Website Grader Score of 93 But No Sales?

[kentheriot]

I posted the below text last night but then had an idea how to rephrase it.

My original idea for a web business was to sell my own products...video tutorials for audio recording. I've worked a lot at adding content in various ways, and doing YouTube videos and Ezine Articles (platinum member). The url is over a year old. All this has led to an increasingly more powerful site, in terms of SEO and marketing (see below for some of the stats I am using to base this on), but I have sold very few products, and those have only been my ebook/report. I've sold none of my "primary" product, the tutorial videos.

So do you think I could re-purpose my site as more of an IM/Affiliate site?

Anyway, here is what I originally said in last-nights first version of this post:

I just wanted to get some advice on what lesson I can take from having a high-scoring (93) website according to Hubspot's Website Grader, but not having any actual sales?

Some of the stats for the site are:

Alexa Rank: 1,072,668
MOZ Rank: 2
Google Indexed Pages: 171
Inbound links: 181

Still new at this and learning every day. Any advice would be apprecitated.

Thanks!

Ken

[kentheriot]

Bumping, due to change in post.

[tdadd]

Without seeing the actual website, it's difficult for anyone to answer your questions fully. The one thing I can say is that opening an affiliate program (for a product that converts well) is one of the most lucrative things a person can do to make money online. There are many marketers who've said their incomes skyrocketed when they took on affiliates.

[kentheriot]

Without seeing the actual website, it's difficult for anyone to answer your questions fully. The one thing I can say is that opening an affiliate program (for a product that converts well) is one of the most lucrative things a person can do to make money online. There are many marketers who've said their incomes skyrocketed when they took on affiliates.

Thanks tdad,

Sorry about that. The main site is http://www.homebrewaudio.com

Actually though (and this is how green I am), I was wondering about BECOMING an affiliate marketer with this site, since MY stuff isn't selling. I thought maybe I could use the increasing value of the site to sell other audio-related stuff. Yes? No? Or am I giving up on selling my stuff too early?

Thanks again. Still learning via the firehose method. Does it ever slow down? The learning, I mean.:rolleyes:

Cheers!

Ken

[MikeF421]

What kind of traffic are we talking about?

10 unique visitors a day? 50? 100? 1000?

And how long have you been getting that traffic?

[kentheriot]

What kind of traffic are we talking about?

10 unique visitors a day? 50? 100? 1000?

And how long have you been getting that traffic?

Mike,

According to Google Analytics, from June 2nd to July 2nd I got about 45 unique page views per day, and about 100 total page views. The site is just 4 months old, so the past month has been the highest.

I don't really have a frame of reference for this though. Obviously more is better. Is this what I should expect to see? Is it odd not to have but a handful of sales at this point?

I know I have to stop using the "I'm a newbie" excuse pretty soon;).

Cheers,

Ken

[Engage]

Here's my 2 cents.

Great niche! I love home recording.

You've got a good start on content and links. Keep pushing hard on both those numbers.

Focus on building your traffic for now. Whatever you sell, you need more traffic.

Install Adsense, so you'll have at least some income coming in, with the least possible effort.

Can you set up some way where your visitors can add content to your site? Perhaps a forum where visitors can share their audio creations? Guest authors offer their recording tips? Can you convert your site in to a community somehow? If yes, that should be a big help on the content side.

If you can enlist users in creating much of the content, that would free you to work on links almost full time.

Traffic first, then worry about what to sell.

Good luck, and happy recording!

[kentheriot]

Thanks Engage!

I'll look into how to make the site more interactive. Great ideas.

About Adsense...someone told me that was just a good way for your competitors to make money off you. I just believed him. Should I rethink it?

Thanks!

Ken

[Engage]

About Adsense...someone told me that was just a good way for your competitors to make money off you. I just believed him. Should I rethink it?

Having your own products, your own customers, your own list etc is a good plan. To make that work, you need your own traffic too. More than you've got now.

Thus, I'm suggesting you set aside the question of what you're selling for now, and focus on traffic, that is, content and links.

I just suggested Adsense only because you can install it in minutes, and then forget it, and get back to work on content and links.

Adsense won't earn you much income at your traffic level, but it will make some money, and maybe that will help keep you motivated? It's tough to keep pushing on content and links if we're not making anything at all.

Maybe this? Focus on content and links until you're making a couple hundred a month with Adsense. At that point you should have enough traffic where you might turn your attention back to selling your products, and/or other people's products.

1,000 pages and 1,000 links.

5,000 pages and 5,000 links.

Go get'em! :)

[tdadd]

Hi again Jake,

I checked out your site, and I'm wondering about the packaging of your videos. Have you considered bundling them together as one system, with one price? As is, it may be confusing to your visitors, and people tend to judge a product's value by the price a vendor places on it. They may wonder why some segments are $7, while another is $5 or $6, or even $2! (Personally, I have no idea what this sort of course is worth.) If your visitors are returning to the site, but not buying anything, maybe you need to offer a more compelling reason to buy, or a more powerful sales page for the system. Offering the first few lessons for free is great; how is the list building going?

If you're thinking of monetizing the site with some affiliate offers, product reviews work very well. You could, if you choose, write a comprehensive review of a piece of audio equipment, with an affiliate link or two worked into the body of the post. I did a quick search for "audio equipment + affiliate programs" and there are a few. I didn't click on anything, just did a fast scan of the first page of Google. You could also check out Amazon's aff program. They're bound to sell things you could promote.
Almost forgot, you said you have lots of content. Are your posts/articles keyword specific? Are you targeting kw's with decent search volume?

Terese

[wade_watson]

I'd agree with Terese that the piecemeal pricing might cause some confusion. I think I'd put it all together into a single package for a reasonable, but substantial price. Add on a few PLR ebooks to sweeten the deal. Instead of posting it directly on the site, I might offer a free/super cheap report-- that offers some irresistible value itself, and offer the full package from within the report or to the list later. You could even offer it as an upsell on the free/cheap report's thank you page for instant sales.

The fact is that some types of products/markets require a certain amount of warming up to a real purchase. I believe Lynn has said she likes to put a low price on initial reports when the main product is an e-product. That way you form a list of people who you know will buy something. Remember, in Internet marketing, there's nothing more valuable than your list.

Wade

[HarryJackson]

Why not you focus on SEO and bring your keywords on top of search engines, with 171 in bounds links and such a high alexa rank clearly suggest that you don't have organic traffic on your site.

[MikeF421]

If you are trying to sell your own product, I will respectively disagree with Engage, and would never put AdSense on the site.

All Adsense is going to do is give your visitors another exit point... a reason to leave your site and check out something else that has peaked their curiousity, and they may never return.

Now if your primary focus is going to be affiliate offers, Amazon products, etc. that's different. Then, in that case, AdSense is one more opportunity for a sale.

[Engage]

If you are trying to sell your own product, I will respectively disagree with Engage, and would never put AdSense on the site.

All Adsense is going to do is give your visitors another exit point... a reason to leave your site and check out something else that has peaked their curiousity, and they may never return.

I don't really disagree.

It's just that he isn't yet in a position to sell his product, or any product. I'm just suggesting Adsense as a temporary income source, a modest motivator, until he has enough traffic to sell his own products.

Once he has a healthy supply of targeted traffic, that would be a good time to remove Adsense, and focus on the product, copy and conversions. There's no point to doing that until there's more traffic. As it is now, there's just not much there to convert.

It's a great start though, that can be quickly built upon, if the focus is there.