One affiliate program I have joined pays out 45% commission to their affiliates and another 10% to 2nd tier. That's 55%! They only keep 45% and it's from this that they take their costs. Either they've gone completely mad or they are very smart! I suspect they are very smart.

It is something you have control over.

But what exactly is a conversion ratio?

For affiliate programs, conversion ratio (or CR) is number of visitors that click through your affiliate link compared to number of sales you make.

For instance if you had 100 visitors to one of your affiliate programs you were promoting and got 1 sale then your CR would be 1%.

One sale for every 50 visitors would be a CR of 2% and one sale for every 200 visitors would be a CR of 0.5%.

So what would be a good conversion ratio for an affiliate program?

Well after much research I have seen that a 1% CR is quite acceptable. A CR of 0.5% would be a little low and if you have a CR of 3% then you are on to a winning affiliate program.

Depending on what you are promoting your goal should be to achieve a CR of 1% to 2%. But how?

To get a higher CR you need to concentrate on following factors:

1. Join quality affiliate programs that have products or services that are proven sellers on internet.