How to add affiliates functionality to my shop
You have to be integrated with Google Analytics (GA) to be able to track Affiliates revenue. The steps to integrate with GA you may find in this article.
If you already integrated with GA you are able to use affiliates.
Create affiliate URL
Go to the google URL builder and create the URL based on the:
- campaign source – any name which can identify the affiliate for you (e.g. abc_inc, ulrich etc), do not write much personal information here as it will be shown to visitors in a newly generated address.
- campaign medium – cpc, banner, email or whatever else
- campaign name – any title (or slogan) of the campaign. Later you will be able to segment sales with it.
As the result you will get an URL similar to:
http://myshop.com/catalog/?utm_source=AFFILIATE_ID&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=3
Send this link to your affiliates (don't forget to vary their AFFILIATE_IDs), you will not be able to distinct sales by affiliates if they all will have same URL.
Give access to reports
It could happen that your affiliate will trust you when you'll pay them, but not necessary. If someone would like to control his achievments you can give him a read-only access to the GA profile.
To give an access your affiliate must have a Google Account (see here) and sent you his Google Account email. If user don't want to create any accounts he can just register new email on gmail.com.
Go to your shop's profile in GA and click «Add user» link:
You will be asked for Google Account email of your affiliate, ask him to provide it to you (he may aleady have one, or register new). Fill his google account email and don't forget to set «Account Access» field to the «View reports only»:
Your affiliate will be able to track statistics for your site when logging into Google Analytics with his google account (or gmail login/passwords).
Getting total revenue gained by an affiliate
Open your shop's reports in Google Analytics. Select Traffic Sources / All traffic sources on the left. Limit the period to a needed term, group by «Sources» and click on «E-commerce» tab (see screenshot below).
You will see revenue earned for that period groupped by all affiliates:
