Whenever you want to improve something, you always have to test it against a slightly different version of the same thing. That’s what successful marketers do — they test, test and test again to get the best performing piece (advertising copy, sales copy, landing page, e-mail copy, etc.) to get the best results.

The obvious truth is that if you’re not testing, you don’t know if you’re doing the best that you can’t. However, if you’re testing and you are relatively new to it, then there are several possible pitfalls that you might face. I would like to talk about one of them today.

Let’s talk about A-B split testing. Just to summarize, if you don’t know what it is, you’re basically testing one item against another. Those two items are different from each other. However, not too different. Usually you’re supposed to test

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Blogging, or writing in general, they come to some people very easily. However, not everyone is good at writing. It doesn’t mean they don’t have something to say, it simply means they somehow are having problem converting whatever they have to say into writing. Cover the thoughts inside their mind into letters, words, sentences and paragraphs.

As an Internet marketer you have to be able to create content on demand. Content creation is one of the stumbling points for some Internet marketers because they have to hire somebody to write articles for them. This takes money and time that you have to wait for the content to be written. There is nothing wrong with hiring someone from elance.com to write articles for you, but sometimes you need something quick and you know the topic fairly well. Every situation is different.

Now, if that’s specialized content and you’re not an expert in that field, then

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Here are your 7 Direct Marketing Tips:

1. Give a money-back guarantee that surpasses a normal one. Instead of the normal timed guarantee, give them extra back. Tell them they can keep the free bonus or give them double their money back. You could also extend the guarantee’s time limit to 60 days, 3 months, 1 year, or a lifetime.

2. Tell your readers they’ll receive surprise bonuses. This’ll raise your readers’ curiosity and make them want to buy so they can find out what the surprise bonuses are. You could also not tell them and make it a real surprise. For example, imagine how you would feel if you bought a product and got a second one for free without knowing it ahead of time?

3. Let your readers know (more…)

The affiliate marketing, the way we know it, is illegal. Unless you make some changes to your affiliate marketing promotions, you might have to pay $11,000 to the FTC. I will explain why in a second…

“Since when,” you might ask.

Since October 5, 2009 when US Federal Trade Commission changed some of their guidelines related to affiliate marketing.

Quick summary: bloggers who endorse products must disclose any financial benefits they receive for doing so. The violators will pay $11,000 per violation.

See Full Version: New Rules For Bloggers And Affiliate Marketers

I didn’t get a call from FTC notifying me about this. Rather, Ray Edwards, an exceptional Internet marketer and brilliant copywriter wrote about this on his blog, which I was lucky to be following.

His Post: FTC Kills Affiliate Marketing?

By the way, if you’re interested in learning about copywriting, Internet marketing, product launches, and how to make your business more profitable in an economic environment — go to Ray’s blog and subscribe for his updates.

The problem with affiliate marketing:

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Here are your 7 Direct Marketing Tips:

1. Sell your products or services to a specific niche market. For example, instead of selling your fishing book to all fishermen, target it toward fly fishermen. You could also use a price niche. You could offer different versions of your product at lower and higher prices. This will fit all people’s budgets.

2. Test your advertising and marketing. You’ll save time, money and big headaches promoting the right offer to the right group of people. For example, if you know your ad pulls 5 orders out of 100 visitors, you know you would need 2000 visitors to sell 100 products.

3. Persuade visitors to buy your product by (more…)

Let’s get back to the call between Paul Lemberg and Rich Schefren:

A very important question to ask whenever you stumble upon an opportunity:

“Is this going to move me in the direction that I want to go?”

Rich Schefren says:

Opportunist just says: How do I bring the next revenue stream. It may provide you with income, but it will not (less likely to) provide you with equity.

Strategy starts with goals

Opportunities are still fine, they can help you get to your goal, but strategy STARTS with a GOAL

Myth:

Even if you are very good at working smart, it doesn’t mean you don’t have to work HARD.

If you’re strategic enough, you can bypass work, but if you always act in an opportunistic way and not in a well thought out strategic way, then

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A very important question to ask is:

How much money do you want to make by doing what, by when?

Less than a year ago, I listened to a call between Rich Schefren and Paul Lemberg. Both of them are extraordinary business coaches. While I was listening to the call, I made some notes… and today I would like to expand on some of the points they made.

First of all, let’s make it certain.

What is strategy and what is tactic? Most importantly, what’s the difference between those two?

According to Wikipedia, strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.

According to Tony Robbins, strategy is a specific way of organizing your resources in order to consistently get the result you want.

According to Wikipedia, tactic is a conceptual action.

The difference between strategy and tactic:

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Here are your 7 Direct Marketing Tips:

1. Offer to write exclusive articles (that means you only submit them to one place) for high traffic web sites in exchange for a link back to your site. You could also target high subscriber e-zines if they include your resource box. These publishers will publish them quicker because they will be the only ones with this content.

2. Create a positive online image. Tell your visitors about fundraisers you have sponsored or that you donate a part of your profits to charity. For example, you could say, “We regularly attend fundraisers and donate about 10% of our profits to charities and aid organizations.”

3. Improve your customer service on a regular basis. Try out new technologies that (more…)

Stop Wondering And Start Tracking!

If the rate at which your website visitors leave is higher than your industry standard, you should find out the reason(s) why they leave so soon without diving deeper into your website.

This is known as Bounce Rate.

I bet you wan to know how to improve the bounce rate of your website…

The lower your website’s Bounce Rate, the better. Except, if your website’s strategy is built around having your visitors leave as soon as possible through the links that you provide. One of the examples of this kind of sites would be an Adsense site, where you create content to attract visitors so that they click on the Google Adsense ads you have integrated within the  content. However, we are not talking about those.

Don’t give up if your website’s bounce rate is really high. (more…)

You know that when you create squeeze pages (landing pages), one of the things you have to do is to make sure that the call to action (in this case call to subscribe or just enter information) is better be above the fold.

[If you are building a squeeze page on Mac, this applies to you too]

By the way if you didn’t know this, now you do.

Squeeze Page Defined: single web page with the sole purpose of capturing information for follow-up marketing; that means NO exit hyperlinks.

Anyway.

You are probably asking: “What does above the fold mean?”

Above The Fold – the area of the screen that you see without having to scroll down.

According to some internet marketers, direct response marketers, copywriters, and other online professionals, the opt-in box on your squeeze pages is supposed to be placed above the fold to ensure higher conversion (more subscribers). So they say.

However, earlier today I was reading an article, which (more…)