Traffic Strategy Shift

I guess I'm a slow learner. After all of this time, I should have been at this point long ago. Maybe I was nostalgic for the old ways... or maybe I just wanted to believe that the old ways were still good enough. I had finally started to get the hang of SEO so I started to put all of my eggs in that basket.

Big mistake.

Now my two main sites are hurting on the search engines. As far as the infoproducts are concerned, I HAVE to start getting traffic from other sources. The goal now is to reduce the dependence on search engine traffic to less than 25% of the overall visitor flow.

Here's how I'm going to do it:

Affiliates - I've already started to actively recruit affiliates for my main product. Rather than wait for them to come to me, I'm going to them. If they have a site that's even remotely similar to the niche, I'm going to contact them. Even if I can get on 10 decent affiliates who could make a sale a day for the main site, that would be $140/day.

This means that I need to upgrade the affiliate center for the site. I created 3 swipe files last night for an affiliate that I need to add to the affiliate center. I will also have some banners created.

I will do the same process for the relationship website. I will be approaching sites in the relationship niche and trying to recruit them as affiliates.

Going back to the main product, I also realized that I can use other vendors in my niche to my advantage. I'm working on a way to give affiliates of other vendors a bonus that they can give to buyers of the other vendors' products. That bonus could be used to get the buyer onto type of buyer's list for the affiliate - a list that will have autoresponder messages I created that direct the buyer to my product using the affiliate's link.

I'm still working on fleshing out the concept but I think it will work. I'm not sure how to go about doing that for the existing relationship product, however, there are possibilities for the new product.

I would really like affiliates to make up the majority of the traffic.


JV - I've talked about it a little bit already but I want to start creating products that will easily integrate into the marketing of established Clickbank vendors. This will let me jump right into making sales without an outlay of money on my end.

I've also already started contacting vendors in similar niches that may be open to cross-promotion. So far only one has responded and he was not interested. Even so, it would only take one big vendor to make the effort worthwhile.


YouTube - I already have a number of videos on YouTube for both sites. I need to find out what can be done to get more traffic using them. Also, I'm going to approach YouTubers with established videos to recruit them as affiliates.


Pinterest - I've assigned one of my workers to study a guide I bought on Pinterest. She is going to develop a strategy on how to start getting traffic from the site.


Guest Posts - For the relationship site, I'm going to start trying to do guest posts on established blogs. Everything listed here, this is the part that I'm most apprehensive about (and therefore, the on I've done the least for so far). I know that guest posts can send tons of traffic to a site but the prospect of writing articles for someone else isn't very appetizing. I just need to get over it.


Banners on Niche Sites - Some site owners will be more open to plain advertising rather than becoming an affiliate. For those, I will try to get banners on their sites.

With this strategy, my traffic sources should be diverse enough to keep algorithm changes from hurting the infoproduct side of the business. Now I just need to do it.

Whoa!

Every once in awhile, you get hit with something that leaves you stunned and unsure about what to do next...

That's where I am right now.

In the last few blog posts, I've talked about the incredible (apparent) rise and fall of my relationship product. Until this point, I had theories about why the sales suddenly disappeared but I didn't have any concrete information. My suspicions ranged from blocked emails from my autoresponder to broken sales links. It was not until today that I actually sat down and compiled the data from Clickbank and did a real analysis from that end.

It's amazing what happens when you have data in front of you and the tales that it tells... Data just does not lie.

According to my Clickbank sales and my Aweber info, from 2/1/2012 to the present:

• 50% of the sales came from people who opted into my list from content on the website
• 33% of the sales came from non-subscribers (basically 1st time exposure to my product)
  
• Only 2 sales came from paid traffic subscribers!
• No sales were generated from 7Search or Bidvertiser
• Sales were coming in every other day until 2/18. This date coincides with a drop in rankings for content across my website and also a change in the optin pages used for MSN adCenter traffic.
  

This information leaves me a little sick to my stomach, literally. It means that there has suddenly been a shift and traffic from MSN is no converting as well as it used to. From 10/1/2011 to 2/1/2012, only 42.9% sales came from organic traffic. Since 2/1, we are looking at 83% sales from organic traffic! While some would say that the silver lining to this is that organic traffic is free, the reality is that organic traffic from the biggest search engine is completely unreliable.

I'm left to contemplate what can be done about this situation. The first thing that I will do is switch back to the older optin pages. While their optin rates may have been lower, I believe the videos actually worked to pre-sell prospects on purchasing the product later. The current optin pages do not pre-sell at all. I will watch this to see if it starts to bring sales in from MSN. Something happened to make MSN less profitable. I'm hoping that it boils down to the change in optin pages. I changed the optin pages around the same time the sales evaporated.

The next thing is to figure out how to get traffic to the site without relying on the search engines. The traffic is good and it converts but I can't base whether or not I can pay my bills on how Google feels from day to day. That's a fool's game. So far, efforts to get affiliates have not panned out. However, I have started looking into doing guest posts on other blogs. We will see how that goes. As mentioned in a previous post, I am also creating a new product specifically for getting JV traffic and sales.

Meanwhile, my employees will continue to work on the SEO side of things to hopefully get the site's pages back into the top of the rankings.

Oh, the frustration!

I'm Engaged!

After a little over 5 years of being together, I proposed to my girlfriend last Monday in Puerto Rico. Thankfully, she said yes=)

She has been my biggest support with the business. Even in the times where I was ready to give up, she was there to help me keep going. I couldn't ask for a better girl than her.

While the personal life has been great, business has not. The end of January and the beginning of February were incredible. However, everything has tanked since then. I can't even describe how frustrating it is when it looks like things are turning around and they begin sliding backwards.

Info Products
The relationship product has inexplicably stopped making sales. I'm actually getting more optins to the autoresponder (AR) sequence but no sales. There was a period where the sales were coming in every other day in the least, but there have only be 2-3 in the past 3 weeks. It's very strange.

I thought that maybe the addition of the html to the email messages in order to track open rates may have been the culprit. However, I have since removed all of it and there has not been an increase in sales.

I just changed one of the download pages for the free report to see if that helps.

I'm also looking into getting traffic from sources other than Google for the relationship site. I'm going to try blog comments on the popular relationship blogs to see if that helps. I am also creating a product that will work well for other relationship product vendors on Clickbank. My hope is to get them to incorporate the new product into their AR sequences. With the amount of traffic they receive, it would mean a huge boost for me to get them as affiliates.

My main product has fallen out of the top 20 results which means that there's very little money coming from that end as well. In order to combat that, I've started brainstorming on niches that would have customers who would be interested in my product. I made a pretty decent list of Clickbank vendors and have already started contacting some of them about doing a JV. Hopefully something pans out there.

Lead Generation
The lead generation site has not received any leads since the one a few weeks ago. The site has been bouncing around Page 2 and 3 in Google. To start seeing results, it will need to make it to Page 1. We will see how things go.

7 Years Today!

Yep, today marks the 7 Year Anniversary of the Business!

Things are so incredibly different from when I first started. Looking back, my mistakes and my victories are quite apparent. I would have to say the biggest mistake was not building lists for every niche that I was in. I was in so much of a hurry to try to make the sale, that I missed out on a huge opportunity almost every single time.

It took the near collapse of my business to make me recognize the importance of building lists.

I think what I did right over anything else was creating my own products. Lead gen may turn out to be huge, but right now my products are bringing in the revenue.

Another mistake is in choosing markets and products. From now on, I will create products that will easily integrate with the lists of other infoproduct owners. This will make JVs easier and will eliminate the thing that has been my biggest hurdle - traffic.

The biggest thing that I did right, though, was not giving up. Seven years and I'm still not where I want to be in terms of income. However, I am doing this full time now. There is only one person that I met when I started this game that is still in it. That says a lot.

I think that things are going to continue to improve with The Business. Yes, there will still be ups and downs (this past week was especially bad) but that is just the way things go=)

To another 7 years and to more profits!

Amazingly, I did something else HUGE today. I'll have more details in a few days.

First Lead!

Lead Generation
The first lead for my lead generation site came in early yesterday morning! I contacted a few businesses yesterday and I'm currently waiting on a response from them on getting sample leads from me.

The site is still sitting at #15 for the main keyword so I expect the leads to come in as a trickle.

This is exciting, though. I would have to say that of all of the sites and concepts I've built, I've been the most patient with this one. It looks like that patience may pay off soon.


Info Products
I completed work on the affiliate tools page for the relationship product and emailed a number of sites that were highly ranked in Google for several keywords. We will see how things go.

I Need Affiliates!

Info Products
The relationship website is making moves and I'm rolling with it. This week, I've been focusing on preparing the way for affiliates to promote my product. I had one of my employees make a list of the top 12 sites for a number of keywords that have generated PPC sales for me. Once everything is ready, I will email potential affiliates to see if I can get some on board.

So far, I have:

• Started the affiliate page. It has banners, link creation, and links to YouTube and Ezine articles I've created that affiliates can use.
• Set up the affiliate autoresponder. I may make a custom image for it rather than the boring one Aweber provides.
• I've created a separate salespage just for affiliates that incorporates an exit pop up page. This page has a squeeze page for the lead magnet I created so affiliates can benefit from my autoresponder messages even if they don't have one themselves.
• Crafted the email that will be sent to the potential affiliates.
  

I have an old PDF that was put together back when I was part of The Edge that talks all about getting affiliates. I will have to break that out and make sure to hit all of the points.

The first goal is to reach 7 affiliate sales per day. That would equate to ~$105 profit per day from the affiliate traffic.

I have also spent the last few days updating my tracking links. The data is so valuable and I was too lazy to do it right the first time. "There's never enough time to do it right but there's always enough time to do it again," is what my Dad says. Now, I should be able to see open rates for my emails in Aweber, as well as know where each sale is generated.

MSN has been acting funny lately. Ever since I set up a new set of Website Optimizer split tests, my traffic from MSN adCenter has fallen to a trickle. I will call them today and see what is going on.

I have also developed an idea for a new product on the relationship site. I will start fleshing that out after work on the affiliate tools and the buyer's autoresponder sequence is complete.


Lead Generation
The lead gen site has not produced any leads yet, however, it still has not broken into the top 10 on Google. The employees are working on building links for it.

I have been tempted to try another, less competitive market for lead gen. However, I've been pretty good about staying focused so I will sit tight for now.

January Was Good

Last month was a good month. There was revenue flowing in from all parts of my business, including parts that I had not actively marketed in a while. I honestly believe that the tithing was the key. I have an entire blog post about it that I wrote in January.


Info Products
January also showed glimmers of just how much revenue the relationship product can produce. For example, on Jan 16 there were 4 sales of the product for a gross of $164 in addition to the revenue that came in from the other sites. I know there is a ton of traffic out there for this niche, it is just a matter of tapping into it.

I also did a number tests and tracking last month and found some very interesting stats:

• Exactly 50% of the Customers Bought on the First Message/Freebie Download Email
• 7.14% of the Customers Bought on the Second Email (Links to a video I created with tips for them to use)
• 7.14% of the Customers Bought on the Third Email (Also links to a video I created with tips for them to use)
• 4.76% of Customer Bought on the 11th Email (Soft Sell)
• 61.9% of the list was built with paid traffic.
• Salesletter converts at 4.26%!

There are a number of interesting things to take away from this:

1. There is a conversion gap in my autoresponder sequence between message 3 and 11.
2. Another paid traffic source is probably in order to get revenue up. MSN just doesn't have any volume.
3. Half of the conversions happened before visitors even really entered the sales funnel! It may be time to start approaching affiliates=)

This month, my focus for this site is on traffic and conversions. I've already set up some new test for the optin landing page and I have some results that I'm trying to verify as far as which salesletter is best.

I'm also working to fill the conversion gap in the autoresponder sequence. Initially, I was going to overhaul the entire sequence but I think that a lighter touch is in order. Instead, I'm going to work on tweaking the existing messages and adding some more hardsells into the mix.

Lead Gen

The lead gen site is making its way through the SERPs. On last check, it was #15 for its main keyword. My employees are building links to the site to help push it along. Next time, I believe I will go for a more "niche" version of a lead gen site. This one is very general.