Way back at the end of May 2007 I wrote an article Affiliate deep linking tools and the one click deep link creator from Paid On Results, which had been around a while even then, came out top of the pops.

Since then other networks have developed one click deeplinking too, Affiliate Window, Linkshare and just recently Buy.at, I love them all it makes my life as a affiliate much easier to just simply navigate to the merchant page, click a link on my toolbar and bingo a deep link.

The question is how do they all stack up?

Paid On Results

To set it up go to your POR account, follow the ‘Deep Link Generator’ link in the Tools menu and you will see full instructions.

Positive

Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer

Generates either the deeplink URL or full HTML code

Provision for a click ref

Negative

No facility to generate a short URL

Takes user away from merchant page to generate the deep link

Linkshare

You will find instructions to set up the Linkshare Bookmarklet in the BentoBox here.

Positive

Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer

Generates the deeplink URL

Creates short URL’s

One click posting to Facebook and Twitter

Negative

Doesn’t generate full HTML code

No provision for a click ref

Affiliate Window

To install go log into your Affiliate Window account and click the Plug-ins link in the menu under Web Services and Tools.

Positive

Works with Firefox

Generates either the deeplink URL or full HTML code

Provision for a click ref

Creates short URL’s

Negative

Does not work with Internet Explorer as its a Firefox Plugin.

Buy.at

To Install log into your Buy.at account, click Content & Creative > LinkEngine, then follow the instructions on the Firefox LinkEngine tab.

Positive

Generates the deeplink URL

Works with Firefox

Negative

Does not work with Internet Explorer as its a Firefox Plugin

Doesn’t generate full HTML code

No provision for a click ref

No facility to generate a short URL.

So which is best?

Basically I like each and everyone of them but because Paid On Results has been around so long without being upgraded it has stood the test of time plus the negative points are so minor I am going to award it 9/10.

Second place goes to Linkshare they have embraced social media with the Facebook and Twitter integration 8/10.

Affiliate Window is only let down by being tied to Firefox only, not a problem for me but I know others that wont use that browser 7.5/10.

I am very pleased that Buy.at have produced one click deep linking as it will get me using them more, this tool like I said is the new kid on the block and still very much in beta I’m sure we will see massive improvements in time 5/10.

One statistic that is sorely missing from the reports of most of the affiliate networks that I use is where the traffic I am sending originates from.

Affiliate Window have today launched a report which addresses that issue, the Click Ref Report shows exactly which links your users have clicked on.

Here is an snapshot of the report taken from my stats today.

So what does this report tell me?

Basically its letting me know which links are generating traffic, most notable for me in this small sample is the fact that the article I wrote this morning about the brand ‘Traffic People’ linking to ‘Lastseason.com’ has generated traffic from three separate links.

Using the Click Ref Report

To use this report simply append &clickref=YOURCLICKREF to the end of your links like so:

http://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=3&id=45628&clickref=YOURCLICKREF

Could the report be improved?

Awin admitted themseves that this is just a basic report, see article on affiliates4u.com New Click Ref Report, and that it would be built upon, what I would like to see included is a referring url for the click and a direct link into the Link Performance report (with link back via clicks column of that report).

All in all a big thumbs up to Affiliate Window, I really like this report but eagerly anticipate the next version.