Time for conversions

[Frog]

I decided to make a site following the general approach shared here:

https://www.buildersociety.com/thre...months-tech-affiliate-site-follow-along.2573/

A few months ago, it has taken me some time but I have a site with around 40k words on it, mainly long posts. I have learned the importance of understanding your niche when doing this because I dont really know much about the niche I am writing in and that has made it harder work than I thought it woud be as the niche is quite technical.

Because I dont know the niche so well my content has been quite general but I have taken care of the on page stuff and cross linking. For example, lets say the niche was remote control cars, the top sites are all posting reviews of the cars, the top speeds, how they respond and their experiences using them...... as they know their stuff.

My post are more of the - "Should You Buy A Petrol Or Battery Remote Control Car". It is almost like my content is all of the filler content style, perhaps not what is called in the above case study "money content".

Now I am getting traffic and ranking, I am in the top 30 for some really competitive terms and I am getting between 200-300 hits per day, I am running adsense on the site and making a few £100 per month but I am not sure how to take the site to the next level and sell remote control cars with such general content.

I think I can rank and I think I have created a site that google likes but Ive no real experience of the best way to monitize the site with affiliate offers. I could put a few banners on the site for the most popular remote control cars but would that be enough? Is that me relying on someone coming to the site and clicking the banner because they iike the look of the advert? Should now write some really long posts trying to sell a specific remote control car and say how good it is?

Is there a course or any recommended reading on this side of the game? I may not have taken the conventional approach here but Ive gathered some traffic and I am sure created a site google is fond of, now I need to try to add another channel of cashing in with it.

I have been reading around and read this:

https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/the-9-live-traffic-leak-case-study-start-here.360/
First lesson, crash course in on-site, for if the onsite is not good, the amount of traffic coming will not matter. Getting 1000 visitors a day to a site with no call to actions, or clear outlined funnel process would equate to just getting absolutely no traffic in the first place.

And feel like this is sort of what I have done.........

 

[Ryuzaki]

I could put a few banners on the site for the most popular remote control cars but would that be enough? Is that me relying on someone coming to the site and clicking the banner because they iike the look of the advert? Should now write some really long posts trying to sell a specific remote control car and say how good it is?

Getting people to the information content on the site and putting ads in high visibility places and hoping the visitor likes the look of the ad or the text catches their eye... that's how CPC display ads work like Adsense.

Could you replace those ads with banners for an affiliate product and do okay? Maybe, but you won't be getting paid per click, but per conversion. So if you only convert 5% of those clicks, the value per conversions needs to be 20x higher than the average CPC you're getting on Adsense. And that's just to break even.

A lot of that is out of your control too. You can't tell the affiliate offer to split test their landers better or offer you better creatives. Once the visitor clicks the banner and is off your site, all you can do is cross your fingers. That's with general info content because the buyer has less buying intent. They are higher up their own funnel.

But if you write content that captures traffic of visitors who are deeper into their own buying funnel, where they have an idea of the product they want but need validation, or want to see a top 5 list of the best options, etc, or even closer where they're looking for a coupon, then you'll have a much better conversion rate on an affiliate offer.

You can't simply publish content and slap affiliate offers in there. Adsense works like that on sheer numbers and the fact that you're asking very little of the visitor. All they have to do is click once and you get paid. On an actual offer you're asking for them to investigate, commit, pull out their debit cards, wait for shipping, etc. YOU have to coerce them with actual sales copy, not informational content, if you want a decent conversion rate.

Don't feel like you can't rewrite your competitors deeper content and link to it from you 'filler' content. And then the same with some reviews or top lists, and link to it from the 'deeper' content. That's creating a sales funnel where you educate the buyers and push them along. Eventually you might think about hiring someone more knowledgeable to write, if you're not willing to learn more deeply about it yourself.

Good luck with this. You've got a great foundation going it sounds like. Getting to a few £100 per month is no easy feat. It gets easier from there.

 

[Jasper68]

Yeah, nice advice, and useful for me right now too.

I did ok with Adsense back when MFA sites were all the range, nothing crazy, $3k per month ish.

I still intend to use something of that model on my new site. Lots of informational content that can make me money from ads when the traffic is high enough, but all of those funneling into buyers guides and large review posts. I think of it like a satellite, money posts in the middle with info post all bringing in traffic, getting some ad clicks for those that aren't buyers yet, and funnelling the buyers to a place where I can get them deeper into the journey, and hopefully sell them something.

Also, there are so many more informational keywords out there, that are by their nature, not very competitive, it seems a shame to skip them.

So my revenue streams will hopefully be a mix of ads and product sales.

Sounds like you just need to add some buyers guides in and do sum of dat funnelling shit :-)

Good luck