Where do your sales dollars come from?

past customers, affs, link partners, ppc or native search?

[wingslevel]

I'm taking my annual look at joining an affiliate program as an advertiser. Thought I'd see if any of my fellow ecommerce operators would share some data.

How about this:

% of sales dollars from past customers
% of sales dollars from affiliates
% of sales dollars from outside links
% of sales dollars from paid search results
% of sales dollars from native search results

For me:

15
0
7
0
78

[wingslevel]

Not even 1 person?!?

[Sanenet]

Simply stating your % of site revenue per channel isn't really very helpful. Each site is unique, so what works on one site wouldn't on another.

BTW, what do you mean by "outside links" - paid for links going to another site?

[wingslevel]

Obviously everyone agrees with you since noone has posted here.

I think it is valuable, though. For example, in the search engine forums there are zillions of threads where everyone shares their breakdown of traffic from google, yahoo, msn, froogle etc. Even though their sites are different, it is of use because we can get a sense of which se's are driving the most traffic.

In this forum, where the only posters are likely to be ecommerce sites that actually sell something, I think it would be interesting to see where our traffic comes from collectively. For example, I have struggled mightily with the roi from ppc and aff business, but if I were to see that lots of my brethren were relying heavily here, I would want to take a harder look. Since very few of us are direct competitors, sharing this kind of info would come at little to no cost to us - and we might learn something.

As for outside links, I mean just plain old links from other websites - inbound non-paid links. Like a site that you exchanged links with, or one who just linked to you.

[blaze]

% of sales dollars from past customers
% of sales dollars from affiliates
% of sales dollars from outside links
% of sales dollars from paid search results
% of sales dollars from native search results

0
0
0
0
100

I sell software on the Web.

[Raymond]

% of sales dollars from past customers
% of sales dollars from affiliates
% of sales dollars from outside links
% of sales dollars from paid search results
% of sales dollars from native search results

40
5
20
0
~35

Customer loyalty is the most important factor for my site, and we have been spending a lot of money into improving customer satisfactions. PPC never really worked for us. Our clients don't really buy on the first visit.

[lgn1]

Raymond, Dont you mean, PPC may be working for you, but you just don't have a means to track the customer after the first visit.

[derekwong28]

% of sales dollars from past customers, outside links, and unknown sources
% of sales dollars from affiliates
% of sales dollars from paid search results
% of sales dollars from native search results

~30%
1.5%
35%
35%

I think comparisons like this are important. Besides the type of business, I would say the percentage will vary in the development cycle of a business.

Likelwise, I am thinking of increasing the sales generated by affiliates. I am planning to increase the commission payout from 10 to 20% A commission of 20% will allow affiliates to profit through PPC and I am hoping to draw in an influx of affiliates using the Google Cash method.

[wingslevel]

Looks like none of us are big in the aff business....

Hats off to DerekWong28 and Raymond for the big repeat business %. Just redid our September #s and we are just over 20% for repeats - this is my priority.

Thanks for the responses.

Anyone else?

[tomld2]

% of sales dollars from past customers, outside links, and unknown sources
% of sales dollars from affiliates
% of sales dollars from paid search results
% of sales dollars from native search results

10%
35%
50%
5%

[derekwong28]

No, we don't get many repeat customers. I think most of those in the unknown categories were actually PPC customers that were not tracked properly.

<Tomld2> Your figures are interesting, I thought you relied mainly on affiliates in the past but it looks look that you have switched to PPC. Can I ask which affiliate network you use if any?

[tomld2]

Yes, I used to rely about 90% on affiliate sales and even though the affiliate sales volume has steadily increase, as a percentage of total sales it has dramatically dropped (which is always a good thing:). I don't use any affiliate networks, rather I have developed my own software and run my own private affiliate network. Private networks are great once you build up a large affiliate base, as you gain a huge pool marketers who trust you and then when releasing new products, you have these eager affiliates waiting.