Affiliate Classroom Blog Archives

Conversions – Holy Grail of Affiliate Marketing

Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 1:11 pm by Matt Van Atta

Conversions are what all affiliate marketers shoot for – the holy grail. Usually, they are sales, sometimes they are sign-ups for your opt-in list or other lead acquisitions. But always they are the desired end result of a web visitor’s action when he or she visits your website. In the upcoming issue of Affiliate Classroom magazine, you’ll get dozens of tips for how to increase conversions. In the meantime, here is something to whet your appetite.

The most common conversion by far is that of a sale taking place. The visitor clicks through from your site to the merchant’s site and buys a product, and the merchant gives you the monetary “thank you” you’re seeking.

 

As I mentioned in my post of December 22 (“Life is Good When Things Are Clicking (Through)”), the conversion rate (the percentage of web visitors that you bring to your merchant’s website whose activity results in a conversion) is an important statistic to which affiliate marketers should pay attention. In many ways, the conversion rate is the ultimate indicator of your success, or lack thereof, in promoting a merchant’s product. But how you interpret the conversion rate can be as important as the rate itself.

Naturally you want to promote a product that results in the best possible conversion rate, right? That’s part of the equation, but not necessarily the entire equation. A large conversion rate for a product would be sweet, but if the product retails for only $20 or $25, and the commission paid on a sale is, say, under 30 percent, the large number of conversions you generate may not provide enough of a return to justify constantly “priming the pump.”

On the other hand, a product that generates fewer conversions may still be appealing, particularly if it comes with a high commission percentage and/or a higher price point. Such products would enable you to earn larger revenues with fewer sales, but it would also take greater effort on your part to bring in the sales.

In the end, you have to determine what conversion rate has to be in place for your affiliate business to be successful. As they say, one person’s chicken you-know-what can be another person’s chicken salad; and while a 1 percent conversion rate may be pretty small for most folks, it may be golden for you.

When considering the conversion potential of products to offer to your selected market, a number of other factors need to be considered besides the conversion rate. I’ll touch on these other factors in a future post.

Review Your 2007 Advertising Budget

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 12:52 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

Now that we have good reason to think that retail growth will continue for at least another year (see Jeff’s post below), it would be nice to know what kind of marketing techniques to use on all of these buyers.

eMarketer.com put the results of the end-of-the-year Ad:Tech and MarketingSherpa reports into an easy to read grid.

Here are a few places where marketers plan to increase their advertising spending in 2007.

Search Marketing - 34% say they will increase in this area - while only 25% say they will increase their SEO spending.

E-Mail Marketing - E-Mail marketing to in-house lists will be increased by 27% , but in 2007 only 13% said they will increase e-mailing to third-party lists.

This makes sense in the new Social Networking aspect of Web 2.0; people want to get to know a person before they buy from them. As always, the list created by the owner will always out-perform any others for that list owner.

These are just a few of the observations made, you can check out the report for the full list.

Speaking of Web 2.0, quite a few things on the list that have to do with emerging advertising tactics:

Social networking budgets will be increased by 40% of advertisers - this type of advertising wasn’t even around in 2005! Ads on 3rd party blogs and blog networks will also be increased, as will RSS Feeds, Video ads and sponsored podcasts (again, only a partial list from the full grid).

It’s worth keeping an eye on these upcoming advertising methods. Some of them are easy to incorporate (e.g. RSS feeds), others will take more time and thought (video and podcasting).

It’s definitely going to be worth doing several tests to find out what will work best in your market - and go from there.

Affiliate Marketing News: Will eCommerce Plateau Soon?

Monday, February 5th, 2007 at 5:19 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

The results are mixed, but surveys suggest that things are going to be great for a while.

“The Jupiter report calls for US online retail sales to grow by 16% in 2007, reaching $116 billion.

After next year, however, Jupiter predicts that the growth rate of online retail sales will begin to decline, falling to single-digit increases of 9% in 2010 and 8% by 2011.”

As with any rapidly growing area, sooner or later things have to cool down, at least in percentage terms. No market can sustain double digit growth over the long haul. Sooner or later, limitations have to set in.

But even having a much smaller percentage of a much larger pie results in more money for you. Take a peek at what some experts think is in store for the next few years.

Next Entries Right Arrow
Affiliate Program | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | Terms of Use | Earnings Disclaimer | Link To Us