Most publishers hit the same wall once traffic scales. Network dashboards tell you that a sale happened. They rarely tell you which link, which page, or which traffic source earned it. SubIDs close that gap. They are the infrastructure layer for link-level affiliate data, and operators who use them consistently make better placement decisions than those flying blind on aggregate reports.
I’ve been running affiliate sites for over nine years. SubIDs are one of the first tools I reach for when I need to know what converts, not just that something converted. With them, you can see the specific link location that led to a sale, the traffic source, the exact product, and much more. This guide covers what SubIDs are, why they matter for affiliate marketing, and how to create and track them without burning dozens of hours on manual work.
Updated 2026.
1What Is A SubID?
SubIDs are alphanumeric strings you add to affiliate links to track extra information. Affiliate marketers use SubIDs to gain an extra layer of data beyond what most affiliate networks provide by default. That deeper view shows you what converts best so you can make the right optimizations.
SubIDs work similarly to UTM query strings. UTMs let you monitor inbound traffic sources to your website. SubIDs let you monitor what happens after someone clicks an outbound affiliate link.
You can track specific user attributes, link placement, and more. Here is a shortlist to start with:
- Landing pages
- Sub-affiliates
- Referral URLs
- Link location on the page
- Websites
- Calls-to-action
- Keywords and ads
- Traffic sources (organic, PPC, email, etc.)
- User types
- User clicks
You can get as granular as you want. These are a solid starting point for operators building at scale.
For the broader stack around measuring outbound clicks, our guide on affiliate link tracking covers how SubIDs fit alongside other tracking methods.
2What Does a SubID Look Like?
All affiliate links share common traits that make them easy to track:
- The publisher’s ID (or referrer)
- Merchant ID
- Product details
- Campaign
SubIDs are another extension of the link. For instance, you could have three parameters inside a “best cocktail shakers” list post with an affiliate link and SubID like this:
- yourwebsite.com/dp/product?ref=789&m=123&subid=best-cocktail-shakers
Your three parameters in this example are:
- ref with the SubID value 789 (the publisher or referrer)
- m having a value of 123 (the merchant)
- subid with the value best-cocktail-shakers (SubID)
The merchant value is your affiliate ID, which credits the sale to you. The SubID lets you see that this sale came from your “best cocktail shakers” page. You could add SubIDs to each link on your page to get an even more detailed picture of what converts best.
Sub ID Values Vary
Different affiliate programs use different SubID parameter names, and they sometimes overlap. For example, JVZoo and ClickBank both use tid as their SubID value.
Because different networks use different values, tracking gets confusing across a large number of affiliate links. We cover a solution to that problem further on in this article.
To use Impact as an example, Impact affiliate links have four parameters:
- The unique tracking domain
- Your media partner ID (mpid)
- Assigned ID for the ad (adid)
- Assigned ID for the brand’s campaign (campaignid)
And here is how it can look:
example.com/mpidcxz/adid1234567/campaignid65432/4321?subId=desired-thing-you-want-to-track
Or an example from ShareASale:
shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=731549&u=1305425&m=45652&afftrack=best-cocktail-shakers
- b=banner
- u=user
- m=merchant
- afftrack=subid
SubIDs vary by network. ShareASale uses afftrack while ClickBank uses tid. If you were creating a SubID for a ClickBank affiliate link, replace afftrack with tid.
Usually, if the program does not support multiple values per affiliate link, there is a max number of characters you can use. You can add as many values as you like as long as:
- You separate each one with an & symbol.
- It does not exceed the character limit.
For example, an Impact link lets you add multiple values:
- someimpactlink.net/c/123/456/789?subId1=value_1&subId2=value_2&subId3=value_3
Some affiliate networks let you add more than one value per link. It depends on the platform.
If you are adding a SubID to a Lasso product box display, image, grid, gallery, or button, you can override the shortcode like this:
Examples of How You Can Use Sub IDs
| Data You’re Tracking | Appended URL |
|---|---|
| Landing page | example.com/en/?id=1234&subid=landing_page |
| Side banner on a blog post | example.com/?id=1234&subid2=blog&data1=side_banner |
| Call-to-action button | example.com/en/product-details?subid=blog&data1=cta1_value |
| PPC campaign | example.com/en/product-details?afftrack=PPC&data1=campaign_id&data2=keyword |
3Benefits of Using SubIDs in Affiliate Marketing
The larger your site gets, the harder it is to track everything. With so many moving parts, it is difficult to tell what is working and what is not.
For example, you might want to track click IDs within a campaign or across multiple campaigns. You might want to see traffic from a specific website or uncover how many clicks your homepage sends.
SubIDs show you the behavioral patterns behind individual clicks and allow for much more segmentation. They also help track different traffic sources, so you can evaluate whether particular sources deliver enough ROI. Compare paid ads against organic traffic and the data tells a different story than sitewide averages.
There are some key downsides, though. Fortunately, there is a straightforward solution.
4How To Track Affiliate Conversions with SubIDs
You can see some of the most popular affiliate network parameters below. If you want to use a specific SubID to track conversions, append your affiliate URL with the platform’s corresponding value. Then add the information you want to track, for example the product name, and measure the performance.
Affiliate Sub ID Parameters
Affiliate network SubID parameter differences include:
| Affiliate Network | Sub ID Parameter |
|---|---|
| Awin | clickref, clickref2, clickref3, clickref4, clickref5, clickref6 |
| ClickBank | tid |
| Commission Junction (CJ Affiliate) | sid |
| eBay Partner Network | customid |
| HasOffers | aff_sub, aff_sub2, aff_sub3, aff_sub4, aff_sub5 |
| Impact Radius | subId, subId2, subId3 |
| Rakuten | u1 |
| ShareASale | afftrack |
Example using ClickBank: https://hop.clickbank.net/?affiliate=AFFILIATE&vendor=VENDOR&tid=blog_feb_2021
Pair SubID data with click tracking on your site and you get a full picture: which placements earn clicks and which clicks earn revenue.
5Downsides of SubIDs (And How To Solve This)
Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks with using SubIDs.
1. Manually creating and tracking SubIDs is very time consuming
Creating custom SubIDs is a boring and time-consuming process. You have to create the affiliate link, append your custom ID based on the factor you are tracking, and then add it to your website.
Assume you have 10 affiliate links on each page and 80 pages on your website. That is 800 total links to add custom SubIDs to.
If each takes 3 minutes to create and add to your website, this is 2400 minutes, or 40 hours, of work.
And once you have created them, you still need to track and measure them so you can make optimizations.
2. SubIDs are confusing and vary across networks
There is no universal language for SubIDs because every affiliate network has a different version. This gets confusing fast.
For example, Awin uses clickref while Rakuten uses u1.
Manually entering all of this data takes time. That is why it is a good idea to use a third-party tool for doing it at scale.
Fortunately, there is a solution that automatically adds custom SubIDs to every link on your site and tracks them in a central dashboard to surface opportunities to increase your affiliate revenue and conversions.
6How To Automatically Add and Track SubIDs With Lasso
Lasso’s Performance feature was built to track as much affiliate data as possible and do it automatically so you save time and make more money.
Using our software, SubIDs are automatically added to every single product link on your website. You can track the exact location, product, page, and merchant on every link.
As a result, you can see the locations, the CTR of each link, and the revenue each link is worth for you. Here is an example from one of my sites below:
Performance compiles this data using all of these links and combines it with other metrics such as CTR (click-through rate), EPC (earning per click), and the total revenue of each page on your site in one central dashboard. Our guide on earnings per click affiliate marketing explains why EPC matters once you have link-level SubID data.
Here are some pages on my sites as an example:
With this data, you can see your top-performing pages to prioritize, your best-converting products to add to more locations and move higher up on your affiliate posts, and find your most profitable traffic sources.
Most importantly, it saves you dozens of hours of your valuable time tracking these links. You can focus on what you are best at: creating content that gets traffic and earns you money.
Run an Opportunities scan on URLs that already get traffic. Most operators find product mentions sitting in posts with no affiliate link attached. SubID tracking only helps once the links exist.
7Final Words
SubIDs bring a new level of insight into your affiliate content performance. They are easy to create manually, but that takes time and is harder to track accurately at scale.
With Lasso’s Performance tool, you save time creating these links and take advantage of our analytics software to collate all your data into a dashboard that surfaces the main leaks in your income so you can maximize your revenues.
We are also the cheapest affiliate analytics tool around, no matter your earnings. Whether you earn $1K per month from affiliate or $200K, we can help you take your affiliate marketing game to the next level.
See how Lasso fits your stack. Get started with Lasso and start optimizing your links today.
Jamie I.F.
Jamie heads up marketing at Lasso, runs a portfolio of niche sites, and tweets a lot about affiliate marketing and SEO.