A tale of two landing pages

You wanna know what really pisses me off? When the Broncos lose. (I was angry quite often this season...)

You wanna know what really boggles my mind? Landing pages. Sometimes knows as squeeze pages.

The objective of a squeeze page is to get somebody to give you their name and email address. That's it. Usually, you send somebody to a squeeze page from a PPC click. That person is probably looking for exactly what you have to offer. That person will probably be very happy, in the end, that they gave you their private email information.

Your job is to communicate as efficiently as possible all the great things that are in store for them if they sign up.

And, of course, there are a million ways to do this. And of course, the lifeblood of your online business is getting these people to do that. If you can get a high percentage of people to sign up (generically speaking) you pay less per conversion. If you get a low percentage of people to sign up, you end up paying Google a lot more than you should for each converson (and probably lose money on each sale, and probably go out of business, and probably become a bitter old man). So, it becomes a point of much testing and changing and tweaking to get as many people to enter their info on the squeeze page.

But here is what boggles my mind:



These two landing pages are identical, with one obvious difference. In the original squeeze page, the signup form is in the middle of the page, after some interesting content explaining all the fantastic benefits of signing up. In the new version, the signup form is placed smack dab at the top of the page underneath the headline.

A simple change like moving the signup form from the middle of the page to the top of the page produced much better conversions. You can see from this Google Website Optimizer screenshot that the new squeeze page (with form at top) performed a heck of a lot better.



One disclaimer here. As you can see, not a whole lot of conversions have been run through this test. BUT, I'd say at this point it doesn't matter how many more are run, the new squeeze is going to win out.

Moral of the story? Test everything.

To be fair, as is often the case these days, I got this idea from Glenn Livingston. A looooong time ago he said to me something like:

Travis, I'm very happy that you've got a nicely performing squeeze page. Now you need to test the heck out of it. Test everything. Headlines, colors, move the form around, testimonials, .....

etc, etc, etc... And, as usual, my thick skull takes longer than it should to process what a smart man says.

So - thanks again Glenn!

Livingston Surveys Complete!

I recently purchased a DVD seminar series for the Livingston survey method called “How to Double Your Business”. If you’re not familiar with Dr. Glenn Livingston, click here to read more about his methodology.

Since I am already involved in the Incorporation/LLC market I decided to apply the lessons there first.My objective was to gather at least 300 surveys in the Incorporation/LLC/DBA market, and at least 35 for each of the channels that I wanted to move into.

Most of the data being collected was open-ended questions asking the survey taker to tell me about their most important problems. For taking a survey, I returned the favor by giving away a compilation of data that already existed for free on the Internet. (To be fair, they would have had to search long and hard to get all that data, and I provided it in one spot, so it was valuable.)

After more than a month, and a sizable $$ outlay, the surveys have been completed. Below is a screenshot of the number of surveys I completed for each channel.

As you can see, the LLC market is by far the biggest. At least, that’s the one that I was most successful driving traffic to with my Adwords campaigns.

This was not a cheap endeavor! The clicks in this market are expensive and only a small percentage of the people I paid for actually took a survey. But, the data collected was very valuable and confirmed that I am in a potentially lucrative market.

New business owners face an uphill battle of legality and complex rules. These people have all kinds of questions about their business entities. And, they are willing to form a personal relationship with me (even though we’ve never met and they’ve never heard of me). 23% of the survey takers gave me a their phone number (even though it was not required).

Now the real work begins! I’m moving on to the coding phase of the Livingston survey method. This step will require me to break down the answers of every survey received into “codes” that will tell me many things about my potential customers.

When done properly, the resulting data will tell me everything I need to know to make money in this market. It will tell me:

• What kind of products they’re desperate to buy, and at what price point.


• Exactly what the strongest selling points are that I could make (in order of highest priority to lowest).


• Which sub-groups and segments are most responsive.


• What types of terms they are likely to search on to find the data they’re looking for.


• Which markets are related (and which are not).


• Market demographics for laser-targeted offline advertising.

So, off to the Excel mines! Time to get my hands dirty and figure these folks out.

More updates coming soon.

Travis

ps. In addition to coding the survey data, I must also at this point begin my phone interview process. All of the data above will provide the “hard facts” I need about my market, but only by talking to the actual people and hearing the words they use and the emotion behind their problems can I understand the “softer side” of their needs.

Using Online Surveys To Understand A Market

When you understand a market, you know what they like and dislike. You know what products they buy. You know the terminology they use. You know how to talk to them.

If you understand a market the way Glenn Livingston does, you also know how much a lead/sale will cost. You know what you can sell the customer on the back end. You know the search terms that the customer will likely enter first, second and third in order to reach the information they're looking for. You know, based upon the potential customers' most important issue what else they're interested in (in order of highest to least priority).

When you know a market the way Glenn Livingston does, you cannot fail in that market. When Glenn Livingston enters your market - beware!

I've recently had the pleasure of watching the Dr. Glenn Livingston course "How To Double Your Business". I've spoken with Glenn and exchanged emails several times to discuss a project I'm working on using his methodology. He is highly intelligent, encouraging and helpful. I'd like to thank Glenn for his instruction and guidance.

Outside of seminars, this is the highest price learning course I've ever purchased. He used testimonials from a bunch of gurus whom I've followed for a long time (including Perry Marshall) to convince me that it was worth it. And - it was worth it - it was worth every penny!

A psychologist by trade, his methodology is to survey a market before you ever move into it. Or, if you're already in a market, use surveys to better understand it. He likes to say he'd rather "sweat in training than bleed in battle."

Once you collect enough surveys from your web site to be statistically relevant, you go through each one and code it for a scientific understanding of every aspect. Glenn then follows up on the phone with a select group of those people who took the survey to understand the softer side of their mindset.

He boils it all down and sells exactly what the market wants, in exactly the way they want it.

The DVD videos and accompanying audio cd's, computer software and testimonials explain every aspect in great detail. If you have the heart to implement the tactics, you have all the knowledge to do it.

In addition, Glenn hosts a monthly mastermind session where he answers questions and puts two people on the "hot seat" to analyze their campaigns in detail.

The survey methodology has several advantages and disadvantages. In my humble opinion, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. I've already implemented the surveys for one of my markets, and am preparing to do more.

Advantages of the Livingston Survey Method

• Understand a market before spending a lot of time and money on a venture
  
• Understand if a market is unlikely to be profitable (or not) before launching a product
  
• Understand what kind of products the market wants to buy
  
• Understand the search continuum in order to reach a potential customer earlier in the search cycle (and therefore pay less for her)
  
• Understand the cost per lead/sale so you know how much you have sell a product for in order to realize a profit
  
• Understand the amount of traffic available
  
• Understand the channels that traffic comes through, how engaged those people are, and how to most effectively market to each
  
• Understand exactly how the people within a market speak, what lingo they use, what drives their passion
  

Disadvantages of the Livingston Survey Method

• Costly
  
• Time prohibitive
  
• Not easy! This method is not for slackers - there is a lot of overhead involved in understanding a market like this
  
• Math... although Glenn makes it easy for all of us who are not statisticians, there is some excel work involved.
  

To get more information on the Glenn Livingston Survey course, just head on over to his web site. I'd highly recommend signing up for the

http://www.HowToDoubleYourBusiness.com

Travis

Using Co-registrations to sell impulse products

A hot method of advertising your product is appearing to web marketers recently. Two guys named Brock Felt and Buck Rizvi demonstrate in video format how to explode your list sign ups using co-registration. Co-registration is traditionally the playground of huge companies like GM and Netflix, but little guys are discovering the possibilities.

The opportunity is quite large, and apparently you can get 10's of thousands of list sign ups per day. This could mean massive profits (if you know how to convert them into buyers) or it could mean massive cash hemorrhage (if you don't know how to convert a buyer).

If you type in "coregistration" into Google, you'll find a hundred companies selling the service. But, according to Buck and Brock, there are only a few that matter. In their video series, they've yet to disclose who they are, but I'm staying tuned in hopes of catching the info!

They impart three solid pieces of advice:

1. Use only real-time co-regs. This is an impulse buy and if you're receiving your leads in a batch a day late, they're worthless.
   
2. Put a tag line at the bottom of your co-reg sign up blurb that says something like "Check your email immediately to get your free information!" Once again, this is an impulse buy, and these folks are in the heat of the moment - take advantage!
   
3. Have back-up products to sell so that you can make extra profit (or any profit if your list doesn't like your initial offer). This also acts as long term cash flow insurance.
   

To see the videos and come up to speed on the high-level overview go to http://www.pipeline-profits.com/blog.

Are you selling gift cards?

If you're not selling gift cards on your B2C web site, you're missing out on a lucrative opportunity. Read the insightful post by Ken McCarthy - The secret holiday bonanza

http://kenmccarthy.com/blog/?p=69

How to Master the Art-And-Science of Finding a Profitable Market

Sometimes I forget the amount of time and effort that goes into creating a new product or service to sell to the world. When I see a gizmo that's flying off the shelves (or the e-shelves, as it were) I say to myself 'wow!' I wish I'd thought of that. Or, maybe I could compete with them and find a way to get their customers!

Then, I get into the research... and the research is tough! It takes many hours of painstaking (and often boring) reading and researching to find a few facts that will let you know whether it's worth the next months of your life to put together a product. I really have to work on my discipline to get through it.

Most of the time, I'll decide that I'm just not interested enough in the product to justify the time it would take to put it together. Some of the time I decide that the market isn't big enough or motivated enough to justify it.

On a rare occasion, I decide to pursue it - and then a few months later I say to myself - 'DAMN - why did I decide to do this!!!' Then a few months after that, when the money is coming in I say 'YES - I sure am glad I decided to do this!' Although, occasionally I say 'Who the f*** decided to do this project!'

Anyway, I decided that I'm tired of people asking me if I think something would be a good business to start, or if I think a product would sell well, or if I think it's a good idea. Most people don't think the right way about their business - they're backwards - putting the product before the market. You must put the market before the product - always. If the market doesn't exist, or is not profitable, then the product should NOT exist either!

Most people make the mistake of creating a product and then try to find a market for it. They say "Travis, I have this idea for a doodad that would make it easy to perform a tracheostomy. Do you think that's a good idea?"

What they should instead do is find a market - a passionate, hungry market - and come up with a product for it. You say "Hmmm... I wonder if there are very many people out there that are really interested in tracheostomy and have purchased tracheostomy related products before?"

Why find a hungry market first?

Gary Halbert has a standard story that he likes to tell to people at his seminars. He asks them what advantage they would take first if they were opening a new fast food hamburger restaurant.

Some people say location, others want superior meat, the lowest prices, etc... He says "whatever." He goes on to say that he'll give them every single advantage that they've asked for - he only wants one advantage in order to sell more burgers than anyone else.


All he wants...

Is a Starving Crowd!


When marketing a product, you want a starving crowd. Someone so eager and hungry to get their hands on your product that they'll do anything for it. They'll lie, cheat and steal just to get it. And, there are ways to find people like this. You can find people that have already demonstrated that they have a hunger for a certain type of product. Then, all you need to do is figure out a way to sell a new or similar product to the same types of people.

When you fall in love with your product (before your market) you're starting off behind the 8-ball. You may have gotten lucky and invented a product that has a massive market appeal, for a group of people with money to spend, that have proven that they spend money on that type of offering. But more likely, you've created a product that solves a problem for an unknown group of people that have never heard of the type of solution that you offer. That's tough to sell...

How do you find hungry markets?

There are quite a lot of different ways to figure out if a market is hungry or not. You combine a few of them and you really start to get a picture of the type of person that's likely to buy a certain kind of product.

1. SRDS - Stands for "Standard Rate & Data List Book". It's a huge book with a description of thousands of available mailing lists. You can find a list for just about anything in there, and break it down in all kinds of creative ways.
   
   A mailing list is the best indicator of a market because all of the people on the list have bought (or voluntarily signed up for) something. This gives you a pinpoint target of your customer - you know how many people are on the list, what they purchased, how long ago they purchased, and what their basic demographics are. The bigger the list, the bigger the market! The higher the dollar amount of purchase, the more lucrative the market!
   
   The SRDS book is not cheap! It is, however, worth the subscription price. Until you're ready for that, though, it's usually available at your local library.
   
2. List broker - Like a real estate broker for people and addresses. They use the SRDS a lot, but they also have many other sources of lists and markets.
   
   Sometimes you can ask your list broker for an example of a sales letter that has worked on a particular list in the past. This is very valuable!
   
3. Magazines, Newspapers, and print products - A lot of web site and mail order ads are placed in space ads in magazines and newspapers.
   
   When John Carlton (respected copywriter and direct marketer) and his crew are researching new markets, they will go into a Barnes & Noble, pick a magazine up off the rack (any old magazine, it doesn't matter because they're not reading it) and stare over the top of it. They look for which magazines people are picking up, and where in the mag they're flipping to. They study what people are looking at, and for.
   
   Then, they purchase 20 or 30 magazines, take them home and pore over them.
   
   They find interesting appeals and products, and buy the magazine for a couple of months in a row. When they see an ad appear over and over again in a magazine - they know it's profitable. Plus, they know what kind of marketing is already working to get that crowd to purchase the product.
   
   Once you've identified a profitable niche, you do further reseach and decide what (if any) product to market to that crowd.
   
4. Overture inventory and wordtracker - you can get a basic idea of the size of a market by becoming familiar with the overture inventory tool. You type in keywords, and the inventory tool will tell you how many people across the overture network typed that keyword into the search engines in the last month.
   
   It doesn't give you any idea whatsoever if anybody is making any money off of those people that typed in the term - just how many are doing it. That's the job of the next tool.
   
5. Overture bidtool bid prices of competitors (generally, the higher the bids, the more profitable the market) - The bidtool will tell you exactly what people are paying each time someone clicks an ad in overture. When you find a keyword that is getting a lot of people paying a lot of money for each click - you know you've got a profitable niche. When you combine that with a keyword that's getting a lot of searches (see the inventory tool above) you know you've got a profitable market. Another neat tool is Googspy.com. You type in a keyword or website, and you can find out who is advertising on what keywords.
   
6. Alexa ratings of competetive sites - The Alexa rating of sites that are in a certain market are a fair indicator of how much traffic the site is getting.
   
   Anything under 100,000 is pretty large (~2,000 visitors per day). Anything under 10,000 is enormous (~30,000 visitors per day.) When you've got a site that's paying a lot of money for popular search terms, with a high Alexa rating, you've found somebody that is making money - and chances are they're not the only ones in the market. Install the Alexa toolbar, and you'll never again be able to live without it.
   

Write down everything you find. Everything that may be of note later. I have found that Halbert's method of writing each individual note on a 3x5 card works for me. It allows you to shuffle through them all later and easily digest the data.

Once you compile all of this information, you'll have a pretty clear picture of the market opportunity. You'll know who and where your customers are. You'll know who and where your competitors are. You'll have a pretty good idea of what kind of advertising is already working on their customers.

You can take this information and boil it down into a information product. You can private label a product already on the market, or create your own. You can build a valuable service to sell. I'll try to write up a step-by-step article on 'how to create your own information product' in the near future.

In the mean time - go research some markets!

Travis

Why You Should Test Market a New Product

Products don't just appear on shelves around the world and start flying off of them. It's a long and scientific process to get to that point. It takes a lot of ideas, or tweaking of previous ideas. Large amounts of money are almost never made out of thin air. They come from small marketing tests, and later expanded into big campaigns. Most people don't know that everything now big, was once very small. When it was small, it's owners did not know that it was going to be big. They ran market tests to see if it was going to be profitable or not.

If the small tests don't work, the owner knows the big roll-out won't work. In Claude Hopkin's book "Scientific Advertising," he says "When we learn what a thousand customers will cost, we know almost exatly what a million will cost." If it costs more than you made to get one thousand customers, this product either needs better marketing, or modified. Or more likely, to be scrapped. So you can start again...

I would guess that you have to run 10 product tests before you find one that will be profitable! Successful products are tough to identify. This is not easy. This takes time and energy, both valuable commodities in today's crazy world. You have to identify a market, determine whether that market spends money or not, conjure a product (or service) for that market, create the product, and market the product. That's a lot of work for something that may fail miserably. But, it's the only way to know for sure...

How do you run a market test on a new product?

To run a market test on a new product, the idea is to spend only as much money as it takes to reach a market large enough to provide valid data. Your objective is to get the word out and measure the response. All good advertising is keyed so you can measure the return that it provides, but this is especially important (and very closely watched) when running a market test.

For online testing, Google adwords is a common vehicle these days. You can easily put up a small web site for your product, with a way to measure response (like signing up for a free e-book) and throw up a few adwords. You can measure the spend, measure the response, and determine the success of the test.

For offline testing, you place some space ads (newspaper, magazine, newsletter) and do the same thing. You can also send mail to a portion of a good list. This is generally a more expensive but solid testing means. Offline also provides an easier path to ramping up the marketing effort later in the process.

What is a statistically valid sample size to determine the success or failure of a test?

Gary Halbert says that you need at least 200 replies to have a sample size big enough to rely on. I tend to think that 100 sales/replies is sufficient.

What determines a successful test?

A successful test is determined only by the amount of money generated. If you didn't make enough to cover the advertising cost, then your test failed. Now, it's time to evaluate why it failed, and whether it's worth the time to move forward.

What do you do after a successful test?

After a successful test, you don't just roll out the big guns and start firing away. No way. You perform a bigger test to verify the success of the small test. If you sent mail to 1,000 people the first time, you would send mail to 25,000 people the second time. If the second test is successful, then you start firing your cannons. And that's where the big money comes from.

Conclusion

There really are a lot of things to think about, and execute on before you've got a successful product.

People with a lot of money or passion for a certain product can take one idea and over time make it work - no matter the first tests results. But I would venture a guess to say that most people don't have a lot of money to blow on tweaking and modifying, and most people aren't married to their product forever. Even Donald Trump quits when something isn't working. He just published an article on knowing when to quit.

But, once you've found that special market that has an appetite for your special flavor of product, you're ready for success.

My standard disclaimer: Get off your lazy back-side and make something happen. Go fail miserably. Research a market. Write a sales letter. Test a new product. And fail spectacularly. For God's Sake Do Something!! Without the first nine failures, you'll never know enough to make that tenth idea into a million bucks. Go for it!

Secrets to Successful E-Commerce

If you are interested in making more money on the Internet, you should read this.

I just posted my list of the most important secrets I know about making money on the Internet.  It's a fairly comprehensive list of things that I've learned in my 11 year career programming the web and building Internet businesses.

http://travis.giggy.com/ecommerce-secrets.htm

I speak briefly about the most important thing you can do to make more money on the Internet.  Also, I tried to cover all the bases from pre-sale to checkout to marketing your site.  If you have an Internet site that sells anything (hard goods or information or service) you can profit by reading this list and implementing one or more of the suggestions.

Good luck, and let me know what you think of the list.

Travis

Good Copywriting Makes You Rich

Bad copywriting just makes you a bad business person... you don't get any inquiries, customers, or feedback. Much less any money. The most important thing you can do is have good copy. If you can't do it yourself, or don't want to put in the extreme effort required, then hire someone to do it for you.

You can have the hottest market, with the best product, for the best price, and not make diddly squat... if you can't get that message across. You can sell ice-cold umbrella drinks in the desert and make nothing if you don't know how to reach your customer.

I've broken down a beautiful Gary Halbert newsletter into 14 steps to write an ad that sells. The article is titled "Hands On Experience For A Basic Education In Advertising Principles!"

This list only covers the second half of this particular newsletter. The first half goes into great detail on how to train yourself to become a good copywriter. It's not for the faint of heart - but I'm sure the advice is golden. That part is also interesting, and I'm going through the steps that he lays out in great detail (I've already hand written 5 direct mail ads - tough for a life-long typist...) The second half is where he describes how to actually write the ad. I've ripped much of his stuff directly, and added my own flavor. To see the original newsletter, go here.


Steps to write a decent ad:

1. Collect all online pitches for the product or service you're writing about.
   
2. Find any possible offline ads, direct mail packages for related, or similar services.
   
3. Carefully examine the product or service and learn everything you can about it. Become a student of the product. Ask questions.
   
4. Read, re-read and take notes on everything on 3x5 index cards. By the time you're done with this, you should be an expert.
   
5. Determine customer pain spots - what evokes their emotion that's connected to the product? (Sell the holes, not the drill) - write it down on 3x5 index cards
   
6. Take a couple of days break
   
7. Re-read notes.
   
8. Write down the CSI - central selling idea that pops into your brain
   
9. Write, write, write - get it all out on paper. Tell everything, every detail, every nuance. Every benefit, every product feature, every advantage. Don't stop. Rave! rave! rave! crow! describe! enthuse! Give details. Don't worry about getting it perfect. Don't worry about formulas. Just write.
   
10. Take a break for a day
    
11. Organize the copy into the following sequence (AIDA principle - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action):
    
    
    
    1. Say something that gets attention
       
    2. Tell them why they should be interested (expand on the CSI)
       
    3. Tell them why they should believe what you are saying is true
       
    4. Prove it is true
       
    5. Itemize and describe all benefits
       
    6. Tell them how to order
       
    7. Tell them to order now
       
    
    
12. Check spelling, grammar, edit, tighten copy
    
13. Read the copy aloud to discover all the little snags where the copy isn't smooth. Reading aloud helps you find where the copy isn't seamless from one sentence to another, one paragraph to another.
    
14. Edit again. Make it tight. Use short sentences. Short paragraphs. Everyday English. Use some one word sentence paragraphs. Use some sub-heads that make your copy look interesting and easy to read.
    

I highly recommend getting this info from the horse's mouth. Gary's web site is fantastic. Informative. To the point. He's actually a pretty funny dude...

Thanks for the education Gary!
http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com

What is a super-affiliate?

To get to the heart of the question, you have to ask a few…

What is a super affiliate? It's an affiliate for any product that drives a lot of sales. How do they drive a lot of sales? They send a lot of quality traffic through their affiliate links. How do they get a lot of traffic? Aha! That's the right question.

Affiliates only get a portion of the sale – so they have to obtain their traffic very cheaply. Usually the site actually selling the product can afford to pay more for their traffic because they have more margin to work with. The affiliate has to get the traffic, pass it over to the sponsor, and wait for a conversion.

This need for cheap traffic is why most affiliates play the SEO game. It's a tricky game, some people get burned every day, and some people make it big. But it's not necessarily how super-affiliates think.

Super-affiliates are usually more creative in obtaining traffic than just SEO. They sprinkle in some strategic pay-per-click campaigns. They send out email – either list rentals or spam. They forge partnerships. They make creative functionality that attracts links and visitors. The more lucrative affiliates will actually advertise on the radio or in newspapers.

Any solid business knows to have more than one source of income. Any good investor knows to diversify the portfolio. Any good strategy for bringing traffic to your web site should include more than just SEO or pay-per-click. Most of these strategies listed below can be tested very cheaply.

Get some traffic!

SEO
Pay-per-click
Email (opt-in or spam)
Feeds/RSS (froogle, etc…)
Other paid advertising (myspace, etc…)
Partnerships
Newspaper ads
Radio

E-commerce Marketing Study PDF download

Here's a link to an informative study on ecommerce from Marketing Sherpa.  Good stuff!  This proves that the big time sites are not just relying on paid ads or affiliate marketing for their traffic.  You need to be knowledgable about all the different ways that you can drive traffic to your site - not just the most obvious ones...

http://www.sherpastore.com/samples/Ecom_Benchmark_Exec_Sum.pdf

Some of the topics covered in the pdf:

#1. Ecommerce site traffic -- where do high-growth online
merchants get their traffic from? What's the breakdown between
sources such as search vs. email?

#2. Affiliate marketing -- are merchants continuing to add new
rules about affiliates use of search and trademarks?

#3. Eyetracking lab data -- when consumers visit ecommerce sites,
what do their eyes look at? How many images? How much copy? Do
they scroll below the fold? What's the most clicked part of the
page? (PDF includes four-color "heatmap" of lab test results
from Wal-Mart's home page.)

#4. ROI -- How are marketers actually measuring ROI from e-retail
marketing tactics? Which numbers really matter? (Data from
1,101 marketers on this.)

#5. Online shoppers -- why do consumers abandon some sites
without purchasing? We asked 1,120 real-life shoppers what
sometimes stops them from completing transactions.

Why you need a nascar page

A nascar page instills trust and authority to a potential customer. Every fledgling to medium sized e-commerce site needs a good nascar page - a page that's plastered with banners from every news outlet, ssl authority, and online business certification it can find. Large online companies like Amazon, EBay and Travelocity don't use a nascar page because their brand is already well known, and they don't need to convince the customer to buy.

The problem with Internet stores is that you can't hold the customer's hand and make them feel comfortable. You don't have anyone in front of the customer to answer questions and concerns, to gauge the mood of the customer and lead the buying process in the proper direction. A nascar page is a great way to convince the customer that you won't take their credit card number and go on a spending spree down the Mexican Baja (which actually has happened to me... but that's another story), or send them a counterfeit, or not send their items at all...

Here are some top-notch nascar examples:

Godaddy


Right Now

Legalzoom

Doubleclick

Basecamp
Elance


How to build a nascar page
When you're first getting started, just sign up for as many trust authority sites as you can find. Sometimes I'll put a government program seal (with appropriate link) on my pages. Here's a list of places that will allow you to get started:




http://www.ftc.gov/infosecurity


http://www.getnetwise.org


http://www.staysafeonline.info/


http://www.paypal.com


If you want to pay for your customer's trust, try these guys:
http://www.truste.org
http://www.verisign.com
http://www.bbbonline.org
http://www.scanalert.com

Once you've got a good start, you just need to work on getting press. Get into a couple of news stories - or high profile blogs.

It works! Put the time in to make your surfers trust you, and you'll be rewarded with their purchase. Remember - that's the greatest downfall of e-commerce, and the greatest strength - authority and trust is conveyed through your customer's 800x600 pixel screen.

Tips for startup companies

Good article on tips to a successful startup. I've heard and read a lot of "reasons" that you should start your own business, but never one quite like this.

The tip that he concentrates on the most is "3. You have a better understanding of one kind of customer than anyone else." The premise is solid - you need to solve a problem for someone before you can run a successful business. If you don't know the customer, how can you solve their problems?

Mini-digg effect numbers

For anyone that doubts the power of digg.com. Here's a mini-case study on the traffic that flows through digg - for even the smallest of items. I submitted a blog post about making money with creativity to digg last week and measured the amount of traffic that came directly from it. The post didn't get any diggs. It didn't get anywhere near the front front page. But it did send a lot of traffic my way:

	time	digg visitors
before	9:45am	0
after	10:02am	26
	10:15am	62
	6:10pm	122
	11:30pm	158

The traffic from digg went down to a trickle the next day, showing that it's a short term effect. Interesting, none the less.

If you've got a time sensitive story that needs a burst of eyeballs - digg.com is definitely a place that deserves a submission.

How do you make money on the Net? just be creative!

EricB is very creative, and he's collecting a little extra cash over at FerraiChat. He's not making "Ferrari Enzo in Red" kind of money, but it's some nice extra change. Just by staying in tune with interesting things that are going on, and having the capability to talk directly to people that are interested in them you can make things happen. Makes me wonder if his approach couldn't be made into a process and performed serially.



The catalyst is a red Ferrari Enzo (very expensive and rare Ferrari) that crashed in Malibu. It's a strange story involving a driver that fled the scene, and an owner that might be in the Swedish mafia. And it just keeps getting weirder every day.

When you start reading Ferrarichat, it doesn't take very long to figure out that it is a vibrant community full of very opinionated and outspoken people. I imagine this is true of all successful forums and online communities. You need the colorful, unpredictable personalities to keep everyone else coming back. If they like something, they go on about it for weeks, compiling several hundred posts, spanning pages of reading. Every good forum is like that...

In an environment like FerrariChat, a greedy capitalist will be sniffed out very quickly. If all you're interested in is making a buck off the members of the forum, you're toast - burned by everyone.

On March 4, EricB shows up in the Southern California section of the forum. He says he's never posted to the forum before, but he's been reading it for a long time. Then he says that he's got an idea for a t-shirt based around the strange Enzo story, and he's interested in how many people would be interested in owning one. The community loves it and jumps on it immediately. EricB even works with the community on the final design of the t-shirt, and asks whether he should order 24 or 48 of them... he orders 48, and sells them for $15 each. He accepts money orders to his office, or through a paypal account. He has limited quantities and is concerned about how to refund money to people that don't pick up their shirt before they run out.

For a grand total of 6 posts, and a little creative design, EricB makes $720 (minus his shirt printing costs). Because he's smart? He noticed an opportunity and jumped on it, so that makes him smart. I don't think he's a serial forum crasher - but isn't that an idea? Could you make money by posting a thread saying you're a long-time lurker and have an idea for something and want to see if anyone is interested? ABSOLUTELY - I think it's a great idea, if you're creative enough to sniff out the catalyst and the market.

Here's the process.

1. Stay tuned to the news. Focus on strange stories where nobody gets hurt (a key part of EricB's inital post). Stick to wide interest, and massive distribution. Ongoing sagas, where people have been talking for some time about it. One that I could think of right off the bat would be Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie. How about the tunnels that keep appearing under the Mexican border?
   
2. Come up with a simple T-shirt design based on the story. Don't break any laws! Don't infringe on any copyrights!
   
3. Identify where the community congregates. Forums, newsgroups, social networking sites. In the Brangelina story, it might be the alt.gossip.celebrities newsgroup. In the Mexican border story it might be a pro-legalization group.
   
4. Approach the community with an "idea" to see if anyone is interested. If you receive any feedback, flow with it and mold it into something that they like.
   
5. Collect checks. Collect paypal payments. Collect cold hard green.
   
6. Repeat!
   

EricB - my hat is off to you!


PostScript - I've come to find out that low quantities of original design shirts aren't that cheap. The cheapest price I could find for 48 shirts is $12/ea. That makes EricB's profits a grand total of about $3 per shirt - and he's probably spending that on shipping to the people that are getting one. After reading the FerrariChat post though, I'm sure he could have sold the shirt for more $$. At $20, if you could find a drop shipper for the shirts - it might be worth it.

One time offer -or- The value of an email address

I've been aware of a growing trend in the online marketing industry called "The One Time Offer".  I was first exposed to it on Mark Joyner's site Simpleology.  You're promised (and should be given) a great free info product that really excites you.  Upon your first login, you're offered - one time only - an upsell of incredible value.  The offer will never be valid again, you only get one chance at this.  Buy it now, or forever suffer the consequences.  I listened in on a call with Merlin & Harris about this very topic.

Interesting, I thought.  It's worth a try - hell - I'll try anything once.

So I converted one of my ebooks from pdf format into html and put it in a password protected folder.  Now, instead of paying $29.95 for the book, I was giving it away for FREE.  That's right folks, you get this ebook that hundreds of people have paid $29.95 for absolutely free.  All you need to do is give me your name and email.

This particular ebook is out of season, and doesn't sell very well right now anyway.  I'm launching an e-store in about a month that should make a nice splash in the same industry, so getting email addresses (for the site launch) is more important than selling a few ebooks anyway.

Once the person gives me their name and email, I take them to the one time offer page.  Here's the sales pitch:  Buy this ebook that you're about to read for FREE for $9.90, which is 66% off the original price that everyone else has purchased it for.  If you don't purchase the ebook at this special price NOW, you'll never be able to get it for this price again.  If you want the book in the future, you'll have to pay the full $29.95 for it.

Pretty weak sales pitch, if you ask me, but in all fairness the pdf version allows you to print it out, and perhaps reads a little easier than the html version.

So, what are the results?  The first round of ballots are in.  I track every visitor that comes to every one of my sites, so I have pretty good stats reporting.  The number of visitors to the new offer are still low, so don't put too much stock in this.

Sales Letter Version	Splash	Scroll Down	Scroll Down %	First Chapter or Signup	First Chapter or Signup %	Sale	Sale %
12	461	234	50.76%	42	9.11%	4	0.87%
11	3459	1547	44.72%	342	9.89%	13	0.38%

Here are the columns in the above table explained:
Sales Letter Version: This was the 11th and 12th time I'd modified the sales letter in greedy attempts at grabbing more money from people.  This is sorta my test bed for new ideas...  Version 11 is the traditional long sales letter to buy the ebook.  Version 12 is the free ebook in html format, with one time offer to buy it in pdf format.
Splash: How many people landed on the front page, the sales letter page?
Scroll Down: How many people actually read the sales letter?  I have a javascript file that tracks the mouse.  If it gets down past a certain point of the sales letter, I submit a form in an iframe that tells the database this person scrolled down.  Pretty cool, huh?
Scroll Down %: What percentage of the splash viewers scrolled down and read the sales letter?
First Chapter or Signup: This is the only confusing part of the numbers.  Before I converted the book into html, I had a few images of the first chapter of the book for people to read.  Total rip-off of the amazon book "preview" service.  Now, I'm using the same columns to show me how many people actually gave me their name and email to view the html version of the ebook.
Sale: Number of people that actually purchased the book.
Sale %: Percentage of people that bought the book.

This book is in a highly competitive, but niche market.  There is a lot of free information available on the Internet.  It's quality information, though, compiled by a real guru in the field, so it's sellable.  It's in the off-season right now, so the conversion numbers suck - I don't want any comments about my general crappy conversion rates!  Focus on the change between pre and post one-time-offer conversion rates.

As you can see, although still low, the one time offer has more than doubled the sales conversion.  Yes, people are actually buying something that they're one click away from getting for free.  ha!

How to promote an upcoming site

Somewhere out there is someone that's looking for the functionality that you just built. Someone is desperately seeking exactly the technology that you just put live on the Internet. After all, it's a good idea! And that's why you built it in the first place!

But, now that it's up, or getting close to being up, you're wondering where you're going to get traffic for it??? I mean, you know your fans are out there, but how do you get them here?

Here are some ideas.

Put up a promotional site as soon as you can. Have a screenshot, and some enticing text or a small story to tell. Include a text box where someone can get an email notification when they can access your site.

Start a blog. Tell people about your service, but also post some helpful information that will be of interest to people using your up-coming service. Continue posting to it – make it fresh and up-to-date so people know that the lights are on.

Contact some people that are important in the blogging community your site is going to be part of. The leaders of the pack. The big names. Stroke their ego, give them something, make them feel warm and fuzzy because they're the ones that will cause the massive flood of traffic your way. They need to feel good enough about you to write about you. You don't need to choose someone with an Alexa ranking under 10,000, you just need to choose the right person. Give them access to your site, give them a free subscription, give them a bottle of wine – just get on their good side!

Once this person (people) has written something about your site, you'll start to get a little trickle of traffic (or a lot, if it's the right person). If you've done your job properly on your site, people will start to put their email in to be notified of the launch. Their curiosity will be triggered. They'll write about you on their own blogs, and the cycle will continue.

If you don't have enough traffic from this cycle, keep going after the bloggers – they all want to be the person to discover the next big thing. Once a couple of high profile bloggers writes about something, it trickles through the blog ranks, down into traditional media.

A few weeks before you roll out, put some more info about your product online. Get some screenshots or tours up. Explain more about why you're doing it. Share some stories about how this will help them solve a problem. Let a select few people start using the app if it's usable. Always push the email signup – one simple text box saying "Let me know when I can use this!" You want to have as many emails as you can by the time you go live.

When you launch the site, send out the emails. Get some testimonials from the beta testers. Get on as many blogs as you can. Put out a press release. Keep your home page updated: how many people signed up? How many successes can you count?

Set up a forum where people using the site can ask questions and quickly receive answers. People that are researching the product will see this and get an idea of how well you respond to your customer.

All sites should, if possible, offer free access. Offer a low-end free subscription and a high-end paid subscription. Get people in the door – let them tinker with the site and see if it's for them. If they need it bad enough to upgrade, they will.

I've recently read some excellent material that goes over this exact topic and much more. I can highly recommend the Getting Real ebook by 37Signals. It is both inspirational to the small Internet business start-up, and every section makes perfect sense.

You should also check out the recent speech by Seth Godin given at the Googleplex. He goes over a couple of the above topics (and much more) and agrees on the power of using bloggers to market your web site.

Good luck and happy coding!

TG

Internet Profits - zero risk

Here's an excellent example of some people that used creativity to find a way to make plenty of money on the Internet.  This isn't "ferrari in yellow" kind of money, but it is "quit your job and live it up while working only a few hours a day" kind of money.

A risk-free recipe for success on eBay

Niche market, good sales channel, a lot of trial and error and most of all, a little creativity.

TG

Putting a Value on a Website

Thinking about selling your website?  How do you put a value on it?

Thinking about buying a web site?  What is it worth?

 

This is an excellent question, a tough one to answer.  I've been a student of this question for quite some time, since I've always had dreams of selling my web sites for way more than they were worth.  There are all kinds of wildly ranging thoughts on the subject of web site valuation, because it's such a new and complicated idea.  Traditional business valuation doesn't cut it because there are a lot more factors...

 

Stuntdubl does a thorough job of explaining the ins and outs of web site valuation.  He goes over different types of websites, how they generate their money, and what questions you should ask yourself about their operation.  He also goes over the various generally accepted methods of valuation.  There are some links to online tools that will help you uncover the value of the site.

 

I thought this post was very helpful.  I immediately tagged it in del.ici.ous so as to be able to find it easily later on... and I don't dole out bookmarks lightly!  If you're interested in how much to buy or sell a web site for, this post deserves a read.

 

 http://www.stuntdubl.com/2006/02/20/website-valuation/trackback/

 

TG

Why Info-based Internet Business Models?

I am going to try to routinely review an internet business model that's based purely on delivering information, or digital services. I am deeply interested in learning about these types of businesses, and what makes them so valuable to their customers – and in return – profitable for their owners. I will learn so much from my research that I may someday build my own successful endeavor.

What is an info-based internet business model? What is the source of profit?

• By my definition, an info-based internet business model is a web site that sells information, or community, or digital services.
• The source of profit is dicated by the type of service that's provided. If it's software, it might be a recurring monthly fee (Sales Force, Basecamp ). If it's services, it might be a transaction fee (E-trade, Legal Zoom). If it's pure data it might be subscription based (porn, Wall Street Journal) or affiliate based. Other cool models have no apparent money aspirations (Delicious, Wikipedia), other than to be bought out by a huge company. I'm intrigued by these more for the buzziness and traffic generating aspect – perhaps I'll figure out how to mash their coolness up with some path to profitability.

Why do I have such a passion for Internet business models that operate only on information, or digital services?

• Because they're new and shiny and creative. And I have shiny object syndrome, and I'm jealous of creative people. By their very newness, the undiscovered potential is immeasureable. The ability to be creative and start something that nobody else has done is very exciting!
• They're often automatable – you can set up a digital process that runs itself.
• They're global – data goes places boxes don't (very quickly). It doesn't cost nearly as much to set up a web site in French as it does to put a building there!
• They're cheap to operate, and easy to get started. You can set up a new info-based business in your spare time with a web-host, a little creativity and some brain-grease. —> not money, investors, contracts, lawyers, or commitments —> This is not to say that you shouldn't utilize traditional resources when setting up your online business – but you don't have to!
• When you put up a web site – you get the same amount of space as Wal-mart. You get the same real estate as IBM. Your ability to start something that people want, and that nobody else has done before will drive visitors, and customers. Google might step in and build it bigger and better than you – or buy you out – but either one would be an honor for me!
• They're measurable. Every 1 and 0 that passes across your servers can be stored for later analyzing. You can do this with an online retail store as well – but definitely not with a brick and mortar operation. I can track and A/B test my advertising ROI, my conversion rates, my visitor location/language, click paths, blah blah blah. There's too much measuring available to mention. The most important thing to know is that I can test advertising on a small scale and then roll it out big once I prove the ROI. A newspaper ad or television commercial doesn't do that.
• The marketing buzz available on the Internet is very powerful, and growing each day. Bloggers are a powerful army. A mention on the del.icio.us popular page or digg front page can bring down a server, it can drive news, it can replace PR —> or it could kill you if negative. The blogger attention directly results in search engine exposure, to reach a much bigger audience, and can also drive traditional news to explode the cycle bigger and bigger.
• It's got a long-tail. Links, search engines, press releases, articles, etc… all last a long time. I have sites from 1997 that no longer exist that still have links pointing to them!

Why don't I want to sell hard goods via the internet?

• Warehouses have been around for a long time – and I have no desire to do fulfillment.
• Drop shipping is now an option – but you should always control your product. If you're drop shipping, not only do you not have control of the product, but there are probably 97 other places on the Internet selling the same thing.
• Selling hard goods just doesn't seem as creative, or as fun as delivering value with information that people are willing to pay for. A wise man once told me that money won was twice as sweet as money earned – and I feel like shipping boxes is earning it, and being smart enough to have people paying me for data is like winning it.

Why am I writing about the coolest Internet biz models I can find? Being a programmer by trade, and an entrepreneur by passion, I always look to blatantly rip someone else off before I try to be creative enough to come up with something new myself. Now, this might be viewed by some as a cowardly way out of thinking very hard – but I have always programmed faster when using someone else's code snippet, and made more money by emulating something that I already know works. By learning how companies are currently successful by selling information, and digital services, I can also learn how to be successful at it myself. Who knows – maybe I'll be able to come up with something that no-one else yet has… an automatic uber information delivering, buzz-worthy, value-delivering, self-sustaining money tree!

is that too much to ask?

Where are Internet business models going? I'd love to hear feedback about where everyone thinks internet business models are headed. 5 years ago people knew the internet would be big – but how many people predicted that community sites like Wikipedia and My Space would rule the roost? Who really thought that search (Google) would be redefined as the most amazing money maker on the planet? What comes in the next 5 years – or – what kind of site are you going to start?

Buying Text Links

A good site to buy text links for driving traffic.  The SEO benefit is questionable, since search engines are focusing on, and cracking down on, text links these days.  I may give them a shot soon and see what comes up.

 

http://www.text-link-ads.com/

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>> There are only 10 kinds of people in the world - those that know binary and those that don't.

Linking Strategies

This is a reprint of an email I received from Entireweb Newsletter.  These folks send out good stuff - it's actually something I take the time to read most every day.  This email is particularly relevant for anyone with a web site, wondering how they can go about getting more natural traffic.  There aren't too many details, but it's a good primer for the 30,000 foot view of creating links back to a site.

 

Reciprocal Linking

Quite simply - this is a link from your site to another and they link back to you. A bit of advise here is to only link to sites that are relevant to yours. i.e - If you are selling Cars - only link to Car websites, a link to a Health website will really do you no justice, and trust me I have seen hundreds of website owners make this mistake. What's important here is not number of the links you have, but the quality and relevancy of the site your are linking back to. Be Selective and also take a good look at the sites linking to the site you want to link. It's really no good if this Car Site you want to link to has 40 reciprocal Links from Online Pharmacies.

How to Do this :

1. Pay a SEO Company to do it for you. (can be quite expensive)
2. Buy Them
3. Link Exchange Sites.
4. Search for them on your own.

Important : Do not add to many reciprocal links to quickly, build it up gradually otherwise you will be penalised by the search engines, as it will be seen as un-natural. A good way to start is not more than 10 to 20 in one month. As your site gets older you can start adding more.

One Way Links

This is what the search engines call a natural link, and these links are given a far better ranking than a reciprocal link. The easiest way to do this is to write articles on what you are selling and then submit them to article directories with a link back to your website. Website owners are always looking for content for their sites, and Article Directories are the easiest way for them to get content, with out them having to write them on their own. There are hundreds of these directories around and the more you submit to the quicker you will build up your one way links. It also is less time consuming than reciprocal linking and you will get far better results.

MultiSite Links

For this to be effective you need at least 3 to 4 websites to be involved in this. It is also seen as a natural link by the search engines and can be quite difficult to do if you only have one website. Although it can be done. You will just need to find 3 other websites that are interested.

How it works is this :

You link to site B, Site B links to site C, Site C links to site D and site D links back to you. This way all the sites get a link with out any of them creating a reciprocal link.

Directory Listings

This is also seen as a natural link as most directories don't require a link back. It's very simple and all you need to do is submit your site to as many directories as possible. There are thousand's of them on the Internet, so all it requires is a little bit of time and hard work. If you make it your goal to submit to one a day, the process won't become a tiresome.

Good Luck!

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About the Author: Dale Maxwell - http://www.affiliate-program.co.za

Simplify the user experience - and triple sales conversions

I read a great article the other day about simplifying the user experience when trying to sell a product.  The basis of the argument is that you should have one or maybe two options for the surfer to choose from - that's it.  If you have too many options for the consumer, they'll probably pick none!

 

So in response, I created a new version of one of my more complicated sales letters for a "how-to" ebook.  This particular sales letter had a bunch of pop-up picture examples of the finished product, in addition to links to the book table of contents, in addition to links to the first chapter preview, in addition to the "buy now" links.  The pop-up pictures were hugely popular, and just about everybody that came to the page clicked several of them.  I thought the table of contents was good informative content that was useful, but I'd never really tested it so I couldn't say that unequivocally.

 

I removed the links to all pop-ups, removed the links to the table of contents, and left the first chapter and "buy now" buttons.  The result?  About the same number of people went to the first chapter and checkout pages, but the conversion rates tripled!  TRIPLED.  Just by simplifying the user experience.

 

I would have said without a doubt that all the pictures and content helped the user to decide that the purchase was worth it - after all, they could get a powerful visual of what was possible if you follow the instructions given by the book.  I was wrong - the pictures did not help someone to purchase, they actually hindered the purchase process by distracting the potential buyer from what was important - the book!  Now that's what good marketing testing gives you!  And that's why I'm a big fan of it...

 

TG

--

>> There are only 10 kinds of people in the world - those that know binary and those that don't.

How to measure if people scroll down a sales letter

I wanted to be able to see how many people were scrolling down my sales letters, and presumably reading the text, so I came up with a cool use of javascript.

 

I found a piece of javascript code that tracks the mouse movement.  When it gets above a certain value on the y-axis, I submit a page in a hidden frame, and insert a database record to log that this person had scrolled down the page.

 

Here's the code for the hidden frame, inserted just above the closing </body> tag.

 

<iframe name="LogFrame" src="" width="0" height= "0"></iframe>

 

Here's the javascript code that tracks the mouse:

 

// THIS PIECE OF CODE TRACKS THE MOUSE, AND FIRES CODE TO DETERMINE WHETHER THE USER HAS SCROLLED DOWN THE PAGE OR NOT
// Detect if the browser is IE or not.
// If it is not IE, we assume that the browser is NS.
var IE = document.all?true:false

// If NS -- that is, !IE -- then set up for mouse capture
if (!IE) document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEMOVE)

//Set-up to use getMouseXY function onMouseMove
document.onmousemove = getMouseXY;

// Temporary variables to hold mouse x-y pos.s
var tempX = 0
var tempY = 0
var LogIt = 0

// Main function to retrieve mouse x-y pos.s

function getMouseXY(e) {
if (IE) { // grab the x-y pos.s if browser is IE
 tempX = event.clientX + document.body.scrollLeft
 tempY = event.clientY + document.body.scrollTop
} else {  // grab the x-y pos.s if browser is NS
 tempX = e.pageX
 tempY = e.pageY
} 

if (LogIt == 0 && tempY > 1500)
{  //this is where the frame is submitted with the page that will insert the record into the DB

 window.LogFrame.location.href = "ebook/LogScrollDown.aspx";
 LogIt = 1
}
 
return true
}

This method of scroll-tracking is far from perfect.  If the person is using a non-supported browser, or if cookies are turned off, it won't work.  If the person uses only their down arrows to scroll and never move the mouse, it won't work either.  But, it will work for around 95% of people, and that won't change from sales letter mod-to-mod, so it's a good test.

This technique has been very informative for me so far...

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>> There are only 10 kinds of people in the world - those that know binary and those that don't.

Tracking sales

I just added a "sales letter version" key to one of my sales pages.  I wanted to track the conversion percentages for each modification I made to the sales letter, now matter how miniscule.  I was tracking conversion percentages by day, but now I'm also tracking by "version."

 

Here's the breakdown:

 

Sales Letter Version (the version number of the text that's currently active)

Version Date (date the current version went into effect)

Splash Count (number of people that saw the sales letter)

Scroll Count (number of people that scrolled down, and presumably read, the sales letter)

Scroll % (scroll count / splash count)

Checkout Page Count (number of people that saw the checkout page)

Checkout Page % (checkout count / splash count)

Purchase Count (number of people that purchased)

Purchase % (purchase count / splash count)

 

With this quick overview, I can run a new headline for a day or two and see if it's more or less effective than the previous headline.  If I make changes frequently to my sales copy (which I do, daily), this method isn't very scientific.  First of all, it doesn't gather a large sample size if you change it too frequently, secondly, it doesn't take into account things like seasonal or day-of-week shopping patterns (like Wednesday sales traditionally greater than Monday sales).  The better way to do this would have been to run an A-B test for a longer period of time, sending some customers to each version of the sales letter and measuring them against each other.  But... this will do for now!

--

>> There are only 10 kinds of people in the world - those that know binary and those that don't.

Never sell your product - always sell service. Any obvious sales language in a sales letter will create a corresponding amount of purchase resistance. These are the wise words of Claude Hopkins in his books My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising. These books were written in the mid 1920's but the principals are still valid today.

In the real world, this is a free tasting of cheese at the grocery store, or a coupon for a free can of beans. In the Internet world, it's a free match.com account - you don't pay until it's proven to you that it's worth it. It could also be a free trial period for some software. It could be online banking. It could be a content site that provides information, and makes money on hosting PPC ads.

If you're selling something on the Internet - information in particular - give a little away to get a lot in return. Build some confidence and credibility with the customer and they'll reward you with a purchase.

For example, if you're selling an e-book, give away a top 10 list (or a white paper, or a taste of your software) in exchange for an email address. You build cred with the customer, and get the ability to send a couple of email marketing messages to them.

Measuring Conversion

Everyone these days talks so much about advertising, PPC, SEO, pop this and blog that.  I guess everyone is just realizing that you can pay to send people to your site... woo hoo!  Big deal - you've always been able to do this, it's just becoming available to the masses now.

 

The real question, as far as I'm concerned, is how many of those people buy something!  Or, in some cases, how many perform the desired action (filling out a form to become a lead, for instance.)  You can send a lot of traffic to your site, but the only way to know whether it's effective traffic is to measure, measure, tweak, and measure.

 

On nearly all of my e-commerce sites that sell an item with a sales copy letter, I measure the following items.

1. Number of people that landed on the sales page, and where they came from

2. Number (and %) of people that actually scrolled down to near the bottom of the sales page

3. Number (and %) of people that clicked through to the checkout page

4. Number (and %) of people that purchase

 

From these numbers I can tweak my sales letter constantly and monitor the resulting customer actions.  If the % goes up, the change becomes permanent, if it goes down, it's rolled back.  This allows me to send a small amount of traffic to the site and tweak the copy until I know that my larger (more $$, more risk) advertising campaign will not be wasted.

 

Sales copy doesn't come naturally to me the way it does to some people, but my ability to be patient and measure the success of each mod ensures my eventual success.

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>> There are only 10 kinds of people in the world - those that know binary and those that don't.

Finding an Online Marketing Consultant

I've got a web site that needs some paid traffic.  I'm willing to pay the right person to manage that flow of traffic for me.  I'm having a very hard time finding the right person for the job...

 

I can find all kinds of people/companies that specialize in adwords.  It's pretty easy to find someone that does direct mail.  There are lots of companies out there that will start a popup campaign for you.  But I can't find anyone that will manage an online advertising campaign across all avenues.  I'm looking for all PPC (adwords, overture, mamma, findwhat, etc...), banners, popups, classifieds, email, sponsored e-zines, purchased links, and everything else.  I need someone that can review the product, implement the campaign, and measure the conversions and ROI.  At some point it would be nice to test the waters with offline marketing - some direct mail, flyers, postcards, etc.

 

This sort of person/company must exist somewhere, and my money is burning a hole in my pocket... guess I'll keep searching.

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>> There are only 10 kinds of people in the world - those that know binary and those that don't.