Prosperity is not a commodity.  Unlike a bag of cash or a bar of gold, you can’t physically touch prosperity, and certainly no one can give it to you.  But that doesn’t mean nobody can help.  Bishop Jordan has been teaching people how to become prosperous for over 30 years.  The teachings of Bishop Jordan are based on the fact that success is divinely ordained for us all: God does not want his people to suffer.  He wants us to be prosperous.  And Bishop Jordan believes that anyone can prosper, as long as we live in accordance with the divine will for prosperity.

Discovering ones personal path to prosperity is easier said than done.  Luckily, the teachings of Bishop Jordan are available to help guide us down the right path.  Bishop Jordan holds a Ph.D. in religious studies and has offered his guidance and expertise to several heads of state and powerful economic leaders.

As the author of over 60 books, some of which are best-sellers, and the host of a national television show, Bishop Jordan is well qualified to teach people all they need to know about how to flourish in today’s world.  Over the years, the man has amassed an enormous following of devoted students and listeners, all of whom would gladly attest to the life-transforming truths behind Bishop Jordan’s lectures.

Occasionally life will throw you curve balls.  Problems with your spouse or child can have a serious affect on one’s well being.  Strains and stressors such as these can have a negative effect on one’s financial security.  Bishop Jordan teaches that prosperity does not exist in a vacuum.

Although it’s said that family and blood don’t mix, the two are undeniably intertwined.  But when we synergize our perspectives on family and business, and work to correct all previous mistakes, we can obtain a level of success that was unimaginable beforehand.  Prosperity is yours for the taking; you just need to know where to look.

This guest article was a paid advertisement and written by Lindsay Nave.

It is important to understand the players in the game of affiliate marketing.  There are four at the forefront of the game: the merchant, the network, the publisher and the customer.  The merchant is the retailer or the brand, the one who presents the product.  The network deals with the payments and is the pool of options for the affiliate.  The publisher is the affiliate, and the customer is the consumer.  Capital Online Revenue can help you be an effective publisher.  You want your message or product to get out there, and that is where affiliate marketing and Capital Online Revenue can help.

Affiliate marketing can be put into play on many different kinds of website.  The most common form of affiliate marketing is the pay-per-click method.  Pay-per-click drives traffic towards websites.  Advertisers pay the publisher or website owner when an ad is clicked.  Through Capital Online Revenue, you are that publisher or website owner.  You can make money through people clicking on advertisements on your website.

A step towards success with affiliate marketing is joining an affiliate network.  The network controls the relationship between the merchant and the affiliates or associates.  The affiliate network locates affiliates, gets new advertisers on board, and takes care of payments.  The affiliate network takes care of a lot of the behind-the-scenes business.  The networks act as a middleman and take a lot of the work off the shoulders of both merchants and affiliates.  Researching is important in helping you find an affiliate network that you can trust.

Capital Online Revenue can help you get started with affiliate marketing.  Capital Online Revenue can set you up with that middleman between you (the website owner) and your market.  You can start making money through affiliate marketing while you sleep.  Understanding the game of affiliate marketing and getting website owners set up with the right network are key factors in successful affiliate marketing.

This guest post was written by Lindsey Miller, a lively free-spirit who loves to go out and experience life and then write about it.  She takes photographs frequently, listens to music constantly, and bikes aimless hours around Philadelphia—sometimes all at the same time.  Lindsey is truly fascinated by human beings and the relationships they have with one another.  All she really wants to do is travel the world… and write about it.

With all of that said, let’s take a look at how some of the top 2012 Republican candidates are making the most out of their web sites and email and social media efforts, while trying to win the 2012 election.

Mitt Romney

From the landing pages listed in this article, I would have to say Mitt Romney has the best setup. There is already a massive following behind Gov. Chris Christie, and by associating his approval with Mitt Romney, it gives you more of a reason to follow/like/vote for Romney. In addition to an immediate call to action (email/zip code), the page also demonstrates all of the necessary social networking buttons than many of the other candidates lack.

Rick Perry

Though he may not be running in the election for much longer after her little stunt last night during the debate, Rick Perry still has a decent landing page for his web site. An immediate call to action with a nice looking design, along with the option to skip right to the web site if you don’t want to signup. Not providing this option, or making it hard to find, can really irritate web site visitors.

Herman Cain

Herman Cain has been in the news from the start, with his 9-9-9 plan, to the recent allegations against him. We don’t care about any of that… instead let’s focus on his web site landing page. A great looking design with minimal distractions (various colors), but still an immediate action, which is to enter your email address and zip code. Again, the option to “continue to website” is still prominent.

Michelle Bachman

The web site for Michelle Bachman has taken a different approach from the others in the group, which is to offer a choice to the visitors… something I don’t recommend. If you click “Donate Today”, you are sent to a long registration form about donating and volunteering. You also have the option to get email updates… which just doesn’t sound that exciting. Adding one more distraction to the page, you have the option to buy her book. When giving the user too many options, many will just leave or start browsing without a direct goal in mind. I would have just went along with the other candidates and grabbed the users email on the main page.

Ron Paul

It’s not surprising that Ron Paul has taken a different approach from all other candidates, not just in his politics, but also with his site structure. When you visit Ron Paul’s web site, that’s exactly what you get… a full web site. There is no email caption or donation button in your face, but all of the content on one page. You will see placements through out the site for email updates, donations and social links, but they are not stand alone lead generation pages like many of the other candidates. This is an approach New Gingrich did with his web site.

Republican Candidates… Who Get’s Your Vote?

No… not to become the leader of our country, but for the best web site and landing page? With the ridiculous amount of money that will be spent and wasted pushing users to vote for these candidates, if they don’t have the right online setting and social pretense, their campaign may already be doomed. With the simple means of ONE CLICK to “like” or “follow” through Twitter and Facebook, it’s surprising to see more candidates aren’t making use of these powerful means of communication.

Yes, Steve will be missed, but he did change the world in the process and his products and brand is well known through out the world today, and for many decades to come.

With all of that said, let’s take a look at the progression of the Apple logo over the years, and how it’s become one of the most recognized symbols in the world today.

What’s that funny logo at the beginning? Yes, it’s actually the Apple logo back in 1976! The concept is Isaac Newton sitting under an apples tree. As you can see from the dates under the logos, this one didn’t last long. It was missing simplicity and color, which Apple soon implemented into their colorful new Apple design, which lasted over twenty years. With more people using computers and the internet growing like crazy, it was time for another updated and sleek design. Apple would go live with their latest futuristic, yet still simplistic Apple logo.

So what was the story behind going from one crazy original design to a completely new concept?

Jobs thought that the overly complex [Newton] logo had something to do with the slow sales of the Apple I, so he commissioned Rob Janoff of the Regis McKenna Agency to design a new one. Janoff came up with the iconic rainbow-striped Apple logo used from 1976 to 1999. (source)

Works for me! Imagine if Apple still had they same logo today? Things could be very different. I can’t imagine seeing that logo lit up on the back of laptops everywhere, or people placing stickers on their cars or getting “Apple Computer Co” tattoos on their bodies, like we see today!

With the passing of Steve Jobs comes one more Apple Logo that will be sure to be used and spread around for many years to come. Another simple design, yet is speaks so strongly to all the Apple users around the world about the loss of Steve and his impact at Apple. This design was created by a 19-year-old artist named Jonathan Mak, a self-described designer, photographer and philosopher living in Hong Kong. Since posting his design, his page has had nearly 900 comments and has been receiving world wide television and internet exposure.

Simplicity and color are key when it comes to creating a brandable logo. Just think about the greatest and most well known companies/brands in the world… Pepsi, CocaCola, Apple, Nike and Starbucks. They’ve all made progression with their logos over the years, but have always stayed true to have a brandable design with simple colors and design that are memorable.

In the latest Angry Birds news, the company has now reported that there have been over 350 million downloads of their gaming apps. Quite amazing! Last year I wrote about how Angry Birds generates over a million dollars a month, imagine how much it generates now! With over ten times more downloads and users, the company is just a pure cash cow!

Here’s a few more amazing statistics from Angry Birds / Rovio.

• Every day over 300 MILLION minutes are spent playing Angry Birds on mobile devices.
• 3 MILLION plush toys of Angry Birds have been sold since June 2010… but latest reports are over a MILLION plush toy sales per month!
• Over 1 MILLION Angry Birds tshirts sold every month!
• Angry Birds is now playable on over 25 different platforms, including iOS, Android, Nook, Chrome Web App

So how does Angry Birds keep the trend going and make users keep coming back for more? It’s all about the updates and new versions of the game that come out each season.

Make Money Off the Angry Birds Craze

Let Rovio worry about how they can continue to bring in more and more players. Instead you should be worrying about how you can start cashing in! Refer back to my “Make Money with Angry Birds” post a few months ago and read about how some web sites are selling for over $80,000 on Flippa, just for helping other figure out how to beat Angry Birds levels! Since I wrote this article, there have been several more Angry Birds sites that have been sold for big money on Flippa.

As mentioned earlier, there is also a huge craze for Angry Birds plush toys and clothing. Yes… there are even Angry Birds Halloween costumes available. Halloween and Christmas are going to be very kind to Angry Birds this year. Don’t forget to get in on the action!

Conversion Rate of Old Page

Conversion Rate of New Page — on our first revision we took 1.73% increase in conversion.  Not bad !

Summary: With some redesign and sprucing up of ad copy, we lowered our cost per conversion $3.29 which resulted in a 25% reduction in lead cost!

I am pretty optimistic that we can take it even further.  Right now I am going to request the client secure a BBB rating and come up with a warranty guarantee seal that will deliver solid product backing in an effort to shoot the conversion rate even higher.  A seal of Made in the USA is also another good addition.

Lets go over your checklist for your redesign

1. Headline — are you conveying the right sales message in 5 seconds or less?
2. Supporting Bullet Points — support the headline
3. Call to Action — arrow or emphasis on the Big Button
4. BIG Button – Mini Call to Action on Button — SUBMIT – FREE ACCESS
5. Testimonials — always make sure above the fold
6. Supporting Body Copy — keep pushing the conversion moment
7. Product Shot — yes you are legit !
8. Trust Building – you can be trusted
9. Additional Body Copy – last chance to push your product
10. Secondary Call to Action — sometimes you can use this tactic to save the reader from scrolling back  up — remember avoid that IADD!

This post is part of a 4 day series of posts all about creating winning landing pages. This guest post series was written by Michael Salvaggio of SEO Brand.

Now for the Bad : Font too small, call to action is too far down the page — there is a good chance with all of these pointed out obstacles, the reader never even made it to the bottom

Summary: Although this lander has good ad copy and images, our initial hypothesis is that is is flawed and missing conversion opportunities.  A redesign using our 5 point approach will rearrange the lander with a crisp new design and adcopy polish.

Market Research — we really needed to understand our core market.  Other than our historical data, we always tend to make sure we keep up to date on all of the latest market research reports based on the vertical we are redesigning.  Marketresearch.com is one of the most respected websites when it comes to understanding who your core audience is and we always recommend our clients purchase these reports for analysis and deep consumer behavior discovery.  We specifically purchased this report on behalf of our client and learned a lot about the skin care vertical in our targeted country, recent sales, consumer feedback and who was more likely to buy the product .  Marketer also has very detailed reports but the specific country we were looking for was outside of their current reporting.

Color — we thought that keeping the black to enhance the copy was a good idea but knew we needed to change the background to something lighter.  Since this offer was going to be presented to both a male and female audience, we needed to make sure we could select a color that was equally appealing.  Taking a blend of a mauve and light crimson to create a blended off set color of each was our final choice after 3 revisions.  This color tested well among a variety of a mixed male and female audience ages 25-35 in our designated target market.

Headline – We clipped part of the RED BOLD headline from the previous version and infused it into a lighter color — but kept the black background to enhance the copy.  This black headline really mends well with the Logo and Slogan.  Using this new approach the headline now blends in with the lighter background color while enhancing the brand image and headline message.   A win-win.

Headline Ad Copy:  Identifying the problems that they reader suffers from — a modified version of the original copy, clipped and edited.  Its important to note here that in order to avoid IADD is to get your message across in a potent  yet quick way.  Bullet Points usually serve that purpose but again these are all assumptions until put to the traffic test

Call to Action - we took the call to action from the bottom of the offer and repositioned it to the top – Above The Fold.  Above the Fold is the top portion of the viewable webpage before you actually have to scroll down to view.  This is very important and an easy concept to grasp and understand.  Make sure that the call to action and the point you are attempting to make is expressed “above the fold” — this way the reader can find exactly what they are looking for without having to scroll down.  Believe it or not, that extra 2 seconds kicks IADD into super high gear and the reader could lose interest and abandon the page.  This isn’t good news when you are paying $$ per click to get someone to opt into your page.   FIND OUT HOW and FREE Instant Access — were both tweaks to the ad copy to enhance conversion.  Keep in mind that FREE and INSTANT are very strong words in the direct response marketing world.  They are both very powerful.  TIP: Always make sure to keep your compliance in mind : )

A big button helps and there are studies out there that have shown a button in conjunction with its size and color can increase conversions upward of 30%!

Testimonials: An oldie but goodie — the before and after photos may be one of the oldest tricks in the book but aside from video, the most effective weapon in the direct marketers tool chest. We took the approach of infusing the before/after component directly into the call to action form box.  We had this luxury due to the fact that the call to action on this offer was an e-mail opt-in and less fields were required compared to your typical nutraceutical 3 page CPA offer.

Back to compliance, the disclaimer under the photos was necessary for the clients merchant bank.  This is an issue that you, if not already, will be sure to run into.  Nowadays are all about compliant offers — if your offers are not compliant to the new FTC regulations, you are risking a serious lawsuit from the US Government and believe me, no one wants that.  Sacrifice a bit on your conversion rate to protect your assets.  I cannot stress this enough.

Back to the testimonials — this in your face image really paints a powerful image.  Lets dip back into the mind of the reader and his/her problem and what they may be thinking (ASSUMPTION ALERT)  “my face has red blotchy marks on it and I am tired of going out like this in public. I want to date, meet people, network and eat at a restaurant without people staring at me”

Now that may sound extreme but this is the path to conversion.  Image a few scenarios, put together a theory, design and throw traffic at it.  You need to take a position — just like when writing a research paper in school.  Most of the time, your instructor pay much attention to whether or not your material was correct — only if you took a position and defended it.  This is exactly what we are doing when we paint the picture of conversion and test against it to prove our theory.  Now for this test or assignment I should say, its not like we are trying to figure out how to synthesize a metallic alkaloid.  If you are a chem major and can do this great but all we need to do is figure out what would make someones emotions influence a buying decision : )

This before an after image is above the fold and very descriptive showing that after proper use of this product, your redness will go away.

Body Copy – this is the section where you are supporting your product and explaining all of the wonderful things you get and how your product just simply rocks.  This is all part of the building process and if you have demonstrated your product correctly to what we call the “desired website flow” you are on your way to conversion.

For this we kept the copy but highlighted some of the text on each bullet point.  For instance, pushing the conversion moment even further.  Although we have assumed that we have made our case for the conversion moment, this is an extra effort and last minute to push the benefits again.  As you can see, text such as ENJOY PERFECT SKIN – HEALTHY AND VIBRANT SKIN — SKIN CARE are enhanced to further influence the purchase decision

For a trust factor, we normally place seals of guarantee or satisfaction guarantee on the webpage as well — almost always above the fold. In this case, we decided to use this for the 2nd revision as a booster.  We want to have some tools left in the shed should we decide to use them.

For a mini trust build, we enhanced the text 20 YEAR PROVEN TRACK RECORD.  Now I know not all of you would be able to use a claim such as this but we determined that this claim could be one of the more powerful pieces of text and copy we could use.  We also reserved this text as a possible relocation to push the conversion even higher

Incentive/Product Shot  : The only bullet point we did not keep in here from the original text was the last one which we repositioned next to a nice shot of the actual product line. This is also a trust factor showing there are some actual products involved.  You would be surprised on how many offers we come across that doesn’t show the actual image of the bottle or product.  Again,showing the actual product builds trust.  Just keep in mind that you want to make sure you don’t take up too much room on the page as this is probably the case here. I would have rather cropped the image down to just 1 or 2 bottles but when we tried it, it took away the full effect and didn’t look correct.  We are going to have a new product shot and we will use it in the 2nd revision after testing if needed.

I always stress the point of having a photographer take professional product shots of your product.  Since the image is one of the most important pieces of your offer, showing your product with the correct lighting and background can really give you an advantage over some thrown together image.

-  Contact Us — shows there is a viable business here.  Always have a physical location and a 24/7 customer service number for potential customers to call and ask about your company or product

-  Privacy Policy – another one that is routinely missed and can be one of the biggest trust and confidence builders available — plus its a quick add.  Online consumers now have many research tools available and they want to make sure their data is not being sold to a telemarketer or anyone else. Privacy is big for a consumer so you want to make sure you are informing your potential sale that you will NOT do anything with their information that you are not disclosing.

-  Terms of Use – another easy addition such as the privacy policy.  Define your terms and conditions and disclose everything!

- Stay Tuned… Part 4: Landing Page Results: Before and After, post will go live tomorrow!

This post is part of a 4 day series of posts all about creating winning landing pages. In tomorrows post we will compare before and after results. In this internet marketing game, it’s all about monetization and continually tweaking your ad copy and landing pages to squeeze out the best conversion possible. This guest post series was written by Michael Salvaggio of SEO Brand.

Plain and Simple: there is no better way to invoke the conversion moment other than a image or video testimonial (providing the script is strong — more on that later)

Now the disclaimer about Individual results will vary etc… — this is without a doubt hurting the conversion process.  Basically what you are saying is this “ you may or may not look like the after image and it make make your face WORSE” — Clearly the mistake in this approach is quite obvious — sending a mixed signal but for compliance purposes, it is something we are going to have to live with (more below)

BODY — again, strong ad copy — bullet points explaining the the “secrets” you will receive by entering in your e-mail address.  Keep in mind this should always be the guideline on how your product is different than everyone else’s.  Here you have the opportunity to reinforce the conversion moment or else we will suffer from conversion drift — meaning the readers conversion moment is not being reinforced but actually drifting away.  The more the conversion moment drifts, the less chance of a conversion.  This is certainly the danger zone that we do not want to approach so these bullet points must reinforce the buying decision.

The idea of highlighting AND FOR SUBSCRIBING WITH US BELOW TODAY – is a good approach, the wrong text is highlighted.

The issue with these bullet points is the font is too small and there is a bit TMI Here as well.

- Stay Tuned… Part 3: Call to Action, post will go live tomorrow!

This post is part of a 5 day series of posts all about creating winning landing pages. In tomorrows post we will cover the importance of using a great call to action on your landing pages. You only have a few seconds to make the user click, so it’s important to engage them immediately. This guest post series was written by Michael Salvaggio of SEO Brand.

SEO Brand has a unique methodology that takes a hybrid statistical-holistic approach to landing page concept creation and conversion optimization that we call Objective-Stastical Based or OSB.  This internal process was defined and refined over our 8 years of designing and optimizing some of the highest converting offers across many different verticals.

There are many companies and firms that claim they understand this space but do they have the proven work to back up these claims aside from examples of pages and general statements about “being the secret behind high converting offers”.  We do and would like to share a small business skin care offer before and after with you.

Case Study

We were contracted to redesign a popular skin cream offer.  The design was outdated and although the advertising copy was solid, it needed a polish and tweak so we went to work.

Our conversion strategy will be our own internal methodology which we call objective-statistical based and it breaks down like this: We will take each part of the website and break it down to point out the obvious and not so obvious components of each section.  I will then provide the solution that we implemented and the before and after results of the conversion rate.  Once we have the data, we can make our own inferences to the results of this campaign:

Here is the outdated design:

Lets break down each section and point out what we identified as weak points

LOGO – The logo in itself is fine although the print is difficult to read.  Its the color that we needed to change.

Black colors represent a hard offer — something more masculine.  Now, while I agree that the male skin product segment is the fastest growing in this vertical, this original design was intended to present an offer to women.

HEADLINE — Anytime I see a headline with WARNING I immediately think of 2 things: run away as fast as you can or ok, wait, let me take some time to read this.  Either way, you are taking one hell of a risk if you are paying for your own traffic or trying to convince an affiliate network that your offer converts.

HEADLINE AD COPY – Although this ad copy is solid, its a bit too much.  When combined with the above WARNING copy, we could be overloading the reader.  Lets consider this hypothetical :  the reader was sucked in by the WARNING headline and now is continuing to read the next small paragraph which starts to play into the fear of the original feeling the reader had when he landed on the page.  In order to define “fear” we must attempt to get into the reader’s mind to discover when their fear actually takes control and looks for an action to quell that fear for one moment.  This moment we consider to be the “conversion moment” — which is defined as the moment someone makes the decision to buy.  Its an instantaneous decision.  Think about it : the reader has a problem….bad skin.  Lets assume this reader is a male.  The male doesn’t want to go out in public with red blotches all over his skin for a variety of reasons : cant attract women, cant be taken seriously in business or just overall embarrassed.  Are these assumptions ?  You bet.  How can you make these assumptions seem real?  Put yourself  in the readers shoes.  Ask yourself Would you like red blotches all over your face?  I didn’t think so.

Back to the reader, the fear and the conversion moment: the reader has finally found the product that will eliminate his fear and decided to buy — BINGO — the conversion moment has been identified.  Now the million dollar question is “What can I do to invoke this conversion moment in 5 seconds or less ?”

Notice how I say “could be” or “this is an assumption”.  Again these are all assumptions that we are making at the beginning of our controlled test so these assumptions will be put to the test.  Did you sleep though your Consumer Behavior and Stat 101 class?  If so, no worries, you are about to get the crash course again and this time it will make you money on your offer — not bore you to death !

Bottom Line:  we though there was a little bit of TMI — too much information here.

AD COPY HEADLINE # 3 ??   — again this falls into the TMI category but there is something very powerful about this copy and the way its presented.  Try this for a mini controlled experiment:  Switch to another webpage for 30 seconds and then pull this one back up.  Where did your eyes go?

Think about it for a minute: Perhaps this headline was meant to shock me into making a decision?  How about just an attention grabber?  If you are like me, your eyes went to this RED BOLD headline that simply screams out “HEY CHECK ME OUT” — although this is the effect that you want to have on your landing page, being presented in RED and BOLD could also invoke another DANGER response and your mind could already make the decision that this product is hazardous.  Although this approach could be effective, the current presentation is not and more importantly, what about the other 2 paragraphs above?  Again, great copy but TMI.

Keep in mind that all internet browsers (myself included) suffer from IADD — something we refer to as Internet Attention Deficit Syndrome.  Now before you run to your primary care physician and start demanding a prescription, accept the face that you have IADD and thats not a bad thing!  An IADD diagnosis only means one thing: you better find what you are looking for in the next 5 seconds or you will click off and go somewhere else.  This headline certainly sucks us in but the approach is flawed.

- Stay Tuned… Part 2: Testimonials, post will go live tomorrow!

This post is part of a 3 day series of posts all about creating winning landing pages. In tomorrows post we will cover the importance of using testimonials in your landing pages. Everything from using the right images, to relating with the customer and using “fear” in your ad copy. This guest post series was written by Michael Salvaggio of SEO Brand.

I’ve already wrote up reviews on InfoLinks several times, and am also using them as a revenue source on this blog, BloggingTips.com and a few others. InfoLinks is already one of the biggest and most well known companies in the contextual advertising space. Now with the addition of their own self serve marketplace, they will be able to bring web sites and marketers more traffic than ever. Click here to register for a free account and start creating your ad campaigns instantly.

It’s extremely fast and easy to create an account and go live with a new ad campaign. One of the huge benefits is the amazingly low starting prices, which include a .02 per click minimum, and daily budgets as low as $5 per day. The rate of .02 per click is very low, so I would recommend increasing your click amounts to start testing traffic, as it’s all based on a bidding structure. When creating a campaign, you just need to add you title, description, url, desired keywords and rate per click.

Once live with an account, you can edit and manage your campaigns. Some of the best features in the admin area are geographic locations, ad scheduling (day parting) and setting the rotation scheme for your ad serving. This means you can display the best performing ads based on CTR, serve ads on a equal rotation, or simply serve the best performing ad creatives more often.

InfoLinks’ self serve platform is brand new and I already have a few campaigns in the system. I will keep you updated on the traffic and quality of leads generated from the site. Be sure to try it out and let me know what you think.

InfoLinks In-Text Ads Marketplace