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EPC (Earnings Per Click)

Updated July 2026

EPC, or earnings per click, is the average commission an affiliate earns per click on their tracking links, calculated as total commissions divided by total clicks.

EPC = total earnings ÷ total clicks. It is one of the most useful metrics for affiliates choosing which offers to promote: an offer with a high EPC monetizes traffic more efficiently than one with a low EPC, regardless of the headline commission rate.

Merchants publish EPC (often as a network or 7-day/90-day average) so affiliates can compare offers. A strong EPC reflects a combination of a competitive commission, a good conversion rate, and a healthy average order value.

Where EPC (Earnings Per Click) sits in the affiliate cycle

Earnings per click sits at the pay stage because it is computed backwards from money actually earned, not from activity.

EPC (Earnings Per Click) is a pay-stage concept in affiliate marketing. Diagram: the seven stages of an affiliate cycle — recruit, share, click, convert, attribute, approve and pay — with the rules that decide which partner is credited and when a commission is actually released.
The seven stages every affiliate program runs through. EPC (Earnings Per Click) belongs to the pay stage.

How EPC (Earnings Per Click) is calculated

EPC = commission earned ÷ clicks sent

commission earned
net of reversals, otherwise the figure flatters every program
clicks
tracked clicks in the same period the commissions arose from
network EPC
often quoted per 100 clicks — check which convention is in use
why it is the one number
it folds rate, order value and conversion rate together

Worked example (illustrative)

1,000 clicks producing 360 dollars net is an EPC of 0.36. A program paying 8 percent on a 400 dollar product at a 1 percent conversion rate returns 0.32 per click; one paying 40 percent on a 20 dollar product at 3 percent returns 0.24 — so the lower headline rate wins.

The figures above are a chosen illustration of the arithmetic. They are not a measured result, a typical result, or a projection of what any program pays.

What EPC (Earnings Per Click) means for a creator

EPC is the only figure that makes two programs genuinely comparable, because it collapses commission rate, order value and conversion rate into one number in the unit that matters: what one click from your audience is worth.

Compute it on your own traffic rather than trusting a published average. A network EPC is the average across every publisher on the offer, most of whom have a different audience from yours, and the spread around that average is enormous.

What EPC (Earnings Per Click) means for a brand

Publishing an honest EPC is the most effective recruitment number a program has, because it lets a partner estimate revenue before committing effort. Publishing one computed before reversals buys a wave of signups and a wave of churn a quarter later.

Internally it is the cleanest way to rank partners, since it is independent of how much traffic each sends. A small partner with high EPC is the one to invest in; a large partner with low EPC is sending volume the program is paying to process.

Common mistakes with EPC (Earnings Per Click)

  • Quoting EPC before reversals

    Refunds and clawbacks can remove a large share of gross commission in return-heavy categories. Gross EPC is not a forecast of anything.

  • Mixing per-click and per-hundred-clicks conventions

    Several networks quote EPC per 100 clicks. Comparing that against a per-click figure makes one program look a hundred times better than it is.

  • Trusting a published average on a different audience

    An offer's average EPC is driven by whichever publishers send the most traffic. Your own measured EPC after a few hundred clicks is worth more than any published figure.

EPC (Earnings Per Click): common questions

Is a higher commission rate always better?

No, and EPC is the reason. A low rate on an expensive product that converts well routinely beats a high rate on a cheap one that does not.

How many clicks before EPC means anything?

Enough that a single conversion does not dominate it. With a 2 percent conversion rate, a few hundred clicks give you a handful of sales, and the figure stays noisy until you have several dozen.

Should EPC be calculated before or after reversals?

After. The purpose of the number is to predict what you will actually be paid, and a commission that reverses was never earned.

See also

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