When a visitor clicks your affiliate link, the programme leaves a cookie with your identifier in the browser. If that person signs up while the cookie is valid, the sign up is credited to you.
Example. The cookie period is 30 days. A visitor clicks the link on 1 March and signs up on 20 March: the player is yours. If they sign up on 5 April, the cookie has expired and the player is credited to no one, or to the affiliate whose link they clicked last.
What to check
- The cookie period, and whether the programme publishes it at all.
- The attribution model: last click or first click.
- Whether the programme also uses server side tracking (postback), which does not depend on the browser.