You've got three influencers promoting your product. All three link to your website. Sales go up. But which creator drove which sales?
If they're all pointing to the same URL, you have no idea. Instagram analytics tells you about reach. TikTok tells you about views. Neither tells you about purchases. The gap between "someone saw this post" and "someone bought your product" is where most brands lose the plot.
The fix is dead simple: give each influencer their own unique link.
What a tracking link actually does
A tracking link is a URL that looks normal to the customer but records who sent them. When someone clicks Sarah's link, the system logs "this visitor came from Sarah." When they buy something, the purchase gets attributed to Sarah.
The customer sees nothing different. They tap the link, land on your product page, and shop as normal. But in the background, you're building a clear picture of who drives revenue and who doesn't.
How to set this up
There are a few ways to do this, ranging from hacky to proper.
The spreadsheet method (don't do this)
Some brands manually create UTM links for each influencer and track them through Google Analytics. This technically works but it's fragile. UTM parameters get stripped by some platforms. Google Analytics shows traffic but not purchases. And maintaining a spreadsheet of UTM links for 10+ creators is tedious enough that most people stop doing it within a month.
The link shortener method (better but limited)
Services like Bitly let you create short links and see click counts. You could make bit.ly/sarah-coffee and bit.ly/jake-coffee. You'll see how many clicks each gets. But you still can't connect those clicks to actual purchases without manual cross-referencing.
The proper method (attribution links)
An attribution tool creates unique links that connect clicks to purchases automatically. You create a link, give it to the creator, and the tool handles the rest. When someone clicks, it records the visit. When they buy, it matches the purchase back to the click.
With LinkOwl, you'd create:
linkowl.app/l/sarahpointing to your product pagelinkowl.app/l/jakepointing to the same pagelinkowl.app/l/emmapointing to the same page
Same destination, different tracking. Your dashboard shows clicks, sales, and revenue per link.
What to tell the influencer
Keep it simple. Send them their link and say:
"Here's your personal link for our product — use this instead of the regular website URL. It lets us see how many sales you drive so we can track your commission / decide on future collabs / scale up what's working."
Most creators are familiar with this. Anyone who's done affiliate marketing or worked with brands before has used tracked links. For those who haven't, it takes one sentence to explain.
A few practical things to mention:
- Use the link in your bio, Story, description, wherever you'd normally link
- Don't shorten it again (wrapping a tracked link inside another shortener can break the tracking)
- The link works everywhere — Instagram, TikTok, email, wherever
Making links memorable
If the influencer needs to say the link out loud (in a YouTube video or podcast), keep the slug short and pronounceable:
Good: yoursite.com/sarah
Good: linkowl.app/l/coffee
Bad: linkowl.app/l/a7x9k2m
For written links (bio, description, email), it matters less. But a clean link looks more professional and gets more clicks than a random string of characters.
One link per creator vs one link per campaign
You could give each influencer a single link they use forever, or create a new link for each campaign or product launch. Both work.
One persistent link per creator is simpler. Sarah always uses the same link. You see her total lifetime contribution. Easy to manage, easy for her to remember.
Campaign-specific links give more granular data. You can compare how Sarah performed promoting your spring collection versus your summer collection. More links to manage, but more insight.
For most small brands, start with one link per creator. You can always add campaign-specific links later when you need the detail.
What you'll learn
After a few weeks of tracked links, patterns emerge:
Who converts. Some creators drive clicks but not sales. Others drive fewer clicks but those visitors actually buy. The creator with 50 clicks and 5 sales is more valuable than the one with 500 clicks and 1 sale.
What content works. If one creator's links spike every time they post a Reel but stay flat when they post a carousel, you know what format converts for that audience.
When to scale up. If a creator consistently converts at 5-10%, you can confidently increase their fee, send more product, or negotiate a longer-term deal. The data justifies the spend.
When to move on. If three months of tracked data shows a creator drives zero sales despite regular posting, it's time to try someone else. No hard feelings — the data just doesn't support continuing.
Cost
LinkOwl charges 5p per attributed sale. No monthly fee. If you set up 10 tracked links and your creators drive 50 sales, that's £2.50 in tracking costs. If they drive zero sales, you pay nothing.
Compare that to influencer platforms that charge £300-500 per month regardless of results, or the invisible cost of spending money on creators with no idea whether it's working.
The tracking link itself is free to create. You only pay when it actually attributes a sale. That's the model that makes sense for small brands who need to watch every pound.