Revamping an Affiliate Marketing Site
Between December 2004 and February 2005, I created two affiliate marketing sites geared to two very different types of products. I tossed them on the net with equal amounts of promotion and decided to see what happened. Today, I’m starting a new phase.
Despite the miniscule amounts of traffic both sites are receiving, it’s clear that one is at least capable of taking off and the other is languishing on the sidelines. I’ll leave the languisher alone for now. If it perks up at some point, I’ll pay more attention to it. But for now, I’m going to see how I can boost the one that shows some promise.
The reason I’ve picked this particular site to focus my efforts on is that it’s getting a very decent click-through rate at CJ, which makes me think it’s fairly well set for success, and the only thing really lacking is traffic.
Before I start making changes designed to bring in more traffic – and particularly before I pay for more traffic, or anything like that – I’m going to make some general improvements from the visitors’ perspective. I do believe that if you have a great site, you will need less traffic to score hits. Better conversion rates tend to mean better return rates. Why pay for AdSense every month, just hoping one of those warm bodies will actually meander all the way through your site to a sale, when you can make a few simple changes that seriously increase the likelihood that anyone stopping by will make a purchase, or at least bookmark you for future reference?
What it boils down to is, I’d rather have quality traffic taking up my bandwidth than quantity traffic. That’s less work for me – a better ROI of my energy and time. And it looks better to my affiliate partners, which means I may get special offers, or qualify to work with discriminating, high-paying sites.
Speaking of which, I just got accepted into a merchant program that turned me down when I first started building this site. I really wanted to work with them, and I’ll be rebuilding around some of their products. More on this later.
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