How do you setup Google Analytics to track my affiliate sales on a vendor's site?

I've lurked on these forums sporadically over the last few years (hi by the way!), figured I'd take the plunge and get round to registering and asking a question.

I've been successfully promoting a clickbank product and am making sales and the normal clickbank analytic reports work fine. However I want to take my analytics to the next level and the vendor has kindly agreed to install whatever tracking code I want on his order complete page, so I've been looking at setting up Google Analytics goal and funnel tracking from my affiliate site to his clickbank vendor site.

Using the new asynchronous Google tracking code, I've got cross domain tracking working, with the addition of the required extra lines:

var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
[I][B]  _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'none']);
  _gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);[/B][/I]
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

Code (markup):

On test domains, I've setup a goal url from the vendor site and funnel that mixes both affiliate and vendor domain urls. I'm also linking to the test vendor domain correctly, using google's javascript to pass the cookie information, thus:

<a href="http://www.testvendor.com/goal-test-1.html" onclick="_gaq.push(['_link', 'http://www.testvendor.com/goal-test-1.html']); return false;">Goal test 1</a>

Code (markup):

This all works fine, and my Google Analytics (GA) account shows goal conversions on the test vendor site. Now for the but. BUT there are a couple of issues I haven't figured out:

1) How do I exclude conversions from other affiliates, or the vendor himself? I tried ticking the "Required Step" on the GA funnel step but the funnel visualisation report still showed entrants coming in directly to the goal page and bypassing the funnel. Nor did it stop the goal conversion stats showing conversions that weren't mine. (To be clear, I specifically tested for this by going to my test goal url and bypassing the funnel.)

2) I cloak the hoplinks (obviously) through a permanent redirect in my .htaccess file, so what do I put in the onclick="_gaq.push... bit: the actual url (as in my tests), the clickbank link, or the cloaked link? I'm guessing that clickbank will strip out the google cookie code that gets added to the outgoing link.

What I'm most amazed about is that I've spent hours and hours trawling the web looking for setup help for this, and can't find it anywhere. Surely using GA to track clickbank affiliate sales is something thousands of affiliates want to do? OR am I missing a trick somewhere?

Sorry for the long first post, your patience and feedback is appreciated.

 

I don't think that's possible to filter out the sales that other affiliates are making. The only solution I can think of, is to ask the vendor to set-up another copy of the sales page with another copy of the product, replace the product id on the add to cart button and send the user on a different thank you page which is set-up only for that product, so you can add your tracking script there..

you will also need a script to do a redirect job on the affiliate link.. so it will look something like : xxx.greenjk.hop.clickbank.net/?page=2 .

Good luck!

 

Thanks Alex. I've been on to ClickBank too to see if they can provide a video / help page explaining how to do it. But I concur with you, it's not looking too easy.

The best way to do this (it seems to me) is to get ClickBank to implement conditional GA code on their order process. By that I mean, as an affiliate I give ClickBank my GA ID, they obviously know when a sale comes from my hoplink and so they add my GA ID to their order processing pages. Then it doesn't need to touch the Vendor's thank you page. They would need to deal with my point 2) above though and would need to supply me with the right url for their ordering process to add to my GA Goal Funnel, but that would do it.

 

Hi GeeCee,

We have a custom solution who can solve your analytics problems. Ivanhoe connects Google Analytics to your preferred Affiliate Networks. You will see your affiliate transactions showing up as it was a transaction on your own website.

Please visit http://ivanhoe.io for more information.

Best regards,

Bart Houtman