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Just recently a good friend and expert programmer (Michel Komarov) came up with this interesting twist on the popup window concept.

It’s possible you’ve seen something similar to this probably not done in the same way. You’ll know what I mean when you check this out for yourselves.

What I especially like about what Michel has created is it’s unobtrusiveness. Despite the fact that popups work like gangbusters sometimes you want something that’s a little more subtle and perhaps even subliminal (to a certain degree).

With that said go take a look at what he’s created, it costs nothing to use and Michel even gives you all the code you need along with installation instructions, all for zero cost! (Don’t ask me why, something like this could easily be worth around 50 bucks).

Michel’s Komarov’s Interesting Twist On Popup Windows

Even if you don’t need it now, be sure to bookmark the page because I’m willing to bet that you’ll need it sometime soon!

(I almost forgot) …when I spoke with Michel last time he hinted that he might create a WordPress plug-in for this (I hope he does it!).

I’ll keep you posted as he develops this interesting script.

Popularity: 38% [?]

How do you know if your marketing works if you’re not testing?

Do you casually glance at your website traffic stats, hold a finger in the air and say …yes that headline increased our website sales? Or do you scientifically test one headline against another and synchronize this with the number of orders you get?

To help make sure you’re on the right track here are 6 “hot” tips for successful split testing…

1. Test at least two versions of whatever it is you’re testing, this would be the contol and the variation

The control version is the one that’s getting you the best results so far, the variation is the version you’ve created that you want to have beat the control.

2. Equally test one version against another

You’re looking for each version you’re testing to be exposed to the same environmental factors. In the case of your website this would be making sure each version gets the same amount of website traffic form the same source.

3. Measure the actions of each split test

Now you have equal amounts of traffic going to each version you’re testing how will you determine which is more effective? This is where you need to state clearly the objective you’re aiming for, it might be more subscribers or more sales. Then you need to measure this for each version you’re testing.

4. A big enough sample of results.

It’s no use testing 10 visitors to each versions of you’re testing, I promise this won’t tell you anything of any value. On the other hand if you looked at 300 visitors for each test variation you’ll begin to see a more representative picture as to which version is the winner (which then becomes your control in future tests).

5. You need patience

Testing takes time, if your website doesn’t get much traffic on a regular basis it’ll take longer for you to get the results you’re looking for. On the other hand a high traffic site will get your website testing moving along much quicker, leading you to a high converting website in a fraction of the time.

If traffic is something you need more of recently I launched a traffic course called “Flood Your Site With Traffic” if you don’t have this yet click here to get yourself a copy today.

6. You need to understand the results

This one needs more investigation because sometimes you’ll find yourself in a situation where one version A of a test out performs version B by 5%, yet version B communicates your websites values more effectively. So which version should you choose? Over time you’ll become more experienced at testing and your “gut feeling” will play a significant role in deciding the winners of split test where the results are close.

To get you started with your split testing I recommend you take a close look at using Google’s excellent website optimizer.

Get started with your split testing today:

Google Website Optimizer…
http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer

Split testing doesn’t stop with regular websites either… you can also split test the headlines and the content of your blog posts using this special WordPress plug-in…
http://websiteoptimizer.contentrobot.com

Here’s a useful online tool that helps you to calculate the effectiveness of your testing…
http://www.splittester.com/index.php

There’s one last thing you’ll come to realize once you’ve been split testing your website for a while… even your best testing is uncertain at best.

Why? Because of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principal which states that we can’t be certain of anything because the very act of looking changes its nature. This is why as Mark Joyner says in his excellent book Mind Control Marketing… “Drawing broad conclusions from your testing can be hazardous to your financial health”.

Popularity: 74% [?]

I couldn’t keep this one to myself for a minute longer…

It’s some free sales letter software from Eben Pagan that helps you to create sales letters that literally seem psychic to your website visitors. I just had to take a closer look…

What this software does is it creates a squeeze page where you ask your website visitors a series of questions. They then enter their name and email address and on the next page is a sales letter that’s customized to the answers they gave on the previous page. Then at the bottom of the sale letter is your order button.

I installed the software and tried out each step needed to get your psychic sales letter up and running and it’s very straight forward and easy to do. You don’t even need an HTML editor as it’s all build into the software for you.

The only downside I could find is you can only use this as a tool for list building if you have a GetResponse.com account. Otherwise the names and email addresses vanish into a black hole somewhere and so defeating the purpose. I’m sure the code can be adjusted to use any autoresponder service but you need to know what you’re doing.

As someone who loves Macs and prefers to use them I had to fire up my PC for this one because it only runs on Windows, which is a great shame but I do hear of a Mac version coming soon.

Other than that if you’re just starting out online or have some experience already (and have a PC) this software is well worth taking a close look at because of it’s potential for increasing your sales conversions 100 fold.

Before doing anything else you really need to watch Eben’s video first because it does a much better job at explaining how everything works than I’ve done here…

How to create a psychic sales letter

Here’s the link to the software…

Psychic Sales Letter - Download

I don’t know about you but I love to customize my websites and not stick to pre-defined templates so I’m going to see how far the pages this software creates can be pushed. The biggest thing for me is can I make adjustments to the code and sales letters so I can hook it up with my own e-commerce system.

Let me know what you think…

Popularity: 47% [?]

I don’t know about you but when I come across a website that can help me build mine, drive traffic or boost sales I always bookmark it. Here are the 7.5 slightly baddass links I’ve found to help you create big selling websites…

1. 19 Tutorial Websites And 97,200 Visitors In 3 Months
I’m sure you must know by now that creating tutorial videos to show people how to do certain thing can generate some good traffic when you submit them to places like YouTube.com and Video.Google.com.

But did you know there are quite a few websites out there specializing in tutorial videos where the traffic is even more targeted?
www.wipeout44.com

2. 37 Viral Post Ideas You Can Use Today
Regularly posting to your own blog is a superb way of generating excellent traffic to any offers you might have not to mention establishing you as an expert when you give people useful content. Here’s a blog I found recently that gives you some excellent ideas that turn your blog posts into viral marketing tools.
www.skelliewag.org

3. The Cosmo Headline Technique for Blogging Inspiration
Here’s an excellent blog post that reveals a simple technique for creating some really eye catching blog post headlines.
www.copyblogger.com/cosmo-headlines

4. 50 Common Web Design Mistakes
Go through this essential list with a fine tooth comb to see if you’re making any of these mistakes then get them fixed ASAP! you’ll thank me later.
www.designrefugee.com

5. Free article spinning and content rewriting using JetSpinner and JetSubmitter.
This is such a powerful idea! Take your content, re-write it using this software and reconstitute it across the web avoiding Google’s duplicate content filter.
JetSubmitter.com

6. 85+ Free Killer Resources Every Designer Should Know
This website gives you all the inspiration you need to get your website design off to a flying start. Whilst it’s aimed at website designers these killer resources are for anyone who likes to design things themselves.
www.snap2objects.com

7. How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic – The Ultimate Guide
The number of excellent resources that have come out since the beginning of the year on attracting links and building traffic has really mushroomed. Here’s an extensive and thoroughly uncompromising list of the best resources you’re ever likely to find that help you increase your traffic.
http://www.copyblogger.com/increase-web-traffic

7.5 Top 10 ideas for testing your headlines
Having the right headline on your website can make or break your website sales, so getting it right is critical! This article will give you 10 things you can test to find that winning headline…
www.grokdotcom.com

Popularity: 58% [?]

It should be obvious to any person with some marketing experience online that there is no magic pill to success.

To be honest with you I’ve grown tired of reading email after email filled with claims on how easy it is to sell online.

Whilst this can be true, what many fail to tell you is there’s more to it than just putting up a website and driving traffic to it.

Are you ready for the “real” truth behind successful online marketing?

Here it is…

“Fanatically test and track everything!”

Let me say it again, it’s that important…

“Fanatically test and track everything!”

Before you get started with your testing and tracking you need to know what your website conversion rate is right now. This gives you a yardstick to measure future improvements to. In scientific terms this is called your “control”.

Knowing your conversion rate before making, say a change in your headline, is the only way to know for certain if the change made has a positive or negative impact.

And by split testing one headline against another you’ll soon find a winner that beats your control.

Here’s a word of warning… never make a steadfast change to your copy based on some other marketers advice.

This is critical and it’s where so many people fall over…

What works for them may not work for you too.

Plus, how do you know they’re not merely repeating some “mantra” they read or heard elsewhere?

A classic example of this is to make your headline a bright red color. Whilst in some markets this might be the “winning” headline color, in other markets it could fall flat on it’s face and reduce sales conversions massively. Can you see the importance of testing?

Whilst it’s true you can increase sales by increasing the traffic to your site, it’s not the easiest way to do it.

Let’s face it, increasing your traffic is either going to cost you more money or a lot of time and effort (certainly more than split testing and tracking everything to improve your existing sales conversions).

However, just throwing more traffic at your website without knowing your baseline conversion metrics means you’re leaving money on the table because you do not yet know the full potential of your sales process.

Let’s play with the numbers for a moment to give you a good example of what I mean…

Say you have a 1.5% conversion rate and 1000 visitors each week.

That’s equal to 15 sales a week. Not bad.

And each sale is worth $20 in profit.

1.5% x 1000 = 15 X $20 = $300 profit each week Now, increase traffic 50%… 1.5% X 1500 = 22.5 x $20 = $450 profit

Let’s step things up a bit…

Now you increase your conversions to 2.5% and send more traffic, let’s see what happens next…

2.5% x 1000 = 25 x $500 profit. That’s $200 more than in the example above and $50 more than sending more traffic.

Let’s send more traffic to our 2.5% converting site and see what happens with a 50% increase.

2.5% x 1500 = 37.5 sales x $20 = $750 profit each week. Replicate this over 4 weeks and your financial picture changes dramatically.

Always keep this in mind…

Only when you’ve got your sales conversion percentages as high as possible should you begin to consider increasing traffic. This ensures you get the very most return on your investment (ROI) in any marketing campaigns you run that send you more traffic.

Becoming fanatical at testing and tracking is the true path to online wealth.

To help you get started here are the testing and tracking tools I use and recommend you use too…

Google Analytics: www.google.com/analytics/

Google Analytics tells you exactly where your organic traffic is coming from, what pages people visit, how long they stay for and even how well it converts.

Google Website Optimizer: services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/

This other service by Google is integrated with Google AdWords, but don’t let this hold you back because you can use it by itself on any website you own and costs nothing to use. Google Website Optimizer enables you to run “split tests” where you test one website component against another automatically.

To access both these superb tools for free all you need is a Google Account.

Popularity: 45% [?]

Back in January I ran a 7 day test using this interesting new online website visitor tracking service called Crazy Egg. (Here’s the article I originally wrote Don’t boil this crazy egg).

Essentially what this online tracking service does is it tells you which links are the most popular ones on your website. You can then use this information to optimize your websites ability to convert visitors into subscribers or customers.

Here’s the page I tested: BigSellingConversions.com

As soon as you login to your CrazyEgg account you’re shown a really well laid out and easy to navigate dashboard that shows all the tracking campaigns you’re running.

Here’s a screen shot of the page I tested out…

So you can see that during this time I had 25 visits and 17 clicks in total for that page.

To be totally honest with you that figure of 25 visits is something I’ve not been able to verify with my Google Analytics stats that I was getting so I have to question the accuracy of the tracking. I’m going to run another test on another site to see how accurate the tracking really is, right now I’m just not convinced by it.

For the purpose of just showing you what you get when you use this still very interesting online tracking tool here are my other results…

CrazyEgg provides you with a couple of ways to look at the data you get back on the clicks the links on your site has gotten. The first way is a heat map…

Then you can switch to overlay mode and you get something like this…

What’s interesting is how many people clicked on the check box, even though the form would still work without the checkbox being checked. The reason for doing this is to use the idea of commitment and consistency, when you commit to doing something by taking a positive action you’re more likely to follow-it through to the end by being consistent in your actions.

Is CrazyEgg worth using?

Definitely, but with one caveat… make sure you also track your visitors using a service like Google Analytics to compare the visitor numbers.

Based on the what I learned the numbers of clicks were not high enough to get any kind of significant information from them. Ideally you need around 200-300 visits to the page you’re testing to get meaningful results.

Go check out CrazyEgg.com now and see what you can learn about how people are using your website. It costs nothing and takes about 5-10 minutes to set up.

Popularity: 36% [?]

In my last post I showed you the theory behind how people really use and view your website (and it’s not what you think!). If you missed it you can read it here.

When you’re designing your website you need to keep everything I said in mind for the best possible results.

Today I signed up for a unique and “potentially” very powerful online service that’s going to help you a LOT because it follows on from my last post in a very interesting and very useful way.

What this service does is it shows you how people are using your website. Before you only had the theory but now you can get the “actual” stats for your website design, have I got your attention?

Great! because if you’re as serious about creating high converting websites that not only look great but also sell like crazy I highly recommend checking out this service (just as I’m doing).

It’s called “Crazy Egg” and they give you the tools to visualize your visitors (even for free!)

Here’s a screen shot I’ve grabbed from their website so you can see the different types of statistics they’ll give you to help you create websites that convert visitors into buyers or subscribers.

• You get an overlay of the web page you’re testing so you can see the actual percentage clicks on each link and form element you have on you page.

• You get a full summary of raw clicks.

• You also get a visual heatmap of the page so you can see at a glance where your page “hot spots” are (where people are clicking the most).

Here’s the full list of the features Crazy Egg gives you.
Here are the different things you can test for…

• Test a new design
• Test content and discover which version works better
• Test various layouts or placement of key elements such as ads or action buttons.

As I mentioned earlier I signed up for an account. But before taking the plunge with a paid account I’m testing the free version. As soon as I have some results to show you I’ll post them up here.

If you’d like to join me in this testing of Crazy Egg just go to their site here and sign up for a free account. It’ll take about 5 minutes to get started and there’s a single line of code to add to the pages you’re testing.

It’s a really well laid out and easy to use service which looks like it has a great deal of potential to help you build better more profitable websites.

Let me know how you get on won’t you?

Popularity: 30% [?]

So what’s the answer?

There are 2 things you can do…

1. Increase your conversions
2. Increase your traffic

But which do you think is easier and will bring you the quickest possible results?

If you think it’s traffic you’d be dead wrong because the answer is in fact conversions!

Improving your website conversion is the key because all it can take is one small tweak and you can boost your sales almost overnight - but get this…. with the same amount of traffic.

So what areas should you focus boosting conversions on?

Here’s a short list to get you started…

1. The conversion of your traffic from your squeeze page to your sales page

2. The conversion of your sales page into your upsell offer

3. The conversion of the upsell offer to your thank you page.

Here’s where it gets really interesting because when you focus on making improvements to the conversion of your squeeze page (where your traffic arrives) you automatically see massive improvements in sales.

Why’s this? simply because more people make it from your squeeze page to your sales page. The more people make it to your sales page the more people will ultimately buy from you, and so on through your website.

This is the “exact” thing that I did (and continue to do) with my own products. Focus on improving the conversions of your squeeze page (or optin page) first then work on making improvements in the other areas.

I’m sure by now you can see exactly why you should be doing this.

Recently I created a website to help you increase your conversions… I think you’ll find very interesting because it’s a classic example of everything I teach.

There’s also free report on conversions waiting for you to pick up there, so if you’d like to boost your conversions overnight by making a few small changes to your website then this is just for you…

http://BigSellingConversions.com

If you don’t know how to get started improving your conversions create a Google account for yourself then activate Google Analytics and the Google Website Optimizer.

These tools will show you just how well your website is converting now and from this you’ll be able to measure the effects of any changes you make.

It’s all about testing, tracking and letting the numbers point the way to what “really” make you money online.

You can create a Google account here for free.

Popularity: 28% [?]

Many times we purchase based solely on a recommendation from a trusted friend, family member or associate.

Jimmy D. Brown told a story of when he launched one of his new courses. He received an email from a customer who (amazingly :o) had never heard of him. And yet she bought a copy of the course without every taking a look at it herself.

Why? Because one of her close friends had bought it and loved it and had recommended that she obtain a copy herself.

And - voila - there was another sale.

She never read the sales letter. He didn’t touch any emotional nerve inside of her. She didn’t recognize any particular quantity or quality. She wasn’t expecting results (at least not based on his offer). But still she made a purchase.

And that was SOLELY because of a referral. A recommendation. An endorsement. A testimonial.

That all add up to sales.

We’ll talk about this one in much more detail later (I’ll even show you how to get these referrals for free!) I just want to introduce you to the idea now. People make purchases in a lot of cases simply because someone make a recommendation.

How many times have you gotten your hands on something because someone suggested it?

I know I’ve got my hands on a nice set of Logitech z4 speakers because someone recommended them to me!

I bet you’ve made similar purchases yourself.

How can you make it easy for people to recommend your website to others?

Maybe you add a tell a friend form to your subscriber thank you page of your website, or how about setting up a special tell a friend page you simply send your subscribers to, just by using email. You can even incentivize it by offering something of value if they tell “X’ number of friends.

What ideas do you have to tap into the immense power of word of mouth marketing and the law of referrals?

Popularity: 22% [?]

Here’s an excellent post by my good friend John Delavera who can help you with the video part:

www.JohnDelavera.com/blog

He shows you how to get one of the best online video production tools for free!

I highly recommend taking a look at this and getting yourself a copy if you’re serious about online publishing.

To quickly and easily record audio I personally use a website called: HipCast.com Where not only can you record audios through your web browser (and get them hosted) but you can also use the service to host your videos and podcasts too.

While it’s not a free service it is very good and even integrates with your blog making publishing a/v content a snap.

I’ll be using the HipCast video hosting service later on (I’ve got some great video tutorials planned to help you create better looking, high converting websites).

Popularity: 13% [?]