No Sales From Affiliate Links or Banners

[busarena1]

Hi,
We have just joined your excellent forum, and we would like to ask if anyone else has this problem. We run a successful offline Company, which is just as well, because if we depended on online income we would be nowhere.

We have been online for over six years, we have about 15 different websites, some blogs, two or three stores, and a weight loss product of our own. We think all of our sites are reasonable, they all get some traffic (not masses), and they all get some click thrus.

Our product range covers sporting goods, lingerie, online games, cosmetics and and makeup and self improvement. We are on Commission Junction, Shareasale, Linkshare, Clickbank, Amazon, Ebay Partner Network and Adsense. We get bits and pieces of Adsense clicks, we get an occasional sale of our own weight loss program, but virtually no sales from any physical products. I think we have had two Shareasale, one CJ, a few Ebay clicks and no Linkshare sales in the last year.

To give one example CJ in particular, we registered over 3000 clicks in the last six month - one sale!!! None of the rest of the networks come anywhere near that level of clicks or impressions, but one does expect scaling to take effect.

Any comments or observations greatly appreciated.

Thank you

Jim

 

[jcorkern]

Sure, I can give some advice. Here we go in bullet points.

* Drop all sites but one, preferable the one you own the products. Diversity is for projects or companies that are already established. losing focus and spreading your self and your team too thin is probably the mass of the failures you are dealing with.

*You spoke about one business you have that is not online is doing ok at the least, but I would be willing to say that you do not put near the focus on the sites that you do in your brick and mortar business, and if you do, it is not focused.

You may be motivated, but motivation without direction equals frustration and failure. You have a decision to make, and that is which site you are going to focus on "first" because you can only build one business at a time. In other words, treat that site like you do your brick and mortar business and forget the other sites for now.

*Next, affiliate links are competitive, each program is set to give the sale to either the first cookie or IP address or the last one. From what you are telling me, I would assume that it is the first one clicked that gets the sale. This can be overcome by having the top position in google for your respective keywords or top PPC positions. In the affiliate game, second place is the first loser.

*Since you have online stores, I would make sure I was selling the products I own rather than the ones someone else owns. So I would drop the affiliate sites and focus on your products.

*Online sales, whether it be affiliate or your own product, has to be treated as a business, and that is not happening because you are spread really thin according to the info you gave.

*Next is method of promotion and copyrighting the site. If you have poor copy, you can expect poor performance when you do get a visitor. you need to study sales and learn how and why your customers or potential customers buy similar products to yours. If you do not have the time, hire a professional, that does not mean the low bidder, it means the one with the best results and track record.

*Next is promotion. You have several choices, but you have to fit what you have to the right method. If you have a product that retails for $9.95, I would not suggest PPC, but if your product sells for around 50 bucks and you have a good margin, then you can probably do pretty good with PPC. If not, you have SEO and Social marketing. If you are not proficient in either, then again, I would advise hiring a pro to get you launched.

I understand that most here do it their self, but you already own one business and probably do not have time to get through the learning curve and frustration. I say one business because the websites are nothing but a liability as of right now to you.

The smartest business people in the world have several common traits, and one is that they hire specialist that are smarter than they are to get the different jobs completed correctly.

Sorry for being so harsh and direct, but I call them as I see them and hope you take this information to heart and I hear back from you in 6 months telling us here that you have turned your online business around.

Hope this helps,
Jim

 

[Natalie.M]

Hello Jim.
I support Jcorkern opinion - you must focus on one website and it is recommended to focus on one or two affiliate networks otherwise you can drown.
if you get 3000 clicks and only one sale - you are doing something wrong. maybe your landing page isn't matching the costumer expectations - you must do QA!

Good luck!

 

[busarena1]

Excellent Advice But---

Hi Jim and Nataliemor,
You are absolutely correct, and your points are very focused and professional. The Internet is only really a hobby for us, but one always hopes to expand and diversify one's income.

In all areas of business it is very easy to lose direction and be side tracked, but the Internet is probably worse because we are constantly bombarded with new offers.

With respect however, neither of you have addressed our main point. We have experienced a situation where specific clicks have come through from our sites to different merchants or different affiliate networks, and resulted in virtually no sales.

In the case of Commission Junction it was 3271 clicks in total over seven months and only one sale!!

All selling is a numbers game to a degree, and in most cases the law of averages works for you, but not on the Internet in our case. I repeat our original question therefore which is has anybody else experienced this.

These affiliate networks are growing exponentially, and this growth has to be driven by sales. Perhaps it is only Fortune 500 Companies who really make it on the Net.

Thanks for your feedback

Regards

Jim H

 

[jcorkern]

If you are looking for specific information on your pages that get the traffic and are not converting, I would find a quality company that provides heat maps, scroll maps and even click maps. You will be surprised by what you learn.

Things you think are great about your site may be discouraging the visitors even after an affiliate click.

There are probably over 100 factors on a page that have to be in the right places, worded the right way while still being pleasing to the eye. You can over clutter a site, have too much or too little fluff content. You have to know who your potential customer is, and the online visitor may have a completely different trigger or triggers and the same for the negatives.

If you want to make this work, you will need the tools to do it right. If you have specific questions, just ask away, there are many here that are pros and don't mind helping out.

Hope this helps,
Jim