How to track which page earned each affiliate sale (sub-IDs on every network)
Every network tells you what you earned. Few tell you which page earned it, unless your links say so. A sub-ID is a label you add to an affiliate link; the network passes it through to the sale, and its reports group sales by it. Label each link with its site and page and you can rank pages by what they earn, not by what they get in traffic.
A naming scheme that works everywhere
- site_page_placement, for example ucf_ping-g430_table: which site, which page, which spot on the page.
- Lowercase letters, numbers, dashes and underscores only. Several networks reject spaces and symbols, and Awin asks for lowercase.
- Under 50 characters, so it shows in full in every network's reports.
- Never anything about the reader: no emails, names or user IDs. Some sub-IDs are visible to the brand.
The parameter on each network
| Network | Parameter | Limit | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Impact | subId1 (also subId2, subId3, sharedid) | 255 characters | Sub IDs are visible only to you; sharedid is visible to the brand and takes letters and numbers only. |
| CJ | sid | 64 characters | Can't be 0. Encode spaces and symbols, or better, avoid them. |
| Awin | clickref (up to 6 per link) | Keep under 50 | Only the first is visible to advertisers and in the Click References report; the others need an export or the API. No # + " & | '. |
| Partnerize | pubref, as /pubref:value/ | 256 characters | Goes right after camref in the link: the order of the parts matters. |
| Rakuten Advertising | u1 | 72 characters | Called the Member ID or signature in reports. |
| ShareASale | afftrack | 255 characters | Letters and numbers only. |
| eBay Partner Network | customid | 256 characters | Shows in the Performance by Custom ID and Transaction Detail reports. |
| Amazon Associates | tracking IDs (the tag) | 100 per account | No free-text sub-ID for most sites: create a tracking ID per site or section and read the Tracking ID Summary Report. More than 100: ask Associates support. |
Rolling it out
- Start with the pages that earn the most; the long tail can wait.
- If your links go through your own redirects (yoursite.com/go/…), add the sub-ID there once and every link gets it, including old ones.
- Most WordPress link plugins can add a sub-ID per link or per post automatically.
- Leave existing sub-IDs alone if you already report on them: changing a label splits its history in two.
Reading it back
Each network has a report grouped by its sub-ID (Awin's Click References report, eBay's Performance by Custom ID, Amazon's Tracking ID Summary, Impact's sub-ID reporting). Pull them into one place, add your page views, and you get earnings per 1,000 views per page: the number that tells you which pages to update, expand or retire.
Check your whole site, free
The free link check reads up to 100 pages across your sitemap and finds every one of these: gone, bounced, out of stock, untracked, someone else's ID, no sub-ID. It reads the store address out of each link and never clicks one.
Check my linksSources: impact.com: Sub ID & Shared ID parameters explained for partners · Awin: What is click reference · FMTC: Partnerize link parameters · Sugar Rae: Adding SID tracking to the big networks (CJ, ShareASale, Rakuten) · eBay Partner Network: Optimizing using tracking parameters · Amazon Associates: How do I request multiple tracking IDs?.