2 products that made me a lot more money in 2009

[Daniel McGonagle]

Kinda late to be writing this, but hey, just thought I'd share some things that helped me with affiliate marketing efforts.

I think WF member John Taylor had an ebook WSO out on how to maximize your article marketing efforts ( make XXX dollars per article written).

The nugget I gleaned and IMPLEMENTED quite easily from his ebook was to do article marketing a bit differently.

Step 1- your article should leave reader wanting more info, for high CTR
Step 2- (This is the NUGGET!) the link where you send your article marketing traffic should give more info, but also leave an option to sign up for a newsletter to find out more information about XYZ product.

This works well for non-impulse buyers who need a little more convincing before they buy something, and it builds your list. If they never buy XYZ product from you then you got more subscribers at the very least.

SECOND PRODUCT....

This is more of an idea/method really.

Most blogs don't have money pages, and even if they do, they don't convert well due to the sidebar and header distractions.

Nowadays there are a lot of plugins and themes that can remove sidebar widgets (Thesis is one) quite easily.

So if/when you funnel your traffic properly (towards money pages or optin forms or squeeze pages) you'll start to see better results.

BOTH of these methods/strategies can be done for free

if you can hack wordpress to remove sidebars from pages

if you can comprehend the idea behind stringing readers along to go from

A---visitor reads an article

B -- visitor goes from article to landing page or post with more informative content (has to be on your site) and calls to action to buy product or get optin newsletter. They either buy product, optin for newsletter, or click away for good and good riddance, too because they never intended to buy anything anyways otherwise they would have AT LEAST got the newsletter

C -- visitors still doesn't want to buy anything so they opt in for newsletter and followup emails should espouse the benefits of XYZ product, and this leads to a much higher, and automated conversion rate for your affiliate marketing or self-owned products.

Note: this works well for mini-sites, so listen up all you product launch jockeys! Add a newsletter option for your product launch review sites and watch what happens!

Personally, I don't throw up product launch review sites unless I'm a firm believer in the product, but by the time I'm convinced of the quality of what the mini-site review site will be about the launch is long over and I still probably convert my visitors at a higher rate than those who don't do things the way I described here in this thread, which I credit that ebook whose name I can't remember for educating me on.

These are golden nuggets for marketing methods,they're easy to implement and I wish I had learned them a long time ago.

Hopefully someone does something with this info...

[sainteve21]

Hi

Excellent post

Was actually looking for WP themes without sidebars yesterday
It is easy to amend the code to remove sidebars altogether, but I also found these:

Themes without sidebars (ignore the graphics, these are easy enough to replace)
http://wpthemeland.com/tag/no-sidebar/

Or, you could generate your own (very easy)
Wordpress Theme Generator - Create your own Wordpress Theme.

Did my first without sidebars just last night:
Ipads-R-Us

Regards

Steve

[MyLinkClub]

@OP: when you say "leave the reader wanting more info", is there a specific technique or template you use to build up to a cliffhanger, or is it just your copywriting skills that determines the ctr?

[Daniel McGonagle]

Nice references, thanks.

A lot of these themes came out once Thesis theme 1st version was released, and then things seemed to take off from there.

Personally, I was amazed at how quickly a simple change to site design made things work better.

Originally Posted by sainteve21

Hi

Excellent post

Was actually looking for WP themes without sidebars yesterday
It is easy to amend the code to remove sidebars altogether, but I also found these:

Themes without sidebars (ignore the graphics, these are easy enough to replace)
No Sidebar Wordpress Themes

Or, you could generate your own (very easy)
Wordpress Theme Generator - Create your own Wordpress Theme.

Did my first without sidebars just last night:
Ipads-R-Us

Regards

Steve

[Daniel McGonagle]

I don't use any specific template, but I guess I could reverse engineer some articles and boil things down into reader mentality/flow.

Reader wants info, not sales pitch, so first thing they read should be information on what XYZ is all about and what it does.

Reader curiousity is almost satisfied at this point, but they also want to know if XYZ works, brings results, is a good buy for them etc...

CTR improves when resource boxes link to something that says,

Does XYZ really work, read an updated XYZ review here...

Updated XYZ review landing page or post gives more information and up or down recommendation.

If its not recommended, recommend a similar service
If it IS recommended, offer up an aff link or newsletter.

NOTE: I do realize that it'd be very time-consuming to write a newsletter series for each and every product you promote, but if you did, you build yourself a nice newsletter.

This is actually why I had the target subscriber wordpress plugin made, so people could offer targeted banners or newsletters at the en dof each post/article according to category.

Anyhow, leading readers along, I really hate saying it like that, but if you understand your niche and your readers and marketing in general, you know that some people are impulse buyers, some need slots of convincing, and some aren't serious enough yet to take action.

Appeal to all these type sin your marketing methods, and offer various ways to actually help them and you've coralled their interest as much as you could possibly hope to corral their interest.

MODS: you can delete this portion of the thread if you want, but this site here > Unique Article Wizard is Superior Article Marketing is an example/case study of a mini-site that I practice these methods on.

One site, one focus, one message. I've had people sign up for that newsletter even though they already got that product...just to get the helpful training, and some have cancelled their subscriptions, then signed back up again via my aff link because they appreciated the help so much.

That's powerful stuff and gratifying to me, to see that people are THAT appreciative of the newsletter (which I wrote in a few hours, and could only have written in a few hours by being an actual users, which is another point that needs to be stressed: buy the products you're selling and use them so you can provide top notch reviews and inside info).

Originally Posted by MyLinkClub

@OP: when you say "leave the reader wanting more info", is there a specific technique or template you use to build up to a cliffhanger, or is it just your copywriting skills that determines the ctr?

[robs132]

Nice one great post. Always good to see what is working for other people!