Why don't some sponsors let you see your referring urls?
 

I don't understand why some sponsors don't let you see referring urls in stats, this should be a standard feature of any stats interface

and some only let you see the referring url of sales, but not click throughs, that bugs me also

yep.. very annoying.

in mainstream those programs wouldn't get any traffic.. in adult, most of the affiliates are too clueless to know what to do with that info.

so i guess its a matter of demand..

If this is a petition, include me in.

"and some only let you see the referring url of sales, but not click throughs, that bugs me also"

Isnt that ccbill

if we're doing a petition, lets put a whole list of sponsor annoyances together.

what else pisses you guys off about sponsors? lets get a bunch of things together and i'll compile a list

yeh more free gifts are needed to smaller affiliates, thats what bugs me.

Had this discussion with a dating site affiliate rep just a few months ago, it's maddening to say the least.

Especially when THEY can see it in their panel...it's good info to let your traffic senders see what WORK IS WORKING!!!! Rent a few more boxes to let affiliates see that, it's valuable info and if you don't think so, pass me the pipe, you need to cut down for a few minutes. ;)

some sponsors are so huge and that parsing the logs is the problem...
you may want to look closer, they may log the ones that sell or are deeper down..

it sucks..

busy trying to confince some sponsors that I want it:)

if they are that huge they can afford another server or two to handle the load

well more comes in to play, do they have a clustered database system,
does the software support it, do they have logs setup right, where they can make a log file for each client.. that would be ideal.... imagine getting
5,000 hits per second from affiliates, thats alot of database activity

also, the sponsors that don't offer this usually have campaign setups, and you must make a campaign to track whats converting... food for thought..

there are a few larger sponsors that use NATS and I can see referring urls, then there are smaller sponsors that use nats and I can't see referring urls

there isn't any rhyme or reason to it all

depends on the setup they have

I thought affiliates being able to see their referring url was pretty standard, its hard for them to know what type of advertiseing is working without it. We show affiliates their top 100 referring url's.

no, it is FAR less standard than I like it to be

in fact, I can count on one hand my active sponsors that show me referring urls...sad to, cause that is a HUGE part in finding out what works and what doesn't

do they all use the same affiliate software of lots of different software?

there are a wide variety of softwares being used, all have the capability of doing it, and some do and some don't

None of our affiliate programs have referring urls in stas. but if you ask someone here it is not hard to get them to you.

:pimp

can I ask why you all don't provide them when they are available?

I am almost getting the point with my work that I NEED them when I evaluating what is going on with my sites, so when I see a program that doesn't have them I almost always pass up promoting them

It really is a necessity these days, how am I supposed to know where everything is coming from and how to work harder at one source of traffic? I know where my heavy traffic comes from, but when I can't see where people are clicking through it sucks and makes my job difficult

flashbang was right on the money with his explaination. Both with parsing the logs and clustered db's

Providing the referring urls just for sales would be a HUGE task for us.

We do offer other ways to track sales. Either mulitple campaigns or inserting up to a 64 chracter alpha numeric string after the link code and I am always prepared to send someone a spreadsheet as ofetn as they would like with their referring urls in it.

wish friendfinder would show them.

Much ignored are comprehensive stats and campaign tracking.

you are right, I do not use campaign tracking as much as it could be...but when I have 150 campaigns across one domain it gets a little tedious to go in and have to assign a new campaign to each fucking page....now multiply that across 50 domains that I am actively using right now, and you can see how it is a BIG PAIN IN THE ASS

ditto 78

referring URL's is not a feature that is built into your affiliate tracking software?

Personally I think it's pretty damn ridiculous that affiliate programs don't let us see referring stats. Umm hello affiliate programs you want us to send you more sales right? Well let us see where the fuck the sales we do send you are coming from.

This is one of my biggest gripes in this industry, so very few programs give you access to the stuff that would actually help you produce more sales.

Our affiliate tracking software was coded in house. When we wrote it referring url's weren't even considered a part of affiliate tracking software.

:pimp

wow, thats pretty old software then. The affiliate software I used in 1999 had referring url's so it must predate that.

wow, thats pretty old software then. The affiliate software I used in 1999 had referring url's so it must predate that.

wow, thats pretty old software then. The affiliate software I used in 1999 had referring url's so it must predate that.

damn, must be some kind of gerbal in the system, that was posted 3 times.

another thing on the campaing issue, is that I use a central posting script to post to 25-30 sites, and in order for me to use the campaigns and make it work right, I would have to do away with my posting from one single txt file and use a txt file for each site I am posting to......and to be honest, I would rather do away with the sponsor than have to do that much tedious shit

i was wondering about that

i was wondering about that

i was wondering about that

You can do your own referral tracking, what i care about the most is that affiliate programs have a way of "injecting" a shopper id into the url so i can see what site sales/leads are coming from, since referral url's aren't that reliable.

are you talking about campaign tracking? how do you handle it across 40-50 domains and with hundreds of pages on each domain?

You are correct sir.

time to update ;)