Author Archive | Randy R

One of my favorite “business models” is selling subscriptions. Some people call this “continuity”.

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The real beauty of this is that you sell something to someone one time, and then you keep getting paid over and over… until they decide to stop the subscription.

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Sorta the way your cable company works. Think about it, they got you to sign up and you just keep paying every single month.

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Now wouldn’t it be sweet if you were on the OTHER side of that transaction, and you were the one collecting the checks every month?

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Well, the REALLY cool thing is that on the Internet it’s EASY to create a business that does EXACTLY that. Just think if you had 100, or 200, or even 1000 people paying you AUTOMATICALLY month after month. That’s a beautiful thing.

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Of course, this isn’t a new idea… but in the last few years there are a couple of guys who have really PERFECTED this business. You can read more about them here:

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Convert once, get paid over and over…

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This stuff will COMPLETELY change your business.
\nDon’t miss it. If you look at the biggest, most successful businesses online (I am talking businesses that actually make massive profits), a huge percentage are really “membership” sites.

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But don’t get me wrong – this is also a model that is perfect for small one and two-person businesses. Check it out now:

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Convert once, get paid over and over…

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Best regards,
\nEric

P.S. If I had to start all over, this is probably the ONE business model I would go after. This stuff is that cool.

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Convert once, get paid over and over…

\nTags:Affiliate Conversion business models continuity copywriting Landing Page Conversion Marketing membership sites On the internet Marketing Product CreationAffiliate Conversion, business models, continuity, copywriting, Landing Page Conversion, Marketing, membership sites, On the web Marketing, Product Creation

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Terry Dean posted a great list of 25 Ways to Increase Conversion on his blog.

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http://www.terrydean.org/25-ways-to-increase-conversion/

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I recomend everyone give it a read.

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Happy testing.

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Eric

\nTags:copywriting Multivariate Testing On the web Marketing Recomended Blogscopywriting, Multivariate Testing, On the web Marketing, Recomended Blogs

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We recently had a family emergency that has helped me keep things in perspective..

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My 3 year old daughter was playing with her large sisters and wound up getting a rather bad head injury.

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In fact it was so bad that we had to take her to the hospital emergency room. She had a huge gash in the top of her head that was so long and so deep I could actually see part of her skull. (Take it from me… As a father, if there is ANY part of your child you never want to see it’s their skull!)

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Fortunately she is doing just fine (except for a few STAPLES in her head!) (more…)

\nTags:Building Trust Marketing Offline Marketing On the internet Marketing Recomended Blogs Success and MindsetBuilding Trust, Marketing, Offline Marketing, On the web Marketing, Recomended Blogs, Success and Mindset

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My friend Rick Butts recently asked me to be part of the faculty for his just released Visitors2Cash workshop (www.visitors2cash.net.)

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And of course knowing of my magical Conversion Jedi powers, he asked me to give him a swift critique of his sales process.

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So, I decided to record him a short (at least compared to the 2 to 4 hour Conversion Booster Website Evaluations I’m used to doing) video based website evaluation.

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Now the video is not almost as in depth as I go in my full blown paid, Website Critiques, but it will give you a pretty good taste of what you’ll get if you order one.

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\nClick Here to View The Free Video

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And no… This is NOT some 36 minute affiliate pitch for his workshop. In this mini website evaluation I rip his squeeze page and salesletter apart, giving Rick DOZENS of things to change, tweak and test to help maximize his conversion rates.

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If you don’t get at least ONE good tip from this video of something to test on your own site… Well, you just need to stick with working a job. There’s just no hope for ya’!

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This is going to be a great resource and Rick has recruited some of the top minds in the on the internet marketing arena to join him in sharing their absolute best website monetization strategies and secrets.

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Just a few top notch marketers that will be presenting are, Joel Comm, Rick Raddatz, Kirt Christensen, Nathan Anderson, Marc Goldman and of course me…

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So if you want to join us for what promises to be a very profitable experince simply visit www.visitors2cash.net and I’ll see you on the calls.

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Happy Testing!

Eric

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P.S. – If you like this short website evaluation video, then you’ll LOVE getting a full length Conversion Booster Video Website Evaluation or YOUR site!

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Click here to learn more!

\nTags:Landing Page Conversion Marketing Multivariate Testing On the web Marketing Online Video Pay Per Click Conversion Split Testing Testing and Tracking Website DesignLanding Page Conversion, Marketing, Multivariate Testing, On the web Marketing, Online Video, Pay Per Click Conversion, Split Testing, Testing and Tracking, Website Design

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Eric here with a real swift opportunity…

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As I’ve mentioned before, later this year I am going to be releasing my Conversion Rate Secrets course. It will most likely be an complete 8 week Webinar based training system where I cover everything from usability, building trust, copywriting and persuasion (not just THEORY but actual test results), testing and tracking, Google Website Optimizer (and other testing tools, Google Analytics, what to test, how to test, reducing checkout abandonment and MUCH more.

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I guarantee this will be hands down the most comprehensive and complete conversion rate optimization training ever offered by ANYONE. Period.

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But… I have a bit of a problem. (more…)

\nTags:Landing Page Conversion Marketing Multivariate Testing On the internet Marketing On the internet Video Pay Per Click Conversion Product Creation Split Testing Testing and Tracking Traffic QualityLanding Page Conversion, Marketing, Multivariate Testing, On the internet Marketing, On the internet Video, Pay Per Click Conversion, Product Creation, Split Testing, Testing and Tracking, Traffic Quality

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An effective internal linking strategy is important for a few reasons: 1) It helps to increase page views and encourage readers to stay on your blog longer by providing enticing links to content that may interest them, and 2) it can help to improve the search engine rankings for your posts and pages.

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In this article we’ll take a look at ten simple ways to improve the internal linking throughout your blog. Put these into action and you’ll be well on your way to creating a more user-friendly blog and also helping your search engine rankings at the same time.

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1. Use a sitemap
\nSitemaps are not only important for helping visitors find what they’re looking for, but they’re also an easy way to increase the amount of internal links to your important pages. I’m not talking about XML sitemaps created for search engines (although they can be important too), but rather a sitemap for your readers with links to all of your posts, or at least your most important ones.

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WordPress users can use the Sitemap Generator Plugin from Dago Design to automatically create a sitemap for their blog. This plugin creates a helpful sitemap page with links to your posts arranged by category.

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2. Create a FAQ
\nFrequently Asked Questions pages can help you to get internal links to your posts while using highly targeted keywords and phrases. Create some common questions readers might have that can be answered by your blog posts. Pose the question on the FAQ page and partially answer the question and provide a link to a particular post for more information. When phrasing the questions, use keywords that readers are likely to use when performing a search, as this can help to improve traffic from search engines. Also use keywords in the anchor text of the links to your posts.

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3. Link to related posts
\nLinking to posts on similar topics can help your readers to find additional content that may interest them. Just as importantly, it can also improve the number of internal links to your blog posts. You can manually create related links at the end of your posts, or you can use a plugin to do it for you. WordPress users can download the Related Entries plugin.

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4. Include links to your most popular posts on your sidebar
\nMany blogs contain links to specific posts in the sidebar. Linking to those that are the most popular is a good way to increase your page views and also to improve your internal link strength. This also can either be done manually or with the use of a plugin. Doing it manually will require updates and changes whenever you want to feature new posts, whereas a plugin like MostWanted will eliminate the manual effort.

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5. Write a series of posts
\nOne simple way of building up the number of internal links going from one post to another is to write a series. As the series is written and published each post can link to the others. If you have a very long post, consider breaking it into a series. Be careful not to do this all the time as your readers might begin to feel like you are using them to gain page views.

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6. Do a weekly or monthly summary
\nMany bloggers wrap up each month with a post that links to some of the most popular current posts on the blog with a brief description of each. This obviously gives you a chance to add some internal links, and it can help readers who may have missed some posts as well as new subscribers who might not have had the opportunity to read some of your ideal work.

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7. Place links on your 404 pages
\nError pages are frustrating to visitors. Help make your 404 error pages more-user friendly and drive a tiny bit of extra traffic to some of most important posts. Most WordPress themes include a 404.php file that can be edited to include and content you want, including links. If you are using a WordPress theme that does not include a 404 file, see the WordPress Codex for instructions.

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8. Include links in your footer
\nDepending on what blog theme you are using, your footer may be wasted space that includes very tiny valuable content. Many visitors who have read to the bottom of your posts or scrolled all the way down looking for something will check the footer for relevant links rather than scrolling back to the top. Why not provide these visitors with links to other posts or pages on your blog?

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9. Use text links throughout posts
\nAs your writing your blog posts keep an open eye for opportunities to link to older posts. If you have text relates to the topic of an older post, create a link. As you build more and more content this will be even easier to do. It’s also a good idea to periodically go back through some of your older posts to look for linking opportunities to more current posts that did not exist at the initial time of publishing.

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It may be especially beneficial to include links in the first few paragraphs of a post, as some bloggers have reported highly increased click-through rates from RSS readers with links high in the content,

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10. The aLinks plugin for WordPress
\nWordPress users can take advantage of the aLinks plugin to automatically create links for commonly used phrases throughout their blog posts. The plugin is designed for use with internal links as well as external links (especially affiliate links).\n

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© Daily Blog Tips – visit the site for more blog tips!

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I am glad to finally release Homepage Excerpts, a WordPress plugin that I have been developing with a friend for some time already. The plugin has two main objectives. The first one is to make blogs that use full posts on the homepage more search engine friendly. The second one is to give flexibility to people that want to use both full posts and excerpts on the homepage.

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Homepage Excerpts for SEO

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We are all aware that Google and other search engines penalize websites that contain duplicate content. Ideally, therefore, the content of your posts should be displayed fully in one location only, and that is the single post page.

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Most blogs, however, display full posts on the homepage as well, and the posts remain being displayed in full even when they slip out of the homepage into page two, three and so on.

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The Homepage Excerpts plugin can be used to reduce this duplicate content while keeping full posts on the homepage. Suppose you have 8 full posts on the homepage. Once you activate the plugin you will have the option to select how many posts to display fully in the homepage. The options will go from 1 up to 8. If you select 8, all your posts on the homepage will keep being displayed fully while all the other posts (the ones on page two, three, four and so on) will turn into excerpts.

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Remember that new pages usually take one week or more to get indexed by search engines, so that by the time your single post page gets indexed the post will already be out of the homepage, and it will be displayed as an excerpt, removing the duplicate content issue.

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Apart from SEO benefits this change might also improve the user experience. Displaying only post excerpts on the subsequent pages will make it easier for readers to scan them swiftly while searching for the post that they are looking for.

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Homepage Excerpts for Layout

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The plugin can also be used if you want to use an hybrid layout on your homepage, displaying the most current posts in full and the older ones with an excerpt. On this blog usually I display the most current post in full while making the others show excerpts, so that the reader can scan swiftly through all of them. Some other people might want to display half of the posts on the homepage fully and the other half with excerpts. With the plugin you have complete control over this.

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Notice that you can also select if the plugin should extract the custom excerpt from WordPress (the one that you insert manually when writing an entry) or if it should automatically grab the first X words of each post, where X is a number that can be specified on the options panel.

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Installation

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1. Download and unzip the plugin

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2. Uploade the file homepage-excerpts.php to your plugin directory. (Usually
   \nlocated in wp-content/plugins/)

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3. Log into the WordPress control panel, then go into “Plugins” and activate the
   \nplugin

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4. Still inside the WordPress control panel go into “options” and then “Homepage Excerpts”

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5. Update the plugin options as appropriate

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© Daily Blog Tips – visit the site for more blog tips!

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On January of this year I had written down some goals for the blog. One of them was to reach 1,000 RSS subscribers by the end of 2007…

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I really could not have foreseen such a big success for Daily Blog Tips. The 5,000 mark was reached one week ago already, but I waited a bit to write this post, just to make sure that the feed count would not fluctuate below 5,000 on the day after the celebration .

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Anyway I just wanted to thank all the readers, and if you are not a subscriber yet make sure to grab the RSS feed or to subscribe via email.

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The blog has many upcoming events. In November it will turn one year old, there is a redesign coming and many blog projects, so stay tuned!\n

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© Daily Blog Tips – visit the site for more blog tips!

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