Affiliate marketing analytics: which posts send the clicks that earn

Affiliate sites are optimized one page at a time: which comparison table gets clicked, whether the top-of-post button beats the in-text link, which "best X" post is losing rankings. Network dashboards report commissions but not which of your pages or link placements produced them.

VisitTrack records every click to another domain automatically as an outbound click and lists them by destination, alongside the Search Console queries and the engagement (time on page, scroll depth) of every post. If you cloak links through your own domain (/go/merchant), those clicks stay on your domain, so the setup below shows how to count them.

The affiliate metrics that matter

1. 1.Affiliate click-through rate per page

   Outbound clicks divided by pageviews for each money page. A post with traffic and a low CTR needs better placement or a better recommendation, not more traffic.

2. 2.Clicks per merchant and per link

   The Outbound tab lists clicks per destination link with a trend for the last 30 days. Shifts tell you when a merchant's offer changed or a competitor outranked you.

3. 3.Earnings per click (EPC) by page

   Commissions from your network report divided by clicks from your analytics. It's the number that decides which posts to update first.

4. 4.Search queries and positions for money pages

   Search Console data per page. Affiliate revenue usually follows a handful of keywords — watch their positions weekly.

5. 5.Engagement before the click

   Scroll depth and time on page show whether readers reach the comparison table. Add data-vt-scroll to the table to count views of it.

Questions affiliate publishers ask

Which posts earn the most clicks to Amazon?

The Outbound tab lists clicks per destination; for per-post numbers, send an affiliate_click event with the merchant from your link handler and filter the dashboard by page.

Does the top button or the comparison table get clicked more?

Give each placement its own event name (aff_top_button, aff_table) via data-vt-goal and compare them as goals.

Why did clicks drop this month?

Check the page's Search Console position and impressions next to its traffic — most drops are rankings, not conversion.

Do readers from AI assistants click affiliate links?

Filter by the AI channel and compare outbound clicks per visitor with search traffic.

How to set up affiliate analytics with VisitTrack

1. 1

   Install the tag

   One tag in the site layout; WordPress and Astro guides cover most affiliate stacks.

   <script defer data-site="SITE_ID" src="https://visitrack.app/tracker.js"></script>

2. 2

   Direct merchant links: nothing to do

   Links that point straight at a merchant or network domain are recorded as outbound_click automatically.

3. 3

   Cloaked links: send an event

   A /go/ redirect on your own domain isn't an outbound link. Send a named event on click so it's counted and filterable by page.

   document.addEventListener("click", (e) => {
     const a = e.target instanceof Element ? e.target.closest('a[href^="/go/"]') : null;
     if (a) window.visitrack?.("affiliate_click", { merchant: a.getAttribute("href").split("/")[2] });
   });

4. 4

   Make clicks a goal

   Turn affiliate_click into a goal in Settings so it appears on the Overview and can be filtered by page, source and device.

5. 5

   Connect Search Console

   Pages & Search pairs each post's traffic with its queries and positions. Use the SERP snippet preview to test new titles for low-CTR posts.

Example: a home-office gear review site

About 40,000 monthly visitors, Amazon and two direct merchant programs, cloaked /go/ links.

Illustrative numbers for a typical site of this kind, not real customer data.

The chairs post has more traffic than the desks post but a third of the click rate, because readers never reach the comparison table. Moving the table up and refreshing the post to recover its ranking are the two highest-value edits on the site.

VisitTrack vs GA4 and link-cloaking plugins for affiliates

Third-party details as of October 2026.

No site analytics tool sees network commissions directly; join them on page and date in a spreadsheet using the CSV export. See VisitTrack vs Google Analytics.

What VisitTrack costs for an affiliate site

Affiliate readers view 1.5–2 pages; click events add roughly 10%.

Every feature is on every plan; the price only follows monthly events (pageviews, custom events and payments, counted across all your sites). Bot and AI-crawler hits and session replays are never billed. Yearly billing is ten months' price for twelve, every plan starts with a 14-day free trial with no card, and there's a one-time lifetime deal from $59.