A Big Fish In A Little Pond
Everybody wants to be somebody. Most people want to be somebody big!
When it comes to your business, it is important to establish yourself as an expert. Someone that can be trusted, someone who carries authority on your subject. Often times this “status” is achieved by publishing good information that is comprehensive and of quality and value.
The big mistake that people make is that they want to be a big expert and that spot is not so easily taken. When you are looking for “expert status” in your business or marketplace, it is best to limit the size of your niche and become the big expert there. For example, you may become a big expert in a narrower sub-niche of a broader niche, you could focus on a specific geographical area, there are a few ways you can limit yourself. What happens here is that as you limit your niche more and more, there are fewer people running for “expert status” in that arena so it is easier to stand out in that crowd. Very quickly can one become a big player in a smaller crowd. Once you achieve this, then you already have people looking up to you and requesting your input and advice. Then you have credibility and can focus on expanding the size of your niche. Do it at a speed which allows you to maintain “expert status”, and you are on your way to becoming a big expert.
Tags: article marketing, internet marketing tips, internet marketing, Jonathan Hook, website optimization
Different Mediums, Different Markets
I have been looking more lately into publishing my content in different formats. Some people do this already, others have not thought of it. We have been taught to get a website set up, drive traffic to it, capture emails, build a list, follow up, make the sale. And that works, many people are successfully doing it.
There can be more to consider. Are you also putting out content via podcasts? Are you also putting out content via video? Many people are not. Why?
Well, some people haven’t thought of it, others don’t know how and haven’t learned yet, others see it as a barrier to publishing content at all. Whatever your reason, I encourage you to look into it – for a couple of reasons.
1. The more content you can put out in different mediums, the more people you will reach. Why? Quite simply, different people learn in different ways. Some people like to read (web, email), others like to watch video and others prefer to listen. By only using one medium, you are assuming that all your people prefer to get their information in that format.
2. There are many more people in the world with wireless devices than with internet access, so by publishing in more formats, you are able to get into say podcast directories or video directories and so on. You open up your information to people who can’t otherwise get it.
It has been predicted by some people in the know that in the not to distant future, we will start to see a separation of the computer from the internet. This means that people will use the infrastructure of the internet but not from their computers. You can already access certain things from mobile phone or ipod, there are tv-like units that have access to certain parts of the internet and so on. More is coming our way on this.
I would encourage you to think for a minute on how you would run your business if your clients didn’t have a computer. Could they get your information via podcast or RSS? Can they call you to place an order? Do you mail them something in the mail for follow up? This will expand your opportunities many times over.
Tags: affiliate marketing, niche marketing, website optimization, Jonathan Hook, article marketing
4 Ways To Make More Money From Your Website
As far as I know, there are only 4 ways to make more money form your website.
You can do one of these things:
1. Get more traffic
2. Increase conversions – make more sales per number of visitors
3. Increase the size of the sale – charge more for the product
4. Ad more back end sales
The problem is that most people only focus on step number 1. Now don’t get me wrong, traffic is great and at the end of the day there is almost no problem that your website has that can’t be solved with more traffic. If your sales letter sucks but you can get 1,000,000 people to view it, you will still sell something. The problem is that traffic is hard to get and it is expensive if you have to pay for it.
The trick in all of this is to focus on the other 3 points. Because they don’t cost you anything to tweak. You can change your headline to get more attention, you can tweak your site (change the bullets, add bonuses, check your guarantee, etc) and these things don’t cost you anything to improve. Try changing your price – and, believe it or not, a lower price does not always mean more sales. The problem is that you can have a great sales letter, build up your product so that it seems like it is the best thing in the world and then you actually devalue it by selling it for $7. If it is so great then why on earth are you giving it away. You will make a lot more money if you would build up the product and add a few bonuses and sell it out for $97. And you may be able to do this without a significant loss in conversion rates. BUT you won’t know until you test it.
Another way to increase the size of the sale is to upsell the customer at the point of purchase. Is there something else that your customer needs or something else that will compliment the product they are buying? Sell it to them right away – when they are already making their purchase. Right in between the period of time after they decide to purchase and before they enter their credit card number.
And don’t forget your back-end! After someone buys something from you, MAKE SURE you collect their contact info into your autoresponder and make another offer next week. If you aren’t doing this, it is like watching money walking out of your store. Here is someone who just came to you and purchased something, there is a pretty good chance they will spend money with you again. Try it.
NOW, once you have all this in place and you have a good idea of what the life-time value of your customer is, you will have no problem buying more traffic because you know what you can spend and still make money.
Go over your website, increase the value of every click that comes to your site and then, after that, you can get more traffic.
Tags: website optimization, internet marketing tips, article marketing, Jonathan Hook, internet marketing
Do You Wonder How To Get Traffic?
I think that the more important question than how to get traffic is “What are you going to do with that traffic once they come?”.
And, strangely enough, more people wonder how to get more traffic and worry about all kind of different tricks and gimmicks than worry about servicing that traffic once it gets here.
What is the purpose of your website? What is your conversion rate from viewer to opt-in to sale to backend sale? Did you know that if you could tweak each of those steps just a bit, you could double the amount of money that you make with the same traffic you are already getting? It’s true. If you could push your visitor to opt-in conversion rate from 40% to 50% and your opt-in to sale conversion rate from 25% to 35% then for every 100 visitors you go from (100 x 40% x 25% = 10) 10% visitor to sale conversion to (100 x 50% x 35% = 17.5%) 17.5% visitor to sale conversion. You just increased your sales by 75%.
The more steps in your sales process, the bigger difference this will have to your final result. If you would just leave your conversions alone, you would have to increase your traffic by 75% in order to increase your sales by 75% and that can get expensive. First, work on your conversions and aim to increase each step of the sales process just a little bit. It adds up very quickly and soon you will find yourself making more money with the same amount of traffic instead of worrying about getting more traffic. Once you have this streamlined, then go out and get more traffic. You will be rewarded many times over!