In this article, we’ll be walking through how to find and connect your affiliate parameters from Rakuten to your Geniuslink account so you can start earning commissions from more great affiliate programs.

We currently have auto-affiliation support for Newegg, Best Buy, GameStop, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and Microsoft on Rakuten, but please note that as of July 2019, the Best Buy affiliate program has been converted to Impact.

Obtaining your Rakuten Partner ID

In order to obtain your Partner ID and add it to the Geniuslink dashboard you’ll need to grab your “ID” value from a properly built Rakuten affiliate deep link for that store. You can do this by taking a raw link from that store (eg. from Newegg https://www.newegg.com) and going to the Deep Linking tool inside the Rakuten Marketing dashboard and creating a deep link. From the results, grab the value between “id=” and “&”. See the highlighted value in the screenshot below.

Once you have this ID, go to the “Affiliate” section in the Geniuslink Dashboard. Click on the blue “Add a program” button and select your store from the drop-down menu. Then, enter the Partner ID you just grabbed.

For the affiliate programs that only require a Partner ID - you are done! Now simply click the blue “Connect this program” button, and your Partner ID value will be added into your Geniuslink account and all of your geni.us links for your store will start using the tracking info appropriate for your affiliate account.

If you would like to replace your Partner ID, simply follow the same steps for adding a program, or select “Remove” and repeat this process.

Obtaining your Merchant ID (MID/Advertiser ID)

Just like with your Partner ID, to obtain your Merchant ID (aka “MID” or “Advertiser ID”) , which is required for adding Microsoft store affiliation through Rakuten) you’ll need to grab your “mid” value from a properly built Rakuten affiliate deep link for that store. Just like you did for the Partner ID, described above, you can do this by taking a raw link from the Microsoft storefront, then going to the Deep Linking tool inside the Rakuten Marketing dashboard and creating a deep link. From the results, grab the value after "mid=” . See the highlighted value in the screenshot below.

That’s it! Once you have your Partner ID pasted into Geniuslink, click the blue “Connect this program” button. Your Partner ID value will be added into your Geniuslink account and all of your geni.us links for your store will start using the tracking info appropriate for your affiliate account.

How to test that your Rakuten link is Affiliating

To test that your Rakuten link is affiliating, first build a geni.us link that directs to a page for the retailer whose ID you just added. To do this, first, copy the URL of a page for that retailer directly from the page's address bar.

*Because you have added this retailer's ID to your affiliate page, you will never need to grab affiliate links from that program's affiliate dashboard.

Then, create a geni.us link with that URL by pasting that URL into the link creator on your links page.

You'll then need to install a redirect tracing service such as Link Redirect Trace. Installing a redirect tracing service is necessary because our service adds your Rakuten IDs in the redirects between your geni.us link and the final page URL your customer lands on.

Once you have your redirect tracing tool installed, find your geni.us link and click it.

On the page you land on, access your redirect trace. Then and look for your Partner ID in the redirects. If you've set things up correctly, you'll see them in the same place as the highlighted sections in the image below.

If you see your Partner ID in the redirect, then great, you're all set! However, if not, please ensure that you've correctly added your ID to your Affiliate page and there are no typos in your ID.

If you have any questions or issues, please contact our support team at help@geni.us.