What conversion rate can one REALLY expect?

It really depends on what you are selling, offering, or giving away. Really difficult to measure.

you only want to be using stats from people that actually come to your sales page

so say if your sales page gets 100 unique views a month and you make 5 sales a month then you have a conversion of 5%

which is actually fairly good if its a clickbank product

but it all depends on how targeted the traffic is mostly

However if you are an affiliate then an extra step is include ie the clicks on your affiliate link

if you had 3000 visitors to your site and 500 people clicked an affiliate link then
you have a 16.6% click rate on your site

then from those 500 if you make 5 sales then your conversion rate is 1%

if you get $40 per sale

so for every 3000 visitors you get to your site you would on average make $200

$40 sale x 5 sales a month = $200

you would make $200 a month from the above traffic and stats

hope this helps

paul

When determining your conversions, you are always looking at the amount of unique visitors to the page...

If you calculate how many people click the link in your email, you will have a horrible rate.

When I upload a new affiliate email or add a link to my blog, I will click it at least 3 or 4 times to check it. Estimating my test clicks as 4 viewers will destroy your conversion rate and your confidence lol.

Travis

Good thread.

I keep it simple when looking for a conversion rate.

Acceptable would be 4%.

I normally try and get 100 REALLY targeted visitors and then if you get 4 sales out of that it is O.K.

What I try to aim for is a conversion rate of 15% -20% but the higher the better.

If I send 100 REALLY targeted visitors and don't get one sale - I keep on going until I do and then I tweak the sales page to get it under 1 in 100 following the above.

Hope this helps?

Chris

The OP is asking as an affiliate, I think, Chris - not as a vendor: he won't be able to alter the sales page?

People here often give that sort of figure as an average for a "typical ClickBank product"; yes.

It wouldn't be realistic for Amazon (unless perhaps you were trying to do it with poor targeting, or without building a list, or something?).

Clicks on your affiliate link are visitors to the site, aren't they? (The sales site, not your own site). People are giving figures like that as the percentage of sales page visits on which they get a sale. Not as the percentage of visitors to their affiliate site. Most affiliate sales are made from clicks in links in emails, anyway, not from clicks on links on an affiliate's site. http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5210243

(I know you're not asking specifically about ClickBank, but to some extent you can substitute the words "affiliate sales" for "ClickBank sales", and the sense and the point are the same.)

On the basis of the theoretical figures you've given, yes: you'd get 10 sales per month, not 60.

What matters, though, whether it's ClickBank, Amazon, or whatever, is to build a list and not try to make affiliate sales just from clicks on affiliate links on your website. Not only because you'll sell far more that way to start with, but also because that way you can build a real sales funnel and sell repeatedly to your subscribers, which is where most of the money is, in affiliate marketing.

For myself, I often find that my Amazon conversion-rates are about eight/nine/ten times as high as my ClickBank conversion-rates. But my ClickBank commission-rates are about eight/nine/ten times as high as my Amazon commission-rates, so it doesn't make all that much difference to me, really, in the overall scheme of things, on products with equivalent prices. What I try to do is to make repeat sales (typically at increasing prices/commissions) to the same people - but you can't do that without a list.

Hey everyone - thanks for sharing your thoughts.

@ AlexaSmith - What I was trying to contrast is measuring conversion rate as

(a) a percentage of the unique visitors to your site (affiliate site)

(b) a percentage of the clicks on the affiliate links

ANyway - I have to dash right now but hope to come back and interact more. Once again, thanks for chipping in everyone. I really appreciate it

The better question is, "How do I increase my conversion rate?" It's far too easy to get caught up in speculation like this. Far better to try something and look at the actual numbers.

After you see what the actual numbers are then you can better your conversion rate by improving the copy/design elements OR if you have a positive R.O.I but want to increase it, drive more traffic to the site.