Rewards Program Disappointment

I recently found out from DreamHost's Tech Support that DH does not include referrer info in the cookie they leave on visitors' computers.

What does this mean? Well, only that lots of DreamHost customers are losing LOTS of referrals!

Take my case, for example: since May 2004, I have had 735 click-throughs to DreamHost, but, alas, not even one signup so far. Over time, maybe a few of those people will think about it and end up signing up with DH. Unfortunately, when they finally make up their minds to sign up, they will probably go directly to DreamHost.com, instead of going back to my web page and clicking on my link again, and this will mean that I will not get credit for the referral, even though I was the one to introduce them to DH to begin with!

Although practices such as this, which short-change affiliates, are commonplace among affiliate programs on the web, I don't think that the DreamHost Rewards program should be one of them. The better programs do not engage in this sort of behavior and instead try their best to ensure that proper referral credit is given to their affiliates wherever possible. They do this in part by including referrer info in the cookie they leave on visitors' machines: that way, they can still credit the referring affiliate even if the prospect does not make a purchase when initially introduced through the referring affiliate's link. While this practice is not perfect by any means, it works quite well overall, and is the best that can be done to try to properly, and fairly, credit all affiliate referrals made through hyperlinks.

Needless to say, I'd like to see DreamHost add this feature to their Rewards program ASAP!

-Max

Hiya Max,

I can see your point of view but I also strongly believe it should be up to the person signing up to elect if they want to include you as a referrer or not and not just because you happened to point a link to DH on your website which was set via a cookie without their permission sometime a the past period of time.

What happens if that person visits more than one DH site and links on more than one of those links? What would DH do then? Take what ever cookie is more current??

I think the current system is pretty clear cut, if you start introducing referrers reward via cookies you are really mudding the waters..

Hmmm. If what Max is saying is true, I think that is very disappointing indeed. Does DH want their rewards program to be a real affiliate program or not? If I refer people who later sign up with DreamHost and are not credited to me, I'll be, shall we say, rather upset! Who cares if they "want" to sign up under me or not? They never even find out that they signed up under anybody at all because DreamHost keeps that secret from them, as they should: unless their referrer tells them, they'll never know! That is how it should be. The Rewards program is a marketing tool for DreamHost, an affiliate program to entice their customers to bring in more business, not some sort of utopian, opt-in only club!

What Max is talking about is for strangers who one refers to DH, not friends and family. For F&F, DH already has that set up pretty well: they just enter the WebID of their referrer when they sign up, or their referrer can even claim them retroactively after they sign up (and DH will keep that a secret from them, by the way)

In reply to:
What happens if that person visits more than one DH site and links on more than one of those links? What would DH do then? Take what ever cookie is more current??

Yes, "take what ever cookie is more current", of course!

In reply to:
I think the current system is pretty clear cut, if you start introducing referrers reward via cookies you are really mudding the waters..

No, you are not "mudding the waters" "if you start introducing referrers reward via cookies"! You are simply making it more of a real, and fair, affiliate program! Also, it was never "pretty clear cut" to me that if the people I refer do not sign up right away after clicking on my link, and instead sign up later by visiting DreamHost directly, they would be lost to me as referrals. As a matter of fact, DreamHost seems to imply the opposite when they state "Well, you can either remind people to enter that xunu referred them when they sign up... or, anybody who follows a link to http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?xunu and then signs up later will AUTOMATICALLY be credited to you (they don't even have to enter your username when signing up)!" (Visit the page where that is said here) Note the "...and then signs up later..." part: what do you think that is supposed to mean? Do you think that "later" is really doublespeak and it actually means "right away"?

DreamHost is a wonderful company and web host, but nobody should lose sight of the fact that it is a for-profit business and that, as such, it should be happy to reward those who help it expand it's customer base in a fair manner. To offer that and then do otherwise is simply unethical, pure and simple, something that one does not associate with DreamHost at all, hence the feeling of disappointment that Max alludes to.

I have a feeling that, if what Support told Max is true, it probably is an oversight on DreamHost's part, not an intended consequence, and I second Max in hoping that DH will correct it soon.

Xunu... cool

Edited by xunu on 06/25/04 10:42 PM (server time).

I don't know if it's true, as somebody said in this thread, that a "real" affiliate/reward program would track the referral over an indefinitely long period between following the link and actually signing up. All my own experience with such programs (as a consumer, as a site operator who has participated in such programs, and also as a developer who has programmed the "back end" for things like this on several occasions for employers or clients) has referrals being tracked only during the same browser session that the link was followed, unless the customer takes direct action to register or sign up in some manner during that session. Sometimes, just signing up for a free service or filling out an information request form will suffice, if it causes a userid to be generated, but if the user doesn't do anything but passively browse the site, there's no reasonable expectation that the referral will be tracked to a distant-future session when that user eventually goes back to the site on his/her own and signs up.

-- Dan

As ozgreg pointed out "What happens if that person visits more than one DH site and links on more than one of those links? What would DH do then? Take what ever cookie is more current??
I think the current system is pretty clear cut, if you start introducing referrers reward via cookies you are really mudding the waters.. "

I found out the hard way about dreamhosts referrer cookies. I had visited a link from a DH user in the forum, and their referrer cookies was set on my machine. So, when I went to sign-up a new client of mine, I didn't get the referral, they got it (until I contacted support and got it straightened out.)

Don't get me wrong, I think the cookies work. But, I think there should be somewhere on the sign-up page, a place for me to add my referral information (I usually purchase my client's site for them) to override any cookies that have been set on my machine "without my knowledge."

I just wanted to say the rewards program DOES use a cookie, and it's set indefinitely. We also log ip addresses in case their cookie is lost to help a bit. So you would only not get credit if they use a different browser or delete their cookies!

josh!

Boy, I'm just happy DH offers the 10% thing... I remember back in the day when they only offered $10 per signup and that was it. Now my referrals pay for hosting and my account has over 2x the storage space as the computer I used to sign up with DH.

If you guys really are looking for MLM income, DH isn't really the place to do that.

Hey, Josh! That is great news! But how come Tech Support doesn't know about this? They told me that DH, unfortunately, does not do any such cookie thingy!

Regarding logging the IPs, if I understand you correctly, that is a wonderful gesture. However, most people online do not get a static IP to log in from: their ISP assigns them an IP just for the duration of their current online session, with somebody else getting that same IP later on, so I don't know how practical or fair logging IPs really is, but the fact is that this probably hardly ever happens anyway, since most users do not lose or delete their cookies very often.

But I'm not sure that I really understand that part correctly anyhow. "We also log ip addresses in case their cookie is lost to help a bit. So you would only not get credit if they use a different browser or delete their cookies!". I don't get how the second part relates to the first part: why would the WebID that brought in the user of the stored IP address not get credit if that user later signs up either while using a different browser or having deleted his/her cookies? Isn't that what logging the IP is meant to overcome?

At any rate, I'm plenty happy with only the indefinitely-set cookie. However, this does bring up a question posited by other DreamHostees earlier: If Customer-X first clicks on DreamHostee-A's link and does not sign up, then some time later clicks on DreamHostee-B's link and does sign up, who gets the credit? DreamHostee-A, since h/she was the first to intro Customer-X to DH, or would it be DreamHostee-B, who "clinched the deal" in the sense that h/she got Customer-X signed up? My choice would be for DreamHostee-B to get the credit, but there is also merit in it working the other way around. From what freebyrd says, it sounds like DreamHostee-B would get the credit. So how does it work in this situation, anyway?

Thanks!

-Max

Hey!

Ah, sorry for the confusion, when I said "another browser" I guess I meant "other computer with another browser" (and hence a different IP)!

Also, the way it works now is that the FIRST person would get credit. The cookie is not reset if it already exists with any additional click throughs later. I think that's an okay way to do it, since it was really person A who originally got us "implanted" in their head! And I think overall it's a pretty rare occurance anyway...

josh!

In reply to:
...the way it works now is that the FIRST person would get credit. The cookie is not reset if it already exists with any additional click throughs later. I think that's an okay way to do it, since it was really person A who originally got us "implanted" in their head!

Yeah, that's cool too! Either way. Just wanted to know which way it IS!

In reply to:
...when I said "another browser" I guess I meant "other computer with another browser" (and hence a different IP)!

So what freebyrd says happened to him must be due to his using a different computer, or because he cleaned out his cookies...

> I just wanted to say the rewards program DOES use a cookie, and it's set indefinitely.
> Also, the way it works now is that the FIRST person would get credit.

Hmm ... an INDEFINITE cookie, sounds interesting. :) Most affiliate programs set it to like a couple of months, but hey, I LIKE it! I have been recommending DreamHost to almost everybody I meet (and their dogs). Now I know all my effort will be paid ... some day. :D

I don't know if I should start a new topic, but here it goes:

The 91 days hold for non-platinum rewards payout is fine because of the 91 day money back guarantee; HOWEVER, that it also applies to recurring charges of existing referrees (which are NOT covered in that pledge anyway, right?) seems less reasonable, eh?!

Rewards Program Disappointment