Looking for ideas or need advice in a new market? Keyword research, market competition, size of the market - can all be discussed here.

Did I pick the wrong niche?
dhughes429
Posts: 5
Joined: 29 May 12
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12 Jun 12 2:10 pm

Did I pick the wrong niche?

I have an affiliate site, reviewing infrared grills. For the last 2 months, the site has been bouncing around on Google. In May, I had 8,311 impressions, 528 unique visitors to my site (6.4%) with 127 clicking through to Amazon (24.1%). So far in June, I've had 95 visitors click through to Amazon (33.1%). However, I have not made one sale yet.

When I did the keyword research, I saw that the Google Adwords CPC ranged from $0.37 to $1.47 for the keywords I wanted to rank for.

Looking at Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics, I see that most of my traffic comes from 5 keywords:

infrared grill reviews CPC = $0.46
infrared grill review CPC = $0.51
weber infrared grill CPC = $0.80
best infrared grill CPC = $0.90
infrared grills reviews CPC = $0.58

Does this low CPC suggest that these are not buyer keywords? If so, what CPC level should I be looking for?

Is this just a bad niche, or am I doing something wrong?

Please help.

Dennis
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dhughes429
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Joined: 29 May 12
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12 Jun 12 3:35 pm

 Other thoughts I had were that my writing style and pre-selling could be the problem with my sales.

My website is www.bestinfraredgrillreviews.net

If you have any comments or suggestions, I would certainly appreciate it.

Dennis
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ashley.weyers
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Joined: 30 May 12
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13 Jun 12 4:10 am

 Hi Dennis

I had a quick look. I am not at the expert level yet, but a few things struck me.

1.) Your style of writing is good, but everything is in paragraphs, no bullet points, so nothing jumped out at me straight away.

2.) I am on my notebook so the screen size is not great. Your categories widget is above the Amazon stuff and your article finished without me having to scroll down. I would put the sales stuff above categories / posts, maybe even above video.

Also, those are fairly big ticket items and no where do you say that they are from Amazon, or is there free shipping? So there is a trust factor I think?

Why should I spend that type of money over a normal grill, what type of health beneifts are there eating from an infrared grill, Is it cheaper to maintain or run, less risk of fires if you are in an aprtment?

What about a big text message, if its true of course."Infrared grills reduce xxxx by yy% over normal grills"

Don't know if this helps, my 2 cents.

Ashley
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dhughes429
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13 Jun 12 12:44 pm

 Hi Ashley,

Thanks for taking a look. Your feedback is much appreciated. It's hard for me to critique my own work.

Looking at my welcome page, I see what you are talking about.

I certainly need to make it easier for my visitors to know how to move off this page.

Also, I will add something about why infrared grills are better to my welcome page. I have this information hidden on another page, but I need to make this more visible when someone first comes to my site.

Thanks again,

Dennis
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ashley.weyers
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14 Jun 12 12:49 am

 Hi Dennis

Another thought. You seem to have a lot of traffic, but what keywords are driving the traffic. You need the buyer intent keywords, so words down to model number which indicates people are ready to buy. Will not help if your keywords are general in nature. They are not in a buying midset when they get to your site.

If that is the case, then you want to structure the home page to swing them.

Thanks
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mark schaaf
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18 Jun 12 7:45 pm

 I think the site and articles are good but this is just me thinking. Grills are something that are so easy to buy at Lows or Home Depot that are already put together that many people just don't want to do the work of assembly. Even if the price is a lot better many people just don't want to put anything together. So I think you could be right in saying it may not be a good niche for selling on the internet.
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Mark
 
dhughes429
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19 Jun 12 12:31 pm

 Thanks for the reply.

That is exactly what I was hoping, but was afraid I might be wrong. It is a lot easier to start over with a new niche, than it would be to re-learn how to write and structure my sites.

I have been looking at the local box stores and you can get the same price as you can at Amazon.

The last three days, I have gotten 330 unique visitors to my site and 61 of those clicking one of my links to get to Amazon. And still no sales.

I suspected that this niche wouldn't be all that hungry, based on the CPC values for the keywords. Even model number Keywords like "Weber Genesis E330" only have a CPC value of $1.05.

Time to move on.
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PremiumMember
matty
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20 Jun 12 9:06 am

 Without reading everyone else's post, so I may be repeating here...

1) On the main page, you have to scroll down below the page content before you see the grill advertisements.

2) The Grill Ads don't look clickable, make the titles, links, and make them look like links.

3) In the ads, the "read more" is in all lower case and the exact same color as the other text, it looks unclickable and brings no attention.

4) On your main page, don't just send them to a link of all the reviews, information overload! Give them a link to your own write-up of your favourite and most recommended one. Make one of them the star of the site. People think they like to make informed decision, but mostly are looking for something good that comes with peer support.

5) Peer support! People love to conform, so on your star page... Add some reviews from other previous purchasers - people love these. Some nice graphs and statistics of how people like them are great too.

6) On the individual product review pages (or at least the one I looked at) dot pointed lists (a) looked like links [very blue] and (b) took most of my attention. They actually stand out so much and are so much more blue than the "CLICK HERE to get a Char Broil Quantum Urban Grill for yourself.", it makes the CLICK HERE seem unimportant and unimpressive.

7) CLICK HERE is not a good name choice for a link ...
- <link>Buy a Char Broil Quantum Urban Grill</link> for yourself.
- <link>Get a Char Broil Quantum Urban Grill</link> for yourself.
- <link>Get your Char Broil Quantum Urban Grill</link> today.
- <link>Get your Char Broil Quantum Urban Grill</link> for Amazon today.
#Which of there is best I'm not sure, but I'd bring more attention to "Char Broil Quantum Urban Grill". Get "Your" makes them feel it personally involves them and that it aready almost is theres, they'll imagine using "their [your]" grill and have increased motive to buy. Mentioning Amazon may or may not increase trust in the product.

7.5) delivered to your door by Amazon. <= lots of lazy people out there!

8) On the all reviews page, make the article titles look like they can be clicked because they can (wow!) and "read more..." is way to small.

9) Remember, you NEED to walk them through the steps, tell them about the product, make them feel it is good, and that other buying love it and that it's exactly what they want [pre-selling], lastly, show them exactly how they can get it. And maybe mentioning that the link is to amazon will help them feel more safe in the purchase and *cough* that you're not writing all this to get money from them - many people wouldn't know the word affiliate from the word extroqualinquial.

10) Maybe give a ranking of the top 5 grills, they will most likely want the top ranking one (of course). But be as honest as you can.

So in short, IF they managed to scroll down past the page content, they would be totally underwhelmed by the advertisements on the right and probably (1) not notice they are there, and/or (2) not realise they are clickable and go anywhere. erm... and the rest. - This grew from 2 points.

A link looking like a link is a good thing, it gives people the feeling that there is somewhere to go. Guide them through your site, give it direction and show them what they want.

---

Maybe I should start doing some Mark style video reviews =]
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dhughes429
Posts: 5
Joined: 29 May 12
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21 Jun 12 6:36 pm

 Thanks Matty,

I made a few changes after Ashley's comments. You've given me a lot more to think about.

On points 1, 2 & 3 - the grill ads in the sidebar are from a plug-in called Azon Click Magnet. I added this to give my visitors somewhere else to click in case they didn't like what they read from me. I just deactivated it. The only affiliate link on the front page now is for the Weber S670 Grill, just below the video. All the other links go to internal pages plus one to wiki.answers.

Points 4-10 - Excellent suggestions. I will work on making the changes.

BTW - I made my first sale from this site on June 19th. $799 for the grill + over $200 more. YAY!!!

That was the same day I got hit by Google. I went from 2000 views and 114 people visiting my site on June 18th, to only 6 people visiting my site on June 20th.

Dennis
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