Xniphobe

I just opened my first paysite less than a week ago...have had Google Analytics since day 1. It says I have 4,624 visitors, 4,910 visits, and 12,962 page views. I've gotten 17 sales.

Can someone tell me which figures I should use to calculate my conversion ratio?

aico

1/272 or 17/4624

Jens Van Assterdam

Theres no official way to do this. Some sponsors use first page hits, some use second page hits, join page hits etc..
If you choose first page hits your ratio would be 1:272

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Xniphobe

Cool...thanks much aico I figured it made sense to use the "visitors" figure, but that number makes my ratio look the prettiest out of all three numbers, so I didn't want to use it without being sure.

Thanks again.

Hell House Vic

whatever method you pic, stick with it. that's what counts. a ratio is a non-absolute number. hat counts is that it improves, not what it is objectively.

what you can do also is define a goal in google analytics (the thank you page after a signup) and then the analytics itself will start telling you your conversion rate expressed as a percentage.

with just the raw numbers i would take your visitors and divide that by your sales, so 4,624 / 17, which equals 1:272 or 0.36%

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Xniphobe

Thanks much Kick Ass Vic for the tip on having Google Analytics calculate the ratio for me. That seems like a good way to go--less guess work for people trying to figure out how solid my stats are...will get that set-up asap.

Thanks again!

Xniphobe

I guess another question I have that I didn't think of before is whether I should include in my ratio a breakdown of the types of sales I'm making.

Do sponsors generally break things down for you in terms of what percentage of sales are, for example, trials compared to what percentage are 14 or 30 day sign-ups and/or what percentage of trials convert to monthlies?

aico

It partly depends on if you are paying PPS or Rev. A Revshare on a trial is like $1 - $2, unless it converts to full membership. PPS on a Trial is the same amount regardless if it converts or not. If you are doing Revshare, which I think you are, I would take the trial memberships off the affiliate tour, put them on your own main tour only.

Chuke

nice ratio there

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SykkBoy

the best thing to do is count your outbound raw clicks and the amount of income you receive from that sponsor (and with that track daily, weekly, monthly, etc. stats)

that's probably your best barometer since clicks get counted differently from program to program and sometimes for whatever reason, a click doesn't get counted (browser crash, spyware popup, console, etc.)

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Xniphobe

Yes, I am doing Revshare--50&#37; of sign-up and 50% of recurring. So, the affiliate gets the measly < $2 when a surfer goes for the trial, but the affiliate also gets 50% when that trial converts to monthly. If that's the case, why would I want to take the trial off of the affiliate tour?

aico

Because as an affiliate, if I am sending traffic that converts to signups, I don't want a surfer to be able buy a $4.95 trial, download all your content and cancel, or not like the site and cancel before it convert, I want him to buy the full price and do that, and only have the option of buying a full price membership.

signupdamnit

Yep. In addition if it is a ccbill revshare program it is preferred that the only one month options available be recurring. 50% of $30 with no rebilling is only $15. We can get $30 - $35 easily PPS with other sponsors. For ccbill we want those rebills.

If you can make seperate pages with different billing options, that would be perfect too.

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Xniphobe

On that reasoning it would make sense for me to just drop the $4.95 trial altogether...I mean, if Surfer X is going to sign up whether it's for $4.95 or $24.95, then for sure, drop the $4.95.

My thinking was that the trial would motivate a lot more surfers to sign up than would be the case otherwise and that, though many of them would just quickly download and cancel, enough of them would stay to make this approach more profitable than not having a trial.

aico and signupdamnit, it sounds like you're both convinced that this isn't the way to go...that, for the most part, if Surfer X is gonna go for it, he's gonna go for it at $4.95 or $24.95. I'm certainly not convinced that you're wrong...I just saw some of the bigger companies doing these low-cost trials and figured they had the market research, so I figured they had a good sense of what's more profitable. But you've got me thinking for sure...

And, as you both point out, at the very least I'd be better off having different join pages and letting the affiliates decide what type of pricing to go with...that makes a lot of sense, and I'm definitely going to do that.

Thanks for your help guys...I really appreciate it!

Xniphobe

btw, aico I just signed up with you, so if you see 100 new sign-ups coming through in the next hour or so, you'll know where they're coming from

aico

You can have trials, just don't put them on the affiliate tours. You should have your affiliates linking to a tour that has no traffic leaks, and no trials (unless you're paying per sign up on trials, which you aren't), ie. www.yourdomain.com/t1/index.html would be the affiliate tour, and then just http://www.yourdomain.com would be your own tour for SE and your own promoting efforts, and you can put trials all you want on that one, traffic leaks too.

Companies with trials usually pay $25 - $35 on a trial sign up, which is why you see them, and affiliates don't mind because they get paid the same regardless of what join option the surfer chooses.

Hope this makes sense.