When to pull the plug

17 replies
I am a bit of a newbie, so looking for some advice here. I have been promoting the Magic of Making Up on CBank for the last couple of months. So far I have driven 829 hops with a result of just 3 sales to date.

The hops have come from resource links using article marketing, so they are pre-qualified.

I have read in the forum here to give a product somewhere around 500 - 1000 hops before making any decisions. This seems to me to be a very low conversion rate. I have even created a new CB account thinking there may have been issues.

Time to pull the plug or is this too small a sample? Give me your thoughts.

Much appreciated!
#plug #pull
  • Profile picture of the author Rich Struck
    1:277 isn't devastatingly terrible. I bet you could tweak your pages a bit to improve it. I think it is too early to pull the plug.
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    • Profile picture of the author twbarnes10
      Thanks, Rich! I should mention that I have links directed to the sales page and not my own squeeze page, so tweaking is not an option in this particular case.
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      • Profile picture of the author garyv
        Originally Posted by twbarnes10 View Post

        Thanks, Rich! I should mention that I have links directed to the sales page and not my own squeeze page, so tweaking is not an option in this particular case.
        definitely need to experiment w/ some landing pages.
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        • Profile picture of the author twbarnes10
          Thanks, Gary. So you are saying I should create some of my own landing pages that a potential customer would go to on my site, THEN send them to the MOMU sales page?
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          • Profile picture of the author garyv
            Originally Posted by twbarnes10 View Post

            Thanks, Gary. So you are saying I should create some of my own landing pages that a potential customer would go to on my site, THEN send them to the MOMU sales page?
            Yes definitely. There are few cases where a direct link works better, but a vast majority of the time I'd have a landing page. You have much more control over it, and you can track it easier. Also - when you use direct links, you risk losing all of your work if a vendor's site goes down or out of business. If you have a landing page, you can easily change the links if a vendor's site goes down.
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      • Profile picture of the author Ric_Worthy
        Originally Posted by twbarnes10 View Post

        Thanks, Rich! I should mention that I have links directed to the sales page and not my own squeeze page, so tweaking is not an option in this particular case.
        Generally, it is a good thing to have your own "warm-up" page between your lead generation and the official sales page. You can't depend too heavily on the closing power of your vendor's sales page.

        When you think something isn't working as well as you would like it is time to test something new/different. The word is "Test".

        Changing horses (starting to promote a new product) may put you in the same place you are now a while down the road but only with your new product.

        You have already invested in this product, you are getting traffic, and have a few sales. I would work on trying to improve the CR. Whatever you learn will be applicable to whatever you do in the future so its not wasted effort. Who knows a tweak here and there could turn it into a winner.
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        • Profile picture of the author twbarnes10
          Thanks, Ric! Quite frankly I am fairly excited to hear you use the term "warm-up" page as it seems many of the sales pages I have looked at leave a bit to be desired. I have tried to overlook that some as I have read that some of the worst looking sales pages actually convert well.

          The best thing I am taking from this thread is def directing my traffic to my own page from now on before sending them on.

          Great info here guys! Thank you.
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  • Profile picture of the author Daniel Deegan
    Honestly in this particular scenario giving up is not nearly so cut and dry. The reason for the lack of conversions could have more to do with your articles then the product your promoting. What I mean is, if you have been using the same resource box for all your articles and the pre-sell in your resource box sucks...we'll that could be your problem right there.

    Other factors might be keyword selection or message to market match with the keywords you selected. Another possibility is that the articles themselves just don't pre-sell the prospect enough.

    Ideally your best bet would be to start capturing emails and pre-selling the prospect even further before sending them to the MOMU sales page. Hopefully your articles are going through a domain redirect which you own, that would make redirecting to a squeeze page that much easier.

    Hope this helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author garyv
    I agree with Rich - do some tweeking. Finding sales is the hard part and you've done that. Now figure out exactly where and how those sales are coming in and hone in on them. Then rinse and repeat that technique in other niches.
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  • Profile picture of the author poweredbyambition
    Like some of the others said.. it's a little too early to pull the plug.. you've got some sales which is great.. now you need to tweak your sales page, capture emails and work on getting other sources of traffic. I suggest you take a look at copyblogger.com
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  • Profile picture of the author mikemcmillan
    Hi TW,

    I don't want to parrot other comments because they have given you good advice. But my gut instinct is that you should probably direct your clicks from your resource box to a squeeze page and have an opt-in form to collect names and emails. The way it is, the clicks are a one shot thing--either they buy or they don't.

    If you drive them to an opt-in page and offer a little free report related to the product you can get many to opt in to your list. That way you can send them an email once or twice a week with affiliate links to the product of your choice.

    One advantage is that you can promote several different but related products over time to your list. You say you had something like 800 hops to the product page--it's possible you might have opted in 200, 300, or more of those people into a list and then marketed to them by email and increased your sales considerably. In other words, it's not all front-end sales that you could have working for you.

    Just a thought, but based on what you've said and with the advice of others above--I would stick in there and do some of the things that the good guys recommended above. Make a million! --Mike
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    • Profile picture of the author twbarnes10
      Guys, I sure appreciate all of your advice. To date, I have been using two links, one being my anchor text coming back to an opt-in page on my site offering a free report download, the other link being my redirect to the sales page.

      If I am interpreting the replies, it sure sounds like your advice to me is to direct ALL of my traffic to my own opt-in/squeeze page before sending them on from there.

      Great info and feedback when I mostly was wondering if 1 out of 300 was a conversion rate worth spending any more time on.

      Thanks to all...very helpful!!!
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  • Profile picture of the author garyv
    Definitely don't abandon a 1/300 conversion rate if it's free traffic. If you can't tweak it, just leave it, and repeat it in other niches or keywords.
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    • Profile picture of the author twbarnes10
      My link to the sales page is a redirect that I own, so I can just repoint it at my own landing page.

      Thanks again, Gary!
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  • Profile picture of the author Johnny12345
    Originally Posted by twbarnes10 View Post

    I am a bit of a newbie, so looking for some advice here. I have been promoting the Magic of Making Up on CBank for the last couple of months. So far I have driven 829 hops with a result of just 3 sales to date.

    The hops have come from resource links using article marketing, so they are pre-qualified.

    I have read in the forum here to give a product somewhere around 500 - 1000 hops before making any decisions. This seems to me to be a very low conversion rate. I have even created a new CB account thinking there may have been issues.

    Time to pull the plug or is this too small a sample? Give me your thoughts.

    Much appreciated!

    If the traffic you're getting is from a free source (such as article marketing), why would you need to "pull the plug"?

    Just refine/improve your presell article and then create a new article for another product.

    Move forward.

    John
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  • Originally Posted by twbarnes10 View Post

    I am a bit of a newbie, so looking for some advice here. I have been promoting the Magic of Making Up on CBank for the last couple of months. So far I have driven 829 hops with a result of just 3 sales to date.

    The hops have come from resource links using article marketing, so they are pre-qualified.

    I have read in the forum here to give a product somewhere around 500 - 1000 hops before making any decisions. This seems to me to be a very low conversion rate. I have even created a new CB account thinking there may have been issues.

    Time to pull the plug or is this too small a sample? Give me your thoughts.

    Much appreciated!
    It's definately too small of a sample site to be stastically relevant. My biggest question would be-

    A) Is there enough traffic for that particular keyword?
    B) Is the product your promoting convert well?
    C) Is it something you spent a lot of time trying to rank for, and if so could your time be spent better in another area?
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  • Profile picture of the author PHPGator
    I personally don't think it would have much to do with your own personal landing page especially if you have a "pre-sell" on your site. The only thing I might consider it to be too early is if you are using gimmicky ideas such as "Click here for a discount" and then pointing it to your affiliate link or something along those lines could potentially be a problem.

    I am not a huge fan of clickbank because I've heard of owners of ebooks buying their own book to gain affiliate attention. Essentially when you buy your own book off the site, you are paying the majority to yourself and a small percentage to Clickbank. So for a few hundred bucks you can do amazing things to your gravity and landing page conversion rates.

    I don't believe in promoting anything that doesn't convert at at least 1%. Ebooks are a tough sell anyway, but if you have targeted traffic and you have sent nearly a thousand people to their site and only 1 person bought something... there's a problem.

    If I wasn't doing anything gimmicky or "tricking" people into the affiliate links, then its not your site that isn't converting, it is the site you are sending traffic to and there isn't anything you can do about that really.

    I wouldn't kill the domain or any of the articles you are working on. What I would do is let it sit for a while and open up a new project. Those articles should continue to send traffic and as your website gets more data you will be able to make better decisions. You might optimize your own site to get more clicks on your affiliate links, but I wouldn't invest too much more time into it myself.
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