An affiliate link is a tracked URL that is unique to one partner and, sometimes, to one campaign or placement.
Definition
An affiliate link is a tracked URL that is unique to one partner and, sometimes, to one campaign or placement. When a user clicks it, the link records the click and carries identifiers — the affiliate ID and any sub-parameters — so that any registration, deposit or sale that user completes can be attributed back to that partner and paid accordingly.
In most setups the link does not point straight at the operator; it passes first through the affiliate's tracker, which logs the click, stamps a click ID, and then redirects the user to the offer, sometimes via one more hop such as a safe page or a smartlink.
The link is the contract between the affiliate's traffic and the advertiser's payout. Everything downstream — cookie matching, device fingerprint fallback, or a click ID echoed on the postback — depends on the link being built correctly for the specific source, with the right macros in the right places so the tracker can later break results down by zone, creative and campaign.
In context
Affiliate links routinely hold several sub-parameters. SubID slots (sub1 to sub5, or named parameters) label the traffic source, the specific placement or zone, the creative variant and any A/B split, so a streamer can see which video produced deposits and a push buyer can see which zones to whitelist.
A click ID is generated per click and passed into the offer URL so the advertiser can echo it back on the server-to-server postback, giving cookie-free, cross-device attribution.
Link hygiene is a real and under-appreciated source of lost revenue. Broken redirects drop users before they reach the offer; parameters stripped by an intermediate hop or a strict browser break the SubID breakdown; long redirect chains slow the page and lose mobile clicks; and a mismatch between the click ID the tracker expects and the one the advertiser returns causes conversions to go unattributed.
Affiliates test every new link end to end — click it, complete a test conversion, confirm the postback fires with the right ID — before sending real traffic.
Worked example
A streamer's affiliate link adds sub1=youtube and sub2={video_id}. After a month the tracker shows that three of forty videos drove 70% of deposits; the streamer pins those videos, updates their descriptions with the link, and produces two follow-ups on the same games.
Frequently asked questions
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