Does your content provide VALUE to your visitor?

Right now I was searching for informaion on "how to write great landing page" (that was the exact phrase I typed in Google). My friend and me are now testing landing pages for PPC campaigns to drive traffic and convert it on the main product site. As we are new to the whole thing, we need information on "how to write great landing pages".

Which Info Did I Realy Need?

So I typed the phrase in Google and got the list of sites with my keywords. I opened every site with a title with the keywords I typed in (as I thought they have what I'm looking for). I looked at the titles without my keywords only in the second turn (after my initial look).



And I opened several sites with "my" titles.

The very first link contained comprehensive theoretical info on different aspects of landing page ceration. But it was too wordy, each paragraph had 8-10 lines. So I scanned the page and moved on to the next site in Google.

The second site had the similar info, but not so detailed, kinda like that:

"6 Steps To Creating A Perfect Landing Page

Your landing page is the first-most glimpse your visitor gets of your website. In most of the cases, your home page, or your index page is your landing page, but if you are running an online advertising campaign such as AdWords, it is crucial that you have specially dedicated landing pages for your advertising campaigns for individual search terms. Have a lousy or ill-planned landing page and your visitors will leave your website within a few seconds, no matter what valuable service or product your other pages provide, or talk about. So in that sense, your landing page has the power to make or break your online business.

Listed below are a few steps you can take to create perfect, or near-to-perfect landing pages.

1) Define the purpose of your landing page
You need to know exactly what your landing page needs to achieve. Should it:

Prompt people to subscribe to your newsletter?
Contact you for more details?
Explore your website further?
Buy a product or a service present on your landing page?
Join your affiliate program?
Once you have a clear picture you can create your landing page with greater degree of lucidity and purpose. You can write the copy accordingly.

2) Write convincing copy on your landing page
What you write on your landing page is what you want to convey to your visitors. Keep it succinct, and be honest: honesty shows through your message. Talk to your visitors as if you are welcoming them into your office or shop. Don’t load them with information, but be titillating enough to prompt them to explore further or get in touch with you to know more about what you can do for them.

3) Keep the distractions away from your landing page
Don’t put too many bells and whistles on your landing page. Remember that the visitor is not there to be amused by you; he or she is there to do business. So keep the graphics, animations and JavaScript tricks to the minimum. Some even suggest to do away with your main navigation bar, but I don’t recommend that.

4) Create an accessible, easily navigable landing page
Create a landing page that is totally accessible. There are thousands of surfers with special needs. If they come to your website through your advertising link and then have to leave because they cannot access your website with their browsing tools it will be a big waste both in terms of lost advertising money and good will. Put all the relevant links there so that they can easily be referred to to make a purchase decision.

5) Display your contact information prominently on your landing page
On your landing page, make it very easy to contact you so that people don’t leave your website just because they cannot figure out how to get in touch with you. Prominently display your contact form and your phone numbers on your landing page.

6) Finally, keep testing your landing page
You can never create the perfect landing page just like that. You need to try different formats and copies to finalise a landing page that generate maximum results for you. Many online advertising programs such as AdWords let you try out different pages for single ad campaigns so that you can make out what works for you and what not."

See, another theoretical copy resembling the first one. I cannot say the advice given here is a bad content, but IT DID NOT ANSWER MY QUESTION HOW TO WRITE GREAT LANDING PAGE.

So I moved on to the next site, and I found absolutely similar set of tips, seemed it was just rewritten article that everybody posts on his site. THERE IS CONTENT, BUT THERE IS NO VALUE FOR ME.

Why? I analysed why this content didn't interest me. What I was searching actually was a set of rules necessary for making my own landing page from scratch, with real life examples that showed me how and what. Not only theoretical list of tips, but much more details how to combine my LP with keywords, how to place different LP elements, what is critical for my conversions improvement, I hope you see...

And majority of sites from top 10 gave me just article with a number of tips they thought will be enough for me. "Do this, do that" - why? will it work? where are the examples? are you sure I'll be able to create my GREAT landing page after reading your content?

I finally found what I needed (site #8 and 9 in top 10)



Conclusions From My "Customer" Experience

1. Keywords people type in SEs don't always reflect the meaning of a phrase. I mean the meaning is far more DEEP and WIDE that marketer might think. We should SEE THE PERSON BEHIND KEYWORDS. WHAT IS HE REALLY LOOKNIG FOR? WHAT ARE HIS NEEDS, WISHES? OPTIMISE FOR CUSTOMER-VALUE FIRST, THEN KEYWORDS. The biggest mistake I made on my first site, it is optimised for keywords, it is in top 10 for keywords, but it has average 1/80 conversion rate - very poor! I'm not answering people's questions, not fulfill their wishes, not satisfy their needs enough. There's always a psychology, a person behind keyword, look deeper!

2. If an article has NO VALUE, we can rewrite it 100s of times, and our 100s of rewrittens will also have NO VALUE for people. We better submit it to 100s of article directories and probably we'll get at least 3-5 good backlinks. We call these no-value articles "shit-content". No matter how many times having been rewritten, shit-content remains shit-content.

So What Is VALUE Then?

Well, I'm analysing the stuff a lot now, I'm trying to find the answer also, and here's what I personally perceive as value for the visitor:

• Visitors are looking for information, for answers to their questions, for solutions to their problems - not just for not just for 5 theoretical tips - valuable content provides answers to questions, delivers facts and suggests solutions, shows why these solutions good, shows how , provides examples for better understanding, - OVERDELIVERS the information.
• Visitors want to fill the lack of knowledge - valuable content provides them with real, applicable knowledge that people can USE. Well, that article is good, but will you write great landing page after reading that article above? Me not :) But if the author would add real examples to every tip, deliver links for more comprehensive studies, show pictures of example LPs - his content would be by far more valuable for me. And what would I do then? First, I would recommend his site to my friend to see (pure viral marketing - visitors promote your site for you!). Then, I would subscribe to his e-zine if he had it (if this guy explains LP theme so good, he might have some valuable info on related topics I'm also interested in!). And if he had e-book to sell about LPs or how to improve conversions - I would definitely buy it!!! Really, I would do it because he fulfilled my real needs! Now see the benefits of really valuable content?
  
• Visitors looking for something (info in SEs) are emotionally, so to say, a bit upset, disorganised, disturbed I'd say. This is caused by the lack of information, solutions, answers - valuable content helps people get that "emotional resource" lifted! It connects with them at emotional level. They feel - "this is for me!" They feel better after reading that content than before reading it. And we marketers will be able to create this content if we see a person behind keyword, if we care of what he's really looking for! Once more - his needs, his worries, his person behind his keywords!

Earnings in September

Well, september is over and I have unexpectedly nice result! More than in August, total 9 sales and net result is 440 $.


It was all real fun - maybe you read my birthday post, I made 4 sales in that day totally, making total 220$ in one day! It was incredible gift for my birthday, but afterwards...

Just one sale with 20$ comission and - silence! No sales at all. The discount program for weight loss product was over, and I decided I met my dark time in business.

I kept concentrating on reading, learning and creating my 3rd site. All I did for my main income site were links exchanges - lots of them. When your site is in top 10 in Google, you just have to sit and receive LOADS of emails asking to exchange links with you!

I thought Septermber isn't gonna be better than August, and yesterday I was about writing this post about my total earnings, but suddenly ...!

2 sales and 140 $ comission, with the last September sale made hours before September ended - so, I set up new record of 440 $ in affiliate comissions. All my sales except one were from Moreniche.

To be frank, I did almost nothing for my main income site - as you see, the greatest benefit of affiliate business is once you set up your income stream - it starts to work on its own! And with high quality set of products on Moreniche and Worldniche it is a guaranteed way for extra income.

Update

Just as I was writing the post, I made my first October sale. I also check top Moreniche sellers stats and see lots of opportunities in penis enlargement product niche. The guyes who came to Moreniche just a month ago and created their first site, are making their first sales already!

I better hurry up with my site on penis product as missing 175$ comission from 1 sale is stoopid =)

Are you ready to lose the opportunity of making 175$ from just 1 sale? Then don't sign-up to Moreniche now! :)

If you nevertheless decided to start your own extra source of income, sign up and send me your affiliate ID and any questions to anthony_voronoff [at] yahoo.com. I can help you with advice how to start it faster and not make mistakes I made.

Writing articles is easy - write yourself

I've decided to feed both of my current sites with articles. Just now I have written an article and submitted it to ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com and buzzle.com.

I consider for successful article marketing these top article directories are enough. Anyway, success in article campaigns depends not on the number of directories you've submitted your article into, but rather on how interesting and compelling your article is for

• target readers
• other webmasters that reprint your article

Easy to say - hard to do, right? No!

Write articles yourself! Do it until you are very successful affiliate making 5-number income monthly and you really have more efficient and profitable work to get busy with. The more you write yourself, the easier it will be for you to create quality rather than submit to 100 article directories and wait for SERPs to skyrocket. Quality - that's the clue to article marketing success.

I have the article that is still in top 10 in Google for a very competitie keywords, and it has almost 50% clickthrough to my main site. This is interesting content. It made me 3 sales through my affiliate link I also placed in the article. Not bad for just 1 article.

I still have no time to write more about real article marketng success. But I consider it as the easiest way to push your site in SERPs and to get sales of your product through affiliate links within article.

3 Moreniche sales in one day!

Just yesterday I wrote that I'm not satisfied with sales, and today is my birthday!

So what?

Morencihe presented me a great gift - I got up in the morning, turned on my comp and checked the Moreniche sales stats. And was amazed - 3 sales and 200$ more to my account! I went to ICQ to tell my friend about that and he told me that I made sale on Joebucks also (20$ comission). I'm his referral so he gets notified if I make sale.

Total Birthday's gift from my affiliate business - 220$ !!!

Do you want to get those sweet gifts for your birthday? Sign up to best affiliate program MORENICHE, great WORLDNICHE and cover JOEBUCKS also as there are much money out there too!

My site is 16 days old - time to check rankings!

Ok my new site is 16 days old - I uploaded it on 29.08 (see New site launched post) and today is 13.09 so I decided to check my rankings in SEs for my main keywords.

First I went to Google and typed site:www.XXXXXX.com and found that Google indexed 29 of my pages - all my content pages are indexed successfully.

Then I picked my 3 long tail keywords (my main kws are inside long-tail) and found:

Google Yahoo MSN

natural weight loss pills reviews - 200 238 -

best natural weight loss pills reviews - 79 73 -

best natural weight loss pills - 312 555 -

It is too early to check my generic keywords, but I see pretty nice results. It took about 2 months to get at least 800 position for my long tail keywords for my first site.

If you passed that first battle, the hardest one, next battles will be easier.

Seems that MSN hasn't indexed my site yet, maybe it takes some more time to get indexed at MSN, but what I do care about is Google, and it seems Google appreciates my actions. Well baby, let's make friends! :) I need that top 10!

Sales on Moreniche

I made several more sales but I'm not satisfied with my results. Basically the affiliate business success is about bringing enough traffic to your site and convert that traffic. While I see traffic from 5 position in Google for very trafficable keyword, the other side - it's a broad term and broad terms need great presell.

It's all up to copywriting now. But my copywriting was just facts and lots of info, while value of the content is not only useful information, it is EMOTIONS, new resource that people get while reading your content. My text was not emotional, so I see pretty weak conversions now.

Dependance on sales

There's interesting psychological catch - after initial success and many sales I began to feel dependent on sales. If I see no sales today I feel embarrased and like I'm losing money. Imagine, you wake up in the morning and check your stats - and see a sale. In a day or two another sale - you work on and feel great because your actions are rewarded.

And today you wake up and see no sales, and ten days no sales... you feel you could get them, but there's nothing and it is like you lost some money.

Bad feeling, but that's business - I still haven't found a key to making steady sales. I still have only one site and another one on the road.

...But I have many ideas, I keep on reading lots of stuff on affiliate business. While workign full time, it is hard to do, but see that goal of 1000$ monthly? So there's no excuses!

Are you afraid of duplicate content?

The question of duplicate content is botherning minds of many affiliates especially those who promote sites via article marketing.

And the main question asked is "Should I rewrite article for every new article directory I distribute to?" We know of some horrible duplicate content filter that can throw your site away from SERPs for indefinite time... So what is the right answer - to use duplicate content or not to use it in our article marketing?

I have answered this question for myself a long time ago and I cannot tell I regret of my actions :)

But instead of long discussions I love precise experiments. And here's what I found recently on the subject.

Evidence

First, go to Google and type in how does real estate investing works. On 04.09.2007 I've seen such results.



What we see here are two articles from ezinearticles.com, ezinearticles.com/?How-Does-Real-Estate-Investing-Work&id=452125 is #2 and ezinearticles.com/?How-Does-Real-Estate-Investing-Work?&id=678585 is #3

I'm interested in this article, note author's name and first paragraph.



But if we look further, we can see another article that is also in Google's top 10, with exactly the same title Real Estate :: How Does Real Estate Investing Work?
This article is hosted in ArticleBiz.com directory (www.articlebiz.com/article/82964-1-how-does-real-estate-investing-work/ - ) and is #5 in Google for our keywords. Nice, we see 3 different articles with the same title that have top positions in Google.

But are those articles different? ;)

Well, here's where the show begins! Remember my last picture? OK, let's open ArticleBiz.com article and see it:



We can see the same author and first paragraph looks like the same as first paragraph of ezinearticles.com article.

I decided to check how unique are these two articles and typed www.dupecop.com - service that allows to check uniqueness of 2 different pieces of text. I inserted article from ezinearticles directory and article from ArticleBiz directory. Here's the result:



Both articles are identical.

And the show is not over yet. If we take a look at these two sites in top 6 - www.dealfiles.com and www.transformit.net, we find that www.dealfiles.com belongs to the author of ezinearticles.com/?How-Does-Real-Estate-Investing-Work&id=452125, and www.transformit.net belongs to Nancy Spivey, author of our duplicate articles =)))

Both articles and the site are feeling great in top Google results! I could say - "Use it to your advantage", ...but the show is not over yet!

Finally, I took a look into that site that held top positions thanks to successful article "trick", and found guess what? -



I checked article from the site and articles from both directories and found they all were all identical.



Conclusion

As you see, this is not guessings but real situation. Duplicate content not only works, but helps the main site reach SERPs. It's up to you to decide how to use this situation ;) What do you think?

Welcome to Google AdWords

Today I decided to spend my 50$ on Google Adwords.

I created one ad group with info on weight loss product discount. 88 impressions 0 clicks yet. Average ad position is 4. Well nobody is interested in my ad, hm... Or nobody is seeing my ad?

Right now I created another ad group, increased my bid, placed the same keywords and made interesting trick which allows to get traffic to my site without spending money for ad clicks.

I wonder how my experiment goes... %) Will it work or not...

How about my new site?

Yesterday I created sitemap.xml file and submitted it to Google. Now Google indexed 7 pages from my site. The site also appeared in SERPs for my main keywords already, but far from even top 500.