No Success Converting Findology Traffic 4
Last month I had a breakout month with Clickbank, with affiliate earnings exceeding $400.
This month, I’ll be lucky to break $100 with Clickbank with the same site and same niche and same product, largely because traffic is wa-ay down. The keywords which were driving much of my traffic from Google are no longer ranking my site well.
So, since natural search traffic is killing me, I’ve been experimenting with PPC traffic. (You’ll remember that I wrote an earlier post about signing up for Findology, one of the many 2nd-tier PPC networks out there. I signed up after finding a $50 coupon code with an initial deposit of at least $25.)
Well, so far, my opinion of Findology is this:
The Good:
- I have only good things to say about their staff. Carey, my account manager, has been polite and helpful from the get-go. But, since our initial email conversations, I’ve yet to use her services again.
- PPC costs are LOW. We’re talking $0.03/click.
The Bad:
- I’m having trouble converting the traffic.
In the last week, my ads have generated 630 click-thrus. Result: No conversions. And, actually, I don’t even think I got any AdSense clicks. I got nothing. In comparison, with natural search traffic for the same site and same product, my conversion rate was 0.7%.
Also, Google Analytics is showing a very high bounce rate. And my gut feeling just tells me that the traffic was not engaged.
Granted, I’m still new to PPC and so, my ads are weak, my landing pages are weak and/or canned, and my sales pitch is untrained. Maybe it’s just a lack of skill on my part.
So, I queried Google to find others that WERE having success converting Findology traffic. What I found was the exact opposite. Link 1. Link 2. Seems that others have come to the same conclusion as me. Findology traffic has low conversion rates.
So, What Now?
I’ve now eaten through my initial $25 deposit with them, and still have $50 remaining. It’s essentially free money.
Not sure how to use it though. I figure I’ll still run the campaigns, and continue to tweak them to see if I can generate a sale. I just need 1 or 2 to recoup my initial $25 deposit.
After that, I don’t think I’ll deposit anymore money with Findology.
I follow your blog via RSS, how do you get adsense ads into your RSS feed?
Hi chovy,
I use Google AdSense for Feeds.
You have to “merge” your two accounts (AdSense and FeedBurner) to make use of the service. I believe you can do this after logging into AdSense.
Then, you just configure which feed you want ads on and where you want the ads to appear.
Yup, you have found what many before you have also discovered-for it’s ease of use and accessibility to the little guy, Findology gets high marks-it just does NOT convert. It can get traffic numbers up if that’s important to you but I just wonder where they come from – they say they have very tight fraud prevention but I’m just not all that convinced.
I’ve had your results or worse using Findology in the past. They have a new service that looks like it’s pop unders and I’m feeling like an idiot that I’m even considering it but all in all, Findology has broken my heart more than once. If their customer service and ease of use could be translated to Google in some form (where you get real traffic that converts), wow, that would be something.
Findology I would only recommend for marketing subcription services the traffic is anything but targeted The website link the for free advertising codes in the name link can give you a few avenues to test conversions on including yahoo and several others. However I do get the Impression you going about it the wrong way. The best conversion traffic will always be organic and if you lazy there are ways to pay for it, just be carefull not to get ripped off the internet is one big scam waiting to happen.