EPC, or “earnings per click,” is a popular payment model for affiliate programs and a formula affiliates use to assess the value of the click-through they provide to their affiliates. 

The term “earnings per click” is often used in connection with PPC or pay-per-click affiliate networks, which pay compensation for each click an affiliate achieves.

Let us say you want to learn how to make the most of your affiliate analytics on pay-per-click sites and how to use EPC to determine profitable and less profitable affiliate programs and campaigns. In this case, you can fine-tune your efforts to maximize your pay-per-click income.

What does EPC mean?

EPC is the abbreviation for profits per click. In pay-per-click affiliate marketing programs, this is defined as the commission rate or payment you receive for your click-throughs or activity on your affiliate links.

Knowing how much you earn per click is crucial to calculating your affiliate marketing revenue and making your referral marketing campaigns work for you. It allows you to determine how much you will earn, which links are most effective,, and which ones require more work.

Knowing the value of each click, on the other hand, is often irrelevant – because some clicks bring in more than others, and some bring in nothing at all!

EPC is the method by which commissions for pay-per-click affiliate schemes are calculated and determined—in other words. It shows you the worth of the clicks you win within the payment structure that your affiliate scheme provides. 

What is the EPC for?

Although EPC stands for earnings per click, the terms can be misleading. The EPC formula displays the value for all clicks received, not simply the value of a single click.

It’s a cost-per-click formula that allows you to analyze data from several clicks at the same time.

Then, it calculates your profits per 100 clicks.

What Does EPC Mean In Affiliate Marketing

EPC is a useful affiliate analytics statistic as well as a standard payout mechanism for affiliate websites.

It would be best if you considered this:

  • A single action, such as a click, may not generate any revenue. Having a high bounce rate or a large number of clicks that do not result in sales or signups may not generate any revenue.

Since you can receive different amounts of commissions for different types of purchases or signups, calculating your clicks is of great importance.

It is very easy to calculate your earnings per click.

Here is the EPC formula:

  • The total amount of commissions you earn / the number of clicks you received through your affiliate links = EPC.
  • For example, let us say you ran ads for an affiliate product and your total profit is $100. Your total earnings came from 50 clicks on your affiliate link. In this case, you can calculate the EPC:
  • $100 (total revenue) / 50 (total clicks) = $2 (EPC).

Another example:

  • You earned a $500 affiliate commission by bringing in 100 clicks to a merchant’s website.
  • This means the EPC would be $500/100 = $5.00.

This information is available on many affiliate marketing websites for affiliate marketers. They can only calculate the EPC of their affiliate products on your behalf. This data may be referred to as “network EPC” because the affiliate program’s partner provides it as an average.

“If earnings per click of affiliate networks provide this information, why doesn’t everyone just push products with greater EPC and spend more on ads for that affiliate link?” you could wonder.

The caveat is that this information only reveals the average e-revenue per click, which is not the same for each affiliate partner. For example, one person may receive $3 EPC on a link while another receives only $1.

As a result, the average becomes $2.

As a result, selecting the affiliate product with the greatest EPC does not guarantee a decent income.

To do that, you’ll need a great marketing approach.

Calculate Your Estimated EPC

However, it would help if you also calculated your cost per click.

Why should you calculate your cost per click?

As an affiliate marketer, you may spend a lot of money on advertising on Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. You have already spent money on each click you send to a merchant website.

What Does EPC Mean In Affiliate Marketing? - epc in affiliate marketing

Not for every click, but if you break down an entire campaign to a single click, you should be able to calculate the precise amount of money you spent driving each click, right?

What you get is a measure that you completely control. You choose how much you want to spend per click. You have complete control over how much money you spend on Facebook advertising and how much money you spend on pre-sale or landing pages.

So, if you know the EPC for a specific affiliate program and compare it to your expenditure per click, you can calculate your expected profit per click – how much you net per click after deducting your campaign costs.

This can assist you in identifying affiliate programs with high EPCs, such as the Sandals Affiliate Program or the Weebly Affiliate Program, and opting out of programs with lower EPCs. To put it another way, before you join any of the thousands of affiliate networks, you may fine-tune your efforts and act wisely.

EPC in Affiliate Marketing

The EPC in affiliate marketing allows you to monitor your earnings simply by glancing across the board rather than flipping through the numbers in a large table and adding up all the numbers to see the final result.

Top merchants disclose EPC statistics upfront and on their affiliate pages, allowing marketers to estimate how much they can make per click after becoming a partner with them.

EPC is very significant for affiliate marketers who bring massive quantities of traffic to merchant websites and marketers who utilize a variety of platforms to advertise various products and services. EPC allows them to quickly and easily compare profits via social media marketing, promotional emails, and pre-sales pages.

For example, suppose you operate with an affiliate program that pays varying commission levels based on the signup or action obtained from each click on the same link—$1 and $2 in our example to keep things simple.

A $2 click may appear to be more profitable—but it may not be!

If you can persuade three of your prospects to join up for $1 for everyone who signs up for $2, the $1 sign-ups really pay you more for your effort because the payment level is lower or easier to accomplish.

Even if your affiliate scheme does not supply you with a ready-made EPC table, calculating your EPC for any specific campaign or partner is really straightforward if you know how to calculate EPC yourself. 

EPC Is Not an Affiliate Commission

The terms “EPC” and “affiliate commission” should not be used interchangeably. It is a formula for determining the overall value of your click-throughs. 

While it is most usually associated with CPC or PPC (Pay-Per-Click) affiliate schemes in which affiliates are paid only when a visitor clicks on an affiliate link posted on their website, you can assess the value of your clicks in any affiliate payment model, not only PPC or CPC.

EPC is a formula that can be used to calculate the average value of each click rather than only the value of a single click.

It enables you to analyze data from several clicks and calculate your entire revenue per 100 clicks.

It’s more than simply a payout structure for CPC affiliate programs; it’s also a valuable analytics tool for affiliate marketers, providing insight into their affiliate operations.

Of course, not every visitor who clicks on an affiliate link on your website will buy something, register for a webinar, or fill out an email capture form. The vast majority of clicks would yield no signups or income. 

Furthermore, different types of sales or signups can result in varying amounts of affiliate commissions, but if you can calculate the average income per click, you’ll know where your campaign is headed.

In other words, EPC delivers a complete view of your marketing and promotion efforts.

Use EPC Strategically to Boost Your Campaign

Calculating the EPC for each of your affiliate links and campaigns makes it simple to see how your efforts are yielding meaningful benefits. You may utilize EPC to promote your campaign in a variety of ways. Here are a few suggestions.

  • Calculate your EPC to determine which advertising networks and websites are producing the highest yield.
  • Compare the performance of various links.
  • Compare past data to recent data to see whether or not your campaigns are improving.
  • Determine whether you earn more money with low-cost purchases, signups, higher-cost transactions, or signups that are normally difficult to obtain.
  • Determine whether paid advertising is worthwhile by comparing how much you earn per click versus how much you spend per click.
  • Remove issues like invalid or broken links, high bounce rates, and bad content.
  • A/B tests two versions of your affiliate website to see which one is more profitable.

Conclusion

Running an affiliate company necessitates spending money, time, and effort to search for and compare affiliate offers. As a result, you must determine where you should invest your money and time. 

It’s quite simple to get buried in measurements and numbers, and if you’re not studying the appropriate data, you’re undoubtedly losing money. Focusing on EPC in affiliate marketing may appear to be a quick fix, but it is a proven efficient strategy to ensure that you are not wasting your money.

Scaleo -

Last Updated on December 5, 2023

Author

Elizabeth is a Senior Content Manager at Scaleo. Currently enjoying the life in Prague and sharing professional affiliate marketing tips. She's been in the online marketing business since 2006 and gladly shares all her insights and ideas on this blog.