Conversion Ratios & Clickthrough Ratios Explained

An adult webmaster resource...

Written by Tom from Tom's Newbie Booster

I want to look at 2 important basics in this article: CLICKTHROUGH RATIOS and CONVERSION RATIOS. Let's think about what they are...

CONVERSION RATIOS...

This is probably the most talked about of the 'ratios'. It's what sponsors use in their marketing blurb, and it's what we internet people are always trying to improve. A great deal of an adult webmaster's day will be spent CHECKING these ratios too. These are the money makers.

Conversion ratios deal with the number of people that arrive at a Paysite, and the number that buy something. Let's imagine that you have a website and you charge say $30 to let someone in to your special member's picture pages. Let's say that you get 300 people to your website. Unless you're absolutely magic at marketing, not EVERY one of those surfers will buy something. Let's say that TWO people buy something. 2 out of 300 people bought something at your site - so how 'well' did you do? You have a conversion 'ratio' of 1:150.

Divide traffic sent by the total number of sales. In this case 300 / 2. That tells you how many people it is taking you to get a sale. It's always ONE in something... One in five hundred. One in one hundred and sixty.

Conversion ratios are important because they let you gauge how well you are doing with the surfers that you send to your money-making links. In the example above, if you had sent 300 people to a Paysite that you are a partner with (the sponsor - webmaster relationship) then you would be credited for 2 sales. Here's a rough guide of good and bad ratios:

1:100 - Amazing, you're HOT!
1:250 - Still very good.
1:500 - 1:1000 - Probably an 'average' if there is such a thing.
1:2000 - You could still make money with this ratio.
1:3000 or worse - Something could be wrong here.

When you sign-up with a sponsor, you will be given a 'stats' page. This is where you can check the number of surfers you've sent, and also find out your conversion ratio. Most, if not ALL sponsor's stats areas work out the sign-up ratio for you. Cool huh?

Don't forget that you'll need to know your sign-up ratio for whatever kind of site you're promoting - AVS, Paysite, or some other kind of partnership.

CLICKTHROUGH RATIOS...

This business has many different areas you can get into, but it all mounts up to pretty much the same thing. Get people to one of your pages, and then try to get them to follow a link FROM your website off to a place where they can make you money. They come to your FREE area, and then you send them off to a sponsor, or a Paysite - where you'll get commission for anything they buy there.

Like the conversion ratios - we need to know how well our ADVERTS are doing. If you don't know how effective your links to your sponsors ARE, then there's no way of knowing if you need to change them or make them better.

No-one gets it right first time. Being successful as an adult webmaster is all about watching conversion and clickthrough ratios, and knowing how to improve both. Creating a site, or an advert on a website is just the beginning.

A clickthrough is when one of our surfers clicks THROUGH to a sponsor - they follow a link on our website that takes them to a Paysite. If 5 people click on my Max Cash banner, then I have sent 5 'clickthroughs'. Clickthrough ratios are not like sign-up ratios, where we talk about 'one in something'... with clickthrough ratios (often written CTR) we talk in terms of percentages. Let's look at a practical example here...

Imagine my website. It's just a blank page, with one banner in the middle. This banner goes to a Paysite, for which I get commission on anything they buy. OK, so I'm not going to win any prizes for design here, but just keep that image in your mind. Some how, I manage to get 500 surfers to look at my website. Out of that number of people, 200 like the look of my banner, and click it. I send 200 people to a Paysite.

200 divided by 500 x 100 = 40%

That's how you work out the CTR.

Number of surfers that clicked to your sponsor / 500 x 100 = clickthrough ratio.

Obviously, to do this calculation, you need to know the following:

1) How many surfers your site or page GOT.
2) How many went to a sponsor.

A counter or visitor counter of some kind will give you the first number, and your sponsor should provide you with the number of surfers that visited their site from your website.

You're never going to get a completely ACCURATE figure here. Even if you use a complex script to track the surfers that click on money-making links, there's still a lot of room for error. The best you can hope for is a good 'guide' as to how well your ads are performing.

Here's some common CTRs:

Search Engine traffic: 25% - 33%
Link List traffic: 10% - 20%
TGP2 Traffic: 5% - 15%
TGP Traffic: 1% - 5%

Again, these figures will vary!

CONCLUSION...

So there's the basics on conversion and clickthrough ratios. There's a lot more I could write here, like how important ARE these figures, and how conversion ratios can be altered for better or for worse! But for now, just be aware of what the 2 are, and make sure that you know how to track them both. They are your guide as to what's going on, and they stop you working blind, tell you what's working, and help you fix what is not. USE 'em!

GOOD LUCK!

TOM ^"^