"A BIG Dog Is Just A LITTLE Dog
Who Wouldn't Stop Barking!""How Many Sales Should
I Be Getting!?"
One of the questions I most often get from folks that have just upgraded to Alpha Dog, or folks that have just finished reading the ebook and are at the stage where they are considering upgrading to Alpha Dog is.....
"How many sales should I be getting?"
A lot of you experienced Dogs out there are probably chuckling because you know that that is a darn near impossible question to answer accurately. There are just too many variables in the equation! What ads are you using? What subject lines are you using? How often are you actually marketing? Are you tracking your results? Are you SURE you're doing everything right? How often do you change your ads? Have you verified that your hoplink is working? Etc, etc, etc...
(This is one of the reasons we wrote the article that is in the Training Manual entitled, "Help! I'm not getting any sales!")
Nevertheless.....
.....this IS a question that is in the back of everyone's mind. And while it may be difficult to answer with 100% accuracy, what the heck, let's take a shot at it!
We recently received an email from a brand new Alpha Dog by the name of Lenise Ramsey, whose ID is, of all things, "beachbunny." What I'm going to do, Lenise, is to print your letter in it's entirety below, and then REPRINT it with my comments.
I think ALL of you Big dogs will derive a lot of benefit from it.....
"Hi Stan,"
"If I am just getting in a hurry with these questions, I apologize. If I am doing something wrong that your experience can help me correct, I would rather know sooner than later." :-)
"I decided to concentrate solely on promotion of Big Dogs and I began that campaign on Monday, October 14th. I was already marketing heavily with safelists, and I just switched to using Big Dogs ads on those. To date I have had 484 unique visitors to my hoplink URL - and I have sold three e-books."
"My first question is about my sales ratio. Will that get better with time? I don't think my closing average is nearly as good as it should be."
"My second question concerns where the unique visits came from. 370 of them came from my safelists and 114 from my CHIPS. I'm mailing everyday, using a variety of delays, and a variety of headlines. Does it just take time to build up the visits from the CHIPS or could I be doing something wrong? Do the leads from the CHIPS tend to respond to different types of headlines than the leads from the safelists? Some of the CHIPS are working better than others. DTL, Monster-Traffic, Multi-Links, ProMoneyMail, TrafficWave, wwKiosk, and AdSaturation have all had two or fewer visits - but the others are doing much better."
"Do I just need to sit back, keep doing what I am doing and see how the numbers eventually play out - or do I need to examine what I am doing with some of the CHIPS and perhaps correct some mistakes?"
"Thank you for your time!"
Lenise ("beachbunny") Ramsey
And now let's re-read that same letter, with my comments.....
"If I am just getting in a hurry with these questions, I apologize. If I am doing something wrong that your experience can help me correct, I would rather know sooner than later." :-)
Stan: "No need to apologize, Lenise! Heck, I WANT affiliates who are excited about the program enough to take it SERIOUSLY!"
"I decided to concentrate solely on promotion of Big Dogs and I began that campaign on Monday, October 14th. I was already marketing heavily with safelists, and I just switched to using Big Dogs ads on those. To date I have had 484 unique visitors to my hoplink URL - and I have sold three e-books."
"My first question is about my sales ratio. Will that get better with time? I don't think my closing average is nearly as good as it should be."Stan: "Let's take one point at a time, Lenise. First of all you indicate that you started your campaign on October 14. Now, we received your email on October 22. That means that you have been promoting for eight days - a little more than one week! The bottom line is that after merely eight days it is simply way, way, WAY too soon to tell if your statistics have any major LONG-TERM significance. But let's use the preliminary numbers that you DO have....."
"484 unique visitors and 3 ebook sales"
"First of all, considering that you got 484 unique visitors your very first week is TERRIFIC! That's approximately 2,000 hits a month, and that is a very, VERY respectable figure."
"Secondly, you indicate that you got 3 ebook sales from those 484 hits. That is a closing average of 0.6%. (3 / 484 = 0.6%) Now, your LONG-TERM closing average should come close to around 3.0%, so at first glance it SEEMS like your closing average is only one fifth what it should be (3.0 / 0.6 = 5.0). BUT!.....you need to understand something extremely important about prospects - whether they are online shoppers or OFFline shoppers....."
"Very few prospects purchase a product
the very first time they are introduced to it!""Think about it. How many people read your ad, go to the sales site, and buy IMMEDIATELY!? The number is actually quite small. The MAJORITY will read the sales site - and if they like what they read - will print out your ad, or jot down your sales link in order to "think about it." If you stopped promoting right NOW, Lenise, you would find that you would continue to get sales from those original 484 visitors weeks, and even MONTHS, later!"
"But first and foremost you must again remember that right now you simply have too short a time period to base your statistics. Next week you may have 484 hits and generate 50 sales. Then you may have two weeks with 484 hits and generate NO sales. However, given a sufficiently long time period, your closing average WILL continue to increase."
"My second question concerns where the unique visits came from. 370 of them came from my safelists and 114 from my CHIPS. I'm mailing everyday, using a variety of delays, and a variety of headlines. Does it just take time to build up the visits from the CHIPS or could I be doing something wrong? Do the leads from the CHIPS tend to respond to different types of headlines than the leads from the safelists? Some of the CHIPS are working better than others. DTL, Monster-Traffic, Multi-Links, ProMoneyMail, TrafficWave, wwKiosk, and AdSaturation have all had two or fewer visits - but the others are doing much better."
Stan: "First of all let me say that I applaud your methods and techniques! You are obviously making good use of AdMinder to track your results - you know not only how MANY hits you are getting, but you also know WHERE they are coming from. This information is VITAL to your long term success on the Internet!"
"But to sorta repeat what I stated above, over the long haul you WILL see your statistics start to average out. You will probably find, for example, that over a period of time your numbers from safelists will decrease, while your hits from the FFA sites will increase. There are a variety of technical reasons for this, but a major one you are forgetting is the DELAY you mentioned. Safelists do not have a delay - your prospects receive your sales message IMMEDIATELY. On the other hand, your FFA sites DO have a delay - that's one of the things that makes them valuable. AND....if we assume you are using a four or five day delay, then most of your FFA prospects didn't even receive your sales message when you compiled your statistics! See what I mean?"
"The same 'long-term-view' applies within the FFA sites themselves. You will find that one month you receive very few hits from, say, MultiLinks (one of my favorites, by the way), and then the next month MultiLinks is your top producer of hits! Maybe Brian Rooney at TrafficWave was experiencing some server problems for a few days. Maybe Joel, over at wwKiosk, was making some enhancements to the program, and the emails weren't going out as regularly as they should have been. Remember, Lenise, what I stated in the 'Secrets of the Big Dogs' ebook: No one program, no matter HOW good, can be counted on 100% of the time - that is the basic concept of the C.H.I.P. - to have a VARIETY of programs working for you at all times."
"Do I just need to "sit back, keep doing what I am doing" and see how the numbers eventually play out - or do I need to examine what I am doing with some of the CHIPS and perhaps correct some mistakes?"
Stan: "Lenise, if every one of my Big Dogs would just... "sit back and keep doing what YOU are doing"... not only would every one of 'em be successful, I would be running the Big Dogs Home Office from a yacht in the Caribbean in a year! You are doing just fine!"
"And speaking of the necessity of looking at statistics over a long period of time, here's a little tidbit you didn't know....."
"Our 'conversion ratio' is approximately 18%. That means that roughly 18% of ebook purchasers go on to upgrade to the status of Alpha Dog - and that's where you make your REAL long-term, residual, month after month income, isn't it!? Now, you may have remembered that number from the ebook itself, but here's what you DON'T know..... Of those three ebooks you sold? TWO of those folks have already requested your Signup Module! THAT, my dear gives you a 66% conversion ratio! Obviously, that's simply way too high, but once again, that's just a short-term view of the numbers. Even though I would LOVE to have you maintain a 66% conversion ratio FOREVER (Caribbean here I come!), you and I both know that that number has gotta decrease. Right?"
"So the bottom line, kiddo, is that you ain't doin' anything wrong - not yet, anyway. Just keep on keepin' on, and doin' what you're doin' (tracking your results, changing your subject lines and ads, marketing every day, analyzing your results) - and DON'T go gettin' lazy when those checks start comin' in! Success on the Internet is a numbers game - a long-term numbers game."
"Keep in mind what General Eisenhower said after the Battle of the Bulge in 1943:"
"I have observed that it is not the man who is so brilliant who delivers in times of stress and strain. Rather it is the man who can keep on going indefinitely, doing a good, straightforward job."
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