9 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
9 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

How do you sell a product in under 120 characters?

by MurderousKirk
9 replies
Hey all.

I've been working on a program that generates twitter traffic pretty effectively. I can pick a niche and a product, plug it in, and continuously scale to drive more and more autopilot traffic.

So this is great and all I'm pretty happy with the traffic results. Beats the SEO workload by a million miles.

I've been playing around sending a small amount of traffic and not scaling up much to get a feel for how it converts. I've tried a few test niches and so far this month I've driven roughly 40,000 clicks to amazon, and converted at 0.04%. I've sold 15 products and made about $11.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about why this is. I think partially it was the products and niches I chose. I think I need to be in some of the 'big' markets full of hot buyers (weight loss etc..) rather than smaller interest groups that click just to see more info (even though they just LOVE to click through and eat cookies..).

Something else I've realized is that the tweets I'm using to drive traffic is essentially my entire pre-sell / squeeze page / etc.. all in 120 characters or less. Is my mini pitch going to have a big impact on the sale for those that click through?

I can't help but feel I'm close but just missing some tactics I need to better understand. I can generate lots of niche related traffic but what good is it when i can't sell them anything..

How do i pick out and target the people that are dying to buy junk on amazon?

I read a post that I've unfortunately lost talking about how people buy for the "quick fix" of feeling like they've done something productive. I've been thinking about that post a lot as well trying to sort out what types of crowds i should be baiting on twitter.

I've considered just saying screw it and scaling WAY up with my low conversion rates, but someone warned me this could get my amazon account banned for "low quality traffic".

Help and advice appreciated..

(On the bright side, that $11 has already covered the cost to send all that traffic so.. Yay profit?)
#120 #characters #product #sell
  • Profile picture of the author MurderousKirk
    No advice? :/
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10460590].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Steve B
      Kirk,

      Conversion is the name of the game in Internet marketing. Making $11 on 40,000 clicks is totally unacceptable.

      What if you had a "nothing to brag about" 2% conversion of your own $47 product and 40,000 clicks? You do the math.

      If you want to make some money, get your conversions up . . . but also . . . sell something with a higher percentage of the profits going to you directly. Amazon's commissions on most products are tiny and unless you sell your own products (FBA), they are not going to give you much for a sale.

      So get your conversions up and sell products (preferably your own) where you make a decent amount on each sale rather than a tiny commission.

      Create a web site where you focus on giving the prospect "WIIFM." What's in it for me. Make the site compelling and paint the picture of how the prospect will benefit from buying the product. Use great testimonials from others who have already purchased. Capture an email address so you can make multiple contacts. Remove the risk for someone making a purchase.

      All this stuff is IM 101.

      Steve
      Signature

      Steve Browne, online business strategies, tips, guidance, and resources
      SteveBrowneDirect

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10460614].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author MurderousKirk
        Originally Posted by Steve B View Post

        Kirk,

        Conversion is the name of the game in Internet marketing. Making $11 on 40,000 clicks is totally unacceptable.

        What if you had a "nothing to brag about" 2% conversion of your own $47 product and 40,000 clicks? You do the math.

        If you want to make some money, get your conversions up . . . but also . . . sell something with a higher percentage of the profits going to you directly. Amazon's commissions on most products are tiny and unless you sell your own products (FBA), they are not going to give you much for a sale.

        So get your conversions up and sell products (preferably your own) where you make a decent amount on each sale rather than a tiny commission.

        Create a web site where you focus on giving the prospect "WIIFM." What's in it for me. Make the site compelling and paint the picture of how the prospect will benefit from buying the product. Use great testimonials from others who have already purchased. Capture an email address so you can make multiple contacts. Remove the risk for someone making a purchase.

        All this stuff is IM 101.

        Steve
        Thank you. This helps.

        How important do you think making a middleman website is? Is it expected to have such an impact on conversions that it's worth dropping the cookies on the people that wont click through twice? I suppose if it ups my conversion rates it must be worth it eh? I just know every click that isn't going straight to amazon will start filtering off my traffic is all.

        I've not considered selling my own product with amazon that's something I should look into. I'd started considering making a clickbank product to push but not amazon. Seems like those big recurring sales funnels are the way to go, just a lot of work and you need a suite of good digital products to sell.

        All I've really ever done successfully so far is drive traffic with seo / social media and apply adsense to it so.. the 101 tips are actually a big help to me.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10460636].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author DannyVeiga
    To be honest, you DONT sell products under 120 characters.

    What you do, is build trust. Provide free information, help others, build relationships - that's what you do with Twitter.

    You need to engage with your audience. Honestly, you're lucky you even converted at those numbers. You don't spam Twitter to sell - you're never going to make 6 figures by doing that.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10461195].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author JC Web
    Originally Posted by MurderousKirk View Post

    Hey all.

    I've been working on a program that generates twitter traffic pretty effectively.

    ....

    I've tried a few test niches and so far this month I've driven roughly 40,000 clicks to amazon, and converted at 0.04%. I've sold 15 products and made about $11.

    ....
    This is not effectively driving traffic. This is mostly junk traffic, which is what you would expect from whatever form of spamming or manipulation you are doing. Also, you're going to get both your twitter and amazon accounts shut down with those kinds of numbers.

    Unless you are a huge celebrity, which I think it's safe to assume isn't the case, then you are not going to get a flood of sales by posting amazon links on twitter.

    Build a real website with real value to the customer. Use twitter and other social media to build your brand, provide further value, and link to your website as appropriate - not in every tweet and not in most tweets. Use your website to do your selling/pre-selling.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10461254].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author cititoru
    Agree with the guys above, maybe use the funnel system and filter through that traffic. Make sure the remaining list are highly targeted people and that will increase your conversions as well.
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10461409].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author MurderousKirk
    Alright. It sounds like I'm going to need to build a website then to add trust into my twitter traffic if I cant get them converting then.

    My twitter accounts will be fine btw, they are built well. They actually engage people in more of a human than spambot manner too. Feedback and responses are normally surprisingly positive / engaged reactions. I guess that's not enough though.

    I'm going to first test a little more with picking the right niches, re-branding the accounts to look like more of an authority figure, and split testing my lead generating posts the best I can to start. Hopefully I can increase the conversion rates a little, and when that fails I'll look into figuring out how to build funnel sites for all my niches & thinking about how to minimize resulting damage to scalability/flexibility.

    I know you guys think pure twitter traffic is a little unorthodox and useless, but pulling it off would result in an absurd rate of scalability. Needing to build a new website/funnel with content and dozens of hours of SEO work every time i expand into a new niche would slow me down tremendously.

    (Also forget the fact that my technique sounds like low quality spam from the outside, just go with me when I say it's more like building flocks of authority accounts that interact with people in a positive and generally accepted manner.)

    I'm thinking as far as the website / funnel goes maybe i should pick a large generic niche like health & fitness that can hold a lot of sub-niches. Maybe that will work out..

    Again, thanks for the continued feedback.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10462428].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author sscot
    Originally Posted by MurderousKirk View Post


    I've been playing around sending a small amount of traffic and not scaling up much to get a feel for how it converts. I've tried a few test niches and so far this month I've driven roughly 40,000 clicks to amazon, and converted at 0.04%. I've sold 15 products and made about $11.
    Why didn't you try on $40-$50 worth products?
    Signature



    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10462698].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author MurderousKirk
      Originally Posted by sscot View Post

      Why didn't you try on $40-$50 worth products?
      I was originally chasing interest based products. Things that you will click through with no intention of buying just to read more about. Similar to the trick of offering free products. It can have a big impact on click through rates. I figured amazon would be able to convert a percentage of that then I'd just scale up.

      I will be jumping to more expensive products now though ty.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10462934].message }}

Trending Topics