Tracking influencer and partner campaigns fairly

Give every partner their own link, always

A shared campaign link makes payment disputes inevitable and makes performance comparison impossible. One short link per partner is the minimum. If a partner is posting in several places — a story, a feed post, a bio, a newsletter — give each placement its own link or its own content parameter, because those formats perform very differently and averaging them hides what worked.

Make the links look like they belong to you

A branded short link on your domain signals an official partnership and is more likely to survive platform link filters than a generic shortener. It also means that if the relationship ends, you can repoint the link rather than leaving a partner's audience clicking through to a page you no longer want to promote.

Be honest about what a click proves

Clicks measure interest at the moment of exposure. They do not measure incremental sales, and a partner whose audience would have bought anyway will look excellent. Where you can, pair link tracking with a distinct landing page or a partner-specific code so you can see the whole funnel, and be clear in the contract which number determines payment.

Expect stories and short-form to underperform on clicks and overperform elsewhere

Formats that are hard to click from — short video, audio, anything where the link is not tappable in the frame — produce low click counts and can still drive real search and direct traffic. Watch branded search volume and direct sessions in the days around a placement before concluding a channel failed.

Set up the links before the brief goes out

Partners paste whatever they were given, days later, often from a phone. If the link arrives after the brief, or changes, some of them will use the old one. Mint the links first, put them in the brief, and never change them mid-campaign — change the destination instead if something needs correcting.

Watch for link-in-bio hops

Many partners route everything through a bio-link page, which adds a hop and can strip parameters. If your link ends up as one entry among twenty on a third-party page, its click count reflects that page's traffic, not the post. Ask partners how the link will be placed, and where possible get it into a swipe-up or a direct tappable position.

Keep a simple record you can settle from

A spreadsheet with partner, placement, short link, agreed rate, clicks and any downstream metric. Export the click numbers from the platform rather than trusting screenshots. Disputes are almost always about ambiguity in what was agreed, not about the numbers themselves, so write the definition down alongside them.