Any web developer knows that it’s a lack of universal standards that can make designing and maintaining a web site unbearable. Startup venture VigLink says it’s here to handle at least one consistent issue – keeping affiliate link programs bringing in the bucks. The service says it is going to go even further and recover affiliate dollars you didn’t know you were losing.

The company announced today that it closed a seed investment round and it has a laundry list of technology insiders as backers, including First Round Capital, Google Ventures, LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman, longtime Google executive and current LinkedIn VP of Product Deep Nishar and a number of noted technology entrepreneurs.

CEO Oliver Roup and Architect Rodrigo Leroux co-founded the company in March of last year and Roup told us today that the company was set to go live in the next few months. At the moment, it is still in beta-testing, but we had a quick chat with Roup over what to expect.

Affiliate Marketing

VigLink is looking to stand on the in-between ground of affiliate marketing, betwixt merchants and affiliates. Before we move on with the what and how, let’s briefly clarify our terms. In affiliate marketing, a merchant rewards an affiliate for traffic and pays commission on purchases made by referred visitors. Referring a friend to sign on with a cell phone company and getting $10 off your next month’s bill is an example of affiliate marketing. In this case, the cell phone company is the “merchant” and you are the “affiliate” or “publisher”.

According to VigLink’s web site, more than half of all affiliate links are improperly formatted, which means that the affiliate loses out on hard earned commission dollars. If the customer cannot be tracked, the affiliate cannot get paid. The service solves this problem with a JavaScript snippet inserted into the affiliate’s web site, which makes sure all links are properly formatted.

Changing the Name of the Game

But while formatting affiliate-links properly can be a time-consuming pain, any web developer worth their salt should be able to handle the task. It’s not here that the service is going to make a difference. CEO Oliver Roup told us today that the real focus is all the money that is being lost, not only on improperly formatted links, but links to sites with affiliate programs that your site is not enrolled in. “Every time a link leaves your site, value is being created,” he explained. “You should be able to capitalize on that value.”

The interesting new twist that VigLink introduces to the affiliate marketing game is that you don’t even have to know that you’re linking to a merchant to make a commission. It’s almost like having an agent. If a visitor from your site makes a purchase, VigLink keeps track and collects the commission for you, taking a percentage for itself.

The company’s success now relies on getting some big name merchants involved. Since the service is free to affiliate members, it won’t take as much to get followers on that end of the spectrum. Pending that, we think that this is an idea that could be going places.

Written by Mike Melanson