How to Keep Track of Your Affiliate Links and Sales

If you’re looking for an easy way to keep track of your affiliate links and programs, look no further my friend! This quick and easy tutorial is going to show you the best way to keep track of those links, programs, and sites that you’re affiliated with.

HOW MANY AFFILIATE PROGRAMS SHOULD YOU JOIN?

Before we dig into keeping track of our affiliate links, let’s answer another important question: how many affiliate programs should you join and promote?

The answer depends on how experienced you are with affiliate marketing, how organized you are, and how much time you have to dedicate to promotions. The more things you want to promote, the more time and attention you’ll need to spend on them.

You really only want to be a part of affiliate programs that fulfil one or all of these rules:

• It’s an affiliate program that makes sense for your brand and will be extremely useful to your audience
• It’s a product or program that you personally use and enjoy sharing with others
• It’s an affiliate program that you have the time and energy to dedicate to learning about, testing out, and creating helpful content that’s connected to the products/services in the program

If the affiliate program fits one or more of these bullet points, it might be worth joining.

As a brand new blogger, you’ll probably want to stick with joining 1-3 affiliate programs. 

For starters, join one program, get familiar with affiliate marketing basics, and write an article that includes your affiliate links. Once you get your feet wet, you can start joining a few other programs that make sense for your brand.

Don’t overdo it. 

The more programs you join, the more content you have to create promoting those programs. So start small and stay focused on helping your readers solve their problems.

{{ Our blog posts contain affiliate links. Full disclosure here.}}

WHAT AFFILIATE PROGRAM TO START WITH

Most new bloggers and creators get started with the Amazon affiliate program, which is fine. It’s a trusted company, which makes it easier to get people clicking on your links. You can join the affiliate program for free right here. 

Their commissions are very low, so it’s a good idea to consider joining at least one other program as backup.

There are thousands of great programs in the Share-a-sale network, so I recommend starting there. You can join Share-a-sale for free right here. 

HOW TO KEEP TRACK OF YOUR AFFILIATE LINKS

Once you’ve joined a few programs, you’ll have some things that you’ll need to keep track of.

Your trackable affiliate link is the most important thing to keep track of. But you’ll also want to keep track of your commission rate, important company info, and your monthly earnings.

It’s also a good idea to keep track of which blog posts contain affiliate links so that you can easily find them and update them if your affiliate link changes in the future.

You can create a simple spreadsheet in excel to keep track of any affiliate information that you need to keep on hand.

If you’re a part of my private email community, you can grab my affiliate tracker spreadsheet from our free community resource page. If you’re not in the community yet, you can sign up right here!

Action time >>> sign up for my private email community right here and get access to my FREE affiliate program tracker and more!

WHAT ABOUT TRACKING AFFILIATE PAYMENTS

Most affiliate companies have an easy-to-understand dashboard where you can see your earnings each month.

For example, in your Share-a-Sale dashboard, your affiliate payments are listed under Reports, and then Payment Summary.

In Flexoffers, your affiliate payments are listed under Reports.

In AWIN, your affiliate payments are listed under Dashboard.

Most accounts will show you which programs you earned from and how much you earned.

You can also use a third-party service like Click Meter to keep track of your affiliate links and conversions all in one place. 

Click Meter is trusted by over 100,000 businesses and they offer 3 tiers of monthly subscriptions to choose from + a 30-day money back guarantee. Try them out here!

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

If you take nothing else away from this article, take this away: KEEP IT SIMPLE.

If you’re just getting started, join a few programs, keep track of them in your affiliate tracker spreadsheet, and focus on creating great content around those products or services.

It takes time and strategy to start seeing those affiliate sales climb, so get started today with a simple baby step. Something like joining an affiliate program or downloading the affiliate program tracker from my private subscriber community.

Small simple steps will get you where you need to go! And if you need additional support, check into my affordable blog coaching options right here.

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