Failing affiliate campaign - 700 CTRs and 1 sale

18 Sep 09 1:15 am

Thanks for the advice. It sounds like you are generally saying that I am doing the right things. I just need more keyword targeted articles, more backlinks, more content, and more design on the sites. I wanted to do some graphics on the sites but haven't done it yet. I am trying not to spend a ton of money until I prove to myself that I can make this work. I haven't wanted to buy a bunch of shed pix. Probably just being cheap when I shouldn’t.

I guess my gripe is that I feel that I have drummed up a good bit of targeted traffic, and still seen no results. If i have to drive 20k ppl a month to a site to make a small handful of sales something seems wrong. "Plans Shed" is searched over 100k times a month, hence the domain purchase. I got to 28th position in Google in about a week and a half but yesterday I checked and I am now 98 or something horrid like that. I also targeted "shed house" (8k searches a month) and am jumping back and forth between the first and second page still.

My concern with conversions is that I have heard that you want a 1-2% conversion rate when doing ppc to a landing page. That’s nearly 1 in 50 targeted visitors buying. I have had way more than that. Should I expect lower conversions with organic traffic? I figured that people clicking through an article were pretty targeted, at least as much so as a person clicking through a paid add. I am loosing them at this point, I guess. That’s why I have concerns with my copy.

All in all I worry that something is wrong with either the product or my copy/site design. It seems to me that if I haven't made a sale after a few thousand targeted visitors I am not really likely to make one.

18 Sep 09 1:55 am

Thanks, I am glad to know that there are good keywords out there.........:)

I thought I had found a few but I know I don’t have good placement on many. What are your criteria for a "good keyword"?

I have been going for over 1k searches a month and under 5k competition when searched in "" on Google using Google keywords tool, oh I am looking for low advertiser competition too. Then I am writing an article submitting to ezine articles (and others) and pushing the traffic back to my site. I am trying to put the same (al-be-it altered) content on the site too. I must admit I have not had much luck with SEO on anything but articles. My sites have not been up that long though, I know it takes time.

So tweak and trudge forward eh...

Other than the actual presentation do you see anything wrong with my content, especially the review and directly sales related stuff? An is there any trick to optimizing a site for a specific keyword fraise other than having the fraise on the page and link backs?

Which brings me to another question. How the heck to you get good link backs? I put up all I have access to (article directories, hubpages, squidoo, usfreeads, forums). What else can you do, e-mail someone and say hey give me a link? What’s in it for them? Thanks for all the advice, hey I will try some link building right now...

http://www.buildashedhouse.com

30 Sep 09 2:48 pm

Hi

One of my sites is in the same market as you, although I am promoting a range of products: http://www.buildthingsdirect.com

I too have been trying to promote MyShedPlans, with loads of hoplinks but no sales after about 3 months. My only sales have been in the chicken coop and solar energy areas.

I am beginning to think that this is a dead-end niche, but am reluctant to give up just yet. It is very much for the information-seeker, and the forums seem to be full of 'experts' who sneer at anybody who wants anything other than free plans!

The problem I have is that this niche ticked all the right boxes from Clickbank marketplace when I chose it, and I am using so-called 'excellent' Moneyword Matrix keywords (ie those with 1,000 searches per month or more and 10,000 search results or less).

Not much help to you, I'm afraid, but I'm feeling very frustrated today.

Regards

Kieran

01 Oct 09 12:14 am

I looked at your site. Its really clean and concise, I like it. What did you use to build it? Also I am curious are you having any luck with search engine placement and organic traffic?

01 Oct 09 10:24 am

Hi kschmandt

Thank you for your kind comments about my website. I'm using Wordpress and really like it. I used to use Komposer but, after doing the AB course, switched to WP and think it is much better.

I am only doing SEO, and have several pages ranked in pages 1 to 3 in the main search engines. So all my traffic is organic. I lost several hundred dollars trying PPC before finding the AB course, and will not be doing PPC again until I am really confident about my keywords.

Let me know how you get on.

Regards

Kieran

03 Oct 09 12:30 am

One thing I have thought of doing is pushing adsense traffic through a masked domain and only using the content network to keep the cpc down.

As we have mentioned it may just be the niche/product but I also worry about my sales copy. I thought cutting me/my writing out of the process might help.

I am going to press into another more "hair on fire" niche and see if I can make some sales that way.

Interestingly within a day or so of making the first post in this string I had a sale then 2 days later another. Who knows...

05 Oct 09 3:37 am

Thanks, I am glad to know that there are good keywords out there.........:)

I thought I had found a few but I know I don’t have good placement on many. What are your criteria for a "good keyword"?

There are 3 things you need to look for when selecting your keywords:

1. Keywords should contain 3 words or more.
Keywords with less than three words are too general. Longer keywords are more targeted and easier to rank for.

2. Keywords should have an average search volume of 1500+.
You may use the Google Keyword Tool to check the search volumes of your keywords.
Keywords with very high search volumes are vague and too competitive. A “huge” search volume would be over 50,000 per month.

3. You should have at least 25 regular keywords that cover a variety of topics on your niche and 5 product name keywords. It's okay if your product name keywords have less than 1500 search volume since these convert a lot higher than your regular keywords.

One thing I noticed is that your site looks like a typical site not a blog. Is there a theme that gives you that look or did you do some heavy editing?

It seems that http://buildthingsdirect.com was built using the Affiloblueprint theme :) Am I right, Kieran?

28 Oct 09 1:37 am

Is this shed site produced by Affilorama? Just thinking about why this piece of code is part of it.
Can you explain this please.
Cheers
Pete
"pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/167e4dw100u5i48nvjsxrcp81z.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=100f&referer=https://www.affilorama.com/forum/website-building/failing-affiliate-campaign-700-ctrs-and-1-sale-t5155.html');"

28 Oct 09 3:12 am

It's on a few of the links. I don't know and that is why I'm asking but with all the techniques available to affilorama members. Is this so affilorama can track traffic from that page ( links) ?
Pete

28 Oct 09 4:23 am

That was my question?
Why would Affilorama be tracking these links as they belong to a separate entity?

29 Oct 09 12:14 am

The query comes from a comment from staff to Keiren about his website http://buildthingsdirect.com/
It would appear that this plug for AB is being tracked via the links on that website. I was only wondering how you would explain that as I can see no reason for the website owner to have tracking codes back to this forum.
Why is this?
Cheers
Pete

03 Nov 09 2:16 am

You should cloak those clickbank hop links ASAP. Anybody that has any knowledge of clickbank etc will soon lose interest in your shed reviews if they realize your making money from promoting them.