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What is an affiliate tracking code and how does it work?

When you sign up with a merchant as an affiliate you will recieve your own personalized tracking code or tracking link. This is the link that you will use to direct people to your merchant's website.

The tracking link is a URL that when pasted into a webpage or email becomes a clickable hyperlink. It is usually comprised of 3 areas.

1. The merchants URL or domain name. This is the first part of the link and may end .com/
2. After the merchant URL part of the link you will typically see some characters that call the affiliate program software, followed by -
3. Your unique affiliate ID

So a typical tracking link might look something like this -

http://merchantwebsite.com/?cgi.pl.psp/1010

Where 1010 is your unique ID.

The basic principal is that when someone clicks on the link they are directed to the merchants website and the affiliate program sofyware catches the ID of the refering affiliate - you. So now the software knows who has sent through this particular visitor (you again) and it will associate that visitor with your account. If and when the visitor makes a purchase, the sale is credited to your account and you will receive a commission based on whatever the commission structure is for your merchant.

So when using the tracking link, be sure not to change any characters in the link, or you might invalidate the tracking function and lose the credit for a sale.

As stated, the link is a hyperlink when used on a web page or email. So it becomes your "sales flyer response form" and you need to start promoting it in as many places as possible!