Hi AffLIFTers
Iām still pretty new to affiliate marketing but I'm feeling a lot more confident that I did when I first got started. In the beginning, one of the things I struggled with IMMENSELY was tracking tokens⦠but after persisting for about a month I had a nice little lightbulb moment and since then itās been smooth sailing. I shared this post on STM a few months ago and the post was really well received and is still getting some attention over there even though Iām not active on that forum at the moment.
Iāve been meaning to share this over here for a while and after seeing the post from
@Nick earlier today (see below) I thought I would get onto it.
If youāre struggling with tracking tokens and URL parameters, hopefully Nick's post above or the rest of this post might trigger a lightbulb for you the way it did for me.
When I first started out Iād be reading a guide or blog post and Iād be following along with this or that and just when I thought I had it figured out thereād be something like, āā¦donāt forget to add
&tid=[IMPRESSIONID] at the end of the offer URLā.
ā¦and Iād be like, āOK, I get the [IMPRESSIONID] is a
PopAds token (and Iād give myself a big pat on the back for even knowing that much), but why is the parameter name ātidā? Where did that come from? Why isnāt it āsidā like it was in the last follow along? Or ās2ā like that blog I read before?
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I mean, it seems like URLs roll off most affiliateās tongues like theyāre at Starbucks ordering their morning iced half caff ristretto venti 4-pump sugar free cinnamon dolce soy skinny latte⦠but I was a mess.
Then one day, I was setting up a new
traffic source and something just clicked.
Hereās what the new traffic source set up screen looks like in
FunnelFlux if youāre setting up
MGID:
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Which suddenly reminded me of something Iāve seen a thousand times:
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And the thing that clicked for me was that the registration form above is simply
a way for a website to capture information for its database, where itās directing the user to enter the information it wants for its various database slots: āNameā, āCompanyā, āEmailā and āPhoneā.
And thatās when I realised that thatās what tracking tokens are doing ā theyāre identifying
the name of the slot and
the required information to be entered into each slot.
I guess what I really saw when I pictured an online registration form in my mind was that instead of requiring some dude to fill out a form with the data my
tracker wants (and heād never do that) I can use URL parameters to ask the database from the traffic network or affiliate network (that has already captured information about the dude) to do me a favour and āfill out the form for himā so to speak.
But the problem for me has always been the way that different
traffic sources and
affiliate networks call their slots different things (even though they're tracking the same information), but then the lightbulb lit up and I saw this something like this in my mind:
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Which is when I realised for the first time that if I want a website to send some dudeās info to me then I just need to find the tokens the sending site uses that correspond with the slots I want to populate when I receive the data (or vice versa).
e.g. https:// www. coolevent. com/?name={whatchacalled}&company={yabidness}&email={inboxinfo}&phone={demdigits}
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Of course, the reverse is also true. If Iām sending the dude from my tracker to the offer and I want to pass the info I have about the dude, then I do the reverse:
https:// www. eventdirectory. com/?whatchacalled={name}&yabidness={company}&inboxinfo={email}&demdigits={phone}
Now I know some of you guys are shrugging between sips of your iced half caff ristretto ventis and wondering what all the fuss is about, but I just felt so much relief since this sunk in and I know that there are newbs like me who are scratching their heads the way I was in the beginning, and hopefully this might help them grow some hair back!
And just to have a bit of fun with the whole thing, hereās the story I wrote for myself when I was trying to test myself to see if I understood ā itās about a dude called Bob and his wonderful adventures in my funnel:
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I really hope it might help you in some way if youāre still struggling with this stuff ā even if it just serves to give you confidence that one day, maybe right out of the blue, itāll all make sense and youāll finally be able to relax and just get on with it.