Monday, August 18, 2008
What To Expect When You Test A Niche With Web 2.0 Platforms
I regularly use Web 2.0 platforms to test my niche ideas.
I'll have three or so new ideas for niches, and build a quick site with Squidoo or Hubpages to test the ideas with.
What I'm interested in is how much traffic do the sites get and also how well does that traffic convert into buyers. To find out the sales conversion part, I'll choose a product from Clickbank or Amazon, whichever makes more sense.
The amount of traffic your lenses or Hubpages will get is going to vary all over the place. After all, getting a feel for traffic is part of the experiment! If you can't get traffic to your site, you will want to either choose another keyword phrase in that same niche and test it, or just abandon the niche altogether.
Ideally, what we want is traffic that leads to three or four sales. More sales is better, but that doesn't always happen with Squidoo lenses.
Number of sales divided by the amount of traffic (sales/traffic) is called your conversion rate. (Usually this is turned into a percentage. That's sales/traffic times 100.)
So, what kind of a conversion rate should you expect?
If you're not currently involved in internet marketing, it will be probably much lower than you might think. A conversion rate of 1% to 2% is actually very good! But, let me clue you in on a little secret!
You can make money on any conversion rate, if you're not paying for your traffic! If you're doing your keyword research like you should and if you set up the marketing for your test site correctly, then you will get traffic and some of that traffic will convert to sales!
What I'm looking for with these little Squidoo type experiments is a conversion rate of 1/200, or 0.5%. If I can get just one out of two hundred visitors to buy something, then that's a project I'll go with. Of course, a higher conversion rate is better, and there are ways to increase your conversion rate dramatically, but that's an advanced topic suitable for another article.
So, to sum this up, out of every 200 visitors, you should be making one sale. If you can do that, then you're on the track to success. If you're site is not doing that, then you need to decide to tweak what you're doing or just ditch the project.
To learn more about how to promote your website, download my free ebook: Five Steps to Web Profits!
Lee Cole is an successful internet marketer who can help you get your internet business up and running, and most importantly--profitable! To learn more, visit Lee's website!
