Affiliate EPC: How to Accelerate Affiliate Marketing Success

Affiliate EPC is one of the most important metrics in affiliate marketing. EPC (full form in affiliate marketing: Earnings Per Click) determines the output of your marketing efforts or, in other words, the amount of money you’re capable of earning with every single affiliate link.

Calculating your EPC will allow you to decide with more confidence whether a product is worth the effort, that is, whether it can generate a desired amount of profit. With that said, let’s get into details on what EPC is, how to calculate it, and how to improve this metric in affiliate marketing.

EPC Definition in Affiliate Marketing and Purpose

An affiliate EPC stands for Earnings Per Click and, as the name suggests, it tells you the average amount of money you are earning per a single click on your affiliate link. If you focus on EPC affiliate marketing, you are likely going to be running PPC or pay-per-click ads, with the goal to get as much traffic to your link as possible.

The goal with these kind of affiliate campaigns is to earn more than you’re spending, in order to be profitable. There are two metrics that play an important role in this game – the EPC we just defined and the CPC, which stands for cost-per-click. The CPC is your advertising expense, that is, the amount of money you’re spending to get clicks to your affiliate link.

EPC-CPC

Naturally, your EPC needs to be higher than your CPC for you to break even and come out profitable with your affiliate marketing campaign. The mistake many beginner affiliate marketers make is that they only focus on CPC and try to find products with the lowest cost per click.

While keeping your costs down is a good idea, a low CPC does not guarantee you’re going to make a good return on investment with your advertising campaign. What you also have to do is focus on the EPC, that is, calculate your earnings per click and aim to increase them in order to maximize the potential of each affiliate marketing campaign.

How to Calculate Earnings Per Click in Affiliate Marketing

You’ll often find affiliate marketers asking ‘what is a good EPC?’ The thing is, there is no answer to that question. Your earnings per click are considered ‘good’ if you’re making more than you’re spending on your affiliate marketing campaign. If you’re raking up good profit, then you can call your EPC really great.

So, the real question is how do you calculate affiliate EPC? The answer is pretty simple. Add up the total amount of commissions you’ve earned and divide that number by the number of clicks your affiliate link got. There you have it – EPC calculated in a couple seconds.

To make this even simpler, here’s an example: let’s say you’ve earned $100 from your affiliate campaign and you got 50 clicks to your link. Simply divide 100 by 50 and your EPC will equal 2. That means you earned $2 per ever single click.

Keep in mind that most affiliate marketing sites will calculate this for you, but it’s handy that you know how to do it yourself. Also, this metric will sometimes be referred to as network EPC is you’re in an affiliate program.

How to Increase Your Affiliate EPC

Now, if you want to make more money in affiliate marketing (who doesn’t?), you’ve got two options: either drive more clicks to your link (spend more to make more) or increase your EPC. In marketing, we always strive to squeeze the orange as they say, and get the most out of each campaign before bumping up the advertising budget.

So, before you rush to increase your spending (which would in most cases lead to more earnings, although not always guaranteed), try to increase your earnings per click as much as possible. Here are 5 ways to bump up your affiliate EPC:

#1 Focus on Current Trends

Timing is going to play a big role in your EPC stats. When choosing products for your affiliate marketing campaigns, make sure to keep current trends and seasons in mind. There’s no use to promoting Christmas products in February, or winter gear in June, right?

Making sure your tracked affiliate links are up to date and in alignment with current trends is going to help you get more clicks without forcing the links to heavily. Besides, if you’re able to take advantage of a rising trend and ride the wave while a product is selling successfully, your EPC will be significantly higher.

#2 Measure Everything

You know what they say, what’s not measured cannot be improved. Same goes for affiliate marketing campaigns – you need to know your stats in order to increase your numbers. Having all your metrics in order will allow you to make data-driven decisions, meaning you will be more likely to make educated choices rather than to just guess what might work or not.

As you’re setting up an affiliate marketing campaign, decide what your objectives are and be clear on what numbers you’re targeting. Then keep proper track of relevant metrics to be able to decide which campaigns or products to cut out and which ones to push out even more.

#3 Leverage Organic Traffic

You’re going to earn a lot more per click if you don’t have to spend anything to get that click, right? You’d basically get to keep all the profit. To be able to achieve this, you need get some organic traffic going, which isn’t the easiest thing to do. Luckily, today’s social media algorithms are designed in a way that anyone can go viral or leverage trends to get more free traffic to their pages.

It’s going to take a lot of work to get some organic traction but, ultimately, it’s going to be worth it if you consider how much your EPC would increase. To get the most out of organic traffic, make sure to create high quality content on your blog and social media, and direct targeted audience to the right products. Don’t forget to play around with current trends on Instagram and TikTok, as those can get you tons of free traffic if you hit the algorithm jackpot.

#4 Get Good at A/B Testing

Testing is the holy grail of marketing success, especially if you’re in affiliate marketing. You won’t know what works and what doesn’t until you put it to the test. For that very reason, you need to get really good at A/B testing and experimenting with different products and campaigns. This approach will allow you to cut the garbage and focus on the winners that get you the highest EPC.

Your overall earnings per click will increase as you get rid of lower performing products and campaigns. Think about it, if you get lucky with one or two affiliate links that bring in a good EPC but your other 10 links are performing poorly, your average earnings per click will suffer. So, get to testing before you scale your budget up and decide to spend more on advertising.

#5 Play Around with Different Display Types

Nowadays, your success in any type of online business is going to depend on how quickly you can capture people’s attention. You can find the best EPC affiliate program out there but, if you can’t get people interested enough to click your link, your campaigns will flop. The best way to ensure success is to play around with different display types.

Try promoting affiliate links in scroll-stopping displays to interrupt viewers’ thought-patterns and grab a couple seconds of their time. Make sure the display is eye-catching and worthy their attention. Another display type to test out are pop-ups, which have become very popular among marketers in the industry.

Should You Use API in Affiliate Marketing?

API, or Application Programming Interface, is a tool that allows two applications to communicate with each other. It enables the exchange of data between software programs and the cloud.

Using API in affiliate marketing can be beneficial for several reasons:

1. Automated Data Retrieval: APIs allow you to retrieve data from affiliate platforms automatically, making affiliate link tracking incredibly easy.
2. Real-time Updates: With APIs, you can receive real-time updates on product availability, pricing, and promotions, ensuring that your affiliate website or application always displays accurate information.
3. Improved User Experience: By integrating APIs into your affiliate marketing strategy, you can enhance the user experience by providing seamless access to product information and streamlined purchasing processes.
4. Advanced Analytics: APIs enable you to access detailed analytics data, allowing you to analyze the performance of your affiliate campaigns and make data-driven decisions.

Increased Efficiency: By automating various tasks through APIs, such as generating affiliate links or processing transactions, you can increase efficiency and focus on other aspects of your marketing strategy.

Start Making More Money with Affiliate Links

Now that you understand the EPC meaning in affiliate marketing, all that’s left to do is go out there, test more affiliate links, and focus on increasing earnings per click as much as possible. Keep in mind that this won’t be an easy game – there are lots of factors that play a role in affiliate marketing success.

From choosing the right products, making sure your campaigns are relevant to the current time, and nailing the right display, this might seem like too much work for little reward. However, those who stick around long enough to learn the ins and outs of affiliate marketing through practice and testing are often the ones with the most success.

Hence, go into your new campaigns with an open mind and don’t forget that a lot of the results will depend on testing and timing. Now, you’re probably wondering if you just choose products with a higher EPC and lower CPC, aren’t you bound to make money and come up profitable?

The answer is yes and no, because affiliate EPC is an average statistic. That means one affiliate marketer might link to a product with a $3 EPC, while the other links to the same product with $1 EPC. Hence, the average EPC of that product is going to be $2.

What that means is that no results are guaranteed and you won’t be able to calculate the exact outcome of your marketing strategy based on average earnings per click or CPCs. Instead, you need to play the field and test things for yourself, measure everything accordingly and make data-driven decisions instead of relying on guess-work.

To make your affiliate marketing life easier, consider using a tool such as Strackr to keep all your affiliate data in one place. That way, your attention won’t be scattered across multiple tabs and spreadsheets all the time.