Haven't Made A Single Sale

Haha, that is very funny you should mention that. Here is a small excerpt taken from a list of 10 Internet Millionaires before the age of 30:

8. Sean Belnick – Biz Chair, 20, $42million

BizChair.com was created in 2001 by its then fourteen-year-old founder Sean Belnick. With only a $500 investment and the advice of his stepfather Gary Glazer, a veteran of the office furniture business, Sean began running BizChair.com out of his bedroom. In 2008, Belnick reached $42 million in revenue.

Clearly there are a lot of people out there who disagree with you. Yes, people like to go and try things before they buy them, however the trend these days is people go into the shop and try the product, then they go home and buy it cheaper online.

There was a big news story on this the other night here in Australia. Retailers had noticed this Christmas a huge increase in people coming in and trying on clothes and then writing down the sizes and brands and walking out without purchasing. Obviously they then go home and buy it online.

There are always going to be people who'll absolutely hate the notion of shopping for something online, basically sight unseen, even though they are able to see, touch and feel the same exact merchandise first at a brick and mortar store.

Then again, there are also people who thrive on shopping online and love picking up bargains and deals at e-commerce websites; how else can we explain away the explosive popularity of sites like Amazon and eBay?

I was a little unnerved at first when I started buying physical items online several years ago, but now I simply couldn't live without the convenience, choice and variety available when shopping online - I have bought everything from computers, laptop batteries, cellphones to water filters and gourmet/exotic meats online, and I'll probably never buy another computer or cellphone from a physical brick and mortar store ever again!

The key with your guitar site is to test and track it - you must get some traffic coming to it first before you can determine if it converts well or not. Don't think you can just let the site sit there with very little traffic, and then come to the conclusion that it's not working. That's the classic mistake many newbies make - without sending some traffic to your site first, you simply cannot make a determination one way or the other!

Paul

I didn't need to critique your site because in your OP I saw 2 words in the same sentence... "Guitar" and "Amazon". Before I explain why that is, let me first just say your niche is not a buying market. Trust me, I've been a pro guitarist for 25 years.

1. Most of your target market has to borrow their rich friends mobile phone to call their sisters for money to buy guitar strings. You would need heaps upon heaps of traffic for a single sale (I think someone else mentioned this above)

*2. A guitar, pedal FX, amps, and rack gear are all highly personal purchases for 99% of the players. They'll be at stores trying the gear out long before a blind purchase happens. The only people buying a guitar from Amazon would perhaps be a parent getting there son his first guitar as a gift. The EXTREMELY low percentage of cats buying guitars online will be going directly to Sweetwater or another of the heavy hitting online music stores. This is simply because literally everyone in my industry with enough money to spend intimately knows these stores.

3. My first site online was a guitar site, an online learning course. In a few years I've accumulated heaps of monthly traffic, and I earn fine from it, but only from the teaching course (and from strings, picks, straps, and commissions and consignment sales from subscribers). I wouldn't even dare put an axe on my site that linked to Amazon. It would *insult my readers. Even if Amazon had Jimmy Hendrix' Woodstock Strat on sale I would have to write a paragraph qualifying the Amazon link. Even then I'd expect to lose subscribers.

So my advice to you would be: If you can play like wild fire and know how to teach a good and original technique, do a video course. Having said that, there's a crap load of competition out there in this niche, some of the courses being high quality and totally free.

Sell some very peripheral things, things that a guitar guy would consider a hassle to have to go and buy at the store. (strings, straps, magazine subscriptions, tuners, e.t.c...) But IMO sell nothing that pertains to the actual instrument, nor anything else an axeman would use to produce his sound (amps, FX, e.t.c...) - at least until you have some serious authority and heaps of traffic.

Lol I was wondering when you'd comment on this... I grabbed a copy of DBA as well, and well there's a lot you aren't getting out of Dan's program you really should be.

For starters:

• In Dan's videos, he leaves all the sidebars, not always the best idea as if a reader is looking for reviews and sees basically a "content" site, it can turn them off.
• Secondly, all of your reviews are 5 stars. Sort of defeats the purpose of having a review.
• The formatting sucks (not trying to be rude, just giving it to ya straight, constructive criticism is key in this industry). Work on how it actually ends up looking, you want someone to say "this looks like fun to read". (Not literally of course, but you get the point )
• The header is huge, definitely significantly shrink that, possibly even remove it entirely.
• The traffic exchange thing is... well bluntly it's a turn-off. Had I not kept reading the thread I would have just closed the site and never gone back. Remove that, or at least hide it.
• Fix your social bookmarking buttons so they go horizontally instead of vertically.
• Space out your posts, one every 3-4 days. I noticed you have several on the 8th, the 10th, and the 16th. Go back and change the dates even, it can potentially help your Google ratings. (No guarantee there but I have had some success doing that)
• Spread out the posts onto more than one page. Having your blog scroll for 5 miles is a bit of a turn off. Reminds me of a blogger blog, which are honestly the biggest pain in the a$$ to read.

I'm not sure whether or not your doing daily back-links, but just keep as it and the sales will come. Especially around the holidays, you'll probably see at least one sale before the end of the month.

Hope this helped you out somewhat.

Very true. I actually haven't in awhile. I have a multi-track recording studio built onto my house though. It's my prized possession.

If you want honest feedback....that site needs some serious work. To be honest it looks like a blog and not a store, I could not really tell if I could buy something from it. I seen alot of links but no BUY NOW or ORDER HERE buttons. No one is going to go through your site mousing over evey link looking for a buying option. The images are pictures of famous people playing the item.....no close up or clear pictures of the items. This site just looks like a bunch of pictures and the cost of the items in the pictures are posted below.

I am sorry, if I were looking for a guitar I would not buy one from an online blog.