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Ask Shawn Collins: Searching for Affiliate Program Benchmarks

November 18, 2005 by Shawn Collins

I’m fairly new to this. I am trying to help a company expand and improve the performance of their program. I am looking for some standards to measure our performance against. Are there any numbers on conversion rates (impressions to click thru’s % and click thru’s to sales)?

I’ve been compiling a wide array of data for years for the AffStat Reports, including the number of clicks monthly and conversion rates. In general, I would say that impressions to click throughs are not worth your focus.

The reason here is that when affiliates use text links, put their banners in ad servers, etc., you’re not getting an accurate CTR, because impressions are not being counted.

As far as conversion rates, the numbers I collected about a year ago were spread across a wide range (from less than 0.5% to >5.0%).

The lesson to be learned here is that industry wide statistics are not too valuable for conversion rates. Part of the reason is that they vary so widely depending on pricepoints, site design, brand name, what is selling, etc.

Also, in the past, I combined bounty, per lead and per sale programs for this metric. Currently, I am compiling data that breaks out the type of affiliate program to give a better picture.

Personally, from my promotion of a great many affiliate programs that sell consumer goods, I typically see an average of about 2% conversion rate.

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