WebDiggin.com: An Adventure to Make Money Online

You’ve signed up with an affiliate network. You’ve found an affiliate program you like. You’re running some ads on the various Pay Per Click services offered by the major search engines (i.e. Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing.) Better yet, your search marketing campaign is beginning to roll in some commissions! Now is the time to look carefully at the data and do some performance monitoring. Fine-tuning a campaign can increase your Return Per Click (RPC) and widen your profit margin. But when you look at the data provided by your affiliate program, you can find several different dates and times reported for the sale. What’s the difference between Click Date, Event Date, and Posting Date for a transaction reported by your affiliate program?

There are three different dates to consider. The Click Date is the original date that the visitor clicked on your paid ad on the search engine (like Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing). The Event Date is the date where your visitor made an action that lead to your commission. (For our purposes, we will consider this to be the date and time that the visitor made an online purchase, however, depending on your affiliate program, you may receive commissions based on leads, as well.) Finally, the Posting Date is the date where your transaction was reported to you by your Affiliate Network.

Let’s look at an example. A visitor will do some research on a search engine. Some of their keywords will trigger your ads that are related to the visitor’s search. When the visitor clicks on your ad, they are sent to whatever landing page you are pointing to. This moment is recorded as the Click Date. This is also the moment you are charged money by Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing for your Pay Per Click ad. The visitor walks around your merchant’s site. Eventually they decide to buy something. When they confirm their financial information and finalize the purchase online, this is recorded as the Event Date. The merchant’s site posts details of the recent sale to your affiliate network including your Affiliate ID (and possibly a Shopper ID or SID so that you can better track which of your ad campaigns was used.) This is now recorded as the Posting Date. Your affiliate network will now include this recent sale in their reporting tools.

I used to only consider the posting date in my analysis, but after looking at the data more closely, I see some interesting trends that I missed. There can be a significant difference between the original Click date or a transaction and when it appears on your affiliate network’s reporting tools (Post date), so be sure to consider both in your analysis. When you are calculating your Return Per Click, you might want to examine both dates to see if there is a significant difference.

Overall, I’ve found that about three-quarters (75%) of my sales are made and reported within 24 hours. (i.e. The difference between the Click Date and the Post Date is less than 24 hours.) So, all things being equal, I use the posting date for making my day-to-day decisions about the campaign. When I first started Search Marketing, some of my campaigns had no commissions made after several days. I used to keep running the campaign, paying advertising costs, and hoping that eventually the large referral period would save me. (”Ok, I didn’t make any money today, but the referral period is for 90 days, so there’s still hope!”) However, in looking at some data, I’ve found that after 3 days, I’ve accounted for 84% of my sales and after 4 days, I’ve accounted for 92% of the sales.

Bottom Line? If your sponsored search campaign isn’t producing immediate results in the first few days, turn off the campaign or tweak the campaign. Three quarters of your sales will be made and reported within 24 hours after your visitor clicks on your ad.

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