It's nice when companies make an honest and long-term effort to track visitors sent by each affiliate's campaign.

As affiliates, what do we want? Proper cookie tracking! It's a given that not all people accept cookies. But the percentage of people who do accept them is good enough to create measurable results.
So the cookies ought not to crumble.

The problem is that companies often set their cookies without regard for the affiliate's best interests.

Many companies set different cookies for company_site.com and www.company_site. com. Unfortunately, this means that when you, the affiliate, send your traffic to www.company_site. com, you probably won't get credit when your visitors choose to go directly to company_site.com.

Also, do you ever get the feeling that more and more companies are expiring their cookies earlier and earlier...especially the ones containing affiliate tracking variables? Cookies should last a long time...especially the ones containig affiliate tracking variables!

It's particularly disturbing when companies issue cookies that expire at the end of the session, or within 24 hours. Clearly, a long-lasting cookie is a draw for successful affiliates.

Also - it's nice to have the company indicate very clearly who gets credit when a new affiliate sends the same visitor. Does the first click get the sale? The last click? Is it split?

Finally, it's nice when companies that do measure conversions the first time around store the affiliate info in the database (from the cookie) in order to give proper credit for future actions.

Pioneer Report MDI GRML Browsers Tree GRML Web Browsers Bar Pie Graphs Charts Graphing software Headlines Browsers

The very basics: Sites are ranked on both on-page and off-page factors.

On-page factors include whether (and how often) the search phrase appears on your page, whether it appears in headings on your page, whether it appears in the title of your page, (arguably) whether it appears in the your description and keywords metatags, etc.

Off-page factors include the number of links pointing to your page, the quality of those links, and the anchor text of those links, etc.

There are a lot more factors than this, but these are some of the things to start thinking about. Competitors, outranking another website, are doing better than because of at least some of these criteria.

For instance, other websites may have a lot more incoming links. Or, they have the search phrase in the anchor text of more of their incoming links than others.

Instead, here are some things I don't like about 2 products:

- OsCommerce is a real pain to customize the layout with all the PHP code weeded throughout and all of the stores look pretty much the same. You can smell OsC the minute you hit the page, and I often wonder if that same old look freebie cart doesn't result in lower sales. I think their admin side takes way to many clicks to get any work done.

- Miva has some issues as well, like when you add things to the cart and the same page shows up with no clue that something was added except maybe a small type number of items in cart somewhere. I hear lot's of non-savvy shoppers complain about them. Also, Miva's admin side is another click happy obtuse interface but I think OsC has it beat in obscurity.

I'd say start with some ecommerce comparison reviews, pick the features you absolutely can't live without and then narrow the field from there. THEN read webmaster reviews of those products and see which are the best of the worst :)

I received a telephone call last evening from an
individual identifying himself as an AT&T Service
technician who was conducting a test on telephone
lines. He stated that to complete the test I should
touch nine(9), zero(0), the pound sign (#), and then
hang up.

Luckily, I was suspicious and refused.

Upon contacting the telephone company, I was
informed that by pushing 90#, you give the requesting
individual full access to your telephone line, which
enables them to place long distance calls billed to
your home phone number.

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I was further informed that this scam has been
originating from many local jails/prisons. I have also
verified this information with UCB Telecom,Pacific
Bell, MCI, Bell Atlantic and GTE. Please beware.

DO NOT press 90# for ANYONE.

After checking with Verizon they said it was true, so
do not dial (9),zero(0), the pound sign # and hang up
for anyone.