Affiliate link tracking is the plumbing behind every commission you earn. A reader clicks a link, buys something, and the merchant pays you. Between those two moments a chain of records has to hold together, and when one link in it breaks, the sale happens but the commission does not.
Most affiliates never look at that chain until something goes wrong. Yet the same mechanism that credits the sale can tell you which article or button produced it. Below is how the chain works, how Amazon handles it with tracking IDs, and what you can measure without paying for a tracker.
What is affiliate tracking?
Affiliate tracking is the process a merchant or network uses to connect a sale to the affiliate who sent the buyer. It starts with a tagged link. The URL you place on your page carries your affiliate ID, either as a parameter or inside a redirect that the network controls.
When the reader clicks, the merchant or network records the click, commonly by setting a cookie in the reader’s browser that stores your ID. If the reader buys within the programme’s cookie window, the order is matched back to that stored ID and credited to you. If the window has closed, or the cookie never got set, the sale is unattributed and nobody is paid for it.
Cookie windows vary by programme, and they change, so check the terms of each one you join rather than relying on a figure from memory. Our guide to the Impact affiliate program covers how one large network handles this, and the Amazon Associates commission rates post covers what Amazon pays once a sale is credited.
The weak points are predictable. A redirect plugin that strips the ID, a link rewritten by a page builder, or a reader on a browser that blocks the cookie can all break the chain. None of them shows up as an error, only as clicks that never pay.
Amazon affiliate link tracking with tracking IDs
Amazon’s version of this is the tracking ID. Your Associates account has a main ID, and you can add more. Amazon describes tracking IDs as “identifiers that can be generated in your Amazon Associates portal to track performance”, and is clear about what they are not: “Tracking IDs remain associated with your main Associates ID and do not constitute separate accounts.”
You create them through “Manage your Tracking ID” in your Associates account. According to Amazon’s help page, “How do I request multiple tracking IDs?”, the purpose is to “analyze traffic from different Web sites or merchandising strategies”. The same page sets “a limit of 100 Tracking IDs per associate account”; if you need more, you contact Associates Customer Service.
The results come back in the “Tracking ID Summary Report”, which breaks earnings down by ID. That is the whole point: if every Amazon link on your site uses the same ID, you can see that you earned money, but not where it came from.
| Question | What Amazon states |
|---|---|
| Where to create them | “Manage your Tracking ID” in your Associates account |
| What they are for | To “analyze traffic from different Web sites or merchandising strategies” |
| How many | “a limit of 100 Tracking IDs per associate account” |
| Need more | Contact Associates Customer Service |
| Where the data appears | The “Tracking ID Summary Report” |
| Separate accounts? | No: they “remain associated with your main Associates ID” |
If you have not yet been accepted into the programme, the Amazon Associates requirements come first. If you run international traffic through Amazon OneLink, note that each linked country uses its own default tracking ID, so the same discipline applies there.
How to split tracking IDs so the report means something
A limit of 100 sounds generous until you try to give every article its own ID. The more useful approach is to decide what question you want the report to answer, and split along that line. Three common splits work well.
- By site. One ID per website, which is the use Amazon names first. It stops a second site’s earnings blurring into the first.
- By content type. Reviews, comparison posts, buying guides and deals pages each get an ID, so you can see which format earns.
- By placement. A comparison table, an in-text link and a button get different IDs, which shows whether readers buy from the table or the prose.
Combine them sparingly. A site-plus-placement split is readable; a site, content type, placement and month split becomes a spreadsheet nobody opens. Keep a short log of what each ID means.
One rule from the Amazon Associates Operating Agreement is worth knowing here. Amazon may issue additional sub-tag Associate IDs on request, subject to its approval, to monitor Special Links, but you may not associate any sub-tag or reporting with a specific end user of your site. Tracking IDs are for pages, sites and strategies. They are not for tagging individual readers, and building a per-visitor scheme on top of them is against the terms.
Is there a free affiliate link tracker?
Yes, and you probably already have it. The free affiliate link tracker most sites need is the tracking the programme gives you, used properly, plus UTM tags in your own analytics. Paid tools add convenience, not sales the programme does not report.
On Amazon, that means tracking IDs. On most other networks, it means sub-IDs or click references: a free-text field you append to the affiliate link, which the network echoes back in its conversion report. Put the page slug or placement in that field and you get the same per-page breakdown Amazon’s tracking IDs provide.
UTM parameters cover the other half. They tag traffic arriving at your site, so your analytics can show which source sent the readers who later clicked out. Our guide to UTM parameters and SEO covers where they help and where they cause duplicate-URL problems. Together, UTMs tell you where readers came from, and sub-IDs tell you which outbound link earned the sale.
Once you have both, the natural next number is earnings per click by page or placement. The affiliate EPC guide explains how to calculate it on your own traffic rather than trusting a network average.
Where affiliate link tracking breaks
Most lost commissions trace back to a handful of causes. Redirects are the first. If you route links through a plugin, check that the final URL still carries your ID; the guide to affiliate link cloaking explains why Amazon in particular needs care. Test your own links from a clean browser.
The second is attribution you cannot see. A reader who clicks on a phone and buys later on a laptop may not carry the cookie across, and the programme will not credit that sale. No free or paid tracker on your side can recover it, because the record never existed on the merchant’s side.
That is the limitation worth stating plainly. Affiliate tracking reports what the merchant was able to match, not every purchase your content influenced. Your clicks will always outnumber your credited sales by more than conversion alone explains, and the gap is not something you can measure directly. Treat the reports as a reliable floor, not a complete count, and keep your affiliate disclosure current whichever tracking method you use.
Frequently asked questions
How many Amazon tracking IDs can I create?
Amazon’s help page sets “a limit of 100 Tracking IDs per associate account”. For more, you contact Associates Customer Service.
Are Amazon tracking IDs separate accounts?
No. Amazon says they “remain associated with your main Associates ID and do not constitute separate accounts.” Earnings stay in one account.
Where do I see results for each tracking ID?
In the “Tracking ID Summary Report” in your Associates account, which breaks earnings down by ID.
Can I give each visitor their own tracking ID?
No. The Amazon Associates Operating Agreement says you may not associate any sub-tag or reporting with a specific end user of your site.
The takeaway Affiliate link tracking credits a sale when your ID survives from click to checkout. Split it with tracking IDs or sub-IDs by site, content type or placement, add UTMs for your own analytics, and read the reports as a floor rather than a full count.
