would just get them drip fed as opposed to all at once.
I tried this out, loaded fine, activated fine, but it doesn’t seem to be working, I don’t see the cookies on my machine when I test and my affiliate network isn’t recording any “clicks.”
Can you email me the affiliate links you’re trying to drop and what you’re doing to drop the cookie? Email: pfriedl_at_nebulus.org
I just installed the cookie jar plugin. Showed a lot of hits on my affiliate. I am using it in the global site mode as doing indiviudual posts or pages would be too difficult to manage as I have over 8000 postings.
I was thinking it would be great if on the global cookie multiple affiliate cookies could be scheduled or rotatated by interval, and maybe each with its own percentage of click-through.
I have 3 affiliates I am interested in trying to distribute my traffic among.
Otherwise, I hope this works! Thanks!
That is a LOT of postings! Actually, I am working to allow a list of cookies to drop, possibly based on keywords or randomly – so keep an eye out for updates!
Awesome! I am looking forward to it!
Hey Pat, Thanks a lot for this!
What if the user reads my product review, was about to buy it but her husband comes nagging her to bed. So next morning, she wakes up, and decides its Wednesday, a great day to use Firefox browser instead of the usual Internet Explorer. Wouldn’t my cookie not be credited? Is it possible to do a “Cross-Browser” kind of thing?
THANKS AGAIN!
Unfortunately, there’s no way to create a cross browser cookie. IE and FireFox both store their cookies in different locations. While it’s possible that the user would change their browser later, it’s probably pretty unlikely. It’d be cool, but there’s no way that I know of to create a cookie for every browser installed. Sorry!
Hey Pat!
Thanks for the reply! No worries bro, you did a GREAT job at this!
I did some research for ya, but they lost me when the codes start kicking in. Seems like cross browser cookies happens with flash? I don’t know what they’re talking about! Maybe you do!
http://www.nuff-respec.com/technology/cross-browser-cookies-with-flash
NO! Don’t crack your head on this buddy! But if you sell a new version of this with this feature, I’ll definitely be buying it!
Hi, Pat
How to use it in the global site mode? Just insert the affiliate link and click the update button?
Thanks very much for this GREAT plugin!
Yup, that’s it! Just update the settings with your desired clickthrough rate and affiliate link and let ‘er rip!
Hello patrick,
I am trying to contact you but i do not see any contact form here and think i have a problem with the plugin.
this plugin was working perfectly on the site and recently activated wp super cache then a couple days after looks like the plugin dos not drop a affiliate cookie .
when i set it to 100% to check if it drops i can only find a local cookie , i do not see the actual affiliate link or dos it not work like that ?
I can see in my cj stats that the clicks dropped from 200 to 20 clicks a day
can it be that the wp super cache affected this ? i also deactivated the wp super cache to see if it will normalize but it still the same .
I’ll respond here and via email. Caching plugins literally create a static page from your pages or posts. This can have some crazy effects like what you’re seeing here. I’m not sure how WP super Cache works, but I’ve found that I get better results from QuickCache from the guys over at PrimoThemes.com.
I’ve got a couple of ecom sites that use the Shopp plugin for the cart, and I can’t use any caching on those sites because the cart builds catalog pages dynamically. I’d try disabling your cache plugin and seeing if that fixes the CTR on the affiliate cookie jar.
Hi patrick,
Nice to read so many positive reviews! However, does it work on IE6 ,7?
Mentioned in the post, it doesn’t work on Safari5 because safari5 doesn’t accept third party cookies. IE6,7 don’t accept third party also and have much more users. Till now, i haven’t find any similar script to drop cookies in IE6,7. Is it really no way to break the issue of not accepting third party cookies in the world?
It should work in IE 7, and I don’t bother with IE 6 – it’s been long dead, and under 5% of people still use it. I know that’s cold, but at some point we must stop supporting expired software
I would like to see the ability to add more than one cookie… not 100′s or anything mind you.
But I can see the advantage of being able to add 3 or maybe up to 5. Most of my sites would really only need 3 global cookies – for the 3 top products I am promoting (or one top product and two competitors).
Since the plugin is “intelligent” with dropping cookies, you would in this case have to view 3 pages in order to get all 3 of them.
So you would still have to make a really good site worth moving around in and checking stuff out.
That would be a great addition though!
Great plugin – love it…
On a side note – we can just use your “cookie code generator” to make more than one cookie drop and put them in the footer of the site as well – I would rather manage it all through a plugin.
Thanks for the good ideas. I’m currently working on options to drop cookies based on keywords in your post, so we’ll see about adding the option to drop multiple cookies!
is there a way to make it not drop the cookie if it fails the refresh 3 times instead of dropping the cookie anyway?
awesome plugin!! where is your donate button!
I’m working on a list of options that have been requested, so I’ll add that to the list!
This is a very cool plugin. I have tried it with clickbank aff links and it is working. By the way, how do you insert Amazon aff link? Their links have tag or tag. So does it work with this plugin?
Many thanks Pat
Andy
You should be able to insert any link in the code to drop a cookie. The way to check would be to clear all cookies from your site and Amazon in your browser, then do a hard reload of your site (Ctrl + F5). Open up your internet/privacy settings and view the cookies to see if you’ve got a cookie from the affiliate site.
Is there a way that I can delay the cookies being dropped for a few sec after my website is loaded?
Gary,
Sorry, not at this time. The cookies do drop at the very bottom of the page, so they typically are going to be the last items loaded if that helps.
Great site!
How do you tell if a cookie is first or last in to a non CB or CJ offer?
Can a first in cookie prevent other cookies in?
Say a cookie lasts 30days does that mean it’s protected for that time unless another affiliate cookie comes in?
Nick,
You can’t actually tell if your cookie is first or last, you can just write the cookie. I’m unaware of how ClickBank handles the cookies, but I would assume that the first cookie received is the one that gets the credit.
Hi Pat,
Site A and B
users click site A first, then he clicked Site B’s links,
And site A use this plugin,
still site B get the commission?
I want site A get. lol;
Allen,
It should be site A that gets the commission if it was clicked first. That is, unless the user clears their cookies before clicking a link on site B!
Thank you very much for this.
when I use this, the amazon cookie content begin with “apn-user-id
*****”, and when I real click the amazon link, the cookie’s content begin with “session-id-time*****”, they are different. Is it right? And I run this for 1 day, the Amazon report only get 2 click.
Alex,
I’d check the whole cookie’s content to see what’s being set, and as far as setting your clickthrough rate, you might want to move from the default 20% to a higher rate, although I’d suggest keeping it lower to appear more natural.
Also, I’d be very wary of using any cookie stuffing on both eBay and Amazon – they can get very cranky if they discover stuffing as it’s specifically forbidden in their terms of service.
hi pat ,thanks for the plugins,it is big power for me ,but i have some question about this ,if my website A have a huge traffic ,and i setting the 5 cookie url , all form same company like amazon affiliate link,then the amazon will know the traffic is all come form my website A ? or they donot know ？
The plugin does try to clear the referrer, so they should not see it. However, I’m still doing some testing to make sure that the referrer is blank and plans are in the works to let you define your own referrer.
As a side note, I would avoid dropping cookies on eBay and Amazon links – their terms of service specifically forbid cookie stuffing and they do get very cranky about it! Other affiliate services like ClickBank typically won’t have a problem with it.
if i used the CB,then i see the affiliate url ,like this :
http://Affiliate-ID.vendor-id.hop.clickbank.net
so if i put the vendor code like game,but the guys buy another product,i can get the money still?
I’m not sure if Clickbank gives you credit for another product or if the cookie is for that product only. I’ve checked their site and haven’t found any information that says one way or the other. Sorry!
Hi when will you release the new version ?
It might be a little while
We’re currently working on a few other projects, so this one is currently on the back burner until we launch our other projects. We hope to get back to it soon!
cool thanks the plugin dos not work when updated to wordpress 3.1.3
Do you know why ?
Thanks Patrick!
This plugin works well, but it only blanks the ref, right?
Is it possible, that the plugin fakes a refferer to make it all work like described in this article http://www.contentgeneration.org/near-undetectable-cookie-stuffing/ ???
Cheers!
I’ll have to definitely check that article out and look at integrating it in with my plugin. Thanks for the heads up!
Sounds really good and I’d also pay for the updates.
You might find some good information for a fake referer feature at the link below. I am not a coder at all but I guess the link is on topic.
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/441014/30/0/threaded
Keep up the good work!
If my site has 3 products I’m promoting, is it possible to set cookies for each product using affiliate cookie jar?
Thanks Pat
Hi Pat,
Will the plugin work with subdomain redirects? The vendor URL still shows my userID.
btw I’m using WP 3.2.1.
cheers!
We’re doing some testing with the latest browsers to see if we can make the plugin work with the most current browsers – we’ll keep you up to date!
It seems that it can not work ,the flash can’t cross domain to visit another domain using sendToURL(request) even if you have used redirect.And if I use frame ,IE 6,7,8 don’t accept third party cookie,How can I work out?
We’re currently working on an updated version – some of the later browsers are not taking 3rd party cookies, so we have to work out how to achieve this.
Great plugin! Thanks a million!
Hey folks!
Are you still working on an updated version? Can’t wait to use it!
Question! What do I have to change inside your plugins files to remove the name of the plugin in the path?
Now it’s: /wp-content/plugins/wp-affiliate-cookie-jar/wp-affiliate-cookie-jar-write-swf.php?t=1322104771″>
and I would like it to be:
/wp-content/plugins/hellofolks/hellofolks.php?t=1322104771″>
I would be thankful for getting advise to achieve this.
Greets!
Adnan
We’re going to be looking at how to properly cloak where the cookie is being set as well. Right now, a lot of the new browsers are shutting down 3rd party cookies, so we may not pursue additional development of this plugin. We’re going to do some more testing and see how it goes!
Nice question anand also interested in this answer