Make More Money From Your Ideas

"How do I get a higher Google ranking?"

This is a very broad answer, but I can start by giving you some overall guidelines.

First, one fast and simple way is to buy Google advertising, which will get you near the top within minutes. And it's not necessarily going to cost you a fortune.

If you'd like to go down the free path, though, the first step is to write stuff that people would like to read. People search the Net looking for information first, not for products. So Google gives higher priority to Web pages that provide useful (free) information. If your Web site doesn't do this, then it's going to be much harder to get a high ranking.

If you do provide free information, then you can start optimizing your pages to suit Google.

Labels: search engine listings

"How do I convert people to whom I give free stuff into customers?"

This is a tricky issue. To make this work, I think your stuff has to be REALLY, really good. I've found that people who are quite happy to get free tips and reminders aren't necessarily going to pay for them. So you really do have to create a strong business case and write a strong sales letter in order to convince them to sign up.

It's really a matter of convincing them of the value of it. So you send them really good stuff for a few weeks, then tell them that to get more, they have to buy the paid version.

Alternatively, you could continue providing it free, and use them as a way of promoting other products and services as well. That's the approach that I use with my newsletters.

Find out more about sales conversion.

Labels: free products, sales conversion

"How will I create and maintain my site effectively if I am already "too busy" in my retail store front with the public?"

You can't. You won't. And you shouldn't.

Running an effective Web site takes time. It's not enough to simply slap it up, put it on the Net and hope for the best. You have to be driving people to it (either from your retail store or from other places on the Net), converting them to customers, and constantly monitoring its progress.

I'm not saying that this is a full-time job - far from it - but it does require some time.

If you'd like to get started, forget about the Web site for now and just publish a really, really good e-mail newsletter. Build up a database of subscribers and e-mail them regularly. You'll get more value from this than from building a Web site and then abandoning it.

Labels: e-mail newsletter, outsourcing, Web strategy

"I need to know how to get customer/ visitors to stop and choose us over someone else. To stop browsing .... start buying. I have a number of visitors but few of them are stopping long enough to buy anything!"

I don't know how what's stopping them from buying, but they do!

You could create a little survey on your site, so that if they leave the site without buying, it pops up a window asking them why they didn't buy (and gives them a free report or e-book in return for taking the time to fill in the survey).

You could spend a lot of time trying to guess what to do, but it's much simpler to just ask your visitors. They already are Internet marketing experts in your area.

Labels: survey

"When I direct them to a landing page from a Google ad ...what should I have on it? .... Should I redo my coaching page with more general info and have that as the landing page with links to my resources page?"

You should have information that is directly related to the
information that they read about in the ad. So make the ad as specific as possible, and make the landing page directly related to that information.

If your Google is advertising a specific product or service, then you should have a very specific page about that product/service and nothing else. So, if anything, make your landing page less general, not more general.

For instance, if I was promoting my Get Traffic Fast product, I would have a very specific ad in Google that leads them directly to the Get Traffic Fast page at gihanperera.com/get-traffic-fast.html. This page promotes the ONE product only, and doesn't even have any other buttons on the side to distract them. This is the best way to do a Google advertising campaign.

Labels: Google advertising

"I've articles on my website in pdf format..is this how you would include them on your site?"

The advantage of PDF is that the layout appears exactly the same to all users. So if your article has columns, pictures, tables or things where layout is important, PDF is the best option.

However, otherwise it's better to re-do the articles as normal Web pages. It's just more familiar to users. However, if that requires lots of extra work, leaving them as PDF is just fine.

Labels: articles

"I'm busy reading through all the info I received from you with Get Traffic Fast and have a question. Somewhere I thought i read that you couldn't have a pop up on a landing page. Is that only on the immediate landing page, or is it that you can't have one on the website at all?"

It's only the landing page that is affected. You can't have a Google ad leading directly to a page that has a pop-up on it, but it's perfectly OK to have OTHER pages on your Web sites that do have pop-ups.

Labels: Google advertising

"Just writing to thank you for sending the "Write Profitable E-books" set. It has answered many questions and stimulated many ideas. I was interested to hear your suggestion of Clickbank as a means of providing payment facilities to my website. This was a question I had been wondering about and yet to research fully, however someone had mentioned PayPal as a possibility to me. Do you have any comments on either, given your experience, and any recommendations on why one might be more advantageous than another."

Both are good options.

In my opinion, Clickbank is easier to set up, and it has an affiliate program built in (so other people can sell your e-books). It takes care of the entire transaction, including the e-book download, handling any refunds, and paying all affiliates.

PayPal is now very good. It now works in Australian dollars and no longer requires customers to be PayPal members in order to pay. These were two disadvantages in the past, which they have now solved. Its commission rate is lower than Clickbank's, which could be another factor. On the down side (compared to Clickbank), it doesn't have an affiliate program, it's not so easy to do e-book downloads, and you have to manage refunds yourself. But if you're considering PayPal, also look into Payloadz, which is a cheap PayPal add-on that manages some of these issues for you.

I do have my own e-commerce facility, but I also use Clickbank for the e-books I'm selling to the U.S. market (because it takes orders in U.S. dollars).

Labels: e-commerce, shopping cart

If you're asking this question, congratulations! It's one of the most common questions I get asked about search engine marketing, and one of the most important.

The answer is that you should do both - pay for Google ads and continue to market your Web pages for the free listings.

Ed and I talk about this in the interview for Get Traffic Fast, and you can listen to that part of it here:

Labels: Google advertising, search engine listings

"We offer a 90 day guarantee on our main product. If they don't think they get the results they should and can show they have used it, we give them their money back. They can keep the product. No claims on our guarantee have been made yet."

I wonder what would happen if you increased this to 365 days, or even made it a lifetime guarantee. It might convince more people to buy.

I know your product, and it is very good. However, because it's a comprehensive system, it does take some effort to put into practice. Perhaps some potential customers are putting off their buying decision until they know they have a reasonably free 90 days ahead of them. Increasing the guarantee period would make their buying decision easier. Perhaps you could test this by changing the guarantee for a while and checking your sales results.

I notice that you also have a "prove to us that you've used it" approach before they get their money back. Personally, I prefer not to have these conditions. It doesn't cater for the person who might buy it, look through the material and decide that it's not right for them. However, I do know that some marketing experts favour your approach, so again the only way to know for sure is to test it.

Labels: guarantee, sales conversion

"I offer 100% guarantee on my speaking presentations, not my books or tapes. Books & tapes are 'damaged goods' as soon as they've been used, so the money I've already spent creating them is an expense, whereas my presentations are my time."

I urge you to reconsider this policy. I do understand the point you're making, but I think you're looking at the guarantee the wrong way. It's not about minimising your exposure; it's about minimising theirs.

If you apply this principle, the actual cost of the goods is irrelevant. Customers don't care about the cost; they only care about getting value. If they don't get the value, the guarantee means that they get their money back.

Labels: guarantee, sales conversion

"I haven't written a guarantee due to the fact that a speaker may say or do something that is outside my control. What are your thoughts on how I could word a guarantee being a speakers bureau?"

You can offer a guarantee even if some things are outside your control. You're not guaranteeing that your product or service will always work; you're guaranteeing that even if it doesn't, then you take all the risk.

If a speaker says something inappropriate, then yes - it was out of your control. But who should pay for that mistake? Perhaps it's the speaker, who said the wrong thing. Or perhaps it's you, for putting forward that speaker.

But either way, it's not the client's fault! So why should they pay?

Sure, it's tough when you don't have control over everything. But offering a guarantee is still better than making the client pay for your mistakes.

Labels: guarantee, sales conversion

I recently said in my newsletter:

"Give a rock-solid, iron-clad, easy-to-invoke, no-questions-asked 100% money-back guarantee.

Most customers are honest people who'd just like some reassurance that they are making a good buying decision. So they appreciate the fact that you're reversing the risk, and that makes them more likely to buy in the first place.

Sure, you will get the occasional person who exploits your guarantee. But in most markets, they are the exception, not the norm. You'll get far more sales and greater profits from your guarantee than you'll lose by those who exploit it."

I also asked readers for their own experiences with offering guarantees. Click the comments link below to see some of the responses.

Labels: guarantee, sales conversion

"How do you make real money from writing and managing blogs? Most of what I've seen indicates they take a lot of time but I'm yet to be convinced of where the return on that significant investment comes from (I see a return, just not a big return so my question relates to how to leverage the return to make it more interesting for me to even get started!)"

There's good news and bad news.

The good news is that there are bloggers who make a significant income from their blogs.

The bad news is that you probably won't be one of them. Why? Because it takes time, effort, knowledge and persistence. The really successful bloggers make that their business model. For most experts, this isn't the right approach. A blog should complement your business, not be it!

That said, if you're still interested, here's more about making money from your blog ...

A blog is a certain kind of Web site. So one way to answer this question is to first ask, "How do you make money from any Web site?"

Here are some of the answers you might get:

• Promote products and link to a shopping cart;
  
• Demonstrate your credibility so that people trust you and hence buy your stuff;
  
• Write articles (in this case, blog posts) that provide information and then link through to products that go into more detail;
  
• Sell advertising on your blog;
  
• Send the media to it as a show of your expertise, so that you get free publicity for your business.
  

This is only a small sample of ideas; there are many more. There's a lot of hype about blogs, and some of it is justified. But I think it's useful to remember that a blog is just a Web site, so approach it from that angle first, and then look deeper.

Labels: blogs

"Are blogs posted on a normal web site?"

Yes, a blog is really just a Web site. It just happens to be a Web site that's done in a certain format (i.e. like an on-line diary).

However, this doesn't mean that you must have your own Web site in order to run a blog. If you use the free Blogger service, it will provide space for your blog even if you don't have your own Web site.

Labels: blogs

"I'm not yet convinced that a blog will really help further my business. I already moderate chat forums that relate to my business that have a lot of involvement by a couple of hundred people or more so how will a blog add or improve on that?"

You know, you may be right. A blog might not help your business at all. That's a decision you will have to make for yourself.

However, since you asked about the comparison between blogs and chat forums, I'll expand on that ...

The main difference is that a blog is yours. It's your stuff, your content, your intellectual property, your thoughts, your ideas. A chat forum, on the other hand, is more of a "community", where everybody is equal. Even if you're a moderator, you only get extra administration privileges, not extra expertise privileges.

They both have their place. The chat forum allows you to manage a community of people interested in sharing their ideas with each other. A blog allows you to share your thoughts with others.

So a blog is more one-way communication than a chat forum. This is not strictly true, but it's a useful way of making the distinction.

Labels: blogs

"How do I really measure the effectiveness of my website?"

Good question, because many Web site owners really have no idea about whether their site is a success.

First, know what "effectiveness" means to you. Does it mean generating new leads, or selling products directly, or increasing customer loyalty, or ... ? Most of these things can be measured, as long as you put the effort into doing so. Then there are some other things - more nebulous - such as "increase brand awareness", which is tough to measure. Big companies love doing this sort of stuff (and advertising agencies keep telling them to keep doing it!). But I recommend that you stay away from these fluffy measurements and stick to the things that really count.

Remember to measure what really matters, not just what's easy to measure. If your Web site's main aim is to sell, then what really matters is how much profit you make. Although it's easy to measure hits, visits, repeat visits and conversion rates, it's only useful if you use these numbers to figure out the net profit.

For example, I have one Web site that sells an e-book for $27. I know that 1 in every 180 people buys it. That's a pretty poor conversion rate, but I also know that I only pay $9 in advertising for those 180 visits. So I'm making a good profit on every sale.

Labels: Web strategy

"How do I design a web site that attracts the customer as soon as they see it and holds them there until they buy?"

This is quite a big question, and there are a number of parts to it. So I'll do my best to give you an overview of the answer, and then direct you to other places for more detail ...

First, you must make sure that you've got the right customer for your product. No matter how good your Web site is, if it's selling stuff that doesn't interest the person visiting it, you just won't get the sale.

Next, assuming you have identified the right customer, you have to get them to your site. And not just to the home page, but to the specific page that gives them exactly what they were looking for.

Then you have to convince them to buy. There are a lot of things to consider here, but one of the most important - and one of the most common mistakes - is to make sure you talk about BENEFITS to the customer, not just features of your products.

That's a simplified answer to your question, and I hope you look deeper at some of the links above.

Labels: copywriting, sales letter

"Why would one use special blog software instead of a simple HTML editor like Front Page to create and publish content for a blog?"

The special blog software, as you call it, makes the whole publishing process a breeze. For example, when you post a new message, it adds it to the top of the blog, archives the oldest messages automatically, and links your post into a calendar. Some blog software even notifies people who have expressed interest in knowing when you write something new on your blog.

If you know how to use FrontPage, you can certainly use it for your normal Web pages. But for your blog, the blogging software just makes it so much easier.

Labels: blogs

"How do i find out useful keywords for my business and rank them
according to preferences.Is there any tool available?"

Start with the free Overture search term suggestion tool. Just type in your keywords and it will tell you how many people have searched Overture for those words in the past 30 days. Overture covers a lot of the Internet, so by comparing different keywords, you get a pretty good idea of what's the most popular.

Then you can take this and do even more market research to refine this list of keywords.

Labels: search engine listings

"How do I convert visitors to purchase my big ticket items?"

Build a relationship. It's extremely unlikely that a complete stranger will visit your site and buy a big-ticket item right away (This is also true of smaller items, but even more so as the price goes up).

So think "relationship" first, not "sale". Get them to sign up to your newsletter. Give them an incentive to do so - for example, by giving a high-value e-book for new subscribers. Then start - and maintain - a dialogue with them, until they trust you enough to make a big-ticket purchase.

I've seen seminar promoters successfully sell $3,000+ tickets to their seminars. But they rarely do it on the first contact. They get you on their mailing list, run free preview teleseminars with the speaker, send you free downloads, and just keep in touch until you're ready to buy!

Find out more about sales conversion.

Labels: pricing, sales conversion