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

[tomstark]

Hi Tom,
I went to your site just now and one thing that jumped out at me was a large Hostgator adsense ad. If you find that people are clicking through on that one, you would be better off to advertise it as a Hostgator affiliate. The ad will look almost the same, but you'll get a whole lot more money for it.

Very nice looking site, by the way.

I have no idea why there's a hostgator adsense ad. Probably because I use it, but I've noticed that they've been doing a lot of advertising lately. I will be getting rid of adsense, for the most part, once I can figure out how to make some decent money from affiliates. Thanks.

[tomstark]

Ok, this is getting frustrating.... I'm averaging just over 1000 weekly visitors and still can't get conversions like I think I should. Although some of the most visited articles on my site are not "product" ones, the ones that do try and sell something get enough traffic to convert.

Some examples are: "trail tech vapor" article gets 450 page views per month, "evs bj22 body armor" gets 350/month, "fmf fatty pipe" gets almost 300, "alpinestars tech 3" gets over 200, and there's more. Is that not enough to get conversions??

I have affiliate text, picture, and "Buy Here" type links in all the product articles. What's wrong? Are my articles not convincing? I also took away adsense ads from a few of the top "money" articles and affiliate click ratio rose slightly, but not much, and with no conversions.... I'm stumped.

[tomstark]

Yeah, I just started testing some new things with my newsletter sign-up. I give my subscribers two helpful guides about my niche (says that on the forms). My subscription rate has increased in the past month. Not substantially, but better than it was, and I'm still testing new things.

Speaking of including affiliate links in the newsletter, that's exactly what I was planning on doing next. I also need to work on my email headlines, because I'm not getting enough subscribers to open them...

Any other suggestions?? Thanks.

[Satu]

I just checked a couple of your pages. The site looks good (except that the font is too small to my liking - but I'm middle-aged and almost blind so it may not matter )

I think you should link your product reviews to a specific Amazon product, not a category of products. And the call to action should be about that product, not about best deals on Amazon in general.

You should really join the Elites, Lynn could help you A LOT.

Overall, I think you have done a great job. :-)

[tomstark]

Thanks, I'll try changing some of the links and see what happens. I will look into the Elites...

[Satu]

I was roaming around Lynn's blog and found this post that might be relevant. It's about buying and informational keywords and how to opitimize your site for the buying keywords.

http://www.clicknewz.com/2244/long-t...word-strategy/

[cjmo75]

I know you've done a lot of hard work, and I understand your frustration. I was in your shoes about a year ago. It seemed like no matter how hard I worked I just couldn't make sales.

That's when I learned that it is a numbers game. 700-800 visitors per week really isn't that many. A normal conversion rate is 1%. So, let's say that 20% of your vistors click-through your affiliate links (which is high). That would be 160 clicks. So, this would generally product 1-2 affiliate sales. That's assuming that you have a 20% CTR or better.

As for your newsletter, don't get discouraged when people unsubscribe. That's totally normal, and you shouldn't take it personally that your writing is bad or anything like that.

A 30-40% unsubscribe rate is actually par for the course. Like I said, internt marketing is a numbers game. I didn't start making good money until I developed my own product and put it up on E-Junkie and started to get my own affiliates promoting for me.

The reason is that this produced traffic. As for your list, I didn't start to make good money with that until I hit almost 1000 subscribers. Even then, it can be hit or miss.

Just hang in there and don't give up. You should also put whatever money you are making back into your business to generate more traffic. Pay-per-click traffic can be expensive, but it's very targeted in most cases and can produce great results. Of course, please do your keyword research before starting a PPC campaign, or you could really take a beating.

Also, have you thought about product creation? If you have a newsletter that means you can probably write well. Why not pump out a 15-20 page ebook, embed some affiliate links in it, and give it away on your website?

[tomstark]

Yeah, I know I'm not getting tons of traffic (1000/week now), but I kinda' expected at least a few conversions. So, I figured I was doing something wrong.

I wasn't really worried about people unsubscribing so much. I just wanted to get a higher subscriber rate, and still trying to find out how to get them to open the emails.

I do have an ebook, me and my brother (christianwins) just haven't put much time in trying to advertise it. So you're saying that I should give it away with my newsletter? What kind of affiliate links should be in it? Thanks.

[cjmo75]

Yeah, I know I'm not getting tons of traffic (1000/week now), but I kinda' expected at least a few conversions. So, I figured I was doing something wrong.

I wasn't really worried about people unsubscribing so much. I just wanted to get a higher subscriber rate, and still trying to find out how to get them to open the emails.

I do have an ebook, me and my brother (christianwins) just haven't put much time in trying to advertise it. So you're saying that I should give it away with my newsletter? What kind of affiliate links should be in it? Thanks.

I've had lots of success in building my list by creating a "viral" effect with a product.

For instance, I just created an article marketing product that is worthy of being sold on Clickbank. I've had several people tell me it's very good.

On the very last page of the ebook, I've made a small "Bonus" area that includes a link to an article marketing video course that I give away as a perk to the product. The link goes to a squeeze page and then the reader has to sign up to my list to access the video course.

I've also peppered some affiliate links throughout the ebook, and links to Master Resell Rights products that I sell. Not many, maybe 2 or 3. You don't want the ebook to appear like it's just a reason to sell your products.

Now, here's my twist:

I include a squeeze page and sales page with the product, and give others the rights to sell it or use it to build their list. This is how I get mega exposure. Not only am I giving it away, I'm letting others do the same AND build their own lists or make money in the process.

Here's another tip:

I give the product to as many possible Master Resell Rights membership sites as I can find. The product has to be good or it won't get accepted. The owners of these siets are more than happy to put up a free product IF it adds value for their members.

You can also just give the actual report part of your product away to all of the free ebook sites on the web.

Then, make a simple download page with a link to download your product and put that in blog comments, forum signatures, article resource boxes, etc.

Another thing to do is set up your own squeeze page to give the product away and join all of those JV giveaways where people have to sign up to your list to get your product or "gift".

Also, you can put your download page on a bunch of traffic exchanges.

In short, go crazy giving this thing away.

All it takes is for one person with a lot of traffic to use it to build their list or give it their list, and the leads will start rolling in.

I did a product 6 weeks ago and so far have gotten almost 1100 leads from it. This really works. The best part is, you don't need the help of the search engines! Give it a shot. You'll see good results. It takes time this way, but once the momentum builds you'll have an endless source of fresh leads.

[tomstark]

What if I don't have a product?