I Think I Crushed My Conversions!
If this is the first time you're reading one of my posts, "hello!"
My name is Tiffany Domena and I've been a member here for 16 months! Wow! I joined January 25, 2018, and started the website I primarily work on 1 February 2018 called How to Entrepreneur (you can check it out on my profile). I've been going thru the ebbs and flows of building my website traffic, building the necessary skills, learning the market, and everything else that comes along with mastering this business model.
I'm in the early part of a Youtube challenge where I've been posting one blog post, one Youtube video, and one WA blog post here. The challenge is more than I can do in one day, but I like pushing myself as hard as I can go. Instead of my original goal, I've been publishing 3-4 40 min videos on Youtube daily, 3-4 blog posts per week, and 1-2 posts here, but I'll probably be re-organizing that now that I see more of what I'm capable of. Plus, I've been getting a nice stream of traffic from Pinterest(about 40.1k Pinterest monthly views is equaling 400 visitors this month and over 600 shares) and I haven't spent ANY time there for at least one month!
I don't want to stretch myself too thin, but I may need to consider spending more time on Pinterest. People are obviously liking my content there, wouldn't you say?
My publishing schedule will probably go to 12 posts per month (consistent with the SAC Challenge), one video per day, and one WA blog post per week (unless I have more to say). I haven't figured out if I'm going to take more of my time and go back into creating Pinterest pins and networking there like I did at one point. I was doing much better there at one point with views and referral traffic. This month, I'll also be plotting out my email marketing strategy because my email list is picking up, so I need to put more attention on how I'll build those relationships thru email.
Overall, I continue working to build my website traffic by creating better and more helpful content for the readers on my site, sharing it where it's working, and I learn and get better and better. Recently, I've also begun giving more attention to my website conversion optimization because my website was showing signs that it's appropriate.
Scary Touchpoints in Website Growth
One of the scary things about growing is that sometimes you have to break processes you think are working. With conversion optimization, you have to potentially break something that's working in order to see if you can find something that works better, and split test.
The scariest part is when you watch your conversion rates drop, but you can't go back and make changes too fast without having sufficient data to prove legitimately whether your test is working or not. Many experts will say you should wait until you've had 100 clicks or more before saying you've conducted a quality test, and often times, they still feel you should have more proof than that--even for small tweaks like headings!
Unfortunately, when you make tweaks, sometimes, you'll see an instant surge upwards because you "hit the ball out the park" with your hypothesis, but other times, you have to wait and sweat it out in nervousness. The process of split testing and conversion optimization applies for small low traffic websites, for higher traffic sites, for ads of big and small budgets, and it can be painstaking!
My Latest Website Experiment
In a recent post, I said, I'd finally reached the milestone of 30 referrals in 30 days after 1 year of persistent effort, and I gave my tips. Despite my excitement about achieving that milestone, I weighed the pros and cons of direct linking to affiliate offers from my site, and I decided if I direct link, it'll be harder for me to take customers entirely thru the customer journey of my business. As a result, I decided I need to have more continuity, and build a connection before and after sending people away to affiliate sites, and I decided to use email marketing.
Some sites are more about the transaction and don't have the goal to build a brand or take the customer to an end goal, so direct linking can work well, but for me, I decided that doesn't work well with my business mission. My mission is to help entrepreneurs to grow a business: from idea to enterprise. Many of the affiliates I partner with or plan to partner with help execute that mission, so if I focus my effort on creating lots of content around a topic, I need to make sure I'm building the relationship in the middle--that's my opinion.
With that said, I changed some of my links to point to a landing page rather than direct linking, and for two days, I had 0 referrals. I was nervous, but I didn't have 100 clicks and not enough of a trial to say whether it would work better or not. Some affiliates have said when they add an email optin in the middle, they have lower clicks on the offer, but higher conversions because the serious people will do what it takes. The logic sounded good to me, but the experiment doesn't. Haha.
So far, my clicks have gone down in half and my referrals were 0 for two days then 2 today. Let's see how this test pans out...I'm sweating.
Some Things I'll Be Working on (And Considerations For Those Working on Conversion Optimization)
All in all, I'm still working on optimizing conversions to my email list. There are several steps to make sure it converts well including:
- Making sure I grab the majority attention of the people who come to my site
- Introducing them to a relevant offer to help them where they are
- Creating dialed in and relevant content that would convert to what I'm promoting
- Experimenting with pop-ups, ribbons, banners, and other conversion attention-grabbers
- Experiments with tweaks on my optin page
- And observing the results of each test until I have a conversion rate I'm happy with
If you're considering whether you should be focusing on conversions on your site, I've seen many experts say you shouldn't pay much attention to conversion related things until you're getting 200 or more visitors per day, and from my experience, none of my conversion efforts mattered until I reached that mark. Until then, I'd focus on getting traffic.
Now, it's Your Turn...
What are your thoughts on conversion optimization? Is it scary for you? What do you/have you done to improve conversions on your website? When did you start to notice consistent conversions on your site? Is 200 visitors a day about right? What experiments are you currently doing on your site?
Recent Comments
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Hi Tiffany,
I really enjoy reading your posts. You are putting really great work in to building out your website and sharing it with us. I am about to start sharing my progress here in WA although it is nothing huge yet.
This last post that you wrote about conversions is pretty much the point where I am also at. I am getting some traffic but nothing crazy yet: 40-70 organic visits per day, however I have this worry that something is not right with my landing page.
I do see some experienced/successful WA members use Email opt-in and few don't. I was told that you want to have at least 100 organic daily visits to your site before you start tweaking your landing page for conversions.
This sounds right but we always think we can do something now :)
What I was curious is that you posted before that you are getting 1 referral a day with direct linking and I believe you got some paid referrals too. I think if you are able to convert 30 free referrals in to 4-5 paid - that's already good.
Experimenting is always good I am also leaning towards email marketing because we can simply capture email addresses and send good follow up emails.
Thanks again for your detailed posts.
Thanks so much for following along Vasiliy! You're right that I had reached 30 referrals in 30 days and had 5 sales. It was good especially considering my traffic was something like 3500 pageviews or something like that. I can't remember now.
It's only gone up since. My traffic has been doubling. I think I'm hitting the avalanche everyone talks about.
On the other hand, I was getting 40 clicks daily to WA, so I was wondering, "Why so many clicks and only 1 referrals?". Do you see what I mean? That means a large percentage of my traffic was clicking, but a much smaller percentage was converting--that's when I decided that maybe it's because of the flow of relevance.
My site isn't about affiliate marketing. It's about entrepreneurship, so I hypothesized that if I could improve my flow of relevance, it would probably increase my conversions to goals I want. I still believe a large percentage may not come to WA because my site isn't all about affiliate marketing, but I can probably improve the conversion rate.
I also need to plan for the future of how to best serve the others (even those who WA won't be relevant for) who are genuinely interested in my mission "to grow a business from idea to enterprise"--that's where the email list will come in. I'll need to continue past affiliate marketing to create products and services that serve my audience, so an email list is going to probably be the best way to stay in contact.
Thanks for your well thought out comment. I appreciate your thoughts!
By the way, regardless of how big or small the results, it encourages others. There's a false belief about what's big and what's small in this industry. Making the big money isn't the biggest deal. The biggest deal is the discipline and helping others you put in that makes the money a byproduct.
Ok I see. Basically the task here is to really understand who are you visitors and cater to them in the most relevant way and most likely not from affiliate marketing angel.
I am sure they can be converted in to WA, you just need to test different approaches and this is basically what you are doing now.
You already have good data to work with since 40 visitors hit WA promo. Are you also using personalized WA Signup Link?
I am sure you are on the right track, just need to keep on testing/experimenting with different options and capture all this traffic coming to your site.
This is great info. I totally agree with you on this one. As I work more on my business I can see how much discipline it really requires and how much there is to learn about online marketing. But I am super excited because this stuff really works and it's amazing to be able to learn a lot about online marketing.
This hard work will certainly pay off. I will be sharing my work soon.
Thanks,
Yes. I have a custom signup link. Part of the problem is originally, I was creating content targeted at entrepreneurs broadly. I created legal reviews, accounting reviews, and so on. Now, when those people come, they aren't likely to convert to WA without something warming them up and explaining why.
Even with that, they still may not convert because they came to my site looking for something else. You know? I'd like to pile those niches into my site eventually. Right now, I have honed in much more on internet marketing content because I can see content relevance is so important.
You're right! Our hard work will definitely pay off big! Stats show huge growth in the # of internet users (some countries are growing more than 14% annually!), and I can see from raising kids how much more dependent people will be on internet content in future generations. Now is definitely the time to get in. It will pay off huge for our generation and those to come for sure.
Hi Domena, congratulation for your conversion rate!!!, you should be proud. On the other hand, I am not at this point yet but I like the try and error method. Keep up the good work until you find the right strategy.
Hey Tiffany
I enjoyed your post and learned a lot.
I still at the point where I need to focus my efforts on getting more traffic to my website.
I’m currently getting some conversions from my bing campaign.
Not great. But I’m positive that things will get better
Thanks for your informative post
All the best in your business
Jane
That's cool that you're getting some results with Bing! How long have you been running the campaign? Do you run the traffic to a review post on your site or a landing page?
Glad the post was helpful for you. Best wishes for you also.
It’s been a month now, part of my Bootcamp training.
I send traffic to my landing page for some ad groups and to my Review page for another ad group.
All my ad groups are for promoting WA.
I deliberately decided to use 2 different pages to drive traffic to, as a way to test which one performs better.
Honestly, I did this as an experiment because I don’t have any experience running ad campaigns.
I figured that’s how I will learn!
What do you think?
Hi Tiffany, You seem to be doing all the right things and getting results. I still need to post more regularly and also get started on videos, Alan
Let's do it! Haha. I'm just kidding. I know first, you have to start with a routine: however small or large that is for you. Then, you have to continue increasing the routine, so it's something you can handle. Set a goal and push yourself. You can do it!
I'm not up there in my traffic yet, to worry about conversions. That said I do experiment with social media a little, just getting my page active and a little notice. Sharing a post to a relevant group I'm in, minor things that gives me a few bucks in sales on Amazon. (For example, I'm apart of quite a few author fan groups, if i find one of that author's books is on sale, I do a post on my FB page and share that to the group. I used to share sales to the group BEFORE affiliate marketing, so I haven't changed my practice, just added a step, sharing to my FB page first).
I also experiment with memes and fun posts. Just to see what gets me engagement from likes or shares. So memes win, cute kitty pictures second, awesome book sales third, and random questions nada.
I'm also just growing my social media sites by posting regularly. It's just basic newbie site beginning.
Let us know how your experiment goes!!
Until I get a bit more traffic, I got to play around with other things. I am relevant to my niche, mostly, but also share fun stuff too. Just to be engaging.
Though I keep getting spam followers on Pinterest and spam messages on Instagram. So I'm definitely learning what NOT to do. Lol. Got an email even about building my Instagram followers, it hit the spam folder and I didn't even see it until I cleaned it out. It's a legitimate email, not a scammer, but it's definitely unsolicited spam.:)
Gotta do what I can while building up my website.
Your hardwork and persistence is something I really admire and it's nice to have someone like you in the community tiffany!
I suck with conversions right now but, I'm gonna figure it and hopefully start getting more people into wealthy affiliate so, this information that you're giving out to free for us is really appreciated.
Keep doing what you're doing and I'm certain you'll make it to Vegas by the end of this year.
Thanks so much for your encouragement! I'm pretty confident I'm doing what it takes, but it's always nice to hear that from a fellow member.
Hard work can be a lot of fun when you enjoy what you're doing. I enjoy this work. There are other options to make money, but for me, this is my favorite.
I look forward to seeing your success, and I'm glad the post was helpful for you.
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Tiffany, thanks for a very informative post. The funny thing is that the comment chain is equally educational.
Conversion rates - is my second favorite term. Reader experience is first.
I recently changed my focus to from my general entrepreneurial website to a site that is focusing specifically on blogger entrepreneurs and their ongoing needs.
Like you, I am trying to build a website that will a resource that people come back to instead of simply sending people off to WA and then never seeing them again.
So, I am watching your results with interest. Your Pintrest results sound great!
Starting tomorrow, May 1, I am going to start my own YouTube challenge.....
I hope you have a productive week with some upgrades to premium.
Thanks Sondra! Go for YouTube. I have to decide what I'm going to do about Pinterest. We're on the same page on so many levels.