If you’re running pay-per-click ads, you obviously want to track your stats for each keyword. This is easy to do whether you’re promoting your own products on your own site, or you’re promoting an affiliate offer.

This guide covers the case where you have your own landing page which ultimately drives traffic to an affiliate network offer.

When working with an affiliate network, you generally have two options to track sales conversions: tracking pixels and Postback URLs. Tracking pixels are easier to set up than Postback URLs, but Postback URLs can be more accurate sometimes.

So, first, choose which tracking option you need to use, then review the following steps for tracking your keywords.


Option 1 – Use a Conversion Tracking Pixel

If the affiliate network you’re working with allows you to add “tracking pixels” to record conversions, the setup process is straightforward.

All you need to do is pass your keyword data to your incoming UTM URL, as explained in our guide on Tracking PPC Keywords, and then add ClickMagick’s Sales Tracking Pixel into your affiliate network.

Setting up tracking pixels is much easier than setting up Postback URLs (below), but it can be slightly less accurate if a visitor has poor internet service and their pages don’t load consistently. For that reason, we suggest using Postback URLs in the next section if your affiliate network supports them and you have some experience. (You can always start with tracking pixels and upgrade to Postback URLs later).
   

Option 2 (Recommended) – Use a Postback URL or ClickBank’s Instant Notification URL

Using Postback URLs is 100% reliable, but setting them up is much more technical. You can start with tracking pixels, but at some point in your online marketing journey, you will want to learn how to use and set up Postback URLs (also called server-to-server tracking).

To learn about Postback URLs, read this article:

How do I track sales using Postback URLs?
 

How to Track Your Keywords with Postback URLs

You'll need to perform a couple of steps to track your keywords if you’re using Postback URLs. Just follow the steps below, and you should be set up in no time:

Step 1 – Set up your keyword tracking

The first part is to set up keyword tracking with your tracking links. We have a full explanation of how to set up keyword tracking in this article:
   

Step 2 – Pass the “click ID” to your affiliate link

Every click that hits one of your landing pages has a unique click ID, and this unique ID is critical to tracking affiliate sales using Postback URLs. For Postback URLs to work, you need to pass this click ID to your affiliate link

If you’ve inserted additional pages—such as a thank you page—between the landing page and the affiliate network’s first page, you’ll need to pass that click ID from your Campaigns URL through your pages and then on to the affiliate network.

Passing the click ID through your pages is explained in this article:
   

And that’s all there is to it!

If you’re new to this stuff, it might sound very technical, but if you follow the steps closely, you should have no problems setting up your Postback URL. If you do, contact our Helpdesk and we’ll help you.

Article 146 Last updated: 03/09/2023 5:16:29 PM
https://www.clickmagick.com/kb/?article=146