Considering My Clickbank Sales: Some Theories and Guesses
Thursday, June 3, 2010 17:31In a recent post, I noted that I saw a big drop in ClickBank sales between March and May. Many others at digital point and elsewhere have also noted a similar decline in sales and have put forward theories ranging from this being a regular seasonal slump, to larger economic factors, to blaming clickbank tracking issues. I decided to take a closer look at my sites to see if I could figure anything out more specific for the drop of sales I was experiencing. But before I start, I should warn those of you who find statistics to be boring or overwhelming that this will likely be a long and boorish post. However, as I mentioned in one of my first posts for this blog, tracking and analysis is an important part of my overall plan. And I’m guessing there are also others out there who are like me who really dig this kind of stuff!
So, to start: I have guessed that in addition to the factors mentioned above, some of my loss of sales may be a result of my switching from using article (bum) marketing methods to relying on organic traffic from Google. This is because I believe that some of articles may have been targeting stronger “buying” keywords – although I also had some doubts about this, since I often targeted similar keywords both in my articles and my websites.
To start looking at this issue in more detail, I created a summary comparison of sales data from March and May:
What I learned from putting together this graph is that after refunds, I actually only had two more sales in March than in May. However, although my hops increased a bit over the past couple of months, my conversion has dropped pretty dramatically. Finally, I can see that the amount I earned on average per sale also declined quite a bit.
Now, other people have been complaining about a drop in conversion rates for the past couple of months and there has been some suggestion that this may be because people are still looking for products online but are less reluctant to purchase right now. I’m actually not completely sold on this theory (see below), but it may be that people are also more willing to purchase cheaper products right now. If I look at what products that sold these two months (coded, of course), here are the results:
As you can see, in May all my sales were of products under $30. However, before I concluded that this has something to do with economic issues beyond my control, I needed to take a look more closely at the performance of the different sites represented above.
First, I considered my best performing ClickBank site for the products coded CBP1 and CBP2 (this is a review style page where I sell review both these products). Now in March, nearly all my traffic for this site was coming from article marketing methods (the site itself was set up in late December/early January). In April, however, I took the #1 spot for one of my secondary keywords that has over 5000 exact searches a month. I thought at this point I could just sit back and let the sales roll in, given the amount of organic traffic coming to the site daily from just this keyword and I stopped article marketing for this site. However, as it turns out, this keyword does not convert nearly as well as the primary keyword that I was targeting using articles. Also, as a secondary keyword I’m targeting, it directs the reader to an interior page first and then to my review landing page – resulting in quite a bit of leakage.
So, despite an overall increase in visitors and even hops for this website, sales have remained about the same – although it was certainly nice to be earning those sales from organic traffic instead of bum marketing methods. I’m now moving up in ranks for my primary keyword as well (currently at #7 on page 1), and this keyword gets 18,000 exact searches a month. I expect that once I get to the top three for this keyword, that I will see a significant increase in sales – if my theory is right about this being a better “buying” keyword. (Hopefully we will find out soon!).
If I take a look at my website for the product coded CBB, I see a similar pattern. This is actually my oldest ClickBank site (built last September), and it was sandboxed for my main keywords shortly after being built due to some very aggressive backlink building I did during its first month. Although the site remained indexed and I received some daily traffic from various long tail keywords, the site disappeared from the first 700+ results for the primary keywords for around six months. (I might add this is my only experience with ever having a site “sandboxed”. I do see a lot of dancing around for most of my websites, especially after building profile type links, but I have never had any other site disappear for months for specific, targeted keywords in this way. I think this was the direct result of my building hundreds of links to the site during its first couple of weeks of existence – something I don’t do anymore).
However, rather than giving up on this site after it was sandboxed or building a new site, I decided to focus on article marketing methods until my site came out of the sandbox again. This was a good decision as I was able to get a couple of EzineArticles into top slots on page one instead for my main keywords, and the site was reliably producing two or three sales a month up until April (which at $33 a pop, was pretty nice). In April, however, the EzineArticles finally slipped off of page one and around the same time, coincidentally, my site reappeared for my primary keywords again (originally reappearing around #350 or so in the results). Instead of focusing on boosting the articles again, I started building more backlinks to the website and I am currently in spot #74 for one keyword and #105 for the other. As you can see, there were no sales last month for this site, but hopefully I’ll get this site onto page one in the next month or two for my main keywords, and those sales will start coming in again (I already know the page converts from my article marketing experiences).
Finally, I see a few random sales from sites I built in February and March that initially ranked high due to their newness and that have now slipped back in the results (which is pretty natural and expected). This is actually promising to me, since it suggests these sites can convert once I get them up in the ranks again. However, there are also a few sites that are not converting at all (yet), and these are also contributing to my lower overall conversion rate. I currently have 15 clickbank sites set up, most created in the past few months, but only about half are converting so far – so I may need to do some more reading up on creating great landing pages or be more careful in my product selection.
So, in summary, I conclude that although there may be some seasonal and economic factors contributing to my decline in sales and the average amount earned per sale, I can chalk most of the difference up to individual site performance, my marketing methods and the keywords targeted through these methods. Thanks to all those who offered feedback and suggestions in past comments as well – which certainly helped me with this research. I may, of course, still be off base with my analysis, but I do feel I have a better understanding of things at this point.
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Peter Thomson says:
June 4th, 2010 at 1:52 am
Wow, that was a well written article. It just goes to show taking action and methodically tracking really pays off. Glad the Article marketing is really helping
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Carrie says:
June 4th, 2010 at 5:47 am
Totally dig the analysis! Makes you realize that getting sales/clicks is alot more complicated than just ranking and getting traffic. Thanks for sharing!!
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Michelle Reply:
June 4th, 2010 at 7:28 am
Carrie – Thanks, and glad you enjoyed it.
Peter – Welcome. The article marketing has had pretty good results, but I’m actually not to keen on continuing with that method as I much prefer getting organic traffic from Google. Still, when you first set up a website, it can be good way to generate both traffic and backlinks while you are establishing yourself in the SERPs.
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Ruth - Web Career Girl says:
June 4th, 2010 at 11:47 am
Wow I am so impressed with the way you analyse your sites. I guess it shows that, although you might have some tweaking to do, there is still hopefully a lot of potential with Clickbank! I wish I could analyse my sites like you do, think I need to get better at that side of things, and realising why things convert and why they don’t.
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Meka says:
June 4th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Wow you are so organized. I think it really pays off to be organized and keep track of everything. I feel that you will really improve greatly since you try to analyze what is going on and take it from there. Thanks for sharing as I have learned a few more things.
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Michelle says:
June 5th, 2010 at 6:33 am
Thanks Ruth and Meka. It’s a pretty small “sample size”, but I still think it was a useful exercise.
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JamestheJust on Elance says:
June 6th, 2010 at 11:30 am
zzzzz….whoah! That was SO BORING.
Just kidding – I think I need to frequent your blog way more often – your tone in this article, approaching the biz as a biz and not some knee-jerk reaction or Chicken Little sky is falling and Googl3 hates us mentality, is a very fresh read.
In reading your post, I think you just articulated what I found by pure accident on Commission Junction:
1) Create a landing page (my goodness, I’m using the XFactor template for this — ew! — with a few mods to the CSS so the links and text stick out a bit more). Write Sales Copy…<–missing ingredient to most IMers…
2) Find a product that is a) needed, b) competitive in its own right, c) actually its own niche…(unnecessary, but this was what I did).
3) Bum market…in my article marketing, I presell.
I'm pretty familiar with sales, so this part comes naturally for me (having helped build the family biz to a local behemoth from door-to-door marketing). Every other IMer sees only the value in the backlink, so any junk article will do, just get published and spin the PLR and move on…
…wrong, imho. At least, so long as you're marketing for a particular product, you might as well sell all the way. I learned this method from my fave Elance client:
1) Define the problem ("Got acne?")
2) Give solution at close of article (in a general sense, so the reader *wants* to click the links to your landing page or Web 2.0 property for more info)…
3) Build momentum to your landing page.
It's why I had two months of $600+ from one product, and the reason my sales for this site started out in month #1 at $325…article marketing. All thru UAW, too!
Thanks for your analysis, and I definitely will be visiting more frequently to see your findings, it's why I almost exclusively article market.
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JamestheJust on Elance says:
June 6th, 2010 at 11:34 am
Sorry for being so long-winded, Michelle.
I did want to point out that I did all my bum marketing about 90 days ago, I think if I made more landing pages to that site, with more marketing, I’d get more sales (not sure why it wouldn’t). So, it is as active or passive as you want it, depending on your goals.
It’s also why I intend to use more than just UAW, will be using Article Ranks and My Article Network, as well as Press Releases to see what happens.
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Michelle Reply:
June 6th, 2010 at 11:52 am
Hi James – Thanks for your comments, much appreciated! I certainly shouldn’t give up on article marketing yet, as my results and your comments point out. Actually, given the recent changes in Google’s algorithm, article marketing might be an even better option (considering the PPC alternative, which I’m not really interested in). I haven’t checked yet to see how my EzineArticles are doing in the recent update – do you have any sense yet? I am certainly planning on subscribing to UAW soon (next couple of weeks), and thanks to your posts I have a better idea of how to move forward on that front. I’m also looking forward to seeing your results with Article Ranks. Like you and many others, I’ll probably be ditching SEOLinkVine soon – it simply isn’t putting articles out at an acceptable rate. Press releases… yeah, I need to do more of those too…
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JamestheJust on Elance says:
June 6th, 2010 at 10:57 pm
The thing that’s really exciting about press releases is that there’s a way to do them for free – but even the paid for sites aren’t really expensive. AND most of them allow you to keep your aff links in tact — that’s *what I’ve read* and I haven’t tried it yet, so we’ll see!
For that reason, though (aff links) I’m really considering AMA or MAN to add to the mix.
Re: EZA — actually, the sad truth is that my old hard drive w/all my PW’s is now getting wiped…had two Trojans and they did some damage. Can’t login to my old account, and when I checked where my articles were ranking, I couldn’t find them!
But I followed John XFactor on that note in the beginning: I didn’t SEO any titles or anything at first. Now I do KW research and try to relate the article to my niche, to pre-sell. What that means is that I have dismal rankings for most of my EZA/GoArticles/ArticlesBase articles…they were mostly not SEO’d.
Ah, well! Clean slate.
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Susan says:
July 26th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
When I first saw your blog a few days back, I had to laugh at myself. I had picked a very similar theme for my first blogging attempt. I’m actually kind of embarassed to post my link, because it is pretty pitiful compared to the wealth of information you have here.
I really love your site, your ethic and your determination. I will be following your site with great interest. The fact you have been at this only a year gives me hope that perhaps I’m not just a crazy dreamer. I don’t need to make mega bucks. If I could do what you are doing now, I would be so delighted. Even as just a supplement for what I do now. All the best and thank you so much for your excellent blog!
Susan recently posted..Eureka Moments – Working From Home
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Michelle says:
July 26th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Hi Susan and welcome to my blog! Thanks for your kind comments – I just took a look at your blog and it looks really interesting as well. I’ll be stopping by regularly to see how things progress! I’m certain that with hard work and commitment you can reach the level I’m at – but hopefully more and faster too. It looks like you are well on the way already – so best of luck and feel free to drop me a line if you ever have any questions.
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Susan says:
July 27th, 2010 at 9:07 am
Thank you for your feedback! I was looking at the tool you used, the Micro Niche Finder. OOOHHHH! I so want that!. What a great information site! He gave enough information that I feel, on top of your recommendation, that it would be a worthwhile tool to have and use. Unfortunately at this stage, I can’t afford it. It will definitely be on my wish list! Besides, I have to tell myself, I must have some business expenses to offset my income! Otherwise the tax hit will be bad. You seemed to indicate, though that the adwords tool should be ok?
It doesn’t seem to have the same features, but maybe I’m just not using it correctly?
When I do buy that tool, I’m coming back here to buy it through your link!
Susan recently posted..Eureka Moments – Working From Home
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JamestheJust on Elance says:
July 27th, 2010 at 11:30 am
Michelle – have you used other keyword tools besides MNF?
I recall you mentioned SEO Spyglass – their Rank Tracker is, frankly, astounding.
JamestheJust on Elance recently posted..Free SEO Download – Save 999 Get SEO PowerSuite FREE
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Michelle says:
July 27th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
He – it’s funny that this post I wrote nearly two months ago suddenly starts getting all this traffic!
Anyway, James – I haven’t used Rank Tracker yet, but I’ve heard about it recently from a couple of sources and have been meaning to check it out. Thanks for the reminder. I did try out SEO Spyglass but don’t use it regularly. I should, probably, as it is a good tool. I’ve only used MNF and Google’s Tool.
MNF is working well for me and I’m used to it, so I’ll be sticking with it for now!
Susan – You can do adequate keyword research using Google’s tool – I used it for months before I purchased MNF – but it is a lot harder and it doesn’t have many of the features MNF has that makes things quicker and easier. MNF was actually my first IM purchase – I bought it as soon as I received my first paycheck from AdSense (once I crossed the $100 threshold), and although you don’t necessarily need to have a tool like MNF – it makes things much easier and ultimately more productive. MNF’s main competitor is Market Samurai, by the way, and many people swear by that tool as well. I haven’t used it, but it has some cool features like keyword tracking so you might want to take a look at it as well. Still, if you decide to go with MNF, I’d glad to have the commission!
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Susan says:
July 27th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Hi Michelle,
I’m not very good at this blog commenting! I hope I haven’t made a mess putting a comment where it shouldn’t be! I just got excited after reading your blog, looked for a place to comment and presto! *blushing* I just looked for my first post to continue the thread. Hope that’s ok? I think I will muddle along with the adword program for now, but I liked the video presentation, and the program looks easy to use. I learned a lot from those videos on the MNF site, so, when i can, I would like to at least give back. Especially since I am certain that the program will be a big help. I guess this is an example of “residual” benefits!!
Susan recently posted..Eureka Moments – Working From Home
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Ed says:
September 4th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
What you did not mention was the order form submit to actual sales ratio. Check out your analytics. Since March CB went from about 95% to about 70%. Then in June it dropped to 50% or lower. CB says that these are problems with people not having enough room on their credit card or not enough dough in the bank. 50% of the people? I’m thinking CB’s vendor bank is the problem. They apparently cannot accept payment from all banks so these sales are lost.
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Michelle Reply:
September 5th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Hi Ed,
This is interesting although I’m not seeing the same with my analytics. Actually, since I originally did this post my sales numbers have improved quite substantially with ClickBank and I’m now doing better than ever. I have noticed a slight increase in my overall submit failures, but nothing like the 50% you are reporting.
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