How To Increase Affiliate Click-Through Rate

Khairil Iszuddin Ismail When you join an affiliate programs, what is it that you want to achieve? Of course, we want to gain commission from the merchant. How can we do that? Commissions are gain when visitors that we refer purchase products or services on the merchant's website. But when the visitors are at the merchant's website, we don not have any control, do we? So, think again. We want the commissions and commissions are only possible when we refer visitors through affiliate links. In my opinion, our actual role as an affiliate is to get visitors to the merchant's website through the affiliate links. After that, it is all up to the merchant. There is a special term for this, click-through rate (CTR).

CTR is page views versus clicks on the merchant's links. It is actually an index that we can use to see how effective your website is in sending visitors over to the merchant's website. When you have 1000 page views on your website but you have 50 clicks to the merchant's website, your CTR is 5%. That is already a very good CTR. Now how can you increase CTR on your website? Here, I will walk you through 5 ways I use which boost my CTR to 20% instead of 2%.

1 - Choose relevant affiliate programs

When you put up an affiliate link, make sure that the merchant has relevant products or services to your content on that page. You cannot write about shoes on your website and put up an affiliate link that sells computers.

2 - Use text links instead of images

People are getting tired with banner ads. Let us get away from all that. Reports on the affiliate programs that I join showed that text links out-perform graphic links. But weave them nicely.

3 - Do not sell, recommend

Another thing that visitors don't really like is when you are hard-selling the products or services. I have seen websites that goes "Buy This" or "Buy That". Instead try "When I tried the trail Product A, it has improve my bla... bla... [link]Download your copy

now[link]".

4 - Write clear phrase for you affiliate link

Affiliate programs would normally give you a URL address to link back to them. It is up to you to write the phrases for your links. But give a clear picture of what your visitors are about the see at the other end of the link. Use phrases like "Download your copy here" or "YourAffiliate.com are selling them for $9.90".

5 - Do not let them escape

Now to do this, write clear stories and leave them with just one place to go - your merchant's website. The key here is, put up one link and one link only. Of course, at the top, you can have your navigational links. But at the end of the pagel, do not cloud visitors with related websites, or related articles, or any other links except you affiliate link. That is where we want them to go right?

With these techniques, I see that my CTR increases from the normal 2% to 20%. On normal days, I should get about 10% to 15% CTR. But remember to always monitor your CTR to spot the changes. Then, be sure that you continue to fine-tune your website from time to time.

About the Author

Khairil Iszuddin is the editor and publisher of the FREE monthly newsletter, eBiz FAQ (http://www.eBiz-FAQ.com) which helps people in building their website for internet income. Issues focus on in the eaisest, fastest, cheapest, most effective solutions to website buidling geared towards internet business.