Does Anyone Really Get 10% Conversion Rates?

19 replies
This is something thats been bugging me for awhile now...

I see so many merchants on Clickbank claiming outrageous conversion rates for their sales pages... Is there any truth to it?

Now, I've never done a big product launch and I've never worked with a "top gun" copywriter. But, in my experience as an affiliate... Even heavily presold visitors RARELY convert at 10%.

So, I'm asking, do any sales letters convert 10% or anything close, of their TOTAL traffic?

And also, what is considered an acceptable conversion rate for a $10,000 sales letter? I was under the impression that 2-3% is pretty good.

Cheers,
George
#10% #conversion #page not found #rates
  • Profile picture of the author Eswar
    I have reached upto 5% conversion rate with article marketing. I was not able to go beyond that.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sarah Johnson
    It can depend on your market and where your traffic is coming from. Some traffic sources are more likely to give you higher conversion rates. (Like a list of people who have bought from you before.)

    And other sources are likely to have lower conversion rates. (Like search engines.)

    Which is why I am weary about guarantees of a certain conversion rate. At least before they know the product and the traffic source. And therefore are more informed and able to make a more knowledgable claim.

    ~Sarah Johnson
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  • Profile picture of the author X
    I agree that conversion rates vary
    greatly, mainly depending upon
    sources of traffic and pre-selling.

    Although this is not usual, you can
    take a look at how my top affiliates
    are converting on one offer:

    Affiliate Black Book Affiliate Program

    Actual conversion rates ARE 25%
    lower than shown - please see note
    on the page. But you can see the
    variance and it's interesting to observe
    what the individual affiliates are doing
    that produces that variance - ie, the
    traffic sources uses and the way they're
    framing the offer.

    What you're seeing ARE my top
    affiliates and not indicative of all
    affiliates.

    Also note, conversions to my own list
    are higher than affiliate conversions
    and not included in this sample.

    X

    PS - This is not to demonstrate that
    what people on CB are claiming is true -
    instead it's to demonstrate these number
    are possible and that it really varies for
    a number of factors.
    Signature
    The Affiliate Black Book
    The Inside Nasty on How to Kick the Snot Out of a Google Cash affiliate.

    Black Books Blog: No Cow is Too Sacred
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  • Some interesting points guys, but I should have made it clearer that I was talking about the sales letter as a whole. (I actually achieve conversion rates of over 10% for those who click the affiliate link on several of my sites from my preselling)

    But forgetting preselling e.t.c...

    I'm asking what percentage of the TOTAL TRAFFIC some sales letters convert, forgetting each individual affiliate. The total traffic to the sales page.

    E.g. Do some letters really get 1,000 visitors a month and 100 buyers? (a 10% conversion rate) or is it a load of bull?
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris Lockwood
      Originally Posted by George Montagu Brown View Post

      I'm asking what percentage of the TOTAL TRAFFIC some sales letters convert, forgetting each individual affiliate. The total traffic to the sales page.

      E.g. Do some letters really get 1,000 visitors a month and 100 buyers? (a 10% conversion rate) or is it a load of bull?
      It still depends on where that traffic is coming from, as several others have said.

      Some people are known for cranking out quality products and have people on their lists who will buy almost everything they release- an offer like that could easily convert above 10%, but it's not really because the copy is great, but the customers love the guy's products.

      If Adwords or other traffic were sent to the same sales page, it would probably convert much lower since those visitors would likely not be loyal fans of the seller.

      So it still depends on what the total mix of traffic was.

      I just did an email promo that converted at a bit over 10% (based on number of clicks in the email). That had nothing to do with the copy- it was a list of people who subscribed for info on a specific product, and the email offered it for half price for a few days (no real copy about the product other than "it's on sale"). The link went right to a payment page.

      I think instead of shooting for a specific % based on other people's results, it makes more sense to measure your current rate and work on improving it, since going from 1% to 2% is the same as from 5% to 10%- they both are a doubling.
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  • It really depends on where the traffic is coming from, and how much you've done to promote it. If you are speaking strictly organic, non-affiliate, non-PPC traffic, 10% would be pretty exceptional.

    However, with the right partnerships, we've heard of 30% rates.
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  • Profile picture of the author GenerationMedia
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author Jack Duncan
      George,
      There are a ton of angles to this answer...so it's probably never going to just get a satisfying YES or NO answer...

      But here are some things to consider:

      1. Some of the best copywriters in the world (the A listers) go wild when they hit a 4% conversion on their direct mail packages...Those packages are essentially being mailed based on demographics and psychographics...and depending on who you talk to, those are some pretty "chilly leads"

      I'd say that given how much more control you have on the internet, they may just be able to pull off a 10% conversion for a small period of time (the market is always changing!).

      Now, we are talking about copywriters who charge $25,000 - $100,000 deposits and take a commission of total sales.

      2. You can hit some pretty awesome conversion rates with a so-so copywriter and MVT testing. Again, a 10% conversion may not be sustained over a long period of time...but given the timing and the market, I can see a good MVT winner pull in 10%.

      3. A good targeted Adwords campaign can deliver people absolutely ready to hit the buy button...based on surveys done on the market and what they search for...not a problem to hit 10%...but you may have trouble getting all the traffic you need.

      4. A good email list can easily hit 10% when you use MVT. You can use MVT and Email marketing to get some pretty high boosts in conversion rate. We recently ran a test and our initial salesletter conversion rate was 2.65% (Open rate was 33.55%)...but after taking in all the results and mailing the rest of the leads the winner...our new email conversion rate was 10.4% (Open rate was 34.3%).


      Sorry for the long winded post.

      Is it possible...absolutely.

      Are there a ton of factors that make it possible...ABSOLUTELY.

      The BIGGEST thing to remember is to TEST, TEST, TEST...then TEST some more.

      Clear as mud?,
      Jack
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  • Great post Jack.

    But some of you still aren't getting my point. I just want to make sure we're all on the same page here...

    Most sales pages will get visitors from a variety of sources, right?

    Total traffic means the total number of visitors who visited the page, regardless of HOW they got there, right?

    So, I'm asking what kind of conversion rates does a top quality sales letter get, not from one or two affiliates. But from every affiliate and from the merchants own efforts.

    What percentage buy from the TOTAL TRAFFIC an offer receives? And does anyone actually ever achieve anywhere close to 10% (Jack kind of answered that already)?

    And yeah, I do realise that some sales letters might get more PPC affiliates than other, and I realise that some offers might get more affiliates that heavily presell. But over time, the sales page would get traffic from a whole variety of sources...
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  • Profile picture of the author Odhinn
    I have seen 10% conversion over a short period of time from "presold" customers, i.e. those who clicked with the expectation of finding something they had to pay for. Overall, it's got to be impossible to keep that up, except maybe, maybe, in a place like the WSO forum, and that's only for the short term.
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    100 Backlinks a Day

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    • Profile picture of the author Jack Duncan
      George,

      Ok...

      We are talking about a site that gets traffic from PPC, SEO, offline advertising, Images Ads, Video Marketing, Forums, Article Marketing, Press Releases, Word of Mouth, Affiliates, Classified Ads, and Social Bookmarking...etc...

      We take every traffic source, including those goofy keywords we rank organically for by chance, and we take a total salesletter conversion rate...

      Does it equal 10%?

      99.9% of the time I'd say that be a strong "No".

      When you find the guy who's in that .1% group and can do it even 50% of the time, and can actually prove it, you'd better pull him close and grab a pen.

      Then you'd better shoot me an email.

      Cheers,
      Jack

      P.S. I think that many people who experience high conversion rates and talk about it are probably referring to a single campain/traffic source...as in..."I converted at 10% in my Adwords campaign"....or "I'm converting 4% from my Craigslist ads"
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  • Profile picture of the author X
    George -

    With all due respect I think you're trying to
    fit a round peg into a square hole.

    Any traffic from any place is highly unlikely
    to convert at 10% - though I don't doubt
    it's possible here and there either.

    In my experience, *really* good sales letters
    will convert in the range of 3-5%.

    The average sales letter, on all traffic
    is probably going to do 1-2%.

    Anything below 1% is an issue.

    My sales letter referenced above is
    converting at 4.2% overall. Now if
    someone sends 10,000 visitors from
    a poor traffic source obviously that's
    going to dive.

    And the real point here is *THIS* -
    if you're looking at this from the
    perspective of "I'm an affiliate and
    I want to promote something good"
    you really have a *LOT* of control
    over results. What others are
    doing really doesn't mean much at
    all.

    X
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    The Affiliate Black Book
    The Inside Nasty on How to Kick the Snot Out of a Google Cash affiliate.

    Black Books Blog: No Cow is Too Sacred
    The Death of Crap: Crap Dies Slowly
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  • Profile picture of the author boosey12
    I've gotten as far as 8% conversion rates... but it really depends on the offer i'm promoting....

    Sometimes, with the right crowd, you can do as much as 100% conversion rates... (or dang close!!)
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  • Yeah thats what I thought, 1-2%...

    Crazy how so many sales letters claim to convert upwards of 8% - Just something that has been bugging me for ages.

    And I wanted to get an idea of what to expect when I launch my product. And what conversions I should expect from my copywriter.

    Thanks a lot for the help guys.

    funnily enough, my Google Sniper WSO is actually converting at around 9% if the view count is correct... But thats a WSO, not a sales page I guess.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tim Whiston
      Bear in mind that when people are looking to pick up new affiliates they probably put their best foot forward, so to speak. This could mean they are being "selective" about the nature of their stats while not necessarily fibbing to you.

      As has been stated by another poster converting sales with a warm email list usually yields a higher %, for instance.

      Also I've found that conversions of 10% to even 20% are possible on the upsell offer, i.e. the sales letter shown to people who just bought something. You could argue that this is a less "pure" analysis because the traffic just came from an order button but I like looking at conversion rates across a project.

      From...

      • free opt-in conversions on the LGP
      • % who verified if double opt is used
      • % who bought offer on confirmation page (this is the standard sales letter in many funnels)
      • % who bought an upsell or OTO
      • % who bought a downsell or second OTO
      • % who bought from the first follow-up email in a series.
      • and so forth...
      It's conceivable that a CB merchant might roll all this up to get a grand average of 10% Or heck maybe they really just kicked some serious butt with their promo and actually converted 10% off the front.

      That's pretty wild though isn't it? Now that I think of it I think on the CB Marketplace terminology breakdown they tell you the % is the sum of multiple considerations and not necessarily a cut and dry run of the numbers.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ross Dalangin
    Actually it would really depend on the kind of product you are promoting.
    In 2007 my conversion rate for my review script range from %8 to %15 when it first came out.

    Ross
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  • Profile picture of the author Raydal
    I've seen conversion rates of 15% and above and this
    traffic came from safelists (of all places) and PPC.
    (See Signature for letter) The 'poor' traffic source
    is what made this letter so incredible.

    This is atypical for sure and the standards are much less.
    The best optin rate I had for a landing page was 68%.

    -Ray Edwards
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    The most powerful and concentrated copywriting training online today bar none! Autoresponder Writing Email SECRETS
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  • Profile picture of the author garyv
    I agree w/ most here - the source of traffic is part of the equation. You can have the best sales page in the world, but if you put it in front of the wrong people, then it still won't convert.
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