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How is my site converting?

by petemcal
17 replies
I've got a site that's in the cat niche. It deals with a specific problem and is not just a general "learn about cats" type site. I'm promoting a clickbank ebooks that specifically relates to the problem that my website is centred around.

I'm promoting this ebook through the site with a sidebar (animated gif banner ad) and a link at the end of each post.

Over the past 30 days I've had around 3900 visits to the site (arond 3500 uniques). From this traffic I've had around 100 hops (clicks) through to the ebook splash page.
From this 100 hops I've had 2 sales $20 retail to the buyer.

This is the 1st affiliate site I've set up so I don't know if this performance is good or bad.

Can anyone give me some indicators as to what is a good level for this niche/traffic?
#converting #site
  • Profile picture of the author edpudol1973
    That is 2% conversion which is very low in my opinion. There many factors why you conversion is low, one of the common reason is the affiliate you're selling is not appealing to your visitors.

    Try to promote other affiliate product that related to your website to test which one convert well.

    For me 5% will be good conversion.

    I also suggest, find a way that your visitor leave their emails, they will be your targeted customers in the future.
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    • Profile picture of the author petemcal
      Originally Posted by edpudol1973 View Post

      That is 2% conversion which is very low in my opinion. There many factors why you conversion is low, one of the common reason is the affiliate you're selling is not appealing to your visitors.

      Try to promote other affiliate product that related to your website to test which one convert well.

      For me 5% will be good conversion.

      I also suggest, find a way that your visitor leave their emails, they will be your targeted customers in the future.
      Thanks for your feedback. I think it may be the affiliate as their sales page is a really long squeeze page which to me just seems spammy.

      The problem is he was the best affiliate I could find on clickbank.

      Perhaps I need to write my own book and create my own squeeze page? Because nobody out there seems to have a product that is marketed very well to this market. However from my traffic and the hops I think there is clearly a market here.

      I've got an email sign up form on my site where visitors can get a weekly newsletter but nobody has signed up to it yet (I don't think it's that kind of niche)
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      • Profile picture of the author edpudol1973
        Originally Posted by petemcal View Post

        Thanks for your feedback. I think it may be the affiliate as their sales page is a really long squeeze page which to me just seems spammy.

        The problem is he was the best affiliate I could find on clickbank.

        Perhaps I need to write my own book and create my own squeeze page? Because nobody out there seems to have a product that is marketed very well to this market. However from my traffic and the hops I think there is clearly a market here.

        I've got an email sign up form on my site where visitors can get a weekly newsletter but nobody has signed up to it yet (I don't think it's that kind of niche)
        Creating your own book is one of the best option of course. Now while you're creating your own ebook, you may want to re-write or create your own sales page for the clickbank affiliate product. This is effective way to increase conversion.
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        • Profile picture of the author Davidstarz
          Originally Posted by edpudol1973 View Post

          Creating your own book is one of the best option of course. Now while you're creating your own ebook, you may want to re-write or create your own sales page for the clickbank affiliate product. This is effective way to increase conversion.
          I totally agree with you. Why not write your own e-book that you can sell to your visitors. You will be highly confident in it and you can even get affiliates to promote it for you.
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      • Profile picture of the author shane_k
        Originally Posted by petemcal View Post


        The problem is he was the best affiliate I could find on clickbank.
        The best affiliate by what standards?

        Did you choose this because it was most related to what your site?
        Did you choose this because they had the best pay structure?
        Did you choose it because you felt it was the best quality product and nices sales page out of the bunch?

        You want to be careful with making statements like this, because what you think might be the best, might not be what your customers want. And there could be products that you think don't look very good, or their sales page doesn't look very good, but it could be actually what your customers are looking for.

        If I were you I would send them other offers to see what happens.



        I've got an email sign up form on my site where visitors can get a weekly newsletter but nobody has signed up to it yet (I don't think it's that kind of niche)
        Again I would be careful about making statements like, "I don't think it's that kind of niche."

        What kind of incentive are you offering to get them to sign up for your newsletter?

        What is the benefit for them if they do sign up?

        What will they learn or get from your newsletter that they won't get from just reading the posts on your site?
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        • Profile picture of the author petemcal
          Originally Posted by shane_k View Post

          The best affiliate by what standards?

          Did you choose this because it was most related to what your site?
          Did you choose this because they had the best pay structure?
          Did you choose it because you felt it was the best quality product and nices sales page out of the bunch?


          What will they learn or get from your newsletter that they won't get from just reading the posts on your site?


          Hi thanks for your feedback. I shall explain a little further for you. I chose the "best" affiliate based on
          • the relativity of the product to my site's topic area
          • The perceived quality of the information provided
          • The quality of the copy and content on his sales page
          • The pricing matched what I thought people would be willing to pay
          As for the email list I take on your point, there will always be something additional you can offer people as an incentive to sign up. This is something I'm brainstorming currently.
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  • Profile picture of the author kyle8820
    not bad for your first site, but you have to keep working on quality of your website to increase It to at least 5%
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  • Profile picture of the author petemcal
    Originally Posted by MatthewWoodward View Post

    There are a conversion rates at play here-

    Unique Visitor > Sales conversion which is 0.05%
    Unique Visitors > Hop Clicks which is 2.85%
    Hops > Sales which is $2

    What I would do is focus on increasing the unique visitos > hop clicks percentage and at the same time I would rotate the traffic to different offers on clickbank to try and increase the hop > sales conversion rate.

    Have a look at this post-

    How I Increased Profits By Changing The Colour Of A Button - Matthew Woodward

    I reveal the stats of one of my split tests that I used to increase the unique visits > clicks ratio
    Hi Matt, thanks I've read your blog post and I like your split testing.

    I'm actually doing some separate testing at the moment as each link placement in the site's template has a different redirect link.

    For example the sidebar banner is /recommendedbook
    The text link at the bottom of posts /expertebook

    So through my redirect plugin I can track the clicks on each one to see what sending more traffic to the affiliate page.

    My theme makes it a little tricky to do A/B split tests between banner ads. I'm going to have to look into how to set this up as you have to set ads through the "theme options" and not from normal widgets etc.
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    • Profile picture of the author MatthewWoodward
      Originally Posted by petemcal View Post

      My theme makes it a little tricky to do A/B split tests between banner ads. I'm going to have to look into how to set this up as you have to set ads through the "theme options" and not from normal widgets etc.
      I'm currently split testing a video player on my blog, more details at Live Case Study – How To Increase Video Conversion - Matthew Woodward

      It was tricky to implement but basically I have a plugin called duplicate post and another called WP hide post so I can duplicate an existing post, make a few changes and then hide it from view everywhere else on the blog so its only accesible via direct url (also exclude the post id from any sitemap plugin you use)
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      • Profile picture of the author petemcal
        Originally Posted by MatthewWoodward View Post

        I'm currently split testing a video player on my blog, more details at Live Case Study - How To Increase Video Conversion - Matthew Woodward

        It was tricky to implement but basically I have a plugin called duplicate post and another called WP hide post so I can duplicate an existing post, make a few changes and then hide it from view everywhere else on the blog so its only accesible via direct url (also exclude the post id from any sitemap plugin you use)
        Hey thanks for sharing that resource I'll have a look at it shortly.

        I also (coincidentally) read this post today by the google team on how to do split testing safely so your search rankings are not affected. May be of use to some people:

        Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Website testing & Google search
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    1%, 2%, 3%, etc... doesn't matter. Keep making that money and look at things for the long term. You dont want to end up at age 60 trying to get a higher conversion rate for a site - while you could have been getting steady and slow profits through all of these years.

    And of course, the more sales you get, the more customers you get, and the more you sell to these customers again... the more money you will make.
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    • Profile picture of the author MatthewWoodward
      [QUOTE=Randall Magwood;6896108]1%, 2%, 3%, etc... doesn't matter./QUOTE]

      Actually it does matter, in fact its absolutely bloody critical!

      If you have a site with a 1% conversion rate making £10,000 per month, you could increase that to £20,000 per month with just a handful of tweaks that take a few hours to implement.

      Obviously there comes a point where your nit picking on squeezing out that extra 0.1% here and there but the difference between 1%, 2% and 3% is huge!
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  • Profile picture of the author Fredbou
    Originally Posted by petemcal View Post


    Over the past 30 days I've had around 3900 visits to the site (around 3500 uniques).
    Just wondering if your site has enough info/pages etc. enough? From 3500 uniques I would expect more total visits than 3900. What was the number of page views for that period?

    My best income generating site has 80% more visits than unique visits, and page views average 5 per visit.

    If you can keep people coming back, then you stand more chance of selling product.
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    • Profile picture of the author petemcal
      Originally Posted by Fredbou View Post

      Just wondering if your site has enough info/pages etc. enough? From 3500 uniques I would expect more total visits than 3900. What was the number of page views for that period?

      My best income generating site has 80% more visits than unique visits, and page views average 5 per visit.

      If you can keep people coming back, then you stand more chance of selling product.
      Hi the site has about 9 pages/posts on it. The problem is it is a very specific problem the site deals with.


      A fictitious example of the sort of subject area it is would be "how to get rid of zits". I've done posts from every angle without creating content just for the sake of it. So again going along the lines of the example I have posts like:
      1. how to get rid of zits
      2. natural remedies for zit removal
      3. Comparison of commercial zit removal products
      4. What causes zits?
      5. How can you prevent zits from occuring
      etc.

      I think I've reached saturation without putting up content just for the sake of it.

      Another consideration is if I keep the content tidy like it is just now more page rank is concentrated on these target keyposts from the homepage. Adding more content would be diluting the link juice flowing around the site.
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  • Profile picture of the author tac88
    I would definitely put a squeeze page and maybe offer a free white paper or tips to get them to sign up. That way you can test out other offers and if you can not find another offer do the demographics on the visitors and match them with demography matched offers.
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  • Profile picture of the author Troy_Phillips
    Create a teaser ebook and trade it for signups while you are preparing your actual product.

    40% is probably low but let's go with it anyway. Your current numbers would provide you with 1400 or so signups. Do you think you could do a prelaunch to that number alone and make more than 2 sales of your own product. I Do!
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    • Profile picture of the author petemcal
      Originally Posted by Troy_Phillips View Post

      Create a teaser ebook and trade it for signups while you are preparing your actual product.

      40% is probably low but let's go with it anyway. Your current numbers would provide you with 1400 or so signups. Do you think you could do a prelaunch to that number alone and make more than 2 sales of your own product. I Do!
      This is a really good way of going about things, thanks for the suggestion it's fodder for developing my conversion strategy in the long term.
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