Pulling Mad Cash From Conduit (review) Sites

[flnz400]

Anyone doing the above? I'm working my ass off trying to get my review sites rolling, but things are a bit stagnant.

I'm wondering if people outside of the War Room are having success (minor 1k/mo) with these methods?

This is my first attempt at entering affiliate marketing, and at this point, it seems I could be getting a better ROI on my time implementing other methods. I'm open to suggestions if you could spare a moment or two.

Here's part of what I've done thus far...

I set up a generic conduit site (generic review site that is not limited to a niche) and found some lucrative affiliate offers. One of which is Chris' suggestion about Market Health.

I found products that seemed to have a decent stake in the marketplace and did some keyword research. I refined that research into a list. From this list, I choose the highest yielding keywords to form my titles, tags, meta tags, and keywords. I use Wordpress, so all of these things apply.

Keywords are chosen from a "buying mood"..... buy (product), () review, best () for blah blah, fix (insert inherently urgent product solution here; IE desperate buyers), etc....

I banged out some reviews. I took deep links and found some relevant content on Yahoo Answers or wherever and answered a few questions I am knowledgeable about, with a link to my product as a solution.

I submitted my home url to directories. My rss feed is submitted to rss directories. Some Squidoo pages and blogs also import my rss feed. You can also assume that I set up some blogger blogs with content and static links, squidoo pages, hubpages, etc...(NAMED THE SAME AS MY PRODUCT REVIEW TITLES!!!!!!). My blogs are ALSO submitted to rss directories. Yes, some content gets spit out a couple times, it doesn't matter.

I'd be using Content Kahuna, but it doesn't work with a 64 bit OS.

Deep pages have been social bookmarked by hand, only a few times, and no sn submission software used, as of yet.

What have you done?

As I've said before, I'm only made two commissions valued at $55 total, and I drive on average 25-30 visitors per day for my "buying mood" keywords. The site I'm talking about has NO articles, content other than reviews, and utilizes no keywords other than what have been described.

These commissions happened very quickly and I have not had any since. I started out with a 1:3 ratio, and now I'm well over 1:100. Traffic has increased, but conversion have not. My predictions are that it has to do with my rank placement in the serp's. I'll have to go back through each longtail that I'm trying to rank for and see if they are slipping. I'm sure others are targeting the exact same products as I am, so perhaps "review saturation" is happening with the products I chose.

Thank you for having a look and for any input! Much appreciated!

[Hamida Harland]

I get 5-10% conversion for most of my conduit/review sites, however I've tried Market Health before and found the conversions to be less than 1% (for the same type of sites). I don't know why that is but Market Health doesn't do that well for me.

[Matt Hoey]

The question is, where is your individual pages ranking for the chosen keyword?

If your keyword is something like ""buy xxxxx online" and it is searched 2,000 times a day and you are rank 1 it goes without saying you would probably make "mad cash".

Your success really does come down to this i'm sure.

[OnlineMasterMind]

what % of your visitors actually proceed to visit the products?

if that number is low... the issue could be your copy

[flnz400]

Originally Posted by OnlineMasterMind

what % of your visitors actually proceed to visit the products?

if that number is low... the issue could be your copy

I'd tend to agree.

I started out with 1:3 commission rate, but now over 100. My CTR is anywhere from 1:15 to 1:50.

I was trying the "conduit" method or reporting, so I'm not really selling or pushing products. If something is decent, I encourage and link to a top rated product or whatever.

[flnz400]

Originally Posted by Matt Hoey

The question is, where is your individual pages ranking for the chosen keyword?

If your keyword is something like ""buy xxxxx online" and it is searched 2,000 times a day and you are rank 1 it goes without saying you would probably make "mad cash".

Your success really does come down to this i'm sure.

Agreed. BUT, for certain keywords, people won't find the review format they're looking for, so they will dig a bit deeper.

To answer your question, I have a few terms in 3rd, but most are 5th through 7th.



The only reason I don't like my results is because my content is pulling visitors, but I'm leaving money on the table. I think if I switch gears a bit and do a review type newsletter and get them on a mailing, I'll be more satisfied.

[Matt Hoey]

It's all a test and evolve process. I don't think we can blame the conduit method. what i think is we should help each other and discover how to make the best of what we have. I'd be happy to JV with you on some thigns if you want.

To be brief my back is against the wall with living situations at the moment and i wouldn't mind exchanging ideas with someone over this method. I'm hammering articles and techniques right nwo to get my pages ranked under good buyers keywords.

If it's not working, let's make it work?

[flnz400]

Yeah, I've been saying that the whole time in the War Room thread.

You should be able to get ranked overnight as long as your url is indexed already. That was the easiest part to me. I haven't written a single article and pull first page results for 20k + competing for (blah blah product) "review", "buy", etc...

[Neil S]

Originally Posted by Hamida Pall

I get 5-10% conversion for most of my conduit/review sites, however I've tried Market Health before and found the conversions to be less than 1% (for the same type of sites). I don't know why that is but Market Health doesn't do that well for me.

Wow that is an incredible conversion rate. Right now I convert about 1% or less and make decent money. Can you share a little specifics about how you got your site to convert so well?

[Dan C. Rinnert]

Does the appearance of the site have an effect on the conversion rate?

As I understand it, the point of the conduit site is that you have someone already looking to buy, but looking for affirmation that they are making a good purchase.

If your site looks sales-y, might that not break that frame of mind? In other words, they want to buy, they've perhaps already decided to buy, and now what they are looking for is some sort of validation of that decision. So, they look to the review as an affirmation that they've made a good decision. From there, they make their purchase.

But, if the review site looks like it's pushing them to buy, doesn't that push them back into the original decision-making process? So, instead of looking for affirmation of their decision to buy, they have reverted back to deciding whether or not to buy. Rather than push them toward the sale, you've pushed them toward indecision.

If the review site looks like an actual review site or informational site with reviews, wouldn't that keep them in the original frame of mind? They have decided to buy and now want the affirmation. By looking like an actual information website, you are keeping them in that info-hunt/affirmation-search frame of mind. You're not giving them reason to reconsider their purchase. Instead, you're maintaining their purchase decision and providing them with the affirmation they are looking for before finalizing their purchase.

At least, that's my theory anyway, and one which I'm currently testing.

[flnz400]

Originally Posted by Dan C. Rinnert

Does the appearance of the site have an effect on the conversion rate?

As I understand it, the point of the conduit site is that you have someone already looking to buy, but looking for affirmation that they are making a good purchase.

If your site looks sales-y, might that not break that frame of mind? In other words, they want to buy, they've perhaps already decided to buy, and now what they are looking for is some sort of validation of that decision. So, they look to the review as an affirmation that they've made a good decision. From there, they make their purchase.

But, if the review site looks like it's pushing them to buy, doesn't that push them back into the original decision-making process? So, instead of looking for affirmation of their decision to buy, they have reverted back to deciding whether or not to buy. Rather than push them toward the sale, you've pushed them toward indecision.

If the review site looks like an actual review site or informational site with reviews, wouldn't that keep them in the original frame of mind? They have decided to buy and now want the affirmation. By looking like an actual information website, you are keeping them in that info-hunt/affirmation-search frame of mind. You're not giving them reason to reconsider their purchase. Instead, you're maintaining their purchase decision and providing them with the affirmation they are looking for before finalizing their purchase.

At least, that's my theory anyway, and one which I'm currently testing.

My thoughts or interpretation of the "conduit" method precisely. But, I haven't had much success being, "gentle", I guess you could call it. Reporter style.

[cosmokid]

I'm using a hybrid technique with my first conduit site. So I also have articles targeting my general keyword plus news related to my keywords (serves as link bait drawing people in fast.) Plus I have the usual review style pages.

Some simple social bookmarking and pinging brought in sales in three days. Made about $100 at that point.

Added a bit more content over the next three weeks and have averaged somewhere around $850 so far on this very new site.

I'm in a beauty-related niche where there are tons of products, many of them high end with good commissions, some of them not high end but which convert really well.

It's a straight html site but I've created my own feed for it (very important - helps you ping and get indexed fast.)

I started with maybe a dozen pages of content and now have about twenty pages. The plan is to let it sit for a while now.

I'm into building profit channels with my affiliate sites. The minute I get one to earn me $500 per month minimum I'm happy and move on to the next thing. I stack my affiliate sites and so far have been happy overall with the conduit strategy. However it may need some tweaking as more webmasters slam the engines with conduit style sites.

HINT about the tweaking: Find a way to profile a product on more than just one page, possibly by having a page about it in a news section or media section, or an articles section. This makes your site appear more relevant for that product name in the search engines. Unfortunately with really competitive products you might not pull much traffic for a product if its highly competitive. So you need to "HIT" it more than once content wise on your site.

Jennifer

[Matt Hoey]

Cosmokid, i created an RSS feed for ym website but i'm unsure as to how it can be used other than for people to bookmark me through it. Can you tell me how it "pings"? I know you can sumbit blogs to be pinged but what about websites? how can i be indexed just as fast? I'm very interested in some of the techniques you're talking about.

You can view my website in my sig if you would be so kind as to give me additional feedback? thanks

[Andyhenry]

'The Conduit Method' - Is that what people are calling marketing with review sites now?

Niche marketing with review sites has been a standard IM strategy for years and has always worked well if done effectively.

Why do people need to rename things in order to get people to do it?

I've heard of re purposing something old, but renaming it seems to get people interested too. I might try it.

[LB]

Why do people need to rename things in order to get people to do it?

That's called "marketing".

[Andyhenry]

Originally Posted by LB

That's called "marketing".

Aah - thanks.

[Art Turner]

Originally Posted by Andyhenry

'The Conduit Method' - Is that what people are calling marketing with review sites now?

A conduit site is not a review site. It is more balanced and low key.

[Andyhenry]

Originally Posted by Art Turner

A conduit site is not a review site. It is more balanced and low key.

Apologies, I got the impression from the title of the thread. I guess I assumed that it just meant using standard niche siloing techniques with the focus of the content being reviews rather than normal LSI keyword focused articles.

Reviews have always worked well so it would make sense to keep them in the mix, so my bad, guessed wrong.

Usually when people are focused on one strategy and talking about it like it's a business in it's own right, they've been unsuccessful with the normal terms and strategies and this is just the next thing they're trying because they're hoping that because it's framed as being different, their success will change.

If it's a more robust model than just driving traffic to what effectively end up being review-based niche sites in the old mini-net way then it probably merits more attention that I've given it. Not that I'm interested in doing it, but so that I know what you're all talking about when it keeps coming up in the forum.

[Art Turner]

Originally Posted by Andyhenry

Apologies, I got the impression from the title of the thread. I guess I assumed that it just meant using standard niche siloing techniques with the focus of the content being reviews rather than normal LSI keyword focused articles.

No problem of course. I think the main distinction separating conduit sites from review sites is instead of an effort to sell the prospect on a solution, you just essentially give them a slap on the backside as they head toward something they already wanted...purchasing through your link. More than just the top three products are included and negative reviews are sprinkled in for good measure.

That's my understanding of it anyway. I've given it a rather half-hearted effort and haven't seen the success that others report.

Art

[Andyhenry]

Thanks.

Maybe I read a lot of that into things.

Review sites tend to be focused on interrupting the sales process of someone who is looking to buy and answering the questions they had (so using multiple products and testimonials - good and bad) is the normal way to use them as an affiliate commission IM strategy. It's worked well for me, so I assumed that was probably the focus.

Andy

[Jeannie Crabtree]

I wrote 5 review pages recently for a site I have had a couple years. It all ready had some articles and about 170 backlinks. It took three weeks for the pages to show up in google for me to get natural searches. So It can depend.

I sold one ebook at about 18 visitors doing a click through. It is now at about 100 visitors for that one page, so hoping I make another sale soon. This is not for a large niche, but one that gets about 500 on related searches a day, from what I can figure.

"You should be able to get ranked overnight as long as your url is indexed already" - *It is going to depend*. Some will, some won't.

My site has room for improvement. I decided to get more backlinks, bookmarks and write a few more article for the article directories for that siteand get the articles backlinked before I move on to do another reveiw site.


Jeannie

One of the things

Originally Posted by flnz400

Yeah, I've been saying that the whole time in the War Room thread.

You should be able to get ranked overnight as long as your url is indexed already. That was the easiest part to me. I haven't written a single article and pull first page results for 20k + competing for (blah blah product) "review", "buy", etc...

[ExRat]

Hi Andy,

If you go to the war room and read Chris Rempel's popular thread you'll get the picture - review site's with a little twist.

[deverell]

Just starting to build a few conduit sites. Appreciate the report on Market Health, I can skip that for now.

I did try the conduit style on 25 squidoo lens, I think there are too many alternative places for them to click on lens for it to work well there. Pretty good traffic even some clicks but no buyers yet.

[Andyhenry]

Originally Posted by ExRat

Hi Andy,

If you go to the war room and read Chris Rempel's popular thread you'll get the picture - review site's with a little twist.

Aah ok - it's in the War room is it. thanks.

[cosmokid]

Matt,

You asked about pinging.....pinging doesn't automatically happen unless you're running a WordPress blog and then I believe WP blogs are automatically set to ping a service like pingomatic or pingoat (both of which are down sometimes, so it's best to list some other pinging services in your ping request area at WPress.)

If you have regularly straight html site, every time you make an update to you site do this:

Go to autopinger.com, pingomatic.com, or pingoat (choose one and see if it's working that day; if not choose another service.)

Enter your site url and you will then "ping" the various services listed at that pinging site. This will bring search engine spiders around to index your new content rapidly.

Another thing you can do is to submit your rss feed info to various free rss feed directories - it's an amazingly easy way to get fast backlinks of good quality because many rss feed directories have excellent page rank.

You can also place a button on your site encouraging people to subscribe to your site's feed. That way any time you've made an update they will be notified at whichever feed reader they like to use. (There are tons of ways to read feeds online and a lot of people prefer to read content that way rather than receive an update about new content via email.) So if you can encourage people to subscribe to your feed, this can increase loyal readers to your site.

These are just some of the cool things you can do with a feed.

Another cool thing you can do with a new site is to subscribe to your OWN feed through a service like MSN, Google, or Yahoo and that will get your site indexed in a few hours to 24 hours at most.

Jennifer