Best practice of tracking affiliate conversions?

15 replies
Hello,
I'm sending paid traffic to my landing page which contains an affiliate link.
Traffic is coming from Adwords, Bing ads, etc.

What is the best practice for getting information on the sales that I generate, such as which keywords resulted in sales?

I read that I should implement Sub-id parameter inside my affiliate links, but I don't want to expose my merchants the the sub-id information.

I heard about google click id, which might solve this for adwords, but what about bing ads? I don't think they have such thing. btw, does Google Analytics have anything to do with it?

Also, in general, how can I make everything more automatic? is there a way to pull automatically all these information without manually running reports, exporting files, editing sheets and column names, and importing them on a daily/weekly basis?

I'm interested to know the best practices, how do you guys do it most efficiently?
#affiliate #conversions #practice #tracking
  • Profile picture of the author ChrisBa
    Originally Posted by sosoride View Post

    Hello,
    I'm sending paid traffic to my landing page which contains an affiliate link.
    Traffic is coming from Adwords, Bing ads, etc.

    What is the best practice for getting information on the sales that I generate, such as which keywords resulted in sales?

    I read that I should implement Sub-id parameter inside my affiliate links, but I don't want to expose my merchants the the sub-id information.

    I heard about google click id, which might solve this for adwords, but what about bing ads? I don't think they have such thing. btw, does Google Analytics have anything to do with it?

    Also, in general, how can I make everything more automatic? is there a way to pull automatically all these information without manually running reports, exporting files, editing sheets and column names, and importing them on a daily/weekly basis?

    I'm interested to know the best practices, how do you guys do it most efficiently?
    You should get a third party tracker such as prosper202, cpvlab, voluum
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  • Profile picture of the author sosoride
    what exactly do they solve? exactly everything i've just described? also, are they safe to use or do they deliver the data to the makers of these plugins?
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  • Profile picture of the author Brent Stangel
    What is the best practice for getting information on the sales that I generate, such as which keywords resulted in sales?
    Install conversion tracking. Ask the vendor to add your conversion code to their "thank you" page.

    You set it up in your Adwords and Bing dashboard.

    https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1722054?

    Conversion tracking with campaign analytics | Bing Ads Training
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  • Profile picture of the author goonie
    I'm working with big time vendors, they won't add any code to their own thank you page.
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    • Profile picture of the author Brent Stangel
      Originally Posted by goonie View Post

      I'm working with big time vendors, they won't add any code to their own thank you page.
      Why wouldn't they?

      big time vendors
      will do a lot to help serious people promote their products. It's in their best interest.

      BTW - I've never had a "big time vendor" refuse.
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      • Profile picture of the author SiteNameSales
        If you're looking for a variety of alternatives for a particular service, give Alternative Site - Find alternative websites at try. Enter the url of the most talked about provider and the site will give you more choices. Good for finding free trials, low cost solutions, etc.
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      • Profile picture of the author sosoride
        Originally Posted by Brent Stangel View Post

        Why wouldn't they?

        will do a lot to help serious people promote their products. It's in their best interest.

        BTW - I've never had a "big time vendor" refuse.
        Let's take Amazon and Walmart as an example, do you really think I have any chance as an affiliate to reach their coding team to modify their checkout page to my needs? Doesn't sound realistic at all.

        Usually affiliates have only an affiliate manager as the only contact person to the advertiser they promote, often this affiliate manager is external and has no interaction or say about technical issues such as conversion installation.
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  • Profile picture of the author johnlagoudakis
    I'm starting to put everything through Google Analytics. When you combine it with Google's URL Builder you can track everything in the one place...

    ...and do all your reports.

    Track campaigns, conversions, SEO, traffic sources, etc.

    Google have awesome training videos at Analytics Academy which will show you how to use all the features.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kherk Roldan
    I would be recommending you to try improvely for tracking your affiliate conversions.

    It will also show you exactly which of your ad campaigns and landing pages are generating commissions for you.

    It protects you from affiliate managers stealing your traffic and keyword lists

    and also, most of all you can Cloak Your Affiliate Links
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    • Profile picture of the author sosoride
      Originally Posted by Kherk Roldan View Post

      I would be recommending you to try improvely for tracking your affiliate conversions.

      It will also show you exactly which of your ad campaigns and landing pages are generating commissions for you.

      It protects you from affiliate managers stealing your traffic and keyword lists

      and also, most of all you can Cloak Your Affiliate Links
      That's more or less what I want to do, just with a costume script.
      anyway, It seems like improvley keep all the data in their own servers, doesn't sound like something I'm too happy about.

      also, why would I wanna cloak my links? black hat techniques are not allowed on most networks or PPC sources.
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  • Profile picture of the author TBosch
    I have a custom script I used that gives me pretty much every stat a person could want.. visits w. IP location, time spent on my page, re-visit information, click tracking, sales, etc.

    I'm sure there are a lot of quality tracking services out there but for me I chose custom.
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    • Profile picture of the author sosoride
      Originally Posted by TBosch View Post

      I have a custom script I used that gives me pretty much every stat a person could want.. visits w. IP location, time spent on my page, re-visit information, click tracking, sales, etc.

      I'm sure there are a lot of quality tracking services out there but for me I chose custom.
      Sounds exactly like what I need. can you tell me how much did you pay for someone to build such a script? does it sit on a database on your server? can you view it with Excel to analyze it? you can PM me if you want. Thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author Coach Dale
    The best I have noted is "CPVLab". Nice low price and it looks fairly simple to learn to use. Of course, you can always just use Google Analytics and get almost everything you're looking for. If you haven't tried that, give that I shot first. Wish you the best.
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