How To Boost Your Marketing Campaign With Visitor Tracking

by: Mal Keenan

Who cares, as long as they visit your site, right?

Wrong!

It is a fact that traffic, or the number of people who visit your site, could make or break an online business. After all, we cannot sell our products if no one would get to know about them. The problem is, most webmasters would rather concentrate on generating more traffic by dabbling in countless marketing strategies instead of honing a particular one to perfection. The former is susceptible to new risks, while the latter eliminates old problems for improved performance. Clearly, tweaking your site is the way to go. And you could do this efficiently with the aid of visitor tracking.

Visitor tracking has long been hailed as a science, and for good reasons! The accurate findings that visitor tracking can provide is the key to creating a site that is both friendly to everyone who would grace its pages, and enticing to everyone so that they may try its features.

How is visitor tracking capable of all these, you might ask. Consider the powerful deeds that visitor tracking is capable of:

* With visitor tracking, you would be able to know where your visitors are coming from. With this knowledge, you could make corresponding adjustments to your marketing campaign. Know what area to target, what kind of people to focus your attention on, and how to win their interest so that they would come to your site.

* With visitor tracking, you would also be able to know the sites your visitors would go to after lingering in yours. You would be able to ascertain an aspect that has eluded even the best socio-oriented marketers in the world: consumer behavior. Visitor tracking would allow you to determine a pattern based on the conduct of online users, and you could make this work to your advantage.

* With visitor tracking, you would know how much time your visitors spend in your site. If their visits last for mere seconds, then such is a telltale sign that something is wrong with your pages, and adjustments need to be made to sustain their interest and make them stay longer.

* With visitor tracking, you’d know which links work best. This is awesome for two reasons:

A. You’ll be able to find out which of your links are producing the best results, and you could pattern subsequent campaigns based on that method; and

B. You’ll be able to increase your Google AdSense revenue by knowing which ad links are actually being clicked and which ones are just collecting dust.

* With visitor tracking, you would be able to know how your visitors go about in every visit to your site. Which pages do they open first? Where do they go next? Where do they stay longer? This is an invaluable knowledge as it would help you tweak your site to lead your visitors where you want them to go, instead of relying on where they would rather proceed.

It has been said that success can only be attained and sustained by constantly improving ourselves to meet every challenge thrown our way. With all the benefits that visitor tracking provides, success won’t be that far away.

Improving Your Conversion Reduces the Need to Constantly Promote Your Sites

by: Jack Humphrey

I just got off the phone with Michael Fortin, one of the top copywriters and conversion experts on the web.

We were doing a teleseminar for our members on conversion and testing for website owners wanting more out of the traffic they already enjoy, rather than constantly having to promote their sites to support low conversion rates. Specifically, we were talking about all the things you can do to test different "calls to action."

A call to action is anything you are trying to get people to do on any particular site or page of a site. It could be buying a product or service, getting people on an announcement list or newsletter, or getting people to click on your advertising links.

Most web publishers are so happy when they finally have a site up that they consider their work done and get right to marketing it. Once the traffic rolls in, they enjoy whatever sales or clicks they get and try to make more money by driving MORE traffic to the site.

Then they start building another site. And another. And another.

This is a disturbing trend that is creating a massive amount of waste. Both in resources and time. Especially when it comes to niche publishers who are building massive networks of sites on different topics in order to capture emails, generate advertising revenue, sell affiliated products and services, or to build their lists to generate backend sales to their subscribers.

The waste is generated when people are in too big a hurry to build more sites, add more products, and get more traffic to sites that can convert sometimes 1000% BETTER than they do now.

They are moving at a hectic pace, in this scenario, to build build build, when their income goals can most often easily be met without so much waste.

One example of waste is when someone builds a content-dry site that has nothing but Adsense and some links on it. People hit that kind of site and can't wait to find a reason to leave. The thinking is, "Great! My 'click thru ratio' is sky high! I am getting almost everyone to click on my ads!"

But here's what's happening in reality: you are working VERY hard to get traffic to such a site, only to "burn" it on a 35 cent click! No email capture, no followup, and most importantly no desire on the part of the visitor to EVER see your site again!

Would you rather have someone come through your site and click immediately on an advertiser's link, never to return? Or would you rather have someone come to your site, read some great content, sign up for your list and not click on ANY links that first time?

I will take scenario #2 any day of the week. And I won't have made a single penny off of that person with that initial action. But I will in the future!

If you have a site that you constantly test and tweak for performance (beyond its ability to repulse your visitors into clicking on an advertisement just to get to a QUALITY site) then you have a real business.

You can test and track SO MANY variables to make a site more profitable than it is now. Every site on the web can perform better than it does right now. Every single one!

The people who understand this never stop testing their calls to action to get their visitors to do more than something that results in a one-time action.

Traffic is the most expensive thing on the web both in the time it takes to get it and the resources you have to use up for each and every hit.

The traffic you have now might be all the traffic you EVER need on a daily basis to make a killing with your site. You will never know until you test and track everything about your site.

The headlines, the offers, the opt-in forms, the guarantees, testimonials, bullets, adsense placement, followup... In short, every webmaster on the net has a lot of work to do on every site they own if they really want to reap the kinds of profits their sites are actually capable of pulling in.

Most people get a site up and are happy with the sales or clicks they get and move on. NO! You are leaving so much money on the table thinking you are done with a site right after you put it up.

That site is the worst it should ever be! Wasting another domain fee, hosting fee, bandwidth and the costs associated with getting traffic to a brand new site before you have optimized your current site for the very best conversion it can pull is NOT good business practice.

I know people who have literally thousands of domains. And one thing I can guarantee you is this: They are making a pittance, even if they are making $60,000 a DAY, in comparison to what they COULD be making with far fewer sites and more testing and tweaking of that smaller group!

And Fortin seems to agree. He is going to be at my seminar in New Orleans September 9th - 11th, 2005 to expose everyone who attends to just how much money they have left on the table over the years because they have never tested different aspects of their calls to action.

It is enlightening, as well as depressing to find out how much money you COULD have made all this time had you tested from the beginning!

But the point is, you cannot go back to get all those lost subscribers, sales, or clicks. You can only start testing today to capture more money from each site you own. Thereby alleviating the need to have a massive network of sites all performing at half their potential or much less!

Eyes on your eCommerce Website

by: Richard Keir

In a recent article I talked about Google AdSense placement based on eye-tracking research. However, research by The Poynter Institute, Eyetools and the Estlow Center for Journalism and New Media has a lot to say about more than where to put an AdSense block.

Designing an eCommerce site is more than making it pretty. You have certain desired actions you're looking for from your visitors. You have specific things you want to be sure they see and hopefully act on. Now, there's some research that can guide your design. Certainly you want your site to look professional, but you want it to do its job as effectively as possible too.

People are surprisingly alike in some of their basic visual behavior. It's been argued that our evolution as hunter-gatherers has shaped much of our ingrained visual patterns. Whether you buy that particular argument or not there are still important commonalities.

Typical behavior on initially viewing a site is to do a fast scan of the entire visible screen with short focusing periods around the areas that attract attention. First pass tends to include headlines, the page logo, photo captions, subheads, links and menu items. And the big hot spot is the upper left corner of the screen. I haven't seen any definitive research on whether these patterns also hold for users with native languages that read any way except left to right, but I'm assuming most of you are building sites for left-to-right readers.

The clear message is that your most important real estate is in that upper left area and that the lower right (particularly if it's below the fold) is the least likely to receive much attention.

How you use your words in a headline, paragraph or link can make a huge difference in your success at capturing a visitor's attention. The concept is called frontloading. Wherever you can make sure your critical terms appear at the very beginning of headlines, links and other text. It's still got to make sense, but the first few words are far more likely to be at least scanned then the middle or end of a headline or link or the inside of a paragraph.

The exact same words can have drastically different capture rates depending on their order. You want to maximize the probability that the visitor will read a whole headline or link and then act on it. So put the most significant, enticing words first - the ones that are the best grabbers and convey the subject immediately.

You don't have a lot of time to mess about. It's been reported that a typical surfer may be off your page in well under 14 seconds unless something grabs his or her attention fast. Remember the upper-left? You want to do an especially good job with headlines, link and text in that area.

Dropcaps (where the first capitalized letter in a line is in a different, often unusual, font and extends below the normal text base-line), bolding, font changes and color changes can also serve as strong eye-attractors. If you try these techniques you need to be careful that you don't overuse them (your page will look like a mess), and it's extremely important that you test whether or not they're actually doing what you want. Annoying as it may be, running tests is the only way to make sure it's an improvement.

Do you use lists? Have you made sure that they're in-line and as close to the left margin as possible? Don't ever use an outline format with multiple indents. People scan down, not across and they tend to scan close to the left margin. Indent too much and it might as well be invisible.

An interesting testing result that I read somewhere said that somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of site visitors don't even see centered headlines. Sure they look nice and a lot of sites use them, but if they're totally missed by even 3 percent of your visitors, you're paying a major price to look good. Suggestion? Put those headlines up against your left margin.

This also applies to links. Put those links up against the left margin, not inside a paragraph, centered or off to the right. And if you want any clicks on a link, never put it in that nearly unseen lower right area. Might as well just leave it off your page.

How about indented paragraphs? Now there's a great way to start an argument. Some argue that it attracts the eye, it's different, few sites use it so you stand out. Others insist that you're far better off staying left justified and frontloading each paragraph. There's only one way to resolve it for yourself, yeah, run some tests and see what works with your visitors on your site.

The bottom line is that once you get beyond the basics of placement, frontloading, and left-justified links and headlines, you need to test if you want to fully maximize the effectiveness of your website design. I wish there were a simpler answer too, but in the end only testing will tell you what works best for your site.

Do Marketers Really Need RSS?

by: Rok Hrastnik

The recent Forrester Research study, which claims that only 2% of online households in North America use RSS, took the internet marketing world by storm. Does this data really mean that marketers can still afford to ignore this channel?

Soon after the Forrrester study became public, I received a press enquiery asking whether marketers should be interested in RSS now that so few online adults use it.

Is this the correct question to ask? Let’s take a look at the bigger picture …

1. THE FORRESTER STUDY VALIDITY

The Forrester study is just one of those available and cannot be considered as the only relevant study, although it was conducted on a sample of 68,000 households.

Jupiter Research estimates RSS penetration at 12% of the American online population, while the latest report from PEW shows that 9% of the American online population has a good idea of what RSS is. An October 2004 PEW study actually estimated RSS penetration at 5%.

It is also important to understand that Forrester data does not include those that might not even be aware they are using RSS, especially through services such as My.Yahoo, which is actually the most popular RSS reader.

Also, at the same time, Forrester Vice President Henry Harteveldt says that »RSS is critical for any organization that wants to reach out to people under the age of 30«.

2. THE FUTURE GROWTH OF RSS

Regardless of the numbers we put our faith in, the future growth of RSS is without question. Microsoft just recently announced full RSS support in the next edition of their Internet Explorer browser and full RSS integration in the next edition of their operating system, the Windows Vista.

Once RSS becomes easily available to most internet users out-of-the-box and becomes as widely spread as bookmarks, its adoption will grow at an incredible rate. Microsoft has now made sure this in fact will happen.

Consequently, the time for marketers to not only become interested in RSS but also master it is now. Those that test and discover the best possible ways of using RSS for marketing will be ahead of their competition once everyone starts using RSS.

Furthermore, since RSS implementation can actually be free of any charge, there’s no reason not to start providing your content in RSS feeds now.

3. GOOGLE SHOWS THE WAY

Microsoft and Yahoo! aren’t the only big players to show support for RSS. Google recently launched RSS advertising as part of their Google AdSense program, giving publishers reason to start their own RSS feeds to generate direct revenues.

Those that depend on Google AdSense for part or all of their online revenues actually need to provide RSS feeds, or stand to lose some of those revenues due to their visitors switching to sites and feeds from their competitors.

Face it, today many users are already starting to request publishers provide them with RSS to subscribe to their content. This trend will only continue, with many users selecting RSS as their primary channel of receiving and reading online content.

4. THE QUESTIONABLE RELIABILITY OF E-MAIL

All marketers today are experiencing e-mail delivery problems, constantly wondering whether their messages are getting through or not. Simply put, e-mail can no longer be relied on.

For one, offering your content via RSS as a supplement to e-mail will help you make certain that at least a portion of your visitors, those that decide for the RSS option, will be receiving all of your content without any doubt.

Lockergnome.com decided to start pushing RSS instead of e-mail some time ago, and as a result saw that their RSS feeds are outperforming e-mail when it comes to clickthrough rates for about 500%. Also an interesting fact, they today have 5 times more RSS subscribers than e-mail subscribers.

And two, for your most important content updates, RSS really is becoming a must, especially if you need to be in contact with your existing customers, partners and other key audiences. If you want to be 100% certain that your messages reach your audience, RSS is the way to go.

5. OTHER BENEFITS OF RSS

But all of the above don’t even touch all the reasons why marketers should start using RSS today …

a) RSS will help you generate additional traffic and reach new audiences. Considering the low cost of RSS implementation, this is reason enough to get started with RSS today.

b) RSS helps you to easily get your content published on other sites, thus generating you more credibility and visitors.

c) As a publisher you can use RSS to display content from other sources, thus making your site more relevant and interesting to your existing visitors.

And the list goes on and on.

RSS may not be mainstream yet, but it provides enough advantages even today to make it a must-choice for marketers.

Making money with RSS Feeds

by: Sandra Stammberger

First it was banner ads, then Google AdSense and now, the latest way to make money on your web site could very well be RSS feeds. Say what? I said: RSS is hot and you should be using it to drive eyeballs to your site. Here's how it works:

Depending upon who you ask, RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary". Regardless of what you call it, RSS is a way to automatically publish (syndicate) someone else's content on your web site. Now don't worry, that's not the same as stealing someone else's content. There is nothing illegal about using RSS feeds. In fact, the publisher of the content wants you to have it show up on your site and that's why he or she makes it available as an RSS feed to begin with.

So what's in it for all parties concerned?

Using RSS is a win-win for both the publisher of the content, who gets their name out to potentially millions of sites and you, the web site owner who is pulling the content onto your site.

Content, by the way, means anything that a publisher decides it means. Typical content includes news headlines, new product update notices, blog summaries and lots of other stuff. It's the "content" portion of the equation that's good news for you.

Show me the money

One of the best features of hosting RSS feeds is that it gives your site an endless source of freshly updated and relevant content. This content acts as natural search engine spider bait which they will fill their little tummies on and come back for more every day. Their appetite for fresh content keep your rankings up.

Sticky Loyalty isn't a new Ben & Jerry's flavor, but it should be the goal of any serious webmaster who wants to create a web site that visitors return to over and over again. The use of carefully selected RSS feeds can make that happen by offering unique content which can't be found anywhere else.

Now please don't make the mistake of thinking "But they can get that same content at the publisher's site, why should they come to mine?". Just build it and they will come! Sorry, I couldn't resist saying that, but it's true. In addition to the RSS content, which they surely can get somewhere else, you are going to add your own sticky loyalty stuff that's all about whatever your site is all about to begin with. That combination of your own content and the RSS feed makes visiting you a purely unique experience that can't be found anywhere else.

You don't have to be a member of the Geek Squad to start showing RSS feeds on your site. Just visit any of the links below and get busy using RSS to make mo' money.

Free RSS to HTML PHP Script
http://www.feedforall.com/free-php-script.htm

Carp - Free Rss script
http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/

RSS Equalizer
http://milleniumb.rssalizer.hop.clickbank.net

Clickbank Profits RSS Feed Generator
http://www.insiderscripts.com/cb/

Can You Really Make Money From Blogging

by: Willie Crawford

One of the questions I see frequently asked on online discussion forums is, "Can You Really Make Money From Blogging?" People want to know if there's some way to profit from the time they spend maintaining their weblogs or personal online journals.

My answer is an emphatic "YES," because I do it... everyday!

Today I'll share with you how I do it.

Let me begin by saying that I don't make thousands per month from MOST of my blogs. However, I do have many making hundreds. Since I don't put in a lot of time maintaining them, and I enjoy blogging, I consider the money a bonus. I blog while sitting in my yard with my laptop (on a wireless connection)... watching the clouds roll by.

Another bonus I get from blogging is that it helps my regular websites that are set up as my "money machines."

The search engines visit my blogs more often than they visit my regular sites, and they follow the links from my blogs pointing to other sites. Some of these links point to my sites, and some point to sites of partners. This does help the search engine rankings of these sites MASSIVELY.

How Do I Monetize My Blogs?

I monetize my blogs by creating blogs on topics people are searching for... and that they are spending money on. I know which niches are hot to an extent based upon what my research proves pay-per-click advertisers are willing to spend their advertising dollars on.

I run Google AdSense ads on my blogs. I simply insert these ads in my menu bar and other strategic places on the webpage. I also experiment with other paid advertising on my blogs.

I sell affiliate products from my blogs. I simply find affiliate products at places like PayDotCom.com and Commission Junction. I incorporate these into my blogs. I do things like product reviews, how-to articles, etc. You can also locate suitable affiliate products by typing your target keywords + "affiliate program" at any major search engine. This should point out numerous websites with suitable affiliate programs to you.

How Do I Setup/Host My Blogs?

I have blog hosted on some of my own domains using Moveable Type. This is just one of many great pieces of blogging software. You have other choices... my programmer recommended this one to me.

I also have blogs hosted for free on Blogger.com. I have them on Blogger.com because they are incredibly easy to set up and maintain. A secondary reason I have them on Blogger.com is that Google OWNS Blogger.com and they index webpages hosted on their servers OFTEN and FAST!

The secret to getting Google and Yahoo! to visit your blogs often is a technique called "blogging and pinging." It's a method of notifying all of the major search engines, and blog directories, each time that you update your blog. The search engines come to take a look and they follow links from your blog to spider other blogs/sites. It's very powerful.

I won't go into too much details on blogging and pinging here. If you want more information on that topic I invite you to drop by my free, Internet marketing discussion board and ask any and all questions! It's at:
http://WillieCrawford.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi

Examples Of Profitable Blogs?

I know, you want to see examples of profitable blogs :-)

To show you how simple it can be I'll show you just ONE. It’s less than 2 months old :-)

The problem is that as soon as I show a site to anyone as an example, it's instantly ripped off. So, I'm going to "sacrifice" one making me about $60 per day from affiliate product sales and about $20 per day in AdSense revenue. That site is at:
http://cure-nail-fungus.blogspot.com

The above site currently ranks Number 6 on Yahoo for the term "cure nail fungus." It's a small niche but one that makes me $2400 per month... just from that one blog.

If you searched on the same term at Google, this site is not very highly ranked. However, THIS page is Num ber4:
http://www.chitterlings.com/no-more-nail-fungus.html

That happens to be one of my pages too :-) I won't tell you what ALL I'm up to on that page... that's another article. The technique involves using your own domains to promote affiliate products rather than advertising someone else's domain... so it improves your link popularity.

I'm not going to show more of my blogs because that just invites competition. Instead, I'm going to answer another question you have to be wondering...

"How do I find time to maintain all of these blogs, even if they are profitable?"

Well, first of all, I don't really need a lot like the "sacrificial lamb" that I showed you above to keep me satisfied.

I do have a number of secret weapons though. One is called AutoBlogger. You can check it out at:
http://WillieCrawford.com/auto-blogger.html

What AutoBlogger does is allow me to queue up a number of posts for my various blogs in advance. It lets you queue up "articles" which can really be anything you want. Then you tell the software at what frequency to make a post.

My AutoBlogger account allows me to automatically post to an UNLIMITED number of blogs.

WARNING: A program like AutoBlogger can get you in trouble if you misuse it! If you use it to spam or abuse the search engines, it's just going to get you banned. If you use it to abuse the blog hosts, they're just going to delete your blogs.

Here's how I use AutoBlogger:

I have sites where I discuss Internet marketing... as just one example. On these sites I share many of my articles and tidbits. I simply queue up these articles/tidbits to post at a given frequency. This frequency can be a set number of hours, days, weeks, or months. So theoretically, I can set up a blog, pre-schedule 50 posts, and not touch it in months, while it is automatically posted to for the next 50 intervals.

AutoBlogger even lets you set it to start rotating through the posts again when they run out, if you want to. I personally wouldn't do this since you'd just be posting duplicate content.

AutoBlogger allows you to insert RSS feeds right into your blog posts. So in addition to posting articles you can also auto-update by adding new RSS feeds at a set interval. Since I HATE sending my traffic to other sites (without reciprocation), these RSS feeds generally pull from MY sites. That way, my traffic is only sent to my other sites.

If you don't even feel like queuing up a lot of posts, you can go to a site like Elance.com and hire someone else to do it for you... or just hired your kids to do it for you. It can be as easy as you want to make it.

OK, I've just proven to you that you can make money off of blogs. In-fact, you can make more money than many people make off of their REGULAR websites. It just takes a little thinking outside the box!

It also takes not being too greedy. What I just showed you works for me because I'm not doing anything that's likely to get me banned from the search engines, Google AdSense, Blogger.com, or any affiliate program. It's only when you get carried away, and do things that harm the search engines that you "shoot yourself in the foot."

Set up blogs providing useful content. Make regular posts to these blogs but not in a manner that seems unnatural. By that, I mean don't auto-post twenty times in an hour, or post every hour for a month! No human can possible post to a blog at these rates for long, so the search engines detect something is "wrong." They don't generally prohibit you from using tools to make your job easier... just don't get carried away!

There are actually, thousands of people earning a living doing things similar to what I just shared... but with little twists. I'm meeting up with many of them in New Orleans in September. You're invited to join us. We'll basically be sharing how we make a fortune off of niche websites and programs such as Google AdSense. You can register today at:
http://WillieCrawford.com/meet-in-new-orleans.html

Make Money Blogging

by: Matt Bacak

You have created a blog and your blog is dedicated to a niche industry. Have you ever thought that the blog could make money for you? We would look here in this article, ways and means, to make money blogging. Lets first have a look at what are the prerequisites for a blog needed to make money:

1. Blog needs to be dedicated to a niche market.
2. Updated regularly.
3. Enough back links (Don't worry for it. Directory submission would be enough to begin with)
4. Good blog host or application (blogger, Xanga or typepad recommended), and
5. High quality articles or news items supported with images.

Get the above criteria in place and Hurrah... You are ready to Make Money Blogging.

Top 5 Ways to Make Money Blogging

Lets now take a look at top 5 ways using which you could make money blogging:

1. Google Adsense
Google Adsense delivers text and image ads to the authorized websites/blogs depending on the content of the website. Small code is required to be pasted at proper locations on a webpage and Google automatically recognizes the page. Google shares the revenue it gets from the advertisers whenever a visitor clicks on these ads.

Google bills advertisers on price per click basis (PPC). Advertisers are required to pay only when any visitor clicks on their ads. They bid against each other for the keywords in order to receive better placement and thus prices for each keyword differ from one another. It is better to choose keywords for your blog which pays high $ per click.

2. Amazon
Amazon Associate program is another important way to make money blogging. The Amazon Associate program gives opportunity to website/blog publishers to promote any product from its inventory by adding a predefined code to their website/blog, which, when clicked by a visitor, takes them to the relevant product page. Once the visitor buys the product, the blog owner will be compensated with a commission.

3. Blogads
You can use Blogads as an effective tool to have a better control over the advertisers in your blogs. You can analyze and compare your profits with any one of your online agencies. Blogads can be simply specified as an advertising service used for the web logs or blogs. From the total money generated by Blogads, it retains 20% of it and the remaining money is paid to you through PayPal or checks.

Alternative Services:

• Crispads is another useful network focused on the blogs. You can put your advertisements in their blogs using Crispads. You can move through their RSS/ATOM feeds that help in generating revenues.
• Tagword – It is similar to Blogads. It makes you select the ads and their price.

Users can place their text-based ads in the site within minutes and the ads will be displayed instantly on the website.

4. Affiliate Programs
Your affiliate programs can help you earn a lot of money for selected products and services. Lot of websites offers you to become affiliate members. These affiliate programs can provide a better reach and an in-depth exposure to the products. The commissions for the sales differ according to the quality of the product, sales and marketing strategy involved. You can gather information related to the commissions by looking into the catalogues of Link Share and Commission junctions.

5. Text Links
Text links has emerged out to be the best form of moneymaking source that you can use instead of cluttering or crowding the page with ads. You don’t have to make these text links prominent within your website. This link can act as an extra value to your site and will also help to promote the rankings of other sites. In most of the cases you will find these text links placed in the bottom of the web pages. The best part of this strategy is that the publishers send and accept links as the market continues to grow.