Frank, who does not want his last name used, emailed me with a solution to missing/deleted cookies or hijacked affiliate links. About six months ago Frank (who works in computer networking and holds several IT certifications) and his dad were looking to buy an expensive informational package online. The product offered an affiliate commission and they each decided to each get an affiliate ID number and link. Frank bought the course and used his father’s link to sign up and buy the product.

Months passed and still no payout or commission for Frank’s dad. The affiliate payor claimed they did not know who to issue the commission to as no cookie existed. Luckily Frank had cut and pasted his entire affiliate link into the COMMENTS section of the order form when he placed the order. His dad mentioned that to the payor, they looked up the order and then awarded him his long awaited $100 commission.

Because of that situation, Frank believes cookies are no longer useful. He thinks someone with programming knowledge could instead combine the properties of two products such as a stenography image program and a public key encryption application to do the job.

According to his email, “The order form would include a picture or image of some sort (preferably a product LOGO). To a product buyer, it is just a logo. To an affiliate, it contains their ID#. Each affiliate would receive a copy of the order form for soliciting online sales. They could open the order form image using the stenography software and insert THEIR affiliate ID number into a preset location within the image or logo on the order form. The commission payor would simply open the order form image file and extract the ID number and award payment accordingly. To protect against another affiliate hijacking/editing the logo and inserting their own ID#, [to steal a commission] a type of password or public key could be used with the stenography software.”

Start blogging and let me know if you think this could work or if anyone is already working on another solution or better yet – give me your own great idea.