What is affiliate tracking?
Affiliate tracking is the process of managing and tracking marketing activities, usually through the use of special software and various plug-ins installed on affiliate websites.
Affiliate website sales, conversions, and clicks are tracked to measure affiliate performance. This is to enable the affiliate network owner to track the performance of their affiliates, to measure what traffic and revenue increases are being achieved and to receive appropriate compensation.
Affiliate tracking is used by companies that own affiliate networks to manage their affiliates and gain insight into the performance of each affiliate and the network as a whole.
This enables both the network owner and the individual partners to determine which parts of the network are receiving the most visitors, conversions, hits or clicks and whether a marketing campaign is working or not.
Many types of affiliate tracking software are used depending on the business model, most of which show graphs of various metrics. Popular affiliate networks are Amazon and Ebay, which award commissions on every purchase made by or through their affiliates.
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