Affiliate Musketeer

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve asked this question of both myself and others. I’ve seen it posted lots of times on affiliate forums and there seems to be a healthy consensus that will give you an answer of ’100 clicks’. That would seem about right..1% conversion rate. It also seems doable when you start out and I’ve kind of fallen into the same mindset without ever actually testing it. My new bar stools affiliate website launched about 2 weeks ago and has sent a total of 34 visitors to my merchants. They are all highly targeted, I hasten to add and, so far has not converted anything. Here’s a list of bar stool related search terms that referred users to my website today:

Search Keyword (via Google):
assembly instructions for bombo bar stool
85cm high bar stool
black folding bar stools
bombo bar stools white
country kitchen bar stools uk
gio bar stool
jack bar stool
john lewis bar stools
kitchen breakfast bar height
matilda stool
rio black bar stool
sam bar stools
stool with backrest uk buy
stylish folding bar stools
z bar stools

Now this is pretty good in general terms. 16 visitors, all for long tail, highly targeted keywords that make you think that the user has already begun their research cycle because a lot of the searches are for product names, rather than generic ‘bar stools’. After seeing this I thought ‘yeah, great! There should be at least one commission off those searches…’

I logged into my programs to check stats and was once again deflated by the lack of click throughs to my merchants. Unless my stats have not updated yet, and I thought Affiliate Window updated in real time, then the culmination of these visitors has resulted in me sending 2 clicks to my merchants! That’s pretty disheartening given the long tail, end of buying cycle search terms used to refer the traffic.

My initial thought here is that my site could be re-designed to increase click throughs and perhaps over a longer test period I will consider this but for now, I’m going to remain disheartened but motivated to improve on these figures.

Anyway, this all brings me back to my point about conversions…I sent two of those targeted visitors to my merchants and 34 likewise visitors since my site started, but how long is it going to take me to get that first commission?