If there’s one phrase that I hear over and over again which is preached by every successful online business owner it has to be “Know Your Numbers!” Business at the end of the day is a numbers game, and if your bottom line isn’t up to scratch then you’re heading for trouble!

A couple of posts back I spoke about the 4 Skills for Business Success and I thought I’d follow that up today with a little look at The Numbers Game – more specifically Conversion Rates and EPCs.

These are 2 of the most important numbers to an internet marketer and the cornerstone for unlimited success. Okay, so by now you may have built a squeeze page and perhaps even put a backend product in place but what’s next? Well your going to want to add Targeted Traffic to this funnel and see what numbers it churns out.

These numbers will quickly identify the strengths and weaknesses in your sales funnel and will give you tangible results which you can then take and build on for the future.

The first number which we are interested in is the Conversion Rate. This is the % of people who arrive at your squeeze page that opt-in to your mailing list – the higher this number the better. E.g. If your squeeze page is only converting at 10% then you know that you’ve some work to do whereas if your seeing a 70% conversion you may be reasonably pleased.

It’s worthwhile taking the time to split-test different pages and variations until you hit your sweet spot of maximum conversions. If you are seeing a 10% conversions then take some time and analyze your page. How could you improve it? Is the copy compelling enough or the product images catchy enough to convince your visitors to Opt-in?

If you are really lost here then just go and “Reverse Engineer” what your successful competitors are doing. Have a look at their squeeze pages and take notes and inspirations from them – then get to work and get your page as good as possible!

Okay, so you’ve done some work and are relatively pleased with your efforts. Your page is converting nicely and you are seeing opt-ins to your list. After this the next number you’ll want to study is your EPC (Earnings Per Click) – this is the average revenue generated by each visitor to your site. Again you should try to keep this number as high as possible and aim for at least $1 EPC.

This is because you’ll need such numbers in order to be able to convince affiliates to promote your offer for you. If your numbers are poor then you’ll have a very hard time in attracting affiliates and joint venture partners.

One way of testing your sales funnel is to pay someone to send traffic to your squeeze page. One of the most popular ways of doing this is by purchasing a solo ad. A solo ad is essentially where you pay someone to promote your product to their email list for a set fee. You pay for the amount of “clicks” (visitors) which this person will deliver.

For example… Say you purchase 100 clicks from a solo seller and out of this 50 people opt-in to your mailing list. This tells you that your squeeze page is converting at 50%. Now imagine after opt-in these 50 subs are presented with an OTO (One Time Offer) which costs $10. 10 of these subs purchase the OTO giving you total revenue of $100.

So based on this hypothetical example lets have a look at our Numbers….
50% Conversion rate on the Opt-in Page
20% Conversion on the OTO (10 from 50 bought the product)
Total Revenue of $100

…all of which means we have a $1 EPC (total visitors / total revenue)

Can you see how important it is to Know Your Numbers?

And don’t stop there! – you now have a benchmark and you should continue to tweak your squeeze page and alter your OTO sales copy until you get those numbers as high as possible.

For every percentage point you increase your Conversion Rates you are putting money in your pocket and not only that – but the higher you can get your EPC the more traffic will start to flow to your site.

Why? Well, you know how hard it can be to attract JV Partners and Affiliates? Well if you can show them an attractive EPC you’ll no longer have to chase after them because they will find you out and beg to work with you!

Sounds crazy right? Not at all – the Numbers don’t lie and if your numbers stand up then you’ll have no problem whatsoever attracting some very powerful JV Partners and even some Super Affiliates. It will all start to snowball from there and every one involved will do very well for themselves 🙂

So the moral of the story is to persevere because your not going to nail this the first time around. Your Conversion Rate may stink and your EPC may be non-existent….but that’s okay. At least now you have a starting point, a benchmark that you will use to measure your results against as you tweak you copy and test, test, and re-test your numbers.

The important thing is to keep moving forward and try to make a little progress all the time. And remember the more you go through this process the better you will become at it. You’ll find it tough the first time around but after a while you’ll be able to set up and test conversion rates and EPCs in your sleep!!

So that’s it for today, a very simple introduction to the importance of good Conversion Rates and EPCs – so now go out there and get started yourself and don’t forget – “Know Your Numbers!”

Thanks for reading – Noel.