You often see an ad for a new traffic gimmick that sends you thousands of visitors a day. Or maybe you’ve noticed someone bragging on a forum they get 50% opens on their emails, or that 25% of their email recipients click the links inside the emails they send.

I’ve only got one question for those who spend time on this type of marketing – how do you pay your bills with opens, clicks and visitor numbers? Because if you can tell me that, then I’m all ears. Otherwise, it’s about time some one asked the obvious question–otherwise those numbers mean naff all.

Let’s say you get 10 visitors to your website and your competitor gets ten thousand visitors. I’m using daft numbers here to prove a point, so bear with me.

Out of your 10 visitors, 5 of them buy a $1000 product. You’ve just made $5000. Your competitor doesn’t sell a single thing to any of those ten thousand visitors, but there they are, bragging about their traffic and trying to sell you a product on how you can replicate their results!!

…while you quietly smirk all the way to the bank..

Or maybe you send out a series of emails that only get a 10% open rate and only 10% of those opens click the link, but again you outsell your competitor who’s getting 50% opens and 25% clicks.

Are you going to think you’re doing poorly? You are if you measure your success by their terms. But again, all that matters is the bottom line isn’t it. (Or am I being a tad simplistic here)??

So much of what they try to peddle in marketing is simply smoke and mirrors. It’s a wise person who can see through the nonsense peddled to us Internet marketers to what is truly important.

Let’s say you have a subject line that says, “Naked hot movie star pics” and you get a 100% open rate. But you’re selling a product on how to improve your face book ads. How many sales are you liable to get? Likely none. But you got a 100% open rate so that should count for something, right?

Wrong.

Let’s say you’re still selling the exact same Face book product, but your subject line is, “How to make $100 a day with Face Book.” This time your open rate is a dismal 10%, but from that 10% you make 50 sales.

Which is better? The 100% open rate and no sales, Or the 10% open rate and 50 sales?

The next time some one is bragging about their opens, clicks and visitors, ask them one question: How much in SALES are they doing? Because that’s the only statistic that pays the bills.

Rant over…


    5 replies to "Why Opens, Clicks and Number of Visitors Mean Naff All To Me.."

    • Richard

      Interesting post and welcome back 🙂

      Yes numbers are useless at times it is the $$ value that is important. To be honest I fear numbers as they can be looked at and make to paint any picture you want

      For example in the company I work with one marketing person panicked as the number of visitors had dropped from last year. I said hold on that might not be a bad thing. Perhaps because of marketing efforts more people know what the company does and therefore you are getting more targeted customers than tire kickers….

      So I said go see conversion rates and action taken, then compare the numbers, lo and behold when she looked at that it showed that yes numbers were down but action taken and conversions and $$ value of visitors had increased!
      Richard recently posted…Split Test Monkey ReviewMy Profile

    • Mandy Allen

      Hi Kim, you are so right. And there seems to be an awful lot of bragging that goes on. I find it difficult when people start out and are already telling others how to be successful when they are having no success with the same things themselves. I started out in the self help niche, something I have worked in for years, now I focus on helping others to become successful bloggers because through my self help blog I have learned a lot about it, but I didn’t start out trying to tell others how to blog because I didn’t know much about it myself. Start out with what you are accomplished at then move on when you are ready.

      Enjoy the journey!
      Mandy Allen recently posted…Fail To Plan And You Plan To FailMy Profile

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