By default, each affiliate gets a referral link made of your store's domain plus tracking parameters, such as yourstore.com?rfsn=123456.abc123. There are several ways to give affiliates a link of their own, tools affiliates can use themselves, and add-ons that work with any link. This guide explains what each one does and when to use it. Many can be combined.
Personalized Links for Each Affiliate
These options give every affiliate their own short, memorable link on your domain instead of the default referral link. The right one depends on your platform.
On Shopify
Branded Links is the recommended option. It creates a link on your own domain for every active affiliate, and you manage them from the affiliate's Links tab. You can also add Redirect Links, which are additional personal links for the same affiliate that point to a product, collection, or page. The older vanity link options still work if you already use them or if your plan doesn't include Branded Links.
| Created | Shows in Refersion | Availability |
Automatically for every past and future active affiliates. | Yes, on the affiliate's Links tab and in their dashboard. | Newer billing plans | |
Automatically when you approve an affiliate. | Yes, in all the same places as branded links. | All plans | |
By you, one at a time in your store | No, you share each link with the affiliate yourself | All plans |
On other platforms
Branded Links is available for Shopify only, but you can get the same result with URL redirects. A redirect sends a short path on your domain, such as yourstore.com/janedoe, to the affiliate's referral link.
The simplest way to start is to create each redirect by hand in your store's admin. See your platform's documentation, such as BigCommerce's 301 redirects guide. Redirects created this way live only in your store and don't appear in Refersion, so you'll need to share each link with the affiliate yourself. Your platform may also limit how many redirects you can have, so check its documentation.
If creating redirects by hand becomes hard to keep up with as your program grows, you can automate it later. Refersion webhooks can notify your system when an affiliate's status changes, and once the affiliate is approved, your system can create the redirect through your platform's URL redirect API. This requires development work or an automation tool.
Add-Ons for Any Link
These settings add something to the links your affiliates already use.
Discount links
A discount link gives the shopper an incentive to buy, which can help the affiliate convert. There are two kinds, and both are available for Shopify stores:
Refersion discount links apply the discount through the link itself, so there is no code to leak to coupon sites.
Shopify shareable discount links add a Shopify discount code to the affiliate's link, which suits stores that already manage discounts as Shopify codes.
UTM parameters
UTM parameters label affiliate traffic so you can see it in your analytics systems outside of Refersion.
Tools Affiliates Can Use Themselves
Affiliates can also create links from their own dashboard manually.
Page-specific referral links: An affiliate can create a link to a particular product or page, and the links they create are saved in a list in their dashboard. You can also generate a one-off page-specific link for an affiliate, but those aren't saved. See: Create page-specific referral links
Bit.ly integration: An affiliate can shorten their own link with Bit.ly from their dashboard. The result is a bit.ly link, not a link on your domain. Learn more