Rich Sage Underground Invitation & Conversion Tracking Using Google Analytics

Finally, after several attempts, I’ve completed what looks like a sales page.  Since I don’t like to sell, it’s an “Invitation Page” to my Rich Sage Underground!

Perhaps, the biggest mistake online Entrepreneurs make is to setup a sales process and not track the activity generated by advertising. I think that not tracking advertising is akin to driving blind.

My Underground Invitation page has taken 3 months to complete simply because I don’t like to write sales copy.  I like to educate people. I like to motivate people.  I will even do what I can to help solve problems directly… But, I don’t have the stamina to generate sales pages.

In this situation I was the only person who could write such an “invitation page” having intimate knowledge about what I am up to… Now I have “Invitation Page 1.0″ done.  I will continue to improve upon the page until I hand it over to a professional to “make fine adjustments”.

Now that part is out of the way, to the next most important item in the advertising process –tracking visitors.

More thoughts about visitor tracking and conversion rate calculations…

IF there is one thing that you must do to build success online is to track sales conversion rates. You must do it.  Otherwise, you will do what most people jumping online head first into the online gold rush end up doing.

What they do is spend $100 in advertising to sell a $20 dollar product.

This is called “going broke”. Period.

In my case, I have an element that I must be very careful about  -I have a 30-day, $1.00 trial.  I cannot even think about the $1.00.  What I have to keep in mind is that I will have to spend $10 or $20 or $50 to signup a new member.  Then I have to wait 2 or 3 months before I can calculate a decent return on advertising costs.  That time is needed to see how many of the signup actually do a certain amount of work and retain their membership.

I will have to look at a scenario like this:

• Cost PER Visitor: ?
• Cost to Signup a Trial Member:  ?
• After the Trial, the PERCENTAGE of Members Remaining: ?
• Cost per Member, Following the 30-Day Trial: ?
• Then the ROI:  Revenue After 30 Days divided by Ad Costs

From the time I purchase advertising, it will take about 30 to 60 days to know a realistic advertising return on investment.

Let me get to an example:  Let’s say that I can purchase a visitor to RichSage.com’s Underground invitation page for $1.00.  And every 10 visitors, ONE will signup to my trial.  Now I have a cost of $10.00 per trial participant.

Then after 30 days, lets hypothesis that it takes 5 trial members until ONE member stays beyond the 30 day period.  Now I am up to $50.00 in costs before I have one long-term member!

The summary is that it take 50 visitors to make ONE long-term sale… ONE Member = $50.00.  Since my second month’s revenue is $67.00  -less fees and miscellaneous expenses and even fraud charges, I may end up with $57.00.  That means that I am “making” $7.00!

This is a rather close call in a long-term marketing model.  I will have to greatly bring down the cost of generating visitors.  Increase the response rates and manage costs.  Otherwise, this is not an operation that I want to build  –it’s a financial dud.

I think a target that I need to aim for is to have visitors ‘generated’ at a cost of $0.50, and have around 10 see the page before a trial is purchased.  Then I’d like to see one-in-five remain as a member.  This is a very high conversion rate, but again, I have no idea what will happen.  I can only guess.

I do know one thing  –using Google Analytics I can track the cost versus the results and quickly see that is happening.

My main test bed for the advertising is Google, using it’s PPC (Pay-per-click) type of ads.  I’ll also try to minimize my costs by directing ads to some knowing places where Google Ads are displayed.  I think I can greatly cut my ad costs by taking this step.

In my case I have setup Google Analytics to accomplish the following:

• Keep track of exact ad costs versus the number of conversions
• I can then know where to spend more ad dollars

I will discuss the Google Analytics and setup aspect along with more thoughts in PART TWO, tomorrow.

Carpe Diem,
Rich Sage