Affiliate Marketing Report Card – How to Pick the Best Programs
Picking the best affiliate program can be challenging when there are so many key elements to compare. The following guest post makes it simple and shares a cool info graphic that attempts to help sort out the options. Affiliate Marketing Review Report Card. The one thing the following info is missing that also needs to be considered is cookie length.
This is a guest post by Loren Baker from Search Engine Journal.
5 Things to Compare Before Deciding Which Affiliate Program Is Better
Choosing an affiliate program is tough. There are plenty of programs promoting similar products and it is hard to decide which one offers better terms.
This article lists some basic metrics to consider to help you decide:
1. Commissions
Commissions can depend on the amount of sale (i.e. when you are paid percentage of each sale). In this case it is important to know the seller’s average order before estimating how much you are going to earn each time.
There are also set commissions: when you earn some agreed amount of money for each sale / lead.
2. EPC
EPC stands for “earnings per click” – this metric is not always revealed. It estimates how much each click would cost: EPC is calculated by dividing total revenue by total clicks.
Naturally, if this metric is made public by the seller, it’s a good sign in itself.
3. Order Size
Again, this is only important if you are paid percentage of the total sale. The larger the order, the more you are going to earn each time someone referred by you buys something.
4. Conversion Rate
Like EPC, this metric is not always revealed: it shows how easily the product sells: if 100 people visited the site and only 4 of them buy the product, the conversion rate is 4%.
This can also help you estimate your average earnings.
5. Pay Threshold
The pay threshold stands for the minimum amount in sales that must be generated before you will be able to actually receive money.
This one is the least important but it can also be a red flag to you: if the payment threshold is considerably higher than among other similar sellers, this should look strange to you.
Now, we made our best to sound simple and explain everything in easy-to-understand words. And to make thing even clearer (and more fun), here’s a great Affiliate Marketing Review Report Card that will teach you to compare various affiliate programs (and will list some of the highest-paying ones):

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#1 Tom Myers wrote on March 7, 2010 :
I think the advice you gave is great! It’s also good for people to remember that top affiliate programs will have a good track record of success. If other affiliates aren’t finding success in their program then you can bet the house that you’re not going to find success either.
#2 Joel Acuff wrote on April 24, 2010 :
Such webmasters try to apply articles from available substance directories to get visitors to their site and make some money. This is mostly important for those who have just begun working as an affiliate for several companions and do not still have any funding, yet need to develop small niche sites to visitors to their internet site so that they can start making gross.