It shouldn't matter a great deal for any business tactics you might have. Mine is not so very good at this point.

We have about a 1/180 conversion rate.

For every 180 unique visits we get 1 sale. We don't really get a lot of traffic. Ah well.

I'm curious as to what other folks are seeing. I suppose we should advertise more so I've been working on that today.

Thanks if you're willing to share.

KGIII

1/180 is pretty good. We're sitting at about 1/5000 or so, but our site is much older and we have more of our own customers browsing our site.

We don't judge our performance by conversion rate of all traffic to our site (our site does more than just sell new hosting accounts), but rather only advertising campaigns to our site, which are tracked separately.

That being said 1/180 conversion rate on an advertising campaign is probably still good, depending on your pricing and type of traffic.

Ah, thanks for that. I don't judge so much as I'm curious about the matrix involved in people buying traffic. My rates would be much higher were I not guilty of buying some traffic recently.

I know that I just adjusted the site today, I think I've mentioned it twice, and the page views (not user count but that too has gone up) have jumped up at an odd proportion and the update just went up today. So, well, that got me to thinking and this question cropped up.

I try to think of the site as a tool to help people decide and, as it grows out the FAQs, to help the clients. (If that makes any sense.) Our sales have pretty much all come from word of mouth, direct referrals or by accident in things like online forums. We don't have a lot of customers and I'm technically retired and the others involved are pretty relaxed about this as well and fully plan on letting it run - even at a loss if need be - for as long as it takes to grow. If it doesn't grow then, well, we're still (combined) just a bit less than we'd normally pay for hosting our own sites.

Anyhow, thanks for that... I'm wondering, it really - to me - puts down the wonderment of the value of some of the ad structures in place out there when I stop and look at it like that. It seems like if we were to dump a bunch of cash into ads and trying to grow that it's got potential but the reality is that we're happy just growing as we grow and buying small ad packages (text and banner links really is the extent of online ads for us) as they come along.

So far the few sales that came from anywhere but word of mouth have come to a total of 4. Of those 4 two were abuse orders in which the first spammed and the second tried to sign up again with the same email address and credit card. The other two actually came in from fairly new sites which is an interesting avenue I'm wondering about.

I think, I have a bit of a business background and actually was involved in the hosting industry a long time ago before ***** **** (intentionally edited by me) ran off with everything from hardware, clients, to money. This time around it's good because it's not a "we have to make it" situation and operating at a loss is, well, exactly what we planed though we're just about even so that's better than we'd expected. I'm able to enjoy being small enough to notice things and, I guess this might be considered bad for me to say but it might be a strategy for those in our situation, it's interesting because some of the best traffic is coming from the smaller sites where we spent a couple of bucks for a link for a few months or what not.

I don't know what drives that. New site, new users, people looking to start their own? I'm not really sure honestly. I guess coupled with that and armed with some sort of estimate and make broad assumptions. I'm not really sure what I'm driving at here but it has to do with the quality of the traffic and our findings that - even though the clicks are far fewer - the online sales are from some of these smaller and newer startup sites and in both cases it's been from community type sites. (The other two were forum trolls I suspect but I have no way of knowing that with any certainty.)

Anyhow, I'm exhausted so if the above looks like insane babble then it probably is.

Strangest thing, from looking around them earlier, the majority of customers are (for us) businesses, artist, and municipalities or pseudo-towns meaning they're folks doing stuff for their community without official authorization. It'd be just plain funny to find a niché by accident.

KGIII

Of those 4 two were abuse orders in which the first spammed and the second tried to sign up again with the same email address and credit card.

FWIW, I don't include abuse/fraud in our order statistics - only legit customers. We get several fraud orders a day, but only one legit order every other day or so (usually come in bursts for some reason). Our traffic is about 2000 to 3000 unique visitors a day. Advertising always seems to bring fraud/abuse. I believe that is because most fraudsters are lazy (they couldn't go earn/spend their own money, after all) and will click on the first thing they see.

Mind if I ask another question? You needn't answer if you don't want to but it'd help me put things together a bit.

How many employees do you have?

Thanks for answering if you will and thanks for the information so far if you will not. I can't think of any reason why but some folks like to hide that sort of stuff.

KGIII

P.S. You wouldn't be the same "advantage" user who was around with Cyberwings would you?

How many employees do you have?

We don't hide this at all. You can even see our faces on our web site if you like. There are 3 full time and 3 part time. We had a peak of 12 full time employees in 2000 before the dot com bust.

P.S. You wouldn't be the same "advantage" user who was around with Cyberwings would you?

We've never been involved with Cyberwings (big fiasco a few years back if I recall), but I was active on WHT during that time frame. I only know them by name/reputation and through the threads people posted about them on WHT. We also got a few customers back then from the Cyberwings fallout.

Oh, I forgot. We also have one robot on staff. Really!

I'm currently sitting at one sale/500 unique hits.

Andrew:

After all you've shared then the last thing I think I'd accuse you of would be, probably, hiding stuff. I have a robot but, well, he sucks. He's still in the original RadioShack package. I should dig him out and take pics. Wow...

Bryc3:

Thank you. The more information I can put together the better off I'll be at trying to look for patterns. At some point I might actually set down a script and analyze all sorts of results and release them just to see what effect it has on the industry. I suppose that's crazy talk but it'd be good to see the results regardless.

Andrew:

You probably were given 'em by the ******** (self moderated) after I lost money, hardware, and clients... As in really STOLE and SOLD to another hosting company without anyone knowing after the entire thing was pretty much dead in the water but that's another story for another day.

KGIII:

You're still awake? You should sleep...

Really, it's been a long day. (I'm not worried about any of YOU guys buying from me so if you'd like you can see the new design. I'm going to fill in the FAQs with everything I can think of that might matter or link to the stuff that doesn't this week. Yay for slave labor.)

KGIII

I had about 1/70

New site and everyone who came was from Google Ads..

You probably were given 'em by the ******** (self moderated) after I lost money, hardware, and clients... As in really STOLE and SOLD to another hosting company without anyone knowing after the entire thing was pretty much dead in the water but that's another story for another day.

I think you may still have me confused with someone that wronged you. My username is 'advantagecom' and not 'advantage'. We never had any dealings with Cyberwings at all. I just know that we got a bunch of unsolicited sales calls from former Cyberwings customers looking for a new host because they were left high and dry. I think a lot of hosts that are still around from that era can say the same thing.

LOL No no no! No such thing... As near as I can tell the dude the took off with all of them, the equipment, etc? He ended up not being able to keep them and sent them all to other people. I by NO means think you are associated with that. HE took 'em and no no no! Wow... No, not you. Sorry if you thought I thought (how's that for an odd sentence) you were associated with him. Beyond that it's been 4 years or so I guess and I don't even harbor any anger towards the old any more. Well, no, I don't harbor MUCH anger. ;)

But no, not you. I can't imagine anyone who was involved in that is likely still in business actually.

KGIII