One of the latest advancements in affiliate marketing is a new model titled Revenue Share. Quite simply it encourages affiliates to work together in order to gain a sale, the commission made from that sale or lead is then divided between the affiliates that helped. The rest of this post will cover how it all works at a more technical level.
 

How does this actually work

We will start by examining the existing model. If a visitor on an affiliate site clicks through to a merchant, the visitor is first directed to the affiliate network (Affiliate Future, Affiliate Window e.t.c.) At this stage, the network places a cookie containing the referring affiliate ID onto the client’s machine and then redirects them to the merchant, indicating where the visitor has come from. This is all completely transparent to the user and allows the network to keep track of who is referring the clients to the merchant site. If the visitor then decides to make a purchase on the merchant, the merchant will check to see what network (if any) their buyer has come from and call a script that tells the network one of their affiliates has referred a sale.

This is the standard, widely adopted model that is based on cookie tracking. It is not the only model, there are URL based schemes, Self replicated pages, and direct links but these are out with the scope of this post.

Revenue Share Model

So what’s the difference with Revenue Share? The only real difference is there is usually 1 extra player, but essentially the principles are just the same. The visitor is referred from the affiliate site as before. The network places a cookie on the visitors machine once again, to aid with tracking. It then calls a script on the 2nd affiliates site to indicate where the visitor came from, this script will usually just place a cookie that the 2nd affiliate can read.

If the visitor then decides to visit a merchant from the 2nd affiliate, the 2nd affiliate then creates and stores it’s own tracking code and also stores which affiliate referred that visitor. The visitor is then sent to the merchant once again via the affiliate network. When the sale comes in, the merchant calls the script that tells the network a sale has been made. This time the network calls a script (known as a callback) on the 2nd affiliate to indicate a revenue share sale has been made, passing the tracking code that was created at the referral time. The 2nd affiliate now looks up its tracking code to find who the visitor was referred by and calls its own script telling the network to pass on a certain agreed percentage of the commission directly back to the original affiliate.

This can be represented in 3 easy stages:

Stage 1:

1. Visitor clicks on link to 2nd affiliate.
2. Network places first cookie on client
3. Network calls tracking code on 2nd affiliate site
4. Visitor is redirected to 2nd affiliate site

Stage 2:

1. Visitor clicks on link to merchant.
2. 2nd affiliate stores its own tracking code
3. Network places new cookie on client
4. Network redirects to merchant site

Stage 3:

1. Visitor decides to buy from merchant
2. Merchant calls the sale network script
3. Network stores sale details and fires a callback script on the 2nd merchant
4. 2nd merchant looks up own tracking table
5. 2nd merchant calls network script to pass commission onto original affiliate.

Coding

Coding this model if not too difficult as long as you think of it in separate stages as above. Taking the role of the 2nd merchant there are 2 main areas to code. You have incoming visitors and outgoing visitors. When a visitor leaves your site you need to know whether it is from an affiliate who is part of the revenue share model or whether it’s just natural traffic.

To do this, setup your affiliate network to call a script when a visitor from another affiliate is sent to your site. Using this script, place a cookie on the visitor’s machine. In this cookie, store the information that the network provide, i.e. the affiliate ID that the client has come from, and any tracking they have provided. Store this in the cookie in a form you can extract later.

e.g. AFF@@affyid123@@affytracking

This not only allows you to track the visitors from that affiliate, but also allows you to customise the site if necessary, for example, turning off other certain links that are not relevant to where the visitor came from, hence focussing the site for the sale. When the visitor leaves your site through one of your links, you need to store the information you have in the cookie along with your own tracking ID. So when a visitor leaves your site the first thing you want to check is the cookie. If the cookie contains the affiliate information, you know its a revenue share sale and hence you must track it. For example, you could store this in your database :

The visitor would then be sent to the network containing your newly generated ID as a tracking code. This information is essential, when the network calls you back to indicate a sale, it passes back your tracking ID ( e.g. 172) and commission details, you then use this to look up who referred the visitor to your site, and call the network back with details of the commission to be passed on to the original affiliate.

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