What Is EPC in Affiliate Marketing? (And How to Use It to Predict Earnings)

EPC, also know as Earnings Per Click, is an important metric for evaluating an affiliate offer.

It gives affiliate marketers a rough idea on how much they might earn for every click they send.

All else equal, if two offers are in the same niche and one has a $4.12 EPC and the other has $1.15 EPC, the first offer is likely to earn you more.

📊 How EPC is Calculated

EPC is calculated by dividing the total commissions earned by the number of clicks sent.

Example:

You send 100 clicks to an offer and earn $68.40 in commissions.

🔍 Where to Find EPC

Most affiliate networks display EPC publicly.

This number reflects the average performance across all affiliates in a program, including bloggers, influencers, cashback sites, social media promoters, and more.

It’s a solid benchmark for comparing offers, but not the whole story.

Your traffic might perform differently (and often better!)

📐 Be Careful with Format Differences

Most networks like Impact, Awin, and CJ show EPC as earnings per single click.

But networks like ShareASale show EPC based on 100 clicks which inflates the EPC number. Just divide by 100 to compare apples to apples.

EPC can definitely help you identify which affiliate programs might be worth your time, but it shouldn’t be the only thing you look at.

“The real question you should ask is: ‘How relevant is this offer to my audience?’

If the offer is a natural fit, and something your audience already wants or needs — you’re gonna have a much easier time converting clicks to commissions.

Bonus points if it’s a product or service you’ve personally used personally.

📈 Using EPC to Project Affiliate Income

1. Projecting Blog Income

EPC is also a useful tool for estimating how much you could earn from a given traffic source.

Going back to the Farmers Dog affiliate example, let’s say that we have a blog post reviewing the service.

We know the blog post gets 10,000 views per month, and estimate that 5% of your visitors click affiliate links.

That’s 500 clicks.

If the affiliate offer’s EPC is $4.12, we can assume that adding an affiliate link will bring $2,060 in commissions per month.

2. Paid Ads & EPC Arbitrage

EPC also plays a key role in affiliate paid media strategies.

Let’s say:

• You’re sending traffic to an affiliate landing page via Facebook Ads
• You’re paying $0.85 per click
• The offers EPC is $1.40

In theory, you should be earning more per click than you’re spending.

With scale and optimization, paid media affiliate strategies can become an incredible strategy.