Tables were skewed, pictures half covered up, the drop down navigation didn’t work, etc.

I actually thought this guy was playing a trick on me — no one would EVER take this site seriously.

When I commented to the client that his little joke was “very funny,” I quickly found out that this was no joke.  That was his REAL site.

After talking to him a few minutes and pulling the site up in other browsers, it didn’t take too long to figure out that he was having some serious browser compatibility problems.  He had built the site for Internet Explorer, and it was a work of art in that browser platform, but it was all messed up on nearly every other browser I tried.

Despite all the advances of internet technology, all browsers are still not created equal when it comes to how your site is viewed.  Browser incompatibility represents a huge challenge for anyone building a website.  Browser compatibility issues can affect your images, JavaScript functions, style sheets, links, navigation, and page layout.

AND it can totally kill your website profits and subscription rates!

Internet explorer, for example, tries to figure out what you meant to put in your code and fills in the blanks.  In other words, if you’ve used incorrect HTML code in your webpage, Explorer will try to make the corrections or fill in the blanks resulting in a page layout that may not be what you intended.

So obviously, you’ve got to address this issue with your website — Which can be a total pain in the rear.

Your first stop should be to check your website in a variety of browsers.  There’s three ways you can go about checking browser compatibility:

1.  Download and install all those browsers onto your computer and view your website in each browser.  This would be a total pain in the neck and totally unnecessary.

2.  Purchase browser compatibility software or a service.  There are lots of great services out there to choose from if you Google it.  I wouldn’t suggest this option unless you have a lot of websites or your build websites for your clients.

3.  Use a free service online like www.browsershots.org.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you don’t really need to check your website in every browser in existence on the planet — that would be ridiculous!

The last time I checked, 99.2% of internet users only used seven browsers:

• Internet Explorer 6- 14.9%
• Internet Exploere 7 – 18.7%
• Internet Exploere 8 – 7.1%
• Firefox – 47.3%
• Google Chrome – 6%
• Safari – 3.1%
• Opera – 2.1%

Of course, these numbers change as new browsers come on the market, but it’s a pretty good place to start.

So I guess that I’m suggesting that even though technology continues to improve, browser compatibility STILL matters and you should definitely check your websites for compatibility!

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Of course she was absolutely certain that the affiliate program was ripping her off — She’d actually made sales but they weren’t credited to her affiliate account.

Maybe that was true in her case, I don’t know, but there are also other factors that could explain here lack of affiliate sales.

1.  Does the affiliate sales page convert?

This is probably the biggest thing that all affiliates should consider before joining because it will have the biggest impact on your bottom line.   Does the sales page for the affiliate product that you want to promote have a good conversion rate?  In other words, how many people who click over to the sales page actually buy the product?

Believe it or not, conversion rates average around 2%… but I’ve see affiliate sales pages converting at much, much less.  It’s not unusual to find affiliate conversion rates in the tank at 0.01%.

2.  Does the sales page offer “untracked” sales?

Sometimes an affiliate sales page offers prospects other forms of payment that can’t be tracked to the affiliate who referred them.

For example, if a prospect can order by 800 number, then the affiliate may not get credit for sales they’ve referred who purchased through that toll free number.

I’ve seen a lot of Clickbank merchants do this kind of bait and switch thing to affiliates… let me explain.

The merchant joins Clickbank and sells one of their products through them.  Once they’re in the Clickbank marketplace and affiliates start promoting them, the merchant switches over to take payments through PayPal, phone, or another payment system and cuts the affiliate out of the sales.

3.  Is your advertising targeting the right market?

This is what I think happened to my coaching client… she was getting plenty of clicks, but they weren’t people who were interested in actually buying the product she was advertising.

It’s easy, especially with pay-per-click, to get a lot of people clicking through your ad.  All you have to do is word the ad so that it provokes a lot of clicks.

But clicks aren’t what really matters in a pay-per-click campaign… quality clicks are what matter.

That’s why most PPC experts use negative qualifiers and precise information to weed out all the tire-kickers.  Once you do that and specifically target who will see your ad, you’ll find that the quality of your clicks and your return on investment (ROI) improves tremendously.  (If you want to learn more about PPC, then I highly recommend The Definitive Guide To Google Adwords!)

In the end, there are probably lots of reasons why some affiliate products don’t sell, but these are the most common problems that affiliates face.

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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.

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And that’s what led to this quick marketing tip.

I came across a really well-written sales letter that did a terrific job of selling the product… If you actually took the time to read the words.  I doubt that anyone would actually take the time to read this sales letter because it was BORING.

The copywriting was really good, except that it lacked all the “magic” that makes a sales letter exciting and easy to read on a computer screen.

And so here’s my quick tips for making your next sales letter exciting and easy to read:

• Include images, especially pictures of smiling people.
• Use lots of bullets to break things up.
• Make your bullets into small gifs instead of the standard bullet.  It just looks more professional.
• Limit your font colors to a couple.  At most I only use three:  black, blue and red.
• Sprinkle a little “pixie dust” on your sales letter when you’re done.

Pixie Dust?

That’s what I call it anyway.  Here’s the idea…

When I finish a sales letter or promotional piece, I go through the piece and read it to myself.  Wherever there’s a place in the copy that should have a little more emphasis, I bold, underline, or italicize the text.

On rare occasion, I might even add a highlight to the text, but not often.

I like to add the “pixie dust” because I think that it will highlight the important parts of my letter for those people who scan websites.

But be careful no to overdo it.  Too many bolds and underlines are just plain annoying.  You also have to be cautious when using italicized text… If the font is too small it’s really hard to read.

So there you are — copywriting pixie dust!

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Increase your sales

1. Nail Your Niche

I’m sure that you already know what a niche is and that it’s important in your business, so I won’t belabor the point here. Design your web site to be a targeted resource center for your niche market. You’ll gain repeat visitors that are interested in that topic and increase your sales overall.

2. Fabricate REAL Freebies

Freebies are a great way to give people a taste of what you have to offer, gain traffic, and increase subscribers, but it must truly be free to work.  Otherwise it destroys your credibility and will actually reduce the number of sales you get.

Worse still is when people offer freebies that are total garbage full of affiliate links.  Make your offer genuine and you’ll improve your bottom line.

3.  Lasso Leads

Websites prove to be excellent lead generation tools and you’re missing a lot of sales if you aren’t working to capture leads for your business.  Appropriately marketing your products and services to your permission based leads can increase your sales tremendously.

4.  Track Your Traffic

Visitor analysis and complete website tracking is extremely important for any online venture.  It’s the only way to track what’s working and what isn’t for your business.

5.  Elevate Emotions

When creating sales pages and promotional materials for your products and services, be sure to engage the reader’s emotions.  Triggering your reader’s emotions will always increase your sales.

6.  Design For Dollars

When it comes to generating revenue with a website, you’ve got to design your site to make money.  It should be compatible with all the popular browsers, engage your target audience, and lead visitors by the hand to make a purchase.  Your website design should have one goal and one goal only — make the sale.

7.  Pen A Plan

Sit down and write a plan for how your website will generate revenue and gain targeted traffic.  It doesn’t have to be anything formal, but a marketing plan is a must to increase your sales.  You must plan to profit.

There are tons of other strategies that will help you increase your sales, but this basic list is a great place to get started.

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As an affiliate, it looked like a good deal.

Just send targeted visitors to the sales page and make one sale for every sixteen or so visitors you send them.

So, I started working on my affiliate marketing campaign for the product.  In this case, I decided to use pay per click(PPC) to promote it.  Here’s why I started with PPC:

Read the rest of this post at www.The-Affiliate-Directory.com (one of my other blogs)

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In addition, hopefully this sales letter mistakes video will show you what NOT to do when you create your own sales pages!

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It should be no surprise to you that the best way to learn about internet marketing is to watch and learn from what others do… this is where the swipe file comes in.  A swipe file is simply a file or collection of marketing messages, headlines, techniques, etc. Essentially, whenever you see an example of great marketing you add it to your marketing collection.

Before The Internet

Before the internet, a swipe file would contain a bunch of direct mail marketing pieces, newspaper ads, postcards, etc. all kept in a box or file folder.

Today you can still have a file folder full of those kinds of things, but you should also consider starting a digital collection where you can put great examples of email marketing, ezine ads, headlines, digital sales letters, etc.

You can even put an expert’s entire profit funnel in your swipe file if you watch them long enough.

Some of the best marketing messages that I’ve seen were only presented in an online format… especially sales letters!

I have my own digital swipe file where I save email messages, article resource boxes, sales letters, great headlines, and other promotional materials that I think are really good.

I keep my digital swipe files on thumb drives.

Remember, a great marketing piece doesn’t have to relate directly to your chosen market to be useful to you… so save any marketing piece that works, regardless of the product.

No Copying!

A Swipe File IS NOT For Copying.

Before you get the wrong idea here… keep in mind that a swipe file is not intended to be a file where you store materials that you are going to copy later.   That would be a HUGE no no.

You should think of a swipe file as a place to store materials that you can use later to generate your own marketing ideas and strategies.

Thumbing through a collection of marketing materials will likely bring on a flood of ideas for how you can position, write about, or promote your own product… and that’s why you should create your own collection! Remember, you’re just looking for inspiration.

Don’t just save the materials from the big companies either… some of them use terrible promotional materials!

In fact, you’ll find some of the best marketing and promotional materials are written by little known people who have really taken their time on each and every piece.

You’ll also find a lot of great marketing fodder by watching what the ‘gurus’ do.  Some of them are very, very good at what they do… that’s why we think of them as ‘gurus!’

By The Way…

If you’re really interested in simply copying other people’s campaigns and using them, you really should check out CopyNProfit.  I haven’t tried it myself yet (although I plan to review it in the near future), but it seems to be getting really good reviews.

If you’ve already tried it, I hope you’ll take the time to post your comments about the program so others can benefit.

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I’m guilty of it and I bet you are too.

I regularly scan through sales letters, website copy, articles, etc. so I can quickly get to the meat of the matter and move on.

That’s why it’s important to keep that in mind in all your writing.  Sherice Jacob wrote an interesting article on the subject for Copyblogger called, “How to Write Copy for Short Attention Spans” that addresses the things you need to do to get your reader’s attention when you are writing your own sales material.

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• A headline must capture the attention of your prospect.
• A headline must tell your prospect what’s in it for him.
• A headline must deliver a complete, immediately understandable message.
• A headline must pull the prospect into the copy… compelling him to keep reading.

In essence, a headline should motivate your prospect to respond.

In fact, headlines are soooo important that I have a swipe file of really great headlines that I come across.  I keep a swipe file so that I can go back and refer to those headlines and use them as headline starters when it’s time for me to create my own promotional materials.

Here are 10 headline starters from my own swipe file:

• The Untold Secrets To Making…
• Is Your (Insert Topic) Being Threatened?
• 7 Amazing Strategies to…Add New
• Do You Wish There Was An Easier Way To…
• 3 Direct Reasons Why You’ll Be Kicking Yourself if You Don’t…
• Instant Strategies Anyone Can Use To…
• The 5 Ugly Lies About…
• How I (Insert Benefit) In Record Time…
• Watch this ‘shocking’ play-by-play underground video…
• Why Aren’t You…?

If you’re interested in getting more great headlines as well as swipe files for other parts of your promotional material, then I highly recommend My Instant Swipe File.

Or feel free to visit my full review of My Instant Swipe File.

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