Amazon site - hundreds of clicks, 0 sales!

It may be a possibility that visitors to your site are getting distracted by the Adsense advertising. If you are trying to promote a certain product, give them only one option on the page and that is your link back to Amazon. No other distractions.

Do you know where the clicks are coming from?

I don't know if it is still the same, but the Amazon affiliate program used to only pay out if you were receiving geo targeted related clicks.

For example, you need to be signed up to the US amazon affiliate program to receive commissions from US customers, and for UK clicks you need to be signed up to the amazon.co.uk program and so on.

It's a bit annoying really as you affiliate tracking id is different for each program, so you need to different buy now buttons or versions of the site to cater for it.

If anyone knows a better way, I'd love to hear about it!

Best thing to do is check your analytics for the site and review from there.

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your reply. I am registered with both US and UK, the majority of visitors on this site are US and so I am linking to the US Amazon site. It's baffling me to be honest. I'm not sure if the links are tracking the sales? I guess I need to some how test if it does track a sale by getting someone to buy something through one of the links, this is probably against their terms though?

Josh

That's odd. I had sites that did not convert, like 1 sale out of 800 hops, but your case is even more extreme!

It might be a technical issue...

Does sound a little extreme. Which makes me think you're traffic isn't all that targeted. But I'd figure you'd at least earn a sale or two from the 24 hour cookie.

Try some of these tips...

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...mazon-com.html

Stop guessing.

You need hard data. Look at your analytics (if not installed, install it!) and look WHERE the traffic is coming from. This will help you big time. If 900 clicks are coming from Sri Lanka or Swasiland to amazon.com it won't help you. This is why you need data first to see what's going on.

How targeted were those 900 clicks?

I would expect a few sales from that many clicks if it was targeted, especially in January!

There could be many reasons:

a) Amazon has 24h cookies and if your visitors are coming from non-buying keywords, it could happen
b) You need to see how many of those visitors of your are from US
c) January is not the best month for selling. My conversion rate is 30% from what it was in December
d) I had 1 day with 0 sales in January as well. In that day I had around 700 clicks so it might happen.

Thanks to every one who has posted a reply, very grateful that you would take the time out of your day to help me out.

I have analytics installed and 80% of my traffic is US traffic.

I too believe that Wiki users probably already own the book or would know where to get it from, but with the amount of clicks I would have hoped for at least a few unrelated purchases. Those people that arrive on Amazon and think "oh well as I am here I may as well pick up that CD I wanted to order...".

I don't think the links are tracking correctly, but I think I will leave it until the end of January to be sure. Hey, you never know, maybe there are so many orders that they havent been able to update my account with the commissions (I wish)

Thanks again everyone,

Josh

Think about the last time you bought a product from Amazon for a second.
Did you read the product description first? Or did you read the customer reviews?

Of the two, which influenced your decision most?

I'm not saying this is the answer, but instead of long form reviews, shorten
your own reviews to a short paragraph or two, and use a plugin like Reviewazon.com
to pull in a string of actual customer reviews from Amazon.

That may give your site a communal feel, which can only be a good.

I am not sure that this web site is a good idea.

Stephen King is not exactly poor and I am not sure whether he likes it that
you are trying to make money using his name.

I would definitely get in communication with his publicist and try to get approval
for using his name in the domain name before I would invest any more time and/or money in this.

Once you have the written OK to use his name you can start worrying about getting sales.

As George said, you definitely need some hard data. And as hpgoodboy pointed out, your domain name might land you in trouble.

However, as general advice you can still apply even if elsewhere, I would also suggest you consider making your call to action at the end of your articles more focused.

Even though your banners do say "Buy", at first glance they look more like a regular banner ad as you don't immediately read the text.

And most people click a banner ad in "browse" mode, i.e. gathering info and window shopping, rather than in "buy" mode, i.e. "I know I want this I'm off to pay".

On top of that, you're currently presenting them with three choices. So that makes the person even less sure what they specifically want when they click the link.

With Amazon's 24 hour cookie, you really want people to be in "buy" mode when they leave your site via your affiliate link as you have to close the sale inside that short window.

So I would personally consolidate into one single product you want people to focus on - with books they can easily choose a different format at Amazon if they want to.

And I'd suggest making it much clearer that the link is a "Buy" link, rather than a 'keep browsing' here link. In my experience, if you want to influence people to take a certain action, you have to make it really clear what that action is.

Along with the theme of the advice above, I'd also suggest reviewing your content and seeing if you can add more info to help warm up the visitors and make them excited about owning the product.

Changing the nature of your content can attract a different kind of visitor. If you target information seekers, you'll get information seekers and your site will be a public library. But if you target shoppers, you'll get shoppers your site will be a department store.

Good luck!

Check your Amazon links. It may be that your site is hacked, the links are someone else's, and the clicks you are viewing are just made for you to keep you thinking that the liks are there and work. 900 clicks and no sales is quite likely just plain impossible.

You can go to any used bookstore and buy almost any Stephen King novel for 50 cents. That goes for a lot of the popular fiction.

Book-buyers know this. For example, I only buy online if it is a hard-to-find book, or if the online books are going to be cheaper than the big retail booksellers.

There's just no reason for me to pay 3.75 + shipping when I can swing around the block and pick up 4 of them for a few bucks.

From where are you getting this traffic this is important, if they are from search engines, then conversion should be more if the sales pages are good.

Hi everyone,

Thanks again for your replies. I have discovered something a little odd about my daily stats, see image below.



It looks like I might be getting some kind of bot visit the site every 3 days and follow the links??

Josh

That traffic patten in not natural. I think you have found the issue. That many clicks an no sales of any kind if also not natural.

You said you bought the site? Perhaps the previous owner did something to artificially increase traffic and click throughs to get a higher sale price?

Hi drewfioravanti,

The traffic stats do not match with this though. The traffic I get adds up and is genuine, mostly from Wikipedia and the rest from Yahoo and Bing. The seller was genuine and I guess didn't have the ability to take it to the next level (apparently neither do I at the moment!)

Josh

Hi Melkur,

I use Google Analytics

Josh