It often so happens that merchants run across their own affiliates' websites, click their links and by so-doing set the tracking cookie on their computer. Furthermore, such a merchant may place a manual order (e.g.: received by phone from a person not referred by an affiliate), and the cookie set on their machine triggers a commission payout to the affiliate whose website the merchant visited last. We've seen this scenario played out in 5 out of 10 cases overall, and 9 out of 10 cases with merchants who have just started an affiliate program.

What the merchant needs to do is clear their browser's cookies. Here's how:

If you are using Internet Explorer:

1) Go to "Tools" >> "Internet Options":

2) From the "General" tab of the dialog box click the "Delete" button:

3) In the next dialog box you see, choose to "Delete Cookies":

If you are using Firefox:

1) Go to "Tools" >> "Options":

2) In the dialog box you see, select the "Privacy" button in the top menu:

3) Then click the "Show Cookies" button:

4) Now you can choose to either delete specific cookies, or "Remove All Cookies":

If you are able to locate the folder with the cookies you want to delete (e.g. "commission-junction.com" or "linksynergy.walmart.com"), we would definitely recommend not to clear all cookies, but just the ones that will make a non-affiliate-referred transaction post to an affiliate account. The conveniently-embedded search function can be especially helpful in selective cookie deletion.

Once you've deleted the cookies, you may place your manual order through.