How To Create and Track an Affiliate Link

Affiliate marketing is a popular way for social media influencers and e-commerce businesses to generate higher income. Most brands use affiliate programs but still struggle with creating and tracking an affiliate link that helps affiliate marketers monetize campaigns, reach a bigger audience, and boost revenue by driving more web traffic. In addition, affiliate links assist companies in monitoring, tracking, and improving conversions and analyzing marketing performance. 

Read on to learn more about affiliate links and how to create and track a link with affiliate link tracking software.

What Is an Affiliate Link?

The uniform resource locator (URL) is the special link assigned to an affiliate to track direct purchases from the company’s official website or the products’ sales page. The tracking parameter follows the domain in the URL. 

Every affiliate receives a unique ID — the affiliate link — from the merchant after they become part of the affiliate program. This link appears on the affiliates’ social media platforms, websites, and email promotions. 

The affiliate program tracks each click. Tracking provides insight into the affiliates’ metrics, like clicks, commissions, and sales. Affiliates earn commission on clicks that convert to sales. 

Relevant leads can also create affiliate commissions per their agreement. Furthermore, once a visitor clicks on the affiliate link, the website’s cookies save the user’s behavior for 30 to 90 days. 

Affiliate marketing is a tough job for some, but many find it more efficient than tracking various programs and conversions, creating links, and searching for new affiliates. Each affiliate program is different and may not work or produce results of your choice. To make the most of your affiliate program, learn how to create and track an affiliate link suited to your needs. 

Types of Affiliate Links

The following are different types of affiliate links. 

• Standard or default links. These auto-generated official links are shared with partners upon joining an affiliate program. Users are directed to the home webpage with these links; however, you may direct traffic to particular parts of the site with changes incorporated in the affiliate link. 
  
• Lead generation. These links direct high-intent leads to the company’s product lead submission forms. With every purchase or sign-up of a user, there is a commission for the affiliate. 
  
• Custom links. You or the affiliate can create this link for any purpose. Marketers mainly customize links to shorten or clean URLs. Furthermore, marketers offer various URL styles with their affiliate software to set the desired URL style preferred for your web pages. 

How Do Affiliate Links Work?

Every affiliate has a unique affiliate link. Generally, the unique link is shared by the affiliate through email promotions, websites, and social media. Readers and followers visit the preconfigured page — usually the product’s sales page — once they click the link. 

Cookies help identify the actual traffic sent to the affiliate. Similarly, the cookie helps record the affiliates’ commission on every purchase done on the website. The most recent cookie is helpful if the client opens various links. 

How To Create an Affiliate Link?

First, you must install the affiliate plugin to begin your affiliate link creation journey. After the affiliate plugin is installed, use the following easy steps to create and track an affiliate link. 

Step 1: Create a New Campaign

Having different campaigns will help you identify effective marketing techniques. For instance, you can create and track separate URLs for all distinct products to pinpoint high-traffic pages. 

To start, navigate the Affiliate Dashboard, add affiliates, and create a new campaign. 

Name the campaign and create an easy-to-understand slug with some notes in the description — it may be visible depending on the site’s theme. 

Step 2: Affiliate Link

To design the campaign’s affiliate link — the main component of the affiliate partner’s posts — follow these steps:

• Go to Easy Affiliate to create links and banners. 
• Tap add new at the top of the page (give it a well-descriptive name) and get a link for your partner’s webpage. It is better to get a deep link to draw potential customers for a specific product purchase. 
• Then, decide the resource type (either text or banner) to add some graphics to the link. 
• Enter the desired text beside the URL in the “Link Text” for distinctive branding over the web or to add to your brand’s personality. It can be visible or hidden. 

Step 3: Affiliates

Once the process is complete, affiliate links essentially serve as a personal database of your partners. Easy Affiliate comes up with unique URLs for all the partners, so you don’t need to focus on customization. 

PRO TIP

A specific slug is vital because the users get an idea of the contents of the webpage. 

Different Methods of Using Affiliate Links

• Cloak links. The destination website’s URL is hidden and redirects to another page. Cloaking URLs may make tracking traffic difficult.

• Link Density. Too many affiliate links may flag the affiliate website and lower its rankings. Balance your affiliate links instead of simply adding more. 
  
• Add Nofollow. Many affiliate links redirect to the website. It may appear to Google as a way to boost SEO and result in a penalty and no ranking on search engines. Add rel= ”no-follow” attribute to deter the crawling of bots to the site. 

• Reveal affiliate links. The FTC requires every affiliate to share the endorsed agreement to explain the affiliates’ relationship, particularly when paid.

Best Practices To Follow for Affiliate Links

1. Make a plan
2. Set clear objectives and goals
3. Understand the customers
4. Choose the right affiliates
5. Frame proper terms and conditions
6. Provide support to affiliates
7. Create appealing content
8. Utilize cross-promotion
9. Keep abreast of industry trends
10. Assess program success by employing  a production reporting tool
11. Optimize mobile content
12. Make your affiliate program easy and simple

Key Takeaways

Knowing how to create and track an affiliate link is essential to the success of your partnership program. The process may be a bit tough and intimidating at first, but our detailed outline can help you. 

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