Got my site to No.1 on Google, but NO sales. Help?

Chris

Being #1 is not always a ticket to riches.

Do you know this term brings search volume?
Do you know what your market wants?

Most martial arts searches these days revolve in the "MMA" Mixed Martial Arts niche. Maybe you need more products that cover this topic?

Two words come to mind when reading this thread and they are BUYING VOLUME.

A million and one visitors to your site means nothing if they have no intention of buying.

Out of interest - how long has the site been in this position?

How many daily visitors are you getting ?

How much traffic are you getting? As mentioned, this traffic may not have their wallets out with intent to purchase. If you are getting more than 100 visitors a day, I would try adding other karate items for purchase. Test karate items like clothes, training videos, movies, accesories, etc.

This is a limited market with a certain amount of buyers. There's lots of places they can buy this information. Why should anyone buy from you?

If you cannot answer this question, then you won't make sales. What makes your site/information unique?

I purchased a site through this forum petfoodcontainer.net and it has been number 1 or 2 for a couple of weeks. Still not one amazon sale and it only gets a handful of visits a day.

Andy Beveridge

Hmmm, I just thought Id revisit this to see what I could come up with.

Firstly, may I ask why you chose this niche? And secondly, exactly what amount and what type of research did you do before doing so?

Heres a bit of information about this topic.

1. There are 369 books listed on amazon.com under ‹ Books ‹ Sports ‹ Individual Sports ‹ Martial Arts ‹ Karate

2. Many of these books have very small review figures. Im seeing maybe 12, 14, 3 and less on others. Some books however reach 44 reviews - still no big numbers.

3. Many of the books listed are ranked 30,000 - 40,000 in terms of popularity. I dont know just how many books amazon have listed but surely this figure would be of concern???

4. The actual keyword "karate books" according to the GKT fetches 2,400 spm. Not exactly anything to pop champagne corks over. This equates to 80 searches per day, which you then share amongst other competing sites.

5. Some of the books listed sell at $12 or less. Whats the commission on this - is it really worth your time???

Whilst I havent researched this thoroughly and perhaps Ive missed something but to me -- this is a very luke warm marketplace.

Probably not one that Id invest my time into.

Maybe Im wrong - anyone else care to eloborate or add anything further?

This very interesting to me, as I'm also in the field. Personally, I think there are very few products in the martial arts niche(s) that are going to do well online. A few thoughts:

--MMA is widely popular and growing like crazy. However, it is a spectator sport - not a participatory sport. I've got a site dedicated to MMA fitness that ranks top 3-5 in google for several MMA-related keywords, and I don't have near the sales I should for the ranking and traffic I get. I think it's a combination of several factors including the fact that many people scour the internet looking for what I do/sell for free, the aforementioned fact that MMA is a spectator sport more than a participatory sport (just b/c tens of millions of people watch NFL football, that doesn't mean that they're all potential customers for a regimen to train like Brian Ulacher or Adrain Petersen), and the fact that many people are just plain lazy and don't want to put the work in.

--If you can find people that are participants in martial arts, be it MMA, submission wrestling, TMA, etc., more than likely, these folks have a gym or dojo they train at. Instructionals are good, but instruction in person is MUCH better, and that's what most people go after. Esp considering that to effectively learn most matial arts, you have to have a parnter. Drilling, katas, and such will only take you so far - you have to practice it "live" with another human being.

Along those same lines, instructional videos are much better than books. When MMA first started to grow (think the late '90s until really only about 5-7 years ago), it brought BJJ/GJJ (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu / Gracie Jiu-Jitsu) into light, and many people became fans overnight. As a result, instructional videos were sold left and right. However, as popularity grew, gyms/dojos started popping up all over the place, and video sales went way down. I don't have stats, but I frequent several MMA sites/boards and know what I've seen advertised over the years vs what's advertised now.

TMA is the same way.

Then add to that the fact that videos, while more expensive, are much better to learn from than books, and you've got even more cards stacked against you.

--Then there is the idea that the books you sell aren't really anything "special" in that they can be had at pretty much any local bookstore, and for just as cheap. It's not like you're selling a specialty item that you can only find online. Also, to the otherwise uninitiated, many martial arts materials are just the same. The average person won't know the difference between BJJ vs sambo vs catch wrestling or karate vs hapkido vs gung fu. So, as far as they're concerned, even if you had a book(s) that were "rare", they wouldn't know the difference anyway. It's all "karate".

--IMO, if you want to make $$ in the martial arts niches, you've got to pick the right products. I know that's kind of a "duh" statement to make, but IMO, there are only a few products that will sell well.

As far as MMA goes, it's going to be clothing (Tapout, Affliction, etc is huge - even though it's expensive as all hell). However, many folks will just go to the company's site itself to purchase, or to a much bigger overall site (like sherdog or MMA Warehouse) to get this stuff.

Then there are event DVDs, though all you really have left is the UFC (since most other feds have closed their doors and/or been bought out by Zuffa). But again, many of these can be had locally. Why should somebody buy a UFC DVD from you when they can pick it up for cover price (no s/h) the next time they go to wal-mart?

You then have accessories - pads, gloves, gis, etc. There is a market for these things, but it is a smaller population of the overall market MA market, b/c only a small percentage of the MA fans actually train. And once again, they'll be going to a gym/dojo which will likely hook the up with a supplier for this stuff (if not sell it to them directly). And online, you're still competing with much bigger sites like The Underground, sherdog, Title, etc.

I know in exactly what I do (the fitness/workout aspect of MMA) there isn't anybody out there that makes their sole income simply from MMA fitness/workouts. They either train fighters/people in person, sell other online fitness (non-MMA related) materials, or whatever.

Just my experience(s). YMMV.

I'm also in this niche... and can vouch for Wiggy just posted.

You may also want to pay attention to what sort of Karate Books are being searched for.

By taking a quick look at the results from the Google Insight tool (Google Insights for Search), you'll find that Shotokan Karate Books are one of the more popular searches (not surprising since Shotokan and it's derivatives probably has one of the largest followings).

People are also searching for the term "Best Karate Books"... so having a list of the "Top 10 Books On Karate" might be worthwhile.

Another thing to note is that the highest regional interest for the term "Karate Books" is in the UK... if you are monetizing stuff from the US, this could be another reason why you're not seeing any $.

You may also want to try other monetization strategies like eBay or even Adsense (if you want a set and forget site this could be worthwhile).

/Steven

what keywords did you use to get that ranking?

Just did a quick search for search volume in MNF and found that 'karate books' gets 1,900 searches per month which is still ok but not a lot.

Also, I went to your site and although it looks quite nice, as a buyer the first thing I want to know is how much the price of the book is, guess what? Theres no price anywhere, when I clicked on on the majority of the links, the item was currently unavailable and also there was no price listed.

Looks like although you're listed number one which is an excellent achivement, you may have hit a brick wall. Other than Amazin, what about trying eBay listings?

Good luck.

Books are one of the hardest items to convert online.... most people go directly to Amazon.

karate books is a buying keyword.

I would remove the books that are unavailable, add some adsense and see what happens. If you see one book starts to sell, then dedicate the entire page to that book. Or review a couple, but but the seller at the top.

AdWords cost 0,87 per click. If you get 0,30 of that and get 3 clicks each day you get over 300 bucks a year. Thats a lot of beer.

You can also add a few affiliate links to the different household Karate sites on the top. Extra money.

What I've learned from this is that there is no real quick process (as I suspected) to finding a key phrase, whacking up a site and getting income fast.

Thank you all for the comments. What I will do is apply the thought processes, such as diversifying and really thinking what the consumers are doing to my main niche that I am working on.

Thanks

Chris

My first impression is that I'm overwhelmed with choices when I go to the site.

If it were me, I'd probably outsource maybe 10 karate-related articles and make my own info product ... something they can't get from Amazon.

You really need to get an e-mail list, too. There is nothing you can do but gain from having a list...

I think you'd better spend more time on your website 、product and service.They are the
key points.I you can't make sure the quality of them,you'll never benefit much even if there is high traffic.What's more,it needs time for your promotion.Be more patient.

The nicheninja method / sites tend to pop in on googles first page very easily - if you hit the right term nr 1 or 2. be aware though that the quick indexing in the vast majority of cases backfires and jumps you around before dropping you to page 3 -5... unless you do the work. Nick is open with this - there is no magic bullet and the sites need tending. You need a couple of articles on site, reviews, do the link thing, diversify the on-site information, grab som rss feeds - above all, do not use the same nichexample template that 95% of all the nicheninja members copied

bottom line though is that keyword research is ultimately uber vital and that probably takes the longest time and needs some experience, gutfeeling, etc... keyword research on traffic and on sellable product value

I have a bunch of these sites and about 20% of them produce revenues and the rest are more or less dead.
good or bad?
it must be weighed against the devoted time. i put in quite a bit of time on some of my sites, they no longer look like autoposter sites, got lots of links etc .. some live.. some are in a coma

anyhow, if you did the karate book site in 1 hr and just leave it and it only pays 50 buck over the full year, you are (minus domain, shared hosting etc..) doing about 40 bucks profit
40 bucks an hr - work 6 hr days, thats 4800 bucks a month
considering the profit you will make on each book that might be har to achieve - on the other hand, if a couple of your visitors click on and then buy the Minotaur Youth Mixed Martial Arts/ Boxing Trainer that sale alone will make you over 13 bucks

keyword research is paramount - in this as in all IM matters

Martial art is one of the "hard to convert" traffic, may be there are some profitable keywords, you just need to dig deeper...

I think using PPC to test your keywords are easier, at least you can try those keywords before putting too much effort on it.

I also noticed that some of those links come up with "not in stock".

I think the site is nicely done, clean..but it might miss a serious "call to action" since its merely a list of available books. Convince people to buy!

The other question is how good that keyword is, whether its a buying keyword...and what search volume that KW gets. You might want to tighten there and get more specific maybe with the keyword.

What traffic are you getting at the moment?

Edit:

Make it more personal, review some books and tell the reader WHY you think you would recommend this or that book.

1) Let the visitor know/think you are an authority about that field.
2) List and review books.

Reader wants information rather than a plain list of books. Same principle applies whether you sell Karate books or acne products or whatever. A good review site can seriously boost sales. Goal is effectively make the visitor STOP browsing and make him stop jumping from one site to another to search for whatever he wants - make him BUY the product off YOUR site. And you need to give him a reason aka

"We reviewed many Karate Books and we really think that XYZ stands out. [point out whats good about the book etc...] We can highly recommend this book because of [etc..etc...]

You get the idea.