Marketers love to throw around numbers and stats, as if the world rose and set around them. Ever go to the Clickbank marketplace to see some of the top selling products and the insane statistics that they’re claiming as far as conversion? It’s enough to make you sick. Well, I’m going to cut through all the garbage as far as these stats and also clear up some confusion regarding conversion rate versus conversion ratio. It is my hope that when you are finished reading this article, you’ll be able to take all of this with a grain of salt and also understand what these numbers really mean.

The first thing you have to understand is the difference between conversion rate and conversion ratio because many marketers interchange these terms and they are not the same.

Conversion rate is an actual percentage. For example, if somebody says that their conversion rate is 6%, that means that for every 100 people that come to their site, they make 6 sales. You get the percentage by dividing the number of sales by the number of visits and then multiplying by 100. So if you get 70 visits for a test and make 7 sales, you divide 7 by 70 and then multiply by 100. That will give you a 7% conversion rate.

Conversion ratio is presented as X number of sales for every Y number of visits. So a conversion ratio of 4:25 means 4 sales for every 25 visits. If you want to convert this to conversion percentage, then you simply take the number of sales divided by the number of visits and multiply by 100. In this case, the conversion rate would be 16%.

What you need to know about these numbers, when they get thrown at you, is that most marketers will not give you true statistics. They’ll tell you that their conversion rate is 6% but what they don’t tell you is that this is based only on Adwords advertising, or on list promotion. If they were to give you the stats for all their promotions, they would probably turn out to be lower than the stats they are showing. The reason for that is because they always put their best foot forward. So it is important to be aware of this when you decide on a product to promote as an affiliate.

Naturally, marketers are going to want to put their best foot forward when giving you their conversion stats. As long as you understand this, you’ll be better able to make an informed decision when deciding what product you’re going to put your money behind.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.