Is it possible to track inbound links ????

[justzed]

Hi everyone ! Im new to the forum and new to aff marketing, I am working on a UK site and have some good ideas (i hope....) with .com to follow, but what I really want to find out is 'can I track nofollow inbound links, that then sign up to online bookmaker' ? The reason I ask is that I have a few non betting sites that are willing to show links/banners to my site. In return I have offered a % of any revenue generated.

Cheers, zed

[Christiaan]

With Google Analytics you can see where a person comes from and where he leaves your site. But after that you don't know if they will sign up at the bookmaker and how much revenue they generate.

[indepthstats]

I think this would be pretty difficult to do unless the bookmaker site provided a method for doing this.

For instance, if they were generating a link code that was unique for every single visitor to your site; then you could track the codes you displayed for pages to visitors from those inbound links and reconcile them if they turned in to signups. But you'd have to have a whole system setup even just to do that.

There is no way to "read back" cookie data or anything like that after the visitor has left your site though if that's what you're asking.

As I see it, you have two options that would work:

You could setup an entirely different section of your site (or site altogether), use different campaign codes from the affiliate program on those pages, and give your referring web partners a percentage of those commissions. Seems unnecessarily complicated though, and you'd obviously also be giving them a commission on any other signups that found their way to your links through those pages.

If it were me though, I would just make a deal to pay for the banner placements or referral links from the non-betting sites on a monthly or per click basis. That way they're guaranteed some income from the traffic their sending you. And you don't have to cut them in for a full percentage long term or manage what would basically be the equivalent of your own affiliate program to monitor their percentages. And, of course, that would be really easy to track.

Plus, at some point, wouldn't they just figure out they could signup for the affiliate program themselves and get ALL the profit? Why not give them a little guaranteed income, and keep the permanent commissions for yourself?

[chaumi]

I think this would be pretty difficult to do unless the bookmaker site provided a method for doing this.

For instance, if they were generating a link code that was unique for every single visitor to your site; then you could track the codes you displayed for pages to visitors from those inbound links and reconcile them if they turned in to signups. But you'd have to have a whole system setup even just to do that.

There is no way to "read back" cookie data or anything like that after the visitor has left your site though if that's what you're asking.

As I see it, you have two options that would work:

You could setup an entirely different section of your site (or site altogether), use different campaign codes from the affiliate program on those pages, and give your referring web partners a percentage of those commissions. Seems unnecessarily complicated though, and you'd obviously also be giving them a commission on any other signups that found their way to your links through those pages.

If it were me though, I would just make a deal to pay for the banner placements or referral links from the non-betting sites on a monthly or per click basis. That way they're guaranteed some income from the traffic their sending you. And you don't have to cut them in for a full percentage long term or manage what would basically be the equivalent of your own affiliate program to monitor their percentages. And, of course, that would be really easy to track.

Plus, at some point, wouldn't they just figure out they could signup for the affiliate program themselves and get ALL the profit? Why not give them a little guaranteed income, and keep the permanent commissions for yourself?

Great and well considered answer.

To the OP, if this suggestion gives you a potential way of doing it, you might also consider how you could analyse the likely strength of the traffic you might be getting from those other sites. No point in giving anyone anything if the traffic they're sending is never going to/unlikely to convert

[justzed]

Hi guys, thanks for the answers and opinions. The traffic i would be sending would be of similar profile to my target market. I thought of trying to set it up this way, as i wanted the partner sites to be on-board with the idea, and hopefully use it as a 'feature' if you like. I understand that it's almost impossible now its been explained, thanks !
Just a thought, probably way off the mark, but.... Would it be possible to add all the affiliate bookmaker codes to the links on the partner sites. I would obviously set up a different set specific to the site in question ?

cheers, zed

[baldidiot]

Hi guys, thanks for the answers and opinions. The traffic i would be sending would be of similar profile to my target market. I thought of trying to set it up this way, as i wanted the partner sites to be on-board with the idea, and hopefully use it as a 'feature' if you like. I understand that it's almost impossible now its been explained, thanks !

It can be done, we do it for PPC to track the origins - but I'll get to that in a minute...

Just a thought, probably way off the mark, but.... Would it be possible to add all the affiliate bookmaker codes to the links on the partner sites. I would obviously set up a different set specific to the site in question ?

If you're wanting to do that and only give them a percentage of their revenue, then surely they'd just go and sign up themselves and take all the revenue?

I could see why they may want to do it if you're offering them a fixed fee or per-impression deal where you front the risk and their revenue is guaranteed, but otherwise I struggled to believe you'd find many takers in the long terms - unless you're adding something we don't know about (eg: some kind of reward scheme).

[justzed]

Hi, no i'm not offering any kind of reward scheme, but i'm planning my site to be better than a lot of my competition.... Yes of course they could set up as an affiliate themselves, but to do what ? place an ad or banner, the same as everyone else does ? Besides if they have no knowledge or desire to go down that route, why not just promote my site. It's then in both our interests to do well !

zed

[baldidiot]

Ok so to your original question, yes you can do it. You'll need affiliate codes for each source (eg: bookie 1/traffic source 1, bookie 1/traffic source 2 and so on) and a way of identifying the source, then it's just a case of changing the outbound tracking link based on the inbound source.

Eg:

source 1 ---> your site ---> outbound 1
source 2 ---> your site ---> outbound 2

Plenty of different ways of doing it, but the two that spring to mind as the simplest involve giving the user a unique URL for your site that incorporates a parameter - eg: yoursite.com/landingpage.php?source=bobswebsite - here the source is identified as 'bobswebsite'.

Then you can either using GET to pull the parameter from the URL and use it to modify the links on the page directly (would only apply to the landing page though, unless you pass the parameter to internal links on the site like a session ID), or drop a cookie and query it when the user clicks on a link to return the relevant aff link.

[justzed]

Hi baldidiot, thanks for the solution which i think i understand sort of, but to be honest, not much idea of how to do it, i am new to this and still learning.......
My site is going to another few weeks yet at least, so hopefully by then i will have read and learnt more.

zed

[justzed]

Hi again baldidiot, could you please give me an example of this method for just 1 partner site, in the simplest terms possible please ?

thanks, zed

[indepthstats]

Ok so to your original question, yes you can do it. You'll need affiliate codes for each source (eg: bookie 1/traffic source 1, bookie 1/traffic source 2 and so on) and a way of identifying the source, then it's just a case of changing the outbound tracking link based on the inbound source.

Eg:

source 1 ---> your site ---> outbound 1
source 2 ---> your site ---> outbound 2

Plenty of different ways of doing it, but the two that spring to mind as the simplest involve giving the user a unique URL for your site that incorporates a parameter - eg: yoursite.com/landingpage.php?source=bobswebsite - here the source is identified as 'bobswebsite'.

Then you can either using GET to pull the parameter from the URL and use it to modify the links on the page directly (would only apply to the landing page though, unless you pass the parameter to internal links on the site like a session ID), or drop a cookie and query it when the user clicks on a link to return the relevant aff link.

This is what I was saying was possible if you had a unique code from the bookmaker for every visitor, at least to identify those coming from different sources.

The issue is, you're still going to have to have some way of adjusting the code for your affiliate links on your page on the fly, based on the referral source.

You'd need to setup campaigns (different code id's) for each of your partners with the affiliate. Then you'd need a piece of code on the website, that read the incoming site id, looked up the correct affiliate code you want to use for that referrer, inserts it into the page, and then records the visit (assuming you want to know when you're getting visits, not just signups through the links).

It's not impossible. But you'd still have no way I see to easily track signups and commissions over the long run based on referrers.

[baldidiot]

This is what I was saying was possible if you had a unique code from the bookmaker for every visitor, at least to identify those coming from different sources.


The issue is, you're still going to have to have some way of adjusting the code for your affiliate links on your page on the fly, based on the referral source.


You'd need to setup campaigns (different code id's) for each of your partners with the affiliate. Then you'd need a piece of code on the website, that read the incoming site id, looked up the correct affiliate code you want to use for that referrer, inserts it into the page, and then records the visit (assuming you want to know when you're getting visits, not just signups through the links).


It's not impossible. But you'd still have no way I see to easily track signups and commissions over the long run based on referrers.

Yeah my suggestions above assumed you were manually creating unique codes for each partner as separate tracking profiles. But thinking about it there are some programs that let you apply an additional payload on the fly (think IA have introduced this recently) so you could actually do it without setting them up, so long as you apply the source as a payload.


Eg: /clickthrgh.asp?btag=a_00000b_00000&aid=PAYLOAD - it's the last &aid parameter that you're interested in here. I've not used it personally, but noticed it the other day and may incorporate it at some point in the future.


You also don't necessarily have to modify the link on the page directly, although that is the way I tend to do it on isolated PPC landing pages as it's easier. An alternative is to link to the same intermediary page regardless of the source (eg: /go-to/somebookie.php) and then run the query on that page (so the relevant aff link is selected in somebookie.php and then redirects the user).

Hi again baldidiot, could you please give me an example of this method for just 1 partner site, in the simplest terms possible please ?

It really depends on your site and how it's set up - is it php, static html, a cms - and what you want to achieve. If you're talking creating affiliates to your site you're going to need to nail down a flawless tracking method.

I intentionally kept my answer vague because I wanted to let you know it could be done, but whatever way you do it you're probably going to need some custom coding done. Especially as you're talking affiliation - any errors that affect your tracking will be taking money away from your affiliates.

So if you do want to go down the route I'd find a developer who can advise you on the best method for your site/intentions etc.. as it's not just a case of plopping some code in wordpress.

[justzed]

So if you do want to go down the route I'd find a developer who can advise you on the best method for your site/intentions etc.. as it's not just a case of plopping some code in wordpress.

Thanks a lot for the advice which i will take and get someone in the know to sort if, but it is possible !

thanks again, zed

[TheWaiter]

Hi everyone ! Im new to the forum and new to aff marketing, I am working on a UK site and have some good ideas (i hope....) with .com to follow, but what I really want to find out is 'can I track nofollow inbound links, that then sign up to online bookmaker' ? The reason I ask is that I have a few non betting sites that are willing to show links/banners to my site. In return I have offered a % of any revenue generated.

Cheers, zed

This could be difficult, I would maybe create a URL shortener leading to a unique landing page (maybe a copy of your main one, with nofollow) and use a different tracker for each page.

So if your site was games.com create a new one games.com/affiliateurl/ then use the same page, nofollow it, but use all the affiliate links on that page of a new tracker.

Other than that create sub affiliate accounts for them?