Archive for the ‘Tips’ Category

Generating Leads from Contact Page

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

As many people know, single-page landing pages generally don’t work anymore. Adwords slaps any site they think is just a sales page and does not offer anything to the visitor. They are more worried about what they call “user experience” then profit… Google and Facebook must be buddy-buddy.

For a while now, it has been recommended that landing pages have articles, contact page, privacy policy, etc. Adding these pages makes your site look legit to both Google (or Yahoo!, MSN) and the visitor. I have also had some success with generating leads with the contact page.

Some people that visit your landing page may not be completely sold. They may have some questions and a contact page is a perfect place for them to ask. You then have another chance to sell that visitor on your product. Answer their question to the best of your ability (Don’t lie. If you don’t know the answer, show them where they can find one.) and maybe include some elegant pros that will get them to wip out their credit card.

A Simple Contact Page

If you don’t already have a contact page, here is a simple one you can use. Put this code on your contact page (ie. www.yourdomain.com/contact.php):

  <form method=”post” action=”sendmail.php”>
<table width=”500″>
<tr>
<td valign=”top”>Name:</td><td><input type=”text” size=”30″ name=”name” /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign=”top”>E-mail:</td><td><input type=”text” size=”30″ name=”email” /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign=”top”>Comments:</td>
<td><textarea cols=”50″ rows=”8″ name=”comments”></textarea></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td><input type=”submit” value=”Submit” /></td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>

And then save this as “sendmail.php”:

<?
//send us your mail

mail(‘you@yourdomain.com’,'Subject of the email’,$comments,’From: ‘.$name.’ <’.$email.’>’);
header( ‘Location: http://www.yourdomain.com’ ); // where they go after the message is sent

?>

How I Do Facebook Ads

Saturday, December 20th, 2008

Most of the money I made this Summer was via Facebook Ads. I had a few campaigns that did very well for me. To have success I had to use trial and error, just like anything else, and to do this I had to make a lot of ads. This is how I organized, tested, and optimized my ads on Facebook.

Prosper202

I use Prosper202 for tracking on all of my campaigns… Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and even Facebook. For Facebook, I start by setting up the network, offer, and text ad that I will be using, and generate the appropriate link. It looks something like this:

http://trackingdomain.com/tracking202/redirect/dl.php?t202id=xxxx&t202kw=

Redirect page

I then set up a redirect page. This is important because Facebook does not allow the url of your ads to be edited once they have been submitted. So if you want to change your bid, you can just change the link inside the redirect page.

The redirect page looks something like this:

<?

Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
if($ad == ‘fbxxxxxx’ || $ad == ‘fbxxxxxx’ || $ad == ‘fbxxxxxx’ || $ad == ‘fbxxxxxx’) {Header( “Location: http://trackingdomain.com/tracking202/redirect/dl.php?t202id=xxxx&t202kw=”.$ad );} //ads with $0.xx max bid

elseif($ad == ‘fbxxxxxx’ || $ad == ‘fbxxxxxx’ || $ad == ‘fbxxxxxx’) {Header( “Location: http://trackingdomain.com/tracking202/redirect/dl.php?t202id=xxxx&t202kw=”.$ad );} //ads with $0.xx max bid

else {Header( “Location: http://www.affiliate-network.com/reporting.php?pub=xxx&offer=xxx?=none” );  } //this is in case I get traffic to this url that isn’t from Facebook.

?>

A couple things to note here about the redirect page.

  • You must save it as a .php file.
  • “fbxxxxxx” is what I name my ads on Facebook. The first ad I made was named “fb000001″. I do this so that I can organize my ads and so that I can see which ads are performing and which ones aren’t. OPTIMIZATION.
  • The url I actually put for my Facebook ads looks something like this: http://www.mydomain.com/redirect.php?ad=fbxxxxxx

Tracking and Optimizing

Once I have all that setup, I sit back and let some data collect. Hopefully, I can easily see that I’m spending less money on Facebook than I am making with my affiliate network of choice. When I do have some conversions to check, I simply update the subids into Prosper202. I then sort my results by keyword and I can compare all of the ads. This lets me delete ones that need deleting and change bids.

This has become an efficient way for me to setup and test campaigns on Facebook. It seems like speed is very important in advertsing on social networks as people often copy your ads within a day or so.

Let me know if you have any problems with this. I would be more than happy to help you out.

Think Green

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

Gas prices across the nation are well over $4 now. A few weeks ago I saw it at $4.69. Everyone is affected by the gas prices and most people are looking for ways to fight the rising gas prices. Going green is now a bigger market than ever before.

Cash in on Green

It’s time to take advantage of this huge market. Start thinking about what kind of offers people will want with the high price of gas. Most of the networks have free gas cards e-mail submits (NeverBlueAds actually has one with a $1.70 payout).

If you’re thinking of starting a blog… green blogs are huge right now. I just stumbled on a network of green blogs called Green Options that seems to get a decent amount of traffic.

Think about all the green-consciousness out there right now when righting ad copies. If you can hit that emotional trigger, your ad will have a much higher click through rate. Just make sure that your landing page matches the ad copy you write.

There are hundreds of different ways you can cash in on going green right now. How are you?

Go Offline to Make Money Online

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

This post is guest written by AffiliateTips.com, a great place to find affiliate programs and get started with your affiliate marketing.

Since affiliate marketing is an online business most affiliate marketers only do their promotion on the Internet. Of course, you should be visible and work on your marketing online, but offline marketing could be just as important if you want to make money as an affiliate. One of the best reasons for offline marketing is that it’s extremely affordable which means that there isn’t really any reason to not check it out.

You shouldn’t restrict your business to only one area – expand to the offline market to get noticed by as many potential customers/referrals as possible. Offline marketing can increase your brand awareness, make you a trusted affiliate and in the end also increase your monthly earnings.

Why Should You Consider Offline Marketing?

Sure, your affiliate business is only available on the Internet and it’s easy to assume that you should focus all of your energy on this forum. Online advertising is the way to go if you want to be successful, right? Yes and no… One should never forget that many potential customers may never see your online promotions. In using offline marketing you increase the possibilities in making money as you will reach a wider crowd that might be interested in having a look at your affiliate marketing site.

If you don’t believe us you should have a look around at the websites that use offline marketing. As you’ll probably notice there are some hugely successful online companies that are also promoting offline. They all know the potential in working this way. The offline market is huge and it’s there for the taking. Try for example to pin point where the people you want to visit your site are and add posts on bulletins at places they visit.

What Are The Benefits?

Many of the traditional offline marketing forums are very expensive, think radio and television, and you want to stay away from these. There are many other solutions that are perfect for affiliates that are free. This could become a great complement to your now existing online promotions and efforts within marketing.

The other thing we would like to mention as a reason to why you should get involved with offline marketing is that it’s a way to gain in trust among customers and potential referrals. There is still an issue among online shoppers that they feel as if they don’t trust many of the online companies. If you can add some trustworthiness to your site you’ll have a great advantage to your competitors.

Now you might ask yourself how offline marketing helps building this trust that we’ve been talking about. Online shoppers are more likely to trust a website that they’ve seen in elsewhere. In using offline marketing you can increase your profits through driving more traffic to your affiliate marketing site. Try it and you won’t regret it!

Weezer’s “Pork and Beans” Hits Viral Marketing on the Head

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

First of all, I’m a huge Weezer fan. I think I became a fan shortly before the green album came out, and like most, I was in love with the blue album and Pinkerton. I’ve loved every album that has come out since (some more than others).
Before I go any further, check out Weezer’s newest video: “Pork and Beans”

It is basically a collage of some of the greatest Youtube viral videos of all time. Just a few are the Numa kid, Chocolate Rain kid, the jedi, and GI Joe (“Holy cow I’m totally going so fast!”… best one). If you are part of the YouTube generation, you have to love this music video (or at least appreciate it).

Can you go viral?

Without a doubt, the most inexpensive way to make a lot of money is viral marketing. That Numa Numa video has over 13 million views! Now just imagine if that t-shirt of his had a website on it to a zip submit or something like that. I bet at least 5% of that the viewers would look at the website. That’s over 500k visitors, most of them probably young and gullible. What a great demographic to have!

So if you ever have an idea for something that will go viral (video, song, website, etc.)… let me know and I’d be glad to give you a hand!

Don’t forget about image search

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

For all of you guys that use SEO techniques for marketing, you may be missing out on a big money maker. Everyday I get a few dozen organic hits to a landing page that I used to use with PPC a few months ago. I did basic SEO techniques like meta tags, titles, etc. However, none of this organic traffic is coming from normal searches. All of these hits are actually coming from Google Images. And some of the traffic still converts!

The image is on a page with a couple paragraphs and a h1 title about the topic. The topic is also listed as the alt text in the image. On the websites home page, there is a link to the page.

That is the only work I did. If I search the alt text in my image, I am the third image and I get about 30-40 unique hits a day from that puppy.

So lets review…. I added some SEO techniques to a landing page, Google found my image, and now I am getting free conversions for that little work a few months ago.