basschick
03-24-2008, 12:46 PM
recently i heard from 3 different paysite owners who felt that their ratios of traffic to sales was terrible - awful - the worst! they were all quite upset. turns out that they were all well within the norm but turns out they believed the hype when program owners post overall ratios for their programs of 1:150 or 1:200. or saying it's a new site that converts at 1:50? that's probably with targeted adwords traffic and unless the site is great, it may be filtered, as well. sure, the program converted it at 1:50, but the amount of traffic sent do the filtering page may be more than that number reflects.
so i thought i'd set that straight.
when you own a program, you are going to have some affiliates sending you untargeted traffic. traffic sent from links that aren't very descriptive converts a lot less well than traffic sent via links that let surfers know what to expect. and traffic sent via blind links is a lot worse. how about traffic from a 404 page with a link that is simply a site title? unless your site's name is very descriptive, this traffic isn't going to convert at 1:200 - it probably won't anyway. and then let's not forget popup traffic or sites that popup your site everytime their site opens. it's not unusual for that traffic to convert at 1:10,000.
and let's not forget gallery traffic. most webmasters' gallery traffic converts pretty poorly, say at over 1:800 but often much higher. of course, if you're using ccbill links to your fhg's, that will REALLY make your ratios look bad.
so unless you only have a handful of personally-chosen affiliates, your site isn't going to convert overall at 1:300 even if it converts at 1:50 on highly targeted traffic. don't panic if you have an overall site conversion of 1:500 - 1:800. first take a look at how your own targeted traffic is doing. then take a look at how each of your larger affiliates are doing individually. now, if your own targeted traffic and ALL your larger affiliates are doing 1:800, you probably should consider tweaking your tour. but if you're seeing steady 1:350's or 1:400's for your targeted traffic and your larger affiliates, you can probably make you and your affiliates more money by working on your site's retention.
so i thought i'd set that straight.
when you own a program, you are going to have some affiliates sending you untargeted traffic. traffic sent from links that aren't very descriptive converts a lot less well than traffic sent via links that let surfers know what to expect. and traffic sent via blind links is a lot worse. how about traffic from a 404 page with a link that is simply a site title? unless your site's name is very descriptive, this traffic isn't going to convert at 1:200 - it probably won't anyway. and then let's not forget popup traffic or sites that popup your site everytime their site opens. it's not unusual for that traffic to convert at 1:10,000.
and let's not forget gallery traffic. most webmasters' gallery traffic converts pretty poorly, say at over 1:800 but often much higher. of course, if you're using ccbill links to your fhg's, that will REALLY make your ratios look bad.
so unless you only have a handful of personally-chosen affiliates, your site isn't going to convert overall at 1:300 even if it converts at 1:50 on highly targeted traffic. don't panic if you have an overall site conversion of 1:500 - 1:800. first take a look at how your own targeted traffic is doing. then take a look at how each of your larger affiliates are doing individually. now, if your own targeted traffic and ALL your larger affiliates are doing 1:800, you probably should consider tweaking your tour. but if you're seeing steady 1:350's or 1:400's for your targeted traffic and your larger affiliates, you can probably make you and your affiliates more money by working on your site's retention.