Profitable Blogging

In this post we’ll talk about CTR and why it’s important to you if you want to make money with your site.  The better your CTR, the better your chance of making a sale.

What is CTR?

CTR is the acronym for Click Thru Rate.  It’s expressed as a ratio — for every 100 people to your affiliate page, how many of them click through to the sales page?

So if your CTR is 5%, it means that five out of every 100 people visiting your blog will click your affiliate link and go on to the page actually selling the ebook, product or service.

CTR also applies to programs that pay on a per-click basis, like ebay and AdSense.  For these programs, CTR is more precisely expressed as clicks per impressions.  (One page can have multiple impressions.)

Why is it Important?

The higher your CTR, the better chance you have of earning money.   In an affiliate program, until the visitor clicks through from your page to the sales page (or in the case of AdSense, clicks on an ad), you aren’t earning anything. 

Your goal is to provide the information your reader needs to fill their need.  One example might be on a review page; if you’re reviewing an ebook, offer pros and cons of the ebook.  Tell the reader why the ebook filled your particular need (like how to lose weight or learn Spanish or…).  Make the review balanced so you have credibility with your reader.

The better you pre-sell your visitor, the more chance they will ultimately buy.  In other words, by the time they get to your affiliate link, you want them reaching for their credit card.

What About AdSense and Ebay?

Adsense, ebay and a few other programs out there like Kontera and Chitika pay you when an ad appears on your site and someone clicks on that ad.  So your visitor doesn’t need to buy anything; they just need to see relevant ads and have the desire to click.  You might get smaller amounts of money per click (compared to an ebook sale, for example), but you don’t have to rely on the visitor buying anything.

A word of warning; all these programs have fraud tracking, so don’t think you can sit there and click on your links and make all kinds of money; that will just get you tossed out of the program.  Don’t do it, because these affiliate programs can be extremely lucrative.

Anything Else You Need to Know?

Some niches are better suited selling products; some services or e-products; others do great with AdSense.  But what all share is that CTR is vitally important to making money online.

If you have highly targeted traffic, and you do some experimenting to optimize your CTR, you can be earning a lot of money from your blog.