I would like some feedback. I have owned LoftDog.com since 2001 and have tried my best to make money from it. The first time I developed the site I had over 20,000 computer related products and a few of which I had in stock in my brick & mortar store. I have not made money regardless of what I have tried in the 2 yrs I had that niche. I am now coming upon a year trying something a little more automated (ebooks and software)...atleast I don't have to keep inventory. But I have tried Google Analytics, Adwords and WebCEO which registered me to a dozen or more search engines. Can anyone give me some advice? Thanks, LoftDog
Yes but not much. Sept 2007 I got 28 unique visitors, Oct 2007...22 visitors, The most I had in a single month was 72 unique visitors. That may have been when I signed up on WebCeo. Thanks for inquiring.
Heya. I'll try to point out a few things for you. 1. Your site is positioned as a mall, and you are competing with sharks What or how are you positioned? Where do those products come from? What's your commission on them? Who is it through? 2. Your uniques are extremely EXTREMELY low. Great products will usually sell at 1-4% (meaning out of 100 unique very targeted clicks, 1-4 will buy). This is if you are promoting just that one product, or a handfull of proven sellers. All the stuff I noticed in your mall is... dated and cheap (sorry). Most of my affiliates and my own efforts generate 100's or 1000's of uniques a day, and even then it's tough to make great sales. Your first big problem - volume. 3. You have an old style 'make a membership first to purchase' gateway - this will not convert well for you ever (or until you reach a HIGH number of existing buyers, have a huge brand recognition, and are trusted across the world). 4. When you say you haven't made money do mean literally 'no money'? Since 2001?? I would STRONGLY suggest getting your hands on a trusted comprehensive guide to marketing/affiliate marketing/internet marketing. Even with an hour a day you should be able to generate a few hundred clicks easy by having the knowledge base that you lack right now. 5. Rather hard to make recommendations because chances are you are now emotionally attached to this, you've spent years and years with it, it would be difficult to rip it apart or scrap it to start over right? Detach any emotions you have - it's business there's no room for it I mean that in the nicest way possible and have fallen victom to it too. If I WAS to recommend anything, it would be to sign up to a trusted affiliate network, (CJ/CB/Azoogle) etc., scout for high converting proven sellers and put together a SMALL library of relative products either in a review format or in a mini-mall format. These are also digital products, they will have affiliate resources and guides to help you get traffic and learn the ropes. If you are already there and have invested in your site heavily through third parties and low commission paying malls--you will have a hard time continuing this way. Cheers I hope you have taken this in a positive critique manner as my aim is to help educate/give you some goods so take my advice and note with some salt Norb.
With information products the best method I've found is to use Article Marketing for promotions. I'm sure others may have different advice, but this is what I would do. A quick example using the first ebook I saw on your page when it loaded, "How To Build HTML" would be to write a few short but informative articles on HTML basics and including a link in the author's resource box at the end that points directly to the "How To Build HTML" product page. The link shouldn't seem like its selling, but rather use text along the lines of: "Learn more about How To Build HTML here!" If you create decent articles, and submit multiple articles like that to several good article directories you should see some results. Article Marketing isn't going to drive tons of traffic to your pages, but it will send very targeted traffic to them and that's usually pretty easy to convert into sales. Hope this helps and good luck.
#1 Reason.....I typed your Url into google search and it listed 7 sites with your link to it.....You cant just set up a site without sending it to all the directories and without marketing it. Promote your site more, get it listed higher in the search engine. Purchase google adwords if you have to. Good Luck Jason I just went and looked at your site. You dont even have meta tags it looks like. You should maybe start there. And change your Title so its easier to search for. Cause the ":: anytime, anyplace loftdog" that doesnt tell me what the site is about.... after you make your first sale I expect some commision...haha jk oh speaking of....check out CJ.com and maybe pay people a percentage for selling stuff for you....
No comment on search engines. I'm not a fan of SEO. I optimize it the same way the so-called "experts" do, and then I move on. Why aren't you advertising on a slew of other sites? If you are using adsense to advertise on other sites, what are the ads? Maybe you are going wrong there???
Awesome Advise....thank you for taking the time to give your feedback. I will try to update my inventory, modify a few meta tags, and advertise as suggested.
Meta tags aren't enough, you need real copy/content on the page itself. I'd slash your inventory and focus on niche products. For each product write lots of good content.