Can Adwords Tracking be used for affiliates?

[TravelAff]

Fellow webmasters,

A few weeks ago I heard of the fact it is possible to apply conversion tracking.

I'm starting to think I dont understand how it can be used. Can someone please confirm if i'm right or wrong?

I run a travel site filled with affiliate links, we are generating quite some sales and we also buy traffic on adwords.

But since I do not have my own thank you page (because i dont sell anything) its hard for me to decide which adwords ad groups and keywords are creating ROI and which don't

I thaught adwords conversion tracking would give me the possiblilty to see what keywords/ad groups and campaigns are generating sales on the sites of my affiliate?

But because the conversion to click data in my adwords account does not even come close to my network sales, i'm thinking i'm wrong and its not working as i would like.

Please reply.

Thank you for your feedback...

[RhinoFish]

it can be done, but it would mean your merchant partner would have to post your tracking snippet on their receipt page. if you're a huge affiliate with them, they might be willing to do that, but it's very unlikely.

what you might do instead is configure your google analytics to trigger a click on an outbound link to your merchant partner as an tracked event, set that up as a goal, link your analytics account to your adwords account, and import those goals as conversions - so you'd be using the outbound click as a proxy for an ecommerce conversion. it doesn't count sales, but might be an effective indicator for you.