How does affiliate marketing work?

Affiliate marketing is a kind of marketing where businesses reward affiliates for visitors they send to the business’s site via the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. An affiliate system is the system that handles the affiliate accounts, the tracking of the traffic affiliates have sent to the site, and the monetary rewards the affiliates have earned for their efforts.

This diagram helps to illustrate how the system works:

Common questions on affiliate tracking

How is an affiliate tracked?

When an affiliate promotes your products and services they use a referral URL which typically looks like this:

http://yoursite.com/?ref=123

When a customer clicks this link and lands on your website, the affiliate’s ID (123 in the example above) is stored in a cookie, within the customer’s browser. If the customer makes a purchase, the affiliate that the customer is tracking is awarded commission on the sale.

Is the affiliate tracked across all pages of the site?

Absolutely! Since the affiliate’s ID is stored in a cookie, the affiliate is tracked across all pages on the site.

Can I change the ?ref=123 to something else?

We’ve implemented the use of your id to show in your referral URL. The reason is to provide some autonomy and discretion.

How long does the tracking cookie stay in the customer’s browser?

We’ve set cookies to infinite. They will not expire unless the browser cookies are cleared manually.

Note: A user may clear their browser cookies at any time, in which case the affiliate will no longer be tracked.

If a customer clicks on 2 different affiliate links from 2 different affiliates, which one is saved?

We incorporate ‘credit the last referrer’ mode. We want to reward the freshest referrer. If referrer no.1 received a click that did not translate to a sale, then we regard that referral as stale and it’s open to a fresh new referral. This encourages healthy competition. This is not to say a cookie can reside with a client for a very long time (if the cookie is not cleared) and resulting in a referral reward.

I would like the cookie to never expire so I can earn commission for the lifetime of my customer

We have set the cookie to never (or at least max) expire but you’ll still be at risk of a customer clearing their browser cookies, or using a different browser altogether, in which case the affiliate is not tracked. Cookies are only stored in the browser that the customer is using.

However we use Lifetime Commissions to allow your affiliates to earn commission for the lifetime of a customer. Once the customer uses an affiliate’s referral URL they are linked to the affiliate, regardless of whether they use another browser or clear their browser cookies.

Why aren’t any referrals being created when a customer purchases?

We use JavaScript to store a cookie that tracks your affiliate ID. If there are any kind of JavaScript errors on a website, the cookie may not be stored and you will not be awarded commission when a customer purchases. JavaScript errors will also prevent other functionality on your website from working so it’s always a good idea to fix them.

Can affiliates credit the last referrer?

Yes! There is what we’ve done.

If a customer clicks on an affiliate link and uses a coupon assigned to that affiliate, does the affiliate receive double referrals?

No, the coupon will always win, including if it is assigned to a different affiliate. The affiliate assigned to the coupon or discount code will always receive the referral, regardless if an affiliate link was used. Don’t see a coupon? Want one? Please email support to request one. You can choose one already available or a new one (depending on request, you may or may not receive a personal coupon).

Sharing affiliate referral URLs/links

With V3DA hub affiliate, it’s incredibly easy for you to generate and share your unique affiliate referral URLs/links anywhere. Below are some commonly asked questions and answers on how they can generate or create their own referral links, and where they can share them.

How do I generate affiliate referral URLs/links?

There are two ways that affiliate referral links can be generated:

You can add your unique affiliate ID or WordPress username to the end of any URL or product page on your website. For example: http://yourwebsite.com/product-1/?ref=123.
You can generate your own referral link from the Affiliate Area by pasting the page URL from any page on your site into the Page URL field and clicking the Generate URL button

Can I still promote products if I don’t have a website?

Yes! Whether you have a website or not, you can promote your site and products on social media, offline, or anywhere else using any of the supported affiliate referral URL formats.

What products can I promote?

It’s simple. Just visit https://v3da.com/shop for a list of all products. Each V3DA hub membership purchase is a subscription. So that means, as long as that customer subscription is active, you will continue to receive payouts indefinitely as per conditions stipulated set out in the terms and conditions. You can even promote our certification program with too is a recurring annual subscription.

How can I share my site or products specifically through social media?

You can use your affiliate referral link to promote your products via any social media platform (including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and more).

When you share your affiliate referral links on any of these platforms, you want to ensure your site and products are showcased properly; all links shared by affiliates in a social media post should display the correct page title or product title, the correct site image or product image, the correct page URL, and/or a correct description. To do this, it’s recommended you use Open Graph tags/social media meta tags throughout your site’s HTML. Each social media platform has crawlers which will look through your site’s HTML and pull the relevant (and correct) information through to the shared link’s post.

The requirements and specifications are slightly different between each social media channel. Below is a list of links to the documentation for some popular social platforms with detailed specs for images and copy, and how to properly include Open Graph tags or meta tags for seamless and effective social sharing.

Can I track the performance of where their marketing efforts are focused?

Yes! Affiliate referral URLs can include a campaign parameter which helps affiliates track and monitor the performance of their affiliate links.

Affiliates can name each campaign in the Affiliate Area when generating an affiliate referral link. The campaign name will be automatically appended to their affiliate referral link. Here are a couple of examples of what the affiliate referral link looks like with a campaign parameter added:

http://yourwebsite.com/product-1/?ref=123&campaign=twitterjanuary
http://yourwebsite.com/product-1/ref/123/?campaign=twitterjanuary

You may wish to use campaigns to place specific affiliate links in specific marketing channels – such as in an email, on a particular social media platform, or on their own website (if they have one).

The campaigns created by you are visible in the Statistics tab when they are logged in to the Affiliate Area. This tab also shows the following campaign data:

The number of visits through a specific campaign referral link
How many unique referral links have been used for that campaign
Whether the conversion was successful (a referral was generated)
And what the conversion rate is for that particular campaign.

Some examples of campaign names an affiliate might use are: “Winter email”, “Twitter January”, “Facebook sale”, “Summer special”, and so on. This could be aligned with the marketing material you provide to your affiliates, or a sale or promotion you have scheduled.

Using this campaign parameter will allow you to identify where you should focus your marketing efforts for maximum sales and referrals.

How does V3DA hub affiliate track visits with cookies?

V3DA hub uses cookies to track affiliates and visits so referrals can be generated. This article explains why the cookies are important, and how you can see them in your browser when testing the system to check a visit has been created.

How they work

A cookie is a small piece of data which is stored in a user’s web browser when they visit a website. When a customer comes to your website via an affiliate referral link (i.e. yoursite.com/?ref=123), V3DA hub affiliate stores two main browser cookies in order to track the referring affiliate, and the visit. Their names are:

affwp_ref – this cookie stores the affiliate’s unique ID
affwp_ref_visit_id – this cookie stores the visit ID (the visit ID increments by 1, each time any referral link is used until the cookie expires or is deleted).

As of version 1.7.7 we also store a third cookie for affiliate campaign tracking. The name of the cookie is affwp_campaign. This cookie will only be stored if an affiliate generates an affiliate referral URL with a campaign name from the Affiliate Area, and that link is clicked on by a customer.

When a customer clicks on your referral link, and these cookies are successfully generated, a visit will appear in your Visits screen. The cookies will then remain in the browser throughout the purchase or conversion process to track the correct affiliate so a referral can be generated for that affiliate. The cookies will also remain in the customer’s browser for an indefinite period of time, or until the customer clears their cookies.

If these cookies are not visible in the browser when your site is visited via an affiliate referral link, a visit will not be generated (or, we may have enabled Fallback Referral Tracking). This is why it is important to test the system is working when you initially setup.

Here’s how you can find the cookies in popular browsers to check if a visit has been stored correctly:

Firefox

Follow these steps to view the V3DA hub affiliate cookies in Firefox:

Visit your product page or website via the affiliate referral link
Go to the Tools menu in the top menu bar, scroll down to “Web Developer” -> and click on “Developer Toolbar”. This will display a toolbar at the bottom of your browser window
In the toolbar, type “cookie list” and press Enter/Return on your keyboard – this will display a list of the cookies on your website
Look for the affiliate ID cookie (i.e. affwp_ref=123) and the visit ID cookie (i.e. affwp_ref_visit_id=1). If the affiliate has created a campaign, the affwp_campaign cookie will also be visible.

Chrome

Follow these steps to view the V3DA hub affiliate cookies in Chrome:

Visit the product page or website page via the affiliate referral link
Go to the View menu in the top menu bar
Go to the Developer option
Click on “Developer Tools”
In the “Application” tab, click on the “Cookies” drop-down menu in the “Storage” section on the left and click on the name of your website – the affwp_ref and affwp_ref_visit_id cookies should be visible there. If the affiliate has created a campaign, the affwp_campaign cookie will also be visible.

Safari

Follow these steps to view the V3DA hub affiliate cookies in Safari:

Visit the product page or website page via the affiliate referral link
Go to the Develop option in the top menu bar
Click on “Show Web Inspector”
In the “Storage” tab click on Cookies in the left navigation menu – the affwp_ref and affwp_ref_visit_id cookies should be visible there. If the affiliate has created a campaign, the affwp_campaign cookie will also be visible.

Alongside each cookie name is a “value”. For the affwp_ref cookie this value is the affiliate’s unique ID (i.e. 123), and for the affwp_ref_visit_id cookie this is the visit ID. For the affwp_campaign cookie, the value is the name of the campaign the affiliate is tracking (i.e. a “twitter”, or “facebook” campaign, etc.). These values can help you identify which affiliate is being tracked, and show you how many visits have been made to your website through affiliate referral links in total (all affiliate referral link visits are counted as one total).

Referral Statuses

Each time a referral is generated, it is assigned a status. There are four possible values that can be assigned:

Pending – This is a referral that has been generated but is not yet confirmed
Unpaid – This is a confirmed referral that is waiting to be paid out to the affiliate
Rejected – This is a referral that was rejected
Paid – This is a referral that has been paid to the affiliate

All referrals begin with a status of Pending and are then updated to one of the other three statuses when particular events occur. A pending referral means that it is waiting to be confirmed as valid. Referrals are confirmed when orders in the eCommerce platform are completed.

A referral is marked as rejected when the corresponding order in the eCommerce platform is refunded or deleted.

Referrals are marked as Unpaid when the corresponding order or signup is completed in your e-Commerce or membership platform. Once marked as Unpaid, the referral is considered earned and should be paid out to the affiliate.

Referrals receive a status of Paid as soon as they have been paid to the affiliate. Once marked as Paid, a referral is considered closed and no further status changes are applied to it.

Is the affiliate tracked across all pages of the site?

Absolutely! Since the affiliate’s ID is stored in a cookie, the affiliate is tracked across all pages on the site. If the customer visits any other page on your website and purchases, the tracked affiliate will receive a commission.

Does V3DA hub affiliate work with caching?

Yes it does! One of our number one frustrations with previous systems was the lack of support for aggressive caching. You often had to make a compromise: either have good caching and a fast site with no referral tracking, or successful referral tracking with little to no caching and a slow site.

We spent numerous hours laboring over the tracking methods built into V3DA hub affiliate to ensure it works with all caching systems, even the most aggressive. We even went so far as to communicate with several of the managed WordPress hosting companies that implement really aggressive caching to ensure V3DA hub affiliate would work on their systems with zero special configuration from the hosting company.