A lot of marketers, especially the more established ones, will be quick to say that they want to know the conversion rate for a product before they ever consider promoting it as an affiliate.

To me, that information alone is worthless.

There's an inherent flaw with it... it doesn't tell you anything about the "traffic".

Suppose I have a great product with a fantastic sales letter... but my advertising uses a "curiousity" hook which results in a lot of untargetted traffic. My conversion rate plummets.

Suppose I instead drive fairly qualified PPC traffic to this same offer ... my conversion rate climbs.

But suppose that I send this offer to my very loyal BUYERS list who already knows that everything I put out is worth 10x my asking price so as soon as I release my new product, a large majority of this BUYERS list ends up buying. My conversion rate is now incredibly high ... at a level where few (if any) affiliates could duplicate it.

It's all very deceptive.

This leaves me a bit confused on why some marketers still keep yapping about the importance of conversion rates and how no intelligent affiliate marketer would ever consider an offer without knowing the conversions.

Are they just repeating something they heard because it sounds good?

OR (and this is a lot more likely) are they failing to mention the very important second part of that equation... conversions only matter when you also have an understanding of the type of traffic that the number was obtained from.

I'm getting more and more affiliate invitations and NOT ONCE have I ever had a marketer mention anything about where these supposed conversion rates are coming from. Because a 5% conversion from raw traffic is good... but 5% conversion from your own qualified list of loyal buyers is horrible. So what's really the full picture?

Interesting, but I think the conversion rate is important. If a program has a good conversion rate then you know that there is also a chance that you may get a good conversion rate. If the conversion rate is bad then it could be the traffic, but it could also be a number of other things, like the sites products are not that good, the site's customer service is not that good, their tracking doesn't track all the sales, etc.

>> I think the conversion rate is important.

Of course. In fact, very important... just not on its own.

Telling a potential JV partner "my conversion is 5%" is absolutely meaningless unless you define the type of traffic used for it.

What if it was achieved through extensive long tail and highly qualified PPC campaigns or from a loyal buyer's list. That bit of information is very important because if a conversion with such targetted prospects is 5%, that's not necessarily too impressive... it means that from an average reader/visitor base in the same niche, or a subscriber list, that conversion will drop to 1% or less.

That's potentially thousands of dollars in difference.

What tends to happen is marketers release a new product that their own client base is already primed for (warmed up). They then do several followup mailings as well and generate a lot of excitement from this customer base. But these are ALREADY their customers... so naturally, those will be some of the best conversions that their particular offer will likely ever see. And they tend to use that number in their "sales pitch" to recruit new affiliates...

Without any further information as to the type of traffic used in those conversion stats, to me it's empty information that's often very misleading and used as a sales hook. HOWEVER, when you *do* add in the extra data and provide a bit of a picture as to how the traffic/sales were generated... then the conversion stats are, I agree, very important.

Of course. In fact, very important... just not on its own.

You just contradicted everything you wrote then.

You're reading too much into it. People want to know the conversion rate so they can know if the offer converts! That's it. Nothing more....

Armed with that knowledge you can then start looking at how you're going to approach it. If you know it already converts that just tells you that with your own methods you can probably make it convert even better $$$

Conversion rates provided in affiliate marketing are most often network averages. While I think the info is valuable, I agree that it's most useful when combined with other metrics.

I've got a single-digit conversion rate on a lead-generation site, but the closed leads are worth thousands, which is why I can afford a cost per lead of low-mid $XX while generating over 1000 leads/mo.

With just the conversion rate, that would look like a losing proposition.

Well I guess you guys know best. I personally suffer from CPA stupidity and would need someone to walk me through it for a few days step by step before I "got it". Unfortunately nobody is gonna do that so I'll just have to keep trialing and erroring...

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

You just contradicted everything you wrote then.

You're reading too much into it. People want to know the conversion rate so they can know if the offer converts! That's it. Nothing more....

Armed with that knowledge you can then start looking at how you're going to approach it. If you know it already converts that just tells you that with your own methods you can probably make it convert even better $$$

Yep, that's what I said, but you written it better than me. lol

I know that if there were a network average of 0.0001% conversion rate for an affiliate program and a 16% conversion rate for another program and they were both offer the same sort of products then I would go for the 16% affiliate program without a doubt.

>> You just contradicted everything you wrote then.

I don't think I did. If you revisit my post, it talks of the need for the "additional data" not just a conversion number being thrown around.

>> People want to know the conversion rate so they can know if the offer converts! That's it. Nothing more....

That's their mistake, which is my point in this post. Again, suppose that you put together an offer and send it to your own warmed up list of loyal buyers and see a conversion of 3.8%.

Based on what you just wrote, that could be "useful" information for marketers because they know it "converts" at 3.8%.

But that's very inaccurate. YOUR OWN LIST OF BUYERS is where the highest conversions for that offer will nearly always be... so that 3.8% is likely closer to 0.5% for the average marketer's promotions ... that's a BIG difference.

>> already converts

In what? How was it promoted?

See, this is precisely my point. The affiliate invitations I receive always just bark about a nice little conversion number... but if I don't know how qualified the traffic was that was sent to it, then it's meaningless.

>> With just the conversion rate, that would look like a losing proposition.

That's the other side of it too, I agree.

Someone could have a great product and great sales page for it (ie: it would convert well based on the target audience and effective promotions).

But they decide to re-route some of their domains to point to it, and they mention it on a general interest blog, they throw banners across their web properties to promote it and maybe even engage traffic exchanges or other low quality traffic sources.

Point is, their overall conversion % will be horrible... and as a potential JV partner, I would likely pass on it if I don't know that this number actually comes from a lot of general and un-targetted traffic.

The 1% conversion they might get with the above "techniques" could become 6%+ conversion with better traffic.

All I'm suggesting is that the accepted template of "I pay 60% commission and it converts at 3.5% .. here's your affiliate link ____" is ineffective even though the majority seem to practice it.

>> 0.0001% conversion rate for an affiliate program and a 16%

Yes but that's a pretty silly example. I'm referring to the numbers used in everday affiliate JV invitations where it's easy to hear a number from 3%-10% ... but if I don't know what created that number, then it's empty information to me.

sometimes a low conversion rate can be good for you. Everyone else is promoting it the "typical" way. U think outside the box and have awsome conversion rate while everyone elses stink. as rob said the network averages are good info, even some will somewhat break it down into email search etc.. but even that is only if email marketers only use email links etc... so the network info is good to ahve but i wouldn't bank on it in any means.... which is why it is always said in this market test it out for your self and try to learn form even your failures.