You’ve been as an affiliate for a few months now and want to increase your revenue, but don’t know how to improve your site to help you get there.

Have you taken a look at your website’s data to track and analyze your performance? Do you know that the numbers you see each day have a story to tell?

If your answer is no to either of these two questions, then it is time you learn the importance of data. 

Tip 1: Identifying Key Metrics

Before you identify your key metrics, you should know what your goals and objectives are for your website. Every website owner has a different goal and will use different metrics to compare data. Below are a few examples of some goals webmasters may have for their website:

• Increase traffic (number of visitors or unique visitors)
• Increase conversion rate (visitors that sign up or click-through)
• Increase approval rate (high-intent visitors that convert)
• Decrease bounce rate (increase time spent on page)

Depending on your industry, you may only earn revenue when a visitor from your site goes on to make a purchase. In the financial services space, for example, the metrics we typically measure for revenue generation are approvals, or visitors from our sites that have successfully gone on to apply and be approved for a product.

Metrics of success in this area include cost-per-acquisition (CPA), or how much you are paid for a converted customer,  approval rate (AR), or how many of your customers successfully apply and are approved, and number of approvals. Because affiliate marketing is performance-based, revenue is only earned from your results. These key metrics are important as it impacts your business.

Econsultancy states that historical data holds valuable information that can help you increase revenue. By analyzing past data, you can see trends of months that overperform and underperform – this helps you pinpoint what you did differently each month that produced your results. From here, you are then able to craft a strategy by identifying which activities generated you the greatest return with the highest ARs.

Tip 2: Understand Your Audience

Do you know who your audience is, and does your content reflect their interests? You think you may know, but can you confirm that you are collecting data from your audience? And if you are collecting data, do you have enough data to determine whether your insights are significant?

This is one reason why having your website target a particular niche audience can result in greater revenues – because typically you can more easily pinpoint your audience’s key values and interests.

Recall from our How-To Series: 4 Easy Steps to Becoming an Affiliate, the first step is to find a niche for your website and to not try to cater your website to everyone. Your niche will be the foundation of your business and will guide you in the direction to understanding your audience as you work to shape it.

According to Voluum, your first converting visitor doesn’t represent your subsequent visitors. It is recommended that you have significant data on who your visitors are. This can include details like:

• Age
• Gender
• Geographic location
• Household income
• Parental status

By having a clearer picture of who your audience is, you will be better suited to optimize your website’s performance by identifying and aligning the best products that match your customers interests and needs. You may have several segments that visit your site for different reasons. You can use the data you collect to guide you in targeting the right products for the right audience. In becoming more targeted, you’ll be able to see a steady uplift in revenue from higher conversions.

Tip 3: Always Be Testing

Not all products are built the same. Sometimes, the content that you are producing and the products that you are promoting do not align with your audience’s interests. Because of this, you must always be testing to learn and improve. Affiliate Valley notes that your content plays a significant role for your visitors. By testing content, you can compare how it affects your performance.

Below are examples of how to change up your content for testing:

• Add visuals (pictures, videos, etc.)
• Decrease/increase word count
• Include a one-paragraph summary of what your post is about

When you are testing different methods, you may want to utilize keyword tracking to measure the performance of specific mentions in your content.

For publishers that are members of the Fintel Connect Network, you can use our “Keyword” parameter on the platform, which allows you to add a custom value to your tracking link(s). With this tool, you will be able to effectively denote and track different campaigns to see where your conversions are coming from. This will also help you strategize your campaign efforts.

Tip 4: Bring It All Together

Now that you have all your data ready, it’s time to pull together a report. Often, publishers do not dive into their data to analyze and optimize their results.

It is important that you spend extra time to understand what factors caused your key metrics to increase or decrease. By doing so, you’re able to continue to do what is going well or change what is not working to improve for next time.

We recommend viewing your data on a weekly and monthly basis at minimum. Look at trends and changes in trends and what may have caused them. It can also help you to identify any issues you may be having with your tracking or analytics.

If you’re having trouble analyzing your data, our publisher team is happy to help you analyze and optimize your performance. We are here to support you and provide helpful tips and recommendations.

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

To take your website’s revenue to the next level, remember that data plays a key part in helping you understand what’s working and what’s not. To optimize your site’s performance and earning potential, consider the following tips:

• Tip 1: Understand what your goals are to identify key metrics to watch
• Tip 2: Know your audience and which of them are converting
• Tip 3: Always test and learn to improve performance
• Tip 4: Analyze your data on a regular basis to identify trends and further optimize results

If you have any follow-up questions or need help with optimizing your website, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our Affiliate Team – we are happy to help!

If you’re not yet a member of the Fintel Connect Network, and would like to join us and get access to top financial brands, please sign up here!