Tracking Your Affiliate Partners and Website Earnings.

Years ago, the word organization and I did not belong in the same sentence (some days they still don’t, but I’m so much better than I was before LOL). I really couldn’t even tell you how much I even actually made from affiliate marketing in the early days… I only knew that I made more income than I spent on things in life and that I spent quite a bit.

I had no idea what each site in my arsenal was making either, so for all I knew, some were actually losing money and the others were making up for it. I would need to use an affiliate link and end up spending an hour looking for which network had the advertiser or what my login at said network was. Indie affiliate programs had me constantly resetting my passwords.

But then I started using an excel sheet to get it all organized. It might not be the most advanced way to track these things, but it works for me. 🙂

Tracking Affiliate Partners & Programs

I use a spreadsheet to keep track of every affiliate program I work with. I track the following in that document:

Program name

Main merchant website address

Dashboard or network website address

Dashboard or network username

Dashboard or network password

Name of my contact at the program (if any)

Email of my contact at the program (if any)

Twitter handle of my contact at the program (if any)

The original uncloaked affiliate link for the program (to create new cloaked links when needed)

My cloaked link for that program (why I cloak affiliate links)

The link to my review of the program or product (if any)

The product niche

The product commission rate

Whether or not I have a special commission rate (helps me know who I still need to ask for a higher payout if I’m doing a lot of sales for a product)

How the program pays me (direct deposit, check, Paypal, etc.)

Tracking Affiliate Website Earnings

I use spreadsheets to track each website I own individually. It helps me know where to put my efforts, especially when I’m pressed for time. The below is what I track (note, I include all contextual and display advertising programs as “advertisers”):

Website name

Website address

Date creatives were last updated

SID code used for that website (I use the same SID for all programs for that site)

A list of the merchants I affiliate with for that site

Earnings from each merchant for that site by month

Gross yearly earning totals for each merchant

EPC for each merchant by month and yearly CPC average

Gross yearly affiliate income for each month with all merchants combined

A list of the advertisers I affiliate with for that site

Earnings from each advertiser for that site by month

Gross yearly earning totals for each advertiser

Gross yearly advertiser income for each month with all advertisers combined

Gross total monthly earnings – all in

Gross total annual earnings – all in

A list of expenses (things like domain registration, hosting, promotional costs, development costs, etc.)

The net income the website generated – all in – by month

The net income the website generated – all in – for the year

Author: Rae Hoffman

Courtesy of www.sugarrae.com