Product Specific Landing Page Tips

I previously wrote two posts on “Quick Tips to Improve Your Landing Page“, but what if you want to target towards specific products or services. Are you going to send traffic from your ad campaigns to your home page and hope for the best, or should you setup individual landing pages and campaigns for each product? Below I have included a few tips for you to use when building your product specific landing pages and campaigns.

1.) Don’t Sending Traffic to Your Home Page
Everyone loves to send and receive traffic to their home page. Unfortunately, when paying for search marketing, this is usually not the best scenario. When you send traffic to your home page, you are usually giving your users too many options and most will get frustrated and immediately leave. Instead of sending potential customers to your home page and offering several products, create multiple landing pages and ad groups based on different products. Not only will you provide your customers with what they are looking for, but you should also see a dramatic increase in conversions.

2.) Tell Your Customer What they Want to Hear
How many times have you gone shopping and asked a salesperson a direct question about a product, then they go on to tell you everything else about it and not what you wanted? If you are going to create landing pages to promote individual products and services, make sure you make it quick and easy for the customer to find what they need. Always provide a title, picture, description, specs, dollar amount and an easy to fund “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” button. These are the most obvious fields everyone is looking for. If you have more in-depth information to offer, you may want to add additional pages or provide it below the actual listing.

3.) Repeat the Search Term on Your Landing Page
Sending your targeted traffic to a landing page which points them to a product or service they are searching for is excellent. Being able to further monetize that page is even better. If possible, try and incorporate the “search term” that was used in your advertisement, and have it re-appear on your landing page. Additional methods for increasing conversions and order sizes, are to include related products.

Quick Case Study:
I went to Google and did a search for “buy flip camera“. The first listing was for Amazon.com, who are one of the best (if not the best) in landing pages and converting sales. Before setting up your landing pages for product specific items, take a look at some of the big retail sites like Amazon.com, Buy.com or WalmArt.com. All of these sites are very clean and to the point, providing the buyer with the basic information they need, then more specs and user reviews when you scroll down. The call to action on all of these landing pages it to buy the product.

Amazon.com Success: Title, Product Name & Picture, Price and Add to Cart

Once you have created your product specific landing pages, continue to test and compare what’s working and what could possibly increase your conversion. Remember, if you are currently converting 3% of your customers to a buyer and can increase that 4%… you are looking at a 25% increase in sales. Your landing pages and testing are key to your success.

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Affiliate Network Rewards Programs

With so many affiliate networks out there, they all have to work really hard to get your business. To show their appreciation, a lot of network have their own rewards programs. Let’s take a look at a few programs and how they are rewarding their Top Affiliates.

Market Leverage REWARDS PROGRAM
In addition to a whole new site design, a new rewards program was recently added to Market Leverage. The network now boasts that they have “The Highest Paying Cash Rewards Program in the Industry“. With the Market Leverage rewards program, you would receive an American Express Cash Gift Card worth 1% of the amount you earned in that monthly reporting period. The minimum commission to each an American Express gift card is $1,000, which is much lower than many other networks.
Minimum Commission to Receive Reward: $1,000
Commission to Reward Ratio: 1%

- Join Market Leverage Affiliate Network

CX Digital Media REWARDS PROGRAM
Taking their rewards program to another level, CX Media Digital has a pyramid format and rewards in actual prizes and gift cards. To reach the first level of rewards point, you will first need to earn $15,000 in commission with the network. Rewards available on level 1 are in the range of $100.Once you’ve earned over $300,000 with the network, you can receive rewards such as a Panasonic TH-50PX60U 50″ Plasma HDTV valued at $2799.99.
Minimum Commission to Receive Reward: $15,000
Commission to Reward Ratio: Less than 1%

- Join CX Digital Affiliate Network

Rocket Profit REWARDS PROGRAM
Every month you earn over $5,000 with Rocket Profit, you can receive at least a $25 gift card, or all the way up to a $500 gift card. Rocket Profit offers a wide selection of gift card to choose from, whether it be Barnes and Noble, Home Depot or clothes from the Gap.
Minimum Commission to Receive Reward: $5,000
Commission to Reward Ratio: Less than 1%

- Join RocketProfit Affiliate Network

Copeac REWARDS PROGRAM
Increase you monthly earnings with Copeac by earning a gift card each month based on your performance. With a rather high minimum, an affiliate must generate $25,000 to earn a $50 gift card. If you are pushing some nice volume through the company and surpass $100,000 in commissions, you’ll walk away with an additional $500 gift card.
Minimum Commission to Receive Reward: $5,000
Commission to Reward Ratio: Less than 1%

- Join Copeac Affiliate Network

AFFILIATE NETWORKS REWARDS BREAK DOWN

From the chart shown above you can see a break down of each affiliate network rewards program based on the minimum commission you must make to receive a Level 1 reward and the Level 1 reward amount. The last % Ratio column is a break down of how much each rewards program actually “rewards” you, based on your earnings. For example, for every $100 you earn in commissions with Market Leverages, you would receive $1 in rewards value, or 1%. Taking that same example and applying it to COPEAC network, you would earn .20 for every $100 in commissions earned (.20%), towards a reward.

Which Affiliate Program rewards program works best for you, and have you received any rewards lately?

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Picking the Right Niche Market

Everyone is always talking about niche marketing and how you can make good money if you dedicate yourself and target the right niche. So how are you supposed to know what niche market to target, without wasting your time and ad dollars. Here are a few quick questions and ideas to ask yourself when trying to find and target a new niche market.

1.) Make a Short List of Your Passions
It may sound cheesy or cliché, but it’s going to matter. For example, if you really enjoy watching or playing basketball, then creating a site based on basketball or selling basketball sports supplies, you will probably be that much more dedicated toward working on your site and getting it to work. Not only will you have an interest in your new niche area, but if it’s one of your passions, then you should know a lot about the topic and what you are talking about. Write a short list down of 5-10 passions of yours and see what you can come up with.

2.) Is this a Profitable Niche?
Once you have a few ideas and passions written down, take a look at them and see if there is a high demand or big money being spent in these markets. A very simple way to see if there is a lot of money to be made, is to do a simple Google search, then look at the advertisers on the right hand column. If you are seeing a lot of advertisers, there is usually a high demand for the product or service. Another obvious method for calculating is retail pricing. Will it be better for you to target a less competitive niche market (basketball skills training guides) and sell 100 items and make $10 or each, or try and target an over saturated market (sports tickets) and making $50-$100 per sale?

3.) Is there a Demand for this Niche?
Nearly just as important as how much people are willing to spend on your niche product or service, is how many people actually want it. Using the Google Traffic Estimator, you can get an idea on how often people are searching for a specific niche area or product. Not only will you be given estimates on daily search term traffic, but you can also use this tool as another resource to find how much others are paying to market in this niche, by looking at the average cpc cost.

Just using some simple “basketball” related terms, you can see there are multiple niche markets. You have less cost and traffic for targeting toward people that want to “increase vertical leap“, so it would be easier for you to take advantage of a larger portion of this niche market. On the opposite side, you could sell basketball tickets and memorabilia, where the average advertising is paying more money, with more traffic. Map out your passions and niche markets and see which opportunities make the most sense.

4.) Target Towards Yourself
Once again, going back to basing your new niche market on your passion… as a customer, learn to target towards yourself. If you are going to create a web site based on “increasing your vertical leap“, you should have prior / existing relation to the topic. If you were doing a search on Google for the same topic, what type of information would you want to find on the sites you are visiting. Since you are now the marketer and the potential buyer, you should be able to relate to your customers better than most. Create your new site and niche market to cater as much to your users as possible.

5.) Stay in It to Win It
If you are going to target to a niche market and find you are doing well with it, I would recommend focusing on this niche area for the long haul. Depending on what you are targeting it may be extremely difficult, or quite possible for you to become one of the main and prominent sites in this area. If you are going to target towards people looking to increase their basketball jumping ability vs. selling sports tickets, you will probably have a lot more success with the prior. Not only will you have less competition from heavily funded companies in search marketing, but if you provide a quality site and/or product in a small niche area, you can get a ton of exposure and sales from word of mouth. Before selecting your new niche market, ask yourself… “Can I become one of the top 5% marketers/sites in this area?”

These are just a few questions and tips to consider when starting in a new niche area. Niche marketing can be very fun and profitable, or very frustrating and a waste of time and money. Before jumping into a new niche market, make sure that you take the time and effort to map out your business plan.

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Introduction to Build a Niche Store

Before setting up your site with Build a Niche Store, you should first know what the program does and how it works. Build a Niche Store is a program that you upload to your web site, which creates a database and admin area for you to easily create an eBay auction resource type site, the program costs $97. (Other alternatives to BANS is phpbay, which is a wordpress plugin and costs $47.) The Build a Niche Store program is focused and aimed towards new comers to web site design, marketers and anyone that doesn’t want to program or play with eBay’s API system. In short, the $97 cost on this software is to save you time and pay for the time spent on creating this product and to access their active members forum.

What is BANS and how does it make money?
Build a Niche Store is a program that you install on your web server, which easily creates sites based on eBay auctions. The basic platform and concept for earning revenue with a BANS site is through the eBay Affiliate Program. Every time your web site generates a new user to eBay or a winning bid for an auction, you earn money. Through this guide I will cover many different ways to monetize a BANS web site, in addition to listing eBay auctions.

What do I need to create a BANS site?
If you currently have your own web site or knowledge on setting up domains and new sites, you are set and should have no problems creating a new site for BANS. If you are new to creating/hosting web sites, you will need a host and a domain name. I recently setup a new hosting account with HostGator ($7.95 a month / unlimited domains) to house most of my Build a Niche Stores. I also order domains through GoDaddy. Once you have your web site hosting and domain available, BANS comes with a very easy to understand guide for uploading and setting up your BANS site.
- If you need a web host, used coupon code “SPRING” at HostGator and save 20%.

How long does it take to go live with a BANS site?
If you are completely new and need to setup your own hosting and purchase a domain, you should be able to go live with your store in less than an hour. (HostGator had my new account live within 20 mins of ordering) If you are already established and know what to do, you’ll have a store up in minutes. Figure two minutes to register a domain, another 5-10 minutes to upload and setup your BANS store, then spend a couple minutes to link/submit your new site to a few indexes or partner sites. In addition to how quickly you can have your site setup, it shouldn’t take long to get indexed in the major search engines as well.

What type of site do I create with BANS?
Without sounding to cliché, the possibilities are really endless. However, from a marketing standpoint, it would be best to target to niche markets that offer high end priced products, or are sold in volume. The more traffic and bids/sales your site generates, the more revenue you will receive. Another crucial factor to think about when creating your niche store, is to choose a topic you are interested in. The advantage to being interested in your topic, is that you will be more motivated to work on the site, and you can write content pages for the site, which will help it index in search engines and give your site users something to read.

Can I see examples of current BANS sites?
When you visit the Build a Niche Store web site, on the right column you will see a section called “Customer Stores“. This area profiles a select group of BANS customers and the stores they have setup. You will see that most of them are just utilizing the eBay affiliate program as a source for revenue. In the next follow up post this guide, I will show you actual BANS sites that I have created and am promoting through search marketing, articles and linking to drive traffic through the site, as well as many different revenue sources added to the site.

Targets towards almost any niche with eBay Auction content.

How do I promote eBay auctions on my BANS site?
eBay has their own affiliate program called the eBay Partner Network, which gives you linking access to all auctions currently running on their network. With the integration of BANS and eBay, your site can easily link up hundreds of auctions and will update automatically along with eBay. Once you setup your BANS site, in the admin area you can provide your eBay Partner Network account information and it will track all existing campaigns and referrals through your site. Depending on your site’s traffic volume, you will earn 50-75% of the revenue for each winner bid placed through your site. You will also earn $25-$35 per new active user sent to eBay.

Who should use BANS and why?
Build a Niche Store was created to make the ease of setting up niche auction stores simple and fast. After setting up your first site and going through the process, you can whip these out pretty fast. Unfortunately, making money isn’t so easy… anyone can create a ton of stores with BANS and hope for the best, but site promotion and monetization are key. I will provide you with many stats and real life examples on how to make the most of your BANS pages.

As for who should use BANS, anyone can use the program to create site, however most will find that it is very simplistic and could be a very good intro for anyone starting out in the web marketing and affiliate space. Though the program is simple, even veteran marketers can make use of the program. If you currently have an existing network of sites and traffic, you can easily setup new niche sites to bring new traffic to. Once establishing your new niche area, you can focus and build it up to a new residual revenue source.

This has been a quick intro the the Build a Niche Store program and what/how it works. While there has been some skeptics on the potential of the program or feel that I am wasting everyone’s time by even writing about it, I feel it definitely has potential and I have been working in niche markets for years and know they are profitable. In the next post on Build a Niche Store, I will use a site I setup with BANS as an example and show you how to target to niche markets, while monetizing your BANS site with more revenue sources besides eBay Partner Network.

As much as I would like for everyone to make money with the BANS program, it just isn’t likely. The program itself WILL NOT make you money, you need to dedicate yourself to put in the time to market and monetize your site. This program makes it super easy to install and setup a new site, but how many people stop there? I wrote this tutorial and guide to inspire and motivate you to go beyond the norm and put forth the time and effort to make money with your BANS store, than move onto bigger and better projects.

In the next follow-up post, I will cover how to focus on niche markets and break down one of my BANS created sites, including how to add new revenue generating sources to your sites.

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Why I Blog

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net, recently made a post asking “Why Do You Blog?“. Not only did he ask the question… but he also wanted it in video format. I’ve wanted to do video for quite some time now, and I’m glad Darren made this post, because it finally pushed me to making my first actual blog post video. Instead of doing a regular video, I decided to have some fun with it and do something original! So here it is… Why I Blog!

I Blog to Be Different
A lot of internet marketers are blogging, but not as many are moving into video. Whether you are blogging, running an ad campaign or video blogging, creativity and being different is key. Being different not only helps you in succeed, but it also gets noticed. Don’t worry about what other people think. Do something crazy and push yourself outside of your comfort level!

I Blog to Get & Stay Motivated
It happens to all of us, sometimes you just feel unmotivated and want to step away from your business for a bit. Blogging is a great way to get away from it all. Sometimes your best writing happens when you are frustrated. Step back and review some news articles or talk to some friends on AIM, get an idea for a new blog post and get to it! Once you have your new post live and have read your readers the comments, you are now motivated again and ready to go! Not only are you motivating yourself, but your posts will also inspire your readers at times as well!

I Blog to Share Knowledge
I’ve been making money online for over 10 years, but I’m still learning new stuff every day. Being able to share my stories and experience from past to present, then having people comment on my posts with their ideas or advice is just awesome. No matter how big or small, we can all learn from blogging.

I Blog to Network
After attending BlogWorld and AffiliateSummit West, it was amazing to see the response from people who read the blog. I was even more amazed by how many people I already knew, but had no idea they were daily readers! Email is great, but being able to get more personable and read up on a fellow bloggers is much better. Blogging is a great networking tool.

I Blog for Name Recognition
This blog already has thousands of readers. The more popular a blog gets, the better name recognition and branding you have. Over time your name and brand power can be priceless. Are you working towards building your name or company branding?

And I Now Video Blog…
This was my first video blog. Why blog as Spiderman?! Why not… making money online and blogging is fun, make the most of it! Do something creative today, see what happens!

Thank you Darren for your recent video blog promotion. Not only is it a great idea, but it was the boost I needed to get started and put my first video blog post together. What did you think of my first video and would you like to see more? Am I crazy, funny, insane… or a marketing genius?

My video also on YouTube, Metacafe, Google, DailyMotion, Blip.tv and Sclipo.

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