Many people think that the Amazon cookie only lasts for 24 hours but you can actually get 90 days and more. Read on to find out what a cookie is and how to maximize your Amazon commissions with longer cookies (Video + Transcription Below).
I see a lot of misinformation about the Amazon cookie.. so I recorded a video to explain:
- What a cookie is
- How you get a 24 hour cookie
- How you get a 90 day cookie
- How to get longer than a 90 day cookie
- + More
Check it out here:
My recommendation: for most niches use the shopping cart to lock in 90 day cookies and bigger basket sizes.
Video Transcription
Hello this is Carey Baird from Fresh Store Builder and in this video; I’m going to explain the difference between the 24 hour cookie and the 90 day cookie. And I’m going to show in which situations a 24 hour cookie is set and in which situation a 90 day cookie is set.
So first off, what is the cookie? When you are promoting Amazon, when you send one of your visitors to your website over to Amazon, the little bit of tracking that identifies that you sent them over is called a cookie. That’s a very simple term but it’s just what we use to say this customer as been tagged as your customer and that’s how Amazon knows to give you the commission.
Now the length of the cookie means; how long has the customer got to buy for you to get the commission. So when we talk about the 24 hour cookie, that means the customer has up to 24 hours to actually buy that product and if they do, you get the credit. If they take longer than 24 hours, you don’t get the credit, you don’t get the commission.
And likewise, the 90 day cookie, the customer has got up to 90 days to buy the product for you to get the commission.
So I’m going to just show you on this Fresh Store Builder demo store, I’m going to walk you through what the customer will do in different situations and what kind of cookie you get. So I’m just going to click into one of these products and show you from a customer’s point of view.
So on this store, I’ve set up two options; we’ve got an add to cart option and we’ve got a buy now from Amazon option. Of Fresh Store Builder, you can use both of these like you can see now or you can use just one. Normally, I’d recommend using the just the add to cart feature which we’ll go through shortly but for now I’m just going to click this buy now from Amazon link.
And that is sending me straight over to the Amazon product information page and as soon as the customer hits this page, the 24 hour cookie is set. So in this situation, the cookie is 24 hours.
The customer now has 24 hours to buy and buy any other products of Amazon and you will get the commission for it.
But here is something that some people don’t really know about. If the customer clicks add to cart here on this page, the product is added to their basket and in this situation, you now get 90 days—only for this product or only for the products that are in the basket.
So if the customer leaves Amazon now at this stage, comes back tomorrow, next week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks and then finally does buy this steak, you do get the credit and likewise for any other products that have been added to the cart.
But if the customer comes back in one week on their own accord and goes and buy some other products, you don’t get the credit. So hopefully that makes sense. Just a bit of clarification on when the product is added to the cart, it is locked into you.
Okay, so I’m going to go back to the website now and we have the add to cart option. This is known as the remote shopping cart and when I click add to cart, it’s going to add it to the basket on your shop. As you can see, I already added one previously so it’s showing 2.
We haven’t gone over to Amazon yet. So at this stage, the cookie has not been set. There’s no cookie in place, it’s only when the customer goes over to Amazon that the cookie is actually set. So I’m going to go back and just show you the customer can go in and they can add another product to the cart.
So another product, they click add to cart. Obviously you know what happens, it goes into the basket and this all still on your store. When the customer is ready to check out, they click the proceed to checkout button.
You’re going to get an interim page like this, just to say you’ve gone over to Amazon and now they’re on the Amazon website. But this is important… at this stage, there’s still no cookie set.
It’s asking for confirmation from the customer that they want to add them to the shopping cart. They need to click this continue button. Once they do so, the cookie is now set. The products are in the basket and the cookie is set for 90 days.
Also in this situation, if the customer now goes “oh there’s more products here, I’m going to add that one to the cart” you also get credit for that but that is 24 hours still. So if the customer goes and clicks away and comes back to Amazon in 2 days time, only the products here that have been added to the cart, you’ll get the credit for.
There’s few little complications there, I know it’s getting a little bit confusing but hopefully that makes a bit more sense than trying to write it down and explain it.
Another thing to keep in mind, if the customer is signed in – as you can see here, I’m not signed into an account – these products are actually added to the cart pretty much indefinitely. So the cookie is actually longer than 90 days.
It’s probably unlikely that somebody is going to think about buying the steak and come back in 6 months time and go “oh yeah, I’ll actually buy it now” but it does happen and that is another important point about using the shopping cart.
And that’s why I always recommend with Fresh Store Builder stores to try out the shopping cart ; it’s might seem better to send them straight to Amazon but the benefits of bigger baskets and of getting that 90 day cookie of locking that in, do outweigh the lower total clicks to Amazon.
So I won’t go into too much detail about the strategies between using the two, I only wanted to explain the cookie situation.
Hopefully that makes sense. As I was explaining you can customize how you set up your Fresh Store Builder store; if you want to just have the buy now from Amazon button, you can do, if you want to have the full shopping cart on your store to try and lock in that 90 day cookie quicker, you can do too.
Okay hopefully that makes sense and cheers, thanks for watching. See you soon, bye.
