Skip to content
Sign up

Prelinker5 min read

How Prelinker Works: From Link to Commission

An affiliate network feels abstract until you follow a visitor's journey. Here is the full Prelinker flow, step by step, from the link you place to the payment of your commission.

A smiling man at his computer, surrounded by hearts and gold coins

To know whether Prelinker suits your project, you need to understand what happens between the moment you publish a link and the moment a commission shows up in your account. The principle is simple, but every step is a chance to gain or lose results. Let us go through them in order.

Everything starts with opening a publisher account, covered in our article on signing up for Prelinker. Once logged in, you get access to your tools: smartlinks, widgets, profile feeds, banners. Each one produces a link or a code that contains your publisher ID. That ID is how the network knows the visitor came from your site.

You can also add a SubID, which is a personal label (for example the name of the page) that later tells you which page produced which result. We come back to this in the article on SubID and postback.

Step 2: the visitor clicks and lands on the offer

You place this link in useful content: a blog article, a page of local outings, a video description that points to your site. When a reader clicks, they leave your page and land on the brand's website. With a smartlink, the network picks the offer that suits their country. With a widget, profiles are displayed right in your page, and a click on a profile leads to the signup.

A cookie or tracking ID keeps a record of where the visitor came from, so that a signup is credited to you even if it does not happen right away.

Step 3: signup, then subscription

The visitor creates a profile on the dating site. For you to be paid under the main revenue share model, they need to become a paying member. This is a key point: a simple visit, or even a signup without a subscription, does not pay the same as a subscription. Hence the importance of choosing the offer that truly fits your audience.

Step 4: the commission is calculated

The principle of the revenue share is this: you earn a share of what the member spends. According to rate cards shared by affiliates, this is about 55% of the first month's subscription, then about 45% of renewals, as long as the member remains subscribed. Extra purchases, such as options or credits, are commissioned too. The exact rate card appears in your publisher area: these figures remain orders of magnitude, never a promise.

An example to fix ideas: a member subscribed at €25 per month for a year represents €13.75 for the first month, then 11 months at €11.25, for €137.50 in total. Not every member stays a year, and not every visitor subscribes, which is why the volume and quality of your traffic matter so much. The details of this calculation are in the article on Prelinker commission.

Step 5: tracking and payout

Your statistics appear in the publisher area: clicks, signups, earnings. If you use a postback, these events are also sent to your own tracking tool. Payment is made in euros, by bank transfer (no fee in France, €3 in the eurozone, €20 internationally) or by PayPal. The payment schedule and threshold are set out in the account terms: check them before planning your finances. Our article on Prelinker payments covers these details.

What the flow means for the way you work

Understanding the flow lets you see where to act. If few visitors click, improve the placement and the wording around the link. If many click but none subscribe, check that the offer matches the country and the theme of the page. If subscriptions exist but stay low, work on the traffic itself, for example with better-ranked content.

Three good practices to remember:

  1. Tie each page to a single clear offer, rather than multiplying links.
  2. State visibly that the page contains sponsored links, with a suitable rel attribute.
  3. Record your results every month and drop whatever produces nothing.

On social networks the rule is the same: do not post a direct link, especially on Facebook. Send people to your own website, which presents the offer and serves as the attribution point. The article on the affiliate link explains why this intermediate step protects your audience as well as your results.

Start with a single smartlink and a single SubID per page. Once you can read your statistics, you can add widgets and feeds without losing track.

An end-to-end example

Imagine a blog for singles over 50. A reader arrives from a search engine on an article about regaining confidence after a breakup. In the middle of a paragraph, she finds an honest presentation of a dating service for seniors, with a link clearly marked as sponsored.

She clicks, lands on the brand's website, browses a few profiles and decides to create an account. A few days later, she chooses to subscribe. At that moment, the event is recorded with your publisher ID and the page's SubID. It appears in your statistics and, if you have set up a postback, in your own tracking tool.

Each following month of subscription then feeds your commission, according to your account's rate card. This journey shows that everything rests on relevance: good content, a good offer and a link placed at the moment the reader asks herself the question.

You now have the overall picture. To take the first practical steps, go to the getting started page, or return to the complete Prelinker guide.

Frequently asked questions

How long is a visitor's tracking kept?

The tracking duration is part of the account terms. Check it in your publisher area rather than relying on an approximate figure.

Does the visitor have to subscribe for me to be paid?

Under the main revenue share model, earnings come from the member's subscription and purchases. A visit alone does not produce the same results, which is why an offer suited to your audience matters.

Can I track what comes from each page?

Yes, thanks to the SubID. You assign a different label to each page or campaign and you find that label in your statistics, or even in your own tool via the postback.

Are commissions the same for everyone?

The orders of magnitude come from rate cards shared by affiliates, but the exact rate card for your account is shown in the publisher area.

More to read in “Prelinker”