An affiliate emailed me the following question about a program run on an affiliate network:
I’d like you to send me a custom text link that I can modify as necessary — the html code in which I can plug in any web address and text.
The answer will depend on the affiliate network. Some affiliate networks have a special affiliate tool to help you create such custom links to merchants’ pages. With others, you will have to work without a tool. Below you can learn how to create custom links on 3 affiliate networks (LinkShare, ShareASale, and Commission Junction):
— LinkShare ——————————————————————————–
Go to Links > Deep Linking > select advertiser and URL to link to [see image below]
— ShareASale ——————————————————————————
Go to Get Links > Create a Custom Link to a Page > select merchant, destination URL, etc [see screenshot below]
— Commission Junction —————————————————————
While this network doesn’t have a “deep linking” tool available, there is a way to create custom links, and that can be done by appending a ?url= parameter to your affiliate URL [thanks for this tip, Kim!]. So go to Get Links > your advertiser > View Links > work with the available links.
If it doesn’t work with a regular link, try it with a product link instead. Sometimes it doesn’t work with the former, but does with the latter.
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BONUS
After Gary Marcoccia’s comment under this post, I decided to also add AvantLink to the list:
— AvantLink ——————————————————————————-
Go to Tools > Custom Link Tool [see image below]
While not exactly the same thing as custom linking, Commission Junction announced the beta version to CJ Links at CJU 2010. This account tool makes it easier to find and create product links for hundreds of CJ merchant. While still in beta, all CJU attendees were automatically granted access to this beta.
Thanks, Mike. Very interesting information, which I didn’t know.
A deep linking tool is probably the single most important (and simple) tool to provide for Affiliates. Not sure why any network would not offer it. GM
I couldn’t agree more, Gary, and I’ve just added AvantLink to the list too. You, guys, do a splendid job caring about your affiliates!
Thanks for adding us, Geno 🙂
I like to cloak my links but CJ states that you shouldn’t remove any part of the link including the image source or it will affect tracking. But if it’s a text link, why do I need to include the image source?
Stephanie, I also do not believe that the exclusion of the image source will affect the tracking in any way, but you may want to double-check with CJ.
Quick note on the CJ deep linking.
Rather than manually scanning the available links for one with a URL param, simply search for “Deep Link” within the GoDaddy links.
There is a text link (10388358) and image link (10497118) provided that explicitly permit deep linking.
I’m going to give them a shot on my domain search app (namevine.com), specifically deep linking to WHOIS results. I’ll update here if there are any surprises to share.
I would simply like to create a link to the homepage of the website I am promoting using Commission Junction. Can anyone point me in the right direction? I can’t figure it out.
Log into your Commission Junction affiliate/publisher account > Go to “Get Links” tab > Find the advertiser you want to link to > Click their name (a pop-up window will appear) > In the pop-up window (under “Get Links” on the right-hand side) choose “All(Except Products)”) and find their homepage link there > Choose “Get JavaScript” or “Get HTML” in the very last column (to retrieve the code you’d be using).