“Earnings Per Click” (EPC)

[Thesa]

Definition: It is calculated by dividing the total earnings from click throughs by the number of clicks.

“High EPC” is often confused with high paying keywords. It is said to pick some and then build pages around them, which is not true at all. Artificially created sites around some keywords will not help. “High EPC” goes beyond just high paying keywords.

“Earnings per click” cannot be kept very well under control, all that one can do is to create the premises for attracting high-paying advertisements. This does not ensure a steady high EPC, as fluctuations are bound to be there.

Parameters that control the “High EPC” are:

a) Firstly, Adsense serves a particular class of ads to your pages. It seems to take into account the following parameters, when showing ads of a certain cost:

• Everything related to webpage content: context, keywords, theme

• Quality traffic — sites generating quality traffic will earn more, for the rate of conversion is estimated as bigger.

• The age and size of a site. The Page Rank.


b)Some of the factors that will influence further the EPC on your site and over which you have little or nil control:

• Advertiser’s budget

• Seasonal fluctuations

• Campaigns launched and ceased

• Changes of competition for keywords (new advertisers)

• The smart pricing algorithm — if the estimated conversion rate of an ad is lower than expected, the earning per click will lower.


c)Of the parameters mentioned above, the following are under your control:

1. Create authentic, valuable, relevant webpage content. The potential of conversion of your content is analyzed. Put your marketing skills into creating pages that have the selling power. Good content will increase also your CTR (Click-through rate) attracting thus higher CPC (Cost Per Click) ads.

2. Strive for improving CTR. Any action in this direction will be beneficial. Adsense will serve higher value advertisements to sites registering high ads CTR, as their profit shall also increase. Therefore, higher CTR means higher possibility of conversion and thus higher EPC.

3. Study AdSense payment system and analyze your site from the perspective of “smart” pricing.

4. The choice of the right keywords and phrases (not just the highest paying ones). You can make a good profit from using phrases containing keywords that pay well instead of simple keywords, that way you get into a niche where the competition is lower and the chances to get higher EPC are greater.

5. Target the right markets. Businesses with a higher profit margin will afford to spend more on marketing.

6. Tracking, testing, previewing. Track the activity of your pages, see which perform better, concentrate on the type of content that generates good or at least decent earnings, optimize pages and use the preview tool to see what happens, if the resulting ads are as expected. Remember to preview the geographically targeted advertisements as some of them can be lower paying.

[Thesa]

Following are the common mistakes that people do while trying to increase EPC.

• Choosing highly searched for keywords. Keyword popularity has nothing to do with their potential for conversion to money. Popular keywords are those that have many searches, are not necessarily high paying ones.

• Using URL filter to block filter what they think are low-paying ads. They do this as they think that it will attract advertisements with a higher value, which is wrong as they block the highest bidders.

As, according to the bidding rules of the system, it's only the highest value advertisements that will show and blocking the advertisements served will make AdSense serve the next highest paying ones. Be careful over this. Track and test when blocking ads.

• Doing everything they can to increase traffic as much as possible. This is wrong, as you should look for ways to increase targeted traffic. AdSense analyzes the quality of the traffic and the possibility of conversion. Targeted traffic is more likely to convert well.

• Trying to increase CTR by artificial methods, obtaining a huge increase in CTR in a very short while will surely be interpreted by AdSense as click fraud. Therefore, this will not only be ignored for payments but your account can also be disabled (get banned).