Not pleased with my results and would GREATLY appreciate feedback about my review site/landing page

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I was afraid to do this at first, but after awhile, I figured, "whatever", I really need some feedback on my site. This is my first ever site for IM. I've been marketing my site since late April via article marketing.
  • I have 80 articles submitted, with all of them on EZA and most of them submitted on about five other article directories.
  • My keyword is "manifesting abundance" which generates 1,800 searches monthly.
  • I get an average of 13 visits per day to my site mostly through article sites.
  • I rank #4 on Yahoo! (I get almost no traffic from yahoo!), and #11 on google. I figure after one more consistent article marketing campaign, I'll be in google's "top ten" for my keyword.
The thing is, I only have made 2 sales so far. Since I've just finished another article writing campaign, I realize I need to take some time tweaking what I have, so I would GREATLY appreciate some feedback in what I need to improve about my website.

Here's my website: manifesting abundance

Oh, and don't worry, I'm in the process of brainstorming for what to write for a free report so I can add an opt-in form on my landing page to capture email addresses and finally build a list.

Thanks,

Ike
#main internet marketing discussion forum #feedback #greatly #page #pleased #results #review #site or landing
  • Ike, I'm not being a smartass here, trust me. But you may be aiming for a market that seems to think that "manifesting abundance" means sitting in a darkened room thinking about and desiring what they want. Not buying products to do it.

    There may be searches for your term, but it's not a buying term.

    Besides, most people don't lie awake at night yearning for "abundance" - they yearn for fancy houses, nice cars, cool vacations, nice dinners out, nice clothes, great educations for their kids, charitable contributions big enough to get the endorphins flowing, and so on...

    If you're going to hitch your wagon to The Secret, do it outright instead of dancing around it like you do in your opening.

    On a pure design note, I'd think about ditching the light gray font in favor of a much darker charcoal gray or black. It's much easier to read when you get to be my age...
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Yea, I had no idea what a "buying keyword" was when I first started this, now I'm just learning the importance.

      If I were to change the targeted keywords for my site, how would I go about doing it? Would it mean that I would have to start from scratch?
      • [1] reply
  • Your review page (on a quick inspection) seems to cut the mustard.

    The sales page you're sending people too is freakin' horrible, though.

    There may be other problems but even with targeted traffic I doubt that sales page could sell much.

    -Dan
    • [1] reply
    • Actually, that's what split testing finds out for you. A simple little script rotates a couple of different pages - each identical except for one variable (like the headline) - and keeps track of which one gets better conversions. Pretty automatic once you set it up. The master marketers are absolute fanatics about testing. That's pretty much why they're masters.

      Yeah, if you keep in mind that most customers in the self-help market really want a magic pill, some words just represent a bad mis-match with their thinking and mindset. (And by the way, I write in the self-help market myself, so I'm not poking fun... it's just where their head is right now.)

      Regarding the page color scheme, font color and so forth, you might consider changing your web page to a scheme that is a slightly closer match to the product's site. The visitor gets a bit of a visual jar, going from your site to theirs.

      Some years back, a man put up a wonderful free "slide show" website called The Interview with God. He was getting fabulous traffic as half the people on the web forwarded his URL to all their friends. However, once visitors got all the way through the slide show and were sent to his sales page, they weren't buying. Near-zero conversion.

      A consultant suggested he change the color and style of his sales page to match the preceding slide show pages, and when he did, conversions went through the roof.

      You build up an expectation that is only partly mental. Another part of it involves the sensory experience, and it's important to keep that experience consistent for best results.

      Cheers,
      Charles
      • [1] reply
  • ikelove: I agree with all the feedback that was given, but product creation has never been one of my strengths; so I'll refrain from the criticism for now. But I did want to commend you for creating your own product and setting everything up.

    How long did the design of the e-book and website take? not counting article writing etc
    • [1] reply
    • Charles,
      Bear with me with all the questions I'm asking, because I have no prior marketing experience. That being said, you said that I may want to use a dark brown or dark red colour for my text. Now, I was under the impression from here that black was the best colour to use because it's the most readable. From what you're saying now, I'm under the impression that it doesn't matter what colour you use just as long as it is easy to read by everyone?

      As for the site builder, it came with an e-book I bought on IM. I just plugged in the template and followed the instructions. Apparently, the person who put it together does manage to make a very good living off of IM but I know that he doesn't use the template for ALL his sites.

      It was ideal because I know very, very little about web design.

      Dude, you give me too much credit. It is an affiliate product and I'm an affiliate. I'm not quite ready to create my own product though right now I'm brainstorming on what type of killer free report to provide with my opt-in page.
      • [1] reply
  • Tough niche, the LOA has been out since the secret and you are competing with many established people in the niche. Personally, I think the LOA is bunk and the people in it are taking advantage of people. I have an ebook which espouses action which the LOA crowd went away from. There is also some backlash now that the sweatlodge incident happened and there is a ton of free stuff about it. So it may just be a hard niche to monetize. As far as the site, I will let the experts judge it.

    Good luck
  • Ike,

    You're right - black is the best color. I was just getting carried away. I looked at the affiliate page and the text against the tan background looked a bit brownish - my bad... I should have checked it before assuming anything.

    Really, you can do a lot of things with this template you're now using. I saved a copy of your page, including the style sheet file, then fiddled around with the colors just a bit in the style sheet. If you'd like to see what it looks like - just to give you some ideas - you can download the style file from here http://www.2-be.com/c/style-new.css

    Then,
    Step 1 - upload this "style-new.css" file to the same directory where your website is
    Step 2 - temporarily rename your original "style.css" to "style-orig.css" (so you don't lose your original)
    Step 3 - rename "style-new.css" to become "style.css" (this file contains the new colors)

    Now start up your browser, go to your page, and if it still looks the same as before, hit F5 to refresh the page.

    I didn't anything except change some colors, but it'll give you an idea how drastically you can shift the tone of a page with just a few simple alterations. And of course if you don't like these new colors you can play around and come up with others that appeal to you more.

    (By the way, the colors I changed in the style file were:
    * body - color (which is text color)
    * body - background-color
    * top - background-color
    * container - background-color
    * content - background color
    * content h1 - color (color of headline 1)
    * content h2 - color (color of headline 2)

    You can compare the values in your original style file with the new values. You'll probably see right away how to make the changes. Playing around with those for an afternoon can give you a world of ideas you can use in the future.

    I know this sounds like a foreign language right now, but it'll make more sense if you'll just spend some time messing around with it.

    Cheers,
    Charles
    • [1] reply
    • Oh, and by the way, there'll always be people ready to tell you that Such-n-Such a niche is worn out, saturated, too hard, no buyers, dead, and so forth. But if you walk into any book store and still see self-help or inspirational books, tapes and DVDs, you can safely ignore the doomsayers.

      Pulling for you...

      Cheers,
      Charles
      • [1] reply
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    Not pleased with my results and would GREATLY appreciate feedback about my review site/landing page

    I was afraid to do this at first, but after awhile, I figured, "whatever", I really need some feedback on my site. This is my first ever site for IM. I've been marketing my site since late April via article marketing. I have 80 articles submitted, with all of them on EZA and most of them submitted on about five other article directories. My keyword is "manifesting abundance" which generates 1,800 searches monthly. I get an average of 13 visits per day to my site mostly through article sites. I rank #4 on Yahoo! (I get almost no traffic from yahoo!), and #11 on google. I figure after one more consistent article marketing campaign, I'll be in google's "top ten" for my keyword. The thing is, I only have made 2 sales so far. Since I've just finished another article writing campaign, I realize I need to take some time tweaking what I have, so I would GREATLY appreciate some feedback in what I need to improve about my website.