Forum Moderators: skibum
Since I guess a lot of affiliates are reading this, I ask you kindly for your insights :) What do you expect from a click on sales-based ads? 5 cent? 10? Or maybe you don't start below 15-20 cent? Maybe you also decide dependiong on certain product categorys? Do you track the revenue per click for sales-based ads at all?
Would be nice to hear some toughts!
e.g.
electronics
books
apparel
insurance
tickets
For me, I have areas where I expect to make $10 per click and areas where I expect to make $.10.
In other areas - I need to make much more. Some people need in the dollars to make a profit.
All depends. To me it is:
1) If free - which program can I do to make more
2) If free - what can I do to make people more likely to buy/click
3) If paid - how can I get cheaper clicks to make the same conversion rate
4) If paid - how can I do ANYTHING to increase ROI.
I know that isn't the answer you are looking for, but you really are asking the wrong question.
What I suspect you want to know - is what do other people doing what I do make? You actually can sometimes get an idea of this by looking around the net in various forums - or even sponsor sites.
We aren't trying to be smart a**es - it just varies. I look at it more per visitor - or per site when looking at free traffic.
I can tell you at one time one of the the most successful people for a large affiliate program was earning about 20 cents per click - based on their click stats. That same person ranged from about 4 cents to 40 cents for various sites in that affiliate network depending on various factors.
The top program has a 3 month EPC (Earnings per 100 clicks) of 179$, that is 1,79 per click! Wow, keeping in mind that this is the average, there must be some guys getting a fortune out of this prog!
But this prog seems to be an exception, the 25th place on the 3 month EPC list brings the EPC down to 50$, the 200th to slightly above 10$.
The EPC depends a lot on the industry. for consumer electronics only 5 programs score an EPC above $10, for games only 1 program. For financial services there are more then 50 Programs with an EPC above 10$.
Conclusion: There is no reason to advertise any other stuff than financial services... joking, of course it depends on the kind of traffic you have. Probably the competition between the affiliates will also be most fierce in this segment.
How much can you make?
It is understandable to want to know your potential revenue per click. But also weigh the per click against the number of clicks.
Expectation (free traffic) = revenue per click X number of clicks
Expectation (paid traffic) = (revenue per click - cost per click) X number of clicks
How much more can you make over time
Okay, you decide on a market and start a site. Next, you start making sales and racking up conversion data. Analyze this information with the goal of steadily increasing your revenue per visitor over time.
How much more can you make than your competitors
This is what guarantees you to make money for the long term. Your free traffic will generate a bigger budget for expansion, plus you will have the flexibility to bid higher on advertising.
For example, as a general rule it is possible to achieve at least three times the average EPC for most merchants at CJ. But the key is to get the first real numbers under your belt and just do it.
Anybody can run ads for printer ink or debt consolidation, areas which theoretically have a high EPC, but on most sites the click rate for such ads will be so microscopic that it's simply not worth it. And in my experience, making irrelevant ads bigger and bolder is a waste: the drop in your EPC from these ads will pretty much wipe out any increase in click rate. OTOH, lots of programs can generate serious money if the merchant is offering the sort of thing your audience is currently looking for.
