About half a year ago I started a blog about poker: holdemblast.com I admit, I did not write any new content after starting the blog and I did not promote it by participating on forums. However if I would have done this, it would take me too much time vs income with this conversion rate anyway. I sold one item on 645 clicks, 0.16% conversion rate. I read some other posts and read about retail shops converting better than pure blogs or rich content with relevant products next to it. Does this mean it's normal to have a 0.16% conversion rate on this kind of website? I am probably making big mistakes so any feedback is welcome.
My average convertion rate since I joined Amazon Associate is 0.86%. I use blog to promote the product. If it's true that the retail shop converts better, maybe I should try it too.
mine is 4% plus. I think the most important thing is to help your audience know why the product is good. Focus strongly on a niche market
First of all thanks for the feedback and advice! I almost forgot but I also had this site registered in Google Analytics. I checked the report for the same period and I had only 56 unique visitors! (most of it search engine traffic, some of one post I did on a forum) I double checked that it is recording all pages and it is! Traffic is showing up naturally distributed. Now if I get one sale with only 56 unique visitors, that's looking good. What I do not understand is how I get 645 clicks in Amazon with only 50 unique visitors (same period= 6 months). Also I only have product links, I guess the 10 product links in the Amazon report are correct but then again what about the other 635 clicks? Maybe Amazon reports all clicks a user does after entering through your affiliate link...
I think it mostly depends on where your traffic comes from and for what reason. My conversion rate is 10.86 for October (so far) and is almost always above 6% for a month. But most of my traffic comes from longtail searches...people looking to buy something specific. If you're site gets more general traffic and people just happen to buy now and then, I suppose the conversions would be lower.
My total conversion rate since I started using amazon is currently at about 4%, but so far this month I'm at 6%. I'd say your 0.16% is low, but not if you're not really doing anything to promote the blog.
Thanks for the info Phooey. I'm afraid I cannot agree. If I would promote the blog it would bring in more traffic, not improve the conversion rate. What I am still puzzled about is the 600+ clicks with only 50+ unique visitors. I tried to track with google analytics how many clicks I got on the amazon links with "site overlay" but it displays 0%, I guess because the links are an RSS feed so they change all the time.
Very true, but the traffic coming to a more heavily and successfully promoted blog is also likely a higher quality of traffic, so hopefully conversion would increase, at least a little. When all I was doing was letting an amazon banner sit in the sidebar of my blog I had a horrible conversion rate, certainly less than the 0.16% you're getting, but now that I've been promoting it more effectively and incorporating amazon links in to the content of my blog I've been doing much better.
also important is to know your target market. In your target market's perspective, ask yourself why would you want to buy? Or does your market have a desire to buy in the first place?
I am at 0.14% because I am advertising on multiple websites that really don't have to do with shopping.