Affiliate Marketing Tips

European Data Protection Board have published their adopted position on the #technical #applicability of Article 5(3) of the #ePrivacy Directive. It basically says everything I have been saying since 2009 but here are some key points: 1. Arguing that you can use #IP address for #tracking because it was sent to your server by the user as part of the HTTP protocol, is not appropriate as it still meets the definition of gaining access to #information already stored on the terminal equipment (this also applies to other device information such as sensors, MAC address, Bluetooth etc.) 2. IoT/Smart #devices which send information back to a server are in scope of Article 5(3) even if these devices rely on a #mobile #app to relay the information back to the server. 3. Any #software including #javascript, #SDKs, #API endpoints, Operating Systems etc. which #instruct terminal equipment to send information to a third party over a publicly available #communications #network are in scope of Article 5(3). 4. #Storage of information is not defined with any upper or lower limits as to the amount of information or how long the information is stored - as such even information stored in the #cache or in RAM for a fraction of second, are within scope of Article 5(3). 5. #URL Parameters used for the purpose of tracking fall under the scope of Article 5(3) this includes #affiliate #links, #campaign identifiers etc. (this one is going to really piss off marketers). 6. #Pixels and other tracking technologies, whether dynamically generated or not, are within scope of Article 5(3). 7. Tracking technologies embedded within #emails are within scope of Article 5(3) (again this is going to piss off marketers) 8. #AbandonedCart software is within scope of Article 5(3) because #scripts cause the users' Terminal Equipment to send information back to a third party and as such is considered as gaining access to information already stored in the users' terminal equipment. Anyone who has followed my work for the last 17 years will understand that I have been making these points for a very long time - but now we have it formally from the EDPB and all of these arguments like "Javascript is cached in memory so it is not stored.", "IP addresses are provided by the user when they send a request to the server." have now been defined as invalid. If you are one of my clients, you already have all this information since 2009, so you don't now need to go through a very expensive #changemanagement programme to get your #marketing and other activities compliant with the ePD - but for the rest of you - well, I guess this is where I get to say "I told you so...". If you want real help with your marketing #compliance (rather than just have someone blow smoke up your ass and tell you everything is fine) feel free to reach out knowing the Regulators agree with my legal opinion on these matters. #Privacy #GDPR #Law #Legal #SurveillanceCapitalism #IOT #Smart #Consent #Cookies

We’ve seen dozens of affiliate programs fail. Not because the idea was bad, but because of three simple reasons: 1️⃣ No clear owner inside the company. If nobody wakes up in the morning thinking “how do I grow this program?”, it stalls. 2️⃣ Poor tracking and reporting. Without reliable numbers, trust breaks down between company and affiliates. 3️⃣ Lack of resources. Running a successful affiliate program is not “set it and forget it.” It’s relationship management, payouts, fraud prevention, and marketing. The irony? None of these problems are about “finding affiliates.” They’re about operational discipline. And that’s where most companies underestimate the effort. They underestimate how much time it takes to onboard, educate, and support affiliates. They underestimate how crucial it is to have fast payouts and transparent communication. They underestimate how competitive the market is — affiliates have plenty of programs to choose from, and they’ll quickly walk away if they don’t feel valued. We at Trackdesk have seen companies launch with good intentions but no structure. They add a “Partners” link in the footer of their website, maybe send out a generic newsletter, and then wait for results. That’s not a strategy — that’s hope marketing. On the flip side, the programs that succeed are the ones where management sees it as a real growth channel and invests accordingly: ➡️ A dedicated manager or agency running the program. ➡️ Resources for creatives, onboarding, and ongoing support. ➡️ The right tools to keep tracking accurate and payouts smooth. Affiliate marketing is not magic. But with the right structure, it becomes one of the most predictable and scalable growth channels a company can run.

Yep, cookies are dead. But while that’s devastating to some iGaming brands, it can be an opportunity for you: If you haven’t heard… Google Chrome will restrict third-party cookies for 1% of users from January 2024, with plans to extend this to 100% of users from Q3 2024. This means that traditional methods of tracking user behaviour across different sites for affiliate marketing purposes will no longer be viable. Of course, when there’s a change like this, people in iGaming freak out! But it’s a chance for the agile amongst us to reassess our strategies, innovate, and stay ahead of the curve. There are two opportunities that I see: 1. Server-to-server tracking methods will become more prevalent. This involves storing information on a server with unique identifiers like transaction IDs and affiliate IDs. Unlike cookies, server-side tracking is not dependent on the user's browser and is therefore unaffected by the changes to third-party cookies. 2. Brand marketing will play a bigger role. I know that many in our industry are afraid of brand marketing. But in a world where privacy is becoming more prevalent, we have to work harder to attract players on merit. That’s by creating an excellent product that people recommend, supported by superb brand marketing campaigns to get your name in front of the right people. We need to do a better job of asking what we can do tomorrow to make our customers happier. This will deliver higher ROI than the loss from view-through conversions. So tell me… How are you going to shape your marketing strategy in a cookie-less future?

2009: I started as a jr. affiliate manager. 2025: Scaling my affiliate marketing company to 7-figures. It's been a 16-year journey in affiliate marketing. Here are 9 rules for affiliate marketing that you must remember in 2025: 1. Affiliate marketing isn’t passive revenue. Brands that recruit, engage, and optimize will scale. 2. If you are not working with the ‘RIGHT’ affiliate, it doesn’t matter how good your strategies are.  Review sites, influencers, and media buyers that drive high-intent traffic will help you with volume and scale. 3. Ensure that the audiences of those affiliates align with your brand’s audience. A skincare brand likely won’t see results with an affiliate who mainly reviews tech gadgets. 4. A small handful of affiliates- often just 5 to 7- generate the vast majority of revenue. Use data to pinpoint your top 1% and invest in what’s working. 5. Affiliate marketing is highly competitive, with thousands of programs. So, having a good offer with a lucrative deal and structure will attract the best affiliates. 6. To attract and engage the top-performing affiliates, offer exclusive deals, bonuses, and performance-based incentives. 7. Affiliate marketing is not a ‘Set-it-and-forget-it’ model. You need to keep building and nurturing the relationships with the affiliates. Help them by sharing your top-performing ad creatives, content, and funnel to improve their conversions. 8. You can’t scale your program without data-driven adjustments. Keep tracking the performance and conversions of ads & landing pages, and refine your strategy accordingly. 9. Affiliate marketing is just like a sales process. You need to keep adding more affiliates to your sales funnel every week to scale your revenue. Implement an outbound affiliate recruitment strategy. Bonus: Affiliate programs aren't overnight success stories. They need time. For both affiliates and brands to win, it's a dance. A dance that can take 5-8 months to really get in sync. That’s it. I’m Fred, and I help scale 8/9-figure DTC brands through affiliate marketing. Connect and follow for more insights.

At BREZ we had a classic subscription brand problem. Customers love the product and naturally want to share it, but we were leaving massive referral revenue on the table... Basically an operational nightmare. Managing customer referrals through one tool, influencer partnerships through another, TikTok Shop affiliates separately, and constantly dealing with coupon codes leaking to coupon sites. Every leaked discount code = lost attribution and margin on future sales. Manual payout processes and no clean data on which creators actually drive high-LTV customers vs one-time buyers. The problem became obvious pretty quickly: referrals and creator partnerships were working — but the way we were running them wasn’t. So instead of adding more tools or headcount, we changed how the whole motion worked. That decision unlocked things like: 1. Customer → Affiliate Activation - Every customer automatically becomes an affiliate post-purchase - No separate sign-up, they get their link immediately (5X increase in referral activity) 2. Safelinks - Generates unique, single-use discount codes for every customer click - Prevents codes from leaking to coupon sites - Clean attribution on every sale 3. Creator Management - Attribution tracking for every creator partnership - Automated product seeding - creators redeem self-serve - Bulk payouts in two clicks 4. TikTok Shop Integration - Our DTC and TikTok Shop affiliate programs run through one dashboard - Track creator performance across both channels 5. Clean Attribution Data - An actual picture of the customer journey - Track which affiliates drive highest LTV customers - Custom attribution windows One platform managing customers-turned-affiliates, creators, TikTok Shop partners, and attribution. - No coupon leaks - Clean payout processes - Raw ROI data on creator partnerships WHY HAVE IT ALL IN ONE PLATFORM? - Clean attribution means we know which partnerships drive profitable customers. No more revenue leaking through coupon leaks. - Automated workflows handle what used to require manual tracking and payout management. - Our existing team manages everything instead of needing dedicated affiliate operations. For a subscription brand where 42% of revenue comes from retention, having clean affiliate operations isn't optional. Shoutout to the Social Snowball ☃️ team for giving us one clean infrastructure to build referral programs the way operators actually want to run them. Check them out here >> https://lnkd.in/gD8-v5Rp #socialsnowballpartner

This excerpt from impact.com highlights a massive shift: the transition from a click-based economy to a citation-based economy. With AI Overviews and LLMs increasingly answering queries directly on the results page, the traditional "affiliate link click" is becoming harder to capture. Based on industry movement for 2026, here is the "Next Big Shift" that will follow the AI search disruption: 1. The Rise of "Agentic Commerce" As we move past simple search summaries, we are entering the era of AI Agents that don’t just recommend products but execute the purchase. The Shift: Instead of a user clicking an affiliate link to buy a vacuum, their AI assistant (using a protocol like OpenAI's or Google’s) completes the transaction via an API. The Impact: Affiliate programs will have to move from cookie-based tracking to API-integrated attribution, where the "partner" is credited when an AI agent pulls their data to make the sale. 2. From SEO to AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) Ranking #1 on Google is no longer the gold standard. The new goal is to become the "Primary Citation" for LLMs. The Shift: Brands are shifting budgets toward Digital PR and "Sentiment SEO." The Impact: Since AI models rely on a "consensus of the internet," affiliate success now depends on how many high-authority sources (Reddit, niche forums, major publications) mention your product favourably. If the LLM doesn't "know" you're the best, you don't exist in the AI summary. 3. "Emotional Performance" & The Human Premium As AI-generated content saturates the web, "helpful" content is being redefined. The Shift: A massive pivot back toward video-first, first-person expertise. The Impact: We are seeing a "Human Premium" where affiliate programs over-index on creators who provide original photography, testing videos, and "ugly" authentic reviews. Users (and AI crawlers) are looking for proof of life, something an LLM cannot fake (yet 😵💫). 4. Outcome-Based "Pay-Per-Mention" Models The standard CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) model is being challenged by the "Zero-Click" reality. The Shift: Hybrid payout structures. The Impact: Top-tier affiliates may start demanding fixed-fee placements or pay-per-citation models. If a publisher's data is the reason an AI recommends a brand, they’ll want to be paid for that influence, regardless of whether the final click happened on their site or inside the AI interface. The bottom line: We’re moving from a world where we track where the user went to a world where we track who influenced the machine. How is your team currently measuring "influence" when the final sale happens inside a chat interface rather than on your site?

The unwritten rules of affiliate marketing ( for beginners ) I've been in affiliate marketing for 10+ years. Finance. Insurance. Health. Gambling. EdTech. Nobody gave me a manual. So here are the rules I had to learn the hard way: 1. Your best affiliate will ghost you one day. It's not about you. Stay calm, stay available. 2. A clean postback setup is worth more than any bonus structure. Fix the tracking first. 3. CR dropping? Before you blame the affiliate — check your landing page, your offer, your funnel. Usually it's on your side. 4. Volume without quality is just noise. And expensive noise at that. 5. The affiliate who complains the most is often the one who cares the most. Listen to them. 6. Never promise what you can't deliver. In this industry, your word is your brand. 7. Read the numbers like a story ,its not just a spreadsheet. What's the click-to-FTD ratio telling you? Why is this GEO converting and not that one? 8. Your finance team is not your enemy. Build that relationship early. Payment delays kill partnerships. 9. The best deals are built on trust, not margins. You can always outbid someone on commission. You can't outbid someone on a relationship. 10. And the one thing I wish I'd known earlier: Affiliate marketing is a people business disguised as a performance channel 😊 The managers who forget that burn out or burn bridges. The ones who remember it build something that lasts. Save this if it's useful. 🔖 Which one hits closest to home? ↓

Most people think more is better. More connections. More partners. More names on the list. But the bigger your roster, the less value you're getting per person. I've audited hundreds of relationship programs. And the pattern is always the same. Founders brag about having thousands of affiliates. Then I ask: how many promoted you last month? The answer is usually under 50. That's not a program. That's a database of strangers asking for free stuff. Here's what actually drives revenue: 1️⃣ THE 30-PARTNER RULE Most programs need 30 high-performing partners, not 3,000 inactive ones. Your top 10 partners will drive 80% of your revenue. Your next 20 will drive 15%. Everyone else is noise. Audit your program: who sent revenue in the last 90 days? If the answer is under 30 people, that's a quality problem. 2️⃣ THE GIVE-FIRST AUDIT Before you ask an affiliate to promote you, ask yourself: What have I done for them? If you haven't built trust first, you're just another pitch in their inbox. Spend 30 days adding value before you ask for anything. Track what you give vs. what you ask. If the ratio is off, fix it. 3️⃣ THE PROXIMITY TEST If you're the biggest name in your affiliate roster, you're in the wrong room. You want partners who are solving problems at your level or beyond. If your best partners are beginners, you'll get beginner-level results. 4️⃣ THE TIME HORIZON The affiliate who promotes you once is worth $10K. The affiliate who promotes you every quarter for 3 years is worth $500K. Stop optimizing for one promotion. Start building for recurring revenue. 5️⃣ THE MUTUAL ELEVATION PRINCIPLE If the relationship only benefits you, it's begging with a commission split. Before recruiting a partner, write down: "Here's what they get from this beyond commission." Ask them directly: "What would make this a win for you?" Build the relationship around mutual goals, not just your launch calendar. If you're sitting here thinking your program needs work, you're not alone. Most programs are built backwards. So here's what you need to do right now: Pull your affiliate roster and figure out promoted in the last 90 days. And circle the top 10. Then, think about the last time you personally reached out to them. You need to schedule 30-minute calls with your top 10 this month. No ask. Just: "How are you? What's working? How can I help?" Stop approving everyone. Start vetting for fit. Because you don't need 3,000 affiliates. You need 30 who actually care. What's one thing you know you should be doing differently in your business but keep putting off? Own it in the comments and make it happen! I break down partnership audits and relationship principles like this in the Four Rooms newsletter. Subscribe here to join today: https://lnkd.in/gUtCUYti ♻️ Repost this to show your network what quality over quantity looks like. And follow me, Amber Spears, for relationship strategies that prioritize quality over vanity metrics.

We added an affiliate program on a whim. 3 months later: $59,551 in revenue added. No ads. No promotion. Here's how to actually run affiliates: 1. Calculate your CAC first. If your customer acquisition cost is $1,000, you can pay affiliates $500-1,000 per referral and still break even or profit. 2. Service businesses: pay 5-15% commission for first project or first 3-12 months. SaaS businesses: pay 10-30% for at least 1 year. Go perpetual if you're bold. 3. Marc Lou does 50% lifetime commission on datafast. It works. 4. Add affiliate link to bottom of every weekly email you send customers. Make it muscle memory. 5. Send one dedicated affiliate promotion email per month. "I'll buy you coffee" for small referrals. "I'll sponsor your Starbucks for a year" for big ones. 6. Put affiliate program on your homepage. Simple Notion page with link to join. 7. Give close-lost deals your affiliate link. They loved your product but weren't ready to buy. Turn them into referral partners instead. 8. When someone says "not now, maybe in 6 months" in cold outreach, send them the affiliate link. Get them in your ecosystem. 9. Train sales team to share affiliate program when customers hit their aha moment. While they're on the high of seeing success. 10. Train customer support to mention affiliates during follow-up calls. "How's your experience? By the way, we pay really well for referrals." 11. Ramp replaced their signup page for existing users with referral flow. Two options: copy link or message LinkedIn connections. 12. The LinkedIn button opens custom search with ICP filters pre-applied. First-degree connections who are founders/CEOs/finance leaders in the US. Makes referring effortless. 13. Credit-based SaaS with fast aha moments and products people brag about using? Every day without affiliates is money lost. 14. Word of mouth is the strongest acquisition channel. Affiliates are word of mouth on steroids. 15. People who promote your product as affiliates eventually become customers themselves. They see others get value, join your email list, enter your ecosystem. 16. Start with 5 referrals/month. 50% improvement in 3 months = 8/month. Compounds fast. 17. If you’re an early-stage startup (<$3M ARR), pull out a separate list of customers that came from referrals and enrich it. Add their LinkedIn profiles, emails, phone numbers, job titles - plus company details from their website (revenue, headcount, industry, region). You’ll usually see these customers retain longer than the rest. Then look for patterns across them and shift your marketing + GTM toward that audience. Same idea as hiring: the best hires are referrals from employees, and the best customers are referrals from customers. Most founders treat affiliates as "maybe we'll get lucky." That's why it doesn't work. Calculate your CAC. Pay 50-100% of that in commission. Put it everywhere users look. The ROI is stupid if you do it right.

FAQs all about Affiliate Tracking Link, Cookies and SubIds. Q: What is an affiliate marketing tracking link? A: An affiliate marketing tracking link is a unique URL assigned to an affiliate, enabling the tracking of clicks, leads, or sales generated through their promotional efforts. It helps merchants attribute conversions to specific affiliates. Q: How does an affiliate tracking link work? A: When a user clicks on an affiliate tracking link, a tracking code or cookie is placed on their device. This code allows the affiliate program or platform to identify and credit the affiliate for any subsequent actions, such as a sale. Q: Can affiliates create their tracking links? A: Yes, affiliates can usually generate their tracking links through affiliate marketing platforms. These links are unique to each affiliate, enabling accurate tracking of their performance. Q: What is the purpose of tracking links in affiliate marketing? A: Tracking links serve to monitor the effectiveness of an affiliate’s promotional efforts. They help in attributing conversions to specific affiliates, determining the success of campaigns, and calculating commissions accurately. Q: How long do tracking cookies typically last? A: The duration of tracking cookies varies. It can range from a few hours to several months, depending on the affiliate program. The cookie duration influences how long affiliates can earn commissions. Q: What happens if a user clears their cookies before making a purchase through an affiliate link? A: If a user clears their cookies, the tracking information associated with the affiliate link is usually lost. In such cases, the affiliate may not receive credit for the sale unless the user clicks the affiliate link again before making the purchase. Q: Are there alternative tracking methods besides cookies in affiliate marketing? A: Yes, some affiliate programs use alternative tracking methods, such as IP tracking or fingerprinting, to identify and credit affiliates. These methods aim to provide more reliable tracking, especially when dealing with cookie restrictions. Q: Can affiliates track the performance of their links in real-time? A: Many affiliate marketing platforms offer real-time tracking, allowing affiliates to monitor clicks, conversions, and commissions as they happen. Real-time data helps affiliates optimize their strategies promptly. Q: What is a sub-ID, and how is it used in affiliate tracking? A: A sub-ID is an additional parameter added to an affiliate tracking link, allowing affiliates to segment and track different sources, campaigns, or channels. It helps affiliates analyze the performance of specific elements within their marketing strategy. Q: Do affiliate marketing platforms provide reporting and analytics tools? A: Yes, most affiliate marketing platforms offer reporting and analytics tools. Affiliates can access data on clicks, conversions, earnings, and more. #affiliatetracking #learnaffiliatemarketing #earnmoneyonline