Why you shouldn’t believe what people tell you about their earnings

Its a tried and tested rule that Adult traffic is hard to convert. Its true, thats not the issue but many people will try and tell you they are getting earnings from stats that you know cant be true.

So to debunk some of the BS you hear from these people I thought I would run through some real stats for you.

First off a disclaimer:

1. I don’t do Adult as a rule but I have some traffic that seems appropriate so thats where I sell it to.

2. This is traffic that is harder even than normal to convert but the main points still apply.

Here is the expected stats for the Adult site I am sending to (I have blurred the actual sites)

Now you may be shouting at the monitor (Why by the way, I cant hear you) that I should be using the top site as it has the best conversion rate. I feel that the site I am sending to will beat that for the traffic I am sending.

These figures mean that they are getting 1 signup per 756 clicks

Imagine if you had to reach that level on all your affiliate stuff, we would all be begging for scraps on the street by now!

Now I also have the problem of not being able to send the traffic straight there as I have to pre-qualify the visitor slightly.

The visitor to my site has to arrive, click any link (they all go the same place) and then when on the Adult site sign up for me to get paid.

This is how the maths work out for me here: -

I get a 37% click through on my site
I need 756 of THOSE PEOPLE WHO CLICK THROUGH to make a sale

So I get 1 sale for every 2041 visitors to my site!

If I get say $30 for each signup (I do a bit better than that as I get a percentage of recurring bills too)

If I was a BS merchant I could pretend that I was earning $4500 a day from the traffic I have but in reality I am getting far less.

I am not complaining here and this site has enough traffic to make it well worth my while keeping it around but I do like to inject a little reality into things every so often.

Remember the rule, work out your numbers based on the full path of the visitor. Dont just multiply your raw traffic by some industry average and think your the big man.