Add Content to Battle Downturn
I am sticking with my plan for August despite the terrible downturn in traffic and sales. Instead of adding content and posting to Quora every day to get ahead, it now feels like I am doing that just to tread water! Hopefully everything will turn around and my extra efforts (compared to earlier this summer) will still bring greater conversions not just keep me in place.
My traffic is down but not terribly. It is basically back to what it was a few months ago. My sales however have plummeted in the last few weeks. I only got 2 sales in the last 15 days. I had 27 sales in the 15 days before that. Of course that was a high period of sales and this is very low so there is more disparity between those two periods.
I am still getting clicks through to Amazon so I know my links are working. I also used Amazon's link checker just to be sure! I am not sure why the Amazon sales are down so much but many Amazon Associates have been complaining about the same problem so it isn't just me! There were problems with Amazon's reporting in July but I don't know if that is still the case. People were complaining that they had sales that didn't show up on the reports! Some also said the report that you can download in Excel format showed more sales than the live report. Others who sell direcly on Amazon found other problems where Amazon was not showing thier listings.
I don't know if there is a problem with Amazon or this is just part of the summer slow down in traffic. In either case I need to just keep plugging away. It is easy to get discouraged and feel like there is no point. After all, if I still get traffic to my website and traffic clicking through to Amazon but can't get sales, then it feels like adding more content won't do any good. I know this is not the case however. I need to keep going. Adding more content will certainly help in the future. It will increase my potential traffic, help increase my Google rankings and if the problem is just a slow down of people buying rather than a problem with Amazon's reporting, then I need to give people more reasons to buy things!
Onward and upward!
Jessica
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I think August is slow in general but hopefully things will pick up next month. I personally have been swamped with trying to get my house ready to sell after Labor Day so this has been the least of my worries:)
Erica
Hi Jessica!
You are doing everything right, just stick with it. I think sometimes we get caught up in the peaks and valleys and need to step back and look at overall progress. Look at the past few months instead of the past few days and I’ll bet you will be very pleased!
Thanks for sharing.
Kyle Ann
I think back to when my kids were in school, and August was a month where I did less Amazon shopping--and I do a lot! We had to get school supplies and clothes, so I was out and about to our local retail stores a lot more. I'm betting that this is pretty typical for a lot of people.
My niche site where I sell Amazon products is still new and has very little traffic yet. Hopefully next year I'll have enough traffic to notice the slowdown and see if my theory is correct!
I believe that a lot of your slowdown is due to the holiday period. My telephoned rings much less in August, as to regard my off-line business, it's been the same for years, so I wouldn't be too concerned.
Enjoy your day.
Roy
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Thanks for sharing, Jessica.