Finding it hard to profit and feeling demotivated

[SamstaUK]

I've been getting closer and closer to making a sale, today I got my first order form submit, but no sale

I've also realised that once I start spending my own money (instead of using the free credit google gave me), it will be extremely hard to profit. If I need around 100 impressions per sale, that means I will need roughly 200 clicks to my pre-sell page, to get those 100 impressions.

The product I'm promoting only pays an £18 ($27) commission, that means I would be having to pay less than £0.09 per click to profit... which isn't going to happen.

I'm feeling really demotivated at the minute, what can I do to fix all this?

Here is my pre-sell page: Get Your Guitar Skills to the Next Level!

[stma]

If i can make a suggestion - go look at what other folks promoting guitar stuff landers look like. You might want to see the competitions landers.

Honestly your lander I just bounced off of - nothing to grab my attention.

[paulgl]

Yeah at first glance, that site needs to be spruced
up with some screaming guitar graphics and headlines!

It's a tough sell as there are a lot of free lessons online.

And that's where I would start. Give them them the first
3 lessons free, get them on your email list.

Set up a youtube channel. Do some video lessons.

Seriously, getting back to that first point. Your site
is bland and lifeless. That's putting it in a nice way.

You can always do a little on site SEO.

Give a money back guarantee.

But that sales page is just bad, man, bad.

Hire a copywriter from WF. They'll even toss in some
terrific graphics. But that page is sending an SOS!
It needs serious help!

(nothing personal, please don't take it that way!)

Paul

[JamesMSpacey]

Apart from the appearance issues mentioned above, which are obvious, if you're determined to use PPC to promote the site you need to optimize the page to get a lower CPC for competitive keywords. Adding more keyword focussed text, pictures with keyword focussed 'alt text' and get some anchor text backlinks with your keywords from article sites for starters. This tells Google your site is relevant to the keywords you're targeting and lowers your CPC.

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by SamstaUK

I've been getting closer and closer to making a sale, today I got my first order form submit, but no sale

I've also realised that once I start spending my own money (instead of using the free credit google gave me), it will be extremely hard to profit. If I need around 100 impressions per sale, that means I will need roughly 200 clicks to my pre-sell page, to get those 100 impressions.

The product I'm promoting only pays an £18 ($27) commission, that means I would be having to pay less than £0.09 per click to profit... which isn't going to happen.

I'm feeling really demotivated at the minute, what can I do to fix all this?

Here is my pre-sell page: Get Your Guitar Skills to the Next Level!

I preach that over and over already - STOP using adwords if you are an affiliate since the MATH SIMPLY WONT WORK!!

Look at avg. CPC (cost per click), look at avg. payouts (majority of clickbank stuff is below $30)...and look at avg conversion rates which are 1:60 - 1:100. IT-WONT-WORK. Stop it as long as you still can.

Look at article marketing and SEO instead.

[NaturalStyle]

Your clicks will get cheaper after you've maintained a good CTR for some time. Honestly, you wouldn't be the first to have to sign up for another Google account because on the first tries with PPC the CTR is naturally bad... you can't know your good keywords in advance, and you can't write a good ad in the beginning. You need to try things out and test, and after you've got a good CTR get another account to start fresh with all the things you've learned.
Well, that's at least how I did it. Started with a CTR around 2-3% and boosted it up to > 10%. Then got another account.

Hope this helps.

Generally, I suspect that on every somewhat bigger niche (like yours) it is tough to make money by PPC alone (otherwise there would be competitors already doing it). You might be able to make money using PPC if you have a product line, so you can afford losing money on the first sale, because you'll recover later by selling higher priced products to your previous buyers.
But this does not help you when starting out- you do not have a product line, you do not even have your own product- you try to survive by selling on commission. That's tough man.

How about:
Put regularly new material on your site
Build regularly back links, submit to social networking sites, and so on
Get free traffic by organic searches
Build a list and keep contact with them
- I'd deliver a free guitar learning course by email covering the basics. And, if they after 6 months of practicing want to learn more advanced stuff, sell them this course for cheap. Start making money after they've had your stuff for a year or so by selling even more advanced courses.
Get a daytime job until then.

Sorry, this is not "get rich quick" and probably has never been.

This will take a while, but it works.

[tryinhere]

I am surprised the big G has not slapped you silly for that page ? none of those links at the bottom of that page work.

[GeorgR.]

And yes i hate to say it, i dont think the site will appeal to that audience.

Do me me a favor, you seem to be just starting out. Learn wordpress, install on your server. Get some music related template, throw the same text on there and pictures - you will have a TOTAL different site.

Edit: I see you do this already AND you use artisteer...you can make very nice looking templates with artisteer. The one you use right now is very bland, to say it mildly.

[inter123]

I know nothing about Pay Advertising but....

This would be an ok looking page if it were for Adsense. With a big block of Adsense at the top, very least 1 in 10 would click to get away!

I take it you are not promoting Jamarora, but another alternative which is cheaper?

If this is the case why have you got tonnes of links to your competitor before your product at the end?

Forget the look of the site. That is important but not as the 'sales article' and that is a bit of a let down. Jamaroma probably love you with the traffic and publicity they are being given by a competitor!

[jimkirk1943]

Hi mate,
Just the same as above that page is bad mate really bad you`ve given it no love at all not even a image for christ sake !!!!

You could make a cool page for that product with images of top artists and youtube vids, loads of things could be done. I`m suprised a young guy like you hasnt had some flare here.

And really i would sod PPC off until you`ve made a few quid to play around with so go get a wordpress blog choose a neat theme add cool pics and youtube videos, hire a writer on WF and pay at least $10 for a great article for your page, choose a couple of keywords you can rank with nothing too heavy and start either article marketing with backlinks to your site or just go for profile and forum backlinks with your keyword in anchor text. And get your self ranked for you keywords and see how you go for there.
Jim

[SamstaUK]

Thanks for the input guys, I think I'm just going to drop the whole thing.

I might try outsourcing, but I'm really starting to doubt whether I will be successful at all at this internet marketing stuff. I've never managed to get ranked for any keywords, and any articles I write never seem to help anything. I've tried all that stuff mentioned above before, it just ended up being a waste of time. It might work for some people, but for me nothing seems to work.

[paulgl]

No shame in that.

This may not pertain to you, but...

So many people think the internet is just a quick, easy
way to riches. They slap and affiliate together and think
they can sit back. Not going to happen.

Everyone goes through feelings and experiences like this.
Use the info now and resolve to do better.

Good luck!

Paul

[jimkirk1943]

Originally Posted by SamstaUK

Thanks for the input guys, I think I'm just going to drop the whole thing.

I might try outsourcing, but I'm really starting to doubt whether I will be successful at all at this internet marketing stuff. I've never managed to get ranked for any keywords, and any articles I write never seem to help anything. I've tried all that stuff mentioned above before, it just ended up being a waste of time. It might work for some people, but for me nothing seems to work.

you`ve got to be joking me mate !! How old are you ?? Do you know the amount of time you have to master this its not that hard christ !
Got to give it time and the only way you will learn is to make mistakes thats just how it works i`ve been at it about a year now didnt make anything until about 6 months ago now im on about £30 a day now not much i know but hey that 7 days a week. man just need to double that and im off to live in thailand with my laptop screw the UK. Mate as you get older you will start to understand all you have to do is not quit, dont quit and keep going that how you succeed in anything just remember that just keep going and is impossible to fail. I`m from the UK so send me a PM or something if you need any help i`m not that smart but smart enough to know quitings stupid.

Jim

[SamstaUK]

Okay this might sound stupid, but I've had a nap and in a much more optimistic mood!

I just want to let people know that I didn't just 'slap' the campaigns together and leave it. I did a good few hours keyword and competition research, and narrowed a list of about 200 keywords down to about 20. I then created a different text ad for each of the keywords. Then I looked at the results, around 100 clicks, about 40 click throughs, 3 order form impressions and 1 submit, with no sales. That's when I realised that I wasn't going to profit.

I've had a new idea, but I have no idea whether it will work or not, so feel free to shoot it down in flames. I was thinking of paying someone to write out some articles which I could use for an auto-responder. I would also pay someone else to create me a decent squeeze page. I would then use adwords to build my list. This way even if I have to pay £50 for 100 subscribers, at least I have the opportunity to sell to each of them again and again, rather than paying £50 for 100 visitors and never seeing them again.

What do you think? Could it work?

[jimkirk1943]

Sounds not too bad but i know nothing about adwords so are you sure you can get 100 subs for £50 ? If so then go for it, heres a email address of a lady who could help you build a landing page or what ever you need shes rom the UK and works well on skype with you `everything.donny@gmail.com`

[SamstaUK]

Originally Posted by jimkirk1943

Sounds not too bad but i know nothing about adwords so are you sure you can get 100 subs for £50 ? If so then go for it, heres a email address of a lady who could help you build a landing page or what ever you need shes rom the UK and works well on skype with you `everything.donny@gmail.com`

My most expensive keywords are 0.20 per click, £50 would get me at least 250 clicks, so depending on the conversion rate of the landing page, I could get 100 subs.

Thank you for the recommendation! Do you know what she charges?

[jasonmorgan]

I suggest you get out of the adwords biz since you don't have the disposable cash laying around to gamble with.

Invest some time into learning SEO. Learn how to rank your sites in the search engines and gain organic traffic.

Learn how to design and write your own webpages. Developing a wordpress themes is really easy once you get the hang of it.

All it will cost you is time and effort.

Build some sites, throw up adsense ads and/or use affiliate sales. Leave adwords to those who can afford to gamble.

Don't expect to be rich tomorrow or next week or next month. Give it time, learn what you are doing and ignore most of the crap in peoples signatures.

[SamstaUK]

Originally Posted by jasonmorgan

I suggest you get out of the adwords biz since you don't have the disposable cash laying around to gamble with.

Invest some time into learning SEO. Learn how to rank your sites in the search engines and gain organic traffic.

Learn how to design and write your own webpages. Developing a wordpress themes is really easy once you get the hang of it.

All it will cost you is time and effort.

Build some sites, throw up adsense ads and/or use affiliate sales. Leave adwords to those who can afford to gamble.

Don't expect to be rich tomorrow or next week or next month. Give it time, learn what you are doing and ignore most of the crap in peoples signatures.

What would you recommend would be a good source for learning SEO? I've tried so many times without success.

[jimkirk1943]

Originally Posted by jasonmorgan

I suggest you get out of the adwords biz since you don't have the disposable cash laying around to gamble with.

Invest some time into learning SEO. Learn how to rank your sites in the search engines and gain organic traffic.

Learn how to design and write your own webpages. Developing a wordpress themes is really easy once you get the hang of it.

All it will cost you is time and effort.

Build some sites, throw up adsense ads and/or use affiliate sales. Leave adwords to those who can afford to gamble.

Don't expect to be rich tomorrow or next week or next month. Give it time, learn what you are doing and ignore most of the crap in peoples signatures.

Really mate i feel this is the best way to go !!

But your idea of hiring a writer and the auto responce are really really good. It suprised me to hear how smart you are and informed about IM and havent maded any cash ?

I kinda feel that you really dont want to do any boring article writing or spend hours backlinking which is why you seem to be so interested in PPC but i think you can build a great list without spending any money on PPC because while you `could` get 100 subs for £50 im not sure you could do it with your first £50 and if you can then let me know coz i`ll spend a few £100 to get a quick and easy 400 subs every month for sure but emm i dont think so but your much more wise on PPC than me.

With high PR profile links & forum links you can quickly rank in the serps for most keywords and you can out source these links to be built for you along with the articles ALOT cheaper than playing with adwords for sure.

[jimkirk1943]

Oh by the way that lady will charge you about £15 ph if you say your from WF she gets my something nice for about £45 ..3 hours of her work

[jimkirk1943]

Learn SEO by starting your own site and try to rank it in the serps and ask question here in the WF as you go along.. well thats how i learnt it anyway

[jasonmorgan]

Break it down into 2 parts...

onsite seo and offsite seo

onsite seo is everything on your page from code to the content while offsite seo is essentially backlinks to your site.

For onsite seo you want to focus on your page title

<title>make sure your keywords are here</title>

your header tags

<h1>use keywords here</h1>

and getting your keywords into your content. You don't need to keyword stuff and you don't need an obscene amount of text. Keep it natural.

Get your keywords into those three spots and google has a pretty good clue as to what your page is about.

For offsite seo, it's all about getting backlinks to your site with anchor text for the keywords you are trying to rank for.

If I wanted to rank my site for the keyword google then that would be the ideal backlink. The higher quality of page the backlink is coming from, the more weight it is going to have.

The importance of the links anchor text is it tells google why people are linking to you and what your page is about... ie, what keywords google should rank you for. Your anchor text should match onsite seo keywords, they are a team working together towards the same goals.

I know this is very quick and sounds very simple but it really does cover the basics. Having solid onsite seo and quality backlinks is all it takes to rank a site for any keyword.

Yes, you can go seo ninja and there are additional tricks but what I've laid out for you covers most of what you need to know about seo.

[SamstaUK]

I stopped promoting the product I originally started with, but I will start promoting it again if I'm going to have to spend time on it, since it is something I'm interested in.

The product has a low gravity score on Clickbank, but the product is really good. I really don't know whether I should try promoting it or not.

My plan is to start a wordpress blog about the topic, then have a pre-sell page with my own testimonial on. Then every 3-5 posts on the blog, I will try and promote the product and point people to my pre-sell page.

Or instead of a pre-sell, I could build a list, which would be a better option?

[blue_sky]

are you into guitars?? Are you able to play one etc??

[SamstaUK]

Yeah I'm into guitars, I can play the guitar, but I really couldn't be bothered to write articles and blog posts about it.

[inter123]

Maybe this is where the problem is. You got to enjoy what you are doing or at least prepared to do things not enjoyable to get paid.

If you have an interest in guitars there are tonnes of stuff available to write. You'd certainly be ahead of an Internet Marketer that knows sod all about guitars but scrapes some info from whats available from the net.

Originally Posted by SamstaUK

Yeah I'm into guitars, I can play the guitar, but I really couldn't be bothered to write articles and blog posts about it.

[Flaura78]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

I preach that over and over already - STOP using adwords if you are an affiliate since the MATH SIMPLY WONT WORK!!

Look at avg. CPC (cost per click), look at avg. payouts (majority of clickbank stuff is below $30)...and look at avg conversion rates which are 1:60 - 1:100. IT-WONT-WORK. Stop it as long as you still can.

Look at article marketing and SEO instead.

OMG, so it is not only me giving up on Adwords?
Thanks for sharing my views, all I hear is the gurus getting newbies into debt with suggesting Adwords. PPC works for guys who have money to throw in for testing or the ones who have been doing it for bout 10 years. I know I am too greedy to throw in the percentage of my revenue that would be enouth for testing and learning.

[Flaura78]

Originally Posted by SamstaUK

What would you recommend would be a good source for learning SEO? I've tried so many times without success.

It is not too difficult, and cheaper than Adwords. Also the results last longer. Look around the site for some resources, sure you will find some.

[SusanneUK]

Originally Posted by jimkirk1943

Oh by the way that lady will charge you about £15 ph if you say your from WF she gets my something nice for about £45 ..3 hours of her work

Jim, Thanks for recommending us to Sam

Sam, you can check out our work on our new site in my signature link. We are also putting together a quote for you now based on this thread and the message you sent us, it should be with you in an hour or two

Although our prices have now gone up we are happy in this instance, to do work for you at the £15 per hour that Jim mentioned earlier in this thread.

Cheers
Sue

[NetWorth]

Everyone is pretty much right your landing page is terrible. If you get a hold of me I can help you with your campaign. I only use SEO methods. Check us out at Writers Wanted.

[SusanneUK]

Sam

We have now just sent an email to you, if you could look out for it please.

Thanks
Sue

[ninal]

I'd have to agree with the landing page appearance. I personally think most visitors will just opt to leave the page. Add some graphics and attention grabbing titles and content.

[shab]

SamstaUK is that really your avatar? you're more like 14-16 yrs old. if so, spend 5 more years. I can guarantee you, you will achieve what you are aiming for. I've been in this sh*thole for about 5 years as well trying to earn my first $100. I never expected to hit a 5-figure month until now.

[Groovystar]

I'd take a look at the top guitar sites out there, and see how they appear when you first click in. How do they sell themselves? What sort of layout, graphics, language are they using? Whatever they are using, works. Keep that in mind when you design your own site. And spare no expense {Even if by expense, I just mean many hours of time, rather than money.}

....Your site's link seems to be partly broken.

[Mission0ps]

Hey Sam keep the faith geez you'll get there. I know nish about guitars but have made the odd sale in that niche
I would say that you really do need to get off the PPC until you are profitable in that niche. as far as SEO try this as a great free ebook to learn from.

If you want to get that site to rank you have to do a bit of article or blog writing .. that being said you don't have to write them yourself! If you are willing to pay I can recommend that great articles can be got for not too much at all. Your better off paying for articles than PPC.

Drop a line to me on my blog and I'll hook you up with what you need if you wish. You'll get a lot more bang for your buck guaranteed.

And never give up dude