What Does EPC Mean in Affiliate Marketing? Your Guide to This Metric

EPC is a valuable metric for affiliate marketers. It’s one way to keep an eye on how much you’re making and your earning potential.

What does EPC mean in affiliate marketing? How can you increase your EPC? Why does it even matter? We’ll answer all your questions in this post.

What Does EPC Mean?

EPC means earnings per click, and this metric measures exactly what it claims to. You’re looking at the average of what an affiliate marketer makes each time one of their website visitors clicks on a link.

How Do You Calculate EPC?

There’s a simple formula you can use to calculate your EPC:

EPC = Total Earnings / Total Number of Clicks

Let’s say you made $500 from affiliate marketing over the month. Look at your dashboard (or however you access metrics) to determine how many people clicked, and divide $500 by that number. For our purposes, let’s say you had 75 clicks on your affiliate links that month.

$500 (Total Earnings) / 75 (Total Number of Clicks) = Approximately $6.67 in Earnings per Click (EPC)

What Is the Difference Between CPC and EPC?

CPC stands for cost per click; in some ways, it’s the opposite of EPC. While EPC averages the amount you’re bringing in for each click, CPC looks at the average you’re spending for each one—specifically in paid advertising.

It’s vital to consider your CPC alongside your EPC because it’s the only way to get an accurate picture of your performance. You don’t know what you’re actually earning until you make allowances for your overhead and spending.

Consider a restaurant as an example. They might sell a hamburger for $5, but they have a lot of expenses to account for before that money goes into the owner’s pocket. They need to look at their lease price, staff wages, utility costs, money spent on ingredients, and so much more.

Depending on those numbers and the amount of food they sell, the owner could even lose money on each burger sold. In fact, most new restaurants operate at a loss for the first couple of years, at least. Your overhead costs will be much less as an affiliate marketer, but they still need to be taken into account—and CPC is one targeted metric that sheds light on the big picture.

Calculate your CPC with this simple formula:

CPC = Advertising Campaign Cost / Total Number of Clicks

What Is a Good EPC?

Simply put, a good EPC is anything that exceeds your CPC. It’s basic math—if each click costs you $1 out of pocket, you need to recoup more than $1 to make money. The bigger the gap between your EPC and your CPC, the more money you’re actually making with each click.

Depending on your actual overhead, your EPC could exceed the CPC without making a profit. Keeping other expenses as low as possible will help you maximize your earnings.

Why Does EPC Matter?

We’re going to assume that you didn’t get into affiliate marketing as a hobby. It’s about making money, right? EPC lets you know how much you’re making with each click; alongside CPC, these are crucial metrics that say a lot about the state of your business and where you can improve.

How Can I Increase My EPC?

In general, a higher EPC puts more money in your pocket. So how can you increase yours? Try these tips:

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Use your affiliate links wherever possible: While you don’t want to go overboard, look for opportunities to include links in landing pages, blog posts, video captions, and wherever else you focus your marketing efforts.
Choose a niche: Identifying your niche can help you determine your target audience and focus your efforts on those most interested in what you provide.
Build an email newsletter list: Email marketing can be very effective—with an ROI of $36 for every dollar you spend. People signing up for a newsletter are genuinely interested in what you have to say and are likely to click on your links.
Focus on your credibility: Getting links and making sales are much easier with an audience that trusts you. So think hard about your approach and commit to making posts and videos with real value for your audience. Once they accept you as an authority, you’ll be more successful as an affiliate marketer.
Opt for more lucrative opportunities: You can be an affiliate for nearly any product or service you can think of, but some of these opportunities pay better than others. If you work with a company like Round Sky that offers generous compensation packages, you can increase your EPC dramatically.

Level Up Your Affiliate Marketing with Round Sky

Our affiliates earn up to $250 per lead with some of the highest EPCs in the affiliate marketing industry. At Round Sky we provide each affiliate with a real-time reporting platform that provides valuable metrics, 50+ websites to promote, iframe widgets, banners in multiple sizes, API integrations, and so much more.