So, after a series of events unfolded (which could be the focus of a later post), my wife and I decided to take the plunge and start our own business. So, I am very pleased to introduce MantyWeb Designs (www.mantywebdesigns.com), a full service web promotion and web design company. We will be specializing in helping local businesses with underperforming websites turn their websites into a valuable part of their marketing plan. I’ll be focusing on helping people increase traffic and improving conversion rates. My wife will be concentrating on sales.

While we are based in Houston, we’re available to help people all over the U.S. So, if you’re in need of assistance, contact me. You can leave all well wishes in the comment section.

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.

StomperNet is giving away their new website conversion software “Stomper Scrutinizer”. You can click here to check out their video message and then download it or you can read about it on the Stomper blog.

Very cool gift!

If you try it out, please let me know what you think of it.

Here are the 39 steps to create a new product:

1. Conduct Market Research
   This is one of the most important steps in the process.

   YOU MUST KNOW YOUR MARKET!

   That is a little easier when you are part of your target market (like with my project). That said, there are many resources for doing market research. During my market research stage, I used some techniques that I learned from the Reese Report, and some that I learned from elsewhere. I am not going to go into detail on the market research that I have conducted, but I will go ahead and tell you about a simple tool I used for quick demographics research. It’s called “Microsoft adCenter Labs Demographics Prediction Tool” and it’s pretty cool. When you type in a search term the tool displays demographic data about the people who search for that term. For instance, if you type in “make money online”, you find out that 52 percent of the people searching for “make money online” are male. 26.8 percent are between the ages of 18-24 and a majority are under the age of 34. It’s not a bad way to get a quick look at your target market’s demographics. However, you will want to do a more in depth look at your market than just using the Microsoft demographic tool.



2. Write The Business Plan
   I talked about my business plan a little while ago. In short, I filled out the business plan from the SCORE template gallery. It is an extremely useful step, one that shouldn’t be skipped.


3. Write A List Of The Tasks That You Need To Accomplish
   This list of 40 steps is an example of the list of tasks that I created for myself. Some of the steps listed here are broken into smaller steps in my actual list.


4. Assign Estimated Times To Complete Each Task
   You need to estimate how long each task in your task list is going to take and write that number down. When estimating how long each task is going to take, you need to allow some time for unexpected circumstances. I estimate on the conservative side, because I find that I often underestimate how long tasks will actually take.


5. Assign Tasks From The List To Yourself Or Others
   If you are doing all the work yourself, then you will be assigning everything to yourself. If you are relying on other people to do some of the work, then you need to assign their names to the tasks they will be doing. This will help you with the next step.
   


6. Create A Time Line
   It is very important to create a time line for finishing your project. Creating a deadline helps motivate you to take action. I recommend creating a Gantt chart using Microsoft Project, Microsoft Excel or with a free Gantt chart creator like ganttproject.org. A Gantt chart is a chart that tracks a project’s progress over a period of time. For those of you who are intimidated by the thought of creating a Gantt chart, or you just don’t want to, I have also developed a “lazy” method of creating a timeline. What you do is add up all the days from your estimates. Go to a calendar, and figure out when you will be done. A Gantt chart is better, because you can factor in other things like dependencies (tasks that are dependent on other tasks being completed). However, having some sort of timeline is better than nothing.


7. Select A Domain Name
   This can be a fun process. I wrote a good article about choosing a domain name for blogs and it applies to regular websites as well.


8. Come Up With A Name For The Product
   This goes hand in hand with previous step. You should choose a good name for your product. Names are very important.


9. Set Up A Mailing List
   I wrote about setting up an email list two weeks ago.


10. Promote The Mailing List
    There are many ways to promote your mailing list. In my case, I am currently only using this blog to promote my list by displaying it prominently in the upper right hand corner of the navigation. I will have to write more about promoting email lists in a future post.


11. Choose Affiliate Management Software
    If you are going to have an affiliate program (and in most cases you should), you will need to determine what affiliate software to use. There is a plethora of choices, and I am not going to cover them in this article. I will cover this sometime in the future.


12. Determine All The Tools And Technologies You need To Create The Product
    This can be a time consuming process. You need to figure this out early on, in order to come up with an accurate budget for your product.
    


13. Incorporate
    If you are starting a new corporation for your product, then it goes without saying that you will need to incorporate. Just like with the product name, it is a good idea to choose a meaningful and memorable name for your company.


14. Conduct Pricing Research
    There are many methods of finding the right price for your product. I recommend reading the free ebook – “Make Your Price Sell!” to learn the basics of choosing the right price for your product.


15. Choose Payment Processor/ Merchant Account
    If you are going to take payments over the Internet, you will need to determine how you are going to handle that. In most cases, you will need to have a merchant account. There are many things to consider when choosing a merchant account, and I recommend you do some research before choosing your merchant account.


16. Choose A Web Host And Purchase Web Hosting
    Choosing a web host can be one of the most difficult decisions you make in the process and it can be an easy decision. If you are like me and you want to find the “perfect” web host, then you will spend years and years researching web hosts until you discover…

    “All web hosts suck!”

    Once you discover that all web hosts suck it will be much easier to choose one by flipping a coin, playing darts, whatever method you deem acceptable

    Ok, all web hosts don’t suck! In fact I like mine, but you can certainly find some fascinating stories by searching for your favorite host along with the word “sucks”. In other words, don’t spend all your time searching for the perfect host, because there isn’t such a thing. Find a host that suits your needs, and preferably one that comes highly recommended by someone you trust.



17. Come Up With Unique Product Launch Plan
    I strongly considered buying Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula for this launch (and I still might). However, after watching quite a few product launches and after talking with a few established Internet marketers there is a good chance that I am going to make do without the Product Launch Formula for this launch. I am putting together a product launch plan and my wife and I brainstorming ideas to make our launch out of the ordinary. If I was launching a product in a niche other than the Internet marketing arena, The Product Launch Formula would be a more appealing purchase.


18. Create Marketing Plan
    Along with the product launch, Jill and I are coming up with a marketing plan to encourage people to buy the product. That said, I only want people who REALLY need and will REALLY use this product to purchase it. I don’t want people to buy it just because it’s the latest and greatest thing. I don’t want people to buy it because they think it will answer all their problems. I know this is likely to mean I will have less customers, but I would rather be able to sleep at night than sell the product to someone who is not going to use it and/or doesn’t need it.
    


19. Purchase The Tools And Technologies I Need From Previous Step
    This is both one of the least fun steps (parting with money) and the most fun steps (getting cool new tools) of the product creation process.
    


20. Create The Product
    This step needs to be broken down into many other steps. For instance, if you are creating an ebook, you will need to research the book, create an outline, write the book, create an ebook cover, etc.


21. Decide On Delivery Mechanism(s)
    How will your customers get the product? Is it a download, does it ship on CD, is it an audio file, video, membership site, email course, etc.? You may want to offer a product in multiple formats to maximize your earning potential. For instance, if you are selling an ebook, you might want to let users also buy it in audio format or have a hard copy mailed to them. You can charge more for the various options.


22. Consult Attorney On Legal Aspects Of The Business
    It is always good to consult an attorney to help prevent potential legal problems.


23. Build A Swipe File For The Sales Letter Based On Similar Successful Products
    One of the first steps people use to create a sales letter is to find similar products that are selling well and “swipe” their sales letters. In other words, you leverage succesful sales letters as a guide for creating your sales letter. Don’t use these sales letters verbatim, because that can get you into legal problems for copyright violations. However, take a close look at the things in your competitor’s sales letter that convince you to buy their product. Use those same techniques in your sales letter.
    


24. Create Sales Letter Based On Your Product’s Swipe File And Based On Copywriting Products That You Own
    I am currently working on creating the sales letter for the new product I will be selling from this blog.

    I own a product from Yanik Silver called Instant Sales Letters. When creating a sales letter, I like to go into the Instant Sales Letter members area and use one of the letters as a guide for writing my first rough draft of a sales letter. It helps me to focus on creating a sales letter with all the right components. I also will sometimes review some of the copywriting principles I have learned from other products I own (like Instant Web Profits System, etc.)
    



25. Create Camtasia Video For Sales Letter
    While not necessary, video does increase your conversion rate. You can create a sales pitch with the video, and/or show success stories, and/or show a behind the scenes look at the product. If it is in your budget, you should definitely create a video to help sell your product.
    


26. Create Camtasia Videos For Help System (optional)
    I marked this as optional, because most products don’t need video to help their users understand how to use it. However, videos that help users understand how to use the product can help, especially with more complicated products and higher end products. They can also be a major selling point and increase the percieved value of the product.
    


27. Create Affiliate Training Material, Sample Ads, Sample Emails, Banner Ads, etc.
    You should create as much promotional material as possible to sell your new product. Affiliates will love all the options and they are more likely to promote your product if they have less work to do. You can also offer your affiliates training. Studies have shown that giving your affiliates training will improve their conversion rate.
    


28. Create Incentives For Early Customers
    It’s important to come up with incentives for people to buy the product when they first learn about it. You should always offer an incentive for ordering immediately.
    


29. Create Website That Will Sell The Product
    This is fairly self explanatory. You have to create the site that is going to sell your new product. This can be broken down into many steps, including a few steps I mention in this list.
    


30. Test The Product To Make Sure It Works
    Testing is important, not only with your marketing, but also with any product you create. Make sure you have created a product that your customers will value. In fact, you need to over deliver on your promise. Make sure your product is BETTER than you say it is.
    


31. Create Terms Of Service, Privacy Policy, and Membership Agreement
    You need to have good legal terms of service, privacy policies, membership agreements, financial disclosures, etc. You need to make it clear how people are allowed to use your product and/or website.
    


32. Create Customer Service Plan
    Create a customer service plan to keep your customers happy. Don’t neglect your customers, they ARE your business. This might include decisions like whether or not to offer phone support, whether to have a customer support ticket system , whether to outsource your customer service, whether to have a customer support forum, etc..
    


33. Create A Company News Blog And/Or An Affiliate Blog (optional)
    While blogs aren’t a necessity, having a customer/product news blog and a blog for your affiliates will help you grow your business faster.
    


34. Set Up Affiliate Contest For The Product Launch (optional)
    Most product launches I have seen have run contests for their affiliates. If you can afford it, come up with a good contest for your affiliates.
    


35. Recruit Affiliates
    If you have an affiliate program, you need to spend a good amount of time finding people to join your affiliate program. Having a powerful group of affiliates promoting your product will make a HUGE difference in the amount of money you make.
    


36. Get Testimonials
    Testimonials offer the social proof you need to convince people to buy your product. You can never have enough testimonials. For those of you who don’t know about social proof, social proof is a psychological trigger that occurs when people see other people behaving in a certain way and, therefore, assume that behavior is the appropriate behavior to take. For instance, say you go into a new town and are trying to find a place to eat. You find two local restaraunts. At one of the restaraunts the parking lot looks pretty full, the other restaraunt only has two cars in the parking lot. Which restaraunt do you assume has better food?

    The restaraunt with more people.

    That is social proof in action. Testimonials offer social proof that your product is good.
    



37. Submit Articles Promoting The Site To Article Directory (optional)
    Writing articles that other people can reprint on their website, or in their eZine is one of the most effective ways of getting free traffic to your website. Writing articles allows you to get free traffic from websites that reprint your article, you get a link to your website which in turns helps your Search Engine rankings, and allows you to develop a reputation as being an expert in your field.
    
38. Write Press Release (optional)
    Press releases are an excellent way to get your online business free publicity, and free traffic. Publicity Insider has a good article on the details of writing a good press release.
    


39. Hire Accountant
    Last but not least, you need to hire an accountant to take care of the millions and millions of dollars you are going to make after your product is releaseed to the public
    

Final Thougths

Be sure to set deadlines on each step and don’t waste a lot of time on any one step. If you spend a month trying to find a web host, you just aren’t spending your time productively.

The steps above are fairly generic, so you can use them as a starting point for the products you create.

If you would like me to write a more detailed post about any of these steps, please let me know.

Anik is providing 100 product reviews in 10 different niches per month. This sounds to me like it could be a really good way to make money online with affiliate marketing. You could set up a product review blog, take the private label product reviews change the text a little, add your affiliate links, and post them to your blog.

The only thing I am not so sure about is that the reviews don’t really reflect your personal opinion about the products. I am not sure how to get around that one without feeling like I was violating some ethical standard I have set for myself.

What do you think? Do you think that http://www.plproductreviews.com/ is a good idea?

I guess it’s sort of like outsourcing your product reviews. Would you outsource your product reviews or not?

I was prompted to do this, because of the results my friend Austin had from adding Kontera ads to a few of his sites. The Kontera ads are the links on this blog with double underlines.

Have you tried Kontera ads on your website or blog? What do you think of them?

Why?

After years of listening to him speak and getting to know some of his techniques, I decided to download his free preview of the Reese Report. I was very impressed with his free preview, but it took a recent teleseminar for me to finally decide that I wanted to learn as much as I could from John Reese.

John won’t let me tell you the things I learn exclusively from him, but I will certainly be able to let you know how things work out. I plan on implementing his strategies in my online business and will let you know the results of those changes.

I will still continue to do my own experiments and reveal the details from those experiments.

Anyway, if you are interested in checking out John’s free newsletter, click here to download it. It’s definitely worth checking out.

1. Produce Quality Content
If your site has good conent people will like it. Whether it be video games, educational materials, product reviews, news, etc. Producing quality conent is the first step to making money online.

2. Get Quality Links
If your site has good content, that is a great start. However, you must get visitors to your site. You have to let your target audience know about it and get quality links to your site. There are many ways to get links to a site. Having a site that is worth linking to (step 1) really makes this process easier.

3. Monetize It
It goes without saying that you have to monetize your site to make money online. There are many ways to monetize a site, ie. Affiliate Marketing, pay-per-click advertising, selling your own products or services, text link ads, etc. This is the missing step from my original formula. I guess I overlooked it, because back then I took it for granted. Now, I see that you should never take monetization for granted, because you can almost always find a way to make more money with your current traffic. I will discuss monetization methods more in the future.

So here is my original formula:

GOOD CONTENT+GOOD LINKS = TRAFFIC

TRAFFIC = MONEY

GOOD CONTENT+GOOD LINKS = MONEY

Here is the new formula:

GOOD CONTENT+GOOD LINKS + EFFECTIVE MONETIZATION = MONEY

It’s really quite simple when you think about it.

Today, Feb. 21st at 8pm EST the first Internet Marketer I ever heard do a teleseminar (Alex Mandossian) and two of his partners are holding a live webcast.

They are going to reveal why web-audio and web-video, when combined with special list-building strategies are the secret to so many successful online businesses.

Of course, they are going to be giving a product pitch as well. They are going to be pitching one years worth of access to Audio Generator (AG), Instant Video Generator (IVG) & Marketing Makeover Generator (MMG), for the price of one.

Anyway, you can find the details about the webcast by clicking here.

Whenever I get bored with a website or blog, I stop visiting it.

One of my BIGGEST goals in 2007 and beyond is to be remarkable, and to NOT BE BORING!

You should make it one of your goals too! Stop being boring! Nobody cares about boring websites except their owners. Just stop it!

Be remarkable, Be exciting, Be interesting, Be unique, Be everything you want to be, but…

DON’T BE BORING!

In 2006 there were a lot of excellent business related blog posts. However, at the end of 2006 Anik Signal (aff) posted what I considered to be the best blog post of 2006. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend you go check it out. In fact, I highly recommend that you read it more than once.

A few months ago, I purchased a new Internet Marketing course called “Instant Web Profits System” by Dan Lok. Dan has created a niche for himself in copywriting as “The Website Conversion Expert”.

For starters, I get a really good vibe from Dan Lok. His staff has always given prompt answers to my questions and they were always very upbeat and positive. Dan strikes as me as someone whose truly desires to help people make money online.

As for “Instant Web Profits Systems“, I wanted to start by letting you know what this course is not:

• It is not a course on blogging


• 
  It is not a course on making money with Adsense
• It is not a course on Affiliate Marketing


• 
  It is not a course on making money without raising a finger

The purpose of this course is to reveal how to increase the online sales of your products and/or services.

I SO wish I had this product when I was starting out. I know it would have made a HUGE difference in the success of the first product I created.

The one thing I don’t like about the course is Dan’s occasional use of colorful language. However, many times in the course it did help him get across the importance of the message he was conveying.

For the most part, it is NOT a step by step guide. With one exception…

The step by step CD that gives you the 11 steps for creating a winning sales letter. I can see how following the 11 steps that Dan reveals in this course can produce an awesome sales letter. I will certainly follow them the next time I need to create a sales letter.

There is a lot of excellent business and Internet Marketing advice in the audio CDs, much of which you can use even as an affiliate marketer or blogger.

What is included in the Instant Web Profit System?

It includes:

• 4 audio CDs that reveal 101 Ways To Make Your Website SELL Like Crazy!
• 2 audio CDs that reveal How To Avoid The Deadly Mistakes That Can KILL Your Online Business!
• 1 audio CD that reveals 11 Steps To Creating Killer Web Copy!
• 8 CD Roms that show Dan Lok making over other people’s website sales letters (this was my personal favorite part of the package).
• 6 Audio CDs with uncensored Interviews with some of the world’s top Internet Marketing experts!
• Plus a 1-hour “private” mentoring session with Dan Lok.

While Dan covers many topics in this package, the topics that are hit the hardest are copywriting and website conversion. This product shows you how to write better copy and how to convert your visitors into customers.

My favorite part of the product is the 8 CDs that contain video of Dan transforming underperforming sales letters into sales letters that sell. I found these videos to be worth the price of the whole package. I have seen free videos on these topics that don’t come anywhere near the quality and depth that these videos go into. I strongly recommend them to anyone who wants to learn how to sell a product or service.

The audio CDs were sprinkled with some Internet Marketing advice that I haven’t heard too many people talk about outside of products that you have to pay for. Here are some (not all) of the main topics discussed in the audio CDs:

List Building
Negotiating
Increasing Website Traffic
Ezine Creation
Joint Ventures
Copywriting
Writing Ads
Website Conversion
ebook Authoring
and more!

This a solid product, that I believe will really help you convert your visitors into customers. It is an excellent product if you have a product or service to sell. Go sign up for his free newsletter by clicking here and you can learn more about Instant Web Profits System and Dan’s other products.

Tags:

conversion improve sales improving conversion rates conversion rate online conversion rate

I have stayed at a wide variety of hotels over the years, however there is one hotel I will always remember.

A few years back, I went back to my home town of West Palm Beach, Florida for my friend’s wedding. Since our youngest was three months old, and since it had been a while since I had been in West Palm Beach, Jill and I decided to book a room at a really nice hotel. It turned out to be the BEST hotel either one of us has ever been to…

It was the “Ritz Carlton in Palm Beach”. Wow, was it nice. I don’t recall the rooms being much better than the rooms at the Omni. Well, I take that back, we had an Ocean view and that was really nice.

The real thing that set the Ritz Carlton apart from any other hotel we ever visited was the Customer Service.

The employees at the Ritz Carlton treat you like royalty!

Everyone on the staff called us by name. I am not sure how they knew our name all the time, but they must be trained in some sort of Ninja name memorization technique.

One of Jill’s favorite things about the customer service at the Ritz Carlton was the number of times she heard the words, “It would be my pleasure Mrs. Manty.”

In fact, when we got back to Houston Jill wanted to teach the kids to say, “It would be my pleasure Mom” everytime she asked them to do something. Needless to say we haven’t trained them to do that (yet).

I will never forget the Ritz Carlton, and we will definitely go back there sometime. I think my wife said it best, “Everyone should get a chance to stay in the Ritz Carlton and be treated like Royalty.”

If you treat your customers like Royalty, they will remember you for a very, very, very long time.

The following is an interview I did with Austin, that I am sure you will enjoy…

Q. Austin, how did you get started in Internet Marketing?

A. I wanted to work from home by myself, make my own hours, not have to actually sell anything, like on Ebay, home school my kids and travel with my family. That pretty much narrowed things down to online stock trading…which I did for a while and lost money, and building a website and promoting products and services that someone else would mail out and take all the responsibility for.

I quit my day job, which is funny because I was the owner of a family auto repair shop in Houston TX that my grandfather started in 1937. I left the company and my father came out of retirement to take over. I knew nothing about the Internet and how to build a website or what and how to sell online, but I was determined and that is all that mattered.

I sat down at my computer and started to learn HTML, SEO stuff, link building skills, how to get listed in top positions in the search engines, how to become an affiliate for other web marketers etc. etc. etc. It took me about a year to really get everything under my belt…but I did EVERYTHING myself which I do NOT recommend. There are tons of places online now that can show you how to build a site, find products and start promoting them very quickly.

I had no idea what an affiliate marketer was so I had to start from scratch, and I was afraid to spend money on education, so it took me a longer time than it should have to get up and running and making a profit.

Q. If you don’t mind sharing, could you let us know what are the favorite sites you work on and why?

A. Sure, I have a direct relationship with an auto insurance company and they are my top revenue producer for me. Google adsense is my second largest revenue producer, then Alldata which is an online auto repair manual program that pays me per new subscriber. Clearly Adsense is the easiest and fastest to implement, but the days of large per click pay outs might be gone.

A year ago there where many, many marketers that were making $10,000 + a month easily with Adsense. I personally know of a handful of marketers that were making well over $50,000 a month JUST in Adsense.

If you can get a direct relationship with an advertiser, you will probably get more money and have more access to statistics and banners etc. than if you used a third party provider like http://www.cj.com which I still use, but look for a direct advertiser first. If you have a quality site, generate a fair amount of traffic and can prove to be worth the extra effort for the advertiser…you should not have a problem asking the advertiser directly.

Q. From the polls I have run on this blog, one of the top questions people have about Internet Marketing is “How do I get more traffic to my website?” Can you give us a brief description of one of your favorite methods to generate traffic to your site?

A. Hands down, KEYWORD RESEARCH! Most site owners make sites and post to their blogs about topics that they as the site owner THINK are of interest to the reader. I do things backwards. I do my keyword research FIRST, find the most traffic for the search term, then I will Google the actual keyword phrase to check out my competition.

I want to get on the top 10 on the first page…or I won’t waste my time making the webpage. So, an example would be the phrase “New Jersey Auto Insurance” and according to http://www.goodkeywords.com using the Overture search engine I see the search volume for that phrase just last month and just on the Overture search engine had about 1059 searches. Now that is JUST Overture, so I take that number and multiple by 5 to include the other top search engines Like Google, Yahoo and MSN ( I count Google twice because of its large search size). So in this example I can estimate about 5500 monthly searches or about 180 daily searches for the phrase “New Jersey Auto Insurance” .

Now I will take the phrase “New Jersey Auto Insurance” and do a Google search to look at my competition. I am looking to see how many sites are Top Level sites, meaning the main page of the site is what Google returned. i.e. http://www.trustmymechanic.com is the top level and www.trustmymechanic.com/newjersey_auto_insurance.html is a secondary page within the site.

If the top 10 competitors are all top level sites…my chances of beating them from my secondary page is going to be very tough, and I would look for other keyword phrases to compete against.

Now, if you did the Google search for New Jersey Auto Insurance, you probably found my page http://www.trustmymechanic.com/newjersey_auto_insurance.html and if you noticed the title of the page, not the title of the article on the page….the actual title of the page you can see what other keywords I am targeting and how I used them in my title so it still reads well, but will pick up on all the varieties of the phrase I wanted to target. Which are

· NJ car insurance

· NJ auto insurance

· New Jersey Car Insurance

· Car insurance NJ

· Auto insurance NJ

If you add up all the potential free search traffic from those keyword phrases it is well over 10,000 monthly potential visitors from those searches. My page http://www.trustmymechanic.com/newjersey_auto_insurance.html gets returned on Google using many of those phrases because I themed the page correctly for each phrase AND I have links from other websites linking to that page using those phrases in the anchor text. The anchor text is what the visitor clicks on, like “Click Here” except I get my link partners to link to that page with “NJ Car insurance” which in turn gives me link popularity credit on the search engines. The more links I can get pointing to that page…the higher the search results I will go.

So the moral to the story is that ONE page on my site http://www.trustmymechanic.com/newjersey_auto_insurance.html is now getting listed in the top 10 results on the first page in the major search engines AND is making money. Incidentally I made that page about 2 years ago doing my keyword research I found that most major auto insurance companies DID NOT write policies in NJ. There is some whacky law that the big insurance companies don’t like, so they just don’t write auto insurance policies in NJ. I got on the phone, and spent days on the internet tying to find an advertiser that WOULD accept NJ traffic and built a relationship with them.

Keyword research is tricky and time consuming, but if you do it right….you will be rewarded handsomely. Don’t forget misspellings in your keyword research….I would bet more than 30% of the search volume contains a misspelling. I purposely add the misspelling and the proper spelling within the articles like this popular page on my site http://myhonestmechanic.com/articles/pontiac-soltice.shtml

I went to the Houston car show early this year and took my own pictures and made my own car review from all the free literature they pass out. You would not believe how many new vehicles that are coming on the market that are prime candidate for misspellings. Think about the visitor and how they might misspell the words you are trying to target. According to the Goodkeywords.com program almost 200 people using Overture last month searched for “break pad” instead of brake pad. 130 searched for nsurance instead of insurance….take these search volume numbers and multiple by 5 to represent the other engines and you can easily see a LARGE amount of easy search traffic that can be picked up utilizing the same articles on your site..

Q. Another thing people always seem to want to know how to do better is monetizing their site. Could you tell us about one of your best money making techniques?

A. From what I see, most webmasters make it too difficult for the visitor to take the action the site owner wants them to do. If you want me to enter my zip code and get a free online auto insurance quote, tell me that upfront on the center of the page…get my attention, make a compelling reason WHY I should get a quote in the first place and why should I get it from YOUR site? Don’t be afraid to be a little pushy. People read a webpage very quickly usually just skimming the content of the page looking for the information they typed in the search engine….make it easy for them.

Back to the NJ auto insurance page from above, look at the page text…I reinforce the same keywords you used to get to the page via Google…it’s my page title with a BIG testimonial from me telling you why you should get a quote from my site and all the reasons why I made the page in the first place….to HELP you find good insurance, because I have already done my research and can save you lots of time and frustration. Bulleted lists work very very well!!

If you have an affiliate program that will allow incentives ( you will give the visitor something in exchange for them doing something for you) then you should make your incentive offer irresistible to the visitor, and your incentive offer must be something they visitor will perceive as valuable and worth their time and effort. Like on my NJ auto insurance page, I will give a free copy of my ebook explaining how they can lower their car repair expenses….its something that is on the same lines as lowering their auto insurance…so the visitor sees value there and takes me up on my offer.

Here are a few good places to find incentive allowable affiliate programs, http://www.modernclick.com (owned by a friend of mine) and http://www.bulletads.com among many other affiliate programs you can Google to locate.

Q. You mentioned to me that you have tons of Internet Marketing products. What is your favorite one? Knowing what you know now, would you have bought as many products as you did or would you have different buying habits?

A. I think I learned the most from Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins, both are super nice and very knowledgeable guys. Here is their latest venture http://www.instantseoexpert.com/ which QUICKLY sold out. The offer lots of really great info for free! I still buy online marketing ebooks all the time, I want to stay on top of what others are doing and if I can learn just one new idea from a $97 ebook…its more than worth it to me. There are lot of SEO tricks out there, but to be totally honest….keyword research, having good unique content, getting inbound links to your page from other quality sites AND having an affiliate program that will convert visitors to customers is 95% of the game.

Q. If you could only give one piece of advice to someone just starting out in Internet Marketing, what would it be?

A. Find your niche, do your keyword research and consistently add great unique content to your site on a daily basis. The visitors will bookmark your site, tell their friends about you and others will begin to find your site valuable as well. I am giving a BBC radio interview later today, they found me via a Google search and from a recommendation of a listener of their show. If your site helps the visitor…you will be successful.

Q. What do you consider to be the most important thing you have done to increase your online income?

Without a doubt, taking the time to do my keyword research BEFORE I make a new website or even a new page on my websites.

Q. Are there any other things you would like to tell someone just starting out?

Find someone in your area who is making money online whom you can meet with on a regular basis for lunch to discuss new ideas, get your ideas and sites critiqued. You can find people online on the webmaster forum boards pretty easily. I would also spend the money and the effort to go to a few SEO seminars like the http://bigseminar.com/ and http://bradfallon.com/. I have been to both of them and have met and interacted with both marketers…..and learned A LOT from them in a short period of time. Don’t be afraid to ask other marketers. I visit a lot of SEO seminars and trade shows and I ALWAYS hand out lots of my business cards with my email and website address. You never know who you will run into and how it can benefit you later on down the road.

Jill explained that most non-technical people do not look for the search button on websites. Instead, they use the site’s navigation and our wiki’s navigation was very difficult. After talking more about the useability of our wiki, we decided to make some changes in the near future.

Then the next day we got an email from someone complaining about the site navigation. Well, that made it painfully obvious that we need to change the navigation as soon as possible. We looked at other wikis and websites, and came up with a few ideas. I am going to make the changes soon. One thing I have already done is added an A to Z article index towards the top of the wiki. That alone should really help with the navigation, but it is certainly not the ultimate solution.

Making your site easy to navigate is extremely important. It will increase the number of people who come back to your site, which in turn will help increase your traffic. It also improves your website conversion rate, and ultimately helps your site become the best it can be.

Always, always, always make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for on your website. I have known this for a long time, and still managed to mess this up with our wiki.

Don’t make the same mistake I made!

WOW!

There was a section of the book (starting on page 39) that provided one of those “ah ha” moments for me. What’s great is that my wife Jill recently gave me a bunch of ideas that fit right into what Mike talks about in that section. Jill sure is blessed with a good head on her shoulders.

Anyway, suffice it to say that I really, really, like the book.

“The Death of Internet Marketing” is well worth the read, even if you aren’t planning on making money from it. Some of the concepts that Mike talks about really hit home for me.

Have you read it yet?

If not, you can download it by clicking here.

Then come back here and let me know what you think of it.

We are having a disagreement on the placement of advertising on blogs and websites.

As I stated in the comments, the thing that annoys me the most are ads that are placed in the middle of an article. Vexation from peevelog likes the ads in the middle of articles. Gary from Blog the Internet hates ads at the top of articles. I have run across some people who hate ALL ads.

That’s one of the problems with advertising in general. Nobody really wants to look at a lot of it, we all have our limits and preferences regarding how advertising is handled, but without it how do businesses make money?

From my personal testing, ads at the top of articles pay me the most money. This is why I currently place ads in the top of my posts using the java script I developed a while back.

So what do you think? Does it matter to you where the ads are placed?

Go vote on my new poll.

One thing I did realize when reading the book…

I have heard much (actually all) of what he said before. In fact, pretty much everything Rich says in the Final Chapter of the Internet Manifesto is said in a different way in Dan Lok’s Instant Web Profits System.

That said, Rich’s latest ebook should help most newbies realize that there is more to running a super succesful business than just putting up a niche blog or website and hoping to make lots of money.

Update: Forgot the link to the book, click here to go get the book. It’s definitely worth the read.

There were two things I noticed that were a bit odd:

1. I don’t recall ever reading the number that he is limiting this too.
Did I miss something? Last time Joel limited the release to 2000 people. This time the sales letter mentions that there is a limit, but I don’t recall ever seeing what the limit is. Either I am missing something or Joel is doing a great job of creating a feeling of scarcity without there being a “set in stone” limit on the number being released.

2. When Joel starts throwing numbers out about the price the sales letter gets a little confusing.
At first when I saw that he was selling them for $1997 I thought that the price was a bit on the high side, considering what he sold his last templates for. I could see how one might get confused at that point and bail out before realizing the REAL price he is selling them at.

That said I almost instantly bought them. You know what makes this offer so hard to resist?

There are two things:

1. The sheer volume of stuff he is giving away makes this offer so hard to resist.
By the time you finish reading the sales letter you think to yourself, “Did he say I am getting a kitchen sink out of this?”

2. The way the sales page answers every question I could ask.
I think Joel answers just about every question I had about his product. He must have recieved great feedback on his first product and used that to answer any objections people might have.

Those are the two things that stood out (to me) in his sales letter. It is a great example of a sales letter that works.

I can’t recall another package that seemed to give away so much value for such a cheap price. That said, I haven’t bought it yet, because it doesn’t fit my current business plans/goals. Which is why I wanted to say:

BE SURE ANY PRODUCT YOU BUY FITS YOUR GOALS/PLANS BEFORE YOU BUY IT.

Lastly, if you want to learn the basics of creating a sales letter that sells, I suggest you take a look at this article by Yanik Silver that breaks down an example sales letter and explains how it works. It includes examples of the two things that Joel is doing that made his sales letter so good (answering objections, giving away bonuses).

While I have not looked at his new templates (like I did with the last ones), there are two things I would like to point out before you consider buying them.

1. My guess is that you will still need to alter the content you get from him. I wouldn’t just use the same exact content you get with these templates.

2. You will probably need to know a little about HTML and uploading pages to a web server, that sort of thing, before you can use them. It’s not like SiteSell where you can create websites without any HTML or design skils.

That said it does sound like Joel has some interesting features in store. You can check out the details by clicking here.

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joel comm Google Internet Online Marketing