You posted on TikTok. You ran a Google ad. You sent a newsletter. You paid an influencer. Downloads went up. But which of those things caused the downloads to go up?
If you don't have tracked links, you genuinely cannot answer that question. You're left making guesses based on timing — "well, I posted the TikTok on Tuesday and downloads spiked Wednesday, so it was probably that." Probably. Maybe. Who knows.
Tracked links fix this. Every campaign, every channel, every influencer gets a unique link. When someone clicks it and eventually buys, you can trace the purchase back to the specific link that started the journey.
It sounds basic. It is basic. But most indie developers and small app teams skip this step entirely, then wonder why they can't figure out which marketing channels are worth their time.
What a tracked link actually does
A tracked link is a URL that records a click before sending the user to their destination — usually your App Store listing. When someone taps the link, two things happen almost simultaneously: the click gets logged with metadata (timestamp, rough location, referrer), and the user lands on your app's download page.
Later, when that user opens your app and makes a purchase, the system matches the purchase back to the original click. That match is your attribution — the connection between a marketing action and a revenue event.
The matching happens through a combination of methods. Some tools use device fingerprinting (IP address, device model, OS version). Others pass identifiers through the App Store URL. The specifics vary, but the outcome is the same: you get a line drawn from "clicked this link" to "bought this thing."
Setting up links per channel
The minimum useful setup is one tracked link per marketing channel. That means separate links for:
- Your TikTok bio
- Your Instagram bio
- Each paid ad campaign
- Your email newsletter
- Reddit posts
- Twitter/X profile
- Any influencer partnerships
This alone tells you something you probably don't know right now: which channels are generating purchases, not just clicks or impressions.
Most people stop at "which channel drives the most traffic" because that's what Google Analytics shows them. But traffic and purchases are different animals. A channel that sends 5,000 visitors who don't buy is worth less than one that sends 200 visitors who do.
Going deeper: one link per campaign
Channel-level tracking is the starting point. Campaign-level tracking is where it gets useful.
Say you're running TikTok as a channel. You post three times a week. Some posts are product demos, some are memes, some are tutorials. With a single TikTok link, you know TikTok is working (or not). With a link per post — or at least per content type — you know which kind of TikTok content is working.
Same logic applies to email. If you send a weekly newsletter, create a new tracked link for each edition. After a month, you can see which subject lines and angles drove actual purchases, not just open rates.
For paid ads, this is non-negotiable. Every ad variant needs its own tracked link. You're paying real money for these clicks. Knowing which creative converts to purchases (not just installs) is the difference between profitable ads and expensive ones.
One link per influencer
If you're working with influencers — even just one or two — each creator needs their own link. No exceptions.
The reason is simple: you need to know who's actually driving sales. An influencer with 500,000 followers and zero purchase conversions is less valuable than one with 8,000 followers and fifteen sales. You can't see that difference without separate links.
This also makes commission-based deals straightforward. If you're paying creators per sale, the tracked link is the source of truth. No arguments about numbers, no manual counting, no "I think my followers bought some but I'm not sure."
Give each influencer their link, let them put it wherever they want (bio, swipe-up, description box), and check the data after a week. The numbers won't lie.
What to track beyond clicks
Clicks are the start, not the finish. A good link tracking setup should capture the full path:
Click → Install → Open → Purchase
Clicks alone are misleading. A link might get 2,000 clicks but only 50 installs. That could mean the App Store listing needs work, or it could mean the audience isn't right. Either way, you need to see the full funnel to diagnose the problem.
Install-to-purchase rate matters even more. If Channel A has a 2% install-to-purchase rate and Channel B has a 12% rate, you should probably spend more time on Channel B — even if Channel A drives more raw installs.
Revenue per click is the metric that ties everything together. Take the total revenue from a link and divide by total clicks. That number tells you what each click is worth, which directly informs how much you can afford to spend acquiring those clicks.
Common mistakes
Using the same link everywhere. The whole point of tracked links is differentiation. If you put the same link on TikTok, Instagram, and your newsletter, you've achieved nothing. You just have one big bucket of clicks with no way to separate them.
Forgetting to update links. You created tracked links six months ago and haven't touched the dashboard since. Meanwhile, you've started three new campaigns with untracked links. Attribution data is only useful if it covers your actual marketing activity.
Tracking clicks but not purchases. Click tracking is free and easy. Purchase attribution requires some setup — usually a webhook from your payment provider or a small SDK. Without that second piece, you're measuring interest but not outcomes.
Not acting on the data. This one stings because it's so common. You have the data. It clearly shows TikTok drives 10x the purchases of Instagram. But you keep posting on both equally because changing your strategy feels uncomfortable. The data is only valuable if you let it change your behaviour.
Tools and setup
The attribution tool landscape breaks into two tiers. Enterprise tools like AppsFlyer, Adjust, and Branch handle millions of events across dozens of platforms. They're powerful and expensive — often hundreds or thousands per month, with contracts and minimums.
For indie developers and small teams, that pricing makes no sense. If you're doing £200 in monthly revenue, a £500/month attribution tool is obviously backwards.
Lighter options exist. LinkOwl, for instance, charges per attributed purchase (5p each) with no monthly fee — so you only pay when the tracking actually proves a sale happened. You create links in a dashboard, hand them out, and purchase data flows back through a RevenueCat or Superwall webhook.
Whatever tool you pick, the setup follows the same pattern:
- Create tracked links for each channel, campaign, or influencer
- Replace your untracked App Store links with the tracked versions
- Connect your purchase data (RevenueCat webhook, StoreKit, or manual events)
- Wait for data to accumulate
- Check the dashboard regularly and adjust your marketing based on what you see
The whole process takes about 15 minutes for the initial setup. After that, creating new links takes seconds.
When to start
Yesterday. But failing that, before your next marketing push.
The worst time to set up link tracking is after you've already spent money on a campaign and want to know if it worked. Attribution is retrospective — it can only tell you about clicks and purchases that happened after the tracking was in place.
If you're planning any kind of launch, promotion, influencer deal, or ad spend, get your tracked links created first. The cost of setting up tracking is trivial. The cost of running blind campaigns is whatever you spent on them, multiplied by the chance that the money was wasted on channels that don't convert.
Start with channel-level links. Graduate to campaign-level and influencer-level as your marketing gets more complex. The data compounds over time — after a few months of tracked links, you'll have a clear picture of where your revenue actually comes from. And that picture will almost certainly surprise you.