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Search Google and Yahoo for keywords related to your niche and product, then contact the owner of the site through their contact page or Whois http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp and ask them how much money they want per month for a banner ad on their site, preferably above the fold. The offer them half the money they want, and negotiate from there.

Get them to do a blog post reviewing your product, as well as add a text link to their site in the footer or sidebar for seo benefits.

Look through the sites on BuySellAds.com, and contact them directly to buy ads. Ask them to open a new slot for you, unrelated to their BuySellAds slots.

Make your banners have a pretty woman’s face in them, see ShoeMoney Video http://www.shoemoney.com/facebook-advertising-soup-to-nuts-guide/. Look at the success of GoDaddy and their #1 position in their niche, it has a lot to do with them using two very pretty girls in their homepages and in their commercials. What do these pretty girls have to do with domain names and web hosting? Nothing. Its just that pretty girls sell.

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Adwords is actually the worst place to get traffic because there is so much demand and competition for it which drives up the prices to unprofitable points, and the only way to to it profitably is to make your goal to break even on sales and profit from the affiliates you get and the links you get from the Adwords traffic.

Affiliate marketing via adwords doesn’t work, even if you are getting 75%. That 25% you’re not getting, and you won’t be building your list of e-mails of buyers and people interested. Also, when someone goes to your ad in position 1, then decides to go back and think about it, click ad 3 for the same affiliate product and buys it there, you won’t get the credit. You need your own product for adwords. The theory of affiliate marketing with ppc is flawed. Since its all based on bidding, clicks get bid up until everyone is just breaking even, and the affiliates can’t make money against the product owner who has a 25% higher margin.

Its good to run adwords campaigns to gather data on kewyords to see which words people are search for heavily and which words people are buying on(through conversion tracking), then build your seo campaign around those successful words.

Use exact match to start out, and only start with 10 keywords. Set the “Ad Title” as the keyword you are targeting. For example if you buy the keyword [web hosting] make the first part of your “Ad Title” Web Hosting.

Opt out of the Search Network and Content Network, lots of click fraud in those.

Only target America, Canada, and England.

Quality score- based on title relevance, and mostly ctr. 10% gets you about an 8, 12% a 9, and 20%+ is a 10

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There are successful information product businesses with all kinds of different price points. When people are considering buying your product, the price doesn’t play as much a role in their final decision as how much they actually want the product. If they want the product bad enough, the price doesn’t matter (as long as its not too expensive). So you have to make them want the product.

Consider starting out low priced with a free trial at launch, then increase your price as your product gets better. Or price yourself high and position yourself at the top of your niche. People have a desire to pay the highest price for whatever they are buying, because they are conditioned to believe that everything good in their life has been expensive, like their home, car, computer, television, cool toys, college education, significant other.

The higher you price your product, the more affiliates you will attract, so also take that into consideration.

Spit test between a $1 free trail for 7 days or a month, and a higher price like $97 per month. See what works by testing.

Monthly membership products with recurring billing work very well for a lot of people.

http://www.seomoz.org makes over $600,000 per month from their. They have a free trail, then their membership is $97 per month.

http://www.doubleyourdating.com , owned by Eben Pagan, makes over a million dollars a year from his membership site. He has a free trail, then charges $19 per month.

http://www.problogger.com only cost $5.95 per month, and the owner of that site does very well. The only problem with pricing low is that you cannot give a very high payout to affiliates, but if you product is good enough and your pitch page converts well enough, many times people will still send you traffic.

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Here are the main reasons no one buys your product or joins your membership website-

1. Your website looks like crap. When I changed the look of one of my websites from this to this it increased the sales by three times (3x) with the same amount of traffic and the exact same product. I went from making about $30 per day (1 sale) to $100 per day (3 sales) by just making my website look nice. You should study the pitch pages of the top 100 clickbank products and borrow ideas from them. The way your website looks is EXTREMELY important when it comes to people deciding if they will buy your product. Think of your website like a woman, if it isn’t pretty no one is going to give it much attention. You have to make your website as pretty and appealing as possible.

2. You give away a free report in exchange for an email address on your product pitch page. This will make your sales rates suffer badly. Yes, you will be building an email list, but you will likely make more money in the long run if you go right for the sale, and Affiliates will like you more because the traffic they send you will convert into sales better. Email lists made up of people that joined to get something for free are very overrated. Again, check the top 100 clickbank products and you will see that the vast majority of them don’t have email opt-ins in exchange for something free. Get your leads to join you list after they purchase your product, or make them opt-in to get to your sales page. An email list of people who have bought your product is worth a lot more than an email list of people who joined to get something free.

3. Your pitch page has too many links to other parts of your website, or other websites. People get distracted by links and your conversion rate will suffer. Your pitch page should only have one link, and that link should be a button to buy your product or subscribe to your membership site. You can also have some footer links to your Contact Page, Affiliate Resource Page,

Other reasons include, your topic and niche doesn’t actually solve a problem that people have, you website has a weird background color(top 10 alexa all have white backgrounds), ugly logo, weird font and font color, lack of social proof like comments open but no one commenting, facebook and twitter buttons but with only a few retweets and likes.

You have to really consider everything about your pitch page. One little thing could make your website visitors say “you had me until you said that” – you really have to think about your sales funnel completely. Every word you say matters. Every word has the potential to immediately make your visitors not like you and leave your website immediately, so choose your words very carefully.

Your website has to look professional, clean, nice logo, well organized, trust-able, and have an easy to follow path to covert without links or free stuff that will draw their attention away.

As Aaron Wall says “They are completely wrong in suggesting that aesthetic doesn’t matter. You can’t quantify the losses without testing a different approach, but companies do not sink billions of Dollars into testing product packaging just for the fun of it. At a minimum a better looking site will increase trust. That leads to all sorts of other things like: * better perceived quality * lower perceived risk * higher conversion rates * being able to charge higher rates * higher visitor value * more media exposure. In many industries the winner is not who is well known within the industry, but rather who is safe and easy for outsiders to reference. Design is important for the same reason that domain names are. Either can yield an instance sense of credibility when done well & either can quickly take it away when done poorly. And people who are new to an industry become the experts of tomorrow, so if they trust you more off the start then you build a self-reinforcing marketing channel. Whereas if you are not trusted you have to convince people to switch away from defaults after they already made their choice. And that is hard to do if they already passed you over once & your website is ugly.”
http://www.seobook.com/seo-tips-using-multiple-web-browsers

Again, people don’t join your site because your site doesn’t solve a problem people are really trying to solve, your pitch and product isn’t cool enough, you say something in your pitch that makes people not trust you or turns them off, or the visitors coming to your site have no money(they are kids) so you need to change your traffic streams or topic.

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To learn how to setup Aweber and integrate it into your Homepage, check here.

Email list building is the hardest way to make money when compared with doing SEO, getting Affiliates to send you traffic, and buying traffic. It is so hard because it requires you to really be likeable and really have exceptional products and content so people will trust you, or they will not open your emails. Are you likeable enough, is your topic interesting enough, and is your content and product interesting enough to build a big email list around? Are there enough high quality affiliate products in your niche that you can promote?

Most of the time you will make more money by setting up a homepage on a domain name that is strictly a sales pitch page with an optin to get to the checkout page, giving away nothing for free so your sales rates will be as high as possible. Affiliate don’t like to send traffic to websites where you are just trying to get people to opt-in to your list in exchange for something free instead of sell them something, because they don’t want to give you their list. But in some niches where there are a lot of affiliate products that you can promote, you might consider making your website a pitch page for a free product (like a ebook, video series, or membership site) in exchange for an email optin, or again just requiring an optin to get to your checkout page.

http://safe-swaps.com is a good place to trade emails with people and build your list, but the problem is everyone there is in the “make money online”/”internet marketing” niche. But its a great site if you are in that niche.

How many people will open your emails?

Only about 5% to 10% of the people you email will actually open your emails and click the link in it (this also varies depending on your niche, and how much your list likes you or not based on your past emails to them). So if you have a list of 500 people, and you send an email to them, about 50 will open it, and 25 will click the link. Some people in the “internet marketing” niche have lists in the 50,000 size range, that only get about .05% click rate, or about 250 clicks each email they send to 50,000 people. But, they can send an email every day to their list of 50,000 people, and get 250 clicks. If each click is worth 30 cents, they can charge products owners in their niche $75 per email to their list, or just do emails with affiliate links and make about that much money from high converting affiliate products. Since new products come out every day in the “internet marketing” niche, there are many product owners willing to pay 30 cents per click from email blasts to large lists, and many with high paying affiliate programs from high converting sales pages.

I originally started building my list with Aweber.com, but they are very strict with Double Optins, so I switched to GetResponse.

A “Perfect” Landing Page is a landing page that has no links to anything but to join an email list in exchange for something free so it converts as high as possible, with optionally a link at the bottom to buy your main product to increase the perceived value of your free product, and small links in footer to join your affiliate program, and contact you. A good example of this is the homepage of Blog Mastermind and Blogging to the Bank.

A good way to convince people that your free report is worth opting in for is to show them your good results in whatever you are going to teach them, and to make your optin pitch page as professional and cool as possible.

You need to think about what you put above the fold (what the user sees before they scroll down the page). You need to put your most enticing text/images/video Above The Fold to immediately draw them in.

As CopyBlogger says “Did you know that web users spend 80% of their time above the fold? Does that mean people won’t scroll down the page? No, it just means you can’t take it for granted that they will (instead of leaving). Don’t be lazy about grabbing and holding attention. Don’t assume everyone instantly “gets” the benefit of your offer the way you do. Don’t overestimate your credibility. In short, don’t drink your own Kool-Aid. Think about it from their perspective, and you’ll realize you might not be all that (until you unequivocally prove you are with compelling copy)”
http://www.copyblogger.com/effective-landing-pages/
http://www.copyblogger.com/landing-page-mistakes/

Here are some interesting conversion rate optimization tips that you should check out.

Email List Management

To keep your email list subscribers opening your emails, you have to really impress them with the free thing (ebook, report, videos, membership site access) you give them. Also, you have to be in a niche where people are very interested in your topic, so they won’t quickly grow tired of the information and product pitches you send them. Examples of topics that are good to build email lists in are dating and making money because people have very hard time solving these problems. Are you in a niche where people have a very hard time solving their problems, and would be interested in continuously receiving helpful emails and product pitches from you? If you are in a niche where people just have passing interest or easy-to-solve problems, you should probably just go for the sale instead of offering something for free, and build your email list out of actual buyers and people that optin to get to your “checkout page”, instead of freebie seekers.

You should sign up to successful marketer lists and watch what they send you and borrow ideas from them.

Think of each email you send your subscriber as a “cookie” for them to have as a treat. The “cookies” you give them in your email responder need to be extremely edible. They should be very good content, your best.

When they signup to your email list, immediately send them your 3 best tips. This will make them trust you and want to learn more from you. Most people hold their best stuff back until people have paid them, but you want to give them your best stuff upfront to build trust and convince them you really are an expert.

Move the free line. The more good free content you give away, the more you will sell, as Eben Pagan says.

Always try to look at things from the customers/visitors perspective. Ask yourself, would I really want to read/buy this?

Perry Marshal said…Sales and marketing is a sequential process. Which means that everything that happens between the introduction and the sale is 100% important. Anything that interrupts this process can be fatal to your business. Sales and marketing are the most hazardous parts of a business to outsource. Things like payroll and bookkeeping and manufacturing, easy to outsource. Your voice and your identity, almost impossible. Therefore…. Sales and marketing is worthy of your passion, devotion and dedication. It is typically the highest leverage activity in any business. And despite the fact that many “academic types” sneer at it, it’s still true: Nothing happens until somebody sells something. You MUST master two things: ONE way of getting traffic, and ONE way of converting it. If you achieve mastery, it will be perfectly OK to be merely “competent” at the other things and your business will still flourish.

That means that you have to be thinking of your visitors perception of you from the moment they come to your site, and how it changes with every word and image you show them until they buy, and then beyond so they keep buying the product you recommend them.

-Email Subject line- “Bad News”- “Seriously though, the reason for the subject is to try out a strategy I just learned by watching Frank Kern’s “Mass Control 2.0” DVDs. (He said that specific subject line had the highest open rate of any email he’d written. Even higher than a subject line saying “Great News”, which I thought was very interesting. That goes to show why FOX news is so popular. We all respond to negativity)”-Brad Callen

For email marketing niche is important because some niches have a lot more affiliate products in them that you can promote while others have hardly any. Start a domain separate from you current site, make the landing page an email capture in exchange for a free report or video that solves their main problem so you can have the highest email list signup conversion rate possible, have the backend be a reoccurring billing membership site so that you can offer a good commission to affiliates to send you traffic, then send your list links to new helpful quality content that you post between once a day and once a week with offers in between.

Watch this video by Frank Kern, but take it with a grain of salt because most niches aren’t like the internet marketing niche. http://masscontrolsite.com/blog/?page_id=9 He says to turn people into raving Fans by giving them excellent value. Incoming Visitors > get their e-mail, and Build relationship through excellent content and you will be set for life> Sell to them over and over. But remember, you can only sell to them over and over if you really impress them with your product, and they really like you, which is extremely hard to make people do.

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Must reads

How to Design a Homepage that Converts

Basically, the way to structure your site for maximum traffic, conversion rates, email optins, and profits is to make your homepage a pitch page for your product, and have a high paying affiliate program. The reasons you want your homepage as your pitch page, with no free content, is so your sales conversions are as high as possible.

A good example of a site designed like this is SeoMoz.org. They do have some free content in their blog, but that is so they can get search engine traffic. You can go for search engine traffic too, but it will cost you a lot of time, and you could eventually get deindexed from search engines or lose your rankings. If you want to go for search engine traffic, its better to separate your product website from your seo website, so that your affiliates will be happy with high sales conversion rates.

If you make the homepage of your site a blog with lots of free content, your sales rates will be extremely low compared with a pitch page with no free content, because people will get lost in your free content. That’s the biggest mistake that people make when trying to sell their product, they make their homepage full of free stuff, and off their product through a banner in their side bar. Thats fine if you want search engine traffic, but if you want sales and affiliate, you should go with setting your homepage as a pitch page for your product with no free content.

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A domain name is the address of your site. For example “Yahoo.com” and “DeviantArt.com” are domain names. Dot com domain names are generally worth ten to twenty times their dot net and dot org equivalents, because they have such world wide recognition. The largest domain registrar in the world is GoDaddy.

Your domain name is extremely important in determining whether or not you will make money online, so choose it carefully. All successful websites have good domain names. Your domain name should be easy to remember, easy to say out loud, spell, and people should know exact what your website is about by just reading it. You can see the Domain Sales chart at DNJournal.

Your domain name is the first thing that people see, so it has the potential to draw them in, or immediately turn them off if it has hyphens or numbers in it, or has words that make no sense.

The problem is most good generic domain names are already taken.

So it you want a domain name like
“VideoGames.com”

You might consider adding a word to the end or beginning like
“VideoGamesWorld.com”
“CoolVideoGames.com”
“VideoGamesForGuys.com”

It is always a good idea to have one of the main keywords for your subject in your domain name. For example if your site is about “Running Faster” then include that in your domain name as it will help you rank for search terms related to that and allow people to remember it easier.

A good keyword tool I use is Word Pot. Put in a keyword related to the subject of your website, and it will give you a list of keyword with the number of times each is searched for per day. For example the word “Skateboards” gets searched for around 1,000 times per day. If you can rank in the top 10 for that keyword, you will be able to get a percent of that search traffic. Whoever ranks number one usually gets about fifty percent of the search traffic (since paid ads get about thirty percent) and positions 2 through 10 get around 10% to 1% the lower you go in rankings.

To buy domains that are already taken, like exact match keyword domains, you should look up the owners email address through a tool like Whois Lookup. Then email the owner and ask them how much money they want for the domain name. When they write back with a price, offer them half of what they want, then negotiate from there.

Usually they will want a ridiculous price that you will not want to pay or not be able to afford, but sometimes you will find domain name owners that reply to you with a reasonable price. I have bought some really good domain names from people this way, including this one. Give it a try.

Make it so when people read your domain name, they know exactly what your website is about without even looking at the content, for example doubleyourdating.com, problogger.com/.net, ultimatewowguide.com, maverickmoneymakers.com.

Make it catchy. Exact match is a must if you want to rank for a particular high search volume keyword. If someone has a domain you want to buy, lookup their whois with godaddy, email them with this exact email, then counter their offer. .Com domains are the best because the .com extension has had so much money poured into it by the biggest companies in the world so they naturally have more trust, but .net and .org are ok too. All other extensions you should stay away from, and the only time you should consider using a dash is in a two word .com only domain like entrepreneurs-journey.com.

Look on GoDaddy Auctions for exact match domains in your niche that are $500 or less.

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A good way to start a membership site is to make 5 to 10 good videos each about 5 minutes long, each one explaining a very important lesson about your topic. Then you can expand your program from there.

Type out a script for each of your videos, or wing them. You should work on your scripts whenever ideas come to you and it might take a month or two, Find funny pictures on google that match the parts of your video by “image searching” for words related to pictures you want, make a powerpoint with OpenOffice.org with the pictures as you read the script, record with Camtasia www.techsmith.com/camtasia/ or IShowU shinywhitebox.com/ishowu-v1/

Hit the 4 learning styles – Why(why is this important), What(theory, history), How(how to do it), What if(answer the main questions that you think your audience would ask) – explain everything through those four things.

A video at the top of your pitch page is the most important thing you can do http://www.copyblogger.com/persuasive-video/

When writing, write for a couple hours at a time, and revise and edit. The simple way to write your own ebook http://www.seoelite.com/lessons/lesson-47-eq/

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Make it cost a lot because people want what they cannot have/afford and they think that if a product has a cheap price then it probably isn’t very good, make your training area short and well organized and just have the most important information on your topic because people want to learn things fast, make your website design really nice to look at because everyone judges a book by its cover and everyone is attracted to pretty shiny things, make your website design really focused on getting visitors to signup to your email list and pay to join your membership training area by having a very clear path for your visitors to follow without any distractions like outside links or links to unimportant areas of your site.

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Just look through the top 100 clickbank products at http://cb-analytics.com/top-products.php and pick a site that you think you could make a better version of or a version that is at least as cool.

“Only create products that really help people. Products that help people get better lives.” And stick with it, because in many cases successful people say that their biggest success came right after their biggest failure” –Eben Pagan

Solve a problem, don’t create a product you think is cool. Scratch an itch. Nobody who bought a drill ever really wanted a drill. They wanted a hole. Therefore, if you want to sell drills, you should deliver information about making holes, not about drills! Sounds awfully simple, doesn’t it?” Apply this to all your marketing strategies, don’t market your product, market a solution to a burning problem. -Products are better than services. If you hire out your time, you will be limiting your income potential, you only have so much time to sell, but you can sell a digital product and service a much larger number of customers in a very small amount of time.”

Don’t think of it as creating a membership site, think of it as creating a solution to a problem that a lot of people have. Join some successful membership sites and buy some successful digital information products in niches that interest you (get a refund if you want) that you think you could clone, and make a similar site to their membership site and traffic streams. Use Alexa.com and Compete.com to estimate how much money they are making by looking at how much traffic they are getting and which websites they are getting it from, then duplicate their traffic streams. The size of the product niche you choose is going to determine how many affiliates you will be able to attract, and how many websites you will be able to buy banner ads on, so consider picking a large niche.

From Teaching Sells. These are the niches they say are the best, and good to create membership sites for.

Weight loss (this one has elements of health, relationships, and status)
Business education (money and status)
Parenting advice (relationships)
Attracting the person you want to attract (relationships, can also include status)
Investing advice (money and status)
Improving your golf game (or any game) (often status — beating your friends)
Sex (relationships)
The “green” movement (health)
Luxury fashion brands (status)
Professional education (money and status)
Celebrities (relationships — we imagine we know these folks, which makes us crave gossip about them)
Cool technology (status)
Organic food and alternative ways of eating (health)