SubID tracking: How to use it

Taking on the role of an affiliate marketer comes with many responsibilities. If you’re planning to make a serious income via affiliate commissions, you will have to start wearing multiple hats, including that of a content creator and data analyst. In regard to the latter one, you’ll have to think outside the box when it comes to data collection.

After all, the success of your affiliate offers depends on how well you’re able to optimize your content to get as many conversions as possible. So, how do you know when and where to make changes on your website to best optimize your link placement? Easy – by using SubIDs for in-depth data tracking. Here’s what a SubID is and how it can help you take your affiliate marketing business to the next level!

What is a SubID?

Most simply put, a SubID is a query parameter attached to the end of an affiliate link that helps you track additional data. In most cases, affiliate networks only allow you to check basic data such as transactions and commission amounts. Frankly, you’re going to need more information than that in order to make better decisions for your business. That’s where a SubID can help you. A SubID attached to your affiliate link helps you get more insight into what links/products convert best, as well as where your visitors are coming from.

What Does a SubID Look Like?

A SubID is a part of the URL that’s placed at the very end of the string. The exact structure of your URL and SubID will depend on the affiliate network you’re using, as different affiliate networks name their URL components differently. However, in most cases, a SubID will look something like this:

Once you add the SubID parameter to your link, you will be able to track additional data each time a user clicks on that affiliate link. Your SubID for each transaction will show up in your commission reports.

You can use SubIDs for the following:

• Segment leads
• Optimize campaigns
• Improve conversions
• Cashback
• Location on a page (top, article, bottom, etc...)
• Calls to action
• Type of page (reviews, overview, price listing, etc...)
• Keywords / Ads
• Sources (Organic, PPC, Email, etc.)
• Sub-Affiliates
• etc...

The SubID will also allow you to improve your knowledge of the performance of a page or an affiliate link by calculating its EPC for example.

How to use it ?

To use SubID, you will have to add a parameter to your link:
https://example.com/product?parameter=value
parameter: you will find this parameter for each network on this page
value: your personalized value, for most affiliate networks you have characters restriction.

Awin (Affiliate Window)

You can use 6 SubId per link with 50 characters maximum: clickref, clickref2, clickref3, clickref4, clickref5, clickref6

Here is an example with Awin :
http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=111&awinaffid=222&clickref=myheader

Effiliation

You can use 2 SubId per link with 255 characters maximum: effi_id, effi_id2

Here is an example:
http://track.effiliation.com/servlet/effi.redir?id_compteur=111&effi_id=myheader

eBay Partner Network

You can use 1 SubId per link: customid

Here is an example:
https://www.ebay.com/?mkcid=1&mkrid=1111&siteid=71&campid=1234566&customid=myheader&toolid=10001&mkevt=1

Performance Horizon

You can use 1 SubId per link: pubref

Here is an example:
http://prf.hn/click/camref:11111/pubref:myheader

ShareASale

You can use 1 SubId per link with 255 characters maximum: afftrack

Here is an example:
http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=111&u=222&m=333&urllink=&afftrack=myheader

Impact Radius

You can use 3 SubId per link and 1 SharedId:

• subId1: alphanumeric, 64 characters
• subId2: alphanumeric, 64 characters
• subId3: alphanumeric, 32 characters
• sharedid: string, 32 characters

Here is an example:
https://trackingdomain.net/c/mpid/adid/campaignid?subId1=myheader&u=url

Daisycon

You can use 3 SubId per link: ws

Here is an example:
https://ds1.nl/c/?si=xxx&li=zzz&wi=eee&ws=myheader&dl=url

Rakuten (Linkshare)

You can use 1 SubId per link with 72 characters maximum: u1

Commission Junction

You can use 1 SubId per link: sid

Here is an example:
https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/1234546/type/dlg/sid/myheader/https://www.website.uk/

Webgains

You can use 1 SubId per link: clickref

Here is an example:
https://track.webgains.com/click.html?wgcampaignid=123456&wgprogramid=1233456&clickref=myheader&wgtarget=https://www.website.com/

Affiliate Future

You can use 1 SubId per link: tracking

Tradedoubler

You can use 2 SubId per link with 64 characters maximum: epi and epi2

Here is an example:
https://clk.tradedoubler.com/click?p=46&a=123456&epi=myheader&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwebsite.xom%2F

Adtraction

You can use 1 SubId per link: epi

Here is an example:
https://track.adtraction.com/t/t?a=123&as=123&t=2&tk=1&epi=myheader&url=https://www.website.com/

Flexoffers

You can use 1 SubId per link: fobs

Here is an example:
https://track.flexlinkspro.com/a.ashx?foid=&&&&foc=1&fot=22&fos=1&fobs=myheader&url=ur

Netaffiliation

You can use 1 SubId per link: argsite

Here is an example:
http://action.metaffiliation.com/trk.php?mclic=AAA&redir=url&argsite=myheader

Partnerize

You can use 1 SubId per link with 100 characters maximum: pubref

Here is an example:
https://prf.hn/click/camref:123456/pubref:myheader/destination:https%3A%2F%2Fwebsite.com%2F

Tradetracker

You can use 1 SubId per link with 255 characters maximum: tt

Here is an example:
http://www.wwww.nl/tradetracker/?tt=11_11_111111_myheader&r=url

Amazon

There is no possibility to add subid to an Amazon URL anymore

How affiliate SubIds work

Once you create an affiliate link and set the desired SubID parameter, the next step is to embed this link on your website or share it across your social networks (wherever you plan to market the product). Once a customer clicks on your affiliate link, the SubID parameter gets passed to the advertiser, thus directing the customer to the advertiser’s website where they can make a purchase.

The affiliate network you’re using will show the corresponding SubIDs in your reports, along with the regular conversion data, thus giving you more insight on what type of content or link led to this conversion. You can then use this data to determine what strategies work best and thus optimize your future offers for better conversions.

How to automate your SubID tracking with Strackr

The problem with Subids is that there is no universal parameter for because every affiliate network has a different version. Manually entering all of this data takes time, give errors with wrong copy/pastes which will result in lost.

Strackr provide tools like a Link Builder allows you to create tracking links and manage SubIds to any page all in one place, check out the video:

In the internal documentation dedicated to the API, we offer a more in-depth list of Subids, the number of characters that can be added and other important parameters such as the one dedicated to the redirection to deep pages of the advertiser's site, like a product page for example.

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