Cookie Policy

LinkApprove LLC operates this platform from 117 South Lexington Street, Ste 100, Harrisonville, MO 64701, United States, and has been running it since 2024. We are a sub-affiliate network and creator monetization platform, which in practice means we hold approved publisher status on upstream affiliate networks and redistribute that access to partners who would not be approved individually. Anything in this policy that needs explaining can go to support@linkapprove.com.

That structure is the reason cookies matter more here than on an ordinary website. The upstream networks see the traffic as ours, so the tracking cookie carries our publisher identifier rather than yours, and the split back down to the individual partner happens on our side using the click records we hold. If either half of that chain is missing, a sale has nowhere to land. Much of what follows is a plain description of how each half can break.

A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store, and that your browser sends back the next time it contacts that same website. It holds an identifier, and sometimes a short piece of state such as which currency you last viewed. Related technologies do similar jobs: storage kept inside the browser, tracking pixels placed in a page or an email, and the server logs written whenever a request reaches us. Where this policy says cookies, it covers those as well.

A cookie is a piece of text rather than a program, so it is not the thing that runs software on your device or opens the files stored there. What it does is let a server recognize the same browser on a later request. On most websites that is ordinary housekeeping, used to keep you signed in or remember a setting. In affiliate marketing it is the payment mechanism itself, which is why this policy spends more time on the subject than a cookie notice normally would.

There are two distinct groups of cookies involved in this business, and confusing them is the most common misunderstanding we see. The first group is set by our own domains, linkapprove.com, publisher.linkapprove.com and advertiser.linkapprove.com, and exists to run the website and the partner platform. The second group is set when somebody clicks one of your partner links. Those cookies belong to an upstream affiliate network or to the advertiser, and they are what makes a sale traceable back to you.

We control the first group and we do not control the second. When an upstream network sets a tracking cookie, it does so under its own terms and its own privacy notice, and it decides the cookie's name, its lifetime and what happens to it. We can explain the mechanism, and you can ask support@linkapprove.com what the attribution terms of a specific program say before you promote it. We cannot lengthen a cookie, restore one a visitor has deleted, or make a browser accept one it has decided to block.

The sequence runs like this. A visitor clicks your link. Their browser passes through a tracking redirect, which records the click together with your partner identifier and any sub-ID you added. The redirect hands the browser on to the network's tracking domain, which sets its cookie, and then to the advertiser's site. If that visitor buys something, the advertiser's checkout reads the identifier, reports the sale to the network, and the network credits it to the publisher account the click came from.

LinkApprove is an approved publisher on the networks we are approved on, and we redistribute that access to partners who would not be approved individually. Commercially, that is the product. Technically, it means the network sees the click as ours, and we then split the result back down to the partner and sub-ID that generated it, using the click records held on our side. Both halves of that chain have to line up before you can be paid for a conversion.

Some cookies on our domains cannot be switched off without breaking the service. They keep you signed in to publisher.linkapprove.com or advertiser.linkapprove.com between page loads, protect forms against cross-site request forgery, and help us block automated abuse of the login and application forms. These are first-party cookies, they are not used for marketing, and the consent rules that apply in the UK and the EU treat cookies of this kind as exempt, because the service you asked for cannot be delivered without them.

If your browser refuses them, the practical result is that you cannot log in, and the dashboard will keep returning you to the sign-in screen. There is no workaround we can apply from our side, because the session identifier has nowhere to live. A private browsing window will usually work for one session and then forget you when the window closes, which is inconvenient rather than harmful, and it is the fastest way to test whether an extension is the cause.

Preference cookies remember choices you have already made, so that the interface does not reset every time you return. That includes the currency your balance is displayed in, since balances are held in US dollars, pounds sterling and euros, along with language, which onboarding notices you have dismissed, and how you last sorted a report. Where the law requires consent before a non-essential cookie is set, the record of your answer is itself kept in a preference cookie, which is why clearing cookies makes the question appear again.

Clearing these has no effect on your account, your balance or your tracking. It resets the interface to its defaults and nothing more. They are first-party, and as the platform is built today they are not shared with advertisers and are not used to build a profile of you or to follow you to other websites once you leave ours. If that ever changes, this policy changes with it before the change reaches your browser.

We measure how our own websites are used. That covers which pages were visited, the referring URL, approximate location derived from an IP address, and basic browser and device information. The work has two purposes. It tells us which pages actually help partners understand the product, and it helps us spot abuse, such as automated sign-ups or click activity that does not look human. If a third party carries out any part of that measurement for us, it acts on our written instructions rather than for its own purposes.

We do not sell advertising space on these websites, so no advertising network places cookies through them, and we do not build cross-site advertising profiles from your visits here. That is a description of how the sites are built today rather than a promise about every future version of them. If it changes, this policy changes with it, and where consent is required by law we will ask before anything new is set on your browser.

A sub-ID is a label you attach to a link so you can tell your own traffic apart, one for a video, one for a newsletter, one for a landing page. It travels in the URL rather than in the cookie, and it is recorded on our side when the click passes through the redirect. Alongside it we record the referring URL, a timestamp, the IP address, and browser and device information, because that is what allows a later conversion to be matched back to you.

Keep sub-ID values neutral. Do not place a customer's name, email address, phone number or anything else that identifies a specific person inside one. Sub-IDs are stored in our systems and are passed upstream as part of the click, so personal data put there travels further than you intended and is difficult to withdraw afterward. Use codes that only mean something when looked up against your own records, and keep the lookup table on your side.

The attribution window is the period after a click during which a purchase still counts as yours. The advertiser sets it, the network enforces it, and it varies from program to program. Some windows are short, some run for weeks. When the window closes the tracking cookie stops counting, and a visitor who clicked your link, thought it over and bought after that point earns you nothing, even though your content caused the sale. Ask support@linkapprove.com about a specific program before you build content around it.

Most programs also work on a last-click basis. If the same visitor later clicks another publisher's link, or a coupon site's link at the checkout, the newer cookie usually overwrites yours and the commission goes to them. This is routine rather than an edge case, and it is decided by advertiser rules that we do not set. Losing an attribution this way is not a fault in your setup, and it is not something we are able to reverse on request.

One consequence is worth stating in advance. The click numbers in your own analytics will run ahead of the conversions we can pay on, sometimes by a wide margin, because windows close, cookies get cleared, and later clicks take the credit. That gap is a normal feature of affiliate tracking rather than a sign that something has gone wrong, and there is no reconciliation process that can recover the difference after the fact.

A tracked conversion is not yet money. Commission releases once the advertiser validates the sale, which typically happens 30 to 60 days after the transaction date. Validation is also where a sale can be reversed, for a return, a cancellation, a chargeback or a breach of program rules, and a reversal takes the commission back off your balance after it has already appeared there. Being tracked and being paid are two separate events, and the gap between them is where most disappointment happens.

What reaches you is a share of the commission the advertiser pays. Partners receive up to 90 percent, and the exact share varies by tier and program; the platform itself is free to use, with no monthly fee, no minimum spend and no exclusivity requirement. Balances are held in US dollars, pounds sterling or euros, and that display choice is one of the settings a preference cookie remembers for your dashboard.

Payouts start at $100 on PayPal, Wise, Payoneer, USDT (TRC-20), Bitcoin and Skrill, and at $1,000 on ACH or bank wire. Frequency depends on tier: daily for verified partners above $2,000 a month, weekly above $500 a month, bi-weekly for approved partners generally, and monthly by default on new accounts. A balance under the threshold rolls forward to the next cycle rather than expiring. None of this changes what a cookie does; it only decides when what the cookie earned becomes payable.

Some ways of acquiring a cookie are prohibited across the network, because they take credit the tracking was not designed to give. Cookie stuffing, forced clicks, self-referral and any undisclosed redirection all fall into that group. Bidding on trademarks and brand terms in paid search is prohibited across the network as well. Incentivized traffic, cashback and reward-for-action require our written approval before you run them, and adult, political or misleading content is outside what we accept.

The consequences of breaking these rules are direct rather than theoretical. Commission already credited to your balance can be reversed, and a partner account can be closed. Upstream networks and advertisers run their own detection against the same traffic, so a decision taken above us can remove earnings that our reporting had already shown you. Applications are reviewed on content quality and traffic source rather than follower count, and the same standard applies after approval.

The major browsers all let you block cookies, delete them, restrict third-party cookies, or browse in a private window that discards them when the session ends. Extensions and privacy tools go further and remove tracking cookies automatically, and several browsers now shorten the lifetime of cookies they judge to be tracking without being asked to. Those controls belong to the visitor. We do not try to defeat them, and we do not advise partners to try either.

The commercial consequence needs stating plainly. If a visitor blocks the tracking cookie, or clears it before buying, the sale usually does not attribute and nobody is paid for it. There is no repair after the fact. We cannot see a click that was not recorded, and we cannot ask a network to credit a conversion that arrives with no identifier attached. This is the single largest reason a creator's own traffic figures run ahead of the conversions we can pay on.

On our own domains the effect of blocking is narrower. Preference cookies can be cleared freely and cost you nothing but your settings. Strictly necessary cookies cannot be blocked if you intend to use the dashboard. Your browser's settings or help pages explain how to review and delete cookies for individual sites, and the choices you make there apply to us in exactly the way they apply to any other website.

Do Not Track is a header that some browsers can still send. It was proposed but not adopted as a standard, no two websites agreed on what it should mean, and the work to define it was abandoned. We do not act on it, and we would rather say so than imply a protection we have not built. Switching it on changes nothing about how our websites behave, and any site that claims otherwise is describing its own private interpretation.

Global Privacy Control is the newer signal and we treat it more seriously. Where it reaches us and applies to our processing, we take it as an objection to non-essential cookies and measurement on our own domains. It cannot reach the affiliate tracking cookie, because that is set by a network or an advertiser on their own domain under their own notice. A visitor sending the signal may browse our site with measurement off and still be tracked normally after clicking a link, or, if their browser also blocks that cookie, not be tracked at all.

Our partners are primarily in the UK, the EU and the United States, and the GDPR and UK GDPR apply to the processing described here. The data involved is account data such as your name, email, country, payment details, tax information where it is required and the channels you submitted; performance data such as clicks, conversions, commission, sub-IDs and referring URLs; technical data such as IP address, browser, device and pages visited; and the communications you exchange with us.

You can ask us for a copy of that data, ask for corrections, object to measurement on our own sites, or ask for deletion. Where a request touches records we need in order to attribute, validate or pay a commission, or to meet the accounting and anti-fraud obligations attached to those payments, we will tell you what we can act on and what we have to keep. The retention periods are published rather than left open: account and channel information for up to 24 months after closure, click and conversion records for up to 24 months, payment, invoice and tax records for at least 7 years, support and email logs for up to 24 months, and security and access logs for up to 12 months. Section VIII of the privacy policy is the authoritative list.

One limit applies to the tracking cookie set after a click. That cookie sits on a network's or an advertiser's domain under their own notice, so a request about it has to be made to them rather than to us, and what we can do is identify the program involved. Requests and complaints about our own processing go to privacy@linkapprove.com, and if the outcome does not satisfy you, the data protection authority in your country can take the matter up.

We update this policy when the way our own sites work changes, and when the mechanics upstream change in a way partners need to understand. The version published on this page is the current one. Where a change materially affects how partners are tracked or paid, we aim to flag it in the partner dashboard or by email rather than relying on you to notice that a page has been revised.

One limit is worth being honest about. Attribution windows, cookie lifetimes and tracking behavior on the advertiser side are decided by the networks we are approved on and by the advertisers themselves, not by us. Those things can change with little notice, and there are occasions when we learn of a change at roughly the same moment our partners feel it in their reporting. We pass on what we know as soon as we can confirm it is accurate.