As you probably already know, personalizing the email subject line with a name increases the response tremendously. It’s something I’ve been doing for years with all my autoresponder messages.

Well, that got me to wondering if it makes a difference exactly where that personalization is placed in the email subject line… so I decided to do some testing.

I tested several of my lists and kept the subject line exactly the same except for the placement of the [firstname]. In other words, I split tested like this: Read the rest of this entry

Let me give you a little background before I get to the Floating Window Review. I finally decided to succumb to the will of the marketing Gods and go back to putting pop up subscription forms on many of my websites… which increased my subscription rate by 200% by the way!

Popups are something that I used to do, but stopped because I hate them so much as a consumer. Well, they work – so I made the business decision to go back to them.

The technology behind popups has changed quite a bit since my last dealings with them, so I did a little investigating into the ones that produce the best conversion rates and checked out some of the newer types of popups like the peel away corners or peel away ads (great for sales pages) and the ones where the background fades away (that’s the one this website uses).

Any of these types work well with my blog and sales websites, but they won’t work with my SBI websites because SBI doesn’t allow ftp access to the server (a real bummer sometimes, but other things about SBI make up for it!).

So I needed a solution that would work with SBI… and I found Floating Windows and decided to give it a try… That’s where this Floating Windows Review finally comes in.

I have to admit that my reason for trying it was more than it’s compatibility with SBI… their website is pretty slick too. Floating Windows has nice graphics, examples of both entry and exit popups, and two nice videos that show you how it all works. Their sales letter is pretty effective (you should check it out if you keep swipe files!).

Cool! I’ll give Floating Windows a shot!

Read the rest of this entry

Last week I signed up for a second autoresponder account over at 1ShoppingCart.com (my main autoresponder is hosted at Aweber). I had a shopping cart set up through them about a year ago, but have since changed how I take credit cards and canceled the service. So, when I needed a second autoresponder, they were my first stop.

I needed the new autoresponder for a new list building method that I’m testing out and I wanted to keep the test separate from my other lists. I’ll tell you all about the list building test that I’m doing when my testing is complete… in about three weeks.

To make a long story short, I ended up having to close the 1ShoppingCart autoresponder because it wasn’t compatible with the test… through no fault on the 1ShoppingCart side.

In order to close the account, I had to actually call them on the phone and cancel. I’m normally not crazy about having to call to cancel because I like to do everything online. It’s usually much faster and less frustrating.

Well, the customer service people at 1ShoppingCart really surprised me!

They were courteous, professional, and very friendly. In fact, I’d have to say that it was a downright pleasure to speak to them!

With good customer service at such a premium in so many businesses, I thought it was worth mentioning a pleasant encounter with 1ShoppingCart.

As I got up this morning and realized how long it’s been since I posted anything on my blogs, I realized that I really don’t like blogging. In fact, in some ways I absolutely hate it. So I’m started asking myself if blogging is really doing anything for my business, if there’s better activities I can employ, and if I should continue blogging.

I’ve spent the better part of the last week analyzing my business.

I’ve delved deeply into my stats, tracked where the revenue is coming from, and analyzed my websites and traffic. Here’s what I actually came up with. Read the rest of this entry

When it comes to product creation, one of the biggest myths is that you have to develop something completely new in order to be successful.

That’s simply not true.

Often the surest strategy for creating a high revenue product is to take a look at other successful products in your industry.

Read the rest of this entry