How To Track Source of Affiliate Traffic?

How can a vendor find out where the affiliate traffic is coming from?

I have a product and I'm looking to find out why a couple of affiliates aren't converting while others are.

I understand that they may be sending crap traffic but I still want to see where's that traffic coming from. Is there any way to track it?

I am not sure how to do it the right way. Any advice will be appreciated.

 

Install a stat statcounter code on your page.

 

Hi jack8, the 51 would help you find out where the traffic comes from.

 

Are you talking about area 51?

Why is everything about you so funny? Even your product RegistryMum lmao. Will the next one be RegistryDad, RegistryAunt or what?

 

^Statcounter is a great tool, however if your affiliates are smart they'll blank out the ref. so you don't see/know how they market. Most affiliates that have been around the block long enough, who structure bigger campaigns DO NOT want you seeing what they are doing, because they fear you'll just outresource them use them as your guinea pigs. YOU could be an angel but it doesn't matter. I see it on my offers all the time, aff's go to great lengths sometimes (multiple redirects/other sneaky shit) to hide from the vendor.

The ones that do campaigns openly, pretty much any counter/analytics tool will pluck out referring URLS, you'll see what people search for in SE's to find you/your aff's, and when people return/exit you get to monitor the whole path/length stayed/and help figure out where and how to improve your users experience. Just never use the data you find against your aff's, or try to outdo them, or share successful aff's campaigns with other aff's and you'll be fine. The ones that don't want to be found - don't look for them just let them earn quietly and they'll stick around for as long as they are profitable.

 

Good post NCMedia, I endorse your post, lol.

 

I like statcounter, but there are hundreds of products out there to choose from....

 

You can see it in your Google Analytics...I hope you have set up one...

 

Thanks for the responses.

@waxman: I haven't used statcounter before but I'll set it up on a site to see how it works.

@rickmi: Yes, there are but I wanted to know something that works the best for everyone.

@NC Media: Thanks for the advice. I really don't have any intention to identify what methods affiliates are using. I saw a couple of them sending a lot of hops with poor sales and I wanted to know how they sent that traffic. They could be buying cheap hits, running ads on porn sites or doing anything like that.

A few months ago, there was a thread where someone was getting cheap chinese hits. I just wanted to know if that was the case with my site too. I won't do anything that goes against affiliates.

@centarec: I'm using Google Analytics and it doesn't seem to provide what I'm looking for.

I'm still looking to find out the source of non-converting traffic but I guess I'll just have to get extra bandwidth to accommodate the cheap hits Thanks everyone for the help.

 

I'm not sure if you can track your affiliate's traffic, the traffic you can track is your own.

Not a vendor yet, but I've noticed vendors replying to this thread and there's still no answer to your questions.

I guess you can only track your own traffic and not someone else's.

The only way you might be able to do that is if your affiliates would be using a php clicks script of some sort I guess. (and that script you can monitor)

Al.

 

Yes,

You can - and once you ARE a vendor mate, you'll see - Someone elses traffic yes, but it's going to your site eventually, and you track that - and if/when people return more than once, even the aff's that blank you out get found eventually (any real smart vendor has more than one analytics tool, and can pull all kinds of data from the smart traffic/blanking aff's). Where there is a radar detector, there is a detector for the radar detector...

Jacky - go to http://www.statcounter.com and get a free invisible one, put it in the footer of all your pages, including your thank you page.

** Tomorrow/when you have traffic to analyze, click on 'visitor paths' and you'll see all your traffic, some of your open aff's traffic (the ones that don't blank you out on purpose, you'll see...), you'll see all your PPC direct affiliates and what keys they popped up for, you'll see your aff's landers (the non blanking ones), and yes you'll see the bot traffic/where/how it's coming in too. My guess is it's PPV (don't get more bandwidth, it's absolute shite traffic 99% of the time - email CB and tell them to send that person a warning to stop instead, I do it all the time/ban people this way too).

 

I would think that if you were a good affiliate you would make your self invisible in that area. I can see a vendor getting the know how or stealing there "how to get traffic" ideas and leaving the aff's out while the vendor takes all the money.. I dont know..............

 

NC ..

I'm either not understanding what the initial thread starter asked or what you've just said above...

Please enlighten us.

Is there any way to track affiliate's traffic... ?

I mean the sources of traffic that they're getting to their landing pages...

Not the incoming traffic to the vendor site...

Let me give you an example..

One of your affiliates is driving insane amounts of spam traffic via PTC and he/she is framing one of his/her websites. Can you tell from your analytics alone that the affiliate is getting PTC traffic on their landing page?

If so that basically means we could track almost any site's traffic then, which in my opinion is impossible

Again, if I am a little off topic, that's really what I want to find out. If a vendor can track the sources of traffic to the affiliate's landing page (not the direct traffic to the vendor's sale page -- that can easily be done with almost any analytics tool.

Thanks
Al.

 

The "HTTP referrer" is a HTTP header field that allow websites and web servers to identify where people are visiting them from.

Example: if my website is www.HelloNuts.com, and My Affiliates Are Promoting trough their own landingpage www.HelloNutsReviews.com. The statistics of my website (www.HelloNuts.com) will show that the "HTTP referrer" of my visitors are www.HelloNutsReviews.com

"The HTTP header" include only the "previous url of the website that particular user was browsing". Therefore there are some limitations on how one can identify the actual source of traffic - example if there are multiple redirections, framing and such ticks

I hope this might clarifyies more what have already been told

 

Therefore framing and redirections can't be tracked ..

I thought so

Al.

 

Read his question again:

It's not a YES/NO answer as pessimistic as you always love to be precious. 'Thought So' doesn't mean shit, and you said it yourself, you're not a vendor and haven't been in this position, THAT should be enlightening enough.

Re-read the responses, you just seem to want to get that last word in there and feel right or what?

 

lol precious lol

 

I appreciate all the responses.

@Norb: I have implemented statcounter on the site's home and thankyou page. I look forward to identifying the source of cheap hits. Btw, I am not gonna ask CB to disconnect those hops atm. I just want to make sure that it is the traffic and not the copy that is responsible for poor conversions for those 2 affiliates

 

I am sorry to be opening this thread....I've had a backlog of reading to do on this forum. Catching up though. This one is particularly interesting.

As an affiliate- I would really like to know - how I can hide the sources of my traffic from the vendor. Not doing anything shady - but I am putting in a lot of effort/work to ensure I rank for the KW's I do.

Any suggestions on how I can hide the sources of my traffic- I would really appreciate your inputs