I've recently setup my first website gameandfilm.com and have made it into an amazon affiliate store. I've spent a bit on marketing ($60 for AdWords) but have only received around 100 hits, none of which have converted into sales. If you look at the site you will notice that as soon as you click to buy something it takes you onto the amazon website - Do you think visitors will be put off by this? I can pay associate-o-matic $100 for the shopping cart to installed on my site so visitors don't leave the site when ordering - Do you think it is worth me paying for this? Any ideas you have to help me increase traffic and sales would be most appreciated - Failing that I'll take offers on the domain name!! HELP!!! Cheers Blair
I just had a look at your site and it looks good. well done. I think if you're testing waters, $100 is an investment you can hold back on for a little while if you concentrate on attracting visitors to your site first. Ideally, you'll be building good, strong backlinks by publishing unique articles about your films and games and submitting those articles to as many article sites as you can (aim for human edited sites to be sure your link doesnt get published in spammy sites) A good article will naturally propagate itself web-wide and bring in new visitors. over time, you can then see how your sales are doing and reconsider whether you need to invest now. check you stats to see if visitors only see that first initial page. If you notice visitors are clicking onto page 2 or 3, then you'll know the $100 may well be worthwhile. Hope i helped you and good luck. .
Hi Lychee, thanks for the advice - Looks like I better get writing those articles then! Do you think visitors are put off from buying when the select an item and are redirected onto the Amazon site as opposed buying through my site?
I wouldn't be put off because everyone knows Amazon is a safe website to buy from. Don't worry about having only 100 hits and not converting any of them as I would imagine thats quite common. I had a website which had over 300 hits in one month and didn't convert anything. Just be patient and I am sure the sales will come through eventually
No. I cant see why they'd be put off from buying directly from amazon. on the contrary. But you need to find a way to get those visitors interested in YOUR site. Otherwise, they click to amazon and disappear. Get articles written for you then find a way to integrate each article in your site with relevant products. For example, film reviews. Book/Game reviews. They'll like it that you provide information about the product you are selling through amazon and they are likely to peruse your site much more, return to your site when they next want to purchase something and who knows even recommend your site to others....see how articles are important? So articles need to go into your site to keep visitors clicking within your site. And then you need to get articles written about your site to submit to article sites so that you attract more visitors. Hope I helped.
You could try to boost it with traffic exchanges (it's free anyway) Find forums or sites about gaming and promote there. I googled your site (gameandfilm.com) it's first on second page
I guess I would also go with traffic exchanges. With a limited budget, there are still plenty of ways to get traffic. Articles are also great...even a blog would help.
I think it's essential to give some value to your visitors. Being just a gateway between them and amazon will not help you. Will bring benefits to amazon only. It's a good step that you set you niche. Now you should create some marketing strategies to keep surfers to your site. How you can do that? - write professional content - give valuable advice - create a contest from time to time - offer them something valuable for free etc.
Thanks for all the replies and useful tips. Some advised traffic can be bought at around $10 per 1000 clicks. I'm thinking if only 1-5% of these convert to sales my Amazon commision will more than cover $10. What do you think, is the traffic going to be rubbish or is it worth a try?
As everyone has said above, find relevant content to put on your site. If you buy 1000 clicks for $10, being $0.01 a click, don't expect it to be good traffic at all. Even a 1% conversion rate may be high.
I think your site is fine, You need to understand who your visitors are and what they understand about your website/product before they arrive. People who read an article and then decide to click through to you site will be "pre-educated" so to speak and will be much higher converting than non educated traffic. Most traffic is people arriving with motives (search for free information/answers to their questions). If you're interested in this theory check out my signature for more information on how to get pre-educated traffic.