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: article marketing, Jonathan Hook, internet marketing, website optimization, internet marketing tips
Have You Tried Article Marketing?
If you don’t even know what I am talking about, don’t worry, I’ll explain…
If you do know what article marketing is, then you are likely already using this technique to generate traffic and links to your site.
Basically, in a nutshell, article marketing is where you utilize the power of article directories to generate links to your site. What you do is simply write articles about the niche that your products or services are in. You might write some “how to” articles, you might write some articles about “why” certain ideas or products are better than others. Once you start thinking about it, the information that you already possess about your given niche or topic can fill a lot of articles. You only need to write articles that are about 500 – 600 words long.
How do these articles help you?
Well, quite simply, if you could get other websites, newsletters or e-zines to publish your written work, you could become an “expert” in your field or niche, couldn’t you? Isn’t that what makes an “expert” an “expert” – other people listen to and quote what they say.
If you write interesting and informative articles, then more people are apt to read them and in turn, use your articles as content. See, the thing that I haven’t told you yet is the bonus… any time you submit an article to a directory, they allow you to have what is called a “resource box”. This is a paragraph at the bottom of the article where you, quite simply, tell a bit about yourself – or your company, product or service. Most often, they will allow you to have a link in your resource box that directs back to your own website. So now, as publishers pick up and use your article, you are getting all of these links back to your website. Better still, the links are on the same page as the topic of your niche and very relevant to the content in your website. Now you should start to see the power of this activity.
You publish an article relevant to your niche, people read it, use it and you get a link back to your website.
So, that is great, how do I publish my articles?
Well, one option is to go to some of the article directories and submit your articles by hand one at a time. Certainly this can be done but it is very time consuming, wasting time that could be better spent writing more articles. What I would recommend is to use an article submission service and let them submit your article all over the web. They have lists of article directories that would take you a very long time to even come up with, forget submitting to each of them.
Better yet, read through this free little book called “The 4 Ridiculously Simple Keys to Online Success” that will bring you up to speed.
Still Trying To Advertise For Free?
There is a funny mindset amongst some internet entrepreneurs and marketers that things online should be free. And this affects their businesses. Many people are drawn to the notion of free traffic to your website. Now, there are a few ways of get “organic” or “search” traffic and certainly it is nice when it happens but how does this come into play in a business model?
There are a few built-in downsides to the idea of free traffic. One is that it normally takes some time to build up. SEO or Search Engine Optimization can take months to produce results. First you have to put up your site, make changes, wait for results and repeat. Sounds easy enough but the search engines take time to produce the results and this whole process could take 3-6 months. Now depending on the purpose of your website, this might be acceptable, but if you are running a real business, you are sitting there loosing potential revenue as you wait around for your “free” traffic.
Let’s compare that to paid traffic. Now understand that there are a number of sources of paid traffic available. You could buy advertising through Google Adwords on a Pay Per Click (PPC) basis, you can buy advertising on blogs or a lot of sites that get a good volume of traffic. Often these are based on the number of visitors such a site receives. You can buy advertising in online newsletters or ezines and so on. But, there are some distinct advantages to paid advertising.
First, you are in control of it. You can turn it on and off at will. Flip the switch (start paying for ads) and traffic comes in. Turn off the switch (pull the ads) and traffic stops. When you are ready to handle more sales, you turn up the volume of ads going out. No problem. When you are relying on free traffic, it can be unpredictable and not the best business model.
Secondly, with paid advertising, you can track your ads very easily. You know which ad or publication someone come to you from, you can get a good idea of what they searched for and what is going to interest them. This knowledge can help you build a better product or service because you can learn to target your customer better. When you are running a proper business, this information is very valuable to you because the better you can tailor your product or service to your customer, the more effectively you can market it.
I guess the biggest problem that people have is that they don’t have a good plan or do proper testing before they get started. See, if you have a product or service that sells for X dollars, you need to know how much money you can spend to acquire a sale for it. Then you need to look over your conversion rates and how to improve them. See, a lot of people think that more traffic can solve their problem and boost sales. Well it can. But a more compelling offer and a better converting site can do it faster and cheaper. If you start at the beginning of the sales process and increase the conversions from surfers to clickers, from ad views to sales letter reads, from sales letter reads to sales, if each of these steps is slightly improved, then you start to see an exponential growth in sales for the same amount of traffic or the same number of visitors.
Once your site or sales letter converts traffic to dollars like a well-oiled machine, then turn up the traffic. Now you can go and pay for ads to get the word out. And when people find you online through an organic search, that is a bonus. But don’t waste your time sitting there waiting for it.
Blogging to increase sales
Well for some of us blogging is just about passing time and writing something on a webpage that is of interest to us. Most of us use blogs as a tool for self expression, to make new friends or discuss any issue. But is this all that blogging is about? Well there’s much more that a blog can do for you. A blog can help to increase your sales and improve your relationship with your clients tremendously, which ultimately again leads to massive increase in sales and profits.So how does it help in improving your brand value, sales, product quality and client-company relationship? Well we’ll share it with you here. Blogs are great marketing tools and when used effectively can attract a lot of potential customers.
Imagine you are running a small fashion house and you have developed some new designs that you are not sure whether people are going to like them or not. What do you do? You’ll go and show them to some of your closest friends but not many people for the fear of word spreading out that you have produced such and such designs. But with blogs there’s a way out. You can put snaps of some of those designs on a blog and then invite people from different walks of life to check them out and give feedbacks on the designs. Such people can be easily found at the various fashion and clothing related online forums. You don’t even have to reveal your name or company’s name till you feel comfortable. This is one of the best ways to get the most genuine feedbacks about your products.
Blogs also offer a great way to improve your product quality. A certain Swiss lock-maker found that their sales were on a constant decline despite increasing demand and was desperate to know what was wrong with his latest designs. The lock-maker started a blog where he informed people about the high quality of metal used and the latest technology that he was using in manufacturing the locks. People accepted everything but everyone on the blog left a feedback which shocked the lock-maker and brought to light real cause of plummeting sales, the key to the lock. The key being supplied with the new locks way too small for comfort and often got bent after a few months of regular use. The company immediately changed the key specs and all the faulty locks and ensured that its reputation was kept intact.
Blogs are a great way to also improve relationship with your clients and also to make sure that they remain loyal to your brand. Blogs are a great way to also tell people what all they can do with your product. Several small software firms do that because often people don’t realize what all functionalities that they offer with their products. A lot of mobile phone companies blog to inform people about what all their mobile phones can do and what all features people are looking forward to.
Most of the products that are designed in today’s world are designed based on client requirement or based on what a group of people in the society need. So it is imperative to know what they want if you want your company to make handsome profits.
Blogs can also be used for advertising too and therefore you can earn money or promote some other business of yours or a relative’s or a friend’s through your own blog. Blogging has truly come a long way since its inception and has become more than just a bare necessity for individuals and business.
What is the value of your customer?
Many businesses, whether online or offline don’t know what their customers are worth.
Knowing the value of your customers is crucial in the marketing process.
If you don’t know what your customers are worth, how can you know what you need to spend to gain a new customer?
The truth is that it costs money to gain a new customer. It is important to know what you are paying to gain a new customer and what the lifetime value of your customer is worth.
Does Advertising Cost You Money?
Well, if it does, you are probably doing it wrong!
The whole point of advertising is to generate income or increase sales. Advertising is not something you do:
a) When you have a chance to get around to it
b) Once you are successful enough to “afford” it
c) When you have extra money
Advertising should be a part of a complete marketing campaign and should not really be done on it’s own without being part of a bigger picture.
The idea is design a whole marketing campaign that works together. Advertising becomes a part of this and you should be able to track your advertising. A well designed campaign will have mechanisms built in that allow you to monitor your advertising every step of the way.
Advertising is an investment and you should know what the return is. Advertising should produce a positive return on your cost.
If you are losing money by advertising, then stop doing it! Get some help to create a marketing strategy and implement it to make money.