Okay, you’ve got a tracking system, and you have your pages prepared to test, now what?

For our example, I’m going to use the article that was recently republished on Site Pro News. Using this method, when I get published for free in a major publication like that, it’s as good as money in the bank. And they’ve been gracious enough to publish me five times just this year.

If you take a look at the article – 5 Reasons Why Your Site Needs To Publish A News Feed – you’ll see that there are 3 major links leading back to my site in the article, the one in my resource box, that points to my blog, my feed (after the link for Pluck, which really leads back to the Pluck downloads page – it’s just a forwarder for easy subscription, so that one doesn’t count), and the one minute tutorial.

Each of these links addresses my audience in a different way, and leads them to a different method of using my site, and ending up as part of my audience.

The first link in the article will give anyone who cares to learn more about me the subscription link to my feed. They can use it to check me out, and decide if they like my content enough to join my audience. In the article, I even tell you how to use it.

If they get so engaged in the feed, they’re already subscribed and can come back to the rest of my content later. Great.

The second link in the article leads to the one minute tutorial. These are the people who my book would really help the most. When they get to that link, they can read through the instructions, but at the end of my post is a link to my free five day ecourse.

The last link at the bottom is just a link to my blog. That day I had an alternate way for people to sign up for my eCourse with a longer explanation of why they’d want to have a news feed and a few hints on how easy it is.

So how can this work for your site.

It’s a little concept I like to call the garden path.

People are busy. They won’t always feel like they have time to read your whole site, and most people skim the Net, they don’t read it avidly as often as we’d all like to think when we’re creating our entralling content.

So how can you make this fact work to your advantage.

In every traffic campaign I begin, whether it is free traffic or some that I paid for, I set up my in-coming traffic to meet three objectives.

First, I want to provide enough value to create a return visitor.

Second, I want the person who comes to the site to sign up to be contacted again. They can join the members resource area, subscribe to one of the feeds, sign up for the newsletter, or purchase a product.

Third, I want to spark some form of interaction between them and my site.

With the garden path, every time I promote or market, I make sure that the target page (the page they land on) gives them the opportunity to chose to come back. The next step will let them see the products I am offering, with incentive to decide now.

If they reject that opportunity, that’s fine. They’ve already said they’d be back. We’ll find out if I can help them later.

If they accept, I want them to be engaged, I want them to get as much value out of their decision as possible. Then we’ll both be happy – I made a sale, they made an investment in their business they can be proud of, that will produce the results they desire.

So when you set up a campaign, you’ll want to make adjustments to the landing page so that that it’s focused on the action you want them to take. If you want them signed up to your newsletter, the only thing that should be on that page is information about it, and quick, easy sign-up. If you’d like to make a sale, in my experience, the page they land on should capture their information and Then lead them to your product.

This is because conversions for getting a newsletter sign-up are typically much higher than they are for making a sale. So instead of converting, say 3% to a sale immediately, you can get that 3%, plus whatever percentage of the 30% or so that signed up for the ezine to buy later.

I’m writing a more specific guide for this in my upcoming book, and due to space and time limitations, I can’t really go into details now.

But for the moment, as you set up your next campaign, think about it, what do you want your prospect to do when they get to your site, and how can you set up your pages to lead them to your desired course of action?

The rest of the day will be focused on extras. The sun is shining out here in Nevada, which means it’s almost time for me to take a break.

Until I see you next, have a happy day!

So you’ve got the people coming in, but they are leaving without buying anything? What’s the solution?

First thing – you want to make sure you have implemented is a tracking system. But let me back up for just a minute.

The biggest traffic secret, as far as I’m concerned, is that you don’t need thousands of visitors to your site if your product is converting well to sales. What’s well? I could quote you industry standards and all that, but I have another idea.

Realistically, how much would you like to earn in a day? Maybe you love your work and you have no intentions of quitting your day job, you just want to have a little something hands off on the side, enough to eliminate your car payment. So you’d like to see one sale a day of your $20 product.

If, for every 100 visitors to your site, you can make one sale, and you have 100 visitors a day, this time next month, that’s $600. Keep your expenditure low to get that visitor, and it can be mostly profit.

Personally, I average somewhere between 4 and 14 sales a day when I have promotions, free or not, running. It’s not always on a premium product, but it makes for enough not to have to work outside the home.

What I’m going to tell you now is just a gloss over of the system that works best for me. I will go into a lot more detail when I’m done updating my Free Traffic Primer.

So back to the tracking system. Make sure you know not just where every sale comes from, but every newsletter or free course sign-up. This will be essential for testing.

Before we proceed, I suggest you make a copy of the location where you have people sign up or buy at your site, at least one. And if you can, code your buy links and order/invoice numbers according to where they came from. I can look at the item number and tell whether one of my site members bought something, or if it came from an advertising campaign, an article, PPC, etc.

I’ll keep going down this path momentarily in part two.

First, the value exchange. What do I mean by this? I mean, something of value from you, containing information related to why the person came to your site in the first place.

It can be a subscription to your ezine, a free ebook (give as much value as you can, but don’t give away the farm), a software demo, a free mini-course, a feed subscription link – something that your visitor can use long after they’ve come to your site, that requires further interaction with an aspect of your business for them to get more information.

You’re here because you’re looking for that holy grail of traffic sources – free traffic. Or are you? Maybe you’re really here because you want the benefits that come with it – more sales, more money in your pocket, more cost-effective ways to run your online business.

That or you really like it when I ramble. If that’s the case, I have the number to a really good therapist….

I kid with you!

But to continue. I bring that up to say, your customer came there because on some level, they are interested in your gizmo, or something interesting on your pages. What benefits are related to that, that you can give away to a potential client?

Most people come to me wanting their site spidered by Google. I say, I can get you that free, here you go. Have a party. And if you want to do it yourself, sign up for my ezine. I tell you how to do that in the second issue.

But what you really want is to get listed by Google, isn’t it? Well, before I help you figure out how to set Google on your site, why don’t you try a little optimization first – that’s free too.

And that question pops up – why is she giving that away? What’s the catch?

Ha. Try and find one. Big secret? I’m not telling you anything you won’t find on your own after looking on the Net if you know where to look. I just simplified it, and made it easy for you to follow. The thing is, those aren’t my secrets. I’d never re-package someone else’s knowledge just to sell you… and maybe that’s why I’m getting rich slow…

For once, that whole spiel wasn’t just another opportunity for me to drone on about myself. It’s to show you an example of how you can give more than other people do, and not be afraid that it will leave you empty, with nothing left to offer.

Don’t be scared to give someone a good, free tip, or lots of them. I don’t know about you, but I’m busy. And when I’m not busy, I’m lazy. Save people time… they’ll just come back to you over and over again looking for more until one day, something about what you said, or what you offer, with strike them in their sunny spot… and they’ll actually feel good about exchanging currency for your knowledge.

That actually takes care of number two, a follow-up with a value increase. Your information should get progressively better over the follow-up time. Reward the people who stick with you longer. Make them think, man, what’s next?

Which brings us to number three. Make your overall sales presentation better. My favorite two articles, that I refer to again and again, are Willie Crawford’s “20 Simple Things To Do Today To Dramatically Increase Your
Website Sales” and Michael Southon’s (man I always thought it was Southern. Whoops!) “7 Simple Ways To Boost Your E-Book Sales“.

I also like to go to Dr. Joe Vitale’s site. I’m sorry. The man is a copywriting genius. Two free chapters of his hypnotic writing book can teach you more about writing better copy than some people get out of years of study. That link is to his copy writing articles section.

But I said it before, and I’ll say it again. Don’t listen to anyone blindly, especially me. Test and track for yourself, then go with the people whose techniques work for you. Some folks may not ring your bells in getting their message across. If you’re not much of a reader, you might find my articles long and boring.

And that’s cool. I used to try and please everyone, but now I realize, the people who I can best work with are the people who enjoy my flavor. I can’t help the whole world, now can I?

I’m fortunate enough to be able to pick who I want to work with, and filter accordingly. There’s certainly enough people on the Internet for all the honest business people out there, right?

That brings me to my last point… in all of the effort to have a great sales presentation, you’ll want to let some part of you shine through. Nothing on a stalker, ultra-personal level. Unless you’re a poet or a singer, and it somehow works with your business.

Be different. Admit your failings and admit your craziness. Be honest and you’ll end up with a sub-niche of the niche you pursued that you Own. The copycats will never be the original you.

See you in a few with the feed and/or site of the day.

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.

What’s better than more free traffic? You would think that I’d say nothing. But the truth is, the one thing better than more traffic, free or not, is a higher conversion rate.

When I say conversion rate, I’m speaking of the percentage of people who come to your site and take the action that you’d like them to take. For some that’s getting a visitor to join your forums. For most of us, it’s making the sale.

The number one thing I have found that people don’t understand about getting traffic, is that you can get up to ten times the results by setting your site up to convert your visitors better.

The truth is, you do not need to have all the top positions in the search engines, or to have tens of thousands of visitors to make money on the Internet.

You need a quality site with good fresh content, a way of updating visitors to changes at your site and a page that converts them to buyers at a consistent rate. Don’t quote me on this, but for internet marketing the conversion rate seems to be around 3-10% for immediate sales. About a third of my audience converts sooner or later.

Let’s see what a difference this can make with a quick example. Let’s say you get a package of 1000 visitors for $5 from a site that actually sends you real buyers. You’re excited because you know that out of every 100 untargeted visitors, 1 will buy. Your product costs $10, you’ll make 10 sales. $95 profit.

Great. But let’s look at what would happen if you increased your conversion rate just slightly, to 3%. What would happen, all other things being equal?

3% of 1000 is 30. That’s 30 sales, $295 profit. Much better, yes?

That shouldn’t be the end of the road for you though. Instead of just depending on the conversion of people who see the value in your product right away, what if you got your visitors to volunteer for you to follow-up with them before they even saw your offer? Now what if, in addition to the original 3% conversion, 30% of the people who joined your list eventually saw the value of your package, and grew to trust you?

From that same 1000 visitor package, what if you could end up with a conversion rate of 33% over the course of the next 30 days – 3% immediate, the rest over time? All else being equal, you’d make 340 sales. At $10 each that’s a $3390 profit.

I did that for easy math – my sticky traffic doesn’t necessarily convert within that first 30 day period, as I follow up with them weekly and not daily, in an effort to control my growth and continue to provide quality service.

However, 33% of my audience eventually converts. And I know what you’re thinking – that’s a neat trick Tinu… mind telling me how you do it?

Well, I can’t tell you ALL my secrets. But I’ll give you a few pointers and direct you to some people who use similiar methods… Be back with that information soon.