I’m back again, friends, sorry about the delay, flu’s catching up with me. I’ll never understand why I get sicker in the summertime…but it’s part of the package to work when you’re sick when you’re an Internet Warrior.
(I’ll explain that term another day.)
Sure, sometimes, when you’re ahead of the game, you can take a month’s working vacation, and be the only one at the family reunion with a laptop 
.
But I also sincerely love my work. And I get to do it in my pajamas from home when I’m sick…
So to continue Money Mondays, we’re talking about conversion. How can you leverage the traffic you already have into more sales… so that any additional traffic you get is more like icing than the cake itself?
First, the precursors.
Like with anything, you need a game plan. How much money, exactly, do you want to make in a set period? What’s your target? Without a point to strive for, you’re like a boat without a rudder- no direction.
Once you get that straight, you want the ability to test and to track – where is each sale coming from? What works better in your copy and what doesn’t? What is the most visited page of your site, and how can you take advantage of it.
You’ll notice here that things are always moving and changing here. I started getting considerable feed traffic, so I keep making the pages readers would land on faster and better.
My most visited time of the week, for some crazy reason, is from 1 am to 10 am on Monday morning, my time. But it’s not my greatest sales day. So I tend to push out more information on Monday, and slow to a pace where I can handle more sales and interaction with present clients on Fridays.
So study your site and see what is already working – so that you know not to fix things that aren’t broken.
Secondly, now that you’ve done the prep work, you want to raise your conversion rate. How do you do that?
In my experience, you need a combination of three things.
1 – A value exchange between you and your new visitors – something they want of value, in exchange for the privilege of keeping in touch with them– you’ll want to offer this BEFORE you get their information.
Why before? Most people will tell you, give them a freebie so they’ll give you their email address. I say no. Not only is it a bait and switch trick, it’s one people are familiar with.
So instead of tricking a person into signing up for a list that most will quickly unsubscribe from, move from a position of confidence. I offer information. Then I give them a sample of what they would get from me on a steady basis.
And I end with a blatant request for them to view my offer. If they don’t want it the first time, may they be blessed as they continue on their way, and take my free gift as a sincere offering with no strings.
Again, this is just to view, not to buy the first time.
If they aren’t swayed by my offer, then they’ve already given me permission to follow up with them, and they can leave at any time – unsubscribing from my list is easy and automatic. I won’t even see it.
If they take me up on my service or product, then great. I build a relationship with them and help them to the best of my ability… I don’t sell standalone products – I give some sort of consulting with every offer.
But blah, blah, blah me, right? Sometime’s I’m so self centered… feel free to point and laugh…
Please forgive me. I just get so many ads in the ezines I am subscribed to that are obvious attempts to get me to try the latest thing… then if you try it, there’s no interaction – I know because that’s how I got on their list in the first place.
Hey, I’m the last person to pretend that the creator of a great product is sitting on his or her thumbs waiting for me to write to them so they can answer my probably-stupid question, maybe for the 100th time that day.
But throw me a bone, can’t ya?
(Sorry. When I’m sick, I’m a bit of a whining crybaby. )
The second thing you need is follow-up. But not just your fabulous autoresponder sales pitch. You want the value of your outreach to them to increase with every mailing. And if they write you, you want to answer as soon as you can.
How will you know when you achieve this? Throw your doors open to feedback and pay attention. Keep tweaking until most of your emails say things like “you’re different”, or “Mondays used to suck, then I started getting your newsletter”, “thank you thank you thank you”.
I know, some of you have day jobs and 10,000 people on your list, a third of whom write to you on a daily basis. Who can keep up with that?
Tell you a secret.
You can’t. It’s humanly impossible, even with autoresponders and everything else on your site running with 100% optimization and automation. You’re going to miss people here and there. It happens. This is my full time business, I’m on the Net sometimes 16 hours a day six days a week and I still miss people.
Accept it – when/if you get called on it, be gracious. And just do your best. It makes a difference.
And I admit, it hurts my bottom line to get my tips out, and stay on top of email, write the articles, and run the forums at five commercial sites and four not-for-profits. But I get joy out of it, job satisfaction, and an enhanced reputation. I’m a do-gooder junkie.
Blah blah blah me blah again… how did I make this about me again?
So anyway. (You already knew I was a rambler… if you want just the facts without my personality, I apologize – but you can just skip down to the numbered sections when I start to ramble…)
The third thing you need is a better overall sales presentation. Your copy, your offer, your price, down to the colors of your page, never stop testing or studying. If you have the cash? Hire a copywriter. If not, learn all you can on your own and apply it.
My personal shame is that I could have started working for myself in December 2002. All I had to do was apply the concepts I knew to a commercial interest. I knew my stuff. Just didn’t use it.
Well boo hoo. I’m here now. And I’ll be back in a few minutes with the hows of the three things you need to make your site more of a capturer and converter.
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