Stats on my first affiliate page, and where to focus from here

7 replies
I've been only very slightly dabbling in the IM world off and on for a few years now. I'm inspired now to make a bigger leap.

I have a single page that I made years ago that:

- Links to a single product on Amazon
- Gets about 88% of it's traffic from organic search, and about 12% from referrals
- Has been #1 in Google for years when you search the products make/model name
- It gets little traffic, usually around 30 uniques/day, but have seen 200 at times

I realize this is a tiny site, but since it's established it seems like a good one to start experimenting with. So I'm looking at the stats, and trying to make sense of where to focus.

In a sample month, I see:

Sessions: 1,120
Click through's (to Amazon): 581
Unique Visitors to Amazon: 491
Total Items ordered: 13
Conversion Rate: 2.24%

The sad thing is, only of couple of the purchases were the item I'm promoting.

From what I can tell, my click through rate is really good, but the conversions aren't. Since I don't have control over the Amazon page, where should I be focusing my attention?

FWIW, my page makes it very clear what it's about, and has two buttons that say 'Clear here for the best price', which are the ones that lead to Amazon.

Thanks for any guidance.
#affiliate #focus #page #stats
  • Profile picture of the author benjamenjuan
    scaling, get more traffic from other sources.
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    • Profile picture of the author theeryman
      benjamenjuan,
      True, but since my conversion rate is only 2.24%, and only a small fraction of that is from the product I'm actually marketing, I feel like there's something to optimize my page, but I'm not sure what. If I had control over both pages, I'd have a tendency to tweak the Amazon page, as it seems that's where people are falling off, but clearly I can't. Not sure if there's anything else I can do on that front.

      Any thoughts on how I can improve the conversion rate?
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      • Profile picture of the author theeryman
        I'm considering making the page a little less salesy, and more of a fan page, kind of feel. More pre-selling than selling. Thoughts on that?
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      • Profile picture of the author aceofsaves
        Originally Posted by theeryman View Post

        benjamenjuan,
        True, but since my conversion rate is only 2.24%, and only a small fraction of that is from the product I'm actually marketing, I feel like there's something to optimize my page, but I'm not sure what. If I had control over both pages, I'd have a tendency to tweak the Amazon page, as it seems that's where people are falling off, but clearly I can't. Not sure if there's anything else I can do on that front.

        Any thoughts on how I can improve the conversion rate?
        That's the beauty of the Amazon affiliate program. What you are selling doesn't have to be bought for you to make money. As long as conversions are happening that is what is important. Think of it like gold mining. The traffic is the pay dirt and your landing page is the wash plant. What's more important is not so much the conversion rate (it is to an extent) but the amount you are making per amount of visitors.

        The stat I like to use is how much revenue am I making per 1000 visitors (I should probably go by unique instead of all visitors but doing it this way gives me a better goal to shoot for) because then you can look at it in terms of scaling. So for example if you make $20 per 1000 visitors and you have a goal of wanting to make $60 a day, then you need on average 3000 visitors a day to make this goal. If you have the #1 spot for a niche that's a great start. if you can't scale it, then start another niche and repeat. If it all goes through the same source (aka Amazon associates) you can treat the entire thing as one big wash plant for your pay dirt and approach it that way.

        Hope this helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author onSubie
    I would be very careful with a site you have't touched in years that has been sitting at #1 in Google for years.

    A change in design (i.e. WP Theme) or content (i.e. rewrite sales page) can cause your site to drop as Google re-evaluates. And with all the recent algorithm changes I don't know that I would want Google to reevaluate a site like that.

    I don't necessarily mean leave it alone but make sure you have a clear plan of what you want to do and why.

    Maybe I'm being paranoid.

    You could use it as a model for other sites that you could rank.

    Or sell it. If it is an older domain at #1 in Google for years and making conversions (no matter how small) then it could be worth quite a bit. Depending on what it ranks for,traffic, etc.
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    • Profile picture of the author LV1203
      I agree with onSubie… be careful to change the site's format too much since it's ranked high.. just add content to it but not remove too much from it.
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      • Profile picture of the author theeryman
        Thanks all -- great insight.
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