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When to scrap a Publisher

by CDowns
6 replies
Hey Everyone,
Long time lurker, and just recently started posting...

I'm pretty fresh to IM, and currently have 1 site (WP blog) which is in a fairly competitive niche. I've been working on content creation and promotion of my blog, and have seen steady increases in traffic over the past 3 months, so this is good.

Now for the bad - on my blog I'm promoting 2 products from Clickbank (both in the same niche, one is a micro-niche so they're not necessarily competitive). I've had probably 200 to 300 targeted clicks to each product over the last 2 months, but have had absolutely 0 sales. They both have fairly high gravity on CB, so I'm not sure where the disconnect might be.

I currently have a "Recommendations" page, with the products listed, along with an image and a brief description of each. I kept it short and simple and figured I'd let the publisher do the sales talk.

About 75% of my traffic comes from Google from various long-tail keywords, so I feel my traffic is fairly targeted. Other sources of traffic are Social sites which I've submitted links.

Is it time for me to scrap these products and start promoting other products within the niche? Should I try to create more copy to pre-sell the product before sending the user to the publisher's sale page? I'm still pretty fresh to all this, but from what I've seen on my forum lurking, 200-300 clicks with no sales = no good...

Any advice is appreciated, and if you'd like to see the site, please PM.

Thanks everyone!

-Casey
#publisher #scrap
  • Profile picture of the author Ronnie Nijmeh
    Hi Casey,

    Welcome to the forums!

    It's hard to say whether to scrap it or not. The reality is that you may be 99% there, but a couple of tweaks to your site or copy could put you over the edge.

    Also, do the products you're selling convert well overall? I.e. they're popular on Clickbank?

    Send me a PM with your info and I'll give some feedback.

    Ronnie
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  • Profile picture of the author 4Highflyers
    There are too many unknown variables to give anything more than general
    suggestions Casey...

    For example:

    If the cost of your clickthrough traffic is 10-cents, and a sale nets you
    $50, then you have 500 clicks before you break even* (*not taking into
    account the most important factor - your time).

    Now, I'm not saying you promote products that deliver you a 0.2%
    conversion rate just to break even, BUT - based on that example -
    it would still give you room to test and improve your pre-selling (as you
    alluded to)...

    REMEMBER: The pre-sell will have a MASSIVE impact on the potential for
    the sale, because you're affecting the mind-set of the visitor to the product.

    So - the answer is "it depends".

    Do the math, work hard on your pre-sell, monitor your results. Change
    things if they don't work and are not profitable based on those results.

    Best,
    Adam
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    • Profile picture of the author CDowns
      Originally Posted by Ronnie Nijmeh View Post

      Hi Casey,

      Welcome to the forums!

      It's hard to say whether to scrap it or not. The reality is that you may be 99% there, but a couple of tweaks to your site or copy could put you over the edge.

      Also, do the products you're selling convert well overall? I.e. they're popular on Clickbank?

      Send me a PM with your info and I'll give some feedback.

      Ronnie
      Thanks for the response Ronnie. The gravity of the main product I'm promoting is around 50, with a 70% referred rate, so affiliates ARE selling it, just not me.

      I tried PMing you my URL, but discovered that I don't have enough posts yet. If you're still interested in taking a peek, please pop me an PM with a way for me to send you my URL.

      Originally Posted by 4Highflyers View Post

      There are too many unknown variables to give anything more than general
      suggestions Casey...

      For example:

      If the cost of your clickthrough traffic is 10-cents, and a sale nets you
      $50, then you have 500 clicks before you break even* (*not taking into
      account the most important factor - your time).

      Now, I'm not saying you promote products that deliver you a 0.2%
      conversion rate just to break even, BUT - based on that example -
      it would still give you room to test and improve your pre-selling (as you
      alluded to)...

      REMEMBER: The pre-sell will have a MASSIVE impact on the potential for
      the sale, because you're affecting the mind-set of the visitor to the product.

      So - the answer is "it depends".

      Do the math, work hard on your pre-sell, monitor your results. Change
      things if they don't work and are not profitable based on those results.

      Best,
      Adam
      Thanks Adam,
      Not sure I understand your statement of "cost of clickthrough traffic". If you're saying what I think you're saying, it doesn't necessarily apply to me since I'm not doing any PPC. It's all organic search engine traffic for the time being.

      I think both of you have sparked some thoughts in my mind. The pre-sell copy I was using on my site was simply a paragraph which was provided in the publisher's affiliate area, copy and pasted onto my site. I think I will try to rework the pre-sales copy on my site before sending them off to the publishers sales page.

      -Casey
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  • Profile picture of the author ChristineCobb
    Could it be possible that you are selling to folks that know about Clickbank and they are changing your link so that the commission is going to someone else? I'm relatively new myself but I've read that you should cloak your links. Perhaps someone more experienced could comment whether you might be experiencing that.
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    • Profile picture of the author CDowns
      Originally Posted by chriscobb View Post

      Could it be possible that you are selling to folks that know about Clickbank and they are changing your link so that the commission is going to someone else? I'm relatively new myself but I've read that you should cloak your links. Perhaps someone more experienced could comment whether you might be experiencing that.
      All my affiliate links are cloaked with PHP redirects, so I don't think that's it...

      Thanks for the input though!

      -Casey
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      • Profile picture of the author Jason G Anderson
        Originally Posted by CDowns View Post

        All my affiliate links are cloaked with PHP redirects, so I don't think that's it...
        Have you checked that your affiliate ID is showing correctly on the order page for the products if you click though (just in case it wasn't getting passed through properly - unlikely I know, but I've done sillier things :-) )
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