I Still Haven't Made A Sale Yet....

[tomstark]

I need some help... I'm obviously not doing something right. I've been working on my site since last fall, and am now getting about 800 weekly visits to my site (700+ are new visitors). The only money I am making currently is off of adsense for now, which is maybe $1 a day. I'm mainly using Commission Junction and Amazon for affiliates. I knew it would take a lot of work, but didn't think it would take this long to start making some money. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or if you can point out what I'm doing wrong. Let me know if you would like some more info/stats about my site: MotocrossHideout.com

Thank you for your help!

[Engage]

Nice site Tom, you're doing a good job.

Hmm, you seem to be covering the bases pretty well.

How's your newsletter coming? Are people signing up? Maybe make that more prominent?

You've got a good start on links. Lots more would be better. 100 visitors a day is a solid beginning, 1000 a day would be a good goal to shoot for.

For immediate but modest results, you might consider adding Adsense panels to the top and bottom of your article. I notice those ad panel positions significantly out perform the sidebar for me.

I'm hoping the other posters will have some better suggestions for you.

Hang in there man!

[tomstark]

Thanks Engage... People do sign up for the newsletter, but not as much as I had hoped so far. 45 subscribed right now, but I've had a dozen drop out over time. Yeah, I just started working on links again (took a couple months off until now finishing an e-book/training booklet). 1000 is exactly what I'm looking for as a goal. I feel I have enough content, I just need to get the articles ranked higher up in google.

Also, I get the feeling that something about the site and/or content isn't good enough, and that's why I'm not getting any conversions.... I might try that setup for adsense and let you know how it turns out. Thanks!

[Engage]

People do sign up for the newsletter, but not as much as I had hoped so far.

Hmm... Maybe make the design of the newsletter form a little more polished and prominent?

How about an incentive gift to encourage subscriptions? Can you give away something special to new subscribers, and use that as bait to boost subscriptions?

<SPAM>Ideally you would find an incentive gift that is relevant to your topic, but if you can't come up with a good one, I know how you could give your new subscribers free web, ezine and forum hosting. </SPAM>

Shift your perspective. Think of your newsletter as the number one thing you're trying to sell on your site. Once they are on your list, you'll have time to sell the other stuff.

Automate your email operations. Set up an autoresponder to automatically feed your new subscribers a series of messages that contain great info, and affiliate links.

Find some partners. You promote their newsletter, and they promote yours.

Yeah, I just started working on links again (took a couple months off until now finishing an e-book/training booklet).

I hear ya, links are a bitch. I have plenty of trouble staying focused on them, which is probably why I'm always ranting about them.

Hmm.... Are those things in the sidebar doing you any good? If not, maybe remove them.

Replace those sidebar ads with links to other sites. The partner webmasters put you in their sidebar, and you do the same for them. You know, lots of bloggers do this.

If you can get in the sidebar of 24 sites that have 200 pages each, that's 5,000 links. Two way links instead of one way, but still, more links than you have now.

Do you have a couple of friends that would help you get a small forum going? You don't have enough traffic to launch a big forum just yet, but you can set the stage with just a few posters. Point being, can you come up with ways to get other people to add content to your site? Aim for exponential content growth.

On my site, I've noticed quick, simple, little pages bring in traffic too. And it's easy to make lots of them. As example...

- Every good motorcycle video on YouTube could be on your site. Hundreds of new pages.

- Create a Flickr slideshow for every motorcycle topic you can think of. As example, search Flickr for a recent race, and see if folks have uploaded a bunch of photos.

- Create pages that highlight individual hot photos. You can use any photo here, if you credit the author. http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/by-2.0/

- Use Mapquest to create maps to all the big race tracks.

- Don't underestimate the power of image searches. Example, I had a site that was getting a few dozen visitors a day. I used an image of a popular band in one of my articles, the image got ranked high in Google (I have no idea why) and now we get 700 visitors a day. Point being, use lots of images, and be sure to give them descriptive file names and alt tags.

- Find good articles on other sites, and write a review praising them. Contact the author, and try to make a friend.

- Find things you disagree with, and politely debate them in articles. Contact the author, and maybe they will argue and link back.

Point being, it can be tough getting page one rankings. Another way to come at it is to load your site up with tons of relevant content, and get lots of obscure long tail searches.

Phew, ok, that's the best I can do for the moment.

[lindastacy]

Your site looks great; it's easy to navigate and easy on the eyes. I have a couple of suggestions that might be totally off the wall, but two things came to my mind right away when I went to your site (and both are easy enough to test).

1 - Where do I shop? Then I realized it's an affiliate site with reviews, etc., but one thing you could do is add an amazon store and a "shop now" link in the top menu bar.

2 - Along those same lines, some people just need to be directed to buy. You could try adding some "buy now" buttons to some of the posts.

One other thought that probably isn't off the wall and that goes along with Engage's suggestion to "sell" the newsletter or add a forum - the vast majority of your visitors are new visitors, not repeats. Work on getting people to come back again and again. A "following" will help tremendously with sales and referrals.

Edited to add: After posting this I went back to close the browser window containing your site and noticed that the top menu has a "Top Stores" link. I think my mind originally saw that as "top stories." You could change that to something like "Best Shopping" and also consider building up that page. You could add a little description of each store and a "go shopping now" link to the store.

[Engage]

Work on getting people to come back again and again. A "following" will help tremendously with sales and referrals.

Great suggestion.

How about an "Awesome Photo Of The Day" feature?

NASA has one of these for astronomy photos, and it appeared to be quite popular.

Does your comment feature allow people to subscribe to receive notification of new comments?

[tdadd]

Hi Tom,

I think your site looks very good. Good theme, and you provide solid information. I clicked on 2 of your posts, and think that you might benefit by using content links in your articles, with clickable images. Lynn has a post on how to do this on her blog, in case you need it. I think it's called "the anatomy of an affilite link". Do you have bike profiles, boot and helmet reviews, etc., with a clear call to action for your readers?

[chickblogger]

Hi, Tom:

Interesting niche, am not to familiar with it. But sounds way fun! Let's get right to it. lol. Which keywords do you currently rank for, and how is traffic to them?

Also someone above suggested adding in text based links, this is a good tip. Many times banners don't work as well, as text based links right in the article.

We'll help you. First, let us know what you currently rank for, and your backlink strategy?

Cheers,
Missy

[tomstark]

Hmm... Maybe make the design of the newsletter form a little more polished and prominent?

How about an incentive gift to encourage subscriptions? Can you give away something special to new subscribers, and use that as bait to boost subscriptions?

<SPAM>Ideally you would find an incentive gift that is relevant to your topic, but if you can't come up with a good one, I know how you could give your new subscribers free web, ezine and forum hosting. </SPAM>

Shift your perspective. Think of your newsletter as the number one thing you're trying to sell on your site. Once they are on your list, you'll have time to sell the other stuff.

Automate your email operations. Set up an autoresponder to automatically feed your new subscribers a series of messages that contain great info, and affiliate links.

Find some partners. You promote their newsletter, and they promote yours.



I hear ya, links are a bitch. I have plenty of trouble staying focused on them, which is probably why I'm always ranting about them.

Hmm.... Are those things in the sidebar doing you any good? If not, maybe remove them.

Replace those sidebar ads with links to other sites. The partner webmasters put you in their sidebar, and you do the same for them. You know, lots of bloggers do this.

If you can get in the sidebar of 24 sites that have 200 pages each, that's 5,000 links. Two way links instead of one way, but still, more links than you have now.

Do you have a couple of friends that would help you get a small forum going? You don't have enough traffic to launch a big forum just yet, but you can set the stage with just a few posters. Point being, can you come up with ways to get other people to add content to your site? Aim for exponential content growth.

On my site, I've noticed quick, simple, little pages bring in traffic too. And it's easy to make lots of them. As example...

- Every good motorcycle video on YouTube could be on your site. Hundreds of new pages.

- Create a Flickr slideshow for every motorcycle topic you can think of. As example, search Flickr for a recent race, and see if folks have uploaded a bunch of photos.

- Create pages that highlight individual hot photos. You can use any photo here, if you credit the author. http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/by-2.0/

- Use Mapquest to create maps to all the big race tracks.

- Don't underestimate the power of image searches. Example, I had a site that was getting a few dozen visitors a day. I used an image of a popular band in one of my articles, the image got ranked high in Google (I have no idea why) and now we get 700 visitors a day. Point being, use lots of images, and be sure to give them descriptive file names and alt tags.

- Find good articles on other sites, and write a review praising them. Contact the author, and try to make a friend.

- Find things you disagree with, and politely debate them in articles. Contact the author, and maybe they will argue and link back.

Point being, it can be tough getting page one rankings. Another way to come at it is to load your site up with tons of relevant content, and get lots of obscure long tail searches.

Phew, ok, that's the best I can do for the moment.

Yeah, I already have two incentives for people that sign up for the newsletter, and a few auto responders the following days about my e-book. I did have about 500+ links a few months ago, but they keep dissipating. The google ads on the side are the only thing getting me money atm. I thought about a forum and actually started out with one, but my brother (christianwins) and I figured it would be too much maintenance until the site gets really popular. So you're saying that if I put a link of other blogs on my sidebar it will automatically put links to my site on theirs?

Your site looks great; it's easy to navigate and easy on the eyes. I have a couple of suggestions that might be totally off the wall, but two things came to my mind right away when I went to your site (and both are easy enough to test).

1 - Where do I shop? Then I realized it's an affiliate site with reviews, etc., but one thing you could do is add an amazon store and a "shop now" link in the top menu bar.

2 - Along those same lines, some people just need to be directed to buy. You could try adding some "buy now" buttons to some of the posts.

One other thought that probably isn't off the wall and that goes along with Engage's suggestion to "sell" the newsletter or add a forum - the vast majority of your visitors are new visitors, not repeats. Work on getting people to come back again and again. A "following" will help tremendously with sales and referrals.

Edited to add: After posting this I went back to close the browser window containing your site and noticed that the top menu has a "Top Stores" link. I think my mind originally saw that as "top stories." You could change that to something like "Best Shopping" and also consider building up that page. You could add a little description of each store and a "go shopping now" link to the store.

Thanks, and I will consider adding an Amazon store. How do you suggest I go about in getting my visitors to come back to my site?

Hi Tom,

I think your site looks very good. Good theme, and you provide solid information. I clicked on 2 of your posts, and think that you might benefit by using content links in your articles, with clickable images. Lynn has a post on how to do this on her blog, in case you need it. I think it's called "the anatomy of an affilite link". Do you have bike profiles, boot and helmet reviews, etc., with a clear call to action for your readers?

What exactly are content links? In my articles that have products, I have images that go to affiliate sites if you click on them, if that's what you mean... What would be a clear call to action?

Thanks a lot for your help so far.... That's a mouthful of info, so hopefully I can start making a couple bucks here soon.

[tomstark]

Hi, Tom:

Interesting niche, am not to familiar with it. But sounds way fun! Let's get right to it. lol. Which keywords do you currently rank for, and how is traffic to them?

Also someone above suggested adding in text based links, this is a good tip. Many times banners don't work as well, as text based links right in the article.

We'll help you. First, let us know what you currently rank for, and your backlink strategy?

Cheers,
Missy

I have a lot of keywords from all the articles, but the top ones are probably: ktm 350 sxf (8), ktm 350sxf (1), wr250f mods (1), wr250f (4), fmf turbinecore (5), and I'm sure there's more, but I'm not going to spend all day, lol. For backlinks, I put them on high ranking forums, dirt biking forums, and related blogs. I'm considering starting guest blogging though...