Fluctuation in sales??

Had a strange few days, yesterday only got 4 sales , today 11 ? Would it have to do with traffic flow on certain parts of the day??

 

A lot of factors play a very vital role with sales. It basically depends on the customer moods too. You see I have seen a lot of traffic some days with very few sales at the same time very low traffic with a lot of sales. There are days in the week where customers are willing to buy but at the same time the niche you are promoting also plays a vital role.

 

ahh true never saw it that way thanks for that

 

A couple days ago Clickbank reported some problems with sale receipts... and my sales were down for those days. Now today and yesterday are back to normal. I wish clickbank would just fix what's wrong with their tracking.

 

yeah thought something odd was happening aye! well hope they fixed it

 

Your sales depend on your promotion method.

I think with PPC, you can predict how many sales approximately you can make each day.

 

bl4ckman - I would agree that PPC is often more predictable than organic methods. I would also say that the more sales you typically make per day, the greater degree of accuracy you will have in estimating your general sales volume.

Case in point, someone who only averages around six sales a day might have 11 sales one day and 2 sales the next, (huge daily fluctionations and hard to predict) but will nonetheless average out with similar total monthly sales every month.

However, someone who averages 50 sales a day might sell 38 one day and 63 another day, which is a larger fluctuation in terms of number of sales, yet a much smaller fluctuation in terms of percentage.

I remember when I worked sales at Dell, we always had a paranoid bunch who thought the sales calls were rigged. They'd always feel like a conspiracy was amidst when they'd get 20 sales one day, but then only 3 the following day. The fact is, if you keep flipping coins (which are perfectly random), you're inevitably going to see patterns that happen as a matter of chance, and it's tempting to interpret them as having some sort of deeper meaning than they really represent. That's why it's very important to look at long-term trends when we analyze what works and doesn't work on Clickbank. Drawing conclusions too quickly can easily lead us to make miscalculations that are sometimes costly.

An example of this can easily be illustrated with adwords. There was an experiment done by an online marketer who ran two totally identical ads at the same time with identical key words, in the same PPC service, and after one week of running them, one ad produced a click-through ratio of over 4% while the other was only 2.8%. If the ads were different, he probably would have concluded that the ad with the 4% click-through-ratio was significantly better, when it was really just a random deviation. Therefore, You need large sample sizes, over longer periods of time, to draw accurate conclusions. Not just because of the laws of statistics, but also because there are real market changes that occur day to day. For example, on Sundays people might be at church in the morning, other days a higher percentage of people may be waiting for their tax returns, etc & etc.

In fact, if you really want to maximize your ROI or have a budget where you must ensure you always have good margins, it would help you to create a log of your sales in excel and analyze sales by category, day of week, day of month, time of day, source of sale, and any other factors you can possibly think of, because any single one of these factors can influence your sales. For example, movie products will sell much more quickly in the evening than in the morning because people are at home, and at work they aren't allowed or able to download movie software. People who know this will run their movie ads only in the evening, and thereby avoid the higher-risk of running a negative ROI in the morning hours.

Also, I'll agree that Wednesday and Thursday had under-reported sales! Look at the days before and after. I can't explain why I'd have such bad sales two days in a row. Coincidence? Possible. Likely? Not really. However, I would have called it a coincidence except for the fact that several other people are also reporting low sales for the same days and Clickbank admitted there were some issues.

Fri Jan 04 $218.43
Thu Jan 03 $48.84
Wed Jan 02 $42.0
Tue Jan 01 $127.79
Mon Dec 31 $152.18
Sun Dec 30 $183.80
Sat Dec 29 $172.09

 

Depends on how/where you market anyway

No conclusions with 4 or 11 sales anyway

 

Rep added, great post Falafelfro!

Understading customer behavior and sales cycles can be quite the task, some things to take into account:

* Overall internet traffic
* Weekends vs. weekdays vs. holidays/events etc.
* Economy
* Paydays vs. mortgage payments/end of the month bills
* Your promotion tactics vs. your promotion tactics (not a typo)
* The weather (believe it or not it's true, gloomy days vs sunny days/seasons)
* Time of the year vs. the products you promote
* Relevancy of the products you promote vs. the markets you attract on any given day(s)

All these factors are in effect, if you think your sales fluctuate and understanding why is hard - picture a walmart/shopping mall and the way THEY analyze these stats while trying to push xx xxx products at once. In fact I'm sure ClickBank as a whole does this, as does any large network/portal (meaning analyze customers behavior). Of course, the fact that there are hiccups at CB has it's relevancy as well, but I wouldn't let it bug you on volume of 4-11 sales or what not... This is when promoting various products in different sectors comes in handy, and you'll start to identify behaviour/overlap and learn to optimize your campaigns (turning ads off at times/places, focusing on stronger customer contact points etc.).

Best of luck to you
NC.