Something you need to watch out for with physical product merchants is the ‘return day' analysis. What return days mean, is the amount of time that elapses when people come back and buy something.
Here is a screenshot from Shareasale
As you can see, the majority of sales comes from people who come back 15 days after clicking through my link. Why is this important? Well, for one thing it means you might be stopping your campaigns too early. In the above example I might have run this campaign for a week and thought it wasn't going to work. It's only after waiting for those return sales to come in that I can get a good idea of what's working.
This varies by merchant. Some merchants have customers who purchase the first day and then again in a few weeks, so you need to take things like that into consideration.
Return days don't really matter for CPA offers, this is mostly for physical product merchants.
You might notice there is a high return time for merchants that have big ticket items. This makes sense because people like to think about big purchases more before they make them.
If the merchant's cookie is long enough, you can actually get a lot of “bonus” sales. Someone might only click through your link once, but they might come back and buy several time from that merchant during the time your cookie is active. If you were doing a PPC campaign you might earn multiple commissions from just one paid for click…pretty cool!
Unfortunately a lot of merchants (like Amazon) are aware of this and set a really short cookie as a result. If you can't get a commission increase from a merchant, see if they can increase your cookie length. This isn't something affiliates are used to asking for, but can end up earning you a lot more than a commission increase.
So, start paying attention to return time and you can earn much more than people who don't. You also need to really pay attention to how long a merchants cookie lasts to make sure it's worth promoting.
How long would you say would be a good amount of time to wait before calling a campaign a bust. Without “getting out too early” and waiting for a return time.
It’s tough because it totally depends on the niche. Some merchants like drop shippers or something I find have a longer return time than a merchant that is just a quick buy with not a lot of return business. I would say wait 2 weeks at the most but keep in mind what kind of merchant it is, etc.