31 Conversion Optimization Tips – and Counting

How can you reduce Distraction on your pages? How many links can you eliminate? … You don’t sell features. You sell solutions to problems.

>> Follow Chris Goward

Copy that Converts: Interview with Copywriting Maven Roberta Rosenberg

You need the words to make the sale, period. Whether we’re looking at text-only email, a simple direct mail letter or even skywriting for that matter, the words are the key to the message. However, as I mentioned in a previous response, good design supports the message and makes it easy, even pleasant to read. It also helps direct the reader from point to point, acting as a visual roadmap to the essential bits and pieces that deserve particular attention. However, what’s even more important than the creative – copy or design – is a strong, attractive offer and visitors who are hungry for what you have to promote.

>> Follow Roberta Rosenberg

If your focus is on receiving commissions from affiliate product referrals, how many of your site’s visitors go on to purchase one of the affiliate products you promote? Think it should be a lot more? So did I, and that’s why I honed my technique to increase the conversion rate. Eventually, I took the lessons I learned and turned them into the Q&A Formula. Check it out sometime.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affiliate products, Chris Goward, Conversions, Marketing

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“Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Lots of it fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.” Tom Peters, Management Guru.

The idea is simple. Create a ton of small niche sites that focus on long tail easy-to-rank-for keywords, slap some adsense on them and add a few backlinks to boot and make money online passively with adsense. And it works.

But the real question isn’t whether it works but how long before it will work…if you are new. For a blogger, fledgling marketer, or work at home mom hoping to get rich quick (or make a little more than a few bucks a month) there seems to be nothing more ideal than to build adsense sites. I mean, who else doesn’t like passive income?

In this article, I intend to explore the realities of this internet strategy for you green horns who have entertained monetizing your sites with adsense and have dreamed of making 1k, 2k, or even 5k a month with adsense. I can do this because I have done it before, know what to expect (and what not to expect) and understand the various pitfalls along the way.

Can you make money with adsense?

The short answer is yes, adsense is still a very viable way to make money online. Don’t believe the haters. The ones that claim that CPM is less than $5 as an industry average are the same ones who clearly don’t know what they are doing. They are either:

1. Not targeting the right keywords
2. Not testing the ad placement
3. …but most likely, they are not doing both…

Pitfall #1- Placing Adsense on Social Trafficked Websites

Adsense is a funny creature in that it rewards websites with high click through and conversion rates and punishes sites with poor CTR’s. The reality is that social websites tend to be visited by people with no other intention than to be entertained. This is in stark contrast to someone looking for a solution to an immediate problem.

Think of it like this-

You are sick and looking for a home remedy to cure a common cold. Do you search the blogosphere for a solution or do you do a simple search query for something like “home remedies for a cold?” Chances are you will do the latter because you are looking for an immediate solution to your problem and trust Google enough to give it to you….

So, you click on the first two or three websites. On one of the websites, you see a google ad that promises to “cure your cold with this old wive’s remedy”. You click on it. What are the chances that you will buy? What would be the chances that you would buy if you were simply cruising around looking at cool stuff without that in mind?

Pitfall #2- Keyword Research

The biggest obstacle that a green adsense marketer will make is to not do keyword research. Keyword research is pivotal to your success. If you can figure out what keywords are being bid on competitively AND what keywords are actually achievable in terms of reaching the top 10 in the search results, you will make money online.

And it isn’t just about going after the highest CPC keywords either. The days of the $50 click through because your site is about mesothelioma are over. The better rule of thumb is to go after keywords that average $1 a click or more and get a bit of traffic in search.

Keyword research isn’t the defining moment for an adsense publisher though. Search results in keyword research tools are hit and miss and a keyword that looks like it could get a lot of traffic sometimes is nothing more than a mirage.

Now, I am not going to turn this article into a how-to guide to do keyword research. If I did so, this already long-ish article would turn into an e-book. However, there are plenty of very good guides on keyword research and the good news is that it won’t take much to actually know enough to get started.

The higher the CPC, the more money you will make….or will you?

Most new adsense publishers enter the contextual ad world with the idea that if they can create content for high paying advertisers, that they will get the most bang for their buck. But there are some inherent issues with this. The biggest issue to this philosophy is that google rewards the highest paying ads to the publishers that convert well and pay out on a lower scale to those that don’t. And it isn’t just about going after the highest CPC keywords either. The better rule of thumb is to go after keywords that average $1 a click or more and get a bit of traffic in search.

Pitfall #3 Testing is Crucial to Understanding How Things Work (or the 80/20 rule)

Whenever someone asks me how to become a successful adsense publisher, if I am going to be honest with them, I tell them that it is a hit and miss affair. Not every site will make you money. In fact, most sites won’t make a significant income. However, there are strategies that you can implement that will help you figure out what works and what doesn’t.

In fact, if I could give one piece of advice, it would be to test markets before you run in rough shod.

Doing one-off page testing on websites that already have trust rank and authority- Most of the time, if I am entering a market, I will test the waters of the market. This is done by using some web2.0 properties that are ranking in the search engines already, such as hubpages, infobarrel, squidoo, etc….

These sites already are trusted by google, will rank out of the box and can give you a good impression on traffic potential and conversion potential. They will give you a clearer indicator as to whether you can rank quickly for a keyword or whether you should move on to lower hanging fruit.

Since most of these sites do ad sharing (you get a cut of the adsense clicks), you can also get a good indicator of how responsive the keyword is in terms of click through’s. And all the while, you will make a little money on the side.

I say “little” because that is what it is. Just to give you an idea of what you could potentially earn, 100 “hubs” typically bring in about $100 a month, with most of those hubs not making any money or getting any traffic whatsoever.

But the real money isn’t building hubs….it is identifying profitable markets in regards to contextual ads.

Websites like ezinearticles are also good because they rank well for long tail keywords quickly.

Watch what your competitors are doing…at times replicate their strategy- I actually talk about this in my article marketing guide. If you have found a long tail keyword that pays well and gives good CPC and you find web2.0 properties on the first page, chances are good, that you will be able to rank for it with a few backlinks. Sites like ezinearticles, wetpaint, squidoo, and hubpages all are good indicators that ranking for them will be easy….

Free Open Source Marketplace Auction Script

If your site isn’t flooded with millions of visitors each day or you just want to try out the idea of adding a marketplace to your site, without spending a fortune on a custom application, I recommend using a prebuilt solution, such as the free, open source WeBid application. WeBid is still in beta, so keep that in mind, but the price is right!

WordPress Classified Ads Themes

Here are two premium themes designed to turn WordPress into a classified ads system. Both allow you to charge users to post ads in the system. ClassiPress is the older and more established of the two. It comes with tons of features – way too many to list here. Templatic’s Classifieds theme is less well known, but has a nice streamlined look that might better suit your style.

WordPress Auction Plugin

If you are looking for a way to simply auction off some of your own items on your blog, then I’d suggest checking out WP Auctions. This is a simple WordPress plugin that lets you auction items within posts or pages, and you can even list the auctions in the blog’s sidebar by using the included sidebar widget.

If you routinely offer products for sale on sites such as ebay or any other auction marketplace, you’ll probably want to consider offering them right on your site to the people who are most interested in what you sell. Since there are no listing fees or image fees or any other type of fees to list your own products on your own site, it makes sense to make use of your site’s own real estate to make a larger profit from your sales.

(Helpful hint: The WP Auctions plugin author’s site is laid out a little oddly, so if you’re looking for the plugin features, you’ll actually find them listed on the Download Now page.)

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Online auction business model, Online Auctions, prebuilt solution, WordPress

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Hi, my name is Brandon and I’m addicted to link building. Now that we got that out, let me start by telling you that I see opportunities all over the place. One of my favorite methods for building links is to give a full RSS feed on established sites. I know there is still debate on whether or not full RSS feeds are a good idea, but I have good reason to put an end to the debate.

1. Source Content Vs. Duplicate Content

There is a good reason why Ezine Articles ranks #1 over other article directories and Ezilon Web Directory does great with Central and South America search results. The reason is they have the source content. They are the first to publish something so Google knows they created the content. Every other directory has duplicate content. Since you’re the first to post, Google knows you have the source content, so don’t worry about someone else duplicating your content.

2. Free Links!

Like I said, I’m addicted to link building and one of the easiest ways is through creating great blog content. Once you get a great piece of content up (pics, video, or content) make sure and link to your site somewhere in the body. When someone steals your content, it’s usually not personal – it’s automated. Since these content thieves aren’t reviewing each stolen post, it’s fair game for you to link to whatever you want. Of course you will find some that strip all HTML out before it gets posted, and there isn’t much you can do about that.

Want the Stolen Content Removed?

If someone is stripping your HTML and not providing you with value, and you want to remove that stolen content, you can start with some time consuming steps that often get expensive with legal fees or come to nothing because the content thief is in another country. If you’re still insistent on trying to remove your stolen content you should start by sending a letter to the website owner. Find the name and address through a Whois search. If that doesn’t work, contact their web host. Still no luck? You can file a DMCA.

Here are two links for help with filing a DMCA.

How to File a DMCA Complaint
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Google)

Good luck with DMCA. I’ve been down this road twice, both of which just wasted my time.

Brandon Hopkins does Madera website design. Contact him for a web design quote.

Note from Donna: I’ve actually had good luck with the DMCA process, but it’s time consuming, and only worth the effort if the thieve’s content has a chance of outranking your own. This rarely happens, but once in a while, the dirty scoundrels actually have a powerful site that is capable of out-ranking source content. For those rare instances, do try the DMCA route. But 99% of the time, Brandon’s method of letting the content thieves provide backlinks to your site is very good advice. I also totally believe in using full RSS feeds. Full feeds are what users want, and if full feeds also enable us to acquire a few backlinks from content thieves, that’s good for us as well.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Brandon Hopkins, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, duplicate content, Link Building

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Does your vision for your site’s content match the reality on the page?

“Conversion-killing” mistakes

In the movie Monsters vs Aliens, the President has two big red buttons … The one on the left launches every nuclear weapon in the country; the one on the right makes a latte. The President asks, “Who designed this ridiculous system?” His colleagues reply, “You did.”

>> Follow them (Sorry, they don’t have a Twitter account. I’ve encouraged them to do so, but for now, I can’t fill this in for you).

An Infomercial Selling Secret You Must Use in Your Marketing Materials

One of the most persuasive terms you can use in copywriting is “imagine.” Readers automatically visualize whatever words you place after this almost magical command statement.

>> Follow Tom Trush

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Conversions, site content, vision

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The Concept

The concept behind this scenario is that you either charge a small listing fee for users to list the items they have for sale, or you get a small cut of the sale price of each item. Some sites charge both a listing fee and get a cut of the sale price. Essentially, you create a mini-ebay or mini-craigslist just for your niche, and your users.

This type of marketplace can work for both real and digital goods, so whether your niche is classic cars or web templates, you can open a marketplace on your site to help visitors buy, sell, and trade related items in an ebay-style online auction or a simple classified ad style system.

Your Mileage May Vary

Marketplaces seem to work best on well-trafficked sites that have some “status” within their niche, but if you think your users would participate, it may still work well for smaller sites. As with many monetization methods, sometimes the only way to know if it will work for you is to try it and see. Before jumping in, however, why don’t you actually throw the idea out to your visitors? Ask them if they would be interested in this. You could create a poll or simply ask them within a blog post to share their opinions within the comments. Does your site have a forum attached? If so, that’s another place that’s perfect for gauging interest. You may not get a complete picture of how well a marketplace would work on your site, but it would be a better barometer than just flat out guessing.

I don’t recommend making your marketplace the key focus of your site, in most cases, but it can be a nice addition to one. It’s certainly worth considering as one way of adding to your online income basket.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ebay-style online auction, marketplace, monetization

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Of course, one of the first things I tell people when they start thinking about creating an online ebusiness is to do their keyword research. Basic keyword research can reveal a lot about whether or not the potential ebusiness is a viable one. I usually point them to Google’s free keyword tool and tell them to type in the general overall phrase that describes the niche, and to select Exact Match from the Match Type dropdown. That will give them a good idea of the kind of interest there is in the subject, and the kind of traffic they could expect if they ranked well for the search terms.

That process is a good one for determining the value of a niche, and also for finding good sub-niches to target. Once you get past this initial discovery stage, however, at some point you’re going to be hungering for more information. That’s when it’s time to use a few more tools.

Using Keyword Research To Strategize Content Development

The next two tools are fairly new to me, so while I don’t have a lot of experience with them, I did thoroughly enjoy the tests I ran. Ideas blossomed and strategies formed after looking at the results. That’s a pretty good sign that the tools are useful to me.

The first tool I played around with was Wordstream’s newish (and free) Keyword Niche Finder. The niche finder is designed to find tightly-related groups of topics that form sub-niches within your niche. It scans a keyword database of over a trillion search queries to find the most relevant and potentially profitable keyword niches, and then automatically groups keywords into closely related clusters. By identifying these groups, you can begin to form a content strategy. What are people most interested in? What groups of content can you create to target that interest?

Here’s what it looks like. Let’s say your niche is “adventure travel”. This screenshot above shows what pops up when I search for that phrase, and then choose to view the details of the “adventure travel >> alaska” group. When I scroll down, I see the entire list of 85 phrases for that grouping. One of them, for instance, is on the topic of backcountry jeep safaris in Alaska. That could make for some really interesting content that you may not have considered before.

This free tool is just one of several tools Wordstream has available. They actually have two other free tools, their original keyword tool, and the free keyword grouper. Each of these is related to the other in some way, so they can all be used for a different look at your niche.

More Details – More Ideas

Of course, they also have a paid tool that goes above and beyond all the free ones, enabling you to develop a really good ongoing content strategy. The paid tool, of course, goes deeper and gives more info than the free tools, but it’s also a bit more complicated to use and understand. I got bogged down a couple of times during my testing because I was unsure what to do next. Luckily they have lots of help and demo tutorials set up (plus some really nice people on staff who are more than willing to help), so there’s help when you need it. Once I fumbled around a little though, I could see the power behind the tool. I admit that I haven’t played with it long enough to be able to really vouch for the tool yet, but there’s a 7 day free trial, so feel free to play around with it yourself. That’s a better gauge of whether or not it will help you than anything I could share here. I can say it’s definitely worth looking at for yourself, to see if it can help you come up with your own content strategy.

I’ll talk about other tools in the future that can also help with your content strategy. For now, these should get the ideas flowing nicely.

Wordstream’s New Affiliate Program

While we’re on the subject of Wordstream, you should also know about their new affiliate program. It’s different than most, so it’s worth mentioning. They actually have two different types of payouts. Here’s how they describe those:

Pay-Per Lead for PPC – We have a keyword management solution for pay-per click advertising on search engine platforms such as Google AdWords. This product has it’s own pricing and we offer a free trial and frequently have potential customers request a live demonstration of the product. As such, we’ve decided to pay for leads people drive to this product.

Pay-Per Sale for SEO – We also have a lower priced product that is more focused at providing value for organic search, which we also make available via online billing (credit card payment). For this product, we’re offering affiliates who drive subscriptions that last at least 90 days a one-time payout of roughly 25% of the 90 day subscription.

If your niche is related, you may want to consider signing up for it.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Keyword research, keyword tool

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5 Dominant Techniques in Social Media Marketing

Different companies with different goals should have different social media marketing techniques. This is a serious pain in the industry because social media marketing is something that truly works and can be very powerful, but most people (companies and consultants alike) have a lot of misconceptions regarding the different strategies and how they should be used.

>> Follow Yu-kai Chou

How Google sets goals and measures success

A while ago I wrote a post about the culture of “failure is not an option” and how, taken the wrong way, that actually conditions people to set modest achievable goals that they are certain they can achieve. Because if they fail … they are fired. Taking great risks, pushing innovation, and striving to achieve the impossible will never happen at companies like that. In that post I discuss how startups definition of “failure is not an option” is completely different. For startups it means they will try 5 or 10 or 20 approaches until they find one that works. They won’t stop until they succeed. Google’s culture seems to follow the Thomas Edison approach which paraphrased is “I haven’t failed, I’ve just found lots of approaches that don’t work, and I am closer to the solution”.

>> Follow Don Dodge

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Don Dodge, goals, Social Media Marketing, Yu-kai Chou

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By now you know I’m pretty partial to WordPress, as many of you probably are too. That’s why I often showcase WordPress plugins and themes that help accomplish certain goals. Today’s post is showcasing a WordPress plugin that helps you easily create an affiliate review site right within WordPress. And yes, it not only gives you a nice review layout, but all the extra bells and whistles like star ratings as well.

WP Review Site is a WordPress plugin (plus themes) that lets you create review sites with the ease of using a plugin. Your visitors can comment on your post to not only review a product, but also give it a star rating, right in the comment form. The plugin also lets you create Top 10 comparison tables that are based on the ratings you assigned in your review posts as well as the user star ratings.

More features of WP Review Site include:

• Want to only add ratings to certain categories in the blog? No problem, the plugin handles that as well.
• Reviewing local businesses, such as restaurants? The plugin can automatically add a Google map for the business being reviewed.
• Includes support for the hReview microformat. This is a great feature. Google now highlights review information pulled from hReviews microformats if a web page includes it (most don’t). This means your reviews have a good chance of being highlighted in Google search results with a special format. You can pretty much count on lots more search traffic if your pages get highlighted this way.
• Includes two sidebar widgets: a top-rated list, and a recent reviews list

This is the kind of tool that makes your job easier because WP Review Site takes care of presentation and scripting, letting you focus on creating informative, useful review content. It’s not free, but the cost will likely be recouped pretty quickly.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affiliate review site, compare products, Google Maps, HReview, Microformats, WordPress

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A quick explanation of CommentLuv: Basically, it’s a special comment feature that rewards people who comment here on the site with a link to their most recent blog post. The plugin grabs it automatically and does all the work without the commenter having to do anything special. The links are still nofollowed, so there’s no incentive for spammers, but hopefully commenters will get some real traffic from interested visitors to this site. Cool, huh?

Anyway, that’s not what this post is about. This one is about showing you how easy it is to give the commenter’s CommentLuv link some special CSS styling. I wanted to do this because I noticed that the post links didn’t stand out as much as I wanted them to. I wanted to put a little extra space between your comments and the actual CommentLuv latest post link, and I wanted to italicize it as well. So, I dug around in the source code for a second and realized that the plugin was using a class called “cluv”. That’s all I needed to know. Woot!

So, if you want to style your CommentLuv links, just go to Appearance / Editor and edit your blog’s stylesheet. Scroll down to the bottom and add the following line:

.cluv {margin-top:10px; font-style:italic;}

Save your edit, and that’s it! You’ve now added a little extra space between the comment and the link, and you’ve italicized it as well. Of course, feel free to style them any way you want. That’s just an example of what I did.

Let me know if you get any traffic from your CommentLuv links when you comment here. I really hope I can send some your way.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: commentluv, CSS

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