Affiliate Tracking Explained: Links, Sub-IDs and Reports

Updated 17 October 2026 · Purple Commissions affiliate team

Commission is only as good as the tracking behind it. If you understand what happens between a click on your page and a line in your report, you can set your links up properly, spot problems early and have better conversations about your deal. Here is how it works at Purple Commissions, step by step, in plain language.

The journey of one click

Every link you take from your account is a tracking link. It does not point straight at Casino Purple; it passes through Purple Commissions first. When a visitor clicks:

1. The click is recorded against your tracking ID, together with any SID label you added. Unique-click tracking means the same visitor clicking five times does not inflate your numbers.
2. The visitor is sent on to Casino Purple, to the page and language the creative was built for, carrying your tracking ID with them.
3. If they register, the new player account is tagged with your ID. This is the moment that matters: from then on, that player belongs to you.
4. Their activity comes back to your account: the signup, the first deposit, later deposits, withdrawals and the revenue figures your commission is calculated from.

The practical consequence: a player who clicks your link but registers later from a bookmark, a different device or another affiliate's link may not be tagged to you. Good tracking reduces the gaps; it cannot read minds. That is one reason clear, well-placed links beat scattered ones.

Tracking IDs: one per website

Your account can hold several websites, added in the Link Creator. Each one gets its own numeric tracking ID, active as soon as you add it. The website you entered at sign-up is already there.

Use this. If you run a review site and a YouTube channel, add both. If you have a Telegram group as well, add that too. Separate IDs let you see which source sends depositing players rather than just clicks, and they make it easy to filter reports by website later. Merging everything under one ID saves thirty seconds now and costs you every decision you make afterwards.

Sub-IDs: labels for placements

Inside one website you usually have more than one placement: a banner in the sidebar, a text link in the review, a button in a comparison table, a link in a newsletter. When you open a creative in Marketing Tools and click "Show code", there is an optional SID field. Whatever you type there, for example sidebar, review-top or oct-newsletter, is attached to the link and appears in your reports.

A few habits make sub-IDs useful instead of messy:

• Keep them short and consistent. Decide on a pattern (placement, or placement plus month) and stick to it.
• One SID per placement, not per page view or per day. Too many labels and nothing has enough data to mean anything.
• Write them down. A small spreadsheet listing each SID and where it lives saves guesswork three months later.

What each report column means

In Reports you choose a date range and, if you like, a single website. The columns you will see:

• Clicks: unique visitors who followed your tracking links.
• Signups: new Casino Purple accounts tagged to you.
• First deposits: players who made their first deposit. For CPA and Hybrid deals, this is usually where the fixed reward is triggered, under the qualifying conditions of your deal.
• Deposits: the total deposited by your players over the period, first and later deposits together.
• Withdrawals: what your players took out.
• Chargebacks: deposits reversed through the payment provider. These can be deducted under the terms.
• NGR: net gaming revenue, the figure RevShare is based on.
• CPA and RevShare: your earnings under each part of your deal.

Read the columns as a funnel. Clicks to signups tells you whether your page sends the right people. Signups to first deposits tells you whether those people were actually ready to play. Deposits and NGR over the following weeks tell you whether they stayed. Each step points to a different fix.

Keeping attribution clean

Most tracking problems we see are set-up problems, not system problems. A short checklist:

• Always copy links from your own account. A link copied from a forum, another affiliate or an old e-mail carries someone else's ID.
• Do not shorten or rewrite the tracking URL by hand. If you use a link shortener, test the short link after creating it and check that the click appears in your report.
• Test new placements with one click of your own, then check that the click is counted under the right website and SID.
• Update old content. When you replace a creative, replace the link too, so traffic does not keep flowing through a placement you have forgotten about.
• Mention the welcome code accurately. New Casino Purple players use PURPLE100 for a 100% first-deposit match. If you would like players using a personal promo code to be credited to your account, ask your manager whether that can be set up for you.

When the numbers look wrong

If clicks are arriving but signups stay at zero for a while, look at the page first: is the call to action clear, is the creative relevant, does the link open correctly on mobile? If you see signups but no first deposits, the audience may be curious rather than committed, which is a content question. If clicks themselves are missing, test the link and compare it with a fresh one from Marketing Tools.

Still unsure? Send your manager the website, the SID and the dates you are looking at. With those three things, most questions are answered quickly. You can also write to [email protected].

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