Affiliate Links & Product Reviews

Two plugins work together here. Affiliate Links manages your programs and links: it stores which stores you work with and your tag for each one, gives every link a clean /go/ address, counts clicks and adds the rel="sponsored" attribute that Google asks for on paid links. Product Reviews turns a post into a review page with a score, pros and cons, a spec table and buy buttons. When both are on, the buy buttons go through Affiliate Links, so one tag definition covers everything.

Both are switched on from Plugins. Each plugin works on its own, but Product Reviews buttons get the tag and click counting only when Affiliate Links is on.

Step 1: Define your program

Open Affiliate Links in the admin. The first card is Affiliate programs. A program has three parts: the store domain, how the tag is added to the link and the tag itself.

The Affiliate programs card with two Amazon marketplaces defined — Type the tag and the sample line shows how every link will go out.

Amazon Associates. Pick the marketplace (amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.de and so on), paste the tracking ID from your Associates account (it usually ends in -20 or -21) and save. Each marketplace has its own tag, so add one row per marketplace you are approved for.
Another program that adds a tag to the link. Type the store domain, the parameter name the program gave you (for Amazon it is tag) and your tag or partner ID.
A network that gives you a redirect address. Some networks hand you a tracking URL and expect the product address inside it. Paste that address and write {url} where the product address belongs. jekcms encodes the product address into that spot.

As you type, a line under the form shows the final link, so you can check it before saving. Subdomains fall under the program too: a link to m.example-store.com matches a program for example-store.com.

Each domain can have one program. jekcms does not accept a second program for the same domain, because it would be unclear which of the two tags to use.

Step 2: Add links or paste store addresses

You do not need to add tags to addresses yourself. Wherever a link to a store domain appears, the program's tag is added automatically:

Links you add on the Affiliate Links screen. Paste the plain product address as the target. The form shows whether the address matched a program and where the visitor will be sent. The tag is added during the redirect, so if you change the tag later, every link uses the new one.
Plain store links inside a post. A raw link to a program's domain inside your content gets the tag and rel="sponsored" when the page renders.
Buy buttons on product reviews. Enter the plain store address on the product; the button carries the tag.

Every link gets a clean address of the form /go/your-slug. Use [aff your-slug] inside a post to insert a tracked link, or [aff your-slug]custom text[/aff] for your own anchor text. You can also link straight to the /go/ address from anywhere.

The link list with tagged rows, click counts and their source — Each row shows its /go/ address, the target, the program that tags it, and human and bot clicks.

The link list shows where each link came from: added by hand, created from a product review (with a link to that product), or left over from a product that has since been deleted. Tagged links are marked with the program they match.

Step 3: Read the clicks

The top of the Affiliate Links screen shows total human clicks, active links and a thirty-day trend. Each link row shows human and bot clicks separately; known crawlers and repeated clicks on one link from the same visitor are counted as bot traffic and left out of the human total. No IP addresses are stored.

Redirects are temporary (302 or 307). Browsers and networks cache permanent redirects, so clicks would no longer be counted and changing a link's target would have no effect.

Dead targets show up under SEO → Broken Links, because every affiliate target is watched by the same link checker as the rest of your site.

Product reviews

With Product Reviews on, a product carries a name, brand, model, ASIN, score with breakdown, a one-line verdict, who it is for, pros and cons, key features, a spec table, an FAQ, badges and its stores. When you link the product to a post, the review blocks appear in that post automatically. If you want a different order, place them yourself with short codes.

To add a store, pick it, paste the plain address and, if you want, give the button its own text. The first store becomes the primary button. For Amazon, leaving the address empty and entering the ASIN is enough; the link is built from the ASIN and the marketplace tag.

Visitors from other countries. When switched on in the Product Reviews settings, a visitor from the UK is sent to amazon.co.uk and one from Germany to amazon.de, each counted with that marketplace's tag. This only happens for marketplaces you have defined a program for. A click sent to a store without your tag earns no commission, so in that case the link is not changed.

Product Reviews settings showing the programs in use — With Affiliate Links on, the settings list the marketplaces and tags from your programs.

Where the tag lives. With Affiliate Links on, the Product Reviews settings no longer hold a tag field; they show the programs in use and link to the Affiliate Links screen. Tags entered before this change were moved into programs automatically, so you do not need to enter them again.

Other settings

Auto-cloak rewrites a raw link in your content to its /go/ address whenever the target matches a saved link, so old posts get click counting without editing.
Auto nofollow adds rel="nofollow" to every unregistered outbound link, so links you did not register also follow Google's paid-link guidance.
Open in a new tab applies to cloaked and outbound links.
Default rel for cloaked links is sponsored nofollow noopener; change it only if you have a specific reason.