Greg K — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 22:13:37 +0000

We have the same type of thing with our site using AffiliateShop.com.

However, even though it can do it, we did not set ours up for people to just sign up and spam away their affiliate link. We have sales people that set up appointments with business owners, or host free seminars that people sign up for, and they give the url out that way.

On our initial home page, if you are using the affiliate's link, it will call an image from Affiliate shop, which activates a cookie. Then if you do sign up, on the "confirmation" page it calls another image, triggering the sale with Affiliate Shop.

Our sales people can log into their accounts, and see how many people folowed their affiliate URL, and also how many signed up from it as well. It works pretty well in testing, ust need to get the "recurring billing" to properly call the image (they get $10 on initial signup, $5 each recurring payment until they cancel)

Now of course, this all is based on the end user allowing cookies. Again, people can go to our site and sign up to become an affiliate, but mainly this is for the people directly presenting the software to people who sign up or request the information.

I persoanally hate spam selling. However, I think this explanation will help others understand where the usefullness of this type of tracking comes into play.

Now, on to the question at hand, with PHP, this is possible to do. Assuming this is what you are talking about:

Quote: http://www.domain.com/?leadid=referrer1
http://www.domain.com/?leadid=referrer2
http://www.domain.com/?leadid=referrer3
http://www.domain.com/?leadid=referrer4

then you could have soemthing like

<?php
       switch ($_POST['leadid']) {
           case 'referrer1':
               $refimage = 'http://www.referral1.com/pixel.gif';
               break;
           case 'referrer2':
               $refimage = 'http://www.referral2.com/pixel.gif';
               break;
           case 'referrer3':
               $refimage = 'http://www.referral3.com/pixel.gif';
               break;
           case 'referrer4':
               $refimage = 'http://www.referral4.com/pixel.gif';
               break;
           default:
             // Put a copy of a blank image on your site for displaying
               // when there is no referer.
               $refimage = 'http://www.yourdomain.com/pixel.gif';
               break;
       }
   
   
   <img src=\"= $refimage \" alt=\"\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" border=\"0\">
?>

I think this should work. Note, if you have a ton of possible referers, you may want to use something other than the switch statement, perhaps check for it in a database, etc.

Additionally, I would recomend setting it up to use http://www.domain.com/referrer1 instead (if you want to do that, I'll look up the thread on here on how to do it and post a link)

-Greg

mairving — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:24:21 +0000

A couple of things to keep in mind. One is that people don't like to be tracked like this and can become very irritated if they find out. The second is that it is easily blocked in email clients. Even Outlook 2003 by default blocks all images from being downloaded by default so as to avoid the tracking.

EliteRides — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 17:40:49 +0000

I understand and agree. If it were my choice I would totally go with an affiliate script. However, this is the request of existing clients. Can't exactly turn away your customers' requests. I did find a way to accomplish this with PHP. Thanks though for everyone's replies.

chrishirst — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 16:55:42 +0000

It's much easier and less risky with a database and let the affiliates have a logon to check their stats.

EliteRides — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:19:50 +0000

You're missing it though. The clients of the company are requesting this so they can see the number of hits, that they referred, in their web logs. If it were up to me, of course I would use a stats program.

Is there a way to load an image (pixel) only if the url contains leadid=referrer1... then it would load referrer1.gif? Maybe with some sort of php. <img src="{leadid}">'And then the page would contain:

referrer1=http://www.referral1.com/pixel.gif
referrer2=http://www.referral2.com/pixel.gif
referrer3=http://www.referral3.com/pixel.gif

bja888 — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 10:36:32 +0000

The wonders of spam

Busy — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 10:12:40 +0000

a tracking pixel is a form of spyware tracking, also used in emails - just a 1x1 pixel image to count/track people

Use a real stats program that doesnt rely on nasty tricks like this.
Most decent hosts offer at least one kind of stats program (my basic host has four), if they are limited they are easy enough to download and install

Roo — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 04:31:42 +0000

What the heck is a tracking pixel? I've never heard of such a thing.