When you, as an advertiser or affiliate join affiliate networks such as Commission Junction or LinkShare, you have the ability to run reports of the sales that show you the sales made on merchant sites as a result of click-thrus by visitors to your site. Theres almost no variation of report you cant generate. (The same is possible also for the merchant.) If you have negotiated individual programs with merchants, they also will provide reports that will tell you the number of click-thrus, the page on your site, location on the page, dollars spent, commissions earned, and payouts to you. You can slice and dice this many ways, but do you?

The successful affiliate makes time to eye these reports like a hawk. The unsuccessful (or very lucky!) affiliate knows theyre available, but is busy with the content focus of the site, cashes the checks, and vaguely sees that theyre getting smaller and smaller. Unless youve won the lottery and are running your site purely for fun and feedback, you need to carve out a portion of your weekly schedule for the review of the money part of the business.

A single weeks data is good to know, but watch for the trends. Have you gone from good to almost zero at a site for water sports a the onset of cold weather? Do you have about as many affiliates as youd like to manage? Why not consider switching to a great vendor of ski and water sports? Theres more to merchant choices than the numbers, but the numbers can lead you to explore options and consider possibilities that are better, both for you and your site visitors.