Comments on: Ask Kirsty – What Should I Do When Conversions Drop?

By: David

David — Thu, 22 May 2008 03:00:26 +0000

Christopher is still on the right track by focusing on search engine traffic even if conversions rates are up and down. I tried email and solo ezine ads and found that conversion rates were consistently poor. No sales at all! I admit that I am relatively new to this business. I am sure that the professionals who know how to orchestrate a successful campaign would make an email campaign work, but is that because they already have a large list? For the last month I have been focusing solely on SEO and I am starting to see more progress.
Regards,
David

By: zowoco

zowoco — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:37:20 +0000

I think the three essentials to bear in mind for your affiliate marketing are:
1. have a variety of projects you work on in order to diversify so not all your eggs are in the one basket
2. patience is the virtue which must accompany perseverence
3. plan a wide variety of marketing strategies from building an optin subscriber list to ppc advertising to referrals to staging a contest to ezine ads: never rely on one source of traffic!

By: Jamie

Jamie — Wed, 21 May 2008 10:02:31 +0000

Hi Kirsty… check out entrecard.com and be sure to shoot me some mail if you decide to go with it…it’s a little online business card that really seems to be taking off as a form of connecting with other blogger, add a widget to your blog and people can leave their entrecard with you, and you can drop yours etc..

May I add, I think it’s really cool that you follow up comments with an e-mail, I often find myself doing this..it’s great to connect with other bloggers….

Kindly

By: Kirsty

Kirsty — Wed, 21 May 2008 01:08:16 +0000

Good point there Joe, I’ve had the odd wibble with my host too!

Jamie, yes I think people can be too quick to jump to conclusions. What’s entrecard?

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:59:15 +0000

Another off site factor to bear in mind is whether your webhosting is working smoothly – I’ve had bad days where the site has been slow to respond and even worse days when I’m PPCing at the same time – even worse if the site goes offline without you knowing. I’ve now got a nifty SMS service set up so if one of my sites goes down I know within a couple of mins and can turn my PPC off – it would be really cool if google could take automated mgs to turn ads off so I don’t have to login and turn ads off manually but at least I can do that from my iPhone these days.
It’s also worth remembering the internet can have wobbly days where some bit of infastructure is down and that impacts on groups of people (one ISP for example) or affects all of us.
So many variables – bottom line is DON’T PANIC!

By: Jamie

Jamie — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:28:45 +0000

Great points Kirsty…

This reminds me of people who see a little drop in sales in maybe their CB or Cj account and start crying foul on all the forums across the net, that tells me they are checking their stats too often and should be focusing more on increasing traffic so the dips aren’t as noticeable..

Like the blog here, I’m gonna bookmark it… do you have entrecard where I can drop you mine?

By: Kirsty

Kirsty — Tue, 20 May 2008 05:54:22 +0000

Good point there Craig. As a matter of fact I should have talked about that! I have had this a few times. I saw a huge spike once on a certain bra brand and it turned out UK morning TV had featured it on their show.

I immediately did an article seeking to get seo traffic from people who couldn’t remember the name of the brand, but knew it had been on that show… and it worked Soooooooo well!! So yes, its important to look at the reason for spikes to see if you still have time to capitalise a bit more.

By: Kirsty

Kirsty — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:24:01 +0000

Ah yes Amit…. those amazing days really do cheer you up no end. What a high!

Mine aren’t quite in the $14k range mind you, but hey… maybe one day I’ll reach the heady heights of your turnover!

By: Amit

Amit — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:46:01 +0000

Hi Kirsty,

Great Post!

Jumping the gun often happens with people who check their stats too frequently and try to analyze every change. I fell victim this in the beginning big time!

Even with niches with large search volume traffic levels and conversions can fluctuation wildly. Market is different everyday and every week. Things usually average out at the end though

And speaking of serendipity, it can happen both ways. I’ve had days where I’ve had my sales surge up to $14k in ONE DAY!

Sincerely,
Amit

By: Craig

Craig — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:21:43 +0000

Nice Q & A Kirsty,

Good point about “over analyzing” a lot of affiliates do this and try to blame themselves/sites/program or merchants for conversion drops without thinking independently/objectivley.

One thing I always think people fail to think about that causes conversion spikes (which you kind of mention on your keywords point) is check the recent media. Loads of things effect conversion and if it just so happens something in a popular media source mentioned a product without you knowing and you in turn rank for “widget review” you will be sure to see additional traffic and conversions, just because this drops off doesn’t mean anyone “broke” anything, just interest dying off.