Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 5:48 am Post subject: Please tell me
My website has been up for a year now, and is presently 184 pages, with 16 affiliate programs, hundreds of products and daily traffic averaging 22 since January 1st. I know 22 people a day is not exactly a crowd.
My total income has been about $30 a month so far. Not for lack of "pre-selling" as I write many articles promoting my products, some affiliate-linked and some not. I have a good click-through rate. For instance, for one program (multiple products) I have had 5,700 click-throughs in 9 months but only one sale with a commission of $2.50.
I sure would like to know how to get this off the ground because it seems stuck although I'm constantly writing and tweaking my site for what I think is better viewing.
It's divided into three main sections, but this is the one that gets the most attention:
Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 5839 Location: by the beach, Australia
Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2007 5:03 am Post subject: Re: Please tell me
JLB wrote:
I know 22 people a day is not exactly a crowd.
Yep. That's about 660 a month. You definitely need to work on that. Set some new traffic goals.
Quote:
My total income has been about $30 a month so far.
I have a very rough rule of thumb for beginners that says that if get 500 visitors a day, you might earn $500 a month. Your ratio is better than this, so you're not doing too badly.
Of course, results can vary hugely - it's a VERY rough rule of thumb.
Quote:
Not for lack of "pre-selling" as I write many articles promoting my products, some affiliate-linked and some not.
Mmmmm. There's a HUGE difference between writing articles about things and preselling. I strongly urge you to investigate this more. You're doing some things well, but you're a bit erratic in your preselling.
Picture ONE typical visitor, and with every sentence you write, talk to that one person.
I hope this doesn't seem unfair, but I've just chosen one of your articles to discuss, the article on an online backup system...
The heading "Mozy Online Backup" isn't really what I'd call a heading. It's just a label. I understand you probably chose it for SEO purposes, but you have to write for humans, too.
The job of a heading is to entice the reader to read your article. Get a few good newspapers and magazines and examine the way they do this.
Maybe "How Mozy Online Backup solved my backup worries" or "Reliable online backups - good discount now" (except that it's not really a very good discount - more about that later).
Your first sentence starts...
Quote:
For the month of October...
The first words in your first sentence are very important. Try to choose strong words, not weak and waffly ones. "For October," or "You can get..." would have been a little better, but not brilliant.
Your introduction says...
Quote:
For the month of October there is a 5% discount on all annual and biannual signups. Just enter the promotion code 'OCTOBER'.
Your introduction is the most important part of any article because if people react badly to it, they won't read any further. Sorry, but I think there are all sorts of things wrong with this intro.
What's it about? "Biannual signups"? You're relying on the fact that your visitor scanned the headline "Mozy Online Backup" and knows what you're talking about. That's being far too optimistic. You're assuming far too much.
Perhaps you should have written a totally different intro. After all, a 5% discount is fairly unimpressive. You could have saved mentioning the discount until the last paragraph, when you'd already half-sold your reader.
A different approach could have been...
"I used to have all sorts of problems with my computer backups, but at last I've solved them."
That would tease the reader into reading more to find out what you'd done.
Does your typical reader already know about online backups? You must be assuming so, because I don't think you use the phrase "online backup" or "online backups" even ONCE in the whole article.
You need to remember that people often skim stuff instead of reading. This article will puzzle people who skim - and that may be most of your visitors.
Quote:
When I moved to my new computer I was emailed simple instructions for how to transfer my settings so all the files already backed up carried through without any need to start over.
That's good! By describing your own experience, you make it really clear that you use this service.
Quote:
there's nothing quite as comforting as off-site back up. This is great peace of mind for under $5 a month.
When preselling, you need to keep re-reading what you've written, imagining your visitor reading it for the first time, and thinking, "So what?" and "What's in it for me?"
WHY does it give you peace of mind? You don't explain. You could have said that's that if you have a backup hard drive sitting on your desk it could get destroyed in a fire or stolen by a burglar.
If you said this, you'd paint a picture in your visitor's mind.
You ended the article quite strongly, but I was puzzled that it didn't end with an affiliate link, and a call to action, such as "Check it out here", "Get it now at the discount price", or "Learn more about safe online backups here" or something similar.
Then I noticed that instead of an affiliate link, you're using an affiliate banner saying "MozyHome". Two things are wrong here. The banner doesn't mention online backups. It took me a while to realize that it was connected to the article. Second, the banner you're introducing here is an ad, so the reader now shifts from being involved in reading a useful, interesting article, to the mindset involved in looking at at ad.
So, 1, the reader is less likely to click, and 2, if they do click on the ad, they arrives at the vendor site, with "ad" in mind (therefore suspicious) instead of having your helpful, friendly advice in mind.
That's what preselling is all about - having your visitor arrive at the vendor's site in a warmed up, ready-to-buy frame of mind.
Quote:
For instance, for one program (multiple products) I have had 5,700 click-throughs in 9 months but only one sale with a commission of $2.50.
Are they clicking on a friendly, helpful useful article, or an ad? Are they arriving at the main page of the vendor's site, or arriving directly at the product page (much better). Or are they clicking from a link in your navigation bar which they though would take them to another page on your site - and then are disconcerted when they arrive at a vendor's site?
If you get only one sale from 5,700 either you or the vendor - or both - are doing something really bad, something that annoys or frustrates your visitor.
I clicked on a link in your navigation and found I'd clicked on an exe file for Syncback! Have a think about how your visitor feels when this sort of thing happens. When you have your visitors' interests at heart, your getting nearer preselling.
Quote:
...I'm constantly writing and tweaking my site for what I think is better viewing.
That's good. It means you'll eventually find out what works.
One little tip, when you're tweaking your articles, try reading them aloud. You'll find you often pick up things which don't sound quite right, and you can then reword them.
If you have trouble choosing words and phrases, imagine that you're talking to a friend. That will make the words flow easier.
You also need to get more good links to your site and to internal pages of your site, to increase your traffic. _________________ Allan Gardyne
... earning a good living from affiliate programs since 1998.
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Thank-you for your lengthy reply. I did not receive an email informing me of it, so I only came upon it while looking for something else. I'm glad I didn't miss it altogether.
Although the section of my website you examined is a 'blog' and therefore mostly read by people who are champing at the bit for something new everyday I have been thinking of re-writing alot of it.
I can see your points. It's not obvious until some-one else says it. I had written a previous longer article on Mozy so assumed people already knew alot about it, and that one was a quick reminder. Obviously, too quick. I did not choose the title for SEO as I don't really know anything about how to manipulate that. It was the title because that's what I was talking about.
About the 5,700 clicks, now 5,900 - they're links to specific product pages. I thought my job was to get the click and then it's up to the merchant. Something seems askew. I wrote several months ago, around 3,000 total, to query the merchant and was told I was advertising slow moving products. So I changed them to what was suggested and got more clicks but still no sales.
Back to the drawing board ... _________________ JLB
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