Adding affiliate links to your content is a great way to diversify your revenue mix. Affiliate links allow you to earn commissions from merchants by promoting their products on your website.
Sovrn Commerce is the fastest, most flexible way to build – and manage – your affiliate marketing program. Before you can start earning with Commerce, you’ll need to go through our approval process. This ensures your affiliate program meets merchant standards for quality and transparency.
Once you’re approved, you can get started right away! Here are some tips to help maximize your affiliate earnings and get the most out of Commerce.
1. Select a variety of merchants
As you get started with Commerce, it’s important to choose a variety of merchants to partner with. As you develop your affiliate marketing strategy, we recommend compiling a list of products or merchants you genuinely value and want to promote across your site.
It may be tempting to link to big brand names that are popular or familiar. It may also seem easier to choose a single merchant that offers all the products you want to promote. But linking to a single, big-name merchant seldom offers your best earning potential – or the best shopping experience for your readers.
Instead, look for a diverse range of retailers that offer the same (or similar) products as those that you plan to promote. You may even find some merchants that you weren’t aware of that offer the same great products, or comparable products that may be more appealing to your audience.
Commerce makes it easy for you to find your approved merchants. Once you’ve located a brand and product you like you can easily see at a glance their average Earnings-Per-Click (EPC), their commission rate, and the payout models they support. Click into the merchant’s profile to reveal more details about their program like average order value, average conversion rate, CPC (if available) and CPA rates, and geolocations they accept traffic from.
2. Optimize your merchant list
Sovrn works with thousands of merchants who offer a wide range of rates for promoting their products. By periodically reviewing your merchant mix, you can often find merchants who are paying a higher rate for the products you want to promote.
Linking to a variety of merchant programs adds depth and stability to your affiliate strategy. Keep in mind, merchants can discontinue their affiliate programs or lower their commission rates at any time. Generally this happens if a merchant runs out of budget in a given month or quarter, or if they choose to scale back on affiliate marketing as a whole. To reduce risk and increase return, we recommend diversifying your mix of affiliate merchants.
Sovrn makes it easy for you to find and continuously update the mix of products that works best for you and your readers by providing details on our 65,000 affiliate merchants, including commission rates, payment method, affiliation status, and more.
3. Maximize your earnings
Sovrn Commerce offers a great way to check the rates that merchants are currently paying. You can see the commission percentage that each merchant pays, their payment method (cost-per-click or cost-per-acquisition), and their recent average earnings per click.
Nearly all Commerce merchants offer both cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per acquisition (CPA) compensation. When your reader clicks on an affiliate link, Sovrn will automatically check to see if the click is eligible for the merchant’s CPC and CPA program. If your click is eligible for both programs, Sovrn will route your click to the program that we expect will earn you the most revenue.
Want to measure your ROI? Learn more about earnings-per-click (EPC) to understand how efficiently your traffic is earning from advertisers.
4. Monitor your results
In order to maximize your earnings over time, it’s important to gauge which products and merchants are most appealing to your readers. For example, your audience may have strong engagement with certain content, or they may prefer a certain brand that’s featured on your site.
The Sovrn Commerce dashboard can help you identify these trends, by displaying performance metrics and delivering insights on what’s working (and what’s not). With a better understanding of your overall affiliate program, you can continue to refine your affiliate strategy and drive more revenue.
The affiliated clicks that you see in your dashboard are a great indicator of how often your readers are looking to get more information on the products or merchants that you are promoting. A high volume of clicks may indicate high interest from your readers, but you want to make sure that this translates into “Actions” – which is how the Sovrn Commerce dashboard displays revenue-generating events.
Actions shown in the dashboard include both the sales you have generated (for CPA merchant programs) and clicks that earn you a commission (for CPC merchant programs). Overall, we recommend refining your merchant mix, to ensure you are receiving a balance of both clicks and actions, as well as strong commission rates and EPC.
5. Explore more Commerce capabilities
Sovrn Commerce provides all the tools you need to build and manage your affiliate program. It includes a wide variety of innovative solutions and tools, including:
- Shopping Galleries: Create a customized carousel to highlight products from one or more merchants. The more products you offer, the better the opportunity to increase dwell time and revenue.
- Comparisons: Deliver a great shopping experience for your audience, meet Google’s algorithm updates, and drive up to 200% higher click-through rates by automatically identifying and displaying alternative retailers selling the same product.
- Expanded features: We’re always improving our Commerce capabilities. New features include an approved merchant dashboard, UTM parameters for affiliate links, and enhanced reporting.
- Content support: Partner with us to jumpstart, supplement, or diversify your monetized editorial lifestyle content.
Ready to start earning with Sovrn Commerce? Sign up for a free account! Once you’re approved, it’s easy to start earning right away.
