EPC (earnings per click)
A standard affiliate-marketing metric: total commissions earned divided by total clicks sent. Used to compare program profitability or content effectiveness across affiliate links.
EPC is calculated by dividing your earned commission by the number of clicks that produced it. If you sent 1,000 clicks to an affiliate program and earned $400, your EPC is $0.40. EPC normalizes across programs with different conversion rates and commission structures, letting you compare a high-volume / low-commission program (Amazon) against a low-volume / high-commission program (direct SaaS) on equal terms.
EPC also exposes silent breakage. If an individual link's EPC drops 70% one quarter while click volume stays the same, the link is probably broken — the page loads, your audience clicks, but conversions stopped flowing through. EPC delta is one of the cleanest ways to detect a silent revenue leak before a quarterly audit catches it.
Related terms
Affiliate link
A URL that contains a tracking parameter identifying you as the referrer, so the merchant can credit you a commission when the click converts to a sale.
GlossaryCookie window
The timeframe between a visitor clicking your affiliate link and completing a purchase, during which the network will credit you the commission. Varies by program, from 24 hours (Amazon) to 30+ days (most other networks).
GlossaryLast-click attribution
The model affiliate networks use to credit commissions: whoever was the last affiliate to send a visitor before they purchased gets the commission, regardless of who introduced them to the product.