My affiliate website do not convert!

I need your help to figure it out, what is wrong.

For the history: I have an affiliate site for a certain nich. I created a money site, total unique, as well a word press blog where I have posted over 150 articles, in a period of 14 months. I did my homework with white and blackhat methods. Now I am in between rank 14 - 28 for a keyword of +300.000 searches per month. In the same nich for other less competitive keywords, I rank from 2-12. So far so good.

I get more than 80 unique visitors per day. The convertion rate is almost 0%. When I started the official site gave a convertion rate of 1,2%. In the begining (that was Jan 2011 ) with less than 30 visitors for a whole month, I got 3 sales and I was excited that I was over that poor 1,2%. The rest of the year I had a total of 17000 unique visitors (42000 visits) and I had less than 10 sales in total!!!

The site is well optimised and it looks really good to the eyes of the visitors ( I was told so), as well to the "eyes" of Google, which sents me 98% of the total traffic. I can't find any reason not to convert.

Any idea that will help?

Could it be that any of the plugins I use in the blog, steal the leads generated, or that the affiliate link is in any way affected to drive the customers directly to the main sale page?

From the stats I get from plimus, it looks like more than 10 people out of the 80 visiting the site every day, are reaching the sale page, ready to complete the form with their data. Even if I use these numbers, I had to have at least 3-4 sales per month! But this is also not the case.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for your time.

Well, start with the obvious first: Are your affiliate links working? Sometimes if you do work on a site you might break a link or delete part of your aff ID and break it.

The not-so-obvious: It might not be your site. Is your keyword targeted and a "buying" keyword? I've had sites that will covert 5% of visitors, and others that convert .01%. The difference wasn't really the site, it was the keywords I targeted.

An example: If my keyword is Apple iPad 2 review, I can expect that I will make sales with that type of keyword. If it's something like "How to lose weight fast" then you're in for a tougher sale because someone is looking for general knowledge and might not be ready to buy anything, let alone your product.

ryanjm said:

Well, start with the obvious first: Are your affiliate links working? Sometimes if you do work on a site you might break a link or delete part of your aff ID and break it.

The not-so-obvious: It might not be your site. Is your keyword targeted and a "buying" keyword? I've had sites that will covert 5% of visitors, and others that convert .01%. The difference wasn't really the site, it was the keywords I targeted.

An example: If my keyword is Apple iPad 2 review, I can expect that I will make sales with that type of keyword. If it's something like "How to lose weight fast" then you're in for a tougher sale because someone is looking for general knowledge and might not be ready to buy anything, let alone your product.

Click to expand...

Thank you for your reply. I just did a check and the link is working fine.
The keyword is one of the bying keywords. As I mentioned before it looks like 10 people everyday are reaching the secure order page, but NOTHING!

I forgot to mention that in my main page I have add a discount code (it is a coupon code used also from other affiliates). I contacted the ventor for the case I redirect the lead to another page, but he reassured me that the coupon code is general and doesn't affect anything!

Website visitors are funny creatures and it really depends on the keywords they have used in the search engines to find your content.

The trouble i find with surrounding my sales website with a buffer of topical and interesting articles, is that visitors find my website with obscure none buying keywords.

When visiting my content they will simply click on an ad or through to a sales page on a whim, or just out of curiosity just to see what all the fuss is about and not actually have any intention of buying anything.

I would work harder at building up some web 2.0 properties targeting specific buying keywords and point them towards your sales page.

This way you will be ranking your main sales page on buying keywords, rather than relying on visitors who have found your article content without any ambition to purchase anything!

ryanjm said:

Well, start with the obvious first: Are your affiliate links working? Sometimes if you do work on a site you might break a link or delete part of your aff ID and break it.

The not-so-obvious: It might not be your site. Is your keyword targeted and a "buying" keyword? I've had sites that will covert 5% of visitors, and others that convert .01%. The difference wasn't really the site, it was the keywords I targeted.

An example: If my keyword is Apple iPad 2 review, I can expect that I will make sales with that type of keyword. If it's something like "How to lose weight fast" then you're in for a tougher sale because someone is looking for general knowledge and might not be ready to buy anything, let alone your product.

Click to expand...

JackSparrow said:

Website visitors are funny creatures and it really depends on the keywords they have used in the search engines to find your content.

The trouble i find with surrounding my sales website with a buffer of topical and interesting articles, is that visitors find my website with obscure none buying keywords.

When visiting my content they will simply click on an ad or through to a sales page on a whim, or just out of curiosity just to see what all the fuss is about and not actually have any intention of buying anything.

I would work harder at building up some web 2.0 properties targeting specific buying keywords and point them towards your sales page.

This way you will be ranking your main sales page on buying keywords, rather than relying on visitors who have found your article content without any ambition to purchase anything!

Click to expand...

Thank you Jack. Maybe you and ryanjm are right. It could be that simple. The problem is how to discover the buying keywords. From the stats I get from my site, it looks like some people give a whole sentence to the search engine, and somehow the search engine points to me (relevant content or similar article, etc) So you think I have to invest time to that direction, right?

Something more I have to report. About a month ago, maybe a bit more, I was observing again my money site, trying to find out, if there are some points I have to change. I was ready to leave when on the botom of my page, I noticed with a similar to the page color and very small text a link with an irelevant anchor text, with a company name. I followed the link and it drive me to a sex page! I imidiately upload a clean copy of my page and changed the passwords. I do not know how long this link was there.