Robert Plank

Reading time: 3 - 4 minutes

When creating your forced optin pages or e-commerce sales letters, or even blog posts... how do you know if it's fully optimized?  How do you know whether or not you are throwing away e-mail subscribers, sales, blog commenters, and fans without even realizing?  I want to tell you what kind of conversion rate you should expect when testing out your pages using Google Website Optimizer or Google Analytics.

A forced e-mail optin page, or squeeze page, is a web page where the only thing a person can do is subscribe to your e-mail list or leave.  I like to put these in front of my sales letters, so people need to commit to a small action (subscribing to my list for more information)... that way I can follow up with them even if they don't buy.

But Most People Overcomplicate This Process!

Your forced optin page should only contain one headline, three bullet points, and instructions about what to do next.  (Opt-in to your list.)  If you do this correctly, you should expect 50 percent, or half, of your targeted visitors, to subscribe... all while your competition overthinks the process and only gets a 10 to 20 percent conversion rate.

After they have opted in, even if you are mailing them a free gift in exchange for signing up, send them to an offer page (or sales letter) where they can buy something from you.  Similar to the forced optin page, this should be a site where all they can do is either buy or leave.  There are no other links in this long, one-page web site.  Even if you don't think you are any good at convincing someone to buy from you... tell them a quick story, your argument for why your solution is best... and a set of bullet points telling them why they should get it now, and what benefits they will receive once they get their hands on it.

If I experience a 1 to 5 percent conversion rate, I'm happy. Even if you experience a little bit less than this, you can split test your web site and even get it critiqued by a professional copywriter at a fraction of the cost that it would take to get it done from scratch.  The copy will actually come out better because you know your product better than anyone else.

That covers forced optin pages and sales letters, but what about other kinds of web sites such as blogs?  What kind of conversion rate can you expect from alternate sources of traffic such as Twitter or article sites?  The answer is that you shouldn't care.  Your time is better spent optimizing your squeeze page or sales letter than worrying about your free traffic sources.  They are tough to measure, and after all, it's all "extra" traffic.

Those are the results you should expect from your well-optimized web pages: 50 percent conversion on your squeeze page and 1 percent conversion on your sales letter. As for your traffic sources, worry about your own sites.

What's your conversion rate? Do you even know (it's ok if you don't) ... just post your answer in a comment below.

Reading time: 4 - 6 minutes

I hope you are noticing this: The more successful solutions out there reduce the number of choices.

I first noticed this a couple of years ago when I bought a special box that attaches to my TV called a NetFlix Roku. What this box does is it connects to my Netflix service over Wi-Fi and streams movies and TV shows to my TV.

Sounds complicated, right? But it's not! The funny thing about this remote is that it has only got nine buttons: It has got a Home button, an Enter button, four arrows (like left, right, up, down), a Play and Pause button, Rewind and Fast-Forward. That's it!

There is no Channel Changing button, there is no Volume button, no Mute button. Not even an On/Off button.

That's Right!

The Roku device remains On for as long as it is plugged in! It is one of my favorite devices to use because I can literally use it within seconds of taking it out of the box.

Here is something else to think about: Video cameras. For a long time I resisted buying video cameras. It is so difficult to decide which one to get. I didn't want to get a video camera that used tape, even digital tape, and I wasn't sure if I should get a camera made by Sony, Kodak or some other manufacturer.

But I did buy the Flip camera years ago. The great thing about the flip is that it really only has one Big Red Button. Much like the Roku remote, it has a couple of extra buttons, such as Pause and Play (that's one button), the Trash button, and buttons to navigate between videos and zoom in and out. But the button usually almost always used is that Big Red Record Button.

You want to record new video? Take it out, hit the Big Red Button - it records. You want to stop? Hit the Big Red Button again.

That is compared to other cameras which are better in quality and have better features, but the problem is they have too many features. For example, with the Kodak Zi8, I almost bought it because it has an external microphone. But everyone I have seen record with it has to navigate through different menus to choose what quality they want to record with, and other settings, before they can record it.

I don't care about that! I want to just hit one button and it records.

Think about the iPhone: again, almost no buttons. It has got a Lock button, volume controls, a Silent button and a Home button. That's it. No buttons for dialing or going through different menus. That is all handled in the touch screen.

If you don't have a touch screen phone, I would recommend you borrow someone's iPhone and try to do a conference call. It is amazing how it can generate new menus and give you new buttons to push when there were none there previously.

Same deal with the iPad, Droid, Kindle and other touch screen devices with almost no buttons. It is super simple and super intuitive to use - and requires almost no documentation.

Think about WordPress: I think what makes WordPress special is that it simplifies everything. You can literally set it up in a few seconds and write your first blog post in a few minutes. The interface for writing new posts and activating plugins is far simpler than any other blogging platform I have ever seen.

And the blogs that are the most accessible are the ones that remove features. They might remove things like the dates, or the ability to leave comments on posts, just to make it easier to get to the information.

Now that I have told you how much I like the Roku, the flip, the iPhone and WordPress, it's your turn!

What Are You Doing To Remove The Buttons?

Do you offer two Order buttons on your sales letter: maybe a way to fully buy your product and another offer as a payment plan?

What would happen if you split tested, only showing one of those buttons? Would it make it easier for people to join your program?

When someone logs into your membership site, is it clear what they should look at first? In other words, are your posts listed in chronological order? And do you have some kind of welcome message or welcome video when someone first joins?

When I read your report, am I going to find clear, step-by-step instructions about what to read first and where to go from there?

And, most importantly, what should I do when I'm done? So tell me, how are you removing multiple choices and multiple calls to action that don't matter?

What are YOU doing to remove the buttons? Comment below.

Reading time: 6 - 10 minutes

Are you split testing yet? Split testing is the internet marketing equivalent of flossing -- but it doesn't have to be anymore!

Marketers usually lie and tell people they split test, but if we are lucky, they do it once a month, and not on a daily basis.  Like both things, the irony is that it only takes a few seconds and it saves a lot of frustration later.

Do you ever wonder if you might have a better headline than the one you are using now?  Do you ever wake up at night wondering if you should charge less or more than what you are charging now?  What if that extra bonus on your sales letter is reducing your sales? Should you use long or short copy or even a video sales letter instead of a written one?

You can all these questions for your particular niche, your audience, and your offer by split testing.  Once you split test, nobody can argue with you.  Because Google Website Optimizer, like most of Google's services, run on their server and not yours, it is pretty easy to set up.  You just have to copy and paste a few lines of code onto your web page.

I am going to give you the basic steps of setting up your own split tests right here.

Step 1: Create Two Versions Of The Same Page

You first need to decide what you are going to split test.  I start with the headline.  Here is something interesting, I once increased conversions by 19.6% just by adding quotes around my headline.  What does this mean? It means for every $100 dollars that I made from that site.  By having quotes around the headline, I would instead make $119 dollars.  For every $1,000 dollars I made on that site.  Instead by having quotes around the headline, I would make $1,196 dollars.  You can see how that adds up over time.

The most aggravating thing about split testing is you don't always know exactly why a certain change makes a difference. Maybe having quotes around my headline makes it look more official and gets them to read longer.  I'm not sure.  I do know from testing that it works.

If you don't know what to split test, enter quotes around the headline, remove a couple of words from the headline, or remove or add a sub-headline. Just make a quick change, don't over think it.  Spend about 10 seconds making a slightly different version of your sales letter.

Now you should save that new sales letter as index2.php.  It means that your normal sales letter is named index.php.  You alternate sales letter is called index2.php.  Once you get Google optimizer set up, it is going to send half your traffic to index.php, the other half to index2.php to figure out which one gets you more sales.

Step 2: Create Campaign

The next step is to create your Google Website Optimizer Campaign.  If you have an AdWords account, you can simply log in, go to the reporting tab and click on website optimizer.  If you don't use AdWords, just go to Google and search for Google Website Optimizer and you will find a page to sign up.  It's free and it's easy.

Once you are logged in, you should see a link that says Create Experiment. You are going to click that link and create an A/B Experiment.  GWO allows you to either run AB test, which is what we are doing where you compare two versions of a page versus multivariate, which requires a lot more traffic which we are not going to use.

Click on A/B Experiment, go to the next step and then create an experiment name.  Most people skip this step, name is something stupid like split test 1.  Name it the name of your site, plus whether it is a sales letter or squeeze page.  For example, Action Pop Up Sales Letter would be the name of my Google Website Optimizer experiment.

The next step is to identify the pages you want to test.  You are only comparing two versions of a page, so you are going to put in the URL to your original page.  For example, www.actionpopup.com/index.php and then you are going to name and give the URL for your alternate page, for your variation page.  For example, "Subheadline" that way you know what the difference is between your original and alternate sales letter.  You are going to add the page variation URL, for example www.actionpopup.com/index2.php.

Finally, you are going to give them the URL for your conversion page, for example www.actionpopup.com/thankyou.php. This way the service knows what your two test pages are and what is your download page, click continue.

Copy and paste the tracking code from this service.  Website Optimizer is going to give you four pieces of code. It will tell you exactly which pages to place it on.  For the original page, that index.php file.  It's going to give you a control code to place at the top of the page.

What this is going to do is decide if your visitors should be viewing index.php or index2.php.  It will make sure that an equal amount of traffic will be sent to both pages.

Next it is going to give you two pieces of tracking code, one code to place at the bottom of index.php and one to place at the bottom of index2.php.  Even though this code looks scary, it is just a hit counter.  It is going to figure out how many people viewed your index.php file and how many viewed you index2.php file.

Finally it is going to give you conversion code which you place on your download page.  This is another hit counter that will only count if someone gets to your download page.

Step 3: Let It Run

Can you see how all the pieces are working together now? When somebody comes to your site, first it is going to decide to send them to index.php or index2.php.  Let's pretend they got sent to index2.php, it's then going to load the tracking code and say "ah ha" they viewed index2.php.  Then the person might leave or they might buy.  If they do buy, they will end up on your download page and then website optimizer will make a note of that, and notice that index2.php happens to make this particular sale.

Let it run until the end. This service will keep track of which page is winning and will run a statistical formula to decide when it is time to stop split testing.

If one of your pages, either index.php or index2.php got a lot more sales than the other, it will decide the clear winner.  For example, your index2.php page with the quotes on the headline might be the winner, and now you know you have improved your conversion rate and have more money.

Delete index.php and replace index.php with index2.php since it is now the clear winner.  You are not done.  Now it is time to start the process all over again and split test the next thing you want to test.  Maybe another change to the headline, a logo, bigger buy button, whatever you want, stop guessing and start split testing with Google Website Optimizer today.

Are you split testing yet? If not, what's your deadline for your next split test to go live?  Comment below please...

Reading time: 6 - 9 minutes

The biggest benefit you can give to yourself as a business owner is to remove yourself from the equation. That means automate as much of yourself as possible ahead of time so your daily tasks do not become chores.

You might be surprised at all the ways you can pre-schedule your content and your marketing ahead of time and I'm going to explain six ways to do that right now.

1. Blog Drip

When someone says the phrase "drip content" to me, the first thing that comes to mind and the first thing that should come to mind to you is dripping out content on your WordPress blog.

WordPress is the #1 blogging platform and my favorite feature about it has always been that you can schedule content ahead of time with no additional plugins needed. When you're writing a blog post, you can choose to submit it right now or you can change the date on it so it appears as if it was written a long time ago, but you can also change the date to a date in the future – for example, date it to be next week or next month.

That post will remain in a scheduled state until the next week or next month and it will automatically be published for you on a timer. You can set not just the date but the time of day so you know exactly when that next post is coming out.

I highly recommend that instead of sitting and writing out your blog's next week's worth of content, write 4 or 5 short posts and schedule them one month apart. That way, you have the next several months of blog posts already scheduled. And guess what else, if you're using WordPress to run your membership site, you're dripping out content inside your paid membership site as well.

2. Autoresponder Drip

The next easy way to drip content is with your email autoresponder.

You might not have notice it yet but your autoresponder gives you the ability to pre-schedule posts in the same way as your blog. You can write an email that will be sent to your list and set it to tomorrow's date or next week's date, which means that you can write your next month or your next week's worth of autoresponder emails and not have to do anything for that amount of time. You could go on vacation for the next week, schedule your next week's worth of emails and now your business will run even though you are not present.

When you are launching a product, one email simply won't cut it. You need to give people multiple reasons to go check out your offer. You need to give people multiple email reminders getting them to look at your webpage. When you're running a webinar, you should send several emails leading up to the webinar to make sure everyone is on the call.

When you make a blog post, you should send traffic to that blog post and even send reminder emails, which means you can schedule your blog post and schedule your autoresponder emails for that blog post.

3. Sales Letter Drip

If you know a programmer for about $5, you can get content on your sales letter dripped out. There's a little thing called "if else" statements.

That means if you want to slowly increase the price of your product – say increase it by $10 once a week for 5 weeks, you can at a special bit of PHP code that will replace your order button with a new one at a higher price every few days. You can run seasonal specials. For example, every month you could rotate in a different bonus for your offer to give different people a reason to get in.

4. Squeeze Page Drip

You can apply the same "if else" technology that you use on your sales letter to your squeeze page as well and you can use it to do the same things – rotate a monthly or weekly offer, and this can be a different headline, a different bonus or even an entire page swapped out for another.

You can switch out one of your opt-in forms after 2 months for a different one and have the first opt-in form send people to a page where they are supposed to re-tweet one of your free audios, but after 2 months, now direct them to a page where it sends them to your blog, which is now filled up with content.

More often than not, if I have a hard deadline for something, if I know I'm going to increase the price, change the headline, change a redirect, I will set it on this timer instead of doing it manually because otherwise I know I might forget.

5. Social Media

Now that you've dripped out your blog post, install a WordPress plugin such as Twitter Tools to leave a Twitter post or a tweet everytime you make a new blog post.

Also, if I know I'm going to be tweeting about something for the next week or two, I will use a scheduling service such as SocialOomph (formerly TweetLater) to write tweets but set a publication date on them, which means I can write 10 or 20 tweets a time which will be posted once a day or once a week.

If you don't know what kind of scheduled tweets you should put out there, just use 30-day reminders. If you're posting about a blog post today, schedule another tweet in 30 days, reminding people about that old blog post.

6. Traffic Drip

Even third-party services allow you to drip out your content, even if your content appears on other people's sites.

The Traffic Geyser service allows you to upload up to 90 videos at once and determine when they will be scheduled. (I wish Tube Mogul did too.)  When I was using this service for videos, I would record 90 videos at once, upload 90 videos and set the publication date for each and everyone - meaning that I could leave it alone for 3 months and it would send out a new video to the video sites once per day.

EzineArticles even has a premium option which means you can schedule all your articles and determine what date they will be published. Meaning, you can use the same strategy, write or outsource 90 articles, upload and schedule them all and the next 3 months' worth of traffic building are now automatic.

I hope that one of those 6 ways to drip content automatically opened your eyes and made you realized that doing things on a consistent basis doesn't always involve you and doesn't always have to be a chore.

So, which one do you like the best? The blog drip, autoresponder, sales letter, squeeze page, social media, or traffic drip? Post below, letting me know. Thank you.

Reading time: 3 - 4 minutes

Writing anything is pretty tough, whether it is writing articles, putting together a report, writing a blog post - but especially creating sales copy.  Let's figure out what your options are...

Hiring A Copywriter

Finding someone to write your sales letter for you sounds good, right? You just pay somebody some money, and out pops a brand-spanking-new sales letter.

But it's not great, because the copywriter doesn't necessarily know you. He doesn't know your voice. He hasn't seen your product. He doesn't understand what your customers' problems are.

And the worst part is you paid money to get something that is worse than if you had made it yourself!

Writing It Yourself

There is a free option: that is that you try to write the sales letter yourself. However, unless you have been trained in writing sales copy, it is not going to be that great. It is also going to take you for ever, and you might not even finish it. If you are not a writer, let alone a copywriter, your skills might be better put to use creating videos or marketing your solution.

Also, many people who have not written on a regular basis don't write the way they sound - which means your sales letter is going to seem completely different than the way you come off in person or in audios.

What is the solution then?

Put together a list of problems your customers have, and a list of benefits that you have that will solve the problem, and...

Dictate Your Sales Copy!

You are going to use the same exact elements as a sales letter: like a headline, sub-headline, body copy, your story, a problem, and so on. So you might need to consult for one hour with a copywriter, especially to help you flesh out the headline and organize the copy.

But if you know your niche and you know your product, and you are passionate about it, you can dictate out an audio file, get someone else to type it up for you. And now you have a complete sales letter that sounds exactly like it came from you - because it did!

Also keep in mind that once you have the sales letter dictated, transcribed and properly formatted, you can send it to the same copywriter again to get it critiqued.

This will probably take only about an hour, and critiques where the copywriter gets on a phone call with you - or preferably a webinar - work the best because you are not waiting around for him to finish.

The next time you need a sales letter done, dictate it! Meet with the copywriter for one hour to flesh out the plan of the copy. Dictate it, transcribe it, format it. Then meet back with the copywriter again, to make it shine.

Have you dictated sales copy yourself? What kinds of things are you dictating? Are they articles / reports / sales letters? Or something I hadn't even thought of?

Leave me a blog comment below with your response.

Reading time: 4 - 6 minutes

Why is it that people pay you money for your services, products and memberships?

It really helps to figure out not just how people found you, but what is their reason for joining your community? That way, when you send emails and write sales letters, you can appeal to all the groups.

I can't speak for anyone else, but here are the reasons I buy your stuff...

The Entire Step-By-Step Training

Four years ago, I joined a Membership site from Jim Edwards that taught everything I needed to know. It taught how to create videos, how to make reports, gave me tips on sales letters... And a lot of the things I learned were not taught directly to me. They were things I observed from his marketing and his videos.

I joined that site as a relative newbie because I wanted to learn and apply one hundred percent of what he showed me.

That training helped me get over a lot of obstacles. For example, I had not ever created video. I had some idea in my head that I needed to have green screen, that I needed to have different camera angles and different screens. But most of his videos were simple PowerPoints. At the time, PowerPoint videos were not very common. And that was the biggest benefit I got from learning and taking all his training, was making PowerPoint videos.

Eventually I outgrew that training and quit. But I short-cut a lot of things that I might have taken a long time to figure out, or maybe would not have figured out at all.

The Quick Fix

I have joined other membership sites, just to get one piece of the training. It is very important that when you join some kind of site, you know what your goal is.

Jeanette Cates delivered a three-month training program about product creation. And although most of the things she taught I already knew, I joined because I wanted to get motivated enough to record more audios. That was my one goal from joining: to record more audios.

I joined the site, picked up some extra tips about how to make my audios better, recorded them and then showed them to her for accountability. I also used those audios to build my list, and I reported back to her about how many opt-ins they gave me and how many sales those led to.

More often than not, I will join someone's site just for one particular thing. This is why, in addition to explaining the step-by-step of what they are getting in your sales letter, go into the details. Tell them EXACTLY what result they will get from your training - because you never know what outcome people are looking for.

Community

I have joined a number of monthly membership sites, just to get my name out there. It is one thing to leave blog comments, or post on a free forum. But the audience there has not been proven to buy anything.

On the other hand, if you join somebody's "$100 per month training" and are allowed to leave comments or make forum posts, you know that every single person reading your messages has at least $100 per month to spend on some form of training.

Also, because it costs money to get into this community, it is more exclusive, which means it is a smaller crowd, which means you have less competition as far as getting your information read.

Some of my best connections came from the inside of these communities.

Brownie Points

When a friend of mine, Stu McLaren, offered training about his WordPress Membership Software, I joined - even though I had previously taught similar membership training.

I joined this site basically to become the "Star Student." I listened to all the training calls, read all the blog posts, and when he had call-in days, I made sure to have some kind of question, to make sure I understood all of the content. And I contributed a couple of things just to make sure all the bases were covered with his training.

Although you should definitely position your sales letter and marketing materials to "Why newbies can best benefit form your course," keep in mind that some experts may join, to keep their own training up-to-date, or even show support for you.

And those are the four reasons why I buy eBooks, reports, services and memberships. Did I leave any reasons out? What is the top reason YOU join someone else's community or pay them money for something?

Let me know down below, in the form of a very brief comment.

Reading time: < 1 minute

A split test of mine recently finished and the conversion rate increased from 2.21% to 3.92% by changing JUST the headline -- but not even the words on the headline... the COLORS!

Imagine that, an additional 14 signups to a "$47 every 2 weeks" membership site -- an extra $1400 monthly passive income -- from such a small change.

Why does this happen?  Why does split testing even work?

I'll tell you why... it's because: Read More »