Hall of Fame: Evergreen Playbooks

TL;DR: Two-thirds of Skimlinks programs have no click data. The median EPC is $0.14. Commission rate is the wrong thing to optimize - EPC is. Interactive report with full data in comments. I pulled every program on Skimlinks (~29k) and categorized against a clean set of verticals. Here's what stood out. 1. There are way more dead programs than you'd expect. Of 28,844 programs listed, 19,191 (66.5%) have no click data - no EPC, no conversion rate, no basket size. They're in the directory, but there's no evidence clicks are converting. Some could be new listings or programs that are primarily active on other networks. But even if you're generous and assume a quarter of them are just new -that still means roughly half the catalog is dead weight. The actual pool of programs generating real earnings is far smaller than the directory makes it look. 2. Commission rate is the wrong way to pick programs. EPC is better (when you have it). Commission rate is the vanity metric everyone chases. "This program pays 12%!" But it ignores basket size and conversion rate - the two things that actually determine what you earn per click. EPC (earnings per click) = commission rate × average basket size × conversion rate. It captures the full picture in one number. Here are the top 10 programs on the entire Skimlinks network by EPC: Program EPC Commission Avg Basket CVR What's driving it Akind DE $15.41 12.4% $361 34.5% Monster CVR ZenBusiness $12.40 37.1% $227 14.7% High commission × high CVR GuestReady $9.25 5.0% $633 29.2% Huge basket × huge CVR RajaniMD $9.10 15.9% $184 31.2% High commission × monster CVR Ivim Health $7.94 21.4% $524 7.1% Big basket × high commission Misha and Puff $7.35 20.0% $300 12.3% Premium pricing × solid CVR smava $7.33 1.5% $20,628 2.4% $20k basket - commission is irrelevant Cloud Water Filters $6.64 58.2% $354 3.2% Extreme commission WECREAT TECH $6.19 8.0% $1,168 6.6% $1k+ basket does the work Beeksebergen $4.85 6.6% $684 10.8% Holiday rental - big basket × solid CVR Not one of these would rank near the top if you sorted by commission rate alone. smava pays 1.5% commission and earns $7.33 per click because the average order is $20,000. GuestReady pays 5% and earns $9.25 because people book $633 stays and convert at 29%. There are really only two equations that produce high EPC: Big basket × modest commission - travel, accommodation, finance, high-ticket goods. You don't need a high commission when someone books a $1,700 hotel stay at 5%. High commission × high CVR - health, business, education. Smaller baskets but 10–30% conversion rates. Volume compensates. The trap is picking programs with moderate everything. Decent commission, average basket, average CVR. That's where most programs live and it's where EPC goes to die. 3. These patterns hold across every vertical. I classified all 9,323 programs with EPC data into 21 verticals (using cross-network data from CJ, Impact, FlexOffers, and Awin to fix Skimlinks' messy categorization). The same two paths show up at the category level: Vertical Programs Avg EPC Avg Basket CVR Commission What's working Finance & Insurance 58 $0.66 $1,277 5.0% 12.2% Big basket Jewellery 136 $0.43 $383 3.5% 8.4% Big basket Travel & Accommodation 444 $0.40 $612 3.5% 6.4% Big basket Health & Wellness 646 $0.35 $100 5.4% 10.6% High CVR Sports & Outdoors 404 $0.34 $217 4.6% 6.6% Balanced ... Software & Technology 142 $0.22 $69 2.1% 31.6% Nothing - CVR kills it (6 of 21 verticals. Full breakdown in the interactive report.) Finance earns $0.66/click on a $1,277 basket at just 12.2% commission. Software has the highest commission rate of any vertical (31.6%) and the lowest EPC ($0.22) because almost nobody converts (2.1% CVR). 4. The EPC distribution is brutal. Of the 9,356 programs with a measurable EPC: 46% earn less than $0.10 per click The median is $0.14 Only 5.7% break $1.00 Just 9 programs in the entire network exceed $5.00 The distribution is massively right-skewed. Most programs cluster between $0.01 and $0.25. If you're picking programs without checking EPC, you're almost certainly landing in that pile. 5. The one thing to take from this: Sort by EPC, not commission rate. If a network doesn't show you EPC, calculate it from basket size and conversion rate. If they don't show you those either, that's a red flag in itself. The interactive report has the full vertical breakdown with reversal rates, the top 20 programs ranked by EPC, EPC distribution charts, and a commission-vs-EPC scatter plot; below. This is one network. I'm building the same analysis across CJ, Impact, ShareASale, Rakuten, Awin, and others - a free directory that surfaces EPC, basket size, conversion rates, reversal rates, and commission structures across 50,000+ listings. More on that in comments. Happy to answer questions about the data or methodology. Data: 28,844 programs on Skimlinks, 9,356 with non-zero EPC. Vertical classification used cross-network category matching against CJ, FlexOffers, Impact

I’ve been trying to grow my small web design business and kept thinking I needed better branding or more content. Turns out I just needed more conversations. Last weekend I tested something simple. Instead of targeting “small businesses,” I narrowed it down to: Private dental practices in one city. No nationwide stuff. No “any business.” Just one niche in one location. Then I needed a fast way to actually build a real prospect list. I used Maplent.com to pull local business contact info directly from Google listings. Emails, phone numbers, websites — all in bulk. I was honestly surprised how fast it built a usable list. I ended up with just over 200 practices in under an hour. That alone completely changed the game. Instead of hunting one-by-one, I had a real pipeline. Next step: I ran their sites through Google PageSpeed Insights and manually checked for: No online booking No clear CTA Not mobile optimized Slow load times Now I wasn’t pitching “web design.” I was reaching out about specific problems. Example message: “Hey, I noticed your site doesn’t have an online booking option and loads at 6.5s on mobile. I redesign sites for dental practices and typically help increase appointment bookings pretty quickly. Worth a quick chat?” Short. Specific. About them. Results from one weekend of outreach: ~60 messages sent 14 replies 6 booked calls 2 closed projects so far No ads. No cold LinkedIn spam. No waiting for inbound. Biggest realization: Growth isn’t about better branding. It’s about volume of relevant conversations. Once I had 200+ targeted businesses in front of me, outreach stopped feeling scary and started feeling mechanical. If you’re trying to grow a service business, I’d honestly focus on: Pick a tight niche. Build a real list fast. Speak directly to a visible problem. Follow up. That’s it. Curious how others here are building prospect lists, are you scraping manually or using tools? submitted by /u/Leading_Act_9550 [link] [comments]

I run SEO for a B2B SaaS in the HR space. Small team, just me and one writer. When I started 8 months ago we were ranking for basically nothing. 6 months later we're on page 1 for 34 keywords, 12 of which are in the top 3. Nothing groundbreaking, just consistent execution. Research and planning: - Ahrefs for keyword research and competitor content gaps. I run a content gap analysis against our top 3 competitors monthly. - Search Console for identifying existing pages that are close to page 1 and just need optimization. - I build topical clusters around our core product categories. Each cluster has a pillar page and 5-8 supporting articles. Content creation process: Here's where my workflow is a little different. When I'm doing competitor research or reading industry reports, I talk through my content angles and observations into Willow Voice. Stuff like: competitor X wrote about this topic but they completely ignored the integration angle, we should cover that. Or: this keyword has decent volume but the SERP is all listicles, we can win with a data-driven piece instead. The transcripts become the raw material for my content briefs, which means the briefs are grounded in actual competitive analysis instead of me guessing what to write about. Briefs: Every article gets a detailed brief. Target keyword, secondary keywords, search intent, outline with H2s and H3s, competitor URLs to reference, and a word count target based on what's ranking. My writer told me my briefs are the most detailed she's gotten, and I think it's because the research observations make them more specific. Technical: - Ran a full technical audit when I started. Fixed crawl errors, cleaned up redirect chains, added schema markup, improved Core Web Vitals. - Internal linking strategy. Every new article links to 3-5 existing pieces and I update old pieces to link to new ones. What's not working: Link building. I've tried guest posting outreach and it's been painfully slow. Our DR is still low and it's holding back some of our higher-competition keywords. Open to suggestions here. What's your content workflow looking like? Curious what other in-house SEOs are doing with small teams. submitted by /u/Public_Mortgage6241 [link] [comments]

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): 19 Strategies for 2025    Triple Whale

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As a freelancer I have built MVPs for over 30 different founders. A few went on to build real companies. The vast majority quietly faded away. Watching this cycle repeat teaches you to see the startup world exactly as it is without the usual romance. Most people are not building a business. They are building a safe room. They spend months agonizing over the perfect tech stack, a beautiful landing page, or gathering a waitlist. They do this because as long as they are just preparing, they cannot be rejected. It is a way to feel productive while completely avoiding reality. The truth is the market is entirely indifferent to your effort. It does not care how many sleepless nights you had or how clean your architecture is. It only responds to utility. If your product does not solve a pain someone is willing to pay for today, your effort means nothing. This is not cruel. It is simply a fact. Founders suffer because they tie their ego to their product. When the market is silent they take it as a personal failure. But your code is not you. A failed launch is not a tragedy. It is just the market giving you data. The only rational response is to accept that data, detach your emotions from the outcome, and move on to the next iteration. If you have not asked a user for money yet, you do not have a startup. You have an expensive hobby. Stop looking for validation in praise and upvotes. Seek the clear and neutral signal of a transaction, and let go of everything else. submitted by /u/Warm-Reaction-456 [link] [comments]

Our senior DevOps engineer thought I'd lost my mind. He didn't join a startup to do sales. So he promised me 5 calls and I guaranteed he'd never have to do it again. It was a bit of a back-and-forth but I strongly believe it fundamentally changed how we build products. When I sat in on the calls, I observed a few things: - Seeing them explain why our competitor's platform was "too complex for non-technical users." - Seeing them assure the customer that the continuous monitoring was actually working (We had beautiful logs and metrics. But what they wanted was a green checkmark.) - Seeing them respond when customers asked "Can someone just do this for me?" Most of our team are backend engineers too and I think this fundamentally made them better product designers. At the end of it, they were sketching a completely different architecture without my "PMing". Because they finally understood who was actually using our product. The rewrite took 2 weeks. We removed 60% of features. Added a simple progress bar. Built Slack integration for questions. Created "done-for-you" workflows. Our support tickets dropped 70%. The biggest problem with most engineers is actually over-engineering. Users don't care about your elegant solution - they care about their problem going away Technical correctness < user understanding - if they can't use it, it doesn't matter how well it's built Every feature has a cost - not in code, but in user confusion Since this experience, I've made this a mandatory culture in our team. Every engineer takes 5 sales calls per quarter. There's always going to be a little pushback. But hearing the exhaustion in a customer's voice when they say "I just need this to work." does it all. I think it helps build up their instinct. submitted by /u/rluna559 [link] [comments]