Monetisation/Effectiveness of Sites

[ChristineS]

I have 16 sites of various ages, even two of which are number 1 on google for a couple of top search terms and from 2-5 position for others.

None of them are selling product.

I'm not wanting to increase traffic to them because as far as I'm concerned I'm just burning traffic at the moment, with around 8,000 visitors a month to the various sites (deducting spambot forum registrations and spider visits) and almost no sales. (So they are deliberately not SEO'd)

Is it possible that anyone would be generous enough to take a look at any or all of these to give me an honest (and brutal if necessary) opinion of why visitors don't feel inclined to purchase?

Re the book price, sales went down even further when I reduced the price, so I put it back up.

www.realhelpforanxiety.com
www.realhelpfordepression.com
www.realhelpforchronicpain.com
www.realhelp2stopsmoking.com
www.realhelpforrelationships.com
www.weightchoice.com.au

Many thanks
Christine

[TryUsOut]

I visited the first site on your list. It looks good (design-wise) and has a fair amount of info on it. If I were in need of such product, I might buy it there.

How targeted are the traffic you are getting? Getting visitors and making customers out of them are two very different things.

I would suggest you place yourself in your market's shoes and ask "Why would I buy on this site? What does it offer that is not available anywhere else?"

[Chris]

I wouldn't, your design looks like so many other sales shill pages.

You have an actual academic background and accomplishments, you have experience and degrees. You need to emphasize that more.

You have to realize self help type content is all over the Internet and most of it is crap made by people who no actual training in their spare time. And your site looks like all theirs do.

This site, http://www.empoweringsounds.com/, is made by a forum member, if he wants to talk about it maybe he will, but I like the design a whole lot better.

Try to emulate a medical website as much as possible, not an ebook shill website. And, emphasize your training and experience, and if you can put any letters after your name, do it.

Cause you're right, no sales on that much traffic is a conversion problem. You should get around 1-2% conversions.

[ChristineS]

Thank you for the comments - I really appreciate that you took the time to look. I think the visits are from the right target group, since they are direct requests that would be mostly by referral or from articles. This is why the low conversion rate really bothers me. I'm obviously not presenting people with what they came for.

[ChristineS]

Hi Chris and thanks so much for the blunt comments, and also for confirming to me that the conversion rate is a real problem and not an imagined one.

Thanks also for the member site. I'd actually taken a lot of information from my site because it seemed that people were reading it (it was very thorough) and then leaving because they'd had their fill.

I see that Joseph encourages people to stay, with his blog etc, and yet this must not be hurting his sales, but enhancing them.

I don't have degrees, but I have 35 years' experience in mental health, and have had my clinical research published, and am registered as a clinical supervisor for the Australian Counselling Association. So while degreeless, I can talk in terms of experience and effectiveness.

I did have a pile of that stuff on there as well, but someone said it sounded boring and "medical" and that I should try to sound more chatty and less academic.

Obviously there is a space there somewhere between sounding like academia and sounding like snakeoil, and I've yet to hit it :-)

What about my site www.toplifesolutions.com ? I haven't promoted that one yet because I was using my 6 smaller sites to feed into it. Do you think that's closer to hitting the mark?

With appreciation
Christine

[Chris]

Sound medical isn't so bad when you're trying to sell a health product.

There is a reason many natural supplement makes name their products like prescription drugs.