This is sometimes called SubId tracking, or Ad channel tracking, and it is used to know exactly which of your promotion efforts pay off and which do not.
Channels
Channels are the most simple and powerful way to control your traffic.To use it, simply create a new channel for every link/banner placement you want. The channels can be created in affiliate panel in Promotion -> Ad channels.
For example, you can create special channel for your home page, for second page, for AdWords advertisement.
When you have some channels created, you can use them in your affiliate links. You can add parameter chan=CHANNEL_CODE to your link, for example:
https://www.yoursite.com/?a_aid=testaff&chan=home
In the Banners & Links screen you can also choose the Channel, and then all banner codes generated for every banner will already contain channel.
Now the channel will be saved for every click on this link, and the channel information will be transferred also to the referred commission, so you will know exactly what link from which channel led to the commission.
Examples of use:- Testing the best placement for the banner on your website - you can use the same banner, but with different channel for every position - and you will know which one is clicked more or has better CTR.
- PPC campaigns - you can have multiple advertisements using the same affiliate link. By using channel unique for every advertisement you can find out which ones are more effective and have better conversion rate.
Channel reporting
There is report about channels performance available at Reports -> Channel stats report.
It displays performance (impressions, clicks, sales) for every channel.
Additional parameters tracking
Except channels, you can append up to two custom parameters data1 and data2 to the link URL for additional tracking. These parameters will be transferred also to the tracked commission, so you will know exactly what link led to the commission.
Example link with additional parameters:
https://www.yoursite.com/?a_aid=testaff&data1=xyz&data2=abcd
When such link is used the content of data1 and data2 will be visible in Reports:
- in Reports->Raw clicks section after editing the view in columns Extra Data 1 and Extra Data 2
- in Reports->Commissions after editing the view in columns First Click Data 1 and First Click Data 2 or Last Click Data 1 and Last Click Data 2 depending on the overwrite cookie settings and the actual click.
Using this all in SEO links mode
When you check htaccess code, you can see that you can use additional parameters in SEO links too. You have to check this part of the code:
RewriteRule ^/ref/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9]+).html$ https://www.yoursite.com/affiliate/scripts/click.php?a_aid=$1&a_bid=$2&chan=$3&data1=$4 [R=301,L]
So if you want to add channel "home", you can use link
https://www.yoursite.com/ref/testaff/11110000/home
where 11110000 is banner ID. If you want to add also data1, you just have to add one more parameter:
https://www.yoursite.com/ref/testaff/11110000/home/data1/
In default case, data2 can not be used in SEO, but you can easily change your htaccess to receive data2. You need to add new line of the code (in our example this code):
RewriteRule ^/ref/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9]+).html$ https://www.yoursite.com/affiliate/scripts/click.php?a_aid=$1&a_bid=$2&chan=$3&data1=$4&data2=$5 [R=301,L]
SubID / Channels tracking works even with the Site Replication feature as explained here.