How Statistics Can Make or Break Your Affiliate Revenue….

BJohnson — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:52:52 +0000

Affiliate publishers should perform various tests to see how website visitors respond. Clear winners should be promoted and tests should further see future improvements.

Online dating is a huge market online. We straddle the fence between Match.com and BlackSingles.com.

For us, BlackSingles has a better reception as far as media conducive to our demographic and better yet, they take the time to keep their banners fresh and up to date. Our experience shows that Match.com has a seemingly larger database of potential dates…. But what good is that if no one is getting to those landing pages?

Here is an example of the testing that you should clearly do to effectively monetize traffic via all of your affiliate programs.

Goal: To get as many site visitors into a conversion funnel to become a dating customer.

Traffic Sources: Mostly organic traffic on one of our test sites: www.blackatlanta.com

Our ClickThrough Stats:

Dating Impressions and Click Throughs for Multiple Banners

Please note that Revenue can still be generated on this clickthroughs! As with most affiliate programs, we are most concerned with:

setting that all important cookie
getting them to sign up for an email list for the affiliates to market and convert
a direct conversion, (which did not happen yet on these clicks)

Banners:

Banner 2401

Banner 2408

Banner 2413

Results

So out of 253 banner impressions, the 3 different banners got varying degrees of rotation.

Per the results, Banner 2413 was the winner with 80 impressions and 4 clickthroughs (5% ). This banner also received ALL clickthroughs!

Some Reflections

Now, some may say that should clearly promote a winner only after a solid test number of impressions given. Sure, we could have waited for 100 impressions a piece for ALL banners, but sometimes, a HUNCH can help you in making money. Just ask Warren Buffet.

So clearly, the last piece of this is that we immediately go into our ad server and deactivate the two losers!

Now, these results were click through summaries for that the Affiliate program has provided to us. You can use your analytics program or vendor programs… JUST GET STARTED!!!!

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Update: as of 2/10/09, Our study still stands… The Click through rate has decreased…. but with over 300 shows a piece, still has a better click through than the other two.

Click Through Is Still The Winner

DEFINITELY turning all traffic towards Banner 2413.