Lots of impressions, no clicks

[grooveman]

I am sure this has been covered before, my sites are approaching the 100,000 impressions mark on CJ with only 28 clicks so far, not one sale.
I understand that I need to increase the click ratio and hopefully create some conversions but what does it take to do that? Do text link ads generally work better than banners? Any other advice?
Thanks!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi grooveman,

Yes text links typically convert better than banners. The 2 things that affect click through rate the most are how targeted the traffic is and ad placement.

Are talking about the 2 sites in your sig? If so, I have some other feedback that could be affecting clickthrough rates.

It often takes 200 - 1000 clicks to get to your 1st sale, so you just need more clicks. After you learn the tricks of the trade, get targeted traffic and pick the right merchants your sales conversions should increase and some affiliates get 1/100 conversion rates. But again highly dependent on a variety of factors.

 

[grooveman]

I have several sites that I am using with CJ. I have been inserting banners at the bottom of the niche sites since I lost my rss feeds and was not able to get them back so I am filling that space with affiliate banners as an experiment. Any input or advice you could provide would be appreciated.

I am not getting as much traffic as I would like but that will come over time I guess. Most of my sites are less than 5 months old. But I thought with almost 100,000 impressions between all my sites I would have at least a couple of sales by now.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Well the one thing I was going to mention on the sites in your sig - well mainly the health site I looked at... This looks to me to be a turn key site you bought that is just pulling info from other sources, blogs, article directories, search directories, since they are pulling lots of blog feeds and articles you could be getting traffic for the specific words in some of the articles, but they may not necessarily be people in "buy" mode, maybe more in info mode. Plus since the content is not unique but duplicate content a tons of other sites have, you aren't probably getting the search traffic you could be and may even be penalized for the duplicate content.

Plus if they come through any of the KW in the blog feeds, which are at the top of the page, when they click to read the info they were after, they get taken to the NY Times or wherever before they even get down to any of the ads.

I know you have other sites and they may not all be like this one, I just wanted to give feedback on this one, because for lots of newbies these turnkey, auto-generated sites look like they'd be amazing money makers because they are so loaded with content, it's not usually the case.

I'm not saying scrap it or anything just pointing out some of the reasons it may not be making money.

 

[grooveman]

I am in the process of having some articles written for the site to give it at least some unique content. When I first started out I bought a couple of those turnkey sites because I did not know any better. The healthdomain site is actually only a few days old, a programmer friend of mine created that for me and it is supposed to be unique. Besides it was free so I can't complain.
I do understand what you are saying and I need to have fresh content in there which I will work to do. As far as being penalized for duplicate content, I wonder how the article directories avoid that since many people, including myself, write and submit articles as a part of their SEO work to hundreds of directories at a time.
I may try to move the rss feeds somewhere else or lose them altogether since they do take people away from the site. I only have the three affiliate banners on that site plus the Amazon products. I just cannot figure out why with so many impressions, I get so few clicks.
Anyway, thanks for your input. I do appreciate it.

 

[Larwee]

grooveman, here is a great "Hall of Fame" thread that will help give you a very good understanding of duplicate content http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...5-duplicate-content-s-not-what-you-think.html

 

[Linda Buquet]

Sounds like you are working on a variety of things and that's what it takes sometimes. Try to keep track of what you do to try and improve as you go through the trial and error process so when you get increased clickthroughs or conversions it will be easier to tell what you did that helped.

 

[grooveman]

Very informative, I think I am in the clear since my website is unique. Thanks

 

[Niche48]

That many visitors and no sales indicates a huge problem

The answer is presell!!

You need to generate some content, preferably unique, which presells your products

It sounds like you have your traffic generation techniques well covered. Congrats for that. But you need to work on your content

I hate to say it but it is your words that generate the sale

 

[grooveman]

Ok, but for example. I have a couple of sites, an arcade and a music/song lyrics site with product banners related to what kids may be looking for. So no content as far as something that would lead to a sale. On a search engine site I have 147 informational niche sites like acne, advertising etc with articles related to those topics and a few banners at the bottom of the pages to replace rss feeds that used to be there. I am not sure if the majority of my sites fall into this category and I am not sure exactly what you mean when you say presell and how I would integrate that.

 

[Niche48]

Hi Grooveman,
If your banners are not related to the content on your pages then you have to do a few things

1. Put the banners where they are most visible. If you look at the Yahoo home page, they put an advertising banner just under the most viewed part of the page ie where you click to access your mail.

2. Try and make your content so that your visitors stay on your page longer. The longer they are there, the greater the chances that they will at least look at your banner

3. Don't clutter the page with banners. I go for one or at most two banners on any one page

4. Text links convert better than banners or so we are told. Apparently web users have developed banner blindness,but then you could argue that big sites like Yahoo, again , still use banners

With regards to presell I mean talking the product up without making a sales pitch.
For example if you are promoting a certain pair of nike shoes, then your page may be about the benefiits of jogging everyday or how great it is to jog till you work up a sweat or the post exercise adrenaline rush, sorry i am getting carried away. But it sounds like this is not applicable with your site

 

[Linda Buquet]

I think one of the the issues is that you have some sites in very general and competitive areas, that cover a wide variety of stuff without enough focus and then adding probably adding banners for fairly generic products that would appeal to a wide range of people.

Entertainment sites like arcade and a music/song lyrics sites are terrible hard to monetize even for pros. Those people are looking for entertainment, not looking for products to buy and there are lots of sites like that so it's very competitive.

When Niche talks about preselling, that's very important, but ideally you want a very tightly focused niche site, targeting a specific type of person, with exactly the type of product they would be looking to buy - THEN you presell it. Instead of just putting up a banner you talk about how people with XYZ problem find relief or save money or are more productive or whatever, with XYZ product. Give some testimonials, add text links to the product within the article etc.

I really think you should read some of our newbie stickies and then niche marketing stickies about picking the right niche. Find something you know about, or are passionate about or want to learn about that's a true niche. It could even be a niche that would fit on an existing site you have. Like a certain health problem. You could add a subdomain onto your health site that's all about XYZ health problem, write unique content but all about that one problem - a topic that's not too terribly competitive, for starters.

 

[grooveman]

Ok, I see what you are saying.. The lyrics site and article directories sites are probably not going to generate much income due to the type of site it is and the reason people are visiting it. On the health site I have, I could probably integrate some text links into some of the health related articles within the content itself.. I think I will try that. Thanks