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Taking this Survival/Home Defense business to the next level (9)

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Hey everyone,

If this isn't the right place for this, please let me know.

I need some help to take this business to the next level. I've had this going for about 2 years now and can't seem to break $100 a day. There has to be a lot more to be made in this. I see a lot of other sites (Survival Life, tons of prepper sites, etc) that seem to be killing it.

Where I'm at now

Website that focuses on the home defense niche (guns, self defense, etc). The website gets anywhere from 3,000-4,000 hits a day and can spike to 10,000. About 2/3s of the traffic comes from the associated Facebook page. The rest comes from organic search. There are over 200 posts on the page. I have Adsense, a section for BuySellAds, and more ads for Clickbank products.

Facebook page The page has about 500,00 fans. I usually post three or four link posts a day linking back to existing posts on the blog. I might also post a photo or two that resonates with the fans.

Shopify Store I have about 200 products up on this. I was doing pretty well with some gun related jewelry but the supplier really couldn't handle the volume. I wasn't able to scale and ran into complaints and refunds. I can't decide if I want to go further with the Shopify store. I like affiliate marketing better and the whole customer service/returns/taxes stuff is a big hassle.

Email list I've built an email list of about 11,000. Most come in through a Facebook Ad advertising an ongoing sweepstakes where I give away a piece of equipment from the Shopify store once a month. The subscriber gets put into a 30 followup sequence where I give them a mix of info and affiliate offers, primarily from Clickbank.

Income:
$200 from Adsense
$300-400 from BuySellAds
$3,000 from Clickbank
$200-300 from other affiliate programs
$3,000 from Shopify

Expenses:
$200 - Hosting, autoresponder
$200 - Shopfiy expenses
$3.600 - Facebook ads for email leads, products on Shopify and Clickbank offers


Where do I go with this?

So you see that I'm not stacking that money with this. I would think that with this much traffic and an email list of this size I should be doing better. Also, I know that Facebook can shut down the page and ads any day. Where else should I go for traffic? How can I better monetize this?

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Nice - looks like you've got a solid base to build from.

When you say "hits" on the website, do you mean unique visitors or page views?

On the mailing list - what happens after the followup sequence? If you're not doing regular emails there that looks like an obvious place for optimisation.

Clickbank products on the website - how much split-testing have you done there?

Interesting project!

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*Rotates in flashlight offer, becomes millionaire.*

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Hi,
Thanks for the response.

For views versus visitors - it averages 3,000 views and 2,400 visitors.

After the subscriber drops off the ~30 welcome series, they go into a daily broadcast where I try out new offers, rerun successful ones and send out a Friday content email.

For the widgets on the website, I evaluate on the hops and earnings per hop.

Right now I am going through the email sub forum here to see what I can pick up.

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Hi,
Yes actually the flashlight offers and the EDT offers do the best.

So is it just a numbers game and I need to increase the amount of traffic/subscribers?

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Okay, just started a new campaign.

Survival Life is running a contest for three of their products. Here's what I set up.

I pulled a video (with permission) from one of the products. I wrote up a review of the product and used the video inside. I am running a Facebook post to fans and friends of fans advertising the video. I am split testing using a Leadpages lander versus a Facebook lead ad. Right now the lead ad is doing better.

Once the person opts-in they go the video/review. They also start a 3 day email sequence for the product.

I have the video/review page pixelized. Viewers go into a custom audience and am also building a lookalike audience for page viewers.

Let's let it run a couple days and I'll let you know how it did.

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Followed your link here from your other thread. Nice post!

Just a couple of suggestions:

1)You have several types of ads on the site - are you tracking them to see which type is making you the most revenue? You can increase ad revenues by showing just the type of ad that's performing the best. Less may be more.

2)Next - are you monetizing your list quite effectively? If you're making more money off list subscribers than from your ads, you may want to do away with the ads altogether and JUST focus on getting eyeballs on that opt-in form. You can always put ads on the thank-you page (after people have opted-in).

3)It sounds like you can really take your Shopify profits to the next level - with or without your website. Depending on the profit margins you're getting on your products, you may be able to afford buying traffic from FB directly. You can outsource the support - you don't need that headache. As for lack of inventory - you can source almost ANYTHING from China! Check out Alibaba for example:

https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search...xt=gun+jewelry

You can either do drop-shipping or buy this stuff in bulk and ship out orders. Again, you can hire someone to take care of this type of grunt work. I know people doing 5 figures/day in PROFITS from Shopify+FB - you have a good niche and know what the best demographics are to target, so I would definitely suggest to explore the potential there.

4)You mentioned that 2/3rds of your traffic is from your facebook page. It would probably be worth it to buy more likes to that page. They actually don't cost that much. I was doing that for my mobile gaming facebook page - my ads said something simple like "Love iphones? Check out our page". I got likes for 1-2 cents each. This way your site traffic and email list will grow.

Best of luck!



Amy

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Hi Amy,
Thanks for the post.

I am reviewing the ads. Every week I look to see which one are still pulling in conversions. I am debating the adsense. For the small amount of money, I wonder if the click offsite is worth it. I do make some money from Clickbank banners on the webpage. I am pretty sure I will keep those.

I am going to look into a free plus shipping product for the Shopify store. A lot of people seem to be killing it with these.

I will also look into buying some likes. It might help the reach on the page.

Thanks again,
Mike

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Not having a lot of success with this. The Facebook campaign is going well, getting a lot of optins... but no sales. I am not sure why....

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