Hopw do you know when to give up?

Hi

I've been working on a niche for the past 18 months. Plenty of blogging activity and ranking well for niche keywords. Getting around 1200 unique vistors a month. I can't seem to get any sign ups to my free report which is appropriate for the market. I've had 2 sales but months apart.

My 'mentor' is telling me to work on my autoresponder sequence but I gotta be honest I'm not motivated to until I start getting a decent volume of opt-ins - am I being short sighted?

I am thinking the niche is not really commercial but on the oether hand I know the perils of giving up too early?

Any ideas?

Thanks

David

How are you getting the traffic? Sounds like they are not finding what they were expecting when they clicked over to your site or your free report needs some "selling".

1,200 unique visitors per month is 40 unique visitors per day. I would work on some keyword research and write posts that are well searched. THEN, I would do some serious SEO work and blog promotion.

If you want to build up a list, in addition to having an audience specific offer, you need traffic. Build traffic like crazy. Set a goal for 100 unique visitors per day in 1 month. Then 500/day in 6 months. Once you start getting that kind of daily traffic, you can test some different opt-in offers and see what works.

I have one blog where I test I think 4 free opt-in offers until I found one that converted well. That blog gets 100 to 200 unique visitors per day, but it's in a narrow niche. My offer is very specific. I get 2 to 15 opt-ins per day. Not a huge number, but it's consistent and my list contains a similar group of folks.

At the end of the day it's about traffic. You can't test conversion with plenty of traffic. Build backlinks, do article marketing, guest blogging, video marketing, social media (not my strong suit, but I hear it can work very well).

Sometimes it's just the wording too - if you're using aweber to build your list, try setting up a simple split test on your optin form. I'd also try putting it in a few different places on your site (i.e. in the sidebar and at the very bottom of your post).

Before anything else though, test the form and make sure it's working. One client of mine wasn't getting any sign ups and we found out after a few days that it was because something went wrong when she installed the form and there was no way to actually sign up.

You didn't mention what niche you were marketing in or if your traffic is targeted traffic or spam traffic. Maybe your niche and your content is not meshing right. I don't know about your mentor but I always try to have my responder with at least 7 followups before I try sending subscribers.

There is no reason to stay in a niche if you don't know if there is a possibality of getting traffic or making sales. Changing niche is not giving up, it could mean you are just smarter than when you picked the niche. Maybe you could send your blog url so we can see what you are doing.

Could be number of reasons why your not having much luck.

Unprofitable niche, hard to believe but they are out there.
Your free report isn't entecing enough for someone to opt in to your list.

What research did you do before hand to find out how profitable your niche is?

Also, is this a niche you really want to be in?

Tanworth, whatever you decide to do, wishing you the best of luck with it. I don't know the answer to your question, and have asked it many times myself.

All I can offer are general comments...

Your question is a very typical one, we've all seen it a million times. Somebody who is intelligent, articulate, determined and somewhat knowledgeable, working hard, and getting nowhere.

Here's a little secret. When you ask questions like this on webmaster forums, most of the folks who will reply with the sincere best of intentions aren't really getting anywhere either. They've just memorized the group consensus advice (which you may already know) and are repeating it back to you.

So what's the problem? Are we all stupid? Are we lazy?

Ok, there are some people who probably shouldn't be in this business, but imho, that's not the problem in most cases. Most of those who start threads like this aren't stupid or lazy, and their determination shows they do belong in this business.

The real problem isn't you. It's not us.

It's not most of the people who are struggling year after year and still making less than they'd make with a part time job at Walmart.

The problem is the "lone wolf" webmaster business model that has us working on our own, trying to do everything ourselves.

Why does Tanworth not have enough traffic to make their email strategy work. It's probably real simple. They don't have enough content and links.

Why don't they have enough content and links? Probably because they're trying to create all the content themselves. They have dozens or hundreds of pages they've made one by one by one, when they should have thousands, or tens of thousands of pages created by a community.

Lone wolf webmastering is dead my friends. There's no future in it. You're never going to be able tc compete with millions of educated English speaking people all around the emerging world who think $100/month is a great income.

What the explosion of social media shows is that those who learn how to create content generating communities around themselves will out compete those who insist on sticking with the Web 1.0 lone wolf model left over from the 1990's.

I'm sorry. I know many of us have invested a lot in learning the Web 1.0 lone wolf webmaster model. I get that it's hard to let go of that investment. I understand that most of us see our sites as a shrine to ourselves, and that's a powerful motivator.

But, that's life. The net is ruthless, and the market is moving on, whether we're ready or not.

Should you give up? Yes and no.

Don't give up on yourself and your future.

Do give up on the lone wolf webmaster model, and focus on turning your site in to a community.

Wow....that is a powerful post with some really great insights to where things are going.....it's an eye opener! And will have me re=thinking my strategies...because I can so relate to Tanworth......
Am going to go for a walk....I do my best thinking that way....
Thanks for your opinions and advice.

Gretchen