Last weeks sales kinda sucked like a cheap plunger! What I’m doing now is looking at all the stats to work out what my conversions are, and I don’t mean just the sales conversions, I also want to get a guide as to where my conversions are at for my opt-ins too.

This is a basic outline of what I’ll be looking at…

The picture above displays the steps I’ll be taking to workout how many views an article gets, then I’ll work out the percentage of people that click on my links within my article, and then find out the percentage of viewers that actually make a purchase or opt-in once they have clicked on that link.

Finally I want to find out exactly what percentage of people that view my articles actually get to that final step of either making a purchase, or opting in to my mini site email list. For this step I’ll miss out the middle part which is the “Clicks” on my links percentage, and just go directly from article views numbers, to sales/opt-ins.

At the end of working this out I should have 3 values(as above) that will let me know my conversions for each one of my articles. What I will be able to tell once I have this info is how different articles perform when trying to turn viewers into possible buyers.

For the articles that link to my opt-in mini site pages Ill have to work out what percentage of people that do opt-in, eventually buy from my follow up email sequence. But the most important thing for now is for me to find out what article style coverts the best so I can use the same writing style for any follow up articles that I write.

You can work out so much information by finding out the percentage values of your conversions, and tracking stats in as much detail as you can. Then you can test ideas and techniques to refine it even further, and hopefully improve upon your end result which would mean more sales for you.

Next post: I’ll share my own conversion values with you;)

Following up from the first article sale came sale number 2 on Monday with a commission of $13.18. This second sale came from a different product than the first, and yet again it was from one of the products I did not really give much hope for. Shows you how much I know right;)

I now have two different products that both made sales via an article, so I entered phase number two of my plan which was to focus my attention and effort on the products that are selling right now.

I spent most of Tuesday writing 4 more follow up articles for each one of the products that made a sale. Each product now had 5 total articles including the one that made the sale pointing to the same product, only this time I focused on different keywords for each one of the articles I wrote.

To keep the creation juices flowing I then decided to round off my day by writing two more articles for a new CPA offer I picked up on Commission Junction. This CPA product is a lead generation offer that will pay me for every qualified lead I bring to the products site, who then submits an email and other information required for me to make that commission.

That took my total article count for Tuesday to 10! It was a lot of writing, and just more proof that it really does help to actually know something about the subject you are writing about.

I have a total of 63 articles now live at various article directories, however both sales came from ArticlesBase which seems to be my favorite site to submit articles to at the moment.

Over the next few days I’ll be tracking stats from the articles to see what kind of changes they bring if any. I’ll also bookmark and build some back links to the new cpa offer articles as well hoping to get them as many views as possible to promote this offer.

Last weeks total sales were $32.36, which is $167.64 short of the $200 per week affiliate challenge target. This week so far $13.18.

Yesterday right after I published my previous post, I went back to check my Clickbank account only to find a sale made! This sale did not come from an article, it actually came from an email broadcast to an old list that I left for dead. That will teach me!

But I guess you don’t really see how important a list is until you get results like that. It happened almost instantly as soon as I sent out the email!

Even though this sale did not come directly from an article, I can still show you where you can find your tracking id’s in Clickbank.

The most simple way to get to the transactions screen within Clickbank is to click on the colored bar right next to your earnings for that day…

Click the bar that’s circled in red, which will then take you to this next screen.

This screenshot shows you the time of the transaction as well as the date. But the important part is outlined in red, that just happens to be your tracking id(TID).

I used an id of AWEBLINK which was to let me know that it came from an  AWEBer LINK, however this would have been a pretty poor tracking id had I sent out many broadcasts to different lists for the same product.

But as this was the only email broadcast I was sending, and because it got a sale so quickly after I sent it, I knew exactly where it came from.

Had I been sending this broadcast to many lists at the same time I probably would have used AWBRLI4 as a tracking id, which would have let me know this information…

• AW = Aweber
• BR = Broadcast
• LI = List Initials
• 4 = Number Of Broadcast Email

If I made a sale from one of my broadcasts using the tracking code above, I would not only know that this came from a broadcast email, but I would also be able to tell what list it came from, and what broadcast number it was as well.

This would allow me to realize that this particular list my prefer a certain type of email content, so then I could modify follow up emails with a similar approach.

So a big lesson learned about the power of a list!

A new plan of action is now underway in this $200 per week affiliate challenge. From the picture above you can see my new course of action in planning stages, that picture represents the layout of a simple website that I will link to from my articles, with the goal of capturing the emails of interested prospects.

With my old plan I was writing articles for 5 separate products targeting related keywords in each one of them. In the articles I would use a target keyword as a link out directly to that products sales page via my affiliate link hoping to make a sale from then on.

However despite what I’ve read about “people needing at least 7 communications on average to become a buyer”, and “the money is in the list”, I failed to really try it out. So with this new plan I’m going to do just that, try and build a list of buying customers(hopefully:)

So Plan #2 Is Born

• The concept behind plan 2 is to pick just 2 products this time and focus on them. DONE!
• Build each product a simple site that contains and opt-in email list option for each. DONE!
• Continue writing articles as before(plan 1), only this time link out via keywords to the landing page. DONE!
• Write several killer content giving follow-up emails for each product that contain my affiliate links. DONE!
• Write 50 articles for each product.
• Build links to articles to push them up the rankings.
• Track EVERYTHING!

I built the sites yesterday and set up the Aweber account for each product, so they are now ready to be linked to. I then went in to edit some older articles to include the new link to my landing pages, and the rest of today will be spent writing more articles for each product.

Product Selection – How I Did It

From 5 products to 2 was pretty easy, I just dropped the products that I did not have as much knowledge about, which will probably help when writing all those articles.

The other thing I wanted as an affiliate for those products was something free that I could offer on my landing pages to get the visitor to sign up for. Once they hit the landing pages I could then use the headline and text on the page highlighting the free gift offer.

Then in the follow up emails I would place affiliate links within the content of the emails I send out, which I think will be a total of 10-15 emails in sequence.

One of the products is a Clickbank product, and the other has its own tracking and checkout system. I still have the articles for the other 3 products live, so I will be able to compare results over time.

Anyway I’m off to spend my Saturday writing more articles for my products. Have a good weekend!

]]> http://www.flopidle.com/856/affiliate-challenge-plan-update/feed/ 0 http://www.flopidle.com/821/200-per-week-affiliate-challenge-2/ http://www.flopidle.com/821/200-per-week-affiliate-challenge-2/#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:43:23 +0000 admin http://www.flopidle.com/?p=821

Still waiting for that first sale in this affiliate challenge, if I had to pay bills doing this I’d be living in a tent! But not to get discouraged I’ll just increase what im doing, more articles, more niche blogging, it’s a lot of writing but the more you do it the easier it becomes.

A good sign today has been a big increase in traffic to a couple of my articles, I also checked the analytics in my Clickbank account to confirm an increase in my hops as well. At this rate surely even I can make a sale;)

For an experiment I’ve been using Wal-Mart classified ads, yes Wal-Mart are now in the online classified ads business, look out Craigslist right! For a couple of product ads I have received some decent traffic using the listings, no sales as of yet, but at least im starting to see some interest in them.

When posting a Wal-Mart Ad you have the same options as Craigslist, you have to select a region to post your free ad in. To narrow this down for me when selecting the best possible location to post in, I use Google Insights to enter the keyword for my product in the search box, then Google Insights will tell me by location the most popular places searching for my item.

Once I have a location idea for my Wal-Mart Ad, I then know where to post my listing, and this method seems to work pretty well for me. It’s also something you can do when using Craigslist too.

I wonder how much I’d get, and where I’d need to post a listing for my kidney?;0)

Not much of an update to bring you income wise yet, unfortunately its still at zero funds in this affiliate challenge but I’m hoping all the hard work going into this, will eventually turn itself around. At least then I will be able to show some progress!

I’ve been writing more articles as well as finding links to my other articles which will hopefully give them a boost in the search engines. So far my rankings in the search engines have been all over the place, one day I’ll be at #1, and the next day I wont even be listed.

I have also been trying to promote The Self Publishing System and The Kindle King as much as possible, I’ve been using forum signatures, Yahoo Answers, Wal-Mart classifieds and I’m about to try my second press release. My first press release was for The Twitter Technique and seemed to work out pretty well.

Persistence will pay off eventually I’m sure, I’ll keep writing as much as I can and hopefully will see some good results start to appear. If I do not really see any improvement closer to the deadline then I’ll have to move over to plan B. And I have no idea what plan B is yet;)

Still without a sale yet, but I have just completed my 20th article which made this weeks article goal! I’m actually finding it easier to write the articles the more I do of them, however it does help a great deal if you have knowlege, and are passionate about the subject you write about.

I found a CPA offer I will be matching to a few keywords that I can base more articles on, these keywords are long tail but still have a decent amount of traffic if I hit the top spots in the search engines.

One of my articles has hit number one in Google so im starting to see an increase in traffic to that article, which will hopefully mean some sales this week?

I now plan on taking an in-depth look at why this particular article hit number one, if I can get a method together that I can repeat over and over, then I just need to find a similar article/keyword/competition combination and repeat it again.

My main aim is to get a few consistent sales from an article, once this is achieved I will then create a website around that particular articles topic, and continue to write content for the website hoping to gain high listings in the search engines for the same converting keywords.

As soon as the website starts to make consistent sales I will then carry on writing even more articles, but this time rather than point links to the vendor page, I’ll instead point them to my site which I can then use to get customer emails and start to build, and sell to a list instead.

But for now I’m concentrating on getting my first sale in this ongoing project. Another 20-30 articles is my aim for this week!

13 articles live so far with  a couple still pending. Altogether the articles have about 136 views so far but no sales as of yet. My highest ranking for one of the articles is up at number 2 for the phrase match on that keyword, so I’m hoping to see an increase in traffic for that over the next few hours or so.

I’ll be writing more articles and gaining links to them over the course of the next couple of days, hopefully by Sunday I can hit about 20 articles this week along.

I’ll keep updating as much as I can!

Here is a sorry sight for your eyes, and to also show that I have some work ahead of me to make the new affiliate challenge I set for myself yesterday. That picture is from my Clickbank account, nothing to write home about huh:)

After I finished the post yesterday I went on to write 4 articles on some Clickbank products I had in mind. I picked the products based on the fact that they converted in PPC, and as I cannot use PPC anymore I wanted to give them a try using only free traffic methods.

I’m going to start with 5 products, 2 from clickbank, 2 from plimus.com, and a CPA offer via PepperJam.com. Again some of the products were selected because of a successful PPC campaign in the past, and a couple of others I researched into them and decided that they too had a really good chance of converting.

The articles will be based around keywords for that product, each one will be 100% original and written by me only. I started with ArticleBase and GoArticles because they seem to publish your articles so much quicker than EzineArticles, but I do have a few articles waiting to be published with Ezine. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Because I am aiming at writing a lot of articles, I wanted to make sure that the product selection I am going with is at least enjoyable to write about, I also went with products I had some general knowledge in as well, this will cut down on research time and any other fact finding issues.

Three articles went live yesterday so I’ll spend some time working on some back-links to each article, just making sure I spread out the link love over a period of time, and not bring them all in at once.

I made sure I selected the keywords correctly making sure there was not a great deal of competition, but also that the keyword did have decent traffic all at the same time. Long-tail keywords will be mostly used in order to try and grab some top listings in the search engines, so I can eventually grab that traffic for free!