Content Marketing

6 Proven Copywriting Techniques That Work And Convert

6 Proven Copywriting Techniques That Work

6 Proven Copywriting Techniques That Work

If you’re wondering why your landing pages aren’t making you as much money as you had hoped for, you might be using common landing page copywriting techniques the wrong way.

If that’s you, read on to find out how to increase your marketing conversion rate simply and effectively.

This is not just a ‘copywriting for beginners’ post, and you aren’t going to learn how to become a world class digital copywriter in the space of a few minutes!

The best marketers are experts in direct response copywriting and there are a few tried and tested techniques that can help you to tweak your sales and landing pages to make them convert better. And isn’t that the point of so-called conversion rate marketing? To optimize conversions and thus sales.

While the six copywriting techniques we’re about to cover have been proven to work, too many marketers use them in a way that cancels out their otherwise potent conversion power.

This is a real shame because your landing page could be raking in larger profits if you only paid closer attention to how you implement these proven techniques.

The good news is that once you become aware of how badly you may be implementing these techniques, you can quickly fix them.

The key is to become aware that you’re using them the wrong way in the first place.

1: Tell A Story To Personalize Your Landing Page’s Value

Storytelling is one of the most powerful landing page copywriting techniques you can use. Not only do you pull your reader into the scenario your offer addresses, but you also create emotional urgency with your offer.

Once emotionally engaged, chances are much higher that your viewer would enter his or her email address or make a purchase.

Awesome, right?

Well, sadly, too many marketers tell stories that are simply worthless.

They are duds.

They seem too good to be true. They show extreme conditions. They simply fail to convert.

What went wrong?

The stories most marketers tell in their landing pages fail to focus on putting a human face on the problem the reader is facing.

Instead, these low converting landing pages tend to present almost ‘too good to be true’ situations.

If you want your landing page stories to convert, take the most probable circumstances faced by your target audience members and base your stories on these.

These realistic stories are more believable because more of your audience members can relate to them.

2: Use A Question As A Header Title For Your Landing Page

Questions are very powerful ‘centering’ devices because they draw your prospects attention to one central concept or a small set of concepts. Questions help narrow and define the problems and situations your offer addresses.

If a question is well-defined, it is easier to present your solution and it is easier for the prospect to see the value in your solution.

Sadly, too many marketers use a header question that has little to do with the questions their target audience members care about the most. For example, the question focuses on cost when most users are actually interested in saving time.

To fix this problem, figure out the primary concern of your target audience members and pose relevant header questions.

3: Change Your Font To Emphasize Key Points Of Your Pitch

When you’re talking to somebody, you normally change your tone of voice when you are trying to emphasize certain things. By the same token, text in bold or italics or larger, ‘special’ fonts tend to be noticed more.

The problem here is that too many marketers overuse these font changes. They use them so much that the reader is confused or reads the text like the formatting isn’t even there.

To maximize the impact of special fonts when emphasizing key points in your landing page text, make sure you use them SPARINGLY.

Keep special fonts to a minimum so when you do emphasize certain words, they truly STAND OUT.

4: Use Testimonials From Happy Customers

One of the most powerful selling tools you can use is social proof. People are more likely to buy whatever you are offering if they see that other people have had positive experiences with what you’re selling.

Pretty simple, right?

In fact, this is so simple that you’d think this would be hard to screw up.

Wrong. Marketers actually blow this all the time.

The key problem is RESTRAINT.

Steer clear of using overly positive testimonials that they look fake. People are very suspicious of overly positive testimonials. ‘Over the top’ recommendations make them skeptical.

Make sure you only use REAL testimonials on your landing page.

Real testimonials are grounded in reality. This means there’s a mix of both positive and not-so-positive elements in the testimonials.

Above all else, use testimonials from happy customers who got results that are not outliers.

Otherwise, your testimonials might seem too good to be true and won’t carry much weight with people you’re trying to convince.

5: List Out The Benefits Of What You’re Promoting

One of the most common, yet powerful, copywriting tips you’ll ever come across is to write out benefits of your product, not features.

People buy based on benefits, not features. Benefits solve their problems. Benefits are easier to understand. Features, on the other hand, tend to degenerate into so much sales talk and technical jargon.

Sadly, too many marketers list SO MANY BENEFITS, they flood their prospects with information. This data overflow leads to, you guessed it, lower conversions.

Your landing page shouldn’t read like a laundry list or check list. Instead, it should be focused on a very small set of benefits which were strategically selected to appeal to your target readers.  To figure out which benefits to focus on, ask your target audience members.

Of course, you need to cross reference this information with the landing pages of your competitors to make sure you’re operating in the right ballpark.

6: Link Your Call To Action With The End Result Your Target Customers Want

One of the most useful copywriting conversion tricks you could ever learn involves pairing a call to action to a specific benefit the reader wants.

For example, instead of relying on the tired and weak “Click Here” try using “To finally get rid of the high costs and headaches of random outsourcing, enter your email here to take your labor sourcing results to the next level!”  See the difference?

People buy because they are looking for solutions. By pairing the action you want people to take with the benefit they are looking for, you increase the likelihood they will take that action. Clear, right?

Well, marketers tend to blow this technique when they end up listing a ton of benefits with the call to action. Not only does this result in horrible run on sentences, this dilutes the conversion power of your call to action.

The reader is simply too confused to take any action at this point.

The solution?

Focus on one central benefit and pair that with the conversion action.

This is quite risky because your target audience might be looking for a number of benefits instead of just one.

This is where split testing comes in. Test different landing pages with different action-tied benefits and see which pages produce the best results with your traffic.

Don’t Be A Victim Of ‘Proven’ Landing Copywriting Techniques

Make no mistake about it, the landing page copywriting techniques we’ve just covered can turn your landing pages into quick winners.

However, you have to use them the right way. Avoid the common implementation pitfalls outlined and truly take your landing page conversion rates to the next level!

If you want to know more about avoiding these and other copywriting mistakes, take a look at the featured resource below where you can download a copy of a free report, Copywriting Blunders, so you will be further forewarned. Download, read it and take action 😊

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4 Traffic Generation Tips For Affiliate Marketers

4 Traffic Generation Tips For Affiliate Marketers

So you are interested in affiliate marketing. That’s great because it is a relatively quick, virtually risk-free way to start making money online.

Let’s quickly explain affiliate marketing for beginners in case you are unsure of how it works.

Basically, affiliate marketing is when you promote someone else’s products and when someone buys through your affiliate links, you get paid an affiliate commission.

As an affiliate marketer, you’re acting like a salesperson for the company. You sign up for their affiliate program, help to make a sale, and then the company rewards you.

The best thing about affiliate marketing is that it is incredibly scalable. A typical salesperson will only sell products from one company, or their own products and services. As an affiliate marketer, you can promote products from many different sources and earn commissions from all of them.

Many people try to start with Amazon affiliate marketing because Amazon is such a large, household name. The problem is that their affiliate commissions are tiny compared to other affiliate programs. Don’t rule Amazon out but you need to have realistic expectations when using it.

How much money can you make as an affiliate marketer? Well, the possibilities are endless, and the top performers are easily making 6-7 figure incomes online, and best of all, they don’t have to create or support their own products.

There are many affiliate platforms and programs that you can apply to join depending on your niche.

But if a product or service looks like a good fit for you and they don’t offer an official affiliate program, you can reach out to them and see if they would be willing for you to promote it to your audience in return for a commission. Many companies will agree because it is a win-win for them, After all, you are sending traffic to their offers so it’s not costing them any time or effort unless they make a sale.

And on the topic of traffic…

As an affiliate marketer, it’s crucial that you know how to drive traffic to your offers. This is a skill that will make or break you. So, you’ll to need to devote a huge chunk of your time in the beginning to learning how to drive traffic. While simple in concept, it’s not entirely easy and will require effort on your part.

Unlike product creators who can rely on affiliates to drive traffic, as an affiliate, you can only count on yourself. The traffic you generate can either be from free methods or paid traffic.

If you have the budget for it, you can use paid traffic. It’s faster and you get feedback much quicker. You have complete control of targeting so you will know who sees your ads and if you get your targeting right, you should be able to break even on your ad spend on your front end offers.

This effectively means you are building a buyers list for free and this is a crucial part of any online business as these buyers can be put in front of more offers.

However, if you’re a beginner and short on funds, there are many free methods of traffic generation that are effective too. The term ‘free’ is deceptive because you’ll be paying for it in time and effort, and you must be patient before you see any noticeable results; this may be frustrating, but you need to understand this from the beginning!

Nevertheless, you can drive free traffic and still make sales if you know what to do. Below you’ll find a few tips that you should always bear in mind when driving traffic.

Know Where Your Audience Hangs Out

You must know where your niche audience hangs out. If it’s a bodybuilding crowd you’re targeting, they’ll probably be on bodybuilding forums, fan pages for bodybuilders, YouTube channels featuring fitness experts and so on. So, you can go into these places and start siphoning traffic from there to your sites.

It is important to know who your target market is and what they are looking for. This is so often overlooked by marketers of all persuasions because it isn’t the most interesting thing to do, but it is one of the most important!

Create an ideal customer avatar and refer to it whenever you are writing sales copy, blog posts or creating videos to promote your affiliate offers.

If you know who they are, what they want and their specific pain points, you will be much more successful in gaining the sale.

Start With One Method

The reason so many marketers never do well with traffic is because they never focus their efforts on one method. If you’re going with video marketing, create a good channel and keep making videos till you have a following. Learn how to optimize your channel and videos so that you rank.

If you’re using Facebook groups, learn how to get more members in your group and post stuff that they like, and which can be linked to your web properties.

If you are blogging, learn to write interesting and engaging posts that are crammed with helpful information that your readers will enjoy and appreciate. Be consistent and write often. Don’t write short posts but instead go for longer posts that can go into more detail (a 1000 word minimum is a good benchmark to aim for). Learn about SEO so you can get your blog posts ranked in the search engines.

Pick one traffic method and strive to master it until you have an avalanche of traffic coming to your sites, etc. Once that’s successful, you can move on to the next traffic method while maintaining the current one.

Repeated And Relentless Effort

Driving traffic is a continuous process. Keep repeating your efforts and never give up. Even if your first few videos have only 10 or 20 views, keep going. Over time you will get more views and a bigger audience.

It takes time for things to snowball. remember what I said earlier; patience is key with free traffic methods.

The same applies to most traffic methods. The more videos you have, the more traffic you’ll get. The more people in your Facebook group, the more comments and engagement you’ll get. The more blog posts you write, the more visitors will come to your website. The more paid ads you create, the higher your chances of finding winning campaigns. It’s all a matter of time and repeated effort.

Engagement

This is another important factor. Engage with your traffic. Reply to comments on your videos. Like and respond to comments in your Facebook groups and ads. If you have commenting enabled on your blog and someone takes the time to comment, reply to them and thank them for taking the time to comment.

The more you engage, the better your relationship with your audience will be. They’ll grow to like you, trust you and will eventually buy through you.

Remember these pointers when driving traffic. It’s not as difficult as most marketers make it out to be. Once you understand how it works and you’re consistent, you will see results. The key to traffic generation is consistency. That’s where most marketers fail.

Get this right and you’ll have all the traffic you want.

Once you have started to make progress you can rinse and repeat with another traffic method.

If you want to know more affiliate marketing, then check out the featured resource below for a free Affiliate Marketing Machine report which complements this post perfectly; download, read it and take action 😊

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Make Money Blogging As A Career

Make Money Blogging As A Career

Blogging has been a widely known concept for quite some time now. While they may not know the technical ins and outs of how it works, many men and women have heard about blogging in pop culture.

Julie and Julia is a good example of this. It’s a movie that originated from a true-life tale of Julie Powell, who set out to blog about her experiences cooking each of Julia Child’s 524 recipes from her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking in just 365 days.

Her blog became so popular that she was offered a book and movie deal for her efforts, and she also published her second book. Her success isn’t common, but not everyone needs a book and movie deal to make a substantial profit from their blog!

The benefits of blogging are huge; it is free or cheap to start so the risk-reward benefits are huge. Starting a blog is simple; you can start with a WordPress blog for free if you want to, but I would suggest paying a few bucks for a domain name and hosting if you want to take the whole thing seriously and really want to make money blogging.

How Blogging Works And Where Most People Go Wrong

 

Looking for “blog jobs” online is something many people do these days. They know they love to post on Facebook, and they hate their current 9-5 job, so they think they’d love to get hired as an official blogger for a company.

It’s true that more and more companies are coming onboard as blog entities – because they understand the value of having a social media presence online, part of which is their blog audience (in addition to Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus, for example).

But you have to understand that when a company sets out to attract a blogger to represent their business online, they don’t want an amateur blogger. They want someone who knows how blogging works and understands the business side of blogging – because when you’re a blogger, you’re building a brand (or destroying it, in some unfortunate cases).

When you start looking at professional blogger-for-hire jobs, you’ll see that they want you to understand online marketing fully, they want you to deliver a certain number of blog posts per week (usually five), and sometimes want you to go out and find guest blogging opportunities where you can blog elsewhere and link back to their main blog.

It’s not a good career for someone who is new to blogging and thinks it “might be fun.” This is for seasoned professionals – and sometimes the company will even want to investigate to see what kind of current reach you have with your own content in the social media world.

If you’re already at a company that doesn’t have an online presence, then maybe you can make a suggestion that they allow you to head up that operation. This would give you a little experience so that you could then go out and brag about launching and generating a good buzz for your current company.

Blogging To Make Money

The do-it-yourself blogging to make money route is far more rewarding. It’s something you can do anytime – in the morning before work, on your lunch hour, after work and on the weekends.

Then when it becomes profitable, you can use it to replace your current income and begin blogging fulltime. When you choose this path, you have much more personal satisfaction in your blogging career.

If you want to learn more about monetizing your blog, check out this post here.

Blogging is a real business when you start pursuing it for financial reasons. Yes, it gives you much in terms of happiness – but when you’re making money doing something you love, it’s very rewarding.

You have to treat this like a business from the very start. If you start blogging haphazardly, then your readers will recognize that it’s an amateur site. Yes, some will become fans anyway – but others want to know they’re following a leader in whatever niche you choose to blog about.


By the way, if you are serious and want to take your blogging to the next level, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint. This is a premium level training that takes you through each and every step of setting up your own highly profitable blog and profiting from it. You can check it out here.


How do you pick a niche for your blog? Some blogs have a multitude of topics – from entertainment to fashion to business to health. You can do that, but unless you have a team of contributors, it’s hard to maintain the momentum needed for a broad blog like this.

A better option might be to narrow down your focus into something that you really love. It can still be broad – like a women’s health blog for example. But it’s not as narrow as “everything” or “health in general” (including both genders).

You can even drill down more and go with one form of women’s health, like menopause or pregnancy. You don’t even need to be an expert in it – it’s all about sharing information and as you learn, you can share!

One thing that’s important is that you make sure that you love whatever topic you’re blogging about. You should want to wake up every day, eager to get to your computer.

If you dread it because it bores you or it’s depressing, then you won’t help your readers and the blog won’t become profitable for you.

Aside from the overall slant, you get to choose what each individual entry on your blog is all about.  If you were blogging for another company, they might tell you what to blog about each day – even if you found it mundane.

You can set an entire editorial calendar for your blog where you choose which topics are presented to your readers. You also get to pick the tone for the blog pieces.

For example, let’s take the diet niche. You could be a fad and trend diet blogger who emphasizes fast weight loss – or someone who harps on the fact that weight loss should just be the adoption of better nutrition and exercise and the pounds should come off slowly.

Benefits Of Blogging: Developing A Relationship With Your Readers

Having a relationship with your readers means they value your blog, and they share the link to it with other people. You want that type of connection because as a professional, the traffic and branding that you gain will be priceless.

When blogs have a loyal readership, they enjoy a fantastic word of mouth traffic flow. While many bloggers are out there buying links back to their site and paying people to help them get traffic, you can do it all for free.

First, pick topics they want to know about. Part of your job in relationship building is to listen to your audience and meet their needs. There are many ways you can do this.

Do some preliminary keyword research to find out what people want to know in your niche. Using the menopause example, you could go to UberSuggest.org and type in what are menopause.

This is known as a sentence starter – and it gives you some insight into what type of blog post you might want to do, such as:

  • What are menopause hot flashes like?
  • What are menopause symptoms caused by?
  • What are the best menopause vitamins?

A good keyword tool gives you help on what to blog about. But there’s more that you can do to find topics. You can look in forum threads and see what people are asking.

You can also simply invite your readers to submit questions to you. You can do this on your email autoresponder opt in form, or have a special contact form on your blog where people can engage with you that way.

Whenever someone emails you with a question, you can assume there are more people out there who are wondering the same thing. Use those questions as fodder for your blog topics.

When you start blogging about all of these things, it makes the audience feel like you’ve really got your finger on the pulse of the marketplace – like you have great instincts.

Next, write in a highly conversational style and end each blog with an invitation to connect. People need to feel like you’re speaking just to them – even if you’re not.

If you write, make sure it’s conversational and not stuffy like you’d write for a professional publication. If you make a video blog, look right in the camera and be casual and relaxed, not stuff and nervous.

When you end a blog post, you can ask a question or invite people to share their own $0.02 about the topic in the comments. Make sure that whatever comment system you’re using, it’s easy to find – because some are almost hidden.

Participate in the conversation that goes on in your blog comments. If people are kind enough to take you up on your invitation, then make an effort to have a dialogue with them.

Thank them for their comment, call them by name, and open up a discussion about what they had to say. You can use a plugin to help the comments become “threaded,” which helps all of your readers see who was responding to who.

Supporting Yourself Financially And Make Money Blogging

When you start blogging for profit, you should be consistent with your efforts. You should blog regularly – daily if possible, but at least several times a week. There are a few ways you can make money as a blogger.

Build a list from your blog so that whenever you have a new blog post, you can notify people about it. Also have an RSS system set up for people who use RSS feed readers to get notified of your new content.

Whenever you have a list, it gives you a certain amount of power – the power to instantly communicate with your target audience when you are selling or promoting products.

Because of this, you have to make sure that you don’t abuse that power by spamming their email with useless or irrelevant offers. If you do this, you build a reputation as a spammer.

Sell ad space for a certain amount of profits. You can arrange a specific area of your blog for ad space that people rent on a monthly basis, paying the ad revenue to you directly.

If you go this route, make sure you have specifics in place to control what kinds of ads can get placed on your blog – all the way down to the colors and animation of it if you want.

Sign up for AdSense, too. This can help you get clicks and revenue. You can put different sized ad banners on your blog, from buttons to skyscraper ads. You can include images or go with just text.

One thing you have to remember whenever you place any ads on your blog is that yes, it gives you some money when people leave your site for somewhere else – but in leaving, it also means someone else is capturing their name and email address and selling something to them, not you.

Promote tangible products as an affiliate. You can sign up as an Amazon Associate and promote anything they sell there that they offer a commission on.  Using our menopause example, if you promoted a chilled pillow, you could earn a percentage of each sale from your blog post.

Promote digital products as an affiliate. Digital products can be found at sites like ClickBank.com. You can sign up for free and get a hoplink (affiliate link) where you earn around 50% for each sale.

Create your own products and sell them from your blog. You don’t have to promote other people’s stuff. Why not create an info product (eBook, video or audio course) and teach something you blog about in more depth – or in a more comprehensive manner?

Offer services from your blog. Freelancing like writing, graphics, or other services can be offered right from your blog. Coaching is something you can offer. Many people pay top dollar for one-on-one coaching sessions via Skype or even email!

Blogging can be a very fun and very profitable venture if you approach it correctly. Don’t make the mistake of flying by the seat of your pants. If you do this, your blog will be scattered with topics, have no set monetization plan, and you’ll end up unhappy with the effort you’ve put in.

With proper planning and enthusiasm, you’ll never need to look for “blogging jobs” again – in fact, you might be the one putting out feelers for a professional blogger to come onboard and help you with your content needs! Being in a position of power makes a world of difference.

And remember, if you want a premium training on blogging the right way, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint which includes over the shoulder training on blogging the right way.

Or, if you just want some more basics to see whether blogging is right for you, check out the featured resource below for a free Blogging Fundamentals report; download, read it and take action 😊

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7 Mistakes To Avoid When Building A Website

If you are going to be successful with any type of online business, then you need to have a great website. This may seem obvious to some of you but there are some really terrible websites out there and I am sure the owners are not as profitable as they could be!

Your website is normally the first time a visitor will see you so it pays to make a good impression. If you are technically minded this may not be a daunting task for you.

However, the majority of people get put off by the technical aspects of setting up a website and there are a lot of mistakes that you can make. And this is why I wrote this article covering 7 of the most common (and most serious) problems that you may come across when building your website.

Hopefully this article will help you to avoid them and get a great looking website up and running with as little drama as possible, so without further ado, let’s get started…

1: Bad Hosting

The first website stumbling block is… BAD HOSTING

Oh yes, I’ve seen bad web hosting happen to good people. Don’t let it happen to you!

Website Hosting Quality

There’s a level of quality you must expect from a web hosting company and there are some very popular programs out there that don’t live up to that quality. Just because everyone registers their domain name at GoDaddy, it doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for hosting your website!

Bad hosting becomes a major stumbling block when problems come up, but solutions are hard to find. Like most services you’ll buy and need help with, customer support is key. Some companies are great at customer support while others are not.

I know when you’re new to this whole process it’s hard to know what companies to trust and who to bring your business too. That’s why it’s so important to education yourself. I recommend a combination of self-education and looking for recommendations from trusted colleagues to decide on a website host for your small business.

Features Of A Good Website Hosting Company

Of course it’s a good idea to know what you’re looking for, so here’s a checklist of website hosting features.

  • Good Price– Of course price is going to be a big consideration but PLEASE don’t make it your only one. Also don’t make the mistake of thinking that free hosting is the way to go. Hosting is so affordable that you have absolutely no excuses for not just considering a cost of doing business on the internet. Hosting is commonly available from about $5-$10 per month.
  • Get cPanel – cPanel is a great way to get access all the popular features without hassle. cPanel is a program that allows you to manage your hosting services in a user-friendly way. Your hosting account contains many features such as the ability to add email accounts, check your website statistics, install special programs on your site, backup your files and much, much more. Without cPanel these features can seem overwhelming and difficult to use. With cPanel it’s nicely organized and ready to go!
  • Get Fantastico or Simple Scripts – Another feature of a good host is the ability to install ‘add-ons’ to your account. These add-ons can be WordPress installations, membership forums, and more.
  • Software Upgrades & Backups – If you install your software and it gets out of date that can be a security issue. Make sure your potential host keeps up to date on upgrades and backups.
  • Email Included – Most hosting accounts come with unlimited email account setup.
  • Responsive Support – This could likely be the most important feature. Top-notch customer support is priceless. Make sure the host company you choose allows you to get your problems and issues solved quickly and easily. Most companies offer 24-7 phone support, I recommend you accept no less from your host.
  • Excellent Uptime – You want your site seen as often as possible. Make sure the uptime is as high as possible.
  • Statistics Tracking – Know where your visitors came from and how many landed on your site is important. Many hosts include quality statistics tracking for you to do on-demand market research.

IMPORTANT TIP – Over the years I’ve set up more websites than I can count for clients. One of the biggest self-created problems I’ve seen is website owners not knowing their own hosting and domain registration information.

If you get only one thing from this lesson get this –>>> Make sure you know your website hosting information. Save it somewhere safe!

Switching To A New Hosting Company

If you’re reading through the checklist above and finding that your current host is a sorry excuse for a hosting company then it’s probably time to switch. The first question you’re probably going to ask is whether this is difficult.

Well, the answer is maybe, maybe not. If you currently have a site setup in WordPress (which I highly recommend) then you’re going to need to move all your site files and your database.

What to Do Next – Step Over That BLOCK

So now that you’re equipped with some knowledge it’s time to take action. Don’t let your hosting be a stumbling block for long… it’s time to step right over it.

Don’t have website hosting? It’s time to go sign up for one!

Remember I said to take recommendations from trusted colleagues? Well I hope by now you’ve realized that my goal is to be a trusted colleague to YOU and provide you with valuable resources for your business.

My hosting company of choice is A2 Hosting. Of course they provide all the features I suggest you look for above. If you want to check them out, you can do so here: A2 Hosting.

2: Hard To Read

The second website stumbling block is… CONTENT THAT’S HARD TO READ

Make Your Website Easy To Read

Nothing turns a new visitor away faster than having to work hard to figure out what you’re trying to tell them. There are a lot of ways you can actually mess up your content’s readability, so let’s do the run-down of things not to do when designing a website you want people to read:

  1. Offensively Bright Colors – I had a client who loved using bright yellow highlights on text, blood-red bolded headlines and pink and blue text sprinkled in for good measure. It was an assault on the eyes! Please for the love of good design don’t add random colors and hope that alone will make people read your content. Catching the eye with a well-placed highlight is one thing, bombing your content with color is another.
  2. Not Enough Contrast – As a good rule I like black text on a white background. Our eyes are so accustomed to this format that it’s something I prefer not to mess with. If you choose to go with a color or even a black background, a word of caution; be careful that your text is read-able by making sure the contrast between your background and your content is strong.
  3. Hard to Read Fonts – I’m a big fan of typography but there’s a time and a place for fancy fonts. As I was browsing sites the other day, I came across a website that had all handwriting font. It was very difficult to read. There are many great fonts to use on your website but choose wisely and make sure they are easy to read. Limit your script type fonts to short headlines.
  4. No/Messy Formatting – Think about formatting as you add your content. WordPress has great features for formatting your content to make it look great: bullet-point lists, numbered lists, blockquotes, bolding and italics. Oh and don’t forget to break your content up by creating new paragraphs and headlines.

Above All, Remember Your Readers

The most important thing to remember above the extra details and the fancy fonts is that your readers don’t really care all that much.

Mostly your readers want the content they’re looking for and if you can deliver that to them, you are doing a good job.

3: You Don’t Know Your Audience!

The third website stumbling block is… MAKING A WEBSITE FOR YOU AND NOT YOUR MARKET

Mark My Words – Your Website is NOT For You…

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve seen websites built purely to fulfil a need to make something awesome for the person who’s building it.

Let me not mince words here: Your website is NOT FOR YOU, it’s for your visitors.

Sure you might like your black background and white font because it’s cool, but is it easy to READ?? Not likely. So are you trying to turn people away or do you just not care if you get visitors who like your site?

Please build your site with your potential customers and clients in mind! Check your EGO at the ‘virtual’ door and completely shift your mindset.

Don’t assume everyone who knows your business will know who you are or what your business is, assume they know nothing about you and don’t really care anyway… assume they’re asking themselves ‘What’s in it for ME?’… because they ARE asking themselves that.

Here are some tips to make sure you flip that thinking around and start building your site for your visitors, not yourself:

  1. Is It Readable? – So you like that fancy font because it’s pretty, but can we read it? Or you like a black background because it’s ‘different’ but are your visitors going googly-eyed trying to read the words on the screen (white font on a black background can be VERY hard on the eyes!). Make sure your visitors can read it and read it comfortably, and you’ll be giving yourself a much greater chance they’re return to read again.
  2. Is It Scannable? – Don’t assume your visitors are going to read every word from top to bottom before they figure out if they’re going to stick around your site. Make sure with an easy scan of the site that they can figure out what it’s about. Repeat yourself! Don’t assume because you’ve hidden the information away in a little corner they’re going to dig in and find it, put important items up front and center.
  3. Is It ART or MARKETING? – I’ve seen some pretty useless ‘pretty’ sites! Please don’t make the mistake of favoring form over function! I’d rather see you with a black and white, bare bones site with tons of useful content than a beautiful but useless site that people come look at and leave again because they thought it was pretty but didn’t know what to do next. Look I’m not against awesome-looking marketing but make sure you don’t use up all your energy on the artistic part and none on the marketing part.
  4. Who Are You Trying to Impress??? – It drives me bonkers when I see website owners get caught up in making impressive displays that they somehow think will ‘wow’ their visitors into buying. Your visitors are not looking to be entertained or bowled over by your impressive site, they just have a need and if you can solve it, they’ll be happy to pay you. PLEASE don’t forget what you’re doing when building your website and stop trying to impressive with ‘flashy’ stuff… get them the goods they need (or want), and you’ll make more sales!

4: Hard To Navigate Sites

The fourth website stumbling block is… SITES THAT MAKE IT HARD TO FIND STUFF

Website Navigation is VERY Important

Have you ever looked at a great big corn maze and thought: “No, Not Today!” That’s just what many of your website visitors are going to say if you make them work through a maze of information to find what they’re looking for. They’ll fast-track it out of there before you can convince them it’s worth the effort.

Don’t make your site hard to navigate! Make it EASY for them to find the content they need. I’ve mentioned this before but it’s OK to repeat yourself when it comes to showing people the way to important content on your site.

If you WANT them to see your important pages, don’t assume they’re scouring every word on your site; assume they WON’T and put links in multiple spots, so they’ll come across them as they scan.

In terms of making your site easy to get through here are some ways to do that:

  1. Navigation Menu – A very common feature on many websites is the navigation menu. It is usually a bar across the very top of the site, below the website header graphic. It can be also in the sidebar or on the bottom of the site (as it is on these Stumbling Block pages).
  2. Links In Content – If you have one page that leads to another, then make it really obvious where to go next by telling your visitors what page to go to! Just tell them right at the bottom of the page to click on over to the next one.
  3. Breadcrumb Navigation – If you have multiple levels of pages a breadcrumb navigation is like a trail back to the homepage for your visitors. If you use WordPress, you can find several plugins that will automatically generate this for you.
  4. Don’t Complicate It – It’s not always a good idea to post every single page of your site on the homepage and then ask people to choose where to go. You must lead them through or you’re going to make it too complicated and confusing for them. If you give people too many choices, they will often choose none!
  5. Ask a Seven-Year-Old – Can a seven-year-old navigate your site and figure out what it’s about? If not, you might want to go back to the drawing board. Seriously! It should be that easy for people to figure out what your site is about and where to find the good stuff. We’re not looking to create a puzzle… keep it simple!

Overall you want your visitors to be able to easily navigate your site, consume the content and then either become a lead or buy from you.

We’ll talk about these important pieces in our remaining stumbling blocks so check them out in the navigation to the right (see what I did there)

5: Waiting For Traffic

The fifth website stumbling block is… THINKING “If your build it, they will come” WORKS FOR WEBSITES (it doesn’t!)

Traffic Must Be Funnelled to Your Website!

Let’s say you’ve built your site and it’s ready for visitors. Now you sit and wait for them to start filing in, right? WRONG!

If you want people to know your website exists, you must go out and TELL THEM SO. This isn’t a time to be shy or coy, straight out promote the heck out of that site by spreading the worth that it’s online and sending people on over to check it out.

There are plenty of ways to do this so you can pick your favorites. They include:

  • SEO – Get your site into the search engines and get found when people do searches.
  • Email Marketing – Build an email list and then send that list to your site. It’s a classic!
  • Social Media Marketing – Of course you know this one… Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram etc.
  • Articles & Blog Posts – Get your content published on other websites and linked back to your site.
  • Blog Commenting – Many popular blogs have tons of traffic. You can get a piece of that by posting comments with useful info.
  • YouTube – If you feel like getting in front of the camera or doing screenshare videos with a program like Camtasia then you can pull some nice traffic from YouTube.
  • Podcasting – Get found through Podcast directories, iTunes, etc.
  • Hosting Webinars or Teleseminars – You can partner with website owners to grab some of their traffic by hosting an event that they can send their people to.
  • Affiliates – Set up your own affiliate program and you’ll get partners sending you traffic and sales.

I know you want your website to be seen by as many eyeballs as possible so get on out there and promote that baby!

Good luck and happy traffic building.

6: Trapped By Your Website Designer

The sixth website stumbling block is… becoming trapped with a website you can never update or edit.

When Hiring a Website Designer, Be Smart, PLEASE!

I’ve seen it far too often with my customers and clients. They’ve hiring a website designer to build a fantastic site and the site looks awesome.

But what now? They have NO way to update it, NO idea how to do it and NO clue what to do next. So what they end up doing in many cases is starting over and using WordPress so they have a website they can actually use.

In the worst of these cases a website design company uses ‘proprietary’ software to build your website and you are completely trapped into staying with them or losing your website all together.

Be VERY careful when you hire someone to build your website that they are not trapping you into relying on them entirely for now and for the future.

One of the smartest things you can do for your online business is to learn how to control your own website. I firmly believe if you have that full control over your web presence you will be MUCH more successful.

Running a business requires you to react and respond quickly. Maintaining your own website will keep you on top of the market you’ve chosen to serve.

Another important reason to at LEAST know how to USE your site is that you can hire the right people for the job. Let’s say you’re not the DIY type (and that’s OK) and you really need to hire a website designer.

It is a smart idea for you to first learn the basics of building a website so that you know how to spot trouble before you hire it!

7: Not Enough Content

The seventh website stumbling block is… not giving your visitors (and the search engines) enough content to decide they want to do business with you.

Content is Your #1 Tool For Getting Leads & Sales

A big mistake many new website owners make is thinking that they can put up four or five pages on a website and use them to build a thriving online business. For the most part you’re going to need a whole lot more than that to get ongoing online profits.

There are many types of content you can use to grow your business, including:

  • Website pages & articles.
  • Blog posts.
  • Email newsletters, broadcasts & autoresponders.
  • Audio
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • etc…

You might be wondering how you’ll make money if you decide to give away tons of content for free. It’s a great question and the answer is that people will NOT buy from you at all if they can’t see the value in what they offer.

They can get that value from the free content you give away and they are more likely than not to be impressed to know where they can find more, learn more, hear more.

The key to giving away free content is to always have something to follow it. Some people might tell you to never give away your best stuff but I don’t agree. Sometimes you want to give away the very best of what you have so you can really impress your potential market.

If you only give away mediocre stuff, do you really expect they’ll be overjoyed and wondering where they can get more?


By the way, if you are serious and want to take your blogging to the next level, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint. This is a premium level training that takes you through each and every step of setting up your own highly profitable blog and profiting from it. You can check it out here.


Throughout this training I have told you about using WordPress for your website and its many benefits. As a content manager, WordPress is known as one of the very best available. Let me tell you what WordPress can do for your content:

  • Easily add new pages for articles or product information.
  • Create sales pages to sell your products from. (see an example here for my WordPress course)
  • Easily create blog posts to provide potential search engine rankings or attract new business.
  • Schedule blog posts into the future so you can have your site working for you, even when you’re not working!
  • Add audio and video to your site with ease.
  • Allow guest authors to post on your site with their own login information or create a multi-author blog for your business.
  • Easily enhance your content with images.

I’ve dedicated a large chunk of my time to helping small business owners like you learn how to use WordPress to grow their business.

I hope it will help you avoid many of the mistakes that I and many others have made along the way to building a successful online business.

If you want to know more about increasing conversions in your business, check out the featured resource below to grab a free report which will teach you how to boost your conversion rate. Download, read it, and take action 🙂

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Blogging For Profit Begins With A Long Term Plan Post

Blogging For Profit Begins With A Long Term Plan

Do you ever wonder, is blogging still profitable?

Many people dream of blogging for profit, and this goal is not far beyond the reach of someone with average intelligence, a willingness to work hard, and a basic grasp of blogging technology.

Many people want to know how to start blogging to make money, however, very few people manage to reap the profits they want from their blog. Why is that?

Most people who attempt to make money with their blogs do not succeed for two reasons.

Often, bloggers have unrealistic expectations of how fast their readership will grow and how much money they will make, and when these expectations are not met the disappointment can crush the desire to continue blogging.

The other trap that many bloggers fall into has to do with lack of planning. If you want to turn a profit as a blogger, the key to success is to make a realistic plan and stick with it.

How To Start A Blog For Profit

To succeed at blogging for profit, the main thing that you will need is a large readership. The higher your traffic, the more advertisers will agree to pay you.

However, cultivating the regular visitors that you will need in order to make a profit isn’t easy.

As more and more blogs appear each day, having a great idea or a wonderful writing style is no longer enough to get attention. You need to be able to market your blog effectively.

Too many bloggers spend all of their time writing posts and almost no time marketing their project. To be certain, updating as often as you can is a great way to keep your blog high on blogrolls and high in blog search engines, and once your readers know that you update frequently, they will return to your site on a regular basis.

However, it does not matter how often you update if nobody is reading your page, so don’t skimp on the time that you spend drawing visitors to your site.

To make your dreams of blogging for profit a reality, try decreasing your number of posts and using some of that time to draw new visitors by setting up link exchanges with other bloggers, making contacts in the blog community, and following other established modes of winning traffic.

Of course, even if you are a marketing genius or have a really great idea for a blog, success is not going to happen overnight. Building the kind of readership that blogging for profit requires takes time, and in all likelihood, it will be at least several months before you are able to turn much of a profit.


By the way, if you are serious and want to take your blogging to the next level, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint. This is a premium level training that takes you through each and every step of setting up your own highly profitable blog and profiting from it. You can check it out here.


Try to stay committed to your blogging project during this initial rough period. To stay motivated, set goals for how often you will update and how many readers you want to attract, and then reward yourself for sticking with your plan.

Also, when you are writing blog posts, you need them to be focused and engaging and the best way to do that is to write it for one particular type of reader.

Why You Should Write To One Person On Your Blog

People end up on your blog a number of ways. They may be referred to you by friends or colleagues or reach one of your blog posts through an Internet search. However someone finds your blog, that person doesn’t care how many other people you are trying to reach.

If you receive 1000 unique visitors to your blog each month, none of those human beings is thinking about any of the others.

This is why it is extremely important to write in the second person. This means addressing your content to the words you, yourself and yours.

No matter how much traffic you get, your blog is visited by a single person at a time. If someone was talking to you, across a coffee table in a friendly chat, wouldn’t you prefer it if they spoke to you as an individual, rather than a member of a group?

People love being recognized for who they are as an individual.

When you write your content as if you are speaking to that individual, a single person, that person that reads your content as if you were doing exactly that. When the human brain encounters the word “you” in communication, in print or online, in regards that communication is personal.

That person then becomes alert to the message you are sending. This sense of intimacy leads to your blog visitors reading more of your content and staying on the page longer.

This helps with search engine rankings, which means you get more generic traffic, and those additional web surfers also feel as if you are speaking to them in a one-on-one conversation.

Why Address A Single Person When I Am Blogging To A Large Group Of People?

Yes, it is true that you are marketing to more than one person. Unless you found a single client with unlimited means, you’re going to need to do business with many people for your blog to be a success. However, each one of these people is an individual, not a faceless group member.

Remember, your blog is only read by one person at a time.

This is why you should write to one individual. It is also why it is extremely important to deeply understand the needs and wants, worries and problems of your “perfect prospect”.

This allows you to very successfully connect with each of your blog visitors individually, by writing your content to a single person, helping solve the problems and answer the questions in their life.

Consider the following two statements, as if you found them on a blog post you are reading:

“Why do people want to lose weight?”

“Why do you want to lose weight?”

Which one of those statements seems more personal to you? Which one of those questions is likely to keep you reading, and make you feel like you are important to that blog writer?

The second question is obviously more intimate and personal in nature, which shows you exactly why you should create your content as if you are delivering it to a single person in a one-to-one conversation.

If you want a premium training on blogging the right way, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint which includes over the shoulder training on blogging the right way.

Or, if you just want some basics to see whether blogging is right for you, check out the featured resource below for a free Blogging Fundamentals report; download, read it and take action 😊

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