This is off the beaten path, but I'm going there anyway.

They say about 90% of people who use the internet know nothing about affiliate marketing, so this is for the 90%.

When I started my website a year and a half ago, I was just wanting to make it easier for cousins to find me.  I was faced with a blank screen in a program I'd never used before.  I didn't think I'd make it past the first hour.  But I did.  I made some genealogy charts, figured out how to set up an ftp server and, behold, I had a website.

Some time later, a company approached me about advertising their products for them.  Advertising?  What's that? Well, I put up their ads around my website, people click on them, buy the products and I make a commission. Wow. Cool.  Why not?  They make good products.  I use them myself.

As time went on I got hoodwinked, I'll call it, into writing the blog I never intended to.  And I signed up with some other companies to advertise for them.  I looked at some common genealogy and computer-related products that you could find anywhere.  If you're going to buy them anyway, you might as well buy them from me, somebody said and I thought Oh, ok, that makes sense.  But for myself it was more about the color.  The color of ads brighten the place up so it's not all black and white everywhere.  

I like writing, I like genealogy, I like computers, I like fiddling with my website trying to make it better.  I especially like old photographs.  I have a picture of a great-great grandmother that's just riveting.  It took me a week to get it ready for printing because I couldn't take my eyes off her.  I had to pass out to get any sleep.  What I don't enjoy is fighting with Internet Explorer and if I had one wish, you'd all switch to .  It's free.  And advertising, well, it's interesting, but I'm not a business person and my mind has a hard time getting there.

Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes with internet advertising?  I'm such a space-cadet I didn't even notice internet ads until I had a website.  I thought they were just there and after the first 5 minutes of it my eyes learned to tune them out.  I'd just take in the overall color-scheme, re-arranging it in my mind like an interior decorator would color co-ordinate a room.  Even my cousin, Sam, couldn't believe how dense I am.

Anyway, this is how it works.  I allow various merchants to advertise on my website.  I let out space so to speak, although they like to think it's the other way around and they're letting me sell their products.  Whatever.

If you click on a product on my site, go to the merchant's website and buy the product directly, I earn a commission. On a straight across link, they can see where it's coming from.  BUT, if you click on a product, go to the merchant's website and accept a trial, they put a cookie on your computer.  A cookie is just a line of gobbledygook in a text document that has my ID number in it.  If you purchase the product when your trial is over, the merchant is able to pick up my ID number from your cookie and I earn a commission.  This is how it works with most of the advertising on this site.

This is what a cookies.txt file looks like.  All the cookies are in this one document.


Cookies can also keep track of where you've been around the internet for other marketing purposes although they contain no personally-identifiable information.  It's more like aggregate patterns of movement and your (no-name) types of interest, so the next time you click on the same website they can deliver relevant ads to your screen.  Not all websites keep track of you through cookies.  For instance, this one does not.  Cookies can also keep track of things like your passwords, if you choose, so you don't have to type them in over and over, so there's a helpful aspect to them.  For the most part they're harmless and you won't even notice what they're doing.  But you can still choose to block this one or that one in your browser settings if you want to.  This is a simple text file.  It cannot execute code on your computer and cause any trouble.  But if the thought of being watched creeps you out, you can delete them and most of the above will be gone.

When I was first starting out and learned that my advertising revenue depended on cookies, I said You've got to be kidding?!  People delete their cookies either on purpose or inadvertently, for instance, every time they close their browser.  Poof, there goes my ID number.  I couldn't get anyone to take this seriously.  In practice what this means is that most of the advertising on my website is being done for FREE.  I do the work of making room on my site for the ads and the merchants make the money.  Some days I think I must be out of my mind.

But please don't misunderstand.  For the most part, merchants are not stealing from their advertisers, they're just using a tracking system that has a near-zero chance of working.

So, obviously, I don't write so I can have a place to put advertisements.  I write because I've been writing since I was born and I'm compulsive.  I write because I have something to say and if it's useful to you it makes my day.  That's it.  My reason to be.

As I came to understand it after a long time (because I read it somewhere) I advertise as an indirect way to be paid for my work of research and writing.  That's the part that makes me laugh.  I write anyway.  If there's no paper-bags around I'll write on bricks.  And the connection between writing and making-a-living is only in theory.  As I tried to tell the 'experts' a long time ago, this cookie-thing is madness and why are so many websites willing to get involved?  They said it's not that serious and I should try it anyway.  So I have and I haven't changed my opinion.  

Whichever way this goes it makes no difference at all in its outcome for you.  As you know, the internet is a frenetic freeway.  Zoom, zoom, every which way.  We're all free as the birds out here.  I get to write whatever I want to.  You can read it if you feel like it.  You don't have to click on any ads, you don't have to purchase anything.  Life goes on as usual over at your house, whatever that is.

But IF you click on an ad and end up purchasing something, the difference lies in whether I get paid my commission or whether the companies taking up space on my website are raking in the profits and laughing all the way to the bank.  

This is what you can do to help.  If you are in the habit of deleting your cookies, it's your choice.  Some of us would rather you stop.  If you don't even know how to delete your cookies that's fine too.  It's possible it's being done for you automatically.  But if you accept a trial of something that originates from a link on this website and later decide to purchase it, please come back to this website and click on a link that takes you directly to the site you intend to purchase from.  That way my ID number is intact and I get paid.  It won't make any difference at all to how things turn out for you, but I may be able to earn a living, or even a night out once a month, doing what I do.