Over on the Plenty of Fish Ads Blog, Ben shows us how sometimes stupid sells, and can increase your CTR by nearly 300%. A few days later they posted some new ads that they’ll be testing in an updated case study. Results coming soon.

The Offer Vault blog asks, “so you have a solid product, now what?” They then provide a run down of ways to prepare and organize for the launch of your product.

Amish Shaw writes about the importance of storytelling, how it relates to business, and how you can use it to attract people to your products and your movement, in part 1 of Crafting Your Story and Spreading Your Message.

News broke this week that parent company of affiliate network, Neverblue, was declaring bankruptcy. This left many people asking, “is Neverblue going out of business?”

The official Bevo Media Blog announces that their Bevo Media Exchange is close to release. Bevo claims their “new setup will automatically make sure you never have to worry about your offers going down in the middle of the night or any kind of scrubbing ever again!” I don’t know much about it, but if they’re able to pull it off, it could be game-changing.

oDigger highlights the benefits of “alternative” dating offers, like RussianBrides.com, as discussed in the article. I can’t vouch for the quality of this particular offer, but I do have some experience in this niche. A short pre-sell is all it takes to convert most traffic for similar offers, and at $5/lead, turning a profit in this particular niche is definitely doable.

Brian at Daily Conversion makes the case for how dumbing down your landing page design and copy may help you connect with certain demographics.

That’s all for the inaugural edition of Affiliate Marketing links of the week. Get in touch with me today for a free quote, and don’t forget to subscribe to check out next week’s links.

I figured I was either the only one experiencing this issue or someone was covertly monitoring some of my sites, but as it turns out, this change is effecting keyword reporting for all web analytics tools.

You may have noticed, while looking over your search stats, the growing appearance of “Not Available” or “Not Provided” in your list of keywords. The reason this happens is because the SSL is stripping out the keyword (among other things) from the search query, effectively rendering analytics software useless. At least when it comes to tracking search data. It’s estimated that more than 25% of Google searches will be stripped of this priceless data.

It seems strange that Google would want to limit the usefulness of one of their own tools, Google Anayltics. Though it should be noted that Adwords data will not be affected by this change. This leads me to believe that this is anoth move by Google to limit the usefulness of SEOs themselves, in turn, increasing the reliance on paid search by marketers.

Source: Practical Ecommerce

Those of you who have received the update — don’t worry! Google says it will take up to six weeks for the new interface to fully deploy to all users.

Search advertising has long been the focus of the Adwords system, and display ads have always taken a sort of back role. That’s all giong to change as this new Adwords update rolls out.

AdWords was initially built for search advertising, and display capabilities were built on top of that platform. Display evolved with a whole range of formats available, including rich media, video and mobile, and also a number of ways of choosing where your ads will show. But the interface hadn’t changed. For a while, we’ve been talking about making display buying much easier. We’ve revamped AdWords to make that possible.
-”Brad Bender, Director of Product Management for Display at Google

Now search and display will work side by side, making it easy to expand a search campaign into display ads and vice versa. This added functionality makes it much easier to apply data from one network to the other for a well-oiled Adwords campaign.

Source: Search Engine Watch

This update brings a number of new features that help you manage content posted to Facebook and interact with your followers. However, the important thing here is how this will effect your social media campaigns, and not the new features.

Social media analytics company, Simply Measured, tracked 15 Facebook fanpages, both before and after they adopted the new timeline format. This is a relatively small sample, but the pages tested belonged to big brands like Red Bull, Toyota, and Macy’s, so this study still provides some incredible insight.

The three main points Internet Marketers should take away from this study, according to Simply Measured, are:

1. 14% Increase in Fan Engagement
2. 46% Increase in Content Engagement
3. 65% Increase in Interactive Content Engagement (Video and Photo)

It appears that interaction with statuses took a hit, but the timeline greatly increased engagement with post links, images, and video. One explanation for this increase is allowing page admins to greater customize how their content is displayed, with new features like “pinning”. You can get a full rundown of new features and how to use them via the official Facebook Pages guide.

Source: Simply Measured

As it turns out, tablet users are 31% more likely to click on paid search ads, and smartphone users are 72% more likely to click, when compared to traditional computers.

The study includes data collected from 1,500 users of Marin’s software, who spend over $3.5 billion per year. Marin’s vice president of marketing, Matt Lawson partially attributes this large gap in performance to the smaller screen size of mobile devices which typically displays just a couple ads, significantly reducing commercial distractions experienced on laptops and desktops.

However, don’t entirely rule out the possibility that many of those clicks are likely accidental, also due to a smaller interface. Given that mobile conversion rates are lower in comparison to computers, this is a plausible explanation. However, low conversion rates are likely due to factors more closely related to how smartphones and tablets are used. For example, many people use their mobile devices to price-shop online while they shop in the store.

Don’t let the lower conversion rates scare you off though, because ad spend on mobile is 36% lower on average. Which only reinforces the idea that mobile advertising is at least worth looking into. Whether you decide mobile marketing is right for your company or not, one thing is for sure, you’ll absolutely want to optimize your landing page copy for mobile, if you do.

Source: Forbes

It appears today that the FTC has completed their research and have drafted the best policies for how Internet companies are allowed to collect data about their users, and what the can do with said data afterwards.

Included in the report, the FTC makes the case for a Do-Not-Track system, similar to the Do-Not-Call list already in place to protect consumers from telemarketer harassment. In addition to specific guidelines for data brokers, mobile, large platform providers, the report also includes tips for self-regulation, and workshops hosted by the FTC planned for mid to late 2012.

They were sure to make clear that these new guidelines do not apply to small businesses. A small business being defined as companies that “collect and do not transfer only non-sensitive data from fewer than 5,000 consumers a year.” In other words, most of you won’t be effected. Still, given the FTC’s recent interest in regulating online business, it’s not a bad idea to brush up on what the FTC approves of, regardless of your company’s size.

Source: FTC

For affiliate marketers, this could be a sale, lead, or as simple as a clickthrough to the merchant or advetiser.

The end goal/action for a web-based ecommerce store is almost always the sale or getting the visitor to opt-in to recieve future promotions.

Small businesses, on the other hand, may be after more foot traffic, increased in-store sales, and if you’re a really smart business owner, you’ll also be getting your customers to register for your mailing list.

Every time a visitor completes the desired action a ‘conversion’ occurs. This is the unit by which the completion of your previosuly defined action is measured. And your conversion rate is the percentage of vistors you are able to persuade to take that action.

For example, 34 of your 200 daily visitors each buying a widget would result in a conversion rate of 17%.

Side Note: Notice that getting opt-ins is a common theme among these very different business models. That’s because the mailing list of a business is one of its most valuable assets, and every business should be taking advantage of this technique in one form or another. But more on that later in this series.

“Isn’t That What I Have a HomePage For?”

Yes and no. Your homepage is going to recieve a very broad range of visitors by nature because it’s the virtual ‘bookcover’ of your website. Many people will take a look, but only so many will explore the inner pages.

For this reason it’s imperative that your homepage be as highly optimized as possible so it can direct all the different segments of your traffic to the appropriate areas of your site that will result in conversion.

The problem with this, and the reason why landing pages have come to exist, is that it is more difficult to measure and understand homepage traffic, and it simply wouldn’t make sense to change your homepage every single time you test a new market or traffic source.

Paid traffic sources, such as pay-per-click (PPC) and pay-per-view (PPV), make it easier than ever before to break your traffic down into highly targeted groups to which you can display your highly optimized landing page to.

Indent -> When it comes to SEO and organic traffic, pages within your site, ranking well for highly trafficked keywords can also act as landing pages because the traffic is often more targeted than the random people that stumble across your homepage.

What effect does this have on conversions?

You guessed it, it results in an increase in your conversion rate. Or at least that’s the goal.

Although copy that is more optimized for your target audience is a move in the right direction, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll see an increase in conversions. In fact, sometimes landing pages bomb completely and don’t drive any conversions at all.

Regardless of how well you think you know your audience, sometimes, for whatever reason, landing pages just don’t perform as well you expected. But it’s not the end of the world. In fact, some of the greatest marketing and sales campaigns started off as failures.

This is where testing your landing pages and traffic sources comes into play, but that will have to wait until a later date, because it’s what seperates the winners from the losers, and deserves to have at least one post dedicated to it. Look out for future installments of this series where we will discuss effective testing methods, and how you can improve conversions by practicing them.

Of course, if you’d like to jumpstart your ad campaigns and want to start seeing results sooner, it helps to have someone on your team who knows the science behind motivating people to act through words. And that is where I come in.

Contact me for a free, no-obligation consultation, and we’ll get you moving on the right path to higher conversion rates.

Justin Dupre recently announced that he’ll be selling off newly designed landing pages in his marketplace for only $1! You won’t find anything of this caliber for $1 anywhere, but there is a catch… sorta.

New LPs will only be $1 for the first 24 hours that they are released. After the first day, you’ll have to pay $5. Still not a bad deal!

The first is a PPV dating landing page, specifically made for Match.com according to his $1 LP announcement post. Of course, it could also probably be used for a variety of other dating offers.

You’ll also notice that he mentions dating is heating up for Christmas/New Years which is just one of the niches found on this year’s list of “Hot Holiday CPA Niches“

If you’re looking for offers in the following niches, checkout OfferVault.com. They’ll try to sell you on stuff via email after joining, but it’s a very useful service nonetheless.

Christmas is only 2 weeks away. If you haven’t started preparing for the holiday rush yet, you better get a move on!

• Flowers

  
  Everyone is buying flowers this time of year for Christmas parties, their moms, etc. Both CPA and cost per sale special Holiday offers should be available on a number of networks.

• Dating

  
  Nobody likes being alone during the holidays. Tap into these insecurities, and making a killing this Winter.

• Payday Loans

  
  This is one mentioned specifically on Stack That Money. People spend more now than any other time of the year. Give them the cash they need to spend on your other properties.

• Free Stuff

  People always like free stuff, but this time of year they think they can get more of it for some reason. There’s never a shortage of Email/Zip offers out there. STM references a Free Best Buy Gift Card offer that might be worth checking out.

• Weight Loss

  
  Most people feel fatter than normal after Thanksgiving, myself included. Unlike myself, some people have the ambition to burn a few pounds and will be gearing up to lose weight for New Years.

• Personalized Santa Cards and Ecards

  
  I’ve only briefly dealt with these kind of offers, but they’ve been around for years. $10+ according to STM for Santa cards and ecards can net you a couple bucks per download or lead.

• Birthday Party Supplies

  This isn’t directly related to Christmas or the “Winter Holidays”, but according to CelebrateExpress.com, Q1 is the best time for birthday party supplies sales, and now is a good time to start getting ready for the rush.

• Jewelry

  Women.

• Travel

  Even if you missed out on the Thanksgiving rush, there is still a ton of money to be made this year.

• Cash 4 Gold

  
  Again, people need cash this time of year. Give it to them.

Ready to cash in on one or many of the above niches? Contact me for a quote!

Although these tactics aren’t necessarily applicable to every niche and traffic source, more often than not, your headline can benefit from employing these strategies.

Connect with the visitor.

When a visitor comes to your landing page it’s vitally important that you connect with them on a personal or emotional level. Most commonly, you see marketers incorporating the visitors location or the page/website from which they came to make the headline appear as if it’s been written just for them.

This is, however, just scratching the surface of what’s possible. The marketer that is able to pinpoint the underlying desire of the visitor has the opportunity to connect with them on an emotional level as well.



The ability to understand what drives a visitor’s needs, and more importantly, their wants, does not come easily to everyone, but we’ll touch on that again in this post, as well as in the future.

• Speak directly to the visitor.

  When writing headlines, I always try to include the words “you” or “your” to directly address the visitor. If somebody wants your product, it’s for their own personal gain, not because they find you interesting, and using these two words helps them imagine what it’s like to have this product solve all the problems.

• Tell the visitor what to do next.

  Again, the whole purpose of a headline is to get the visitor started on the path towards conversion. The last thing you want to happen is for the visitor to finish reading your headline, and still have no idea what they’re supposed to be doing on your website.

  A simple solution to this problem is to directly tell the visitor to your landing page what the next step is. You’re writing as a salesperson, and although you don’t want to come off as a salesperson, you can’t be afraid to be a little pushy. Phrases like, “Join Now!”, “Click here for more”, and “Sign up for our newsletter today!”, are used over and over in web copy and more traditional mediums for a reason. They work! Although you can certainly get more creative.

• Show the visitor what makes your product/service better than all the rest.

  The Internet isn’t the wild wild West it used to be, and chances are, your product or service has its fair share of competition. Which is why you must know what differentiates you from your competitors, and know it well.

  This is what we call a “USP”– a Unique Selling Point or Unique Selling Proposition. You should define what your product’s greatest benefit to the user is, and what makes your product/service better than the others, and develop a USP from that.

• Test, Test, Test.

  Regardless of how awesome you think your headline is, you’ll never actually know how effective it is until you split tests your headline against others. Even the world’s best copywriters don’t write the perfect headline their first time around. In fact, the best copywriters will test dozens of headlines before finding a true winner.

  Now get out there, and test these tactics out for yourself!

If you have any questions feel free to ask, or share your own headline writing tip in the comments below!