Promotion tool

Binom

Binom is a self-hosted affiliate tracker. You install it on a server you control, point a domain at that server, and the click log is written there. A campaign URL on your domain receives the visitor, Binom stores the click, and it sends the visitor to a landing page or to an offer link. Because the log is yours, the campaign only records what that server actually receives. This article explains how to send the offer hop to a Maxlead tracking link, how to pass Binom’s click id, and how the network postback writes the conversion back onto that click.

Maxlead is a CPA performance network that has operated since 2015. Binom is not part of the network, and the network does not operate your tracker server. Publishers open a Maxlead account and promote offers with a tracking link that already includes their publisher id. Binom is the tool some of them put in front of that link when they want the raw click stored on hardware they administer. Offer rules, approval, and the weekly payout of approved earnings stay on the network. If Binom’s screens differ from this description, follow the install you are looking at.

Who runs it this way

Self-hosting suits publishers who want the click record on their own machine and who are willing to keep that machine available. Media buyers use Binom when they rotate paths and landers and they want the full click, not only a summary, under their own domain. It is a poor fit if you do not want to watch a server. When the server is down, the campaign URL does not record the visit, and the redirect to the tracking link does not happen. Cloud trackers hide that job. Binom does not.

The server does not change what the offer allows. The offer on Maxlead must allow the country and the source before you point a path at it. A click from a country the offer does not accept is not saved on that offer, even if Binom stored a row. A forbidden source can be rejected later. Read the offer, then build the campaign. Do not use the tracker as a way to route around a rule.

You will compare two logs. Binom’s click log is the visit on your domain, with the path, the lander, and the tokens you passed. The network dashboard is clicks, conversions, earnings, EPC, and CVR for visits that reached your tracking link from an allowed country. Earnings are approved payout only. CVR is approved conversions divided by clicks. EPC is earnings per click. Approved earnings are what the weekly payout includes. Pending and rejected conversions are not paid as if they were approved.

Campaigns, paths, and landers

A Binom campaign has a URL on your domain. Traffic sources are defined separately, so the same source can be reused and its tokens mapped once. Inside the campaign, a path decides which landing page and which offer a visitor receives, and what weight that path has. An offer in Binom is the outbound URL. For this network, that URL is the tracking link from the offer page, plus the sub IDs you add. A lander is a page you host or control. The link on that page which should reach the offer is Binom’s click URL for the lander, not a raw advertiser address.

The click URL is how Binom ties the lander click to the original campaign click. It uses your campaign domain and marks the lander, so the tracker knows which visit continued. If the button on the lander points at the advertiser preview, Binom may have a campaign click and no offer click, and the network has no click at all. Direct linking skips that page. The path sends the campaign click straight to the offer URL. Use direct linking for the first test so you are debugging one redirect, not a page and a redirect.

Name paths after the thing you are comparing. A path for United States native traffic with one headline should say so. Weights are for a split you mean to read later. Changing weights, the lander, and the offer in the same hour makes the click log longer without making it clearer. Binom can store a great many clicks. The limit is whether you can still see which path matched an approved conversion.

Put the click id on the tracking link

On Maxlead, copy the tracking link only after you are allowed to run the offer. Public offers are available once the publisher account is approved. Other offers need a request and an approval. The link already contains the offer code and your publisher id in pid. Paste it into the offer URL in Binom. Keep pid. Add sub IDs after it.

Binom’s token for the click id is {clickid}. Place it in s1. Place your own labels in the next slots: s2 for the source, s3 for the creative. Maxlead stores s1 through s8 and returns them later as {sub1} through {sub8}. It also creates its own click id, returned as {click_id}, which is not Binom’s id. The postback has to return Binom’s id, or the conversion will not attach to the row in your click log. Leave the token in place so Binom can replace it. A hand-written sample id will record one fake click forever.

Traffic source tokens, the values Binom often keeps as source tokens, are a different set. They describe the ad click. You may pass one of them in a later sub ID if you want it on the network report. Do not put a source token in s1 if s1 is reserved for {clickid}. The click log on your server can show both. The postback can only match the parameter you actually send back.

The postback onto your server

When a conversion is approved or rejected, the network sends a GET request to the postback URL you saved. Pending conversions do not send one. A global postback is used for every offer unless that offer has its own URL. An offer postback replaces the global one for that campaign. Point either URL at your Binom domain. If the domain in the postback is wrong, or the server is not listening, the click log never learns about the conversion, even though the network approved it.

Binom receives the click id in a parameter named cnv_id, and the amount in payout. The usual shape is your domain, a click path, cnv_id, and payout. Set cnv_id to {sub1}, because that is s1, where {clickid} was stored. Set payout to {payout}, which the network fills in dollars with two decimals. Binom can also take a conversion status. If you pass {status}, remember that the network’s values are approved and rejected. Count the conversion as payable only when the status is approved. Do not treat rejected as revenue because the click exists in the log.

You can add {offer} and the rest of the sub ID tokens if you want them stored with the conversion. They are context. cnv_id is the match. Test with a live click on the campaign URL so Binom creates a real click id and the network creates a real click. Then compare the row on your server with Activity. After approval, the same click id should show a conversion in Binom and an approved conversion on the network. A missing conversion with a correct click on both sides is a postback problem: the URL, the token, or a server that did not accept the request.

Clicks on the server versus approved conversions

A large click log is not a result. Binom counts what hit your domain. The network counts what hit the tracking link from an allowed country. If your server shows clicks and the dashboard does not, the offer URL is wrong, the country was outside the offer, or the path never left the lander. Fix the path before you buy more traffic. If both sides show clicks and only the network shows an approved conversion, the postback did not reach the server or cnv_id was empty.

Read EPC and CVR on the dashboard after approvals, not from the first minutes of the click log. CVR divides approved conversions by clicks. EPC divides approved earnings by clicks. A click log that updates live will always look ahead of a payout that waits for approval. The weekly payout uses approved earnings only. Scaling on server clicks, while approved conversions are still zero, spends against a report that has not finished.

Keep the sub IDs stable when you increase volume. us-native has to keep meaning the same source, and headline-a the same creative, or the click log and the network report drift apart in a way no filter will repair. A new headline gets a new s3. A new path gets a name that says what changed. Then the approved conversions have a place to land.

A worked example

Use this only when the offer allows the United States and allows native. If it does not, the click log can still fill up, and the network will not treat those visits as the campaign you intended. Choose an offer that lists both, or do not buy that traffic.

On the server, create a traffic source for the native platform and a campaign that uses it. Add an offer whose URL is the copied tracking link, with s1 set to {clickid}, s2 set to us-native, and s3 set to headline-a. Those labels are yours. They mark United States native traffic and the first headline. Put that offer on a direct path so there is no lander in the first test. Give the native ads the campaign URL on your domain.

A visitor hits the server. Binom writes a click and replaces {clickid} in s1. The redirect reaches the tracking link with pid still present, s2 as us-native, and s3 as headline-a. The network stores the click and sends the visitor to the advertiser. The postback you saved calls your domain with cnv_id set to {sub1} and payout set to {payout}. When the conversion is approved, Binom finds the click in the log and records the payout the network sent. It should not record a payout you typed in because the report looked thin.

Check Activity for that click id’s partner on the network side, the sub IDs, and the approved conversion. Check the click log for the same Binom id, the path, and the conversion. EPC and CVR on the dashboard are the figures to set beside your media cost. If the log has the click and the network does not, you sent the visit somewhere other than the tracking link, or the country did not qualify. If the network approved it and the log did not update, the server did not get cnv_id.

Mistakes

Sending traffic to the advertiser preview skips both your server and your publisher id, or it skips the network even when Binom saw a lander view. The preview is how you read the page before you buy. The offer URL in Binom, and the click URL on any lander, have to end at the tracking link. A preview address in either place produces a click log that cannot be paid.

Rewriting the click id is permanent in a way a summary report hides. {clickid} must stay a token until Binom replaces it with the id stored in the log. Do not abbreviate it, encode it a second time, or swap in {click_id}, which is the network’s id and will not exist as a Binom click. cnv_id has to be {sub1} in this example because s1 is where the token sits. Changing the offer URL to s4 without changing the postback writes the conversion into the void.

Judging one hour of the click log is tempting because the log is detailed and immediate. One hour can be a path pointed at the wrong domain, a server clock, or a few clicks from a data center. Read the network clicks, then the approved conversions, then EPC and CVR. The detail in the log is for explaining a result. It is not a reason to scale before the result exists.

A forbidden country or source still fails on a perfect server. us-native assumes the offer allows the United States and native traffic. Outside those rules, Binom can show a healthy path and the network can show rejections or no clicks. Stop when the offer pauses. A self-hosted tracker will keep accepting campaign traffic after the advertiser has stopped buying it, and those rows will not become approved earnings.

Open the publisher account first

The click log only becomes a paid campaign after the offer URL is your tracking link. Open a publisher account from the Maxlead homepage, confirm the country and the source on the offer, and put {clickid} in s1 with labels such as us-native and headline-a. Point the postback at your Binom domain with cnv_id set to {sub1} and payout set to {payout}. Run a small test, watch the click on the server and the approved conversion on the dashboard, and only then add volume. Your server keeps the log. The network keeps the approval and pays approved earnings weekly.