Your Web Affiliate Links

Because the affiliate software resides on our server, all affiliate links point to myaffiliateprogram.com. This is unimportant to most merchants if they are using banners exclusively, but if you plan to offer your affiliates text linking options where the URL of the link will be visible to the customer (such as a link in an email, for instance), you may desire to have the link point to your domain rather than ours for branding purposes.

You can do this by changing a setting through your administration panel and by uploading a simple Perl script to your server; once activated, all web affiliate links will point to the Perl script on your domain (http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/a.pl for example) which will simply redirect users to our linking script for further processing.

1) Configure and Upload the Perl Script

Click Here to view the Perl script in your browser; then copy the contents and paste them into a new document named "a.pl". The script requires no editing except perhaps the first line, which points to the location of Perl on your server. This is probably either /user/bin/perl or user/local/bin/perl, but you can ask your service provider if you are unsure. Upload the file to your cgi bin as an ASCII file, and set permissions to 755 if you are on a UNIX server.

2) Test the Script

Type the URL of your new script into your browser's Location window, adding the following code to the end of the URL:

?USER_ID&AFFILIATE_ID

where USER_ID is replaced by your MyAffiliateProgram User Name, and AFFILIATE_ID is replaced by any valid affiliate ID number in your program. For example, if you are on yourdomain.com, you have uploaded the a.pl script to your cgi-bin directory, your User ID is jsmith, and you want to test a click through for affiliate number 123, here is the link to try:

http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/a.pl?jsmith&123

If your script is functioning correctly, you should be forwarded to your click-through page, a tracking cookie will be written to your browser, and the affiliate will have a click-through added to his or her stats; essentially, it will look as though you had clicked through a standard myaffiliateprogram.com affiliate link.

If you want the link to point to a specific page on your domain, simply add the name of the page after a final ampersand:

http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/a.pl?jsmith&123&special.htm

this code will redirect the user to http://www.yourdomain.com/special.htm instead of your default click through page.

3) Activate the -Your Link- Option

Once you are satisfied that your Perl script is functioning correctly, go to your administration panel, click the "Change Program Settings" button, set the -Your Link- option to "Yes", and enter the URL of your Perl script (without the added code at the end of the URL, MyAffiliateProgram will do that for you). Any affiliates using the old linking method will still function, and any new affiliates who sign up will receive the new linking method.

Also, any links displayed to affiliates in their administration area will show the new linking method. You should probably sign up as your own affiliate to ensure that the new affiliate linking code you receive functions properly. If it doesn't, make sure you entered the URL of your Perl script into the administration area correctly.

Click here for more information on linking directly to your site (not through a CGI-bin) with ReferDetect and Direct Linking.