working hard ~little money~what am I doing wrong???

[LAM42]

Hello everyone!
I am looking for a bit of advise. I have an affiliate program up and running that is geared towards my passion and my knowledge fo the industry. I am on the first page of google for two of my keywords and I average about 200 unique visits per day and about 3500 to 3900 unique visits per month. I send out monthly emails, I have contests, I do reviews and get the designers to give away the reveiw as a prize for the month. I advertise ppc one day per month and with all that, I am only making a few hundred dollars per month.

Why are my conversions so low? I even have a coupon page and a sale page. The site looks great (I know I am biased)

I have written ezine articles as well.

Any feedback is appreciated. Oh and my site has been up since June.

Thank you!!!!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi LAM,

You said: "I have an affiliate program up and running"

Just want to be sure I'm on the right track. You arent a merchant with an affiliate program, you are an affiliate with an affiliate site correct?

Well part of the equation we don't know is how many clicks you are getting.
If out of those visitors hardly anyone is clicking, that could signify that either your traffic isnt targeted enough or there is a problem with your copy or layout or usability or links or something on your site. If on the other hand you are getting good clickthrough rates that would point to the fact that you are doing things right on your end but the merchant does not convert well or something.

So to really look at why conversions are low or IF they are even low you need to look at clicks, not total visitors. On average (and it varies wildly) an affiliate could expect 1 sale out of 200 clicks. Obviously 1/100 is better and anything greater than that is awesome.

So if you get 4,000 visitors a month but only 200 click a particular offer you may only make one sale. So then you know you need more traffic, or more targeted traffic, or to improve your content and other things you can control on your site.

If however you are getting 2,000 clicks and hardly anyone is buying, then its most likely on the merchant side. Could be poor pricing, bad site design, cart problems, tracking problems or leaks.

Right now without seeing your site or having click stats, all I can do is shoot in the dark. If you are comfortable sharing your site with us so we can give you more informed feedback, feel free to post in the site review forum, giving the above details plus some click stats. We may be able to help.

 

[LAM42]

Well my data states from Sept 1 to Sept 30, I had 1818 click throughs for a specific advertiser but only three sales totalling $22.00. From August 14 until September 29, I had 2966 click throughs but only 8 sales total about $60.00 from another client. These customers use affliate tracking software. I am just so frustrated, I have the people but not the sales!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Yes if you are getting the clicks, ideally you should be getting more sales.
Sounds like you are using more than one merchant, so it's not just a single merchant that is not converting?

 

[cdorob]

it might be that the merchant itself converts quite bad. So no matter how many clicks you send, if the visitor doesn't feel like buying on the merchant site, it's not going to work

And, why don't you submit your site for a review here on the forum? There is a section just for that.We might look and have a better idea of what's going on.

 

[LAM42]

I have 5 advertisers on my site. I am really suppementing my income by charging a monthly flat fee to other advertisers who don't have an affilate program but want their products featured.

I haven't viewed the reveiw section. Has their been a problem with people posting their site and others setting up a similar affiliate web site?

Thank you so much for your responses.

 

[derrekmay]

Hello,
looks like you are trying to do your best!
But maybe you have to use your time more wisely...
try another routine, use new products, promot your site on other ways...