Affiliate sales reporting by website

How are most reports listed?

[techstyled]

I am just getting into affiliate marketing and one question I'm really struggling to find an answer for is if most/all of the major networks provide reporting broken down by websites. IOW, if I have example1.com and example2.com both signed up with my affiliate account, am I going to know how much each made or am I just going to get one lump sum figure per merchant.

I'm really wondering if I need an affiliate account per site. Because of administration, I'd rather not have to but if it means knowing how much each site made, I will.

[LifeinAsia]

It depends on the program. Many (most?) can setup different tracking IDs so you can differentiate between your sites.

The problem with having to setup an account for each site (besides the hassle of logging off/on to check your stats) is that if the program has a $50 payment threshold and site1 and site2 each make $30 in a month, the amount each site makes will get forwarded to the next month. (If it's one account with different tracking IDs, you should get a $60 check for that month.)

[techstyled]

It looks like:

Commission Junction facilitates this by either allowing you to enter multiple sites which will create a unique PID for each and/or you can add a unique SID to each link. I don't know how the reporting shows for each of these but I am assuming you can get a report for each PID or SID.

Google Affiliate Network will allow you add unique MID such as MID=1234 to each link to facilitate many sites or "members". Again, don't know what the reporting looks like but assume it can break it down by "MID".

ShareASale has two parameters you can optionally add to each link you create called "urllink" and "afftrack". Again assuming the reporting allows breakdown on each but the urllink is specifically for tracking which site created the sale so I would imagine you can at least get a breakdown by that.

LinkShare... No idea. I've tried to find ways on their site as well as googling it but I've not find a definite "yes, you can do that like this" answer.

Clickbank allows you to add a Tracking ID to each "hopad" link you create which I assume will be shown in reporting.

Amazon Associates doesn't seem to have any way to add tracking ID's to their links (at least that I can see).

That's all the big ones I can think of, am I missing any?

[piatkow]

Amazon Associates doesn't seem to have any way to add tracking ID's to their links (at least that I can see).

I don't think you can do any fine tuning with tracking ids in Amazon but you can certainly register multiple identifiers which are sufficient to track at a site level.

[techstyled]

piatkow: I think I'm looking too hard at some of these :)

You're right, you can have as many Tracking ID's as you want with Amazon Associates and everywhere you create links, just change the Tracking ID in a dropdown. Couldn't be easier...

I've put in a support ticket with LinkShare asking them if they provide any way to do this.

[LifeinAsia]

CJ breaks down reports by site.

I have multiple sites registered with LinkShare. The downside is that you have to apply for each program from each site.

[purplecape]

This isn't the case with all programs, but Amazon has "performance tiers"--basically, the more items you sell in a given month, the higher the commission you receive. For programs like that, you should do whatever you can to have only one account...

[techstyled]

I understand that purplecape and there's also the fact that you don't get accepted to the best merchants without having some performance to show which is another reason you wouldn't want to divide yourself.

Which is precisely why I'm trying to get my head around this issue.

The LinkShare thing sucks because I really like some of their merchants. But if they're the only one (at least so far) that doesn't offer some way to track per site, then I guess it's not too bad.

I guess it's just their great proprietary link tracking mechanism that doesn't allow this with them. j/k