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Chrome extension: create your tracking links from the brand’s website

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The Affilae Chrome extension builds your tracking link for the page you are currently viewing, without leaving the brand’s website. You open the product page, you click the icon, you copy the link.

Requirements: an Affilae publisher account, the Google Chrome browser, and above all an approved partnership with the advertiser whose website you are visiting. Without an approved partnership, the extension cannot build any link for that website.

Install the extension

Open the extension page on the Chrome Web Store.
Click Add to Chrome, then confirm.
Pin the extension to your toolbar: click the puzzle piece icon, then the pin next to Affilae.

Pinning matters more than it seems. The icon changes appearance depending on the website you are visiting, and that signal is what saves you time.

Log in without typing your password

The extension never asks for your password. You log in to Affilae in a tab, and the extension picks up your session.

Get your affiliate links easily in one click!

Share them through your social networks to promote your favorite brands.

To start, log in to your Affilae’s account

The extension window before login, with its two buttons.

Click the Affilae icon in the Chrome toolbar.
Click Log in. A new tab opens on the Affilae application.
Log in as usual, with your regular Affilae credentials.
Go back to the brand’s tab. The extension recognises you, there is nothing else to do.

If you do not have an account yet, the Sign up button opens the publisher registration form.

Build a tracking link from a product page

Go to the brand’s website, ideally straight to the product page you want to promote.
Click the Affilae icon. The header shows Deeplink builder for followed by the name of the program it recognised.
In Profile, pick the publisher profile to credit. The list only contains your profiles whose partnership is approved on this program.
Click Copy. The button shows Copied for three seconds.

The link points to the exact page you were viewing. That is what a deeplink is: your visitor lands on the product, not on the homepage.

Deeplink builder for My Brand

Profile

My blog

Additional parameters

Add SUBID

Affilae Bitly

https://www.mybrand.com/product/?utm_medium=affiliation&utm_source=My%20blog&ae=1

Copy

The builder window, with additional parameters expanded.

The icon tells you something before you even click. Every time you change website, the extension checks whether you have an approved partnership with that domain. If you do, the icon becomes active and blinks. If you do not, it stays greyed out. A greyed icon therefore means “this website is not one of your programs”, not “the extension is broken”.

Add a SubID and your own parameters

Expand Additional parameters to refine your link.

Add SUBID: your own tracking label. It lets you see, in your statistics, which post generated the sale.
The param and value fields append your own parameters to the destination URL. The + button adds another one, up to three parameters.

The link is rebuilt as you type, so there is no confirmation button to look for.

Shorten the link: Affilae or Bitly

Two checkboxes shorten the link, and only one can be active at a time: ticking Bitly automatically unticks Affilae.

Affilae: the in-house shortener, available to everyone, with no setup.
Bitly: this checkbox appears only if you have connected your own Bitly account to Affilae. It then uses your account, and therefore your quota.

To connect Bitly, go to the Link builder in the Affilae application, then Connect my Bitly account, and paste your Bitly API token.

Tip: only shorten when you actually need it, for instance in a post where characters count. The long link tracks exactly the same way, and it has no quota.

Save and share the link

Once the link is built, a bar appears at the bottom of the window.

The star saves the link to your Chrome bookmarks, using the program name as the title. Clicking it again removes it.
The Facebook and Twitter icons open the network’s share window, with the link already filled in.
Copy puts the link on your clipboard.

Best practices

One SubID per post. Without it you will see that you sold something, but not what sold it. That is the difference between watching your results and steering them.
Build from the product page, not from the homepage. A visitor who lands on the product you are talking about buys far more often.
Check the profile before you copy, if you have several. A link built with the wrong profile credits the wrong site.
Disclose your links. Transparency rules apply to shortened links too, since they hide the destination.

Use cases

An Instagram creator. She is preparing a story about three products. She opens each product page, builds the link with the SubID story-march, ticks Affilae to shorten, and pastes. Three links in two minutes, without ever opening Affilae.

A newsletter publisher. He writes a comparison of six products. He uses a different SubID for each position in the email, and finds out the following month that the third slot converts better than the first.

A blogger updating an old article. He browses his partners’ websites. The greyed icon immediately tells him which brands are no longer among his approved partnerships, and therefore which links in his article need reviewing.

Frequently asked
questions

Voir plus de questions reponses

The extension found no approved partnership between your profiles and the advertiser owning this domain. Two possible causes: you never requested that partnership, or your request is still waiting for the advertiser’s approval. Open Programs from the extension menu to find the program and check the status of your request.

That is normal, and it is actually useful. Every time you change website, the extension checks whether that domain matches one of your approved partnerships. If it does, the icon becomes active and blinks. If it does not, it stays greyed out. A greyed icon means “this website is not one of your programs”, it does not indicate a failure.

No, and that is by design. The Log in button opens the Affilae application in a new tab. You sign in on the Affilae website, as usual, and the extension picks up your session. It never stores your password.

It only talks to two addresses, both belonging to Affilae: the application and its programming interface. It reads the address of the active tab to know which page you are on, and it requests access to your bookmarks purely for the star function that saves a link.

That message concerns the Bitly shortener, which uses your own Bitly account and therefore your own quota. The good news: the extension still shows the long link, which works perfectly and tracks exactly the same. You can copy it as it is, untick Bitly, or tick Affilae instead.

No. This is a temporary Bitly limit, which rejects too many requests in a row. Here again the long link stays visible and usable. Wait a few minutes, or switch to the Affilae shortener.

Three at most, on top of the SubID. The + button becomes inactive once that limit is reached.

It is published on the Chrome Web Store. If you use another browser, the Link builder in the Affilae application does the same job from any browser: you paste the page address, pick your profile, and get the same link.