RevenueWire Tutorial Center

How To Create a Custom Affiliate Link

Create a Custom Affiliate Link Tool

Looking for an advantage when building your campaigns? RevenueWire offers you the option of using the Create a Custom Affiliate Link Tool, located on the individual Product Pages in your Affiliate Account Dashboard.

The Create a Custom Affiliate Link Tool itself is very simple and easy-to-use. It consists of a URL field and naming field. All you have to do is enter your custom URL (i.e., the address of the download where it’s located on your server) into the tool, name it, and click ‘Submit’.

The Create a Custom Affiliate Link Tool is primarily used to help you host your own downloads. When you use the tool this way, your custom URL drops a cookie on the customer’s computer before directing them to the download of the product located on your server. The cookie is what ensures you get credited for the sale.

Custom Affiliate Links differ from Direct Merchant URLs, Direct Download URLs, and Direct Registration URLs. For details on how these link types are different, see our FAQ titled: What are the different types of links and when should I use them?

*Note: If you decide to use the tool to host your own downloads, be sure to email your Affiliate Manager directly. This is to ensure they contact you when there are updates/changes made to the product build. You can also email affiliates@revenuewire.com to notify RevenueWire of your intent to self-host.

The Benefit of Using This Tool

Using a custom affiliate link to host your own downloads has historically proven to generate more sales for our affiliates. There are a couple of reasons why. First, using your own custom URL means you can better synchronize your creative (i.e., landing pages, website pages) with your advertising efforts (PPC ads, banners ads, etc.), which in turn boosts your conversion rates because customers are clicking through a seamless purchase experience. Second, using a custom affiliate link works better with Google and Adcenter. When you host the download yourself, Google doesn’t identify the page as a bridge page, which means you avoid getting slapped.

The Create a Custom Affiliate Link Tool is not limited to just self-hosted downloads, either. It can also be used to link to any page on a merchant site that is SafeCart Certified®. If you decide to use the tool for this purpose, be aware that if the merchant is not an exclusive SafeCart customer (i.e., it offers other payment methods), you could end up losing credit for the sale.

Whichever way you decide to incorporate it into your campaigns, the Create a Customer Affiliate Link Tool is very easy-to-use. Here’s a step-by-step process of how it works:

1)   Login to your RevenueWire Affiliate Account. Go to the Product Tab and open the Product Page of the software you want to promote.
2)   Download the .exe file from the Direct Download link provided.
3)   Upload the file to your server.
4)   Copy the URL for this file (i.e., its address on your server).
5)   Return to the Product Page in your RW Account Dashboard and paste the copied URL into the ‘URL field’ provided in the Create Custom Link Tool.
6)   Give the new URL a name (for your reference only).
7)   Click the ‘Submit’ button.
8)   Your new affiliated download URL will appear alongside the landing pages under the name you provided in the previous step.
9)   You can now use this URL in your “Download” button on your site and get credit for sales.

Important Things To Remember

Be aware that when you use custom links and self-hosted downloads you will also have to create your own advertisements and landing pages/websites. While there is obviously more work involved in using the custom link strategy, it has ultimately proven to generate higher revenue for our affiliates and could prove worth the extra effort in the end.

There’s one more thing to remember. Always have the most up-to-date product build uploaded onto your server. If the merchant decides to update the product build, and you don’t upload the latest version onto your server, you will run into problems making sales.