Saturday, March 5, 2011

Top 6 Mistakes that Hurt Landing Page Conversion Rates

A capture page is a website you send traffic to when you want to capture their contact information so you can begin marketing to them with your auto responder.

It might be a sales page, or some form of content page but in order to be a capture page, it must have a web form that a person fills in. In order to entice the person to fill in the form, you must pay attention to 6 critical tips that will give your site a high conversion rate. Conversion rate is a number that indicates how many people opted in compared to how many landed on your site. A great conversion rate is 48% - 52%. If you’re only getting 15% - 20%, then you need to do some work.
Below are some of the top mistakes people make with their capture pages and how to avoid them.

1. You Use your Website or Blog as your Primary Landing Site

Blogs or your regular website each have a distinct function and purpose. While you might capture names with a web form from your site or your blog, you need to understand that the primary purpose of those tools is not to capture names. A blog is to build relationships, and a website is to present product or sales copy. A capture page is designed for one purpose – capture names and build a list!

Websites and blogs are usually too busy or cluttered to focus a person on the one primary intention of a landing page. There’s just too much to look at and too many options. Don’t think of your blog or regular website as a landing page.

2. Non Motivational Headline

You have two seconds to catch a person’s attention and make them want to see you’re offering. The headline needs to have action or a promise in it. Words like Discover, Secrets, Finally a Proven System, Amazing, Don’t Read This, are eye catchers that stop a person and make them look at the next line. The next line motivates them to read the next, and ultimately entices them to give you their information in return for something.
When you build landing pages, split test two different headlines first and see which one seems to product a higher conversion rate.
Example: FREE Video Shows How To Attract an ENDLESS New Stream of Distributors with Credit Card in Hand!

3. Not Focused On One Thing

The last thing you want to do on a capture page is to give people more than one choice on that site. If you give them options, you will confuse the decision process and they will usually just click away from the page. An effective capture page asks for one thing – “Enter your name and email in the box!” And you must ask for or instruct this action.

4. Poor Appearance and Graphics

If you study the highest converting capture pages, you’ll notice they typically have a Red Headline with a highly emotional action phrase and it’s in big bold, easy-to-read font. Cheap looking graphics or poor spelling cause you to lose credibility and reduce your conversion rate.

High converting capture pages use fonts, colors, and graphics tailored to the audience and action you desire.

5. Making It Too Complicated and Busy

Web surfers spend 82% of their time above the fold. People won’t scroll down the page so you must have your information quick, easy to read and have the form where they don’t have to scroll down.

You might rely on ad copy and you might ad a video to ask people to put their name in the form. I’ve not personally seen a huge difference or statistics on pages that have a great video compared to no video.

6. Not Offering a Free Enticement

The highest conversion rate capture pages offer the viewer and enticing incentive to get them to put their information in the web form. It needs to be a free video or free access to a secret site. They have to get something in return for giving you their personal information.


To your greatest succeess!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

How To Find Your Online Market Niche

So, you want to be an online marketer? Good. There are millions of dollars being made on the internet while you’re reading this article and you can be one of the successful people who make a great living as an online marketer.

You need to know something going in however. There are no get-rich schemes that don’t require hard work, and that includes internet marketing. This is a business, and you need to treat it like a business. My good friend said, “If you treat this like a business, it will PAY you like a business. But if you treat this as a hobby, it will COST you like a hobby!”

In this article, we’re going to discuss three things:

  • Creating your online marketing strategy

  • Finding a profitable niche market with free web tools

  • Making money in your niche.

Laying A Solid Foundation

The only path to becoming a successful internet entrepreneur is by making and sticking to a well thought out business plan. This requires determination, hard work, and focus. It’s not easy, or everyone would be doing it. Don’t buy into all the hype that if you just buy this product or that one, it will SKYROCKET you to million dollar status in 10 days! Won’t happen, so don’t buy into it!

Some of the basic, step-by-step strategies you need to take are:

  1. Find a money making niche that you can feel passionate about

  2. Work on a systematic strategy to develop and market that niche

  3. Build your tools and systems with free resources to promote your niche

  4. Attract targeted prospective customers

  5. And ELMO.. “Earn Lots of Money!”

Find Your Niche With Free Resources

The internet is full of possibilities. You have right at your finger tips access to the entire world as long as you have a computer and an internet connection. Think about it! The entire WORLD is at your finger tips – LITERALLY!

That’s a bit overwhelming if you think about it. Where “in the world” do you begin? What are people looking for that you want to sell and make money by marketing it? You’ll have to go through an initial process of filtering out lots of stuff (some of it good, some not so good) before you finally choose your initial niche.

In order to research your niche, you’ll have to understand how keywords and searches work. This is not an exact science, but it will give you enough information to make an informed decision. Here are some free resources for doing keyword research.

  • Google dot com/trends This tool analyses Google web searches to show how often your keyword or phrase occurs relative to total number of searches. Also look up “hot trends”

  • Freekeywords dot wordtracket dot com this free keyword took generates up to 100 related keywords and an estimate of daily search volume.

  • Alexa dot com. Alexa is part of Amazon and grabs search data from millions of users. This data shows you pate rank and traffic information on the sites they are browsing.

Making Money In Your Niche

You’re in business to make money, so what should you be looking for as you choose?

  • A big, growing market with tons of hungry buyers

  • A newer market, rather than one that’s run it’s course

  • A market with low competition (discover this with a good niche software tool)

  • A market that’s trend “friendly” (ie. Green products, eco friendly)

  • High profit potential.

  • Ones that offer repeat sales or add on products

Some popular niches that are filled with sub markets that are always profitable are:

  • Health and nutrition

  • Music

  • Gaming

  • Online Games

  • Sports

  • “How To” products

  • Internet Marketing tools and training

If you have a hobby or special interest (like quilting), you can make videos, sell patterns, sell tools and equipment, fabric etc. Think of what you like to do it you’re ambitious enough to create your own product. You could even create a free e-book with links and pictures in it rather than creating a website. People always appreciate a free "HOW-TO" eBook.


To your wildest success!

6 Qualities of Top Affiliate Marketers

Marketing affiliate products on the internet is becoming one of the top new career options of our time. Many factors have led to this transition, but the three most obvious factors that have converged are the bad economy, the ease of access to high speed internet connections including satellite feeds and the development of high quality online and offline software, products and tools designed for the internet marketing industry. Internet entrepreneurs are people who enjoy working for and by themselves, enjoy being in front of their computer for hours at a time, and who are creative in how to make money online.

There are six qualities that successful affiliate marketers have.

1. A Hunger To Learn

Building a successful business on the internet is not much different than building a brick and mortar business. It requires knowledge and skill set that fits the career.

You’ll need to become proficient in things like: landing page design, Search Engine Optimization, Video production and marketing, article writing, blog set up, design and content creation, copy writing, research and in some cases product creation. There is a lot to learn, but it’s one of those careers that you can earn while you learn if you do it correctly. But you must have an avid hunger to learn constantly.

2. Time and effort

Don’t believe the ads that tell you that you can just buy this product, click a few buttons and your bank account will be overflowing with cash. If you believe that, then you’re one of those gullible newbies that some marketers love, because you’ll buy all the hype.

It takes two to four hours per day for a period of six months or more before you’ll start seeing a profit as you begin your new career. And that is dependent on your disciplined efforts of focused work and time. Once you get your business up and running, it’s true that much of it can be run on auto pilot and work for you around the clock, but it’s unrealistic to expect those kind of results too quickly.

3. Stick-with-it-tiveness

As with any new venture in your life, you will run into road blocks and discouragement. Unless you are persistent and stick with it, you’ll never make it through the disappointments and struggles you are bound to encounter especially in the beginning. You must be persistent and have a “Won’t Quit” attitude.

4. Discipline

You have to make yourself do the required assignments and to-do list on a daily basis; especially when you don’t feel like it. This article, for example, I planned to put off until tomorrow. But I had an hour between eating ice cream with a friend for my birthday and a Bible study group I’m attending tonight, so I knew I had to crank out my second article for the day. I came home and made myself do it!

5. Positive Mental Attitude

One company’s slogan was “PMA All The Way!” You must focus your mind on the dream that you have in front of you. Picture yourself self employed and financially free and secure in a global market. No more lay offs. No more boss. No more over time. You’re building your new lifestyle and you’ve chosen to be an Internet Entrepreneur and successful affiliate marketers keep that vision in front of them all the time.

6. A Smart Business Plan

You have to identify what you need to learn, tools you’ll need, and a step by step plan for how you’re going to accomplish your dream. If you have difficulty developing a workable plan, it would be a wise investment to hire a mentor or a coach from a successful marketer who can take you by the hand and give you assignments and hold you accountable. You need to play your work, and work your plan.

These are the six qualities that successful affiliate marketers have and it’s my bet you won’t find a single six or seven figure earner who doesn’t have all six of these attributes. If you develop these qualities, you’ll do just fine in this industry.

To your greatest success!