How many opt-ins before a sale?

[Ben Roy]

Yes, I know that this question has no real answer but I'm asking anyway. A guy needs a little encouragement now and then.

Background: I've got a few adsense sites and a few sites marketing products off of clickbank. I typically make a couple sales a month, and make mid double digits on adsense. Not exactly the shining example of success, but it's something.

A little over a month ago I finally did what I've known I should do all along (from reading this forum): I started a list. I roped a couple friends into it for moral support. We took an entire day, did some research, picked a niche, created a couple free reports, built a basic site with squeeze pages, etc, wrote a series of emails, and wrote/posted a few articles (admittedly a small number). We turned it all on and sat back to see what happened.

What I'd like to hear is on average, what kind of numbers would you expect to correlate with sales. Probably needless to say at this point, but we haven't had an actual sale go through yet. We are getting sign-ups, but no sales. For my part, I know that they'll come eventually, but I'm anxious for my friends to see a couple of real dollars come in. I know it'll really motivate them to crank out more articles and drive more traffic.

Any thoughts?

Oh yeah, we're sending an email every 5 days, so by the end of a month they've received the free report + six follow up emails.

[Ryan Gabriel]

There are a ton of statistics that some will roll off..

You start making sales after the seventh e-mail (always with the number 7), each subscriber should equal $1/month (gee, how convenient a figure), etc.

If your list is of poor quality, you may need hundreds of subscribers to make a single sale. On the other hand, a highly targeted list can make you a ton of money through a very small number of leads. I have one list of only about 30 people in a certain niche, but it's as targeted as you can get. I make about $5/month per subscriber with that list.

So, I'm not sure your going to get any answer of value here..

[AndrewCavanagh]

Yes it varies enormously with the quality of the subscribers (which is usually
based on where they're coming from and how well targeted your product
offer is to them).

But if we assume you're in a good niche and they're good prospects you
could play with that number of $1 a subscriber a month.

Let's say you get 1% conversion and you're selling a $100 product.

And 100 people subscribe.

That means you need 100 subscribers to make 1 sale (although your first sale could come after 10 subscribers or 250+).

If you were selling a $20 product with 5% conversion you might expect to get 1 sale every 20 subscribers (although your actual dollar sales would be the same).

But these are really guesstimate figures.

Most copywriters won't get 5% response rates online...even on a $20 product...unless they're selling to an exceptionally hungry niche.

But if you go with that $1 a subscriber theory as a starting base at least you'll have some kind of idea where some kind of benchmark is.

100 subscribers...$100 in sales the first month
1% conversion on a $97 product
2.5% conversion on a $49 product
5% conversion on a $20 product.

If you're doing worse than that then you might want to look at:

1. Your subscribers (Where are they coming from? Are they a genuinely hungry market?)

2. Your product and sales copy (Is it really what your market desperately wants?)

3. Your marketing process (Can you start with a lower priced lead generator and add an immediate upsell to a higher priced product? In what other ways can you optimize your marketing process for more sales?)

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

[Ben Roy]

Wow Andrew, great post. I do believe that the leads are quality - these people are in a situation they don't want to be in. I think I need to tune up my tracking a little bit to get some more insight into how many of the people are making it to the sales pages.

[Barry Richardson]

The answer is 47.





Okay, just kidding. As you know, the question has no definitive answer. But if you get 300 or 400 visitors without a sale, it's time to realize there is something wrong with the offer and that can be any number of things, and Andrew's post covers it well.

Barry

[JMartin]

Any figure, like the $1 per month thing, is just hypothetical. Too many variables.

I've got a list with 500 people on it and I've made $0.

Oh wait. That's because I set it up one day and never finished anything. So, people are joining and getting the initial email or two with zero promo and that's it. Sad....so sad.

Guess I should just blast an ad out. Beats doing nothing.

[mindvalley]

It depends on the industry. I wrote a really long blog post answering your question here.
AdWords Conversion Tracking - The Ultimate Guide | MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Question for the experienced members, am I allowed to link or should I copy and paste my answer?

[Tirmizi]

well if you are getting traffic and not converting it .... you should also look at


Your landing page Content & Layout , Hop links visibility and placements. Observer your compitition within the niche or guru affiliates of that product and learn from what they are doing and don't try to invent the wheal in the start ... observer and then replicate




Tirmizi

[Vince Runza Online]

"Sale first! Opt-in afterwards!" -- The Queen of Hearts in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Okay, she didn't really say that. But consider the possibilities, if your sales process closes them immediately...

[SpicyRobby]

Originally Posted by JMartin

I've got a list with 500 people on it and I've made $0.

There's 850 optins in one of my lists - and to no avail... Why? Those people just aren't interested in buying my product, simple as that!

I agree with Barry - if you have a few hundred optins and still no sales - it's a clear indicator something is wrong.

* * *

Another twist - conversion rates of a list will simply skyrocket, if you don't reveal the actual product to them at the beginning. Or tell them the product is just being created -- it's s typical approach of 'Product Launch Formula'. You create urgency and after the 4th or 5th e-mail people will be so willing to pull out their credit cards!

I had 15% conversion from 330 list when I launched one of my products - that was simply amazing!

The most interesting thing is that even affiliates can implement this launch strategy - so basically prepare people for the product/service, give them tons of free info in follow ups etc, and then -- here's the product!

But the traditional approach we actually use is kind of a post-launch. The visitors have already been on the website, seen the product, and then we follow-up with something.

[jasonl70]

i made a few sales with my frist 30 or so subscribers... I saw a thread the other day where a warrior had a sale out of his frist 3 subscribers.

You might want to email a bit more often in the beginning.. if your subscribers are hot for info, they might just find someone else to buy from while waiting to hear from you..

[JMartin]

Originally Posted by SpicyRobby

There's 850 optins in one of my lists - and to no avail... Why? Those people just aren't interested in buying my product, simple as that!

Yeah, I was just making a joke. That list I spoke of was never fully setup. I haven't even tried to market to it once. I setup a squeeze page and a box on a blog of mine and wrote the initial response letter (all content, no sales). And walked away.

Well, now that I'm talking about it, I guess I should send 1-2 content emails and then try some sales to see if it's worth reviving.

[AndrewCavanagh]

I should have also mentioned these figures are based around using sales copy and email copy written by a top notch professional:

100 subscribers...$100 in sales the first month
1% conversion on a $97 product
2.5% conversion on a $49 product
5% conversion on a $20 product


You could actually be doing okay with half these response rates if you wrote the copy yourself.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh