How long did it take you to make your first sale?

[jwoody]

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I'm just wondering how long it took you guys to make your first sale through your website?

The reason I ask is i've just launched my first affiliate website (first website of any kind to make money) and within the first 8 days; shortly followed by another sale a few days later...

I've just hit my first 200 uniques and have made 2 sales. Is this good or is it terrible? The website has only been live for 19 days.

Really, im just looking for some basis of comparison.

[Ian Cunningham]

It's not so easy to say if that is good or bad, as you need to consider many things such as the cost it took to get those 2 sales, the profit from them, are visitors increasing etc...

If you are happy with your results and feel you can learn from and increase profit on this site and others, then it is a success.

Are you using PPC to generate those sales? If that is organic traffic, that isn't too bad at all for only 19 days!

[aaclapham]

One of my sites has been live since Dec 2005 and I think I have had about a dozen sales from people finding the site through search engines.

However I have targetted work colleagues and long lost relatives and sales are constant.

My hope is that I have a core base of customers and in time this can only grow from the search engines.

There is a girl at work that spends every dinnertime surfing my site with no intention of buying anything, so I guess 2 sales out of 200 is about average. It really depends what content is on your site - holidays are renown for poor sales and people like to surf for background knowledge but like to book on the highstreet.

[pricethat]

There is a girl at work that spends every dinnertime surfing my site with no intention of buying anything

Is she loved up with you or something, seems a very odd thing to do unless its got lots of handbags, shoes or porn on it.

[lowndsy]

A conversion ratio of 1% is pretty standard - I suppose your figures might change as you get more numbers in, but for now it seems you are on track - well done.

[dunklk]

If you've achieved the sales through organic listings alone then you've done well, especially considering you site's only been live for 19 days!

[aaclapham]

pricethat - Is she loved up with you or something, seems a very odd thing to do unless its got lots of handbags, shoes or porn on it

Yep - its the handbag web site

[gcmorris]

The number of sales you are getting looks quite good to me, but it does depend on the number of visitors to your site, and the cost (if any) of attracting the visitors.

As a rule of thumb, I suggest the 2% return applies. Less than 2% of prople of visit a web page are likely to click on an advert or a link. Of the these 2%, less than 2% are likely to generate a sale at the target site. This works out at 4 per 10,000 visitors.

If the quality of the web page is good and an advert is good and related to the content, or topical, you may get more than a 2% click through rate. Often, you will be struggling to get 1% click through rate. Please remember that some cookies will last for several weeks, so puchases that are made some time after the initial visit to a web site may generate revenue.

In my experience, making money through affiliates is not easy, unless you persuade friends, relatives, colleagues to use your site to buy products. This will at least verify that tracking mechanisms are working!

Graham Morris
www.admax.co.uk

[hirschnathan]

19 days, 200 unique visitors 2 sales!

Amazing. Most websites have the "sandbox" syndrome, and that can take 3-6 monts

Well done

[mike_01]

are they from organic listing or the paid visitors (PPC)....
seems pretty well if its from the organic traffic..

all the best..

Cheers,
Mike...

[pricethat]

As a rule of thumb, I suggest the 2% return applies. Less than 2% of prople of visit a web page are likely to click on an advert or a link. Of the these 2%, less than 2% are likely to generate a sale at the target site. This works out at 4 per 10,000 visitors.

I would suggest as well as many others here that this rule of yours probably belongs to you and your type of business but certainly not true for a lot of affiliate marketing people.

It depends how you are marketing but from ppc i would expect a clickthrough rate of at least 50% of people, if i do not get that then there is something seriously wrong with my marketing. From that i would expect at least a conversion rate of 3% - 8% variable depending on influential factors like best price, brand etc. Amazon is easy to get over 8% on targetted pages.

On an seo front it is a little harder to guess but from targetted seo pages (ie the ones you are trying to rank) from specific products i would expect a 10% click through rate with a 2-3% conversion.

Your figures above are alarming, i appreciate not everyone will click through from your page for one reason or another but by your own stats 98% of people visiting your site find nothing of use to them????? I know you can not get everyone to do as you want but if 98% of people that visited my sites walked away again after coming to the site then you have a serious issue that you would perhaps want to improve upon surely?

Conversion rates can differ from type of marketing, i would suggest that the stats quoted be taken with a pinch of salt, generic directory sites dont get so much of a conversion compared with targetted product or service pages. After a while you will get a feel for it, each product can be different too.

[jwoody]

It's not so easy to say if that is good or bad, as you need to consider many things such as the cost it took to get those 2 sales, the profit from them, are visitors increasing etc...

If you are happy with your results and feel you can learn from and increase profit on this site and others, then it is a success.

Are you using PPC to generate those sales? If that is organic traffic, that isn't too bad at all for only 19 days!

The traffic is natural (from search engines), I've yet to take out a PPC on the website.

I'm coming top of google for most products that are featured on the website; which is resulting in about 20 visits a day; which Im quite happy with considering ive only been live 19 days.

It depends how you are marketing but from ppc i would expect a clickthrough rate of at least 50% of people, if i do not get that then there is something seriously wrong with my marketing. From that i would expect at least a conversion rate of 3% - 8% variable depending on influential factors like best price, brand etc. Amazon is easy to get over 8% on targetted pages.

The traffic is natural, I'm considering a PPC campaign, but i've not much experience in PPC (as this is my first website designed to make money), so im currently reading up on it and experimenting.

[Stellar]

The traffic is natural (from search engines), I've yet to take out a PPC on the website.

I'm coming top of google for most products that are featured on the website; which is resulting in about 20 visits a day; which Im quite happy with considering ive only been live 19 days

How on earth did you manage to get a 20 natural visits a day when your site has only been live 19 days! My site has been live for about 4-5 weeks and it hasn't even been indexed by Google yet, so I'm relying on PPC to get my traffic

Anyway, as a way of a comparison.. I have also had 2 sales but with about 400 UV's.. so your beating me!!

[jwoody]

How on earth did you manage to get a 20 natural visits a day when your site has only been live 19 days! My site has been live for about 4-5 weeks and it hasn't even been indexed by Google yet, so I'm relying on PPC to get my traffic

Anyway, as a way of a comparison.. I have also had 2 sales but with about 400 UV's.. so your beating me!!

The first few days was really slow, but then I started to get abit of traffic from MSN search. Only over the past week or so have I started getting hits from google; and now im averaging on about 20 visits a day through search engines (yesterday I made 38 visits through search engines, but i think that must have been a flook day).

[Stellar]

The first few days was really slow, but then I started to get abit of traffic from MSN search. Only over the past week or so have I started getting hits from google; and now im averaging on about 20 visits a day through search engines (yesterday I made 38 visits through search engines, but i think that must have been a flook day).

Just done a quick check and I've now been indexed by Google. Lets hope I can get a bit of free traffic!!