An affiliate link is a web address that is used for advertising purposes. Someone signs up as a referral partner of a provider to a so-called affiliate program and receives a special link to promote products. This link is called an affiliate link.
An affiliate link can often be recognized by certain characteristics. Below you will find some examples of an affiliate link:
https://www.provider.com/product/?partner=12345
https://www.provider.com/product/?affiliate=12345
https://www.provider.com/product/?click=12345However, there are many more variations of an affiliate link.
The person who uses an affiliate link is called an "affiliate" or partner. To get this status, one usually has to sign up with an affiliate program, which is usually free of charge. An affiliate program is a kind of alliance between a provider and an advertiser.
An affiliate link is often easy to recognize, because the corresponding address usually contains so-called parameters, which start after "?" and are separated by a "&".
Once the affiliate link is used on the Internet, the following happens:
- Someone sees the affiliate link and clicks on it.
- The clicker is briefly redirected to an intermediate page that connects the user to the responsible affiliate. For this purpose, a cookie is often created that contains the affiliate identifier from the affiliate link as a value.
- The clicker then lands on the offer page where the product advertised/recommended by the affiliate is offered.
- In a special case, if the user who came into contact with the affiliate link orders something from the provider and thus generates a turnover, the affiliate will participate in this turnover with a percentage or a fixed amount.
- As soon as the affiliate/partner reaches the payout limit, he receives his earned commission.
So, the affiliate link is used to measure the performance of the cooperating partner. All his clicks on the link are recorded and thus it is possible to determine who is rewarded with a commission on a sale or other action that is paid.
