Glossary
Earnings Per Click (EPC)
The average money you earn each time someone clicks your affiliate link, calculated as total earnings divided by total clicks.
Earnings per click, or EPC, is the average amount you earn every time someone clicks your affiliate link. You work it out by taking your total earnings and dividing by your total clicks.
Total earnings / Total clicks = EPC
$120 earned / 300 clicks = $0.40 EPC
EPC matters because it tells you what a click is actually worth to you, which is the number you need before you decide what you can afford to pay for traffic. If your EPC is $0.40 and you can buy clicks for less than $0.40, you have room to run paid ads. If clicks cost more than that, you would lose money on every visitor.
Two cautions. First, EPC only becomes meaningful after a real number of clicks; ten clicks tell you almost nothing. Second, affiliate networks often advertise an "average EPC" for an offer, but that is their top affiliates' result with their traffic, not a promise for yours.
To see how EPC drives the decision to run paid traffic, read revenue per click explained.