If you want to succeed in affiliate marketing, you must ensure your affiliate earnings per click (EPC) remain as high and positive as possible. Every affiliate marketer struggles to get their desired number of clicks at some point in their journey.
When you are promoting products from multiple brands, you must get as much attention as possible. Affiliate Earning Per Click (EPC) is the most important number in affiliate marketing as it rightly determines your journey.
Today's affiliate marketing journey is much more competitive as it has become a critical element of e-commerce, with total spending rising to $8.2 billion in the US in 2022.
To maintain a level of success, affiliate marketers must look for programs with high EPC and then measure their earnings potential based on these figures.
What Does Earnings Per Click (EPC) Mean in Affiliate Marketing?
Earning Per Click (EPC) shows how much affiliate partners make for each click they receive on their affiliate links. It measures how much revenue you're earning from a single click.
EPC is a crucial metric for measuring affiliate marketing revenue and costs associated with affiliate earnings, even for those who only work with one or two products.
If you run PPC affiliate programs, it is one of the critical metrics needing to be accounted for to ensure your costs do not exceed your profit.
Many affiliate marketing networks post the EPC of the affiliate programs listed in their marketplace. This allows affiliate marketers to be selective about the programs they want to promote.
If affiliates rely on a PPC affiliate program to promote products, they need this figure to ensure they can measure the effectiveness of their paid promotional strategies.
Why is EPC important?
Affiliate earnings per click is important because it clearly shows whether you succeed as an affiliate marketer. It provides multiple data points to analyze whether you're on the right path.
One of the best aspects of affiliate earnings per click is that you can immediately analyze your performance daily or at the end of the week, month, quarter, or year.
Therefore, affiliate earnings per click provide a perfect platform for measuring whether your efforts bear fruit.
This calculation is vital for any PPC affiliate marketing programs to ensure affiliate income and minimize losses. Knowing this calculation effectively allows you to make more money from the beginning to the end of a campaign.
How is EPC calculated?
Here is a simple method for calculating affiliate earnings per click:
Take a specific product and determine how much money you have earned from it over a particular period.
Divide the amount of money you have earned by the number of clicks on the affiliate link related to that product.
For example, if you have made $500 from affiliate links of a particular product by getting 250 clicks, here is how you calculate your affiliate earnings per click.
$500/250 = $2.
So, you earned $2 per click from your affiliate link.
The higher the EPC, the more potential to make money and profit from your campaigns.
It's important to understand that an affiliate network EPC is a blended average of all promotion efforts by all counted affiliate marketers. Therefore, there may be instances where a listed EPC is much higher than what is actually able to be accomplished under normal circumstances.
The advertisers also provide these metrics, so honesty can certainly come into question if an EPC is listed much higher than you are able to achieve with your paid click programs, you might question the EPC legitimacy.
Affiliate revenue is the name of the game for affiliate marketers. Therefore, understanding the methods to supercharge your EPC as an affiliate marketer is critical.
You want to be the affiliate marketer setting the bar, not the one trying to reach the average.
8 Ways to Supercharge Your Affiliate Earnings Per Click
Being an affiliate marketer, you want to do your best to earn more with every click. Having the right information can significantly boost your chances of doing so.
Below are additional strategies to leverage above the pay-per-click affiliate programs model you may run to generate your earnings potential.
Include Affiliate Links in Your Blog Posts
According to research, 40% of affiliate publisher commissions are generated through blogs and content. It shows how important blogs are for boosting your affiliate earnings per click and helping you become a more successful affiliate marketer.
The good thing about blogs is that even the smaller ones can help you earn money if you craft them correctly.
The best way of including affiliate links in your blog is to research the most suitable affiliate schemes for your niche and use them organically in your blog.
Here, it is essential to emphasize the organic nature of the blog because spamming doesn't work and annoys the reader. Your goal should be to promote a brand naturally, not force it on people.
Trust is another crucial factor when including affiliate links in your blog. Don't include a link just because it promises you a good commission; include it only because you genuinely believe it to be helpful for the reader and yourself.
Some subpar affiliate links that aren't helpful might earn you some good bucks initially but will harm you in the long run when readers feel fed up.
The usefulness of blog posts extends into the paid sphere. Many affiliate marketing sites use effective blog posts as landing pages as they are effective at driving affiliate site conversions through other channels and can also leverage appropriate ad space on the page that might work in their favor.
Testing posts as landing pages is always best to ensure your PPC program and ad formats produce the intended results.
Create Email Campaigns
Craft Engaging Content
Email campaigns are another great way of boosting your affiliate earnings per click if you know how to do it properly. First, you must engage your readers and produce content that fits your audience perfectly.
Add clear calls to action in your email and keep them entertaining while including important information.
Leveraging a PPC program to build an email list is a great technique for earning more value from paid advertising campaigns. An EPC affiliate can improve this metric through effective conversion from PPC programs to email marketing success.
Keep Existing Subscribers Happy
There is a reason why people sign up for email updates, and it is that they want valuable information from you consistently.
If you drift from your path and give them irrelevant information, they'll be unsatisfied and might even unsubscribe.
This improves customer retention rates which openly means more sales. According to Business News Daily, most companies make 60-70 percent of their sales from existing customers and only 5-20 percent from newer ones.
Reactivating Your Subscribers
A strong subject line is critical for reactivating subscribers, as it boosts your open rate. You can gain the audience's attention through something funny or telling them they're missing out on something important.
The internet has attractive subject lines that can help boost your open rate and affiliate earnings per click. HubSpot shares that over 35 percent of email receivers open emails based on the subject line alone.
Segment Your Subscribers
Segmenting your subscribers can help you create targeted campaigns with different content for different people.
After all, receiving an email that has nothing to do with the interests and preferences of your subscribers isn't going to serve your purpose.
So, you must take an audience-centric approach and send only the relevant emails to keep them engaged.
You can have higher open rates, conversion rates, and affiliate earnings per click by segmenting your audiences. For instance, if you have gained some subscribers by offering them an e-book, you know where their interests lie.
Use this important point to create an effective targeting campaign in the future.
Use Exit-Intent Pop-Ups and Fly-ins
Exit-intent pop-ups and fly-ins can effectively take your affiliate earnings per click to the next level. Wolfgang Digital reports that exit-intent pop-ups and fly-ins can increase conversion rates by 10 percent and improve the site on time by 16 percent.
Here's how exit-intent pop-ups boost your earnings per click:
When the user is about to leave your website, an exit-intent pop-up can excite them into checking something out or offer a call to action, which keeps them on the website and increases sales/subscriptions.
They can remind users of the items left in the cart and offer discounts to complete the orders.
Exit-intent pop-ups can also provide users discounts in exchange for their email addresses for building a solid email list.
Although fly-ins share several aspects with pop-ups for affiliate marketing, they also bring something more:
They can be designed using attractive graphics to catch users' attention at prominent spots on a website.
Since they are activated by user behavior, such as hovering over a specific area, they are perfect for promotions and providing relevant offers.
When paying for website traffic, you want every opportunity to convert that target audience. An exit-intent pop-up is the last chance to make an impression and convince that user to stay or convert.
Most affiliate marketers that employ these types of pop-ups understand when and how to leverage them to produce more affiliate sales and effectively earn revenue using Google Ads or other PPC programs.
Design Discount Pages with Affiliate Links
You can design stunning discount pages with affiliate links, including coupon codes, exclusive offers, special deals, and more.
Once you have hunted down a suitable affiliate program, you must create a dedicated discount page on your website.
It should feature all the active discounts while ensuring that expired ones are removed in a timely manner. Be bold in including call-to-action on these pages to ensure that customers are guided correctly.
You can link to multiple products from multiple companies on your discount page and earn hefty commissions.
However, make sure you're always mentioning that it's an affiliate link and that you're earning a commission from it so that there is transparency in the process.
A discount is one of the most effective ways to promote products, and applying affiliate links directly on a page dedicated to deals is a great way to encourage a click-through on the advertiser's site.
Social media influencers use the direct click-through method effectively as they want the click to occur directly from their channel, be it YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, or another popular social media network.
Put Banner Ads on Your Website
Banner ads can be a boon because they help boost your affiliate earnings per click significantly by improving ad visibility on your website.
They are usually placed in a website's busiest areas, increasing visibility and a higher chance of visitors clicking on them.
Banner ads are also targeted toward the right audiences to increase conversions. You can use different metrics to specify them, such as demographics, interests, and more.
For example, if you run a website that serves outdoor enthusiasts, design banner ads that show camping, bonfires, hiking boots, etc.
Many affiliate marketers overlook that they can use multiple banner ads on a single page. Having a dedicated ad space and a system that refreshes ads allows you to serve more ad impressions to each advertiser and increases the chance it will be clicked on.
It increases clicks per page view and gives you a higher chance of boosting your affiliate earnings per click.
Attention-grabbing banners also have a higher click-through rate (CTRs) which means better chances of improving your affiliate earnings per click.
If you don't want to handle your own ad space and campaigns, consider using a service like Google Adsense, Ezoic, or Mediavine.
Analyze User Journey and User Flow
Analyzing user journey and user flow is critical for boosting affiliate earnings per click, as it assists you in identifying the weak points in your affiliate marketing strategy.
It tells you where visitors could be more engaging with your content effectively. Here's how you can perform this crucial analysis:
The first step is to determine the essential pages of your website, such as the homepage, product pages, checkout pages, discount pages, etc.
Map out the user's journey from the homepage to the checkout page to know where they're dropping off and losing interest. Identify the hindrances that might be putting them off during the process.
Use analytics tools such as Google Analytics to check the pages with the highest bounce and edit rates and the pages with the least time spent.
Once you know the issues, improve user experience by reducing the page load time, simplifying the checkout process, and making your website pages more engaging.
Make Sure to A/B Test
Monitor the effect of the above-mentioned changes on user behavior using A/B testing. It is excellent to check the effectiveness of different versions of the same webpage, email, or ad to know which performs best.
Here's how A/B testing helps you pick the best options for your boosting affiliate earnings per click:
- You can identify the elements with the highest click-generating potential by checking different webpage elements, such as images, headlines, call-to-action, etc.
- You can also improve user experience by identifying important elements, such as page load time, simplicity of navigation, ease of checkout, etc.
- A/B testing helps you determine the most engaging elements, such as images, animations, and videos, so you can increase the time they spend on your website.
- It helps you optimize the ads for mobile and helps refine targeting by testing different versions of the same ad.
BONUS: EPC Affiliate Marketing Tools
Link Whisper (for internal linking)
Although having too many internal links on a webpage can negatively impact its value, not having any is much worse.
Internal linking is crucial for increasing user engagement as you link them to other content on your website and keep them hooked, and LinkWhisper is the perfect tool for it.
The most important aspect of it is improving your SEO. Besides, better navigation and increased visibility are other advantages of internally linking web pages.
SEO Improvements
Internal linking is the most underrated and underutilized SEO tool, but Link Whisper brings new life by offering intelligent suggestions, thanks to the AI powering it.
It suggests you have multiple internal links when editing the content, depending upon the number of articles on your website and the relevance of your existing content.
No More Orphan Content
Orphan content refers to content with very little or no internal linking. Link Whisper automatically identifies such content and helps you add more links to those articles.
You only need to run a link scan, and Link Whisper will instruct you the rest of the way to building inbound internal links and eliminating orphan posts.
Internal Link Reporting and Fixing Broken Links
Link Whisper provides a dashboard of internal and external links connected to your website to help you optimize your website perfectly. It lets you know about broken links, so you can edit or remove them.
From Keywords to Internal Links
No need to go through whole articles to find the right spots for internal linking. You only need to type the keywords, and Link Whisper will suggest the most pertinent links for your articles.
Hunter (for email prospecting and link building)
Email prospecting can be a powerful tool for boosting your affiliate earnings per click and making you a more impactful marketer. Hunter is an excellent tool for quickly finding and connecting with the right email addresses.
The cold email software from Hunter lets you send engaging emails and helps you schedule follow-ups too. Hunter combines automation with a personal touch in these emails while keeping the purpose of your campaign in mind.
While you focus on the content, Hunter manages the rest to help you build meaningful relations and improve your affiliate marketing.
Here is what Hunter can do for your link-building efforts:
- Full personalization helps you edit any email schedules in a campaign.
- Complete authority over campaigns and the daily quota of emails.
- Effective tracking of emails after they're sent.
- A large number of email templates to select the best ones for you.
- Your Hunter account links with multiple Google & Microsoft accounts.
Hunter.io is a perfect solution to make link building a much easier and more effective exercise. As we all contest to, link building is the least fun element of SEO, but arguably its most valuable.
Grammarly
We all know how unattractive and annoying grammatically incorrect content looks and feels. Educated readers are instantly put off by such mediocre content because it makes you look unprofessional and careless.
You can resolve these issues using Grammarly—the most popular and powerful tool for fixing grammatical errors and making your content appear more professional. Grammarly uses advanced machine learning to improve Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Although the free account is excellent for basic writing tasks, affiliate marketers should get a premium plan to enhance their communication game. Upgrading to a paid plan is $12 per month and is well worth the price.
The Chrome extension allows Grammarly to work where you need it to, whether in other AI writing tools, optimization tools, Google or Word docs or even within the WordPress editor.
Organizations and businesses can get Grammarly Business, with enterprise-level features to improve internal and external communication. It is available on Windows, Mac, smartphones, and iPad, so everyone can benefit from it regardless of their device.
Ahrefs
Keyword research and content analysis are both indispensable parts of quality content. By using the right keywords, you can enhance the visibility of your content in search engines.
Similarly, content analysis helps you identify the weaknesses in your existing content and create more engaging and relevant content.
Ahrefs is the most popular SEO toolset currently on the market and brings all the important functionalities into one place. Here are some of the best features Ahrefs offers affiliate marketers:
Site Explorer
The Site Explorer from Ahrefs combines three powerful SEO tools:
Organic traffic research helps you determine competitor keywords and the pages bringing the most traffic.
Backlink checker checks the quality of backlink profiles by seeing the websites that link back to your competitors' sites.
Paid traffic research helps you learn whether your competitors are doing paid search advertising and how they funnel it.
Ahrefs also lets you research:
- Organic traffic
- Popular pages (by traffic, backlinks, keywords)
- Backlinks (by site section, by page)
- Outgoing links
- Paid keywords
In addition, it's perfect for doing proper competitor analysis and finding content gaps.
SpyFu (for PPC research)
If you rely on pay-per-click affiliate programs, you want a tool that can help measure the success and competition levels you may experience.
SpyFu delivers excellent paid advertising research tools, lets you see behind the curtain of competitors' Google Ads campaigns and provides tremendous value from an overall digital marketing perspective.
The pricing is not excessive at $16 per month for the Basic plan if paid annually ($192 per year). It even comes with 5ooo weekly tracked keywords, which is more than most SEO-focused tools do.
Additional Resources
- 22 Best Affiliate Marketing Networks in 2023 – the best networks to start affiliate marketing.
- 5 Affiliate Marketing Strategies to Rely on in 2023 – Build upon these affiliate strategies for success.
- How to Apply for Affiliate Approval – Follow these tips to gain a higher level of affiliate approval.
- How Do Relationships Define the Best Affiliate Marketing Partnerships? – Building relationships to strengthen your affiliate program.
Affiliate Earnings Per Click Wrap-up
Affiliate marketing is rewarding because you adopt the right strategies using the correct information. If you have made it this far, you have a solid understanding of boosting affiliate earnings per click.
To become a high-performing affiliate partner, you need a high-performing affiliate program.
Create engaging blogs, use fly-ins & exit-intent pop-ups, craft inviting emails, do A/B testing, and more to step up your affiliate marketing game. Besides that, also use proven tools such as Link Whisper, Grammarly, Hunter, and Ahrefs to have practical assistance by your side.