In the past I would get really excited to see merchants with high EPC figures. Now, I do not remember the last time payed attention to merchants EPC before joining a particular affiliate program. These EPCs of a merchant mean nothing to me… Well almost nothing. Not until I have at least few weeks of my own data to look at. As they say images speak lauder than words. So let get them rolling. I am going to use the figures of one of my websites but I am including the stats of the entire 2007. The reason I am doing so is that I believe 3months ad 7day EPCs can be easily skewed in one way or another. I think that one year can provide more than enough data to prove my point. I also am talking mostly about CJ merchants, since they flash these EPCs the most. Here are the “showcase” EPCs of one of my merchants:
EPCs for the above merchant on my own website:
Quiet a difference, don’t you think?
Here is another example:
And here are my EPC for the same merchant:
Again, quiet a difference…
You can see in my case “showcase” EPCs prove to be completely unreliable as far as figuring out what should I budget for pay per click campaigns. Do I pay attention to EPC? Of course I do. But not the figure showcased by the merchant. I test things for long enough time to see what my own EPCs look like.
So what about incentives? Boy, some of those incentives look quiet attractive too. Should we consider those incentives? Absolutely not. Many of the incentives truly suck– Scot Jangro did a great job explaining why. Tip of the hat to Scot for pointing out to me that my own EPC figures are far more important than the ones showcased by merchants.
So there you have it. EPC are important, but every affiliate in will have different EPCs for the same merchant, and I am guessing if we (affiliates) put our EPCs for the same merchant side by side, none of the figures would match. As far as incentives go, you definitely should strive to get to the “bonus” level, it pays better 😉 . However don’t get deceived by crappy bonuses.