I’ve been getting a flurry of sales calls lately, mostly offering me costly SEO services (typically $1000-6000). I think this is due to the fact that I’ve just launched DigitalFrameGuy.com and I guess it hit some list somewhere of newly launched e-biz sites.

Problem is, I’m becoming increasingly calloused to sales calls because I’ve been taken in by a few things in the past, and I don’t really have a great desire to throw more money down the golden toilet.

So I’ve learned a few statistics, courtesy of my friendly cold-callers. Here’s one: 92% of all web sales apparently come from search engines, hence the high focus on rankings. These people seemingly completely write off all other forms of marketing, which I think is incredibly narrow-minded. Yes, I will agree that for a web-store, SEO is incredibly important. But to take the line that it is more important that anything else, and that you’re basically wasting your time if you think of doing anything else (hahaha - you newbie moron! - you’re doing PPC?). I know internet marketers who have had amazing success just using lists, and others who are producing amazing results with social media marketing. Personally, I’ve had tremendous success with pay-per-click.

The problem is that these phone marketers don’t know me from Adam, and don’t have a clue that internet marketing is what I’ve chosen to do. I realize I need help along the way, but primarily, I want to learn how to do it myself, not turn my site over to some outfit who will charge a couple grand for an XML sitemap and a few hundred directory submissions.

One outfit guaranteed me page 1 or page 2 on Google, within six months, or my money back. Now that is an offer that is more interesting; however I have this desire to do something for myself. I want to achieve something on my own here! I suppose you could make a business model on having people do everything for you, all the time; however I think it would be a very expensive one. Being naturally techie minded, I’ve learned so much along the way that I can now do in minutes, which other people outsource. Yes, they save a small amount of time, and at some point if life gets busy enough I may do the same. However, I think that until you truly understand what the key elements of your business are you won’t truly have the keys you need to get ahead anyways. Putting 10 outsourcers together is brilliant; and I hope to do it one day, but I MUST know what each one is doing, and why, and how they relate to each other. That knowledge will likely only be gained by doing it yourself, at least the first time.

I’m getting off topic. Back to the sales calls. I am typically polite to callers, and I usually try to hear them out. Sometimes I even learn something. But I really wish they could somehow get a better grasp of who I am before they launch into their one-size-fits-all sales rant. If they actually took the time to find out where I was coming from, I’m sure they would be a lot more effective.

Well it’s time for my monthly traffic post, in the ongoing spirit of trying to grow this blog and chart its  growth. (See last month here)

Here goes:

Popularity Indicators
Alexa: 3,559,160 (up from 6,181,254)
Google PR: unranked
Technorati Authority: 5
RSS Subscribers: 0

The Golden Rule
April 2008 Absolute Unique Visitors: 297 (last month I had 143)

Inbound Links
During April I did the 30 Minute Backlinks exercises and boosted my links way up from a hundred or so to over 700, in only a week or so. Now for some reason, everything I try using to measure my inbound links comes back with a 0. I know that isn’t possible, and I’ve tried measuring it manually on Yahoo, so I don’t know what is going on with the applications I’m using.

Woopra
I just got Woopra installed so I’ll be using that for my stats from now on, although I’ll continue to keep Google running as a double check.

Conclusions
My Alexa rank is steadily improving, which is nice to see, though I don’t know how useful it is. I’m still not getting much regular traffic. Most trickles in from comments I leave elsewhere, with the majority coming from a few heavy days with StumbleUpon traffic. I’d like to see my inbound links straightened out, and I wonder when Google PR starts kicking in? Still, overall I got double the visitors this month from last, so that’s good progress.

In affiliate marketing we’re often trying to find the most effective and targeted way possible to drive traffic to a particular offer. I don’t know about you but I know that I don’t just stumble upon the best way to do that the first time I try. I know many affiliate marketers simply link directly to the offer; however this isn’t always possible. With Yahoo for instance, they won’t let you do that, meaning if you want to take advantage of that traffic you need to create your own landing page. So how do we get the best landing page possible?

Let me introduce a cool tool by Google: Website Optimizer. This is a great split testing tool (sometimes called A/B testing) for internet marketers. Google handles all the complicated code and statistical analysis; all you need to do is come up with a few versions of the page you’d like to try, and drop a few lines of code onto each page.

You can access the Website Optimizer via your Google Adwords account. You’ll see it under the Campaign Management tab, on the far right. You don’t need to use it in conjunction with an Adwords campaign: it can be completely separate.

The concept behind split testing is that you take traffic coming to your site and randomly redirect each visitor to a different version of your landing page. This works best if you keep your different versions to a minimum, hence the term A/B testing - two versions. The whole point is to be as scientific about this as possible. If you remember your scientific method, the idea is that you isolate single variables and measure those alone, while measuring your control.

Ideally, we’re talking about using traffic all from the same source. For instance, I’m only split testing one of my landing pages on Yahoo traffic. This means that your visitors are all coming from the same place, so you’re measuring results from a somewhat standard crowd. However, this isn’t by any means a make or break scenario - you can definitely split test pages getting traffic from multiple sources. The software will take care of sharing the traffic equally.

More importantly, when you make changes to your page, make them incrementally. If you come up with two completely different landing pages, one will definitely outperform the other, but you’ll have no idea why. This can be a good approach initially, as you’re trying to get into the right ballpark, but once you’ve got something that’s working fairly well you’ll want to split test on single variables.

For instance, I recently ran a split test on a landing page for a particular product (gotta keep some secrets you know ;). Anyways, let’s just say I get more money for homeowner applicants versus renters. So my theory was why not put a fairly prominent link on the page saying “Homeowners Apply Here” or something to that effect. Try to encourage my primary targets onward to the offer.

So I started with my original page, which has just a standard “Apply Online Today!” text link, and added a “Home Owners Apply Here” text link, then created a graphic from some clipart that also said “Home Owners Apply Here.” So I was testing two things: does a Homeowner link perform better, and does a graphic outperform a text link? Therefore, I ended up with three different versions of my landing page, each with a single difference from the others, all while keeping my control page constant (I’d been running the control page for months and months).

In the test results (below) Combination 1 is the text link, and Combination 2 is the graphic link. Here are the results from the split test I’ve just described. If you click the picture, it will open a larger copy in a new window.

There are quite a few important things you can learn from this little table. First off, Website Optimizer is telling me that my trustworthy landing page that I’ve used for months is converting at 34% (plus or minus 6%). So this is my baseline. The longer a split test runs, the better this confidence interval gets. I happened to quit this test early, because I could see where it was heading and I wasn’t happy forfeiting the traffic for the sake of a statistically significant result.

Next you can see that Combination 2 (graphic link) underperformed my original page, but over performed the text link. I would have to run the test longer to see which one truly worked better, as they are fairly close, however I’ll save that for another time.

So quickly, through the table, you have the estimated conversion rate range, shown in percentages, with confidence levels, as well as in the very cool graphic. This graphic shows you at a glance how well or poorly your split tests are faring. Next is the chance to beat the original. This is a way of showing you what probability each split actually has of beating your original page. The chance to beat all shows the probability of each split being #1 overall. Observed improvement is the improvement or lack of, as compared to the original. Finally, to keep things grounded in reality, the conversions over visitors tells you exactly how many results went into each split test.

Lessons
So what did I learn from this split test? Well first off, I realized afterwards that even though I get paid more per homeowner, I still get paid for renters, so why would I want to alienate them? So singling out the homeowner is perhaps a poor idea, and possibly was contributing to the lower conversion rate. Secondly, although the test didn’t run long enough to be truly statistically significant, at first glance it appears that the graphic link was outperforming the text link. This would be a good place to start with another split test - excluding the home owner part. Third, 34% conversion for a landing page isn’t bad, I guess, but it certainly isn’t stellar. Basically this means that I’m throwing away 66% of my advertising dollars before the visitor even sees the actual offer page. That’s kind of horrendous if you think about it.

As a side note, I’m currently split testing a different version of the page which at least in preliminary results, the splits are outperforming the original by 26% and 55%. The implications of a successful outcome from a split test can really make a big difference on the bottom line!

If I can get a landing page that is converting above 65% (the current forerunner) that means that for the same advertising dollars, I now get 30% more people viewing the offer! That is nearly double! Assuming final conversion remains constant, this should more than double my profits.

Here’s a super rough example:
If I currently spend $100 in advertising at $1/click, then 35 visitors make it through to the final offer. Assume I get $150 revenue from the 35 visitors. ($4.28/visitor) = $50 profit.

Now, if I spend the same, but have a better landing page, this means 65 visitors go through. With the same ratio of $4.28 to visitor, that would give me a revenue of $278, or $178 profit!!

So you can see the tremendous value of improving your landing page!

Once I have some solid results from this current test, I’ll post them and discuss what I’ve learned. I might even have a valuable tip for you on how you can improve your page the same way!

Since I have installed Woopra, I have attentively watched visitors come and go, browse around my site etc. One several occasions I gathered up enough courage to actually initiate a chat with someone. Not one of them has ever chatted back.

I got to thinking about this, and I’m not really all that surprised that no one has chatted back. For one thing, perhaps they all had popup blockers and they never even saw the window! Or, how often have you been to a site only to have one of those fake chat windows appear with pre-programmed responses? Or, worse yet, isn’t it just downright plain wierd to be visiting a website and knowing someone is watching you! I mean, talk about big brother.

When I go to initiate a chat, I have am staring at the visitor’s IP address - you might as well be watching their front door - I know what city they are from, I know how they got to my page, and I know what they are reading. Imagine it like this:

“Hello friend from Springfield, Illinois - I know you’ve only been on my site for 3 minutes and 15 seconds since you got here from Digg - but do you want to chat? I just got this new software called Woopra and it lets me do that! It’s cool huh?”

Okay, so I’m not that creepy. But seriously, how would you respond if someone started chatting with you out of the blue? Would you feel like your privacy was being invaded? Would you feel like they were stalking you?

From the blogger’s perspective it is great fun to watch people come and go (In Woopra you can even tag visitors with partictular nicknames!), but real time stats great reduces the anonymity of web surfing. I guess the closest example is back to my BBS days. Logging on then meant they knew what you were up to all the time (their computer would make that great modem sound just to let them know you’d connected, for one), they knew your phone number, and several other things about you.

One thing I know for sure, is that for better or for worse Woopra is going to change the face of web analytics, and quickly. My previous post, Woopra - The Chuck Norris of Site Analytics has become the best viewed post ever on my young blog. Woopra is making waves. Woopra pre-approved invites are even being sold on eBay!

What say you? How do you feel, knowing you’re being watched right now?

You know in the movies when they’ve always has this cool laptop with some program on there that seemingly lets him rule the world? You know, they can access whatever they want, hack into things and do cool-looking stuff. Well the little techno-control-geek in me has always wanted something like that, and I’ve got a built in sucker button for anything that looks remotely close.

Well I just got my very own blogosphere-ruling software. It’s called Woopra.

Woopra is the Chuck Norris of Site Analytics.

Woopra makes Google Analytics look like a old donkey pulling a wooden cart with square wheels.

Woopra is free. I am led to believe it is going to remain free as well.

So you’re asking yourself right now, what in the world could be so cool about blog analytics that elicits Chuck Norris-isms? Here’s a screenshot from the dashboard, and then I’ll explain a bit more.

What you see here is the live dashboard in Woopra. That’s right, I said live. You get to see who your visitors are, right then and there as they are reading your posts, in real time. You see IP, city, country, browser, OS, language, viewed pages, time spent on pages etc. You can tag visitors with nicknames, and you can even initiate chat with them! I tried this just now with a friend and it pops up a chat window in their browser. Very, very cool.

WARNING - If you’re reading this I might randomly start chatting with you!
Please be a good sport! =)

A couple more things about the screenshot above… As you can see at the time it was taken there were 21 people reading my blog, simultaneously. From the graphic under the 21 (to the right) you can see this all happened rather suddenly, and traffic was building at that point. In fact it ended up being about a 20 minute spike of around 45 people in total, nearly all from StumbleUpon. I’d like to know if I somehow made front page or something. So the graphic gives you yet another realtime measure of your traffic volume.

There is a ticker tape that runs along the bottom of the screen, displaying your current, once again, I’ll emphasize current, blog stats. It scrolls along quite happily, just like a stock ticker, giving you the key stats of the day, while also telling you if they are up on the day, or down, and by what percentage.

At the click of a mouse all sort of information is immediately available, and all in a very nice user interface. Popular pages, landing pages, exit pages, outgoing links, downloads, custom events and way more. Woopra even has a full screen mode, which brought out my little Mission Impossible wannabe ideas. It truly is fun to watch a full screen map of the world flickering with hundreds of dots (I’m optimistic) showing the locations of who is on your site, worldwide.

Woopra also has search functionality built into it, so you can search for pretty much any event or thing you can dream of that was recorded. With over 40 different statistics recorded in real time, this should be enough to keep you happy!

How To Install Woopra

Woopra is very easy to install. There is a tiny snippet of code, similar to the Google Analytics code we’re all so familiar with that needs to go into your Wordpress blog. To make it even easier, they have turned this into a plugin. So, install the plugin as you would any other, and configure it with your site ID. Now you need to install the Woopra software on your computer. They currently have beta versions for Windows, Mac and Linux, so no sad faces today!

Because the software runs locally on your computer it is very quick - no more logging in and then waiting for slow servers at Google to generate some report or other. Everything is instantly accessible, which adds to the fun.

The Way of the Future

I can only imagine the ways in which this revolutionary software is going to be used in the future. Webmasters can now respond to traffic spikes in real time. I know there must be many good uses out there, especially from a marketing perspective, to being able to initiate a chat with a visitor viewing a certain page. Plus, the sheer fun of being so in touch with your blog and your audience is much more stimulating, even for the average blogger!

If you’ve got a Wordpress blog - why not sign up at Woopra.com? It’s free!

If you liked this post, please Digg it, or leave a comment!

I recently read a post talking about how recession is going to be great for affiliate marketing. Although a bit shy on details, he did make a couple good points. The general idea is that merchandisers tighten up their marketing budgets going into the recession. So far so good. The traditional forms of advertising are becoming more expensive anyway, (print, TV, radio etc) so those dollars will naturally gravitate to he most efficient marketing method - the internet. This means a huge influx of marketing dollars all over the internet.

I would add though that supply and demand economics dictates a stabilization over time - there will always be tremendous marketing value in TV ads for example, and if they temporarily become over-priced, more dollars will flow to the internet, but eventually this will cause TV prices to come back to a  sustainable level. As long as there is value in any marketing channel it will never cease to exist, even though there may be large fluctuations in price or use.

I’ve been thinking about this topic a bit lately. One of my best affiliate offers is a loan product, and people sometimes ask me if business is slowing down. Fact is, I don’t really know, because I keep looking for new ways to promote it and it keeps growing. If it keeps growing, people are still getting loans in droves (personal loans).

I think a smart affiliate marketer will take advantage of whatever current market / economic trends are happening. Recession appears to be on the menu for the near future, so we might as well start evaluating to see how we can take advantage of it. People make money in market ups and downs - just a lot less people make money on the downs! If we’re smart we can be among the few!

Have you ever dressed your website up as a giant carrot? Probably not. If you have, please let me know ASAP because I’d love to hear that story!

Occasionally you hear about unique marketing methods that work really well. Someone comes up with a brilliant idea, and implements it. Often these ideas are quite cheap, but just require you to be unusual, which a lot of people aren’t comfortable with.

A good example is a story I recently read where a guy dressed up as a giant carrot, and started going to events around Saint Paul, Minnesota. His business, the Crazy Carrot Juice Bar, got a huge amount of free advertising in the newspapers, radio and even on TV. He quickly grew the company to 5 stores with 65 employees, and then sold it to Jamba Juice, presumably making a bucketful in the process.

Here’s the best part: the suit cost him $73 to make.

Examples of this kind of marketing are all over the place - the question is, how can you, in your business, make an impact? Chances are there is a way you haven’t thought of to really get your business the public attention it needs to become profitable. As affiliate marketers, we’re typically confined to the internet (not always though - that’s a different topic), but how can we use these concepts to promote our products? Viral videos can make a big splash, and blog contest giveaways can be huge as well. There are lots of ideas out there - which one will you use?

The other day I decided to try promoting a new affiliate product, as I hadn’t done anything new that way in a while. So I picked one from CPA Empire, which had a good network EPC (Earnings per click), and paid per lead. I’ve had good success with lead based affiliate programs in the past. I like the fact that there’s a very low level of commitment required of the customer  - they don’t have to make a purchase decision right then and there, and I still get paid!

Initially, I went to Google, because Google has traditionally been a great place to get a campaign up and running in a jiffy. Unfortunately, with affiliate marketing you don’t always have control over the landing page. I went to the landing page to check it out and it was one of these one page wonders. It is a very simple page, nothing wrong with it from a user’s perspective; however Google’s crawler clearly thought it was lacking. So only 3 of the 40 keywords I wanted went live, and only after I put my minimum bid up to $1.00 / click. When I looked into it further with Google’s tools they told me the landing page sucked. Uh-huh. Already knew that.

So anyways, I let the thing run, and managed to get one lead that day. Unfortunately I spent nearly twice as much on Adwords as the value of the lead. The extremely interesting thing was that I actually got clicks on keywords that were classified by Google as Inactive. Has anyone else seen this? Is it some sort of fraud, or is Google actually letting me get those clicks for some reason? I thought that was extremely interesting.

So I recognized this wasn’t going anywhere, so I thought for a second, then realized if the landing page was the problem, from Google’s perspective, then maybe I should try it out on a different engine that didn’t care nearly as much as Google does about these things. So I fired up my trusty 7Search account and plugged in basically all the same information as went into my Google campaign, and turned it loose.

The immediate difference: I was paying approximately 14 cents per click for second and third place positions on 7Search, whereas I was paying $1.00 per click on Google just to get active. I knew from the start that at least I wouldn’t lose my shirt if nothing much happened, 14 cents a click is a lot more forgiving than $1.00.

So that has now run for about 3 days on 7Search, nothing spectacular, but I have got 97 clicks so far, at a total cost of $14. Out of that traffic, I’ve managed to generate two leads, at $10 a piece. So I’m actually showing a very modest profit. That’s encouraging. Better than a loss, but still nothing to throw a party for. Now I’ve got to figure out how to grow that so it does that regularly and consistently.

Anyways, I guess the lesson of the day is that you need to look at the landing page you’ve got and then go from there; if it doesn’t have much text on it, chances are strong Google isn’t going to like it, and you might want to try it on a different engine first.

I got an email today extolling the virtues of a new service from my web host, Powweb, called TargetClicks. (I’d like to preface this post by saying that I love Powweb as a web host - I’ve been with them for years and they’re really top notch). I’ve copied in the main bullets of the email here:

WHAT THE TARGETCLICKS TEAM CAN DO FOR YOU
TargetClicks ensures that when people perform Google, Yahoo! or MSN searches on keywords related to your site, an entry for your Web site will be listed next to their search results! All you have to do is …
1. Fill out your site information. TargetClicks will determine your competition, target region and optimal keywords.
2. Pay just $1.75 per click. TargetClicks takes care of ad placement for you and eats the cost, even if the lowest bid price is more expensive!
3. Review your performance. TargetClicks provides easy-to-read e-mail and online reports that track your progress.

Is anyone else chomping at the bit to get signed up? I saw $1.75 per click and nearly laughed out loud. Then my brain kicked in, and I started thinking about it. I realize they’re really targeting the people that have no clue about pay-per-click or internet marketing, and would just rather pay someone to know for them. That is fine, there are things that I don’t really care to know much about and would rather pay someone to do, such as fix my car for instance. Are you an ad mechanic? If you don’t like getting under the hood, perhaps a program like this fits your ticket.

Thing is, I do happen to know a thing or two about pay-per-click ads and the $1.75 seems pretty high. Apparently though, one gets coverage on up to 30 PPC networks, which is definitely a big time saver. My guess is their incentive to create a good campaign is the more they get costs down, the more they get to pocket. The other thing to keep in mind though is what kind of quality are they delivering? I could setup a campaign for $1.75 a click and send thousands of visitors through all day long; but how targeted are they? Seems to me the disadvantage of this setup is that there is no relation to profitability.

At the end of the day, this is what makes a successful affiliate marketer; being able to advertise and get a targeted customer ready to purchase for less than the value per action so he can pocket a profit. If you’re just sending traffic down the pipe for a set fee, there will never be any accountability on quality.

Just my two cents.

To succeed in business on the internet, you need to pick a niche and specialize. There simply isn’t a lot of room for more eBays and Amazons out there. There will always be a few of these uber-players in the game; ingowever the vast majority of successful businesses on the internet are specializing in a niche.

I’m going to assume that I don’t need to convince you of the merits of choosing a niche; it is one of the most talked about things in internet marketing. Instead, I wanted to focus on some concrete ways that you can go about identifying a market niche that is going to work for you. This process is well suited to those who are looking to develop a product of their own, though it will work equally well if you’re planning on building a site promoting affiliate products.

Researching a Market Niche

1. Brainstorm. Take a piece of paper and start writing any market idea that comes to mind. The conventional brainstorming wisdom applies - don’t discard any idea - just write it down! Even if you don’t think it is any good, write it down!

Think of your own hobbies or those of your friends. Think of a common problem in people’s lives - is there information out there, or a product, that can solve it? If you absolutely can’t think of anything, go to the public library or a good sized bookstore and have a look at their magazine section. Magazines represent topics people are interested in; topics that people are willing to pay money for more information on. Once you’ve got 25-30 topic ideas on paper you can move on to the next step.

2. Research Keywords. You don’t have to come up with an exhaustive and comprehensive list at this point of every keyword you’ll ever use in the niche. Rather, use this step to get a feel for the highest traffic keywords in your niche. Try to pick around 5. Go to SEOBook.com and use their free keyword tool. Type in what you think is the main keyword for the niche, and see what you can find out. There are likely other common variations or sub-niches you haven’t thought about.

3. Assess the Niche Potential. Ultimately, you want to be able to deeply penetrate your chosen niche. Go through your list and consider whether each niche has the potential for additional products. Would it be possible to create a home study course around it? A membership site? Something you could upsell your customers on after the initial product? How about a monthly newsletter? Is there sufficient depth that people are likely to pay for additional products? Is there a good selection of affiliate products available for that niche? Checkout the usual culprits for this: Clickbank, PayDotCom, CJ, LinkShare, etc. You might need to search around in your niche market to find some good products, then google those products + “affiliate” to see if there are affiliate programs available.

4. Understand the Niche. Now that you’ve hopefully narrowed down your list somewhat, take it to the library and see what kinds of magazines and books exist on your subject. What topics are they writing about? Are there sub-topics that have product potential? Keep your eyes open for complementary niches as well. Once you’ve developed a list of customers, people who have purchased your main product, you’ll want to be able to continue to use that list to sell your customers other related products in the future.

Another idea is to go to Amazon.com and type in your top 5 niche keywords from step 2. See what products come up. Amazon can show you a ton of useful information about your target niche. You can see what people thought of competing products (ie what they liked and disliked), as well as additional products that they purchased. Try to get a feel for the price points as well.

5. Check for a Community of Interest. Go to Google and type in your niche keywords and the word “forum” and see what comes up. Click on a bunch of the results. Are people talking about your niche market, or is it dead? If forums exist on the topic, check them out and see how many active users there are on the relevant threads. Try to get a feel for the topics they are discussing, and the level of participation. Take note of the best forums, as you’ll want to come back to these later on to participate and promote your own product.

Another idea is to go to blogsearch.google.com and search for your niche in there. See if blogs come up on the topic, if so, check them out for content and try to get a feel for their traffic volumes. Are people actively commenting on the posts? Identify the best forums and blogs, as you’ll want to come back to these later to participate and promote your own product. You can also look for article directories.

6. Check out the Competition. Run searches on the main keywords for your niche and see what paid ads come up on Google and Yahoo. What products are being promoted? What are they doing well that you can emulate, and what are they doing poorly that you can do better? Checkout the organic listings as well. Read their squeeze pages and sales letters. Do they have newsletters available? Sign up for them; see what they’re talking about. Keep your eyes open for products you could partner with in the future.

7. Don’t Slack Off! This might seem like a lot of work, and it is. Choosing a niche market is possibly the hardest part of the whole process, and arguably the most important. Put your head down and slog through it. Once you’re established later on you’ll be happy you did.