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Thanks. There are countless vendors who have awful conversion and just sucker potential and existing affiliates into thinking that the niche is fantastic. One great example is the tattoo niche. Conversion there is even worse than for Zynga game guides but no doubt they use many gravity boosting techniques and others to trick otherwise using the concept of social proof.

This may explain part of it but I honestly don't believe it explains most of it. You may notice that some vendors are scared off and others just do it. One thing I wanted right from the start was to be totally legit. I even emailed Zynga legal department to find out what the score was. Turns out that you can indeed use screenshots. They don't authorise or approve of it but it seems they will not sue your @ss if you do.

At launch, I did not have any screenshots. Only one of my neighbors maxxed out on his levels. I am extremely suspect of many of the other vendor's screenshots and speculate that they may have used memory address editing software to boost the coins, level and any other numbers shown on screen. Why do I think this? Because the maps were missing things like government buildings than you would definitely have if you were top level. This is just my speculation, I am not making any specific accusations. People can judge for themselves.

My feeling now is that Zynga game guides are dead. I remember how successful they were in Mafia Wars and Farmville Days. Time has moved on, the Cityville guides did nowhere near as well (I promoted it myself, so easy to rank for). Same for these guides, in my belief. So even though I could add images soon, I don't think it's even worth doing.

The thing is, though the conversion sucks, you might make up for it by the easy ranking. The problem is, I looked around the internet, and hardly anyone is bothering. Maybe they just don't like writing content for the niche. Maybe they are put off with the thought that the typical impulsive and addicted Zynga game player has seen each wave of guide come and go and is now totally jaded. Who knows.

The testimonials are not fake. This is what real testimonials look like. Perhaps you should look at other pages with the middle class Western faces and several paragraphs of testimonials and ask yourselves if you think they are believable. The average impulsive Zynga game player would never write such testimonials, in my view. I do use a pen-name in my niches, there is nothing wrong with that. The story is also true, my personal story is not the same as the other guides. Several of us may us a similar pacing template insofar as the way we introduce the reader to the story and warm them up for the sale but these are standard copywriting techniques, they do not change the actual underlying story.

 

Part of it too is the stricter scripting and fanpage rules facebook has now. Back when I also had a farmville product, I had a couple of affiliates that would have sales spurts of over a hundred sales in a day. Curious I finally tracked one of their fanpages down, and they were doing some shady stuff to get the fan pages to go viral, like promising farmville coins for liking and sharing their page.

I'm still noticing the same type of tricks being used by current affiliates, but it's not nearly as effective. Plus I'm noticing that many links being posted to fan-pages any more are going straight to "hidden post" meaning no one can see it until an admin approves it.

But I think the main factor is just a bad economy. Which explains why more people are playing the FREE games but less of them are willing to pay out any money for guides.

Time to brainstorm some more money saving niches...

 

Interesting insights venrooy.

Part of my problem with Clickbank lately is that I have been late entering a niche. Unless a niche is evergreen, you really have to be in quickly.

Actually, I was in quickly on the E&A niche. The problem is, I was late in on the broader niche...

 

Lol, come on man it's so damn obvious the testimonials and story are fabricated. I'm not complaining about that as pretty well all CB vendors do it, just saying that I think the vast majority of people see right through it and that's why you're not getting conversions. 

 

You obviously have some preconceptions about CB products, you're entitled to your opinion. I disagree with you but I'm not going to enter into a futile debate with you about that. I doubt that I could change your obviously hardened (I think misguided) views. Moreover, I don't think it's appropriate in a Clickbank forum.

I do agree with you in the sense that I think the public are gradually being turned off direct marketing long format style sales pages. But this slow change over time does not explain the sudden drop in conversions in this niche (Zynga gaming niche). They are two separate phenomena. I believe that Zynga game players simply don't want to buy these guides for $27 anymore. Case in point, I'm running a small test and since dropping the price to $5 in a test of mine, conversion has already increased and I believe the $/week is up (too early to tell for sure though).

One trend I've noticed generally for Clickbank products is to create membership sites. I've seen this in gaming and other niches. The content is not really all that different but this could become a common trend in future.