For the past few weeks, I’ve been redesigning my personal blog. The reason?
I didn’t have enough sidebar space. I wanted a third one, so I had it redesigned to include the extra space.
And my business partner, Becki, kept telling me that I needed to “Loofah my columns”.
I had no idea what she was talking about until yesterday when she finally came clean.
Andy Wibbels has put out a series of videos called Blogging Blunders and I highly recommend that you check them out.
But here’s the video about the loofah. Despite your laughter, think about what he says…
What are your thoughts about the “prime real estate” of your columns?
Until next time…
Heather
PS. I’m in no rush to grab my loofah…
Permalink 6 CommentsStrategies for Writing Effective Website Copy
By Alice Seba
It’s relatively simple to gain trust with your website copy and establish yourself as the expert in your area of business. This article will help you star doing that. Whether you sell candles or mining equipment, your online customers want to know that you are a reputable business person and that you “know your stuff”.
You need to speak directly to your target audience and give them the information they are looking for.
Writing for the Web Requires a Different Approach
Internet surfers are continuously looking for information and a solution to their problems. If they’re going to buy anything from you, you need to establish yourself as a credible and informative resource, who also happens to have a terrific product. Speak directly to the needs and desires of your visitor and you will have a captivated audience.
A Few Tips:
1. Talk to your customer - Avoid focusing on yourself. You are irrelevant. Tell your customer how she will benefit from using your product. Use the word “you” and you can be certain you are speaking directly to your customer.
2. Understand your target customer - Understand what motivates your customer and write from their perspective. Don’t try to appeal to everyone. You’ll get better results when you can speak directly the pains and problems your potential customer has than trying generic copy to sell to a wide variety of people.
3. Get attention - You can do this with a good headline and sub-headlines. That way, people will know instantly if you have what they are looking for. Forget cute and clever headlines…give your visitors the straight goods.
4. Keep it simple - Use short sentences and simple words. Your visitors eyes tire easily. Be kind to them! Break up your paragraphs and create plenty of white space.
5. Be casual - The web not the place for a formal essay. Write as you speak and be friendly with your visitor. Do double-check your spelling and follow most grammar rules, but keep the tone light, especially when your target is a more casual group.
6. Set yourself apart from the competition - What makes your product unique?
7. Prove it! - Add testimonials, sales statistics and anything else that proves your claims.
8. Create a sense of urgency - If people don’t sense urgency, they aren’t likely to click on your link. Limited time offers are perfect or showing your potential customer can no longer wait to solve her problem, can be effective. Make sure your potential customers feel the need to click on your link now.
Recommended for Further Study:
For more help with your copywriting and creating a website that people will stick around to read and buy from, check out Alice Seba’s Copywriting Sweetie. It comes complete with software and training to help you sell more of your product to customers who will buy from you over and over again.
Until next time…
Heather
Permalink 5 CommentsAffiliate or Referral Program?
If you own a website that sells a service, hand-made products, or an informational product that you’ve created, then an affiliate program can help you to get more traffic and make more money in the process.
What is an Affiliate Program?
Affiliate or referral programs reward people for bringing them customers.
There are three types of affiliate programs:
Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead or Pay Per Sale. If you’re considering paying for traffic, then you’ll want to check out our article about benefiting from pay per click traffic.
In this article, we’d like to talk about Pay Per Sale. That means that you’ll only pay your affiliates for sending you customers, not just for sending you leads or traffic. So, you pay them money only if they make you money.
I like to compare the Pay Per Sale model to Realtors. They make a commission from each house they sell. If they don’t sell any houses for six months, they don’t make any money during that time. If they sell 100 houses, they make a lot of money.
What are the other benefits of starting an affiliate program?
The benefits are great with an affiliate program. You get exposure from having others spread the word about your product or services, and your work is less than if you tried to do it all alone. You and your loyal affiliates both benefit.
How do you start an affiliate program?
There are several programs available for starting an affiliate program. Before you start, really consider how much growth you plan to have in the coming year.
If you only plan to launch one info product (or electronic product) and want to get it out quickly, then we recommend Clickbank.
Pros: Simple and inexpensive to start. They handle all payments.
Cons: Difficult to track and train your affiliates. You pay per transaction so, if your product becomes very successful, your monthly expenses may become higher than if you had a shopping cart.
If you plan to grow and have multiple products (or you have products that aren’t electronic, like food or skin care), you may want to look into a shopping cart system that has an affiliate program built in like WAHMCart or QuickPayPro.
Pros: All-inclusive. No per-transaction fees. Includes a follow-up responder.
Cons: Monthly fee.
That gives you an idea of where to begin to set up your affiliate program. How do you keep your affiliates loyal and happy? That’s another article…
Until next time…
Heather
Permalink CommentsAfter joining Jimmy D. Brown’s List and Traffic Video Newsletter, I’ve been tweaking some of the processes that I use as well as joining with other list owners to help cross promote our publications. I’ve been working on co-authoring some eCourses as well so look for those in the upcoming weeks.
One of the things that I’ve done is work on my thank you page when someone signs up for the newsletter. When I began my newsletter, I needed a page to redirect my subscribers to once they signed up. Because I was in a rush to get it set up, I redirected them to the archives page of my newsletter.
Big Mistake #1.
When I had some free time I went back and made a thank you page that simply stated, “Thank you for subscribing. Your first issue will arrive shortly.” and listed the archives.
Big Mistake #2
What I failed to realize when I set up those two pages is that I had my visitor’s attention. They were already interested in what I had to say because I convinced them to sign up for my newsletter or eCourse and I let them get away. I missed an opportunity. I missed potential profits.
When I redesigned my thank you page I included the standard “thank you” and “make sure you look for your confirmation email”. I also instructed them to make sure they added me to their safe senders list to ensure they receive my emails. But this time I included “You may also be interested in these additional free offers:” and listed a free eBook, the opportunity to sign up for a free eCourse, and information about my favorite business author – all using my affiliate links.
Guess what happened? When I checked my affiliate stats, my click through rate increased 100% in just two days. 95% of those who subscribed to my newsletter also subscribed to the free eCourse I offered. My affiliate sales for the three products I promoted have doubled.
I’ve been publishing my newsletter for five months and it makes me sick to think about how much money I’ve lost because I didn’t take the time to talk to my visitors.
Do you know what’s mind blowing? Not only did it take me 30 minutes to set up the new thank you page, it didn’t cost me a dime. I already had all the information tucked away in my personal affiliate tool kit and was just too lazy to pull it out and put it to use.
Don’t make the same mistakes. Take a look at the page you’re redirecting your new subscribers to. Are you offering targeted product recommendations? Are you keeping them with you or just letting them close that window to possibly never return? Take thirty minutes of your time and the resources you already have available to you and update your redirect page.
Your bank account will thank you.
Want to use this article in your publication? You can as long as you include the following:
Heather Jacobson doesn’t spend a fortune on marketing if she doesn’t have to. To discover how she does it and claim your 10 inexpensive marketing tips visit http://www.inexpensive-marketing-ideas.com
Permalink 4 CommentsHappy Monday!
Here’s something to get you thinking this week.
Remember…think outside the box with some of these!
http://www.risingstarkaraoke.com/monday_test.html
Then come back and let me know how you did…I’m of normal intelligence, so it says, as I got 5 out of 11 right…
Until next time…
Heather
Permalink 8 Comments