Once a month? Maybe once a week?

You should be checking your affiliate statistics at least 5 times a week. If you take the weekend off, then make sure you check them each Monday through Friday. (What you want to be checking are number of hits, number of sales and number of affiliates signed up in the 2nd tier.)

Why?

Here are 3 reasons you need to constantly check your affiliate statistics:

1. Keep Track of Hits

You want to see if there is a sudden rise or drop in number of hits each day as this can be a good pointer to either a good or bad affiliate marketing campaign you are running. Hits lead directly to sales so a jump in hits should mean a jump in sales.

2. Keep Track of Sales

Did that latest ezine ad you ran lead directly to increased sales? By not checking your statistics regularly you’ll never know. By logging in to your affiliate statistics page a number of times a week you will have a better idea of which affiliate marketing techniques are leading to sales.

Once you know a particular technique is responsible for increased sales then you can double or triple your marketing efforts with this technique.

3. Keep Track of Affiliates

With 2 tier affiliate programs you want to keep an eye on how many affiliates are signing up under you in the 2nd tier. If you see a drop off in affiliates one week, you may need to reinvigorate your affiliate sign up page.

The quality of the affiliate program will determine the level of affiliate statistics you get.

Some affiliate programs provide you with the direct URL that each hit has come from. This means you can tell if a hit came from an ezine ad you ran in another webmasters’ ezine, from a text ad on your web site or from an email marketing campaign. This can be a tremendous asset for focusing on those affiliate marketing tools that are working best.

Don’t just dismiss the affiliate statistics as something that you might check once a month. Regularly checking your affiliate statistics is vitally important to being a successful affiliate.