Multimedia Copywriting Tips

Just a quick "heads up" on some tips for improving your multimedia copywriting skills. Michel Fortin has published "5 Elements of Defense-Piercing Multimedia" with some great tips on using tools like audio and video to increase conversions. Michel is pretty much on the cutting edge of web copywriting so I suggest you go and check out what he has to say. Definitely some insightful stuff.

I believe that including audio and video can really increase your conversions however, I don’t think we’re at the point where they are a "must have" feature. The good news is that by using them now you can stand out from your competitors who aren’t yet using them.

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Secure Your Site - Now.

I tell you what, it’s amazing how badly "experts" hurt their chances of success by overlooking website basics.

I decided to check out the hype around dealdotcom. I admit, it’s a darn good idea and very close to one I had a couple of years ago- there’s a lesson on taking action there. As it goes, I signed up for the site and then logged into the account. The account wanted my home address, phone number, and tax id # (which would be the social security number for most folks). The catch? The freaking page was not even secured with basic SSL encryption.

I’m sorry, I’m far from some of the paranoids I deal with who think that identity theft lurks around every corner but I just can’t enter all my personal info into a web form that has no security and asks for my home info and my tax id #. If you’re a real business then spend the $100 or so to get an SSL certificate, set it up and then make sure that page is locked down.

The internet marketing niche is notorious for scams and identity theft as well as basic hack attacks. I can only imagine how many people thought the same thing I did and just left the site rather than signup. Even worse are those that submitted their info unencrypted.

Dealdotcom (and any other site that collects data beyond a name and email) you need to secure your site if you want me to take you seriously and give you my info.

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Adsense Usually Not Worth It for Most…

That’s the conclusion I’ve come to over multiple blogs, forums and other sites. Overall, I feel that about 90% of the time the real estate where Adsense would go could be better spent on something else.

Why?

Well, there are a number of reasons. First off, when someone clicks on an Adsense ad they leave your site. Buh-bye visitor, and you’ve sent them off for pennies. There is no chance that they will generate a sale making you a nice commission or that they will then later on generate more income from future back-end sales (as could be generated via an affiliate program link). Even worse, Adsense provides "relevant" links meaning you may have sent them off into the arms of a competitor unknowingly or even indirectly.

Additionally, there is no "stickiness" to Adsense. A user clicking on an Adsense ad has decided that your site has nothing more to offer them at that moment. With an affiliate recommendation you can actually involve yourself in the process by recommending a product or offering a bonus for after-sale follow-up.

Other options that tend to be a lot more profitable than Adsense include Text Link Ads, affiliate sales, mailing lists and direct ad sales. For those of you who have never sold real estate on a site before you most likely have no idea just how profitable direct ad sales can be. Companies interested in branding their product will pay very well for a banner or other ad to be placed on your site simply displaying their wares to your visitors. The larger the company you deal with the more likely they are to pony up the cash for a big ad spend without batting an eye.

You might also want to consider affiliate programs offering recurring income so that even though the visitor is leaving your site you have the chance to continue to make money from them.

Adsense also often suffers from very low CTRs on sites like forums and certain blogs. Users visit regularly and quickly learn to ignore the block of ads they see every day. Forums also are especially vulnerable to having really bad and non-relevant ads shown often. Imagine a thread where users are discussing their Harley Davidson motorcycles making comments about their "hogs" and ads are displayed for mail order pork. Ads are also sometimes painfully irrelevant. For example, a thread discussing child abuse shows ads for Catholic priests…yes, I’ve seen stranger things. Adsense is really good but doesn’t know your visitors as well as you do.

When is Adsense a good idea? I think that until you are getting anywhere from 1000-2000 unique visitors per day you are safe throwing up Adsense to see how your readership will react to it. If you run a site that seems hard to monetize or lacks clear focus but gets traffic from a recognizable demographic Adsense may also work. For example, a site offering services for college students or social networking (notoriously hard to target) might be most profitably monetized with Adsense. Even then, it still may be worth it to open up advertising sales and see if you can pull in more sales without Adsense around.

If you look at some of the really big Adsense earners they fall into the categories I mentioned, social sites (like dating services), sites targeted at teenagers or college students, sites covering a broad subject matter but aimed at a certain demographic and sadly spam or auto-generate sites.

If your site is confined to LCD monitors, Honda SUVs or Stock tips- you would most likely make much more money dropping Adsense and taking advertising into your own hands.

Agree/disagree? Let me know…

P.S. Some of you have emailed me saying, "Hey- you have adsense on your site right now! What’s up?" and that’s a totally fair question with a simple answer. I keep the adsense ads in rotation until I’ve sold those spots to private advertisers. Regular visitors to the site also notice that those ads also regularly rotate with other affiliate ads. So for now, the adsense acts as a "placeholder" so to speak.

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A New Plague…Sort of.

Ever since moving a decent distance away from the city I find myself traveling there less and less. It’s not that I hate the city, it’s just that most of my daily requirements can be met much more locally. So for the first time in a few months I found myself wandering the streets of downtown a few days ago. I commented that I saw a lot of people coughing, sniffling and just generally not really looking that good. The weather here has remained warm even this late in the season so it seemed especially odd. I joked that I had stumbled upon some new sort of plague and hoped not to be struck by it.

Apparently, I was not far from the mark.

Despite not having a cold for at least 4 years I have come down with one of the worst ones I’ve ever had and it seems to morph day by day from sore throat to cough or sneezing. Today it has roosted in my sinuses and is currently convincing my face, that yes, it really DOES hurt to look at me. I didn’t sleep much last night either and am debating whether I need more decongestant or perhaps just some cranberry juice and vodka to make the pain go away.

I guess I should have washed my hands more.

In the marketing world…I snagged this link from another blog because it’s that good if you are a blogger: 55 RSS Directories for your blog.

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Split Testing Software

Finding decent split testing software or even a basic split test script seems like a simple enough goal. In fact, with all the promoters of internet marketing goods out there it would seem that by now there should be hundreds of available solutions on the market…as it turns out that is not the case.

Looking for split testing software? Let me save you some hassle.

I’ve now spent hundreds of dollars on broken scripts, buggy software and hosted solutions that like to die and leave your page loading up…nothing. As you can imagine, that last one isn’t really great for sales.

The split testing setups I’ve tried have ranged in price from $17 to over $200 and almost all of them have been garbage. Some of them flat out failed to work, some of them crashed browsers, some counted visitors to the conversion page twice (an obvious problem) and finally as an added insult some of them had their Adsense ads on the pages on MY server after install. WTF? Support was also nonexistent.

Oh, and almost all of them came with "100% money-back guarantees" although as of this writing not one has refunded my money or responded to my very polite refund requests. Buyer beware.

However, I did find two exceptions to the above scenarios. Those of you who know me know that I don’t promote crap and will rarely suggest a product unless I’ve had personal experience with it. Thus the two products listed below have passed my test with flying colors. They actually work and the publishers actually provide support. Both of them are currently installed on my servers and have been running without a hitch since purchase.

The first program will meet the needs of probably 90% of the people reading this. The marketing gurus will have you believe that you have to use multivariate testing but honestly, I really feel basic a/b split-testing is quicker and more effective for most people testing basic headline variations and the like. In the amount of time it takes you to define all the variables and edit the html all the while fighting with the split-testing software or script- you could have just banged out two versions of the page in your favorite web page editor and loaded them into your a/b split testing software.

With that in mind, the first software I recommend is Split Testing Pro.

If you want to get started quickly and easily with some split-testing software that actually works, this is what I recommend. It’s VERY easy to use, it’s fast and it will accommodate pages of all sizes and lengths (a lot of the software out there chokes on the average size sales letter).

Once installed, all you need to do is create the multiple variations of the page you intend to test and then upload them to the appropriate folder. Next, replace the page to be tested with the split-test code and you are good to go.

Additionally, they also answered my support email to them in about 12 hours. Woohoo! Real support.

It’s a little more of an investment than the $17 scripts out there but take it from me- those ones suck. This is what you want, unless you like wasting time. Go ahead and grab Split Testing Pro.

Next up is some software you need to grab if you do want to dive into the more advanced multivariate testing. As I said above I HIGHLY recommend starting with the previous split testing software before you move to multivariate testing. If you don’t, you may just end up doing more harm than good.

Once you are an a/b testing guru, it will be time to grab Easy Multitracking and get to work.

This is a very easy to use and effective multivariate testing script that will allow you to simultaneously test many aspects of your sales or landing page. The html code is loaded up to the script’s interface and then the appropriate snippets of code are added to your sales page. Upload it as usual and you are ready to go. The creator of this script is very active in adding new features and is quick to respond to support requests. And best of all, it actually works!

Just like the other split testing software mentioned, once the pages are up and running all you need to do is login to check which version or combination is converting most effectively. Then you can make more changes or decide to run with the winner.

Go ahead and grab Easy Multitracking if you are ready to get serious.

So there you have it, go ahead and grab another split-testing script or software setup (hosted or not) but don’t blame me when it doesn’t work and you can’t get a refund. I’ve been through that already for you.

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Blogrush

So I don’t usually sign up for the latest internet marketing widget nor am I that "up" on the blogging scene but I did join Blogrush today. I thought the concept was truely a solid one and surprising to me…it was easy to sign up and the stupid code is not hanging up the loading of my blog like most apps do.

Simply put, Blogrush is a traffic exchange and then some that allows you to display other blog links on your site to generate traffic to your own blog. I really do think this will become a pretty popular tool for blogging and I also predict that they will start selling "credits" to generate traffic soon as well.

Check it out for yourself here:

Blogrush.

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You Are Awesome

I’ve been working on some new stuff so I really haven’t been working on this blog like I should. However, I wanted to pop in and say "thank you" for all the positive emails I receive on this site as well as the great comments you all post. I always love hearing from visitors.

Thanks again.

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Is Google Stupid?

Seriously, do they think that their average webmaster/customer/visitor is retarded?

I’ve been pointing out their hypocrisy for quite some time and I’m really glad when I see others finally doing the same.

In particular, I have to give credit to Michael Gray for always sticking it to Google when they start acting holier-than-everyone-else.

He apparently gave the smackdown to the big G when they preached upon the evils of paid links.

Additionally, he points out the extortion that is Google’s "improved" quality score. In other words, Google wants more of your money and will tell you even less about what "quality" really means.

Google is shaping up to be the evil company they supposedly despise (not that I haven’t predicted this). I guess it’s hard to be honest when you have stockholders and the CIA to answer to.

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Niche Marketing is Stupid…

First, let’s clarify that I’ve made good money marketing to "niches". However, my niches are probably a lot different than what most gurus are calling niches.

When you read most of the conventional wisdom when it comes to "niche marketing" there is a lot of talk about targeting small tightly focused niches. The brutal truth though is that most people are targeting niches that are entirely too small.

If you’re writing a book on handcarving wooden fishing lures- how many people do you think will be interested in it? Not a whole lot, and the newcomers to that market are few and far between.

Now, what if you target a weight loss niche or write a book about improving one’s sex life? Do you think there might be a slightly larger market out there for one of these topics AND more new customers? Ya, I think so.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is that they target a niche that is either entirely too small or obscure and in the end they create a product that no one wants. There will also be little room for growth with such a tightly focused product.

When looking for a niche to target- remember to focus on topics with mass appeal and where there is already money being spent. This will allow room for growth where you can create a true business rather than just a flash in the pan money-maker.

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Feedburner

I finally got around to installing a proper Feedburner setup and icon as you may have noticed on the right side of the page —->

I have like 4 subscribers since this morning so I guess that’s a good start. If you want to subscribe just give it a click.

Go ahead, click it now.

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