A Quick Guide: how do i create an affiliate link

Diving into the world of affiliate marketing and creating your first link is way less complicated than you might think.

At its heart, it’s about getting a unique, trackable URL from an affiliate program. If you're a business, this means setting up the program. If you're a creator, it means joining one to promote products you genuinely use and trust.

How to Create Your First Affiliate Link

Before you can even think about generating a link, you need to know which side of the table you’re on. The process for a SaaS business building a program from the ground up is completely different from a content creator who’s joining an existing one.

Figuring out your role is the first critical step—it dictates everything you do next.

Merchant vs Affiliate Starting Points

To make it crystal clear, your starting point will be one of two paths. Merchants are the architects, building the system for others to use. Affiliates are the partners, leveraging that system to drive sales.

Here's a quick breakdown of where each role begins:

Action	For the Merchant (SaaS Business)	For the Affiliate (Content Creator)
Primary Goal	Build and manage your own affiliate program.	Find and join existing affiliate programs.
First Task	Set up the program's infrastructure: choose software, define commissions, create a partner portal.	Research brands that align with your audience and apply to their programs.
Tools Needed	Affiliate management software, payment processors.	Your content platform (blog, social media), and the affiliate's dashboard.
Control Level	Full control over program rules, commissions, and branding.	Adhere to the rules and terms set by the merchant.

Knowing which column you fall into clarifies your immediate next steps and helps you focus on what really matters to get started.

The Two Primary Paths Explained

If you’re the merchant, you’re building the engine. Your main job is to give your affiliates the tools they need to succeed, and that starts with a seamless way for them to generate their unique URLs.

Many SaaS businesses use a dedicated referral link generator to automate this entire process. This ensures every single partner gets a correctly formatted and perfectly trackable link without any manual back-and-forth. This system is the backbone of your program.

On the flip side, if you're an affiliate, your first move is all about research and applications. You need to identify companies whose products you actually use and would recommend anyway.

The real key here is authenticity. Promoting a product you genuinely believe in not only feels better, but it also converts way higher because your audience can sense the recommendation is built on real trust.

A popular first step for many creators is joining a massive network like Amazon Associates. It’s an absolute giant in the space, holding a 46.62% global market share and supporting earnings for over 75,000 companies. Once you're approved, they give you a unique ID and a suite of tools to create links for pretty much any product on their site.

Building Your Own SaaS Affiliate Program

For any SaaS business, just knowing how to create an affiliate link is only the first step. The real game-changer is building a full-fledged affiliate program—an engine that drives predictable, scalable growth. A well-built program empowers your partners to become a genuine extension of your marketing team, promoting your product while you stay focused on improving it.

The cornerstone of this entire engine? Your commission structure. This one decision has a massive ripple effect, influencing the quality of affiliates you attract and just how hard they’ll work for you.

Designing Your Commission Structure

One of the first big forks in the road is deciding between recurring and one-time commissions. There’s no universal "right" answer here. It really comes down to your business model, your goals, and the kind of partnerships you want to build.

• Recurring Revenue Share: This is the gold standard for most subscription-based SaaS companies. You give affiliates a percentage of the subscription fee for the entire lifetime of the customers they refer. The sweet spot is typically a 20-30% recurring commission. This model is a huge draw for top-tier affiliates who are looking to build a stable, long-term income stream.

• One-Time Bounty: The alternative is to offer a larger, single payment for each new customer. This is much simpler to track and can be very appealing to affiliates who prioritize immediate cash flow. You might, for example, offer a $100 bounty for every new subscriber who signs up for your pro plan.

The path you choose will directly shape your partners' motivation. Recurring commissions tend to foster lasting, loyal partnerships, while one-time bounties are great for driving a high volume of sign-ups during a specific launch or campaign.

A smart commission plan does more than just pay your partners. It perfectly aligns their financial incentives with your company's growth. When they win, you win. This creates a powerful, self-sustaining marketing channel that works for you 24/7.

Setting Up Your Program's Foundation

Once your commission plan is locked in, it's time to build out the technical backbone of your program. This means creating the affiliate portal and getting your payment systems integrated. An effective portal is the mission control for your partners, the central hub where they manage everything.

At a minimum, your portal needs to provide:

• Dead-simple access to their unique affiliate links.
• A library of ready-to-use marketing assets (logos, banners, email templates).
• A real-time dashboard to track their clicks, conversions, and earnings.

This is where a dedicated platform like LinkJolt becomes a massive advantage. It handles all the heavy lifting—from affiliate onboarding and automatic link generation to integrating directly with payment processors like Stripe for smooth, automated payouts. It lets you launch a professional-grade program without needing to pull in a team of developers.

If your goal is to set up a killer referral system for your SaaS, this guide on how to create an affiliate program is a great place to start. For a more detailed walkthrough tailored specifically to software businesses, check out our deep dive into launching a successful SaaS affiliate program.

Getting Your Links Right for Maximum Conversions

Once you're in an affiliate program, the real work begins: creating links that actually convince people to click and buy. A generic URL that just dumps your audience on a homepage is better than nothing, but honestly? It leaves a ton of money on the table. To really make this work, you need to start thinking like a guide, pointing people exactly where they need to go.

This is where customizing your links becomes your secret weapon. Instead of sending everyone through the same crowded front door (the homepage), you can create deep links. Think of them as private entrances that take visitors directly to the most relevant, high-impact pages.

A platform like LinkJolt is your command center for this. A clean, intuitive dashboard like the one above is non-negotiable for quickly building out optimized URLs for all your different campaigns without getting bogged down in complexity.

The Simple Power of Deep Linking

Let's say you're promoting a SaaS tool and you just published an amazing blog post comparing its features to a big competitor. If you send readers to the generic homepage, you're forcing them to go on a scavenger hunt for that comparison page. Most people just won't bother.

A deep link, on the other hand, takes them straight there. It's a night-and-day difference in user experience.

• Homepage Link (Don't do this): your-affiliate-link.com/?id=123
• Deep Link (Much better): your-affiliate-link.com/pricing-comparison?id=123

See the difference? The second link instantly gives the user what they were promised, which massively boosts your odds of getting a conversion. Get in the habit of directing traffic to specific, high-value destinations like a free trial sign-up page, a detailed case study, or a product demo video. Each link should be a perfect match for the content your audience just engaged with.

Use Tracking Parameters to Know What’s Working

Deep linking gets the user to the right place, but how do you figure out which of your marketing efforts are actually making you money? That’s where tracking parameters, often called UTM codes, come in. They’re just tiny bits of text tacked onto the end of your link that feed crucial data back to your analytics.

These little tags answer the most important questions you have:

• Which blog post is my number one earner?
• Is my email newsletter outperforming my Twitter campaign?
• Which call-to-action button is getting all the love?

By adding these parameters, you turn your affiliate links from simple pointers into powerful data-gathering tools. A single base affiliate link can be tweaked and customized for dozens of different campaigns, giving you a crystal-clear picture of what’s a winner and what’s a dud.

Pro Tip: Stop guessing where your sales are coming from. Use tracking parameters on every single link you share. This data is the bedrock of a predictable, scalable affiliate strategy. It’s what turns hopeful guesswork into data-driven decisions.

The real magic here is that every link is trackable. Your unique ID is embedded right in there, which is how platforms can attribute sales back to you and make sure you get paid accurately. It’s a surprisingly robust system that fuels a massive industry; the global affiliate market is projected to rocket from $18.5 billion in 2025 to $27.8 billion by 2027. You can dig into more of these trends with these affiliate marketing statistics.

This kind of precision is how you graduate from just sharing links to building a genuine revenue stream. When you master both deep linking and tracking, you create a powerful feedback loop that constantly helps you refine your strategy for even better results.

Mastering Affiliate Link Tracking and Attribution

If you create an affiliate link but can’t prove it drove a sale, you won’t get paid. Simple as that. This makes understanding tracking and attribution non-negotiable; it's the core technology that makes sure your hard work actually turns into commissions.

Without a solid grasp of how it works, you’re essentially flying blind and leaving money on the table.

The whole process relies on a surprisingly simple tool. When someone clicks your link, a small file called a cookie gets placed on their browser. Think of this cookie as a digital name tag containing your unique affiliate ID.

If that user makes a purchase within a set timeframe (the "cookie duration"), the merchant's system reads your name tag and credits the sale to you. That's the fundamental mechanic that powers the entire affiliate industry.

This diagram breaks down how all the pieces—deep links, tracking, and conversions—fit together in a well-oiled affiliate strategy.

The key takeaway? Each step builds on the last, turning a simple click into a measurable, profitable outcome.

Choosing the Right Attribution Model

Things get a little more complicated when a customer interacts with multiple affiliate links before finally buying. Who gets the credit? This is where attribution models come in, and the model a program uses will directly impact your earnings.

• First-Click Attribution: The very first affiliate whose link the customer ever clicked gets 100% of the commission. This is true even if they clicked other links later on. This model is great for affiliates who excel at introducing new customers to a brand.
• Last-Click Attribution: This is the most common model by far. The last affiliate link the customer clicked right before making the purchase gets 100% of the credit. It rewards affiliates who are masters at closing the deal.

Neither model is inherently "better," but knowing which one your partner program uses is vital. It completely shapes your promotional strategy. If it's a first-click program, your focus should be on broad reach and discovery. For last-click, your content needs to be geared towards convincing people to buy now.

Your affiliate dashboard is your source of truth. Get in the habit of regularly checking key metrics like conversion rates, click-through rates (CTR), and earnings per click (EPC). These numbers tell a story about what’s working and what isn’t.

For a deeper dive into the mechanics, our guide on how to track affiliate links provides a much more detailed breakdown.

Beyond Single-Touch Models

While first- and last-click models are simple, they don't always paint the full picture. A customer's journey is rarely a straight line. They might discover a product from one affiliate, read a review from another, and finally click a discount link from a third.

To get a more complete understanding of how every touchpoint contributes to a sale, businesses often turn to multi-touch attribution. This advanced approach helps companies see the value each partner provides along the entire customer journey.

By mastering these tracking fundamentals and understanding how attribution works, you ensure the integrity of your earnings. It’s how you spot trends, identify your most valuable partnerships, and build a reliable, data-driven revenue stream.

How to Fix Common Affiliate Link Problems

Even the most buttoned-up affiliate program will hit a snag eventually. It’s just the nature of the game. One day a link that was working perfectly starts throwing a 404 error, or a sale you know you drove just isn't showing up in your dashboard. When it happens, don't panic—these issues are usually pretty common and often have a simple fix.

Knowing how to troubleshoot these little glitches is a crucial skill. It's not just about saving your commissions; it's about maintaining trust with your partners. A small technical hiccup should never be the reason a great partnership goes sour.

Diagnosing Link and Tracking Failures

Before you can fix anything, you have to figure out what’s actually broken. Most of the time, the complaints fall into two camps: broken links and sales that didn't track. Your first move should always be a quick diagnostic test to see what’s happening on the front end.

The easiest way to do this is to test your link in an incognito or private browser window. This simple step strips away any of your own cookies or cached data that might be messing with the results. If clicking the link takes you to an error page or the wrong destination entirely, you've likely got a broken URL on your hands.

If the link itself works, but a sale you were expecting didn't track, the problem is probably a bit more subtle. Here are the usual suspects:

• Cookie Issues: The user might have cleared their cookies before buying, or they could be using a browser with aggressive privacy settings that block affiliate cookies from being set in the first place.
• Incorrect Link Formatting: A single misplaced character, an extra space, or a broken parameter in your affiliate link can completely destroy its ability to track.
• Ad Blockers: Some of the more aggressive ad blockers out there can prevent the merchant's tracking scripts from firing, making it impossible to attribute the sale.

Your incognito window is the best friend you have when troubleshooting affiliate links. It gives you a clean slate, showing you exactly what a new visitor sees. This will tell you in seconds if the problem is the link itself or something external like a user's browser settings.

Once you’ve isolated the likely cause, you can stop guessing and start fixing.

Actionable Solutions for Common Problems

Once you have a good idea of what went wrong, you can take targeted action. Forgetting to generate an affiliate link with the right parameters is a super common mistake, so a quick double-check in your affiliate dashboard is always a smart first step.

For straightforward broken links, the fix is usually easy. The merchant might have updated the URL for a landing page or removed an old product. Just log into your affiliate portal, find the page or product you want to promote, and generate a fresh link. This guarantees you’re using the most current destination URL.

But what if you think the tracking script on the merchant’s end is the problem? This is where clear communication becomes key. Reach out to your affiliate manager with as much detail as possible: the exact link you used, the time of the click, and any order information you have from the customer. In my experience, a 90% success rate in resolving commission disputes comes from providing clear, documented evidence. It helps their team investigate quickly and get you credited for the sale if something was missed.

Your Affiliate Link Questions, Answered

Jumping into affiliate marketing always kicks up a few questions. Getting straight answers from the get-go is the best way to sidestep common slip-ups and get your first affiliate link out the door with confidence.

Here are the most common questions we hear from both new affiliates and merchants setting up their programs.

How Long Does Approval Take?

This is one of those "it depends" answers, so a little patience goes a long way. The time it takes to get approved for an affiliate program really boils down to the size and style of the company you're applying to.

• Big Networks: Think massive operations like Amazon Associates. They often use an automated or semi-automated system. You’ll likely get a decision within 24 to 48 hours.
• Private SaaS Programs: Smaller, in-house programs, especially in the SaaS world, are usually more hands-on. They might take a few days, or even a week, to manually review your application to make sure you're a good fit for their brand.

Now, if you're a merchant running your own program on a platform like LinkJolt, you’re the one in control. You can set the approval workflow yourself, meaning you can onboard partners you already trust almost instantly.

Can I Customize My Affiliate Link URL?

Yes, absolutely. Most modern affiliate platforms give you options to tweak your links. While the core tracking ID—the part that makes sure you get paid—is non-negotiable, you can definitely make the URL cleaner and easier to share.

Many affiliates will use link shorteners to create branded, memorable URLs. More importantly, a solid platform will let you create deep links, which are links that point to a specific product or landing page instead of just the homepage. You can also tack on your own tracking parameters to the end of the URL to see which campaigns are driving the best results in your own analytics.

Affiliate Link vs. Referral Link: What's the Difference?

While they work in a very similar way—both track when someone clicks and takes an action—the terms "affiliate link" and "referral link" are usually used in different circles. The real difference is in the who and the what.

An affiliate link is typically for formal marketing programs. Partners are often professional marketers or content creators who earn a cash commission for driving sales. A referral link is more common for customer-to-customer programs, where an existing user invites a friend and gets a reward like a discount, account credit, or a free month of service.

Functionally, they're nearly identical. Contextually, they're worlds apart.

Do I Need to Disclose My Links?

Yes, and this is a big one. Proper disclosure isn't just a "nice-to-have" for building trust—it's a legal requirement in many places, including in the U.S. under guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

You have to be clear and upfront that you might earn a commission if someone buys something through your links. Simple phrases like "(paid link)," "#ad," or a clear sentence at the start of your content usually do the trick. The key is that the disclosure must be close to the affiliate link itself, ensuring a visitor sees it before they click. Transparency is non-negotiable.

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Ready to stop worrying about the technical setup and start building a powerful affiliate program? LinkJolt gives you all the tools you need—from an automatic link generator to seamless payout management—to launch and scale your partnerships. Get started with LinkJolt today and see how easy it can be.