Dynamic Embedding of Affiliate Links

6 replies
Hello. I am not a tech guy. I hope someone could point me to the right direction.

Way back when I was using a web scraper software for my site, I asked a coder to make the links in the scraped results page, that point to affiliate merchants, be embedded with my own respective affiliate link. The only issue was that he cannot make the link clicked go to the specific page the URL points to, say to the product page for example. Although my affiliate link was embedded in the clicked URL, it redirected to the index page of the affiliate merchant, not to the actual URL address clicked.

I'm not sure, I think he uploaded a list of my affiliate IDs, with different affiliate merchants, somewhere in my host server's public html folder. The affliliate ID embedding was done through iframes. Again, I am not a tech guy.

Question:

Would it be possible to embed a respective affiliate ID in a URL clicked in my site page without the clicked link defaulting to the index page of the affiliate site? That the URL should lead to the actual page address the link originally pointed to--the only difference now is the clicked link is embedded with my affiliate ID.

The idea is to create a target-page specific affiliate id embedded link on the fly or on demand.

Thank you for the helpful replies.
#affiliate #dynamic #embedding #links
  • Profile picture of the author David Beroff
    Not the answer you were hoping for, but it depends on the individual merchant. The smarter affiliate programs will let you link to any page and still get credit, but not all of them do. You'd have to look at each program individually.
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    • Profile picture of the author webmarketer
      Thanks for replying David.

      It's not only about getting the affiliate credit but streamlining the user experience. I don't want them to click on a merchant link on my page whose URL points to the product page only for them to land on the default home page.

      This annoys the user since they have to dig and click more sub-level pages to get to the page they really want, that is, if they would still waste the time looking for the product after getting redirected somewhere else. Most likely, I'll lose them.

      So back to the question, is my intention/request feasible for a coder to do?
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      • Profile picture of the author David Beroff
        Originally Posted by webmarketer View Post

        It's not only about getting the affiliate credit but streamlining the user experience. I don't want them to click on a merchant link on my page whose URL points to the product page only for them to land on the default home page.
        Oh, I absolutely agree with this.

        Originally Posted by webmarketer View Post

        So back to the question, is my intention/request feasible for a coder to do?
        On your side, sure. But that may not be enough, since the merchant's site still has to set the cookies correctly; you can't do that for them.
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    • Profile picture of the author webmarketer
      Originally Posted by David Beroff View Post

      The smarter affiliate programs will let you link to any page and still get credit, but not all of them do. You'd have to look at each program individually.
      By looking, you mean to test an affiliate link I embedded with my aff ID by clicking the link, buying the product, then see if my commission properly went through, that I still got the credit?

      Originally Posted by David Beroff View Post

      On your side, sure.
      And you've seen this done before? Can you give an estimate on how much a coder will charge me for this fix?
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  • Profile picture of the author David Beroff
    Well, by "looking", I'd meant to check the affiliate website for each merchant, to see if they accepted/encouraged deep-linking. But if you want to test it, you don't need to make any test purchases. Just clear your cookies before a visit to the front page, record what cookies are set by that visit, clear cookies again, visit the desired landing page, and compare to ensure that the same cookies are set the second time.

    No idea about cost. I'd just put it up on oDesk and let the market decide. It doesn't sound like too complex a project.
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  • Profile picture of the author webmarketer
    Thank you David. Will do.
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