It doesn’t matter how great the features are, how awesome your marketing message, or even if your product has all the bells and whistles.  It doesn’t even matter what your industry is… At the end of the day, your customers all buy some variation of one of these things:

1. Make more money
2. Save more time
3. Make them feel better about themselves
4. Avoid the frustration of doing things they don’t want or like to do
5. Saving or avoid losing money in the future

So now that you know that your customers fit into one of these categories, how can you use that to your advantage?

Easy… Focus all your energy on selling one of these key points in all your copywriting and keep these five categories in mind as you create new products.

Of course, there are a lot of other factors involved in the entire sales process, but keeping an eye on these five categories and integrating this basic knowledge into your business plan will ultimately help you to make more sales and create products and services that address a need in your industry.

And there’s your quick tip for today… there are really only 5 things that people buy.

No related posts.

The Google Slap

Let me lay out my story for you.

I’ve been running Google Adwords campaigns for years from the same account, for several different niche websites.  I’ve never had a problem with them — I’ve always diligently followed the rules:

1. No squeeze pages.
2. Content-based landing pages.
3. Keywords matching the landing pages.

In fact, the majority of my landing pages have always been plain old article pages directly from my website — nothing fancy.

I had a pretty good thing going here… then I made a silly mistake.

For some reason, I got in a hurry and didn’t set up a proper article-type page for a new campaign that I started.  Instead, it was a php redirect to an affiliate sales page.  It ran for about six weeks and I made a killing with it — then Google caught it.

My sales plumetted and it didn’t take very long to figure out that I had been the victim of the dreaded Google Slap!

Every one of my landing pages in every campaign I was running (not just the offending campaign) carried a 1/10 rating.  That means that NONE of my campaigns were showing for any domain or product I was promoting through Google Adwords.

Further investigation revealed that Google also dropped my pagerank for iMarketingWatch.com site from a PR3 or PR4 to a PR1.

I immediately deleted the offending ads and hoped that Google would return my “good” campaigns to their normal 7/10-5/10 ratings.  Days went by and there was no change in my account status.

Then I deleted ALL my campaigns and started over fresh with brand new campaigns that went to articles that I have running on my blogs on other domains.  They were only designed to generate traffic, not sales, but Google ranked them at a 1/10 too, making it impossible to run the campaigns.

I repeatedly emailed Google to see if they would review my account, see that I was following the rules, and maybe stop punishing me for my one error in all these years.  They never answered my questions.

They did manage to send me an automated survey to see if I was satisfied with customer service however.

Google Slap experts claim that once you’ve been slapped you should get rid of the offending domain and start over with a new domain.  They claim that once you’ve been slapped, your site can never recover and make it back into Google’s good graces.  I haven’t decided if I want to dump iMarketingWatch.com and start over or not.  I sure hate to start over!

Apparently, you can never use the Google Adwords account that’s been slapped again either.

I deleted my account over the weekend and moved all my advertising dollars over to Yahoo.

I don’t know if starting a new account at Google would allow me to continue working with Adwords, but I’ve heard horror stories about Google tracking your IP or credit card and giving you the old Google Slap again on your new account.

Frankly, I’m not too inclined to give Google a second chance, despite it’s enormous search engine market share.  At Yahoo I’m paying less money per click and getting keywords that I would never be able to afford at Google — even before the Google Slap.

Although Yahoo generates a lot fewer impressions than Google, Yahoo seems to remember that advertisers are customers and they treat them like customers.

Obviously, Google doesn’t really care about it’s customers.  Rather than being punitive, they could easily just disable the offending campaigns for any advertiser – but they choose to brutally punish advertisers instead.

I guess you can do whatever you want when you’re the 800 lb. Gorilla.

No related posts.

So let’s see if we can shed a little light on the subject!

CPA in A Nutshell

CPA is an online advertising model where the advertiser only pays for a specified action linked to the advertisement.  For example, if you run a banner on a website and only pay the website owner whenever someone clicks on the banner and subscribes to your newsletter, that would be a CPA campaign.

I’m sure you can immediately see the benefit of running such a campaign – you only pay for actual subscribers, rather than paying for clicks or impressions.  This is by far the most lucrative form of advertising currently available to online businesses.

CPA is really an advertisers dream.

You can run a CPA campaign for nearly any outcome you choose, but most online businesses use it for purchases, free trials, subscribers, zero friction, etc.  If you’ve seen the advertisements where you’re required to put your name and email to get a coupon or be submitted for a chance to win something, then you’re already familiar with the concept behind this form of advertising.

How Can You Benefit From CPA?

Although CPA has been around for a long time, there have been some interesting developments in the industry recently.  The most beneficial development for most of us is that there are now a large variety of advertising networks available to advertise your offer.  Many of the full-service firms will even help you form your campaign, design your creatives, and even help you with your landing pages.

Not only are there a large number of advertising networks that offer CPA, but there is also a variety of methods of showing your advertisements now available through these networks.  You ad now has the opportunity to be shown in a full page pop under, pop over, email, contextual ad, banner, survey, form, etc.

There are tons of choices and lots of opportunity to profit, especially in zero friction campaigns.

CPA And Affiliates

And that brings me to the other evolution of  CPA.  As an affiliate, you have a lot of opportunities to offer CPA advertisements on your website – beyond the normal pay per commission affiliate program.

As an affiliate, you have the opportunity to earn a lot more affiliate commission through CPA because it’s generally easier to pre-sell your website visitors on those kinds of offers.  After all, it’s generally easier to get visitors to fill out a form or request more information about something than it is to get them to pull out their wallets.

Of course, there is also a downside.  It’s often more difficult to get approved to join CPA affiliate programs than it is to be approved for your normal, run of the mill affiliate program.  In fact, I recently came across a statistic that only about 10% of  applicants are approved for CPA programs.

If you can get approved, you can earn some serious affiliate revenue.

If you’d like to learn more about CPA, then I highly suggest you take the time to learn more about different strategies.  I personally like the zero friction method because it just makes sense!

No related posts.

Starting this week, my plan is to produce a weekly online business and marketing podcast. The idea is to provide you with quick marketing tips, news that affects online business, and a little food for thought to get you thinking about how to turn your website into a money-making machine.  I’ve posted my notes from the podcast below in case you’d like some to follow along.

Now let’s get started!

Really Bad Domain Names

I came across a list of really bad website domains and thought I’d share a few of the least raunching ones.

• chooses pain.com

A tourism site for Spain: choose spain.com

• children slaughter.com

Children’s charity: childrens laughter.com

• dollar sex change.com

Currency trading site: dollars exchange.com

• expert sex change.com

Computer advice site: experts exchange.com

• got a hoe.com

Lake Tahoe tourism: go tahoe.com

• the rapist finder.com

California therapists directory: therapist finder.com

• molestation nursery.com

Plant nursery: mole station nursery.com

I guess that just proves that you really need to think about those domains before you buy them!

Amazon Standing Up Against Taxes

Apparently North Carolina is trying to pump up their tax revenue and they’ve decided to require out-of-state digital retailers who sell within North Carolina’s borders to be subject to state sales tax. As a result of this new sales tax, Amazon.com severed their relationship with all their associates in North Carolina.

A friend of mine sent me an email he received from Amazon that went out to their North Carolina affiliates. Here’s what it says:

“We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation’s effective date…

In the event that North Carolina repeals this tax collection scheme, we would certainly be happy to re-open our Associates program to North Carolina residents.”

I say good for Amazon. Taxing people for online purchases is going to hurt us all as both consumers and online businesses. I hope all the “big boys” of online retail do the same thing and force state goverments to leave online purchases alone.

Arvada’s Answers

Here’s a question that I recently received from a blog subscriber:

“Arvada, can you explain the difference between upselling, cross-selling, and backend selling? Are they all really just the same thing or are they completely completely different? I’m confused.”

Based on a lot of the email and questions that I get, I think a lot of people are confused and don’t understand the difference between upsell, cross-sell, and a backend sale, so here’s a quick and dirty explanation of each term.

The upsell works like this:

After a visitor makes a purchase, but before they’ve actually paid for it, you attempt to upgrade them to a more expensive or more profitable product.

McDonald’s is a perfect example of the upsell when they ask you if you’d like to “super-size” your order. Most people go for the upsell, that’s why a lot of businesses use it.

A cross-sell works like this:

After a visitor makes their purchase, but before they’ve actually paid, you attempt to sell them a complimentary product. Think of the whole, “Would you like fries with that?” thing and you’ll understand the cross sell. Fast food strikes again!

Lastly, there’s the back-end sale.

Back-end sales are when you follow up with your customers at a later time and offer them additional products. In this case, it could be a complementary or related product to something they’ve already purchased from you. For example, if you sold a software program you might want to sell special DVD’s that provide unusual or additional ways to use the software.

When it comes to backend sales, you can also offer products that you believe customers would be interested in, even if they aren’t directly related to the original purchase.

Using any and all of these marketing tactics will improve your income if you learn how to set up your campaigns effectively. You can even use affiliate products to supplement your own offerings.

Comic Relief

I thought I’d end this edition of Arvada’s Answers on Podcast Wednesday with an audio clip that I thought was really funny — although it’s got a little bit of basic schoolboy humor in it.

My nine year old son absolutely loved it!

It’s a spoof advertisement for National Bean Month. I bet you can figure out where we’re going here.

Just imagine how many customers you could gain if you could figure out a way to get their attention. This ad would certainly do it!

[You'll have to listen to the podcast above to hear the clip]

And that’s it for Arvada’s Answers on Podcast Wednesday. I hope you enjoyed it and that you’ll take the time to post a comment and let me know what you think of this new podcast format.

I’ll see you next week!

No related posts.

So… of course I started checking into it.

Stop #1:  The Sales Page

Strictly speaking, the first page you see when you visit The Clickbank Code is actually a splash page, but  I have to tell you that the splash page is really a work of art.

1. There is very little distracting information on the page, including minimal links.
2. The layout is professional and eye-catching.
3. Everything that you need to see is above the fold — You don’t have to scroll to see it.
4. It has an effective lead capture system.  You have to submit your name and email to see the next video.
5. The video on the splash page is engaging and plays automatically.

It was worth visiting the The Clickbank Code just so that I could take notes on the sales system that they’re using.  I love to see how other people are doing it and discover new strategies that work well!

If you’re new to the idea of splash pages or looking into creating your own splash pages, you should seriously check this one out.  It’s pure art… all the way down to the headlines, colors, graphics, etc.

Even the arrows work effectively.

Stop #2:  The Sales Page

As you can tell, I’m a big fan of the splash page… not as big a fan of the sales page.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a well done sales page full of the same professional graphics and videos.  I just thought it was a bit of a let down after the splash page.  Michael Jones, the product owner, claims that the conversion rate for the sales page is over 7%, so the sales page must work pretty well.

I may just have to borrow a few of the ideas here.

Bottom line:  I’ve visited both the splash page and the sales page and I still don’t have a really good idea if I’m interested in this product or not.

Stop #3:  Online Reviews

As you might expect, there are tons of “honest reviews” of The Clickbank Code available online.  The vast majority — 99.99% of them are candy-coated reviews designed to elicit affiliate sales.

That’s hardly a review at all!

Of course, there’s also the anti-reviews or “scam alerts” that are written to capture affiliate sales for other products related to The Clickbank Code.  Those aren’t particularly honest.

I still have no idea if this is a product that I’m interested in or not.  I’m certainly curious about the product, but not willing to pony up out of shear curiousity.  I honestly expect that the product is really just a re-mix of the same old information about Clickbank, SEO, PPC, etc.

But how can I find out?  YouTube!

Stop #4: Get A Sneak Peak

So my last stop is to check out the various YouTube videos out there that show sneak peaks of the product.  My goal is to get that “insiders view” of The Clickbank Code so that I can decide if it’s something that I’m interested in either buying or promoting.

After viewing the videos, I decided that I’d like to promote the product and see how it performs for me, but I’m not interested in buying the product at this time.  From what I can see in the videos, the majority of the information available in The Clickbank Code is stuff that I either already know how to do or currently use in my business.

I’ve been in this business a long, long time… there’s just not that much that’s totally new to me anymore. (Am I showing my age?)

But I do think there’s some really good stuff in The Clickbank Code for those who haven’t been in the game as long as I have.  That’s why I offer the best sneak peak videos that I could find for you below:

In the end, I can’t personally recommend The Clickbank Code because I don’t own a copy myself.  It looks very promising for those who aren’t making as much money as they’d like at Clickbank and I’m planning a PPC campaign around the product to see if it really lives up to that 7.1% conversion rate claimed.

If you want to check out the splash page or sales letter, here’s the link to The Clickbank Code.

If you own this product yourself, tell me what you think about it.

Is it worth the price?

I’d love to hear from you!

No related posts.

In fact, I was quietly building my online business and no one knew about it… until my mother in law found out.

Suddenly my extended family wanted to know more about what I *did,* friends who knew that I worked at home suddenly wanted to know more, and people I barely knew started asking more for more information about my online business.

That’s when the need for business cards hit me squarely in the face… and I didn’t have one!

If I had been a little smarter, I would have created a business card for my ebusiness much sooner.  I guess I just didn’t think about all the opportunities that I was overlooking without them.

Business cards are excellent lead generation tools AND they make you look like a professional… no matter what kind of business you’re in!

The standard business card really hasn’t changed much in last few decades, except for added lines for fax numbers, email and website addresses. While it may be simple, the little card is still an effective lead generation tool that gets results.

• It gives potential customers all the information they need in one location.With that card, they have a contact name, name and type of business, and a website address. That potential customer can access your products or services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

• Business cards make you look polished and professional.Potential customers are more likely to conduct business with you if you have a professional looking business card than if you scribble your website address on a piece of scrap paper.

• It just makes it easier to communicate with potential customers, friends, and family.Handing out a business card easily explains your business, your website address, and what you *do* in one simple to understand format. It’s like having your thirty second commercial about your online business on a cue card… it works.

• People hang onto business cards forever.Once you’ve handed someone one of your cards, you may not hear anything from them about your business for weeks or month… but they still have your information. I’ve been surprised to hear from people who received my card more than a year ago and now they’re ready to do business.

So, do you have a business card for your online business?

Don’t do what I did and wait until you really need it, get your cards and start using them now.  You’ll be surprised how many doors it will open for you and your business!

I get my cards through VistaPrint.

They’re quick, easy, cheap, and professional looking.  In addition, they’re always offering great deals and free business cards online.

No related posts.

I found a really great article from Duct Tape Marketing that lays out how to get listed and gives you more information about why it’s so important.  Well worth reading if your business more local than global!

In addition, here are some other great resources you’ll find useful to learn how to get listed in Google Maps:

• New Google Maps tweak gives you more results (news.cnet.com)
• How to Add Google Maps in a WordPress Site? (shankrila.com)
• Google Local Gobbles SERPs (searchengineguide.com)

No related posts.

I read an article this morning that talks about a brick and mortar company that required it’s salespeople to acquire at least 25% of customers’ email addresses so that they could conduct email marketing.

When the salespeople couldn’t live up to the quotas, they began submitting made up email addresses… and you can guess what happened then.

Their email system was shut down for sending email to bogus addresses and now they can’t conduct any email marketing at all – even to the legitimate addresses.

The company should have seen that one coming long before they instituted their quota!

Well that article got me thinking about my own inbox and I realized that I seem to be getting a lot more junk email than I used to.  Now I’m getting two or three emails per day from companies that I’ve dealt with for years and used to only get a couple of messages per week from.  And it’s not only that, the email that they’re sending is pure advertising rather than information and other stuff I can use.

It’s gotten so bad that I’ve had to subscribe from several lists that I used to really enjoy.

Just because the economy is down doesn’t mean that businesses, both online and offline, should forget to use sound email marketing practices.

In fact, I say that sound email marketing is more important now than ever.

Rule #1 of email marketing: Send subscribers stuff that they’re interested in.  No one likes a constant barrage of sales material.

I realize that some companies are on the edge of collapse and I empathize, but that means that they need to work twice as hard at making every piece of their marketing plan count. Desperately sending out tons of spam and junk email will only serve to hurt them further and contribute to their demise.

And I think that goes for smaller home businesses as well.

… But that’s just my opinion.  What do you think?

No related posts.

I think Santa is really just a pawn in an evil plot designed by marketers all over the world to get our money.

Santa’s Rotten Kid Problem

How many parents go out and buy gifts in the name of “Santa” just so that their children will get exactly what they asked the fat guy for when they sat on his lap two weeks prior?

Especially parents who have rotten kids! You know… the one’s that deserve and get coal in their stockings.

Parents know their kid is getting coal, but they go out and get the big present anyway and switch it out after Santa leaves. No parent wants to see the disappointment in their child’s face when they awake on Christmas morning to find that the man in red has let them down.

It just breaks your heart!

I mean Santa is a good guy, but maybe not the brightest bulb in the factory… if you know what I mean. Doesn’t he realize that parents are gaming the system for their rotten kids?

I think Santa needs to put some kind of magic spell on the coal so that it can only be removed by the offending child. That would teach everyone a lesson.

What about all the Santa Merchandise?

And then there’s all the merchandising revenue that Santa’s missing out on. During the holidays you can barely go anywhere and not see some kind of likeness of Santa.

His face is everywhere!

And does he see one penny of that revenue? No!

After all, he’s got elves to pay, toys to build, and reindeer to feed. He should be getting a share of the merchandising revenue.

What happens after Christmas is over?

And then look at what happens when Christmas is over… Santa gets kicked to the curb until all those evil marketers need him again next year.

If Santa were smart, he’d do an end-run around the marketers and create joint ventures with St. Valentine, the leprechauns, and the Easter Bunny. He might even be able to strike a deal with the Halloween Characters Union and the Thanksgiving Turkey Guild.

That would really show all those marketers who’s boss!

Santa is a pawn!

In short, I think Santa is just a dupe… a chump… a marketing pawn!

He works all year long to build toys for the good boys and girls, does a ton of public appearances, travels all over the world, maintains his public image impeccably, and gives, gives, gives. Yet Santa isn’t compensated for any of his work… unless you think that the joy and happiness of children is compensation.

It’s time for Santa to stand up and take his rightful place in the marketing world!

Oh, by the way… Don’t forget to subscribe to Answers eMagazine!

No related posts.

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!

A Little Disappointed…

After buying the software, I was pretty disappointed to find out that it’s actually hosted on the Floating Windows server instead of being a program on my own computer. Oh well, I thought, it won’t matter if it works as advertised. So I logged into the program through a browser interface and got to work creating my first entry popup.

Frankly, I thought the templates that Floating Windows offered were pretty good and were something that I could work with, so I didn’t really try to do too much of my own coding. I just threw together a decent looking popup, inserted the code into my SBI webpage and started testing it out.

NOTE: If you wanted to do anything really fancy with Floating Windows, I believe you’d have some problems because the templates would actually get in your way. The program is pretty restrictive.

Testing is where it all went wrong…

I originally wanted the Floating Window to open each time I entered the site so that I could see how it looked and tweak it, if necessary. What I didn’t realize at first is that there is no way to adjust how often the Floating Window opens. That means that every time a visitor enters the page, the Floating Window appears.

Very bad idea… unless you like to completely annoy your visitors!

Okay, I didn’t like that, but I figured I’d just put the Floating Window on my homepage and leave the other pages alone. That way I could keep the annoyance to a minimum. (I had originally planned to limit the popup to open once per session and put it on all the pages… but not if it opens every time!)

I don’t like to do workarounds, but they seem to be a regular occurance in the internet marketing industry.

By the way, I forgot to mention that you can’t actually open up the Floating Window that you’ve already created to make changes. You have to re-create your window from scratch each time you want to make a change!

So, I proceeded with my testing. First I accessed the page with the Floating Window in Firefox (my browser of choice). It worked fine.

Then I checked it with Internet Explorer… Disaster!

The Floating Window only came about halfway down the page and stopped short. That meant that you couldn’t actually see the headline or most of the copy… just the actual subscription box.

I went back into the program to adjust where the Floating Window lands on the page where it pops up… I actually like my popups to appear in the middle of the user’s screen.

But you can’t adjust that either!

Well, that was the last straw for me. I’ve removed the Floating Window and asked for a refund.

Summing it all up…

Since this was supposed to actually be a Floating Window Review, rather than a rant, I figured I’d lay out all the pros and cons for this program so that you can make your own decision on whether it’s right for you or not.

Positives:

• Nice graphics and templates included, but might be restrictive if you want to do anything fancy in your Floating Window.
• Compatible with SBI and any other site where you don’t have ftp access.
• Easy cut and paste coding is pretty “dummy proof” so even a complete newbie can use it.
• I briefly tested the exit popup and it worked fine… so this would be a great program if that’s all you wanted. There are some nice exit popup templates.

Negatives:

• Can’t adjust how many times the Floating Window appear per visit. It will popup every time the page is loaded.
• The entire window didn’t appear when I loaded it in Explorer… you may have a different experience. In my case, this is a deal killer.
• Can’t adjust the position of the Floating Window on the screen.
• Software hosted on third party server. I prefer to host my own software when possible.
• If you want to make changes to your current Floating Window, you can’t open it up from the serve… you have to re-create it each time you want to make a change.

If you’re still interested in this product after reading my Floating Window Review, then you can click on the box at the left to learn more and see their videos.

I ended up going with Advanced DHTML Popup to work with my SBI websites and Action Popup to go on my blogs (it has a super-simple WP plugin to set it all up). It will do everything I need it to do… but it’s pretty tricky to work with. I don’t recommend Advanced DHTML Popup unless you have a pretty good grasp of DHTML and how to integrate it with SBI.

No related posts.