Improve Your Internet Marketing

Welcome to I.Y.I.M #24 (formerly “Melanies Tips”) - This issue is BIG: chock-full of valuable, actionable information, resources, downloads, and a ‘case study’.

In this issue, we’ll be talking about a killer PPC conversion-boosting strategy, a truly amazing web page conversion-boosting tool, some ways to super-charge your article marketing efforts - including two excellent downloads (with resale rights!), a terrific website flipping report (with resale rights!), making your Wordpress blog look like a static website, reviewing an amazingly useful KeywordSpy upgrade, some excellent content resources, cool content resources, and as always - that extra “something-for-nothing-thats-actually-worth-something” f.reebie - also with resale rights!

How I Boosted My Adwords Conversions by 880%

I had a campaign for a product that I knew was a great product, yet my Adwords conversions were low - terrible, actually. No shortage of clicks, just a horrible click-to-sale ratio. After one little change, my conversions went up almost ten times!

Shortly after, I was talking with Jay Stockwell (the developer of SpeedPPC) about various PPC strategies, and we got to talking about conversions. I told him about this campaign, and he asked me to write up a “case study” article for PayPerClickSearchEngines.com one of the premier PPC websites.

Here is the article:

Boost Conversions by 880% - A Case Study

I recently launched a product in the “Gas Prices” niche. It’s called “The 2008 ULTIMATE Gas Saver Guide”, and it was originally meant to compete with the “water4gas” products as a legitimate “high gas prices” solution.

As I do whenever I launch a new product, the first thing I did was set up a PPC campaign in order to test and improve the sales page: I simply drive traffic and continually tweak the sales page until my rate of improvement starts to slow down. Once I have my sales page reasonably optimized, I boost my ad spend, narrow & refine my keyword lists and adgroups, and move forward.

This one was a little different. Because of all the affiliates promoting “water4gas” products (the original “water4gas” became one of the best-selling products ever for Clickbank, reaching an unheard-of Gravity of nearly 1000!), the cost for keywords and decent ad position in this niche ran quite high (this was before Google clamped down on these somewhat-scammy products).

Because of the nature of the product, and all the competing products, I found conversions were extremely low. The “water4gas” craze had peaked, people were skeptical, and this resulted in way too many “tire-kickers” - expensive, low-converting clicks.

Well, there weren’t a whole lot of negative keywords to use for this niche, affiliates had played out the usual “buy” keywords, and even long-tail keywords were converting poorly.

In otherwords, this was a fairly typical scenario: a competitive niche with expensive traffic, most of it very poorly converting. I had already optimized the sales page to the point where any further improvements would be very small.

What to do?

I decided this was the perfect scenario for the ultimate conversion-booster: I added the price to the headline of the ad!

Instantly my CTR (Click-Through Rate) dropped like a stone. It went from a high of 12.5% to under 1%.

BUT….

Conversions, which had been hovering around 0.5% jumped to almost 4.5% - an 880% improvement!

The reason is simple but instructive. A headline that said “Double Your Mileage” got a lot of low-quality clicks. By “low quality clicks” I mean “non-converting clicks”. It attracted a lot of information-seekers, freebie seekers, and the just plain curious. They weren’t looking to spend money.

But a headline that says “Double Your Mileage - $47″ is of little interest to those same people. This headline tells you right up front: this is gonna cost you. No freebies here. It’s a “self-qualifying” headline. If you have no intention of spending any money, you aren’t clicking. And if you do click, you do so already knowing that the solution this ad is offering is going to cost you.

(It’s worth noting that I had initially had a very high CTR, so that when it dropped, it didn’t impact my Quality Score, hence my Cost Per Click too badly.)

You can use price as a qualifier on nearly any product pitch ad. Yes, you will potentially lose some sales. But your conversion rate and overall ROI will be much, much higher.

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KeywordSpy’s Killer Upgrade

KeywordSpy has become the “dream tool” for PPC.

Long-time readers know we don’t promote anything we don’t use ourselves or understand well enough to talk intelligently about. Those readers also know I’ve been a fan of KeywordSpy since it was released. After SpeedPPC, KeywordSpy is probably the tool responsible for more revenue than any other I use.

Unlike traditional keyword research tools, KeywordSpy is designed for PPC advertisers. You type in your seed keyword, and it shows you:

• Advertiser
• Ad variations
• Ad position
• # of competitors
• # of clicks per day
• Cost per click

And now, KeywordSpy (Pro Version) does REALTIME TRACKING OF ADS - ACROSS THE “BIG 3″! In otherwords, it combines that crucial keyword competitive data, with realtime “ad spying”!

I have written dozens of articles outlining methods and techniques for combining KeywordSpy with ad spying programs - because by doing so, you can almost guarantee profitable campaigns. And in fact, one of the most popular articles I ever wrote was a step-by-step outline of PRECISELY what we do in managine over $100,000 in Adwords spending: combining KeywordSpy, SpeedPPC, ad spying, and keyword tracking.

KeywordSpy has now integrated many of the necessary parts of our strategy - along with some we hadn’t even been doing because the data just wasn’t available!

I can’t recommend KeywordSpy strongly enough. If you do anything with PPC, you absolutely must subscribe. It’s that simple.

If you’ve never looked at it, you can sign up for a limited no-cost trial, although you are truly disadvantaging yourself if you do PPC and don’t sign up for a full Pro Version membership. If you are serious about Pay Per Click, it will pay for itself quickly, and provide you with competitive & market intelligence that can truly rocket your ROI.

=> KeywordSpy

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Boost Your Website Conversions

Ever wish you could “spy” on visitors and look over their shoulder while they viewed your website or sales page…?

That’s the idea behind “usability testing” - monitoring & recording someone while they use a product or service. This can be incredibly valuable for websites - seeing how someone interacts with a webpage, where they get hung up, where they exit, etc.

A new product called Clicktale does something very similar.

It creates a movie of the interaction a user has with a web page. The result is a screen-capture video showing what portion of the page a user has in their browser as they view it, their mouse movements and clicks, etc.

To give you an idea how valuable this is, consider this real-life scenario:

I had developed an info-product in a very competitive niche . I had an “angle”, a unique and very high-value offer. I was so confident in the potential for my product that I spent heavily on copywriting and development of a sales page.

Initial testing showed much lower conversions than I expected. I did considerable testing - headlines, sub-heads, price, etc. Still no joy.

Then I installed Clicktale and drove traffic via PPC. When I played back the movies, I was able to see, in “real time”, how visitors interacted with the sales page, and in particular, where they were getting hung up. There was a section of the page that grabbed so much attention that nearly everyone went there directly, by-passing all that killer copy. Rather than go back, they simply continued going down the page afterwards, essentially ’skipping over’ the primary features & benefits. The result was they arrived at the price and order button without being sold first!

I removed that section entirely and conversions instantly went up over 700%.

There’s no way I would have been able to discern this simply by testing, unless I inadvertantly removed that section!

Clicktale offers a free trial that gives you 100 movies per week. BTW, that was all I needed to “fix” my sales page, though I’ve found it so valuable, I signed up for the paid service. Here’s the link:

=> Clicktale

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Super-Charge Your Article Marketing

Article marketing is all the rage these days - because it works. But for most marketers, article marketing begins and ends with Ezinearticles. If that sums up your article marketing strategy, you’re selling yourself short.

One of the guys who has taught me a lot about the power of article marketing is Tim Gorman. He’s a United States Army officer who makes more money doing article marketing part-time than his full-time salary as a career military officer. He’s also one of Ezinearticles Top 10 authors. Tim wrote a terrific report detailing step-by-step how he pulls 5 figures a month using article marketing. I bought the rights to the report so that you can have it (you can distribute the report any way you like as long as you don’t alter it):

=> Download “The Power Of Article Marketing”

Tim’s report actually inspired me to re-think my own article marketing strategy, and since doing so it’s become one of my most successful strategies.

During that recent bout of “article marketing fever”, I came across “Article Cash”, a 65-page ebook with a ton of article marketing tips, strategies, and examples. From the table of contents:

• How to write articles so quickly you could churn out 50-100 per day

• How to write articles to profit from Adsense
• How to write articles to profit from affiliate marketing instantly
• How to write articles to profit from affiliate programs for long-term income
• How to write articles for viral income
• Other ways to profit from articles

I decided to buy the PLR license so you can have the ebook both to read and resell. It comes with a sales page which you get as well. You can see the sales at:

http://www.improveyourinternetmarketing.com/Article-Cash/

You can download the whole package which includes the PDF, source file, sales letter, and graphics here:

=> Download Article Cash PLR

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SUCCESSFUL Website Flipping

Most marketers who try their hand at website flipping come away from the experience very disappointed. So many reports, forum threads, and membership sites have sprung up, claiming everything from “How I Build Websites in One Hour and Flip Them for $500″, or “Make $40,000/month Flipping Websites”. In most cases, these are the typical exageratted and unrealistic claims so common in our industry.

That said, there is in fact a LOT of money to be made flipping - the RIGHT way.

One of the core components of my own business is website flipping. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve sold 3 websites for 5 figures each, and perhaps a dozen in the $500-$1000 range. More importantly, I’ve developed a methods for systematizing site development, and refined a strategy to make website flipping a viable, LONG TERM, sustainable revenue generator.

I did a post on the blog detailing a sustainable strategy that you can implement yourself immediately. You can read the post here:

http://www.improveyourinternetmarketing.com/a-website-flipping-strategy-for-long-term-profits/

One of the key inspirations for my website flipping model was a report by JD Swanson, a well-known and respected marketer I met on the Warrior Forum.

His report is entitled “How To Turn Website Flipping Into A $40,000/Month Business” is the real deal. He’s done it, and explains exactly how in his report. He explains in detail how to create a site expressly for flipping, how to generate traffic and revenue, and how & where to flip it.

More to the point, you can do it too. My own website flipping success is a direct result of reading that report.

I wanted to share it with you, so I bought the rights, including Master Resale Rights, so not only do you get the report, but you can resell it as well. You can download the report here:

=> Download Website Flipping Report

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Cool Content Resources

Finding content to use for your sales pages, product graphics, etc., can be a bear. You can outsource, but that can be costly. You can create them from scratch, but unless you have really good photography or graphic arts skills, you can shoot yourself in the foot with less-than-professional images. You can buy stock images - often a very good alternative.

You can also search through a zillion non-copyrighted images that fall under the “Creative Commons” license.

Somewhat similar to Open Source, the “Creative Commons” licensing scheme allows people to make content available without copyright.

Flikr is one well-known example - most of their images fall under CC license. Here is a nifty resource for finding content under Creative Commons license:

=> Search Creative Commons=> Creative Commons Content Directories

 

I recently posted a list of about 20 specific CC resources on the blog. You can find them here:

http://www.improveyourinternetmarketing.com/finding-content-creative-commons/
*** Note: there are different CC licensing ‘levels’, and not every one permits commercial use, so make sure you know what you are using!

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Something For Nothing!

From the “something-for-nothing-thats-actually-worth-something” department: Competitor Ninja!

Analyzing your competitors websites is absolutely crucial. Competitor Ninja takes some of the drudgery out of this essential chore. Specifically, you enter the URL of a website, and Competitor Ninja will instantly tell you:

• The site title
• Its keywords
• Its description
• The text on the page
• All the links on the selected page
• All the email addresses on the selected page

You get FULL PLR RIGHTS to the ENTIRE package, which even includes a built-in demo on the sales page!

The package includes the Competitor Ninja program, plus:

• The sales page
• Competitor Ninja PSD images
• 3 bonus scripts
  • 3D Cube Menu Maker
  • Drop in Box Maker
  • Advertising Box Maker

(The scripts are brandable - you can sell each script individually or keep them as a package.)

You can see the sales page here:

=> Competitor Ninja Sales Page

You can download the whole package here (remember to change it to your own order button):

=> Download Competitor Ninja Package

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Coming next in I.Y.I.M. #25: A step-by-step guide to video marketing, including how to make killer videos in 30 minutes with nothing; excellent Clickbank resources; quick & easy product creation; CPA tips & tricks; scripts, scripts, and more scripts - and much more!

Know anyone who might benefit from this newsletter, feel free to pass it on -
better yet, have them subscribe by sending a blank email to: melaniestips@aweber.com -
you'll be doing us both a favor!