EPC

Both merchants and affiliate marketers want to get the most out of their efforts. It's only natural.

EPC is one of the metrics affiliate marketers use when deciding if they want to use an eCommerce program. Here's an example of how to calculate EPC and why affiliate marketers find EPC interesting.

EPC stands for "Earnings Per Click" - i.e. "what do you earn per click" (or per visitor you refer). Let's look at an example. If a webshop has an EPC of 1.45, this means that on average you should expect to earn 1.45 per visitor you send to the webshop. This figure is, of course, calculated based on the many 1000s that different affiliate marketers send. So if there are 10 marketers who each send 3,000 visitors over, say, 3 months, the shop will receive a total of 30,000 visitors from marketers. If the online shop has a conversion rate of 2, this would be 600 customers (as 2% of 30,000 is 600). If the average order is 320.00, then 600*320.00 = 192,000.00. If the shop pays out 8% to its marketers, it will pay a total of 8% of 192,000.00, which is 15,360.00. This amount must then be divided by 30,000, as this is the number of visitors the marketers pass on. And that gives a figure of 0.51.

This means that the webshop has an EPC of 0.51.

What can you use EPC for?

What a marketer looks at is "how much money do I make if I send 1000 visitors?". They're not so interested in "what do I make if I refer one user?". They're looking at the long term, so to speak.

For example, if shop A pays 15% to its affiliates and shop B only pays 10%, most people will tend to choose shop A. But if you learn that shop B converts twice as well as shop A, it means that you suddenly deliver twice as many conversions by sending your visitors to shop B and shop B's program suddenly becomes more interesting.

Therefore, as a webshop owner, it pays off to work on your order size and conversion rate. This will give you a high EPC and make you more attractive to affiliate marketers.

We know online marketing in Shoporama

We've been working with online marketing ourselves for decades. As the only shop system in the country, we have spoken multiple times at conferences such as Marketingcamp, SEOday, Shopcamp, Digital Marketing, E-commerce Manager, Ecommerce Day, Web Analytics Wednesday and many more.