Looking for Improvements

This week my ads ran for the second week.  I made some changes at the end of last week, so I was curious to see if there were any changes.  I was I was happy to see that even though I had NO conversions on AdWords, my affiliate sites were getting some traffic.  I had 50 clicks on my Amazon Affiliate links, but so far no sales.  I was able to add my Family Chartmasters affiliate link to the site and I was hopeful that I would see results because that was my best ad the previous week.  Well, the ad underperformed (down about 50% in clicks and impressions) but I still had a good response on my affiliate link.  The link was up and running just 6 days and received 22 clicks on their site, compared to 58 clicks on my Amazon link in 16 days.  That tells me that I am getting about 3.6 people per day going to each of my affiliate links.  I will need to find ways to increase that if I hope to make any money.  My next task is to visit each task that needs improvement and make adjustments to my page and my ads to improve.  I am amazed at all the tools and things that are available for website optimization.  One thing I found interesting were the people who posted YouTube videos with improvement tips, that were also money making sites, inviting you to subscribe.  I realize that the YouTuber makes a few dollars per 1,000 views, but to make some money you would need to have several hundred thousand views to make any money.  This whole online marketing arena is incredible.  I remember a couple of videos I watched early in the semester where very young men were pitching how they went from living in their parent’s basement to driving a high-end sports car and living in beachfront condos from their internet business.  These reminded me of the snake oil salesman from the westerns I used to watch.  I know that there is money to be made in e-commerce, but as we have learned, there is a lot of work involved in preparing your site, and lots of time to manage and make tweaks.  Plus you still need something to sell.  I have appreciated all of the eye-opening material we have seen, both assigned, and not (after watching one video, there is always another video popping up)  Well till next week when the Ramble reports on our improvements…

Y’all stay safe on the trail (or the information superhighway.)