What the heck am I doing wrong!

obviously he has no traffic so far,

without traffic he cannot know what his visitors will do

hey,

you definitely need some form of advertising, we basically cannot know
or predict what does work in your case. This you have to test out by yourself.

yes i know, multiple options testing is kind of expensive, but we all did it,
and finally find something that is cost effective and gives a positive return on investment.

This is something to consider.

If they ARE clicking the links... WHAT product do they buy after clicking?

I had a page that for a short while had a spike in traffic, as well as a correlated spike in affiliate income. Oddly however, the item on the page (which they clicked on) was not the item they ended up buying. Four different people clicked the item link on my page to buy the exact same DIFFERENT item. 7 others bought other items, again, similar to the 4 identical ones.

Now at first this may seem normal. Click one item, buy a different similar item right?

Well, that's not what was happened.

They were clicking on wigs, fake claws, and other similar costume supply items. What they were actually BUYING was embroidery books, crossstich books, needlepoint books.... uhm... different topic entirely!

What did this tell me?

This told me that some how the primary keyword bringing traffic to my page, was a keyword being searched for by needlecrafters. They were finding my costume page, then clicking through to Amazon to buy books about embroidery.

This told me that I had hit on a popular keyword and that keyword was sending me traffic, but unfortunatly, the traffic that was arriving, was looking for the keyword as it was used for a different hobby then the hobby my page was about.

This taught me that, while my page was reaching AN audience, it was not reaching my TARGET audience.



After looking at your site, I see some conflict between what you say and what I see on your site.

You said:I wrote all the content myself

Well, after clicking 20+ pages open, I gave up on looking for any content you wrote. There is absolutely 100% ZERO text on your site anywhere. I'm not sure what content you wrote, but I simply can not find it. Perhaps the articles and product reviews are not linked to your navabar and that is why I did not find any of them? This could be why you are not getting sales. If I'm not finding a single, solitary word of content anywhere, perhaps no one else is finding it either. You might want to check your dashboard and make sure your articles and reviews are not set to private/draft, because I just can not find them anywhere at all.

I did however see the blog posts. Is that the content you mentioned? The blog seems to be an "after thought" stuck in at the end of your navabar, with nothing really directing the visitor to click into it, no incentive to look and find the reviews in your posts.

Your site seems to focus on pretending to be a store, but clicking on the item only takes the person to Amazon to buy from Amazon and not YOU directly, as the site is implying.I think this could perhaps be part of your problem, why you are not getting much sales.

See, my first impression was that I had entered a REAL online store. So clicking the item, I expect to buy it from YOU. I don't expect to BOOM be taken to Amazon. I think, that comes off feeling too "bait and switch" (deceptive) for most people and thus would have them click away from your site LONG before they explore it far enough to find the blog where your content is.

Yes, I do agree your site has potential. I can see you've put quite a bit of work and effort into it, but I think your focus it reversed on how it should be.

I think, if it was my site, what I would do is completely reverse the focus:

You are currently focusing on: "BUY! BUY! BUY! GIMMIE MONEY!" right up front and center. The first thing a viewer sees is big product images. They assume they are in a store. Nothing tells them to read your articles. The only clue they have that there is any content at all, is that one link titled "blog" and really, think about it - when was the last time YOU clicked on a store's blog? Do you read Amazon's blog? Did you even know they had one? They do you know. Just like on your site, it's one little link titled "blog". No one reads it. Why would they? They are there to shop not read.

The end result is you are putting a lot of effort into a blog that no one is ever going to look at.

What you want to do it fix this. You WANT people seeing your BLOG POSTS first.

Now, you came here to Warrior's implying that you had a content site that had affiliate links. But that is NOT what your site is. Not even close. And that's why you are getting no traffic.

I am a content writer. This is my full time job. Writing content for a site and getting paid via traffic clicks is my full time income. Go to my site (eelkat.com) and what do you see?

Product links? No!

Store front? No!

What do you see? Links to articles. Links to pages of information.

Look at my navabar... do you see ANY product links in the naavabar? No! ALL links to articles. If you spent to time to do so, you can get to 879 different article pages directly from the navabar itself. But not one single link to ANY products.

Look at your navabar. ALL product links. NOTHING but product links. NOT even ONE single, solitary link to ANY of your articles or reviews. Not one. Every single link in your navabar goes directly to a product sales page.

Now, if you are a STORE, then yeah, putting product links in the navabar makes since. But you are NOT a store, you are a product reviewer with a content site, intending to drive traffic to affiliate income links, via writing content articles. However, because you are promoting products over content, no one who visits your site is even aware you have content to look for, and you've not clued them in to the fact that they should look for it, so they simply click away from your site, not realizing you wrote all that content.

Now that I have actually seen your site, the cure to your problem is quite simple: get your articles front and center. Your blog posts are good. The pictures from your camping trips are phenomenal. Seeing the products in actual use is great incentive to get people to buy.

The gallery method you have used to display products on your front page.... regulate those product pages to the dark side of your site, where you currently have your blog. Then, take that gallery format, and instead of a product in each spot, put a blog post there. Take an image from your blog post, put it where the product image is. That link going to the product sales page? Switch it out, make it lead to your blog post review page instead.

You have 8 products prominently displayed on your home page - replace those with links to 8 blog posts instead. You link to the products on your blog posts, so you have absolutely 100% no need for the product pages at all. You can completely remove those from your site.

In your navabar, it says:HOME
CAMP/HIKE
BIKE
APPAREL
GADGETS
FOOTWEAR
GEAR

When I click on Camp/Hike I EXPECT to be taken to a page that lists all of your reviews, articles, and blog posts about camp/hike stuff. Is that what I got? Nope. I just got a page full of random products. Not one review by you. Not one article by you. Not one blog post by you. Again, toss the product links. Get them out of the navabar. Put links to your articles, reviews, and posts in their place.

You want to drive people to your CONTENT. Your content wets their appetite, fills them with the desire to buy. Just slapping products at random in their face, makes them leave your site. You want people to get to your articles, FIRST, then, and ONLY after they have read your review, only then, do you post the link to the product. After they have seen your photos of your camping trip, after they have read your adventures, then, they will be thinking: "I want to experience this too. I should buy that. I wonder where I can buy it?" That's the point when they start looking for the product, and lucking them, the final part of your blog post will be a link conveniently provided at exactly the point when they started to look for it (and not before.)

Yes, I agree with you, your site looks great and certainly has potential. If you focus on the blog, getting your article center focus, and use your reviews to get people fired up to buy, displaying your articles on the home page and linking to your articles not the products themselves, from your navabar, you should start to see a better return on your efforts.

Overall, a great site, just put more focus on helping people learn what they can do with the products and less emphasis on the buy, buy, buy. Remember: people want to learn WHY they should buy a product, not just have the product posted in their face. Give them a reason to want to buy. That should always come first.

Also, you are actually writing a niche I know. Full-time RVer here, that's my RV in my avatar (you'll see lots of pictures of her on my site as well). I tend to visit a lot of camping sites as a result of my lifestyle and I can say, you certainly have one of the better looking sites out there in the camping niche. Your taking your own photos of your actual camping trip is a real plus. You might want to focus on that too. Perhaps add a section on camera equipment and maybe even ad some articles on how to take photos of camping trips. Photography is a big part of camping. Birdwatchers, fishermen, etc, do a lot of photography on their trips. My boyfriend is a photographer, has $2,000 cameras with $5,000 lenses. You start targeting campers who are obsessed with nature photography, you could make some serious income. Those cameras they use are not cheap and those affiliate percentages start adding up fast. You seem to have a talent for camp photography, but have not touched on that aspect of camping - could be just the break you are looking for.

Hope this helps you out. Good luck with it.

Thanks for chiming in. I received your PM. This is a game of experimentation that's for sure. I don't think there's a wrong way to do it in terms of advertising. I'm using as many mediums as I can. I'm pretty good with social media and I'm essentially building a brand with my project. Social media is a huge aspect of it and people want to see that. In terms of my advertising it's all trial and error. You have to spend money to make it. I'll be testing things out using free and paid and see what works best.