The Nicher

Being a beginner, and knowing that many, many people are trying to learn how to be professional affiliate marketers, I thought it would be helpful to post some of my stats.

 Now, all of my free time has been going into writing my blogs (I have quite a few), building my BANS sites, loading crafts onto eBay and Etsy, and crafting.  This should make it very clear that my affiliate marketing is only a very small portion of my time.  To be successful at it, you really need to devote several hours a day (at least in the beginning) to your marketing efforts.  I, however, do not advertise, and most of my sites have very little in the way of keywords, or, indeed, content, as my time is mostly spent elsewhere.

None the less, I’ve managed to turn a small profit entirely using BANS.  Since the program has now paid for itself in the last month, I thought I’d post last month’s stats.

So, how many clicks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a affiliate program? Let’s find out:

Store #1: 23 clicks = $27.55

Store #2: 64 clicks = $4.73

Store #3: 1 click = $0.54

Store #4: 19 clicks = $0

Store #5: 2 clicks = $0

 Now, that’s how many clickthroughs the stores got, not how many visitors or page views.

Store #1 had the best pageview/clickthrough/profit out of all the stores.  Nearly everyone who viewed the store clicked through, and several made purchases.  I was lucky enough to stumble upon a very, very tight niche.  Really, no one else is exploiting it, and that may be because there’s not much profit to be had in it.  However, that store is what pushed the edge in making my affiliate marketing account solvent.  There is very little content, merely a paragraph or two before each store page, but the niche is good.

Store #2 garners quite a few page views, and clicks.  Not as many purchases.  In fact, the page that collects the most search engine traffic is the one that I tacked on as an afterthought.  That page is responsible for all my traffic and profits for the site. I have no idea if the searchers purchased what they clicked on or not, but it doesn’t really matter.  The key is to get customers to click through, and then buy anything.  As long as the cookie is active on their computer, you get a cut whether they buy a yacht, or a deck of cards.

Store #3 I set up in anticipation of cornering a good niche.  And then I got bored.  That site is more or less empty, and so I use it to track my own purchases.  Since I get a cut of anything I buy through my own affiliate links, I like to keep my purchases separate- so I use that store.

Store #4 is a recent set up.  I’m not even certain if Google’s crawled it yet.  However, it’s my public store.  It’s my example of how simple it is to set up a BANS site.  It may not seem to be the most professional around, but it’s the first that I’ve paid much attention to- actually writing content for it, and designing an ok logo.  This is the store that hosts my About BANS page, which I plan to use to direct all interested parties to.  It also has a page hosting nothing but my own eBay auctions.  That’s also why I have so many clickthroughs on it, without any purchases.  This is the page I show friends in case they want to buy something of mine (since I’ll get a cut on top of the sale price).  This is the store that I don’t mind advertising around other marketers, because, really?  Who else would want that niche?

Store #5 was my very first experiment with BANS.  I set up a series of broad niches to experiment with the program.  When I deleted all my stores and rebuilt, this is the one I kept.  Mostly because I’d actually written content for it.  I don’t believe I’ve ever had someone purchase anything through this store, but that may change soon.

 See, I pay attention to the search terms people use to find my stores.  That particular store has 2 or 3 searches that turn up dead ends on my site.  I couldn’t figure out why.  So I did a little digging, and found that, strangely, what they were looking for isn’t found under the categories you would assume they’re listed under.  So I added sub pages using the correct categories and search terms.  The next time someone lands on my page looking for one of those terms- they’ll actually find what they’re looking for.  And if the price is right? I may just have a sale.

Bottom line? Well, there’s no magic number for page views or clickthroughs.  People are people, and no matter how much you pay attention to what they want, they’ll change their minds the second they’re asked to pay for it.  But in the mean time, 109 clicks produced $32.82 in profit for me. Here’s hoping to even more in August!

I’ve been checking my Commission Junction account on a daily basis, anxious to catch the smallest sign of potential profitability.

Well, this past week I’ve seen a huge jump in sales from my Build A Niche Stores. Or, one of my BANS stores, I should say.

Now, before you get too excited thinking that I’m about to tell you how to make thousands of dollars a day using BANS, you have to understand that my new total is $21.19. That’s for sales through Ebay, not any other affiliate programs including BANS own affiliate program.

I first started building BANS sites in December 2007.  I have about 1/2 dozen BANS sites all together, but only two have turned a profit.  And of those two, all but one sale came from just one site.

I posted about my first BANS commission on February 21.  That $3 commission was the sum total of 6 separate sales that happened to occur on the same day.  I didn’t receive any other commissions for over a week.  Then, in March- boom!

Note that I haven’t even touched my sites in over a month.  No tweaking, no new content, no sales pushes or advertising. 

Combined with the $44 commission for selling the BANS program to a friend, my new total of over $21 in sales commissions has made my investment quite small.  In fact, less than $32 left to go to break that magical number of $97.

I logged in to Commission Junction, as I do every day, to check my stats.  Not surprising.  I have a click through rate of 20% most days, and yet no sales.  But I checked the reports section anyway.  Lo and behold- a pending commission of $3.24!  Woot!

This is my first commission from BANS, and it’s larger than most first commissions (from reports that I’ve heard- I can’t back that up).  Granted, I’ve got a long way to go to reach payout, let alone make back my investment.  But it definitely gives me hope.  I think I have all of 1 paragraph of content on the page that produced the sales.

And then I logged in to Squidoo and saw that I’d earned another $0.83 from an Amazon module.  I’m not retiring yet, but what a great start!