Three tips for optimizing your affiliate program
Affiliate marketing is a popular monetization tactic for many kinds of content publishers. It’s easy to understand, simple to get started, and it offers countless ways to generate revenue by capitalizing on purchase intent. Lifestyle influencers can earn commissions by sharing their favorite health and wellness products. Mom bloggers can build a commerce strategy around child- and family-focused items. Tech and electronics sites can review new product releases. The possibilities are endless.
While building an affiliate program is pretty straightforward, keeping it optimized can be a challenge. Over time, you may wonder, “How can I be sure I’ve chosen the right merchants to maximize earnings? What happens if those merchants pause or even cancel their affiliate program? Would I even know if some of my affiliate links stop driving revenue?”
Managing your affiliate program can become complicated as you build more content and create more affiliate links — but Sovrn is here to help. The Sovrn Commerce platform is designed to help publishers manage all their affiliate efforts in a single, easy-to-use solution.
1. Take control of your merchant mix
In order to optimize your affiliate program, you need current, accurate information about your expected earnings. Our Approved Merchants dashboard lets you search your list of approved merchants to find out which ones are offering affiliate payments on any given product. It also displays pricing and performance metrics so you can select merchants that are most likely to maximize your earnings.
Keep in mind that commission rate is only one piece of the affiliate earnings puzzle. That’s why the dashboard also includes data like pricing model (CPA or CPC), average conversion rate, average order value, earnings per click, and more. Performance data is calculated on a rolling average and commission rates are refreshed daily so you always have the most up-to-date information at your fingertips.
2. Keep an eye on your earnings
It’s important to remember that affiliate earnings fluctuate over time. Merchants may raise commission rates during the holidays or offer a temporary rate increase on featured products. More importantly, they may reduce commission rates or even stop their affiliate payments altogether due to budget constraints, strategy shifts, or any number of factors.
Unless you’re aware of these important changes, your affiliate earnings could suffer. That’s why we created a report that details merchants at risk, an overview of the merchant programs that have recently been paused, canceled, or otherwise stopped paying for clicks. The report also shows how much revenue you earned from each merchant over a given period, so you can easily assess the impact to your affiliate program.
To generate your personalized report, just visit the Commerce Analytics page (also called the “Publisher Dashboard”) in the Sovrn platform. Click on the “Reporting” button and select the site for your report. Then choose the “Merchants at Risk” report from the list and click “Send.” Your report will be delivered directly to the email address on your account — usually within a matter of minutes. For more information and detailed instructions, check out this article.
3. Update affiliate links in a flash
Once you know a merchant is no longer paying, you’ll want to remove them from your affiliate links as quickly as possible. Commerce makes it easy to edit your links without making manual changes to your website.
Rather than combing through all your site content and social media posts, you can simply scan your list of affiliate links within the Commerce Create Links page in the Sovrn platform. Find the links that include the non-paying merchant, change the target URL to a different affiliate merchant, and the links will automatically be updated in your content. For more information and detailed instructions, check out this article.
Ready to start driving more affiliate revenue?
These are just a few of the many ways Sovrn can help you optimize your affiliate marketing program. If you’re not already earning with Sovrn Commerce, sign up now! It only takes a few minutes, and once you’re approved you can start earning right away.
If you’re currently a Sovrn Commerce affiliate partner, feel free to reach out with questions. Our support team is standing by to help you reach your audience — and your revenue goals.
