Sometimes I read these sales letters for all of these internet marketing products (including my own) and I wonder how in the world these product authors became such instant successes. After all, the part of their story that you always hear about is the amazing profit part, right?
The truth is usually that these people fail a lot. Just like Thomas Edison did. Just like Michael Jordan did. Just like I do. (Don't you love the not-so-subtle comparison between me, great marketers and Thomas Edison?) 🙂
So, I thought it would be fun to tell you about a failed experiment of mine.
Michelle McPherson, Me and Chicken Coops.
Back in May, I mentioned that I was playing around with Automatic Article Submitter. In that article, I mentioned that I was lurking on Michelle's blog and decided to try a crazy experiment about Chicken Coops. Here is what I wrote:
About the same time I was playing with this software, I was also lurking around Michelle McPherson's blog reading about chicken coops. I liked that video so much that I decided it would be a perfect opportunity to test Automated Article Submitter.
So, I did some quick keyword research (I'm talking about like 5 minutes worth) and grabbed the domain www.buildmychickencoop.com.
OK — I know you are laughing. I can hear you. Yes, I have a chicken coop blog. No, I do not know anything about chickens. Just hang on for a minute.
I asked one of the awesome guys that writes for me to write some quick Chicken Coop articles, and I threw up a WordPress blog. I then asked another VA to install Automatic Article Submitter (AAS) and submit some articles to directories.
Well, it's been many months since that post. So I thought you might want to hear about the less-than-spectacular results.
Article Marketing Was A Success
As far as getting traffic to websites, Article Marketing is a success. No surprise there.
In fact, some traffic continues to come in due to article marketing. There is no SE Traffic to speak of (I really did not set it up for that). The end result is that I sent 3500 visitors to this site and got about 378 hops. That is about 11% conversion. Not bad.
Unfortunately, there were only 9 order form impressions and no sales. This is completely unexpected since the product has a gravity of 69. Not sure what is up with that.
Well, live and learn.
Below are some stats screen shots for the record.
Love to hear what you think about all of this….here are some theories on why this “failed”. What do you think:
- Maybe the product sales page actually stinks and the gravity number is “misleading”
- Maybe this article marketing traffic is not “buying traffic”
- Maybe 378 visitors to the sales page is not enough to understand the real picture
- Maybe this was all an evil plot by Michelle to distract me 🙂
Again, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Of course the bottom line is always to fail quickly and learn from your failures. Not sure what to learn here yet…
Regards,
Mark
Thanks for the sharing the results to date Mark.
I doubt the gravity score is misleading or that Michelle plotted an evil plan to distract you, lol! I would have thought that the number of hops you had would be enough to get a reasonable picture IF the traffic was targeted enough. So the best guess is that the article traffic isn’t qualified. Not knowing the niche or the keywords etc it’s hard to say though isn’t it…. Maybe these buyers are hanging around forums on self sufficient farming etc and or reading hobby farming online mags.;)
Good luck if you continue in the chicken coop niche, I’m sure in this failure there are plenty of clues on how to be more successful with it next time.
If you are not failing, then you are not trying hard enough.
There aren’t many IM’rs that get where they are now without alot of failure.
So tweek and try again.
My thought is that people looking for chicken coop info know that there is tons of readily available free info out there already, and see no need to pay for it.
The traffic is targeted, but it’s information addicted traffic, not buying traffic.
JMHO
AL
I also had some experience with traffic from articles, and I want to say that the most convertible traffic is the search engine traffic, though – it’s always interesting to experiment, cause experimenting we are learning!
Hey your lucky, at least your getting order form impressions, I usually don’t even get those LOL! I get about 100 hops per week or more to various products, but not a single order form impression. I don’t know what you think, but I think this means the “sales page” doesn’t convert OR the traffic is not targeted. I tend to believe it’s a sales page thing because why would non-targeted traffic even bother to click a link?
Your not alone 🙂
Miles Hennis
Thanks for the share. Can I ask how many articles your va wrote that you then submitted through AAS?
I don’t actually see any failure in this experiment… So clickbank didn’t work! What options do you have?
What about free Chicken Coop Info via email sign up… After a few weeks / months / whatever of chicken building courses they could start being offered chicken supplies, wire, latches, hinges, chicken feed. A paid forum… An all in one chicken coop kit!
It may not make you rich but you got a fair amount of hops and I don’t think this is completely over unless you don’t want to work on it anymore.
I think more importantly is you didn’t give up after your…um…failure. I really believe failing early and finding out what doesn’t work is an important part of building your business. The tricky part is not giving up after the “failures”.
I think it’s the failure that makes it a great success. You can’t call it so unless you had a couple of these so-called failures.
Its a constant routine of trial and error. Right now I have only 1 out of 6 sites generating any traffic to speak of. Article marketing seems to be extremely time consuming. I guess its best for those full timers.
378 hops. I wouldn’t say it’s a failure. You need to know the niche more in depth and get more hops to take your final decision. I will check the video and see what’s going on.
I was considering this niche as well.
Franck
Maybe turn that website into an adsense site or put chicken coop ads from ebay on there.