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Bri
Joined:
04 Sep 2003
Posts:
46
Location:
UK
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Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 2:25 pm
Post subject: What's happening to my visitors (newbie)
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Hello to all of you.
I'm a complete newbie here, and this is my first post. I've been visiting the site for many months now, taking a peek here and there, trying to learn new bits and pieces of information. I've always been too nervous to post because I felt I didn't have a clue what I was talking about, but I think I know a bit now, so here goes... 
I'm currently working on my first serious attempt at promoting affiliate programs. I won't bore you with exactly what the site is about, except to say that it's a competitive market. And no, it's not internet marketing!
I managed to get the site into Google very quickly, and after about a month, my page rank is already 4/10. I think I'm receiving a reasonable amount of traffic for the number of pages indexed so far (about 30+ visitors per day for 26 indexed pages), and I'm pleased so far with my modest progress.
But I'm a bit worried. 
Out of the 30 or so visits a day, I usually get about 6 clickthroughs to my merchants, and have been getting the same volume for a couple of weeks now. Yet nobody is actually buying anything! I have sent my merchants nearly 90 clicks since the site launched, and haven't seen a sniff of commission so far. 
I was wondering ... is the self-doubt creeping in, making me paranoid that I'm doing something wrong, or is 90 clicks (total) to low a figure to judge yet?
Many thanks for your help - in advance.
Brian
PS - I love this forum - it's much better than anything I ever built in my previous life as a software developer! |
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Fatman
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25 Aug 2003
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68
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Harith Al-Jibury
Joined:
11 Jul 2003
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37
Location:
Denmark
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Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 3:26 pm
Post subject: Re: What's happening to my visitors (newbie)
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| Bri wrote: |
But I'm a bit worried.
Out of the 30 or so visits a day, I usually get about 6 clickthroughs to my merchants, and have been getting the same volume for a couple of weeks now. Yet nobody is actually buying anything! I have sent my merchants nearly 90 clicks since the site launched, and haven't seen a sniff of commission so far.
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That's an excellent clickthrough rate from your site to those of the merchants..... 20% !!!!!
Keep up the good work.
| Quote: | | I was wondering ... is the self-doubt creeping in, making me paranoid that I'm doing something wrong, or is 90 clicks (total) to low a figure to judge yet? |
Those who make money with affiliate programs will for sure tell you that you need more traffic than 30 a day. Its a number game, mostly.
As to conversions of your referral clickthroughs to sales, that depends on two major factors, IMHO:
- whether your site is receiving targeted visitors (quality traffic).
- whether the merchants sites are capable to converting referrals to sales.
You may wish to focus your efforts at present on generating more traffic to your site.
Good luck with your affiliate marketing!
Al the best,
Harith
http://www.danex-exm.dk |
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gana
Joined:
27 Jul 2003
Posts:
93
Location:
India
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Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 3:30 pm
Post subject:
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Hi Brian,
If there is one thing i learnt early in this field, it is to ask questions. I don't think twice about asking anyhting i need to know. Believe me there are always helpful people ready to answer our questions. Then about your query. Yes, it is actually quite premature to come to any conclusion yet. With just 90 clicks to merchant site, it is quite difficult to determine. I would suggest you wait for some more time.
But number of clickthroughs to the merchant site is dependent on your content. So if you get less clickthrough to your merchant it either means that the vistors are not targetted or your content is not that impressive, both are bad to affiliates. The good news is that we can change both of them. Check the number of unique visitors to clickthrough rates. That would help you to determine this.
In case you don't mind, can i have the url of your site ? I can have a look at it if you want. Hope that helps.
To your success,
Gana.
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Bri
Joined:
04 Sep 2003
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46
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UK
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Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 3:40 pm
Post subject:
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Hi again,
Yes I can confirm that my visitors are quite targeted. Several industry-related sites link to mine, and the traffic I get from Google so far has been very relevant in terms of keywords.
Perhaps I'm not preselling my merchants correctly? Am I correct to assume that's the main reason for clickthroughs not converting into sales? I'll have to take a fresh look at my site and do some investigation.
Harith, I think you're right about focusing on generating more traffic. I'm working on building more content for the site every day, so I'm certainly not one of those who stands still!
Brian |
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edburdo
Joined:
14 Jul 2003
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1760
Location:
Bangor, Maine
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Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 4:02 pm
Post subject:
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I have a site (linked below) that only gets about 25 hits a day. I got 9 sales last month. Not very much... But I am in the process of recreating the existing pages (follow SBI and MYWS suggestions) and adding about 35 more pages (over the next couple of weeks).
I think your click through ratio is good. Now you need to build your traffic. You might want to find a message board or 2 that relate to your website. Start visiting the boards and asking questions and answering other people. Be sure to include your website in your signature.
You could also try writing an article or two for a newsletter. Find a newsletter that someone is already publishing and see if you can submit an article to it. Then be sure to include your name and website in the "credits box".
But overall, I'd say work on traffic.
_________________
Eric D. Burdo
They Made $6,513 a day With Clickbank Doing This... |
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Debs
Joined:
16 Aug 2003
Posts:
4296
Location:
NY
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Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 4:10 pm
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One thing that hasn't been mentioned is ... is your advertiser converting your referrals???
Make sure you know where the links go, whether they fit into the topic of the page that sends them, and that your advertiser is actually promoting the conversion.
If the advertisers page doesn't convert, you can send thousands of visitors and have terrible sales. Post your url, and give us a chance to see if this might be a problem with your conversion.
Your CTR is excellent, so I would think you are converting, or at least generating interest. It is a numbers game though, so increasing visitors has to be at the top of your list.
_________________
Learn how to turn keyphrases into quality, well-targeted articles your visitors and SE's will love with Gary Antosh's new ebook "Web Content Made Easy!" |
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Charlie
Joined:
22 Aug 2003
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3305
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UK
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Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 6:38 pm
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Hello Brian.
I reckon a total of 90 visitors sent to any given merchant is not enough to get a fair reflection of their sales page CR. For example, if it is 2% (say), you may get no sales out of the first 250 visitors and then only one sale in the next 250, but finally 19 more in the next 500 (all from the same traffic) - totalling 20 out of 1000 or 2% sales CR over all.
If you had given up at the 500 visitors mark, thinking the merchant was only converting one in 500 or 0.2%, you would have never lived to see the true return.
These numbers are only examples, but hopefully you get my point. You basically need to have quite a large sample for a test like this to be "significant". The problem comes when traffic generation is slow, and it takes a long time to establish whether the merchant is worth sticking with.
It's hard to know what CR you will experience since traffic sources vary widely, as do preselling skills. (This is why merchants' published CRs should be taken with a pinch of salt.)
Cheers,
Charlie.
_________________
"Before I speak, I have something important to say."
- Groucho Marx |
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Bri
Joined:
04 Sep 2003
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46
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UK
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Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 7:12 pm
Post subject:
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Thanks for that, Charlie.
My main focus will continue to be adding content and building traffic.
Further to the other advice I've received here - from Debs, Harith, et al - I'll also be tweaking my preselling efforts to be more tailored to the merchants I represent, and I'll be reviewing my merchants' sites again, double-checking that they do actually 'sell' effectively to my referred visitors.
I'm sure you all remember, but this is a lonely business for a newbie, and even though I know I'm doing everything right, every now and then I start to question myself. It's good to get other people's feedback every now and then.
I'll soldier on.
Cheers,
Brian |
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Harith Al-Jibury
Joined:
11 Jul 2003
Posts:
37
Location:
Denmark
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Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 7:45 pm
Post subject:
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| Bri wrote: | Hi again,
Perhaps I'm not preselling my merchants correctly? Am I correct to assume that's the main reason for clickthroughs not converting into sales? I'll have to take a fresh look at my site and do some investigation.
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With the high clickthrough rate of traffic from your site to merchants sites.. 20%, you must be doing a good job in PRE-Selling.
It might be the merchants sites which are not sharp enough at converting your traffic to sales. A merchant site wouldn't convert for several reasons, for example:
- weak sales copy
- unprofessional site design
- there are external links of affiliate programs which the merchant is on (and you wouldn't get referral commissions in most or all of these cases)
- uncompetitive prices
However, it is still too early to draw a solid conclusion.
All the best,
Harith
http://www.danex-exm.dk
PS. if you have time, you may wish to view my article
"What to check out before joining an affiliate program!"
http://www.danex-exm.dk/affiliates.htm |
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Charlie
Joined:
22 Aug 2003
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3305
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UK
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Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 7:51 pm
Post subject:
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Hello Brian.
| Quote: | I'm sure you all remember, but this is a lonely business for a newbie, and even though I know I'm doing everything right, every now and then I start to question myself. It's good to get other people's feedback every now and then.
I'll soldier on. |
Remember we're all still learning.
There is no right way - just what happens to work for one unique set of circumstances at one particular time. Just keep testing, improving and reaping richer harvests! 
Have fun,
Charlie.
_________________
"Before I speak, I have something important to say."
- Groucho Marx |
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Timothy Warnock
Joined:
08 Aug 2003
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205
Location:
Assisi, Italy
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2003 6:19 am
Post subject:
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Hello Brian,
All the above suggestions are good, and I agree with Charlie, 1000 visitors is a good number to have a clear idea as to what is happening.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
Are you promoting a Clickbank merchant? If so, watch out for commission hijacking. (The visitor inserts their affiliate code and gets a discount on the purchase - and you get nothing). This is becoming a real problem. In fact, I've stopped promoting CB products in certain fields for this reason. I use a Mac, and there isn't much out there to use to cloak my affiliate code, and even if there was, those that want to snatch commissions can usually find a workaround.
Also, surprisingly, there are relatively few affiliate merchants that have strong CR% on their sites. So I am leaning away from affiliate marketing, and creating my own products/services (though there are plenty of good opportunities with affiliate marketing still).
Don't want to scare you, but I have had a 70% click through on my site - going out to 3 different merchants offering theme related but different products and services.
Towards one of them, I sent nearly 10,000 visitors and made about 5 sales, towards another I sent 7,000 visitors and ZERO sales, and towards the 3rd about 700 visitors - one sale.
These are pathetic numbers, and needless to say, I have abandoned these merchants.
With one of them, I even offered to rewrite his non-existent sales page (heck, I was easily sending him nearly 50% of all my traffic - I was sure to be able to create better CR%s), and even though I am sure that I was amongst his best affiliates (with 5 sales! ), he didn't even respond to my offer.
Because I was very successful from my end, I was very hesitant to give up (especially considering that there were no other affiliate programs in this field - and I wasn't in a position to create the service myself). So I tried everything under the sun to make this affiliate program work, constantly offering suggestions to the merchant - but to make a long story short, you can't force a dead horse to ride off into the sunset.
In the end, I had to drop it.
So, watch your numbers carefully, and don't be as stubborn and hard headed as I was. If they aren't pulling for you, drop them and move on.
I hope this helps,
Tim
_________________
Timothy Warnock
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wayne
Joined:
05 Sep 2003
Posts:
50
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2003 12:28 pm
Post subject:
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Regarding Clickbank, I do very well with them and do not have that big
of a problem with changing of links. But then I do not promote internet
marketing related programs, which is where you would have most of
your problems. I never did have any luck with them. If you concentrate
on non-internet marketing related products, most of your customers will
not even know who Clickbank is, or even how to change the links. You
can make a lot more money if you promote products not related to
internet marketing. |
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Timothy Warnock
Joined:
08 Aug 2003
Posts:
205
Location:
Assisi, Italy
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2003 5:13 pm
Post subject:
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Hi Wayne,
Welcome to the forum!
I agree with you regarding Clickbank and the internet marketing theme. It seems like the biggest affiliate hijacking problems are in this area.
In fact, I asked Joe Kumar what kind of forged links he was seeing (since he supplied something like 4 different cloakers to choose from for those that became his Clickbank affiliates), and he said about 10% of ALL of his sales!
Regarding my personal example in my post above, it wasn't with Clickbank merchants, nor in the field of internet marketing. Just wanted to make a point regarding poor CR% with merchants from my own personal experience.
If after 1000 visitors sent towards a merchant, there are no sales, then the odds are that these kinds of results will continue - better to simply drop them.
Don't want to mix up this point with the Clickbank point - two separate birds.
All the best,
Tim
_________________
Timothy Warnock
Copywriter |
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Dan1
Guest
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2003 6:39 pm
Post subject: Perplexing
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[Tim's complete post to Brian deleted. Please quote selectively, not whole messages. Thanks. Admin.]
Tim,
It's just amazing to me how helpful you tried to be to the merchant you represented and, yet, not only was no action taken, but they didn't even have the courtesy to give you a response.
I won't even consider representing a merchant who doesn't reply to my email in a timely fashion. If it takes them more than 3 days to get back to a simple question, I'm gone.
This kind of arrogance is ridiculous, and I'm glad to know that programs like Adsense are going to pound many of these affiliate programs and merchants into oblivion.
Not only that, but as Allan has pointed out, the better ones will have to get better to survive. One of the first and foremost ways for an affiliate program to improve is to actually get back to the requests of their affiliates.
You'd think it would be so obvious, but alas...
-Dan |
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