Ask a creator with a few years of content behind them where all their affiliate links are, and watch their face. They are in old video descriptions, blog posts from three years ago, a newsletter archive, a link-in-bio page, and a handful of tweets. Some of the programs have shut down. Some links point at products that no longer exist. Nobody knows which ones actually make money.
The idea: a Google Sheet where a creator can log every affiliate link they have ever placed, see where each one lives, compare performance in ways their affiliate dashboards do not, and quickly find the weak ones to replace. It is number 14 on my list of 100 business ideas in Google Sheets.
Affiliate networks are good at telling you what happened inside their network. They are terrible at telling you what happened across all of them, and across all of your content. That gap is the product.
The idea
Create a sheet a user can add a comprehensive list of affiliate links to, and give them pre-determined ways to organize that list. By program. By product. By the page or video where the link appears. By the date it was placed.
Most creators already have software that tracks performance over time, at least per program. What they lack is comparison. One network's dashboard does not know about the next network's links, and neither knows which blog post drove the click. A sheet that holds everything in one place lets them ask questions no single dashboard can answer: which piece of content earns the most per visit, which program pays best per click, which links have not earned a cent in six months.
The natural users are content creators and bloggers who want to make sure their links are optimized across many sites, videos, and posts. Make it easy for them to find their own links. A tab that lists every URL on their site, with a formula flagging the ones that contain known affiliate parameters, would save hours. Even a simple checklist of "places you probably put links" helps.
Once they can see where every link is, replacing poor performers becomes a Saturday morning task instead of a project they never start.
And this does not have to be just for site owners. Virtual assistants, editors, and channel managers who work for creators need this more than the creators do. They are the ones who get asked "can you swap all the links for that discontinued microphone" and have to go hunting. A tracker makes that person look organized, which is a good reason for them to buy it.
How to build it in Google Sheets
- Links tab. One row per placement: Link ID, Program (dropdown), Product, Affiliate URL, Placed in (page or video title), Placement URL, Date placed, Status (Active, Dead, Replace), Notes.
- Programs tab. Program name, Network, Commission rate, Cookie length, Payout threshold, Dashboard login URL, Last checked. Feeds the Program dropdown.
- Performance tab. Monthly rows pasted from each network's export: Month, Program, Link ID, Clicks, Conversions, Earnings. This is the manual step, and it is fine. Once a month is enough.
- Content tab. Every post and video with its URL and publish date, so links can be grouped by the content that hosts them.
- Dashboard tab. Earnings per link, earnings per piece of content, links with zero clicks in 90 days, and a list of everything marked Replace.
The Sheets features doing the work:
-
QUERY for the dashboard summaries, since grouping earnings by program or by content is exactly what it is for. Something like
=QUERY(Performance!A:F, "select B, sum(F) group by B order by sum(F) desc", 1)ranks programs by earnings. - SUMIFS to total clicks and earnings per Link ID across months.
- Data validation dropdowns for Program and Status, so the QUERY groups stay tidy.
- Conditional formatting that colors any link with no clicks in 90 days, and any Status set to Dead.
- SPARKLINE next to each link showing monthly earnings, which makes decline obvious at a glance.
- IMPORTXML as an optional helper to pull the links from a given page URL, so a user can paste a blog post URL and see which affiliate links it contains. It is fragile on some sites, so treat it as a convenience, not a guarantee.
A time-driven Apps Script trigger that emails a monthly "links to review" list is a nice touch. It turns a sheet the user has to remember into a sheet that remembers for them.
Who pays for it, and how to sell it
Bloggers and YouTubers with more than about 50 pieces of content and more than two affiliate programs. Below that they can hold it in their head. Above that they cannot, and they know it.
The second buyer is the assistant or manager who maintains a creator's links. They will happily pay for anything that makes the "swap that link everywhere" request less painful.
They are paying for the structure and the comparisons. The data is theirs; the tracker is the thing that makes it useful. Pricing as a one-time template at $29 to $59 is fair, because it saves a lot of hours the first time it is used. If you maintain the Programs tab with current commission rates and cookie lengths for the popular networks, that is worth a small subscription, since those numbers change without warning.
A service layer works well here: for a flat fee, you audit a creator's existing content, populate the sheet, and hand it back full. That is the version most creators actually want, because the setup is the hard part.
Sell the template on Gumroad. For the version with a maintained Programs tab, use OnlySheets so paying customers get shared on the live sheet automatically and see rate changes as you make them.
First 10 customers: offer to audit the affiliate links of five mid-sized creators in your niche for free, using the sheet. Show them the dead links you found. At least a couple will ask what else you can do, and every audit gives you a screenshot for the sales page.
Related ideas from the list
- Niche Affiliate Hunt List, which finds the programs this sheet then tracks.
- Creator Command Center, a wider dashboard this tracker could live inside.
- Influencer Brand Deals List, the same buyer tracking the other half of their income.
Want the other 99? This is one idea from my list of 100 business ideas you can build in Google Sheets. Get all 100 business ideas as a free Google Sheet.
And if you want to learn how to package and sell spreadsheets, my course Selling Spreadsheets walks through exactly that.