Fun With Website Optimization

You’ve finally completed the groundwork for your latest income strategy, be it a sales letter
or something else. It looks beautiful. You’ve slaved over the copy, put the images where they should be, and then you posted it to the Internet and started driving traffic. The problem now is, you’re job is only half done.

Now it’s time for the optimization. This is a fancy word that means you:

• Test


• Change


• Retest


• Change some more


• Beat your head on the wall


• Scream at your computer


• Pull on your hair


• Then repeat until you have a sales letter/opt-in form/solo ad/whatnot that does what it’s supposed to do.

I’m currently at this stage in my latest ebook release, but not far enough along for the hair-pulling or scremaing yet. Have no fear, I’ll get there eventually.

You may have already noticed already that it’s not my favorite thing to do. It won’t be yours either, but it’s an absolute necessity if you want to successfully sell. Unless you’re a prodigy, you’re not going to get whatever you made right on the first shot. That’s quite all right, because that’s the way it works for the vast majority of us.

So, here are a few things you might want to change or test if your site or strategy isn’t performing as planned:

Initial impressions: The initial impression is the very first sensation someone gets when they land on your site. You don’t have long to make a good one, so if you’re not garnering any conversions and your site stats say the visitors are only staying for a second or two, you have an initial impression problem. Headers, layout, and colors all affect this.

Your headline: You’ve probably seen The Big Read Headline. It’s the “Attention” portion of AIDA, and makes a huge difference in whether or not you get and keep someone’s attention. Make your headlines short and hard-hitting, and if its not working, tweak the wording, word-wrap breaks (which you can manage with a <br> HTML command), and embellishments like quotation marks or underlines.

Your copy: It helps to go back to your copy once you haven’t looked at it for a while, because you give yourself some objectivity. You may notice things like awkward sentences, weak selling, and bad layout that makes it unpleasant to read. Again, these are things which require tweaking over time, and small things like the font family and its point size.

Images: Chances are I’m going to have to get a header for my new site, and I’ll be doing that soon. As I stated last week, other images like your picture, ebook covers, return guarantee ribbons, and fancy ‘Buy Now’ buttons might be necessary to add, or you may have gone too far and have to remove a few things.

Yes, I find optimization is about as much fun for me as a dental appointment, and even worse, takes much longer than a dentist would. It is a necessary evil though, and obligatory to make your sites convert like they should.

Review Of The SEO Book Training Program

What do I think about Aaron Wall’s SEO Book?

I have been meaning to review Aaron Wall’s SEO book ever since I interviewed Aaron last year. I am finally getting around to it.

First of all I want to say it’s REALLY, REALLY loaded with information! His ebook had over 300 pages and his training program has more information than his ebook ever had.

The SEO Book training program covers A LOT more than just Search Engine Optimization. In addition to SEO, the SEO Book covers:

• Copywriting


• Social Marketing


• Website Usability


• Website Monetization


• Blogging


• and more!

Aaron uses a combination of articles and videos to teach you how to rank high in the Search engines. He also teaches you just about everything imaginable about marketing a product or service.

Not only that, but the SEO Book has a private online community where you can ask and answer questions of both Aaron and other members of his program. The community really blew me away. I have been a member of many paid online communities and none of them were as good as the one that Aaron runs. The most amazing thing to me about the community is how active Aaron is in it. The last time I checked Aaron Wall had 2,799 posts (16.26 posts per day). If you want to get direct advice from Aaron then you should sign up soon, because I just don’t see how Aaron can continue to be so active on his forum and continue to take on new members. It doesn’t seem like a very scalable business model to me.

Anyway, if you are new to online marketing or you want a great place to learn about online marketing (especially SEO) then I recommend that you click here to join the SEO Book Training Program. It is one of the best deals on the Internet for beginners to learn how to make money online.

How To Work Successfully From Home

Working from home poses its own challenges for people who do, namely working in a somewhat lonely environment, deciding on whether to shower, dress for success or simply working in our PJ’s. Either way, whatever we do, it does require some form of control and measure to get things done in a timely matter.

The biggest issue work at home entrepreneurs have would probably fall into time management and staying on track of our goals. After all, it is only too easy to get sidetracked with important visits, movies, game nights, shopping, outings and what not.

I’m sure that if you fall under the label “self employed, working from home” you have your very own demons to wrestle with at times (or had in the past at least).

What were your biggest issues and how did you grasp them in the end?

When I first started out in my first home business, I always dressed up, brushed my teeth, combed my hair and did everything else I was supposed to do to run a successful home business.

After all, working from home is no different than working for a boss, except of course that we are the boss. Or so I thought… soon enough I learned that following the same behavior to get ready for work than if I was actually going to an employers premises didn’t really work out as I hoped it would.

All the nice suits, cool hairstyle and mint fresh breath didn’t get my work done, did it.

No, I learned that instead of living that pre-cut life of doing things this and that way, I was better off to focus on the actual tasks at hand and really stay the course.

Since nobody is watching over our shoulders except perhaps our spouses and clients (if we have them) it is a challenge for many entrepreneurs to stay on course of their self imposed work schedule.

Perhaps that is why it is so easy to make excuses, since we “only” work for ourselves.

To do that you would only kid yourself and risk your own lifeline and success. After all, if we make too many excuses nothing good will ever come out of it.

Don’t you agree?

So what is the secret to keeping the focus without falling prey to daily distractions while working from home?

Personally I think the most important part of running a business from home is to set targets. But not just any targets. They have to be in bite sized chunks to stay manageable. It also helps to factor in distraction time every day.

In the years I have been online I finally learned that no matter how many tasks you set yourself every day, you will fall short of them on most days due to unforeseen distractions. As long as you allocate extra time for this, you won’t have any issues. I also learned that setting myself too many targets never works out so I keep them in a manageable way.

What works for me is to take 2/3 of my working day and plan it out while leaving the rest free for the less important work that has to be done regardless. This has worked really well for me over the past year.

Maybe you have your own tips on how to work successfully from home.

New Going Natural Videos From StomperNet

I wanted to let you know that StomperNet is releasing a bunch of free videos in the next couple of weeks that you really should check out.

Their first video, talks about how StomperNet co-founder Brad Fallon’s Wedding Favors site was dumped from Google’s Search Engine results. It also tells you exactly what Brad did to have his best 6 months ever – without a home page listing in Google by using PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising.

You can watch how he did it, by clicking here.

Also, be sure to keep your eye out for more videos from the StomperNet folks. Their videos tend to be REALLY good.

The Purpose of Other Images on Your Sales Letter

Why are all those different types of images on a sales letter page? The header is obvious,
but why the rest? Do you really need all those other pictures? The answer is simply that
they help. There are certain categories of images you can use beyond a header, because they
improve your conversions in various ways.

So, here’s the how and why of all the other images you might see:

The merchant’s picture: No, it’s not about the owner’s ego, although there might be a little of that too. It’s there because people don’t like buying from a faceless, impersonal web site. Therefore, many merchants selling digital products online add their pictures by putting them next to their first paragraph, in their headers, and occasionally next to their products. If you’re not already doing this, you should consider it.

The pictures of people in the testimonials: Mostly this is a means to reassure potential customers reading the testimonials that they’re not fake. Yes, some people are sleazy enough to post fake testimonials, and they’ve made their customers cynical for the rest of us. So post a picture, or if not that, a link to prove the people who are saying nice things about your product actually exist.

Digital product packages: I’m using this as a catch-all for images of ebook covers, software boxes, CD sleeves, and membership cards. They add a sense of reality to an otherwise intangible digital product, and on top of it, images and text convert better than text alone. These work best right next to the ‘Buy Now’ buttons, and are so useful you should plan to add them for any digital product you sell as a part of the start-up cost.

Red check marks: These go beautifully with benefit lists. It’s a psychological trick that helps give more selling power to them. Mine have shadow effects for some extra ‘wow’ factor.

While a header and footer image can certainly help your sales, don’t forget that other images have a purpose on your sales page too.

Respect Thy Neighbour - And Why We Shouldn’t Judge A Book By Its Cover

While sitting at my keyboard and typing away I’m watching a movie. Yes, that officially confirms that I can multi task. Isn’t that a woman’s birthright anyway?

The movie is about a girl who does an experiment in school about fat people and how they are being treated by most people. I think you can guess that many fail the test because they shun, ridicule, ignore and outright bully fat people and it made me ask myself “what right do any of us have to judge others for how they look, are dressed, talk, behave and what not.”

The sad thing is we all do it. I do it and while I stop myself every now and again and remind myself that I’m no better than the fat lady shopping with her three fat kids in tow. I look at them and feel repulsion for letting themselves go so far.

To be honest, I do feel rotten when I catch myself with these thoughts and it wasn’t until I read a book that talks about the conditional cause of obesity that made me realize that it might not be their fault at all.

If you are interested, the book is called The Gabriel Method and will most likely be the most eye opening book for anybody who ever has or still suffers with extra weight. (And it isn’t a diet!).

It was for me. See, throughout my life I have struggled on and off with extra weight. I have pedaled between $62 kg’s all the way up to $90 kg. After reading this book I now know that the cause of my weight gain is emotional based and I need to resolve this before I can lose weight once and for all.

But I don’t want to talk about my weight issues. I want to address the problem of judging others because of their appearance. While I am heavier than is good for my height, I don’t particularly look fat.

I wanted to know why we judge others constantly and why we do this, even though we know it is wrong. After much consideration and thought provoking discussions with my husband I came to the conclusion that in many cases it is a result of our upbringing and the influence we were exposed to while growing up.

Knowing this doesn’t make the act of thinking these thoughts any better, but it does help the healing process and getting better at not judging others because they look different to us.

I suppose the stereotype advertising we are exposed to every day doesn’t help this cause either. Our role models these days are stick insects (not mine BTW) with collar bones that nearly touch the nose. (Ok that is also judging but I like to drive home a point here about false advertising).

Upon realizing this myself I have started to consciously see the good in every person I meet. I really does help. While it isn’t much, I believe if we all did that, the world would be a much better place.

In case you wondered why I’m rambling about judging others by a cover I’d like to make the connection to working from home. We do the same while surfing websites and blogs and our minds are constantly in a state of judgment. We judge other blogs on their colors, their RSS subscriber feed, their comment section and in the way we can or can not navigate their website.

Funny thing is that while we do this we miss out on some really good reading because we are blinded by appearances. Instead of giving someone the benefit of the doubt we click away, never to return. I have come to learn that some of my favorite bloggers own very basic blogs. There is no fluff about them. They are simple and on the first look boring, but when I looked beyond the “facade” I found real treasure.

Does this happen to you too? Have you caught yourself judging other websites or blogs, only to be positively surprised once you looked more closely or is appearance everything to you, even if it contains a shallow shell? What do you think?

The Only Type of MMO Site You Should Buy

In my last post – Apparently This Is How You Really Make Money Online – Or Is It? – I talked about the new popular trend of buying and selling blogs, and how that is basically a stupid thing to do for either side. I also mentioned there was an exception to this where it is a good idea to buy a blog or static website. That is what I am going to discuss here…

If you are planning to buy a blog or a website then you need to buy one that is highly ranked for competitive keyword phrases in its niche. If it’s a site about making money online or home based business then you want it to be ranked for a lot of keyword phrases related to that. This is because search engine traffic is free, long term, not dependent on your writing style or personality, and won’t require any work on your part since the rankings have already been built up. If it doesn’t have high search engine rankings then you are wasting your money!

For example; I have a website that is ranked for just about every keyword phrase you could think of related to home based business, work at home, and make money online. Almost all the traffic comes from search engines with most of it from Google. If you bought that site from me the traffic would stay exactly the same and the money it earns would not drop at all.

The reason it would continue to make the same amount of money for the new owner is because the traffic, profits, and popularity are completely independent of me. My personality doesn’t matter. My writing style doesn’t matter. My knowledge of making money online doesn’t matter. My subscriber count doesn’t matter. My popularity among internet marketers and bloggers doesn’t matter. Nothing about me matters. The site has the rankings and the traffic and money comes from those rankings.

This is not usually the case with most blogs. At least it hasn’t been with the blogs I have seen sold lately. Most of them don’t have good rankings for important keywords. Their traffic and money mainly comes from RSS subscribers and other bloggers, and they are highly dependent on the owner of the blog for one reason or another.

But don’t get me wrong, there are blogs that could also be sold and continue to get similar levels of traffic and earnings. It just has to be a blog that has good search engine rankings. For instance, the blog you are reading right now, Can I Make Big Money Online, is ranked very highly for keyword phrases like: make money online, make money, how to make money online and many more. Those are competitive keywords that get a lot of searches so the traffic would continue to come in even if this blog was sold.

Also, if you are the one selling a site or blog with high rankings you don’t have it on your conscience that you just robbed someone out of $10,000 or whatever you sold your blog for. You can sleep at night knowing that the person who bought your site is getting their money’s worth.

Another good thing about being the seller of a site like this is that you can do it over and over again to keep making money. It’s a lot easier to build up the search engine rankings of a website for a few competitive keywords than it is to build up a highly popular A-list blog with thousands of RSS subscribers. You can do this a few times a year and keep making big money on each sale. Whereas a highly popular blog usually takes at least a year or more to build up, if you can even do it at all.

Basically the biggest point I am trying to get across here is that if you are going buy a blog or a website make sure it’s one that has high search engine rankings for top keywords in its niche. And a lesser point I am trying to make is that if you are going to build a business out of selling sites then don’t try to build up A-list blogs to sell.

So, the next time you see a blog or website for sale that you may be interested in buying, don’t look at the RSS count, technorati ranking, how many posts it has or how many comments each post gets. For the most part, you should really only be worrying about how highly it is ranked for competitive keywords in its niche and how much traffic it gets from search engines.

How To Make Your Own Ebook

Disclaimer: I need to start by saying that my opinion on this ebook is going to be slightly biased, since the writer of “The Ebook Walkthrough” (Ryan Ambrose) is also one of the writers for my blog.

That said, I am going to give you a quick review of Ryan’s book “The Ebook Walkthrough“.

In his ebook, Ryan walks you though the process of creating an ebook from start to finish. He explains what tools you will need, how to use those tools to create an ebook, and how to make money with your ebook.

The Ebook Walkthrough lives up to it’s promise. It reveals exactly how to write and publish your own ebook in clear, simple and easy to implement steps. I would recommend this ebook to anyone that wants to learn how to create their very own ebook.

Click here to go check it out for yourself.

The Strategy Behind NOT Collecting a Free List

I’m going to throw this out to the peanut gallery, and in all fairness, I didn’t think of it. I remember reading it somewhere, and I regret I don’t remember who said this, but to paraphrase: “The only people on my list are the ones who’ve paid to be there”. It’s the strategy I’m going to use with my soon-to-be-live latest e-report launch, and here’s the reasoning behind it.

The desirable quantity in a list is its responsiveness. Therefore, the only time you should put someone on a list is when that someone has already bought something from you, (i.e. has demonstrated the capacity to be responsive to your sales pitches). This insures a higher chance they’ll buy something else from you later, because they’ve already paid money to be there now. A lower volume of names, to be sure, but more responsiveness.

I know the $7 report theory puts this to some use. You buy the report before you’re asked to for your name and email, which means the person selling it already knows the latest addition to their list will buy from them. Granted, they’re probably not going to buy a product in $97 dollar range if this happens, but other $7 products and their 100% commissions? An entire web site full of them called 7dollaroffers.com exists as nothing more than a clearinghouse for those sorts of offerings in multiple niches, giving you plenty to promote.

So, what do you think, and what are your circumstances?

• Can you get responsiveness out of your free ezine list? If so, what are you doing?


• Do you already do it this way? How’s it working out for you?


• Have another strategy you’d like to share?

Leave a comment and give me your opinion.

Instant Resale Templates - An Online Business In A Box

Wow, this is really cool. In fact, I am seriously contemplating buying a copy of this before the price goes up.

Joel Comm has just released something he is calling “Instant Resale Templates”. Joel has invited a limited number of people to try the same business system that he has used to create over two million dollars!

Basically, Joel is selling you an online business in a box. If that interests you, then click here to check out the deal Joel is offering.

May 1st Is RSS Awareness Day - So What Is RSS?

My friend Daniel from Daily Blog Tips has declared May 1st to be RSS Awareness day!

I am pretty busy with a new baby on the way, but I did want to let you know that May 1st is RSS (Really Simple Syndication) awareness day and in honor of the day I wanted to provide you some good resources to learn more about RSS:

RSS Awareness Day (Official Site)

What is RSS?

What are RSS feeds?

What is an RSS aggregator?“.

How to use RSS

Setting Milestones For Business

Online entrepreneurs have something in common. Our desire to succeed has made us take our financial destiny into our own hands with the idea of becoming financially successful one day.

While success can mean many things for each of us, a common measure of success is managing to become financially independent of an offline job and have the freedom of working from home. While working from home is generally associated with the American dream, many entrepreneurs fail to set proper milestones in their business to get ahead.

It is too easy to become complacent while things are going well, but not setting targets that help us to grow would be like committing business suicide.

The first step is always the hardest since it often involves a tremendous amount of courage, trust in our abilities and mojo to get even started.

Fear of failure holds back many would be entrepreneurs and unfortunately this common human trait will hold these folk back from ever experiencing the power of failure. Yes, that wasn’t a misprint since failure is ultimately responsible for our successes. Without failure we very rarely grow and without growth, there won’t be any success.

Depending on what business you are involved in, you will have to set different milestones on your journey to financial abundance. To give you an idea, I have listed the goals I achieved along the way so far and how I advanced my own business by striving to meet them step by step:

• Starting my own freelancing business – check!
• Earning $1,000 month – check!
• Earning a full time income (minimum of $2,000/month) – check!
• Becoming a pro-blogger – check!
• Networking with other writers and webmasters – check ongoing!
• Taking on other writers (outsourcing) – in progress…
• Earning enough to help my husband quit his job – in progress…
• Building niche sites to pay me residual income for years to come – in progress…
• Working mornings only, while living “my dream life” for the rest of each day – in progress

Ultimately, the last statement is my largest dream. Being able to run my business from anywhere in the world and not having to work all day long every day. My dream is to earn enough money for both myself and my husband and be financially free to work anywhere I please, living the lifestyle of an LIP.

Here is what you can do to determine your very own business milestones.

I’m sure you’ve heard the terms:

• short term planning
• medium term planning
• and long term planning before

These are common denominations when it comes to setting goals and getting things done. The thing is, while for one of you short term means this week, for others it means the next three months.

It really is hard to throw all into the same bucket and depending on the nature of your business, short term really does mean today. If you are in an industry that deals with fast changes like money, real estate or trends for example, today’s hot deal could be stone cold tomorrow. Entrepreneurs in these particular industries have to set different goals than a writer like myself.

Also, often our goals have nothing to do with money but a simple measurement.

Measurements are needed regardless of the business you are involved in and could relate to any of the following and anything else for that matter if I have forgotten to mention it here: time, money, grades, recognition, education, positions, the amount of clients you have, the amount of employees you have, etc.

I’m sure you understand what I mean by now. Unless we use some kind of measure in which to advance our business with, it will be really hard to move ahead.

Measurements evoke another most important attribute. This attribute is called focus.

Without focus most of us would barely be able to earn a dime to support ourselves online, let alone our family. Focus is what gets us out of bed in the morning and keeps us pushing on toward yet another goal when the going gets tough.

As you can see, setting milestones is barely the first step we take when we embark into entrepreneurship. Milestones are a constant evolving matter that power us toward the dreams we always had.

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