How to Add Tracking to Your Affiliate Links

profitpullingmachine Apr 6, 2014 · 3 min read

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

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How to Add Tracking to Your Affiliate Links

When you log into your affiliate section of the Internet Marketing Toolbar, you will get the option to choose a custom username for your links. You want to do this right away and reserve the perfect keyword for your marketing.

Next, you will be given links that look something like this (the custom affiliate username I chose was “free” and I will use that word in these examples).

http://internetmarketingbar.com/free

Okay, so that is how your standard affiliate link works. Yes, this will track to you. Yes it will work fine.

But…

Would you like to know exactly where your sales are coming from?

For example, let’s say that you created a YouTube video, and a Facebook Status Update, and sent an Email to your List.

1) YouTube Video

2) Facebook Status Update

3) Email to Your List

Would it be nice to know the traffic, leads, and sales that came from each of those sources? Here is exactly how you set that up.

You simply add a /keyword to the end of your affiliate link. The keyword can change every time you promote from a new source. So here is how I might set up my tracking for the above 3 examples:

1) YouTube Video = http://imbtoolbar.com/free/youtube/

2) Facebook Status Update = http://imbtoolbar.com/free/facebook/

3) Email to Your List = http://imbtoolbar.com/free/email/

Now, what if you plan on having multiple YouTube videos, multiple Facebook status updates, and multiple emails sent?

You might want to add some additional tracking so that you can know the difference between each one!

Or maybe use keywords to designate which “type” of marketing you were doing.

Or maybe add a date to the end to know which day it was from…

You can also user underscores in your affiliate tracking to make them more readable at a glance.

*NOTE – You should always test your tracking links to make sure that the link doesn’t break when you visit it. Sometimes if you add certain characters, it could break the link. Stick with numbers, letters, and underscores. No spaces. No slashes.

If you think this turns your links “ugly” there are plenty of solutions to fix that as well.

For example, you may create the following link for a youtube video:

http://imbtoolbar.com/free/youtube_X6gfTyl/

The second part of that link might be the ID of your video, so you know exactly which one (smart)

But it looks UGLY right! There are some simple ways to fix that.

Bitly.com – You can paste that link you created above, into bitly, and then add your bitly link to the description of your youtube video.
IMB Advanced Links – You can paste your link into the IMB toolbar and choose a custom “slug” that is prettier than what you currently have.
Pretty Link Plugin – If you have a WordPress Blog, you can use this plugin (free version) and add a custom slug to your own domain name, such as http://yourdomain.com/anything

And there are many additional ways.

Tracking Your Traffic, Sales, & Conversions

Okay, so you have your links set up, with tracking, and you are promoting them now. So where do you go to see your stats?

Simple. In your Internet Marketing Bar you can click on the Affiliate Tab and you can scroll down to the bottom of that page. You will see a section with all your custom tracking links.

You will be able to view the traffic on each link, as well as the installs of the toolbar, the # of products purchased, and how much commissions you have earned from each link!

This information becomes INCREDIBLY valuable when you are placing Dark Post Ads. Because you can track exactly which ads are converting at a positive ROI, and which ads are flops that you should pause and cancel.

At your fingertips you have the exact information you need to be a successful marketer. And we plan to continue to improve this tracking, and these affiliate tools, to help you have as much success as possible as an entrepreneur!