How to Track your Clickbank (etc.) affiliate sales via adwords

Hey,

I came up with a way to track my clickbank and other networkd sales as an affilaite via adwords.

Maybe I am not the first one to find it out, but I want to share since this forum has given me a lot.

First the flipside, there is a limit to 8 characthers (for CB) and this is a limitation within the Clickbank tracking system. Nothing we can do.

This technique works for any network that allows tracking codes to be added to affiliate URL's. You need to read their instructions, there may be character limitations, no space allowed or anything else that will mess it up.

What you do is, in Adwords when creating an ad,
Change your regular CB link:
i.e. http://yourusername.theirproduct.hop.clickbank.net

(Note: The Warrior Forum truncated the dsiplated URL's, hover the link to see it in the lower part of your browser)

To this:

http://yourusername.theirproduct.hop.clickbank.net?tid={k eyword:default}

(where "default" is your "fallback" keyword if no dynamic insterion was available)

Now when you have a sale, you log in to clickbank and check your referrers,
and you will see which keyword made the sale.

Unfortunately, you only see the first 8 charachters if the keyword phrase is longer.

There you have the basics.
I know, I know, you should send traffic to a landing page, not to the clickbank url.

Well, not so hard to do...

In your adwords ad, make the link to
http://www.YourLandingSite.com/yourpage.php?key={keyword}

Make your landing page a PHP file (here called yourpage.php).
On that page you link to the product using this link:

http://yourusername.theirproduct.hop.clickbank.net?tid=<? echo $_GET['key'] ?>

Ta-daaa!

This is what happens;
Adwords dynamic keyword insertion inserts the keyword like this:
http://www.YourLandingSite.com/yourp...ey=playstation

In turn, your landing page creates this link to the product:
http://yourusername.theirproduct.hop...id=playstation

(which, in terms of Clickbank would be interpreted as tracking code playstat because of the 8 char limit).

To test that it works like it should you can go to this link:
http://www.YourLandingSite.com/yourpage.php?key=testkey

and hover your affilaite link and make sure it links to:
http://yourusername.theirproduct.hop...et?tid=testkey

I hope you found this useful! It has it's limits, but being able to track keywords as an affiliate (for free) is something a lot of people have been wanting I think.

Feel free to comment!