Referral Statistics

Outside of Envato, I run a small web store and I use a lot of the same marketing techniques as I do for my Graphicriver items. Obviously, Envato doesn’t yet support referral tracking, however Google Analytics does.

I just took a look at my Google Analytics to have a look at the Ecommerce section and see how much traffic and revenue was sent from the top 10 referrers (numbers rounded up to 2dp)

Just to note, these results only include google.com and they don’t include any results from paid marketing campaigns or email newsletters, etc.

All Authors have access to these referring sites I have used and the private domains listed aren’t traffic heavy blogs (I removed my traffic-heavy sites from these results as they’d skew the results too much)

The private domains are simply Wordpress sites I spent a day or so setting up, filled with content (lots of keywords) and then never touched them again. In fact, one of them is even on my old server it’s been that long since I bothered with it.

From these statistics, here’s a few things that stand out to me:

Firstly you can see how if you’re not promoting your items outside of Envato, you are most certainly missing out on sales and referral cuts.

Secondly, if you’re not applying SEO techniques to your item pages, on and off the marketplaces, you’re missing out on traffic. Google wasn’t the top referrer by magic.

Thirdly, having your own personal domain allows you much greater flexibility with SEO over sites like DA and Flickr, meaning you can use it to pick up more targeted traffic.

Lastly, having a fan page on Facebook is a powerful thing. Allowing people who enjoy your work here on Graphicriver to follow you and interact with you is a great way to post your new items right in front of their eyes and generate repeat custom. These people, after all, have liked you for a reason.

- I was rather surprised to see that Flickr sent more revenue than Deviantart… how many of you are not uploading to Flickr?

Again, just to reiterate, these are a selection of results chosen because everyone has access to them, & the private sites only took a few hours to set up each.

Very interesting! I never realized flickr drove that kind of traffic! I definitely will have to start using it, can I ask for flickr for example, do you submit to groups? or simply just upload your image and leave it?

Another wonderful post! Thanks for sharing, and happy Friday to you!

Oh nice! Some great suggestions in there, thanks a lot for sharing with us Adam!

Well, as Authors it’s interesting to see where the money comes from, even if it is only a small report.

It’s a shame I don’t yet have more in depth information, but in future I’m sure I will

And you’re very welcome folks!

Thanks for sharing buddy. I’m surprised about your Facebook data, never imagined it could work so well

MikeMoloney said
Very interesting! I never realized flickr drove that kind of traffic! I definitely will have to start using it, can I ask for flickr for example, do you submit to groups? or simply just upload your image and leave it?

Yes there are groups on flickr, similar to deviant art.

This is great, it really shows what social networks can do these days.

quickandeasy, if you don’t mind me asking, how much $ per month does referral income amounts to? Is it really worth your time to bother with setting up traffic sites?

@xdkd,

In comparison to some Authors, my referral amounts are miniscule. I know of Authors making several thousand dollars per month with little effort.

My referrals are hovering around $400~ per month right now, they’ve been dwindling as my attention has been elsewhere, but over these next few months I’m planning on going back to growing my affiliate income using what I have learnt from those Authors who’re earning thousands – and I’m going to record my progress so I can give out a case study of it