As the digital landscape evolves, marketers constantly adapt to online market dynamics by developing innovative metrics and testing new strategies.
The EPC (Earnings Per Click) formula is a crucial metric for evaluating affiliate revenue. You might wonder what EPC is, what its significance is in affiliate marketing, and how to improve it. Well, you’ve reached the right place!
What Does EPC Mean in Affiliate Marketing?
Earnings per click (EPC) is a crucial term in affiliate marketing. It refers to the average amount of money you earn each time someone clicks on one of your affiliate links. Pay-per-click (PPC) ads mainly drive EPC.
EPC is an essential metric for success in affiliate marketing because it directly indicates your earning potential.
New affiliate marketers may need to be more familiar with EPC and help understand its significance or how to calculate it. Instead, they often know about another popular marketing term: Cost per click (CPC).
They might search for products with the lowest CPC, run expensive PPC ads to promote those affiliate links, and hope to earn enough to cover their advertising costs and make a small profit.
However, with an accurate EPC calculation, you won’t need to rely on hope. Instead, you can make data-driven decisions for predictable success and even target other higher CPC affiliate products.
Once you know your EPC, CPC becomes irrelevant. You'll be profitable as long as you earn more than you spend.
So, when people ask, “What is a good EPC?” The answer is straightforward: your EPC is suitable whenever it exceeds your CPC. That means you’re making money!
How Is EPC Calculated?
Calculating your earnings per click (EPC) is straightforward:
For example, let’s say you were running ads for an affiliate product and made a total profit of $100 from 50 clicks on your affiliate link. Your EPC would be:
$100 (Total profit) / 50 (Total clicks) = $2 EPC
Many affiliate marketing platforms provide this information for marketers. They often calculate the average EPC of their products and refer to it as Network EPC since the calculation includes the affiliate program’s network of partners.
While selecting products with a higher EPC seems logical, these figures represent average earnings per click and can vary significantly between affiliate partners. For instance, one affiliate might earn an EPC of $3.00 for the same product, and another earns $1.00, averaging out to an EPC of $2.00.
This variability means that choosing a product based solely on the highest EPC might not always yield the best results. The only way to determine your actual EPC is to test it yourself.
At CrakRevenue, an offer’s network earnings per click (EPC) is determined by calculating the average revenues generated for each click by all affiliates who promote the same offer efficiently. We do so to ensure that the network EPC considers a significant amount of clicks.
Here’s a quick example:
An affiliate (e.g., a Webmaster or a Media Buyer) displays three distinct offers on a website’s front-page spot and gets 900,000 impressions/day. Here’s the breakdown:
Offer #1
- 300,000 Impressions / 2000 clicks / CTR: 0.60%
- Income: $100
- EPC: $0.05
- E-CPM: $0.33
Offer #2
- 300,000 Impressions / 500 clicks / CTR: 0.16%
- Income: $60
- EPC: $0.12
- E-CPM: $0.20
Offer #3
- 300,000 Impressions / 4000 clicks / CTR: 1.30%
- Income: $150
- EPC: $0.038
- E-CPM: $0.50
Offer #2 has the best EPC, but you would make only 0.20$ per 1000 impressions generated (E-CPM) on your website. On the other hand, Offer #3 has the worst EPC, but you will make $0.50 per 1000 impressions.
We recently modified our interface to make it easier for Affiliate Marketers to spot EPC numbers on our offers. We’ve worked hard to give the best opportunities possible and now update our EPC daily!
Here’s how it looks:
Why Is EPC Essential to Affiliate Marketing Success?
Earnings Per Click (EPC) are crucial to affiliate marketing success because they directly measure the profitability of your efforts. Several affiliate marketers need to familiarize themselves with the EPC metric and how to calculate it, often focusing on Cost per Click (CPC) instead.
Many look for products with the lowest CPC and run expensive pay-per-click (PPC) ads to those affiliate links, hoping to make enough money to cover the costs. While this approach can yield a small profit, relying on hope is not sustainable.
Focusing on audience qualification can significantly improve your EPC. By understanding and targeting the right audience—those genuinely interested in the products or services you promote—you can drive more relevant traffic to your offers.
Qualified audiences are more likely to convert, increasing sales and commissions. This boosts your EPC and ensures your marketing campaigns are more efficient and effective. One great way to do this is by using pre-landers!
Accurately calculating EPC allows you to make data-driven decisions, significantly improving your affiliate marketing efforts.
With a clear understanding of your EPC, you can achieve predictable success and even target other affiliate products with higher EPCs. Thus, investing time in audience research and qualification can lead to a substantial increase in your overall affiliate marketing performance.
Don’t confuse EPC with CTR
The Click-Through Rate (CTR) is an important metric in affiliate marketing that measures the success of an ad campaign. It is calculated by dividing the number of clicks an ad receives by the number of impressions it gets.
For example, if an ad receives 10 clicks out of 1,000 impressions, its CTR would be 1%. CTR is crucial in affiliate marketing because it helps marketers assess how effectively their campaigns drive engagement and conversions.
It can also be used to compare the performance of different campaigns. For instance, if two ads have similar impressions but one has a higher CTR, it indicates that the audience is more engaged with the higher-CTR ad and is more likely to take action.
By analyzing CTR, marketers can adjust their campaigns and focus on the ads that are more likely to drive conversions, ultimately improving their overall marketing strategy.
Improve Your Earnings in 5 points
1. Convert Abandoning Visitors with Exit-Intent Popups
Re-engagement is a powerful tool in digital marketing. Use targeted exit-intent popups for your affiliate products, displayed when visitors show an intent to leave your site. Tools like Popupsmart can help with this.
How do exit-intent popups work for affiliate products?
When a visitor is about to leave your site, a popup appears with an offer and a call-to-action button directing them to your affiliate product. If the visitor is interested and makes a purchase, you earn money. This approach leverages organic traffic, reducing ad costs and increasing EPC and total profit.
At CrakRevenue, we designed a special tool for exit intent. It’s called Overlay, a graphical content box that obscures the background in the middle of a page.
You can use overlay ads to highlight promo codes, email sign-ups, and exclusive promotions. Customize the amount of your site that is obscured and the ad's dismissal options.
2. Use a Non-Intrusive Floating Bar
Some marketers worry that popups might hurt the user experience (UX). However, when used correctly, popups can effectively convert passive traffic into customers. Floating bars are one of the most user-friendly types of popups used by many global brands.
What is a floating bar?
A floating bar is a type of popup displayed at the top or bottom of a webpage without obstructing the content. It can be targeted to specific pages or sitewide, boosting your EPC marketing efforts and driving more affiliate sales.
3. Embed Affiliate Links in Your Blog Posts
Adding affiliate links to your blog posts is another effective way to boost your EPC. According to research, content and blogs generate nearly 40% of affiliate publisher commissions in the United States.
Creating valuable and high-quality content can drive significant organic traffic to your site. Ensure you follow best SEO practices to rank on search engines and attract more visitors. Embed affiliate links directly in the content to drive sales.
Popular content types for affiliate links include product reviews, resource pages, comparison articles, and product lists. Remember to disclose affiliate links to your readers.
4. Focus on Fast Hosting
A fast and reliable hosting service is essential for retaining visitors and encouraging them to click on your affiliate links. According to studies, the average website load time is 10.3 seconds on desktop and 27.3 seconds on mobile.
Even a one-second delay can reduce page views by 11%, conversions by 7%, and customer satisfaction by 16%.
5. Leverage Email Marketing
Using email marketing sequences effectively can improve your EPC. However, adding affiliate links to emails can be tricky. It can either bring high profits or get you banned from your email service provider.
Email providers dislike spam because it lowers their open rates. Large email lists sending campaigns full of affiliate links can be perceived as spam.
To avoid this, ensure your email series doesn’t look spammy. Provide valuable content and subtly highlight your affiliate products.
An effective email series might include:
- Welcome email
- Sharing valuable content
- Lead nurturing to build a connection
- Affiliate link email
- More content sharing
- Nurturing
- Another affiliate link email
Why Choose CrakRevenue?
By joining CrakRevenue, you align yourself with one of the most respected global CPA Networks, boasting over 14 years of expertise in traffic monetization and digital marketing.
Our platform offers exclusive, high-paying affiliate programs across lucrative verticals such as Cam, Dating, and AI, each presenting immense earning potential.
As a CrakRevenue affiliate, you'll gain access to an innovative self-serve platform, competitive commission payouts, cutting-edge promo tools, in-house creatives, meticulously tested funnels, and round-the-clock, multilingual support.
With an average annual payout of $40 million in affiliate commissions, the opportunities for high and recurring revenue are boundless. CrakRevenue empowers you to maximize your audience's potential, transforming each user into a consistent source of income.
Join us today and unlock unparalleled affiliate programs and tools tailored to elevate your success!
