Skimlinks and Sovrn Commerce

Skimlinks and Sovrn Commerce (formerly VigLink) are content networks. Thousands of publishers, from news sites to blogs, write about products, and these networks turn the product links in those articles into affiliate links. When a reader clicks through to your store and buys, the network earns a commission and shares it with the publisher.

In Sprout Affiliate, each network is one affiliate of your store. You set it up under Settings › Integrations, in the Content networks group.

How it works

Neither network accepts anything sent to it by a store. There is no postback address, no conversion upload, and no pixel to install. Each network joins a store's affiliate program the way any affiliate does, as one very large affiliate, sends readers to the store with a click reference of its own, and then reads its clicks and sales back from the store's affiliate platform. Sprout Affiliate works the same way:

One affiliate per network. Turning a network on creates an affiliate named for it, in the program you choose, at the commission rate you agreed with the network.
The network's link. The network sends readers to any page of your store with ?ref=skimlinks (or the network's own link name) and its click reference in ref_source. Sprout Affiliate keeps that click reference with the order, the same way it keeps a source tag on any affiliate link.
Tracked, approved, and paid like any affiliate. The network's orders appear in Referral orders, are approved or rejected the way you approve anyone's, lock their commission rate when first seen, and are paid in your payouts.
A report for the network. The network reads its own sales from a report address with a key that only works for that network in your store. It sees each sale with its click reference, the order, the sale, the commission, and where the order stands.

Paid in your payouts, not billed separately. The network is paid in your payouts like any affiliate, which is how both networks are paid on every affiliate platform they work with. Skimlinks says it bills no store directly for standard traffic. Its earnings are on your payout statements and count toward your Sprout Affiliate maintenance fee like any referral.

Before you start

Plan. Content networks are on the Professional plan. On a lower plan the rows show the plan name instead of a Set up button. If your store moves off Professional, the network's affiliate keeps earning like any affiliate, and the report answers that it is on Professional until you upgrade again. The key is kept.
The network has to agree to read the report. Turning a network on here tracks and pays its affiliate correctly from that moment, but the network only sees its sales once it reads the report. Skimlinks works only with affiliate platforms it already connects to, and says it cannot add a single store from any other platform. Sovrn Commerce takes stores through its merchant team. See Skimlinks and Sovrn Commerce for what each one needs.
One affiliate, kept. Turning a network off and on again reuses the same affiliate, so its history stays in one place.

Turning a network on

Go to Settings › Integrations and click Set up on the Skimlinks or Sovrn Commerce row.
Enter the Commission rate you agreed with the network, as a percentage.
Choose the Program the network joins. The program's other rules apply to it, such as which products earn commission. Its rate does not: the network's own rate does.
Optionally, enter a Contact email for the network's partner team. That address can sign in to your affiliate portal as the network, to add payout details.
Click Turn on.

Settings › Integrations, Skimlinks turned on

Skimlinks Connected
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The affiliate is called Skimlinks or Sovrn Commerce, with the link name skimlinks or sovrn. If an affiliate already uses that link name, the network gets skimlinks-network or sovrn-network instead. It starts with no discount code and no customer discount on its link. You can change both on its affiliate page, like any affiliate's.

The card then shows the report key once. Copy it before you leave the page. Sprout Affiliate stores only a fingerprint of the key, so it cannot show it again. If you lose it, click New key.

What to send the network

The card for a network that is on lists three things to send to the network's partner team:

On the card	What it is
Link	Your store's address with the network's link name, for example `https://yourstore.com/?ref=skimlinks&ref_source=`. The network can point it at any page of your store, and adds its own click reference after `ref_source=`.
Report address	`https://app.sproutaffiliate.com/api/networks/v1/conversions`, where the network reads its sales.
Key	The report key, shown once. Send it privately, never in a public channel.

A click reference can be up to 40 letters, digits, hyphens, and underscores. Anything else in it is dropped, the same rule every ref_source tag follows, so the network should use a reference in that form.

The click reference reaches the order three ways: through the Web Pixel at checkout, through the theme embed, and, for an express checkout such as Shop Pay that skips the cart, from the landing page Shopify records with the order.

Paying the network

The network is paid in your payouts like any affiliate, so it needs payout details like any affiliate. Until it has them, the Payouts page holds its balance with the reason no payout details on file, and nothing is lost. Either:

the network's partner team signs in to your affiliate portal with the contact email and adds them under Settings › Payouts, or
you add them on the network's affiliate page. Click Open affiliate on the card to get there.

Tax forms work as they do for any affiliate.

The report the network reads

One request returns the network's sales in your store, newest first. It is read only.

GET https://app.sproutaffiliate.com/api/networks/v1/conversions
Authorization: Bearer spnet_...

Query	What it does
`status`	`pending`, `approved`, `paid`, `rejected`, or `all` (the default)
`from`, `to`	Dates as YYYY-MM-DD, inclusive, on the order's own date in your store's time zone
`limit`	1 to 250, 100 by default
`cursor`	The `nextCursor` of the page before. It is null on the last page.

Each line in conversions:

Field	What it holds
`id`	The line's id. It does not change, so the network replaces what it read before by this id.
`type`	`sale` for the order itself, `adjustment` for a refund after the network was paid
`order`, `orderNumber`	The order's name, like #1001, and its Shopify order number
`subId`	The click reference the network put in `ref_source`, or empty if the order arrived without one
`date`, `createdAt`	When the order was placed
`sale`, `commission`	The sale and the network's commission, in the store's currency (`currency` on the reply). An adjustment's commission is negative.
`status`	`pending`, `approved`, `paid`, or `rejected`
`paidAt`	When the network was paid, or null

Lines change as orders do. A pending sale becomes approved and then paid, or rejected. A refund before the network is paid lowers that sale's commission. A refund after it is paid appears as its own adjustment line, with the same click reference, and comes off the network's next payout like any affiliate's clawback.

The answers that are not a list:

Status	When
401	No key, a wrong key, or the network is turned off
402	The store is not on Professional. The key is kept and works again on upgrade.
410	The network's affiliate was deleted
429	More than 60 requests a minute
503	Shopify's orders could not be read just then. Nothing is wrong with the sales: read again shortly. The report never answers a failed read with an empty list.

Rate, key, and turning off

Commission rate. Change it on the card and click Save. It is the affiliate's own rate, so the affiliate page shows the same number. Orders already tracked keep the rate they were locked at.
New key. Issues a new report key. The old one stops working at once, so send the new one to the network straight away.
Turn off. Stops the report: the key stops working. The network's affiliate, its orders, and anything it is owed stay on the Affiliates page. To stop it earning too, pause it there. To remove it, delete it there; Sprout Affiliate refuses while it is still owed money, as it does for any affiliate.

Skimlinks

Skimlinks has no direct signup for stores. A store joins by approving Skimlinks (its publisher account is called Skimbit Ltd) on an affiliate platform Skimlinks supports, and Skimlinks reads the store's sales from that platform's reporting every day.

Turn Skimlinks on here and agree a commission rate.
Contact Skimlinks' advertiser team (advertisers.skimlinks.com) with the link, the report address, and the key.
Skimlinks reads the report once it supports Sprout Affiliate. It does not add single stores from platforms it does not already support, so this depends on Skimlinks adding Sprout Affiliate.

Skimlinks also does not run a store's program on two platforms at once. If your store already works with Skimlinks through another affiliate network, ask Skimlinks to move it before you rely on this.

Sovrn Commerce

Sovrn Commerce, formerly VigLink, works with stores through its merchant team rather than a signup page, and joins a store's program as an affiliate.

Turn Sovrn Commerce on here and agree a commission rate.
Contact Sovrn's Commerce team (sovrn.com/commerce-demand) with the link, the report address, and the key.
Sovrn reads the report once it has agreed to work with your store through Sprout Affiliate.

Sovrn reports a sale to its publishers as earned and can reverse it later for a return or a rejection, which is what the report's statuses and adjustment lines are for.