Increase Your Affiliate Earnings with These Proven Strategies

As consumers turn to their mobile devices for purchases it will no longer be enough to simply build responsive websites. It’ll take a lot more to grow your affiliate earnings.

According to a 2015 Pew Research Center study, 64% of American adults now own a smartphone. Not surprisingly, smartphone user-ship was higher in younger Americans, and those with higher incomes and education levels. Even more interesting is that the study showed that 10% of Americans’ only access to high speed internet is through their smartphone devices.

Combine that with the fact that mobile apps take up seven of every eight minutes spent consuming media on mobile devices, and you’ve got a strong argument for mobile optimization.

If you conduct SEO, and don’t have a mobile site, you may have experienced a decline in revenue. Google reported that in 2014, mobile searches made up to 29% of all search queries. By summer of 2015 mobile surpassed desktop search queries.

AdSense

According to Rae Hoffman, writer for Marketing Land, AdSense publishers have experienced a significant decline in their earnings. There are multiple reasons for the decline, with mobile being one of the most significant:

1.E-commerce conversion rates on average are significantly lower on smartphones.

Advertisers spend less on mobile ads, because they know conversion rates are lower. If the bulk of your traffic comes from mobile, you’re likely to see less revenue.

2. The removal of accidental clicks.

Studies show that about 50% of all clicks on mobile ads were accidental. To keep advertisers happy, Google made it harder for users to click on mobile ads, which means less affiliate earnings for you.

3. Mobile responsive ad units.

Google AdSense launched responsive ad units in 2013, but many publishers have yet to implement them.

4. Responsive isn’t the same as mobile optimized.

Many publishers still rely on showing ads on sidebars for display ads. A responsive design will often move the sidebar to the bottom of the page when viewed on a mobile device which can negatively effect your affiliate earnings. However, AdSense measures active view which is defined as, “Google’s ad viewability measurement solution, tracking the viewability of ads served by AdSense.” Google defines Active View as an impression where at least 50% of the ad’s pixels are visible on the user’s screen.

If your active view rates are low on mobile that could explain declining revenue.

Getting the Most from Your Affiliate Offers

For affiliates, positioning of ads should be determined from a mobile perspective. Those offers which convert better should be placed where they can be seen on mobile devices, not just premium desktop location in order to preserve and grow affiliate earnings.

It’s vital that you optimize for e-commerce, making it easy for customers or prospects to fill out your forms via mobile. Lead gen affiliates must pay close attention to how forms render on mobile, and consider reducing required fields.

Don’t let your developers deprioritize mobile. As web traffic continues to shift towards mobile, your mobile strategy must be on point.