WHY PEOPLE IGNORE YOUR SITE – PART 2

July 20, 2009 Written by Mr X 0 Comment

In this second and final installment of why people don’t come to your web site or return once they do, we’re going to discuss things like getting people to read your ads, finding a target audience, testing your ad copy and giving people an urgency to make a purchase at your site now. By combining these with what we discussed in part 1, you should have a web site and game plan that will attract more than its share of visitors.

The one thing you want to get people to do is read your ad copy BEFORE they get to the free section of your site. If you send them directly to the free stuff, they have absolutely no reason to ever read what you have to sell to them. This requires you to setup the navigation of the site in a way where the first thing they see is you ad. Then, at the bottom, you can give them a link to get to the rest of your site. This is absolutely critical in getting people to come to your site and see the things you want them to see first.

Target market. You hear it all the time. But few people understand the importance of directing your marketing efforts to the people who you want to come to your site. If you have a site that sells pet products, you don’t want to put your ads in E-zines that go out to people who are into wood working. The chances of these people even being interested in your site is slim to none. Sometimes, just putting your ad in front of the right people makes all the difference in the world.

One problem with getting people to your web site, which unfortunately is one of the hardest things to fix, is the ad copy itself. Some people are just not born writers and can’t effectively communicate their product or service to the public. When this happens, the end result is that the potential visitor reads the ad and is totally uninspired to visit your site. Well, there are two solutions to this problem. Either get somebody who is a professional ad writer to write your ad copy for you, or work on your ad writing. There is no short cut solution to this problem. Ad copy is critical to getting people to your site.

Finally, you have to give your visitors the urgency to buy from you now, not tomorrow. There are many techniques you can use to do this. One of them is to make an offer to purchase your product or service at a reduced price and let them know that this reduced price will only be available for a very short time. If you want, you can put a date on the web site when the offer will expire.

By following the above tips and the ones in the previous installment in this series, there is no reason why you can’t bring people to your web site and keep them coming back once they’ve arrived. It’s not rocket science. It’s just common sense and a little knowledge.

0 Comment... Leave Your Own Comment!

WHY PEOPLE IGNORE YOUR SITE – PART 1

July 19, 2009 Written by Mr X 0 Comment

You go through all the trouble to put together a web site. You finally get it completed, start promoting it and for some reason, even if you can get somebody to come, they don’t come back. Why? Well, there are a number of reasons why people don’t come to your web site. We’ll explore a few of them here.

One of the biggest reasons why people don’t go to your site is because you don’t have enough free original content on your site, usually in the way of articles such as this one. If you’ve cluttered up your site with stuff that’s been reprinted over and over again, or worse, don’t give people any content whatsoever except for a sales pitch, they’re not going to stay around long and they certainly won’t be coming back.

Another reason is because you don’t give people free software. Now I know you’re thinking that you’re not a programmer and don’t make your own software. Well, you don’t have to. There are plenty of sites that offer free software on the Internet that is actually quite useful. By including a few of these you increase your chances of having the visitor return to your site.

Visitors love contests and prize giveaways. So why not include some kind of contest on your site? You can maybe have a daily puzzle or riddle to solve. Maybe a trivia question. The prizes don’t have to be expensive. There are plenty of things online that you can get the rights to give away.

Something else that visitors like are web directories. These are pages that contain links to related sites. If you provide your visitors with access to sites that have similar content, they will view your site as one that is actually trying to help them in their quest for information, even if they don’t find it at your site.

Another thing that will get people, not only to come back to your site, but actually on your mailing list, is to offer a free E-zine of information. This can be a weekly E-zine or even just monthly. Just as long as they know they’ll be getting information delivered to them each month. And, if you actually want them to come back to your site, have the E-zine one that can only be read online.

One thing that most people just don’t seem to get, is that in order to get people to come to your site and stay there, you MUST make your site look professional. If your site looks like it was done by a five year old, they’re not going to take it seriously. You don’t have to be a Picaso as a graphic artist, but you do have to at least make a site that looks attractive and navigates easily. We’ll dive into this in more detail in a future article.

In our next installment, we’ll discuss other things you can do to bring people to your site, including getting people to read your ads, attracting a target audience and a lot more.

0 Comment... Leave Your Own Comment!

USING SURVEYS TO GET CUSTOMERS

July 18, 2009 Written by Mr X 0 Comment

I’m not talking about those lousy sites where you take a survey and they pay you 10 credits for it and then when you have 100,000 credits they send you a check for $10. No, I’m talking about how to make surveys work for you by making your own surveys. It’s going to take a little bit of work, but the effort will pay off in spades.

One of the biggest problems that marketers have in selling their product or service is quite simply that they don’t know what people want. Think about it. If you knew exactly what a particular market was looking for, you’d know exactly what to do with your product or service, provided that it was physically possible. Let’s face it, some people want things that are just not realistic. But for the most part, your target market knows what it wants within reason. So how can a survey take advantage of this knowledge?

If you have your own website, or even if you don’t, you can put up a survey to ask potential customers some critical questions about what they are looking for in whatever it is you’re selling. The first obstacle you’ll probably need to overcome is coming up with the right questions. This is actually easy enough. Simply go to a search engine and type in “what do people look for in ?” And fill in the blank with whatever it is that you’re selling. More likely than not, you’ll probably run into a survey yourself. There is nothing wrong with taking those questions and making your own survey. Just put the questions in your own words.

Now, after you’ve come up with the questions, the next thing you’re going to want to do is put them on your site, if you have one, or in an email to your opt-in list, if you have one of those. Now, for putting the questions on your website, that is going to require a means of capturing the answers. This can be done either by having the person fill out an email form (very cumbersome) or fill in an online form, which is going to require some HTML knowledge of forms. If you’re not familiar with forms, just go to a search engine and look up “HTML forms instruction” or something alone those lines. You are bound to find plenty of instructional sites that are free that will teach you how to do forms on a website.

After you have everything set up, all that is left is to wait until the answers start coming in. Once they do, you’ll have a very good idea of what to do with your product or service to make it more attractive to potential customers. The next step is simply to put your thinking cap on and come up with a way to implement these changes with the least amount of effort and cost. You have to weigh the cost factor against the profit margin for each addition to your product or service before you consider making the upgrade. But that’s something for another article.

0 Comment... Leave Your Own Comment!

RUNNING YOUR OWN SAFELIST – PART 3

July 17, 2009 Written by Mr X 1 Comment

Okay, so you’ve signed up with a safelist hosting company and you’ve got your own safelist on the Internet. So now what? Well, contrary to popular belief, the theory of “build it and they will come” just doesn’t apply to anything on the Internet. The truth is, other than yourself, there isn’t anybody on the Internet, except maybe the hosting company itself, who even knows your safelist exists. Therefor, nobody is going to see it. So what do you do to change that? Well, you can start with the hosting company.

Most hosting companies host safelists because they know what they’re doing and know how to make these safelists profitable for the person who is running them. One of the things that these hosting companies do is sign up with safelist submitter services. These services allow people to post their ads to a number of safelists all at once. This is good for the owner of the safelist because it helps increase his membership very fast. So you want to hook up with a safelist hosting company that will provide you with a number of submitter services and at the same time won’t cost you too much. At the end of this article I’ll give you the best company on the Internet.

After hooking up with a good hosting company and applying to each submitter, the next thing you want to do is a little bit of advertising on your own. Why? Because a hosting company alone is only going to take you so far. You still want to get your own people who are yours and yours alone. The best way to do this is through advertising. And this is where most people run into a problem.

The truth is, effective Internet advertising isn’t something that hits you between the eyes. It takes some people months if not years to find effective ways of promoting their business on their Internet. Fortunately for you, the person reading this article, I’ve taken care of that problem as well. At the end of this article I’ll show you where you can learn every form of advertising on the Internet so that your promotions will bring you all the members to your safelist that you could possibly want. These methods will also work for just about any other kind of business.

After you’ve built up your safelist so that you have a decent number of members, the next thing you want to do is start selling ad space, either on the site itself, or in the form of solo ads through your safelist mailings to each member’s contact email address. This is where you will make most of your income because most safelist members will join free. Therefor, you won’t make much money through memberships.

Gradually over time, your safelist will build to massive proportions and you may actually make a decent income from it in solo ads alone.

Running your own safelist can be one of the most cost effective ways to earn an income on the Internet. You just have to know how to go about it. Hopefully, this series has done just that.

1 Comment... Leave Your Own Comment!

RUNNING YOUR OWN SAFELIST – PART 2

July 16, 2009 Written by Mr X 0 Comment

In this installment of running your own safelist we’re going to cover a few things that we didn’t cover in the first installment, that we said we would. Sometimes we just get sidetracked. It can happen to the best of us.

In the first installment, I said we’d discuss the pros and cons of running your own safelist. The problem is, we never got to it. Instead we dove right into the process of actually starting to get your safelist. So let’s go over the pros and cons here.

The pros may be very obvious to you. Or maybe not. I don’t know. Most people when they look at a safelist only see a bunch of people sending emails to each other. How does that do anything for the person who’s running the safelist? Well, as a safelist owner, you do get a few perks.

For starters, you get the name and email address of every person who is a member. This may not sound like a big deal, but building your list is very important. Many people make most of their sales from their lists. Safelists are a great way to build those lists if you’re an owner.

Most safelists have multiple member options like free, pro and platinum. The pro and platinum options are not free. All those who sign up as pro or platinum members pay a fee to do this. Guess what? That fee goes to the safelist owner. So that is another pro. You can make money just from running the safelist and getting members.

Another benefit of running a safelist is that people like to run solo ads through their safelist to the main email boxes of the members, not the list boxes. Some people are willing to pay good money for these ads. Guess what? All solo ads that are taken out that are paid for bring that income to you.

Another benefit of running a safelist, especially today, is that it’s not hard to get members. Why? Because most safelist hosting services have mega submitter services that make it so that when you become part of their network, all the people who join the mega submitter ultimately become a member of your safelist. You’ll be surprised to see how quickly your membership base will grow.

The cons of running your own safelist? Well, there are a few. For starters, you don’t get to do this for nothing. Running a safelist usually comes with a monthly cost, unless you actually create your own safelist. And then you still have to pay for hosting. So be prepared to spend a few bucks.

Then there are all the headaches of membership. You’re going to have to take care of all customer service complaints and if your membership is large, this can be very time consuming. So make sure this is something that you want to do.

Of course you will also be responsible for paying commissions to members who bring in paying members. More work to do. And again, if your membership is large, this can be very time consuming.

All in all, running your own safelist does have its rewards. If you’re willing to make the sacrifices, it can be quite profitable in the long run.

0 Comment... Leave Your Own Comment!
« Older Entries