How does affiliate link tracking actually work?

What an affiliate link is

An affiliate link is a normal URL with a parameter added to the end.

The structure is https://www.yourpagelink?sa=AFFILIATEID. Adding ?sa= followed by the affiliate ID to any page address turns it into that person's tracking link.

An affiliate finds their own ID under Dashboard, then Affiliate Dashboard.

Where the tracking reaches

Tracking works on every page built with systeme.io, including any page carrying a systeme.io form, so a website or a blog counts.

Blog posts take the parameter the same way an opt-in page or a payment page does. Links used to share a sales funnel are affiliate links too.

The rule that catches people out

The www matters, and it points in opposite directions depending on whose pages are being promoted.

• Promoting systeme.io itself: leave www off. Adding it stops the tracking working.
• Promoting your own custom domain: put www in. It stops the tracking parameter being lost when the page redirects.

When does the credit stop moving?

At registration. systeme.io assigns the affiliate at the moment the customer registers through an affiliate link, and from that point the affiliation is fixed. Later clicks on somebody else's affiliate link do not change it.

systeme.io says its technical team investigated the cases where commission appeared to go to the wrong person and found the tracking working correctly. The confusion came from this rule.

The one exception

A purchase made through a different affiliate's link to a payment page pays that affiliate for that sale.

So a contact who signed up under affiliate A, then bought through affiliate B's link to a payment page, earns B the commission on that purchase. systeme.io describes the design as rewarding two moments: referring a new user, and closing the sale.

Why it is not only a cookie

systeme.io says its own programme runs mainly on the last cookie principle, and that the tracking is more robust than cookies alone.

The affiliate link is tied to the referral's email address, and the affiliate ID is added to every email systeme.io sends that referral. A referral who signs up on a laptop and clicks a link on a phone a year later still counts.

The cookie itself expires after 1 year.

On your own programme the same lifetime principle applies: referred contacts and their referrals hold the affiliate ID in the database, so a purchase six months or a year later still pays out.

Tagging where the traffic came from

A second parameter records the source. Add &tk= and a word straight after the affiliate ID.

So ?sa=AFFILIATEID&tk=youtube tags every sale made through that link as youtube. The tag applies to all sales from that link.

Pages that are not on systeme.io

An affiliate proxy link attaches an affiliate ID to a page hosted elsewhere, and only the owner of the affiliate programme can create one.

The owner sets it up under Affiliate program, then Affiliate proxy links, giving it a label, a language, the external page URL, and a domain. The domain has to match the domain of the funnel holding the opt-in or payment page.

An affiliate then asks the owner for that proxy link and adds ?sa= and their ID to the end of it. Any systeme.io page linked from the external page picks the affiliate ID up automatically.