Louey37

My thing with exit popups is that I'm not just doing internet marketing and trying to push as many sales through the door as possible. I'm building a brand. And for me, every part of the users expereince has to be consistent with that brand.

And you know my brand - desperately grabbing at people who're trying to leave definitely isn't part of that.

If I was just running a shitty sales page site trying to push sales through the roof, I'd definitely consider using VSA but I feel like building a brand is a different kettle of fish.

I'm going to get my first adsense site up in the next few days so I'll let you know how it goes. CTR theme looks solid and I've heard good things about it.

AceB7

I was debating the same when considering popup. I opted instead for olark.com (Live help) sits on the bottom and I timed it to "open" after 120 seconds and ask if they wanted to book an appointment (Lead Gen).

Will give it a week or so and report back. Though I dont think it is to "salesy" if they are there for 2 mins they are interested.

Louey37

Ok, looks interesting. Let me know how it goes. I'm keen to see what other options are available.

I think the 2 minute timer is great because if they're there for 2 minutes and it's just asking them if they need help then it's going to be much less intrusive.

Louey37

Just discovered that my shopping cart abandonment rate is up around 50%. FAR too high. Has anyone used a merchant account other than PayPal? I think it's time to move on.

Has anyone used Authorize.net? I've seen plimus around a bit. Does anyone have any experience with it?

pinchyfingers

Jesus man, 50%? That's frustrating. Does PayPal give you options to optimize the cart?

letsmakemoney

Did you ever do the consulting with them? I'm in the same situation (looking for CRO help, but don't make enough for most companies). If so, how did it go? Was it helpful?

__________________
Complete Order and Project Management For SEO Service Providers - TheSEOMarketplace.com/SEO-Service-Providers

Louey37

I'm not using a paypal cart. I've got one from the email marketing / CRM / sales cart software I use.

I think it does have a lot to do with paypal though because I get quite a few messages from guys who don't have a paypal account and want to know if they can pay another way.

I'm going to check out Plimus in the new year and see what it can do for me. It looks like a better option because people can use paypal as well as just using other credit cards and what not.

Louey37

Haven't gone through with it yet. I'm still in the process of rewriting the email sequences at the moment and I'm only really able to tackle one thing at a time.

I'm going to do a few obvious adjustments to the site before I get in contact with him and see how they go. Once they're in, then I'll start using him because his talents wont be wasted on obvious changes.

If I do end up using him, I'll post it up in here so keep checking it out.

Otherwise, I've just posted up something in another guys journal who's looking at conversion rate optimisation and suggested that we do a skype call. We can dissect each others sites and throw out any ideas we have.

If you're keen, PM me and we'll see if we can hook something up.

verbose

Cant you use PayPal just a debit/credit card processor? I believe that may be an option. Great journal

Louey37

Yeah, you can. But I think that's the problem. People see paypal, don't have an account, and then just abandon the thing before they get a chance to see.

I'm not sure. I haven't tested it yet. I think I need to get some kind of feedback form like kissInsights or something so I can get to the bottom of it.

Also, just bought: The Phoenix|250 C Class IPs|PR 6-3 & LSI|2 Private Blog Networks (Full package).

It's for one of the toughest KW's I've gone after. I don't think I have a hope in hell of getting #1 or #2 but wikipedia is at #3 so I think I can beat them out.

booblizzi

great journal my man...i just read the whole thing and i think the paypal thing is a common one...u may wanna checkout out 2checkout.com as that seems to be one of the major paypal alternatives

Louey37

Thanks mate. Looks great. Have you used them yet?

For any of those who care, here's the latest site update:

I have 5 KW's at #1 with 44 on page one of google.

They're bringing an average of 1200 unique visitors per day and 33 conversions. That's an average conversion rate of 2.8%.

I've just had the ebook cover redesigned. The cover has been approved and I'm just waiting on the final version to come through. The new optin banner will be ready shortly after christmas and hopefully that'll lift the conversion rate above the target of 5%

Popup domination v3.1 doesn't work on my site so I'm going back to v2.5 just so it's up and running. I'll probably pull it down once the new optin banner goes up though.

Still chasing a few high traffic KW's which should stabilise traffic above 1500 unique visitors per day once I lock them down although most of my efforts are on convesions at the moment.

The new email sequences are almost ready with just 1 or 2 key emails still to be made. They're mostly video's and podcasts that I need help with but will have them tied down before the new year.

Louey37

Lesson - Don't mess with shit you don't know about.

At the start of the month, I was playing with some stuff in teh email autoresponder and I deleted something. I didn't think I was using it so it didn't seem like a problem. I've just found out that what I deleted was the main email autoresponder sequence and no-one has been getting any emails since the start of the month.

Stupid.

Don't mess with shit when you don't know about it. Learn about it then start to play with it.

Louey37

Lesson - Sometimes people are looking for a reason to buy

The average time frame from when someone signs up to the mailing list and makes their first purchase is 13 days. Basically no-one purchases my book after being on the list for more than a month.

But, what I've just found out is that they may just be waiting for a good enough excuse to buy.

You see, I just did something I've never done before - I ran a sale.

I discounted my book from $25 down to $12.50, my first workshop from $500 to $400, and my second workshop from $1500 to $1200.

The response has been out of this world.

In the 25 days in this month leading up to this sale, I'd sold 21 copies of my book at $25 each and 0 places in my workshops. That's a total of $525 or $21/day

In 4 days of the sale, I sold 26 copies of my book at $12.50, 5 spaces in my first workshop at $400, and 1 spot in my second workshop at $1200. That's a total of $3525 or $881.21/day.

That's a 3000% increase in sales.

And there's still 2 hours to go.

The really interesting thing is that the sale email only went out to people who've been on the list longer than 30 days - the people who never buy anything.

I'm assuming (at the risk of becoming an ass), that this means that they were looking for an excuse to buy and hadn't found one. They like the material, the like the concepts, but there was nothing to tip their hand and get the to take the plunge.

Running a time limited sale pushed them over the edge. They had an excuse to do what they wanted.

I'm now building this into my sales funnel. I'll try selling to them twice over the course of a month and if they don't bite, I'll just throw a quick sale up.

I have to find a way to get wordpress to run timed access to specific pages based on user IP. Not sure if this is possible but I'll check it out.

If anyone in wickedfire land has any expereince with this, please let me know.

Hav3n

Just a thought --- maybe it isn't so much of an 'excuse to buy' but rather a price point issue?

Maybe keep your book permanently 'on sale' at $12.50 from the start and don't let them ever get to 30 days inactive?

Sorta the sell 100 at $100 or sell 100,000 at $10.... you make more at volume.

EDIT: Or.... get them to bite earlier. Tell them it is on sale for the first 24 hours after they sign up ... then it returns to regular price after that?

Lots of ways to skin this cat.

__________________

Follow along as I build an Authority MFA

Bofu2U

Exactly. The sense of urgency really does help.

__________________

Louey37

Interesting thought. I'll have to split test it to figure it out.

I've actually just put the price up to $47 to see what kind of effect that has on conversion rates. I plan to put it on sale at $25 to see if people bite on that.

Do either of you guys know of any wordpress plugins that will allow me to do these kinds of IP synced, timed discounts?

loxllxol

Have you looked into DLGuard?

Louey37

I checked out DL guard. It seems great if you're running a membership site and selling downloadable products but I'm looking for something that can do what it does, but based on IP address.

I'll keep looking around. I might have to get someone to make one for me if I can't find anything.


L.

Louey37

I've encountered my first stubborn KW.

So far, I've had little to no resistance getting high rankings for keywords. I've finally come up against some tough competition.

The KW has 65k exact match searches per month and the pages ranking for it are actually SEO'd companies selling goods related to that KW.

I'm at 7 at the moment and 13 for a long tail variation with 22k exact match searches.

I've just purchased 1000 drip fed articles on ALN and pointed them at the URL. Interested to see how it goes.

Louey37

A few people have asked me about the 1000 ALN articles and where I got them from. Here's the link: Dominate Google - 1,000 High PR Blog Posts only $99

I've jumped to 6 already but I think that has to do with the 200 LSI content blog post links I bought for it a week ago.

Louey37

Vanity Metrics

I realise they're totally pointless statistics but they still make me feel good so I'm sharing them here.

Yesterday, we had a new record of visits to the site - 1763. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that the new email sequence links back to pages on the site, rather than providing complete emails so we've got more people heading back to the site.

Today, we set a new record for optins. With the optins today, to total number of optins over the last 30 days is just over 1000. When I took over the SEO of the site in June, we were averaging around 120.

I realise that both of these are pretty pointless figures as they don't really represent much in the grand scheme of things but they make me feel good so I thought I'd share them.

almograz

Nice ones Mr Vain!

Culture Beat: Mr. Vain - YouTube

Louey37

I'm seeing a really strong correlation between an increase in direct traffic and an increase in organic traffic. Every time my direct traffic goes up (through newsletter broadcasts with links in them) my organic traffic rises in direct proportion.

Anyone have any comment on this? Anyone had similar experiences?

Louey37

Just launched the second stage of my new email autoresponder and things are looking good.

Lots of engagement from people and getting reasonable click through rates.

Will be interesting to see how it effects overall performance

Interestingly, I nearly doubled the price of my book and the conversion rate is still the same (around 3% of optins). Not sure why. Might have to look into it a bit more.

l3msip

You noticed what search phrases they are using? Maybe they read your email, dont click the link but remember it a bit later and type your sitename into google.

Louey37

^^^ The thing is the email links have an anchor text that doesn't give away the title of the post.

I'm sure it's possible that some are doing that but it seems highly unlikely.


CONVERSION OPTIMISATION REPORT:

So I've just completed the first run of my email autoresponder sequence and the results are massively underwhelming.

Of the 296 people who opened the sales email, only 47 clicked the link and 4 purchased the book.

The sales page converted reasonably well (8.5%) but the email obviously bombed. A 15% click through rate is far less than the average of 60%

It's been a good lesson though. I've learnt a lot on this run through about what works and what doesn't.

- Whilst it's a sequence, each email is stand alone.

You can't rely on the previous emails headline / interest factor to get someone to open the next email. Each email has to stand on it's own two feet and has to deliver enough value that the person opens it, regardless of what happened in the previous email.

- Leave it for a day and come back

When you're writing an email / headline / any marketing material, it can be hard to really see whether or not it's going to work. Every time you write one, take some time away from it and come back to read it again. Ask yourself: if I woke up and found this email sitting in my inbox along with 30 others, firstly, would I open it? And secondly, would I take the action it wants me to before I checked out the other emails?

- You don't know till you try

There's only one way to get better at copy writing - give it a crack. You can read all you want and study your arse off but you're not going to get any better at it till you try and see what comes out.

That's all for now.

Opt in rates have actually dropped slightly because I'm getting much more direct traffic coming back to the site through the email autoresponder sequence these days. I'm in the process of finalising the banner design and have guys working on other optins to add to the page to see what it can do.

I've realised that I only need to increase my optin rate from 2.5% to 6.5% and maintain my current conversion rates in the other stages of the funnel to make as much money in a month as I made all last financial year.

That's rad.

Working on it now. I'll keep you posted.

Louey37

I'm giving this a crack. I'm setting a system where new optins get a 50% of voucher that's only valid for 72 hours after they sign up.

I'll see how it goes.

Louey37

AUTO RESPONDER SEQUENCE PHASE 1 RESULTS

I've just finished the first 1 month test of the new auto responder sequence I wrote (first one ever) and the results are in:

1000 people have gone through the sequence over the last month.

Open rates start at 24% (email 2) and drop down to 13% by the end of the sequence (30 days later).

Click through rates start at 18% (Email 2), then drop to 16% (Email 3 and 4) and stay below 10% going as low as 6% (email 8 and 11).

It’s easy to see where the holes are in the open rates and click through rates so I know where to go form here.

***I tried pasting the spread sheet data up here but the forum doesn’t hold the formatting

I think it's pretty clear where the changes need to be made. Unfortunately, the sales email (#8) had the lowest click through percentage of all emails so I there's definitely room for improvement there.

The structure is stolen from Frank Kern's Mass Control if anyone cares.

There's an authority sequence (emails #1-#3), a build up sequence (emails #4-#7), sales email (#8), then build up sequence (#9-#12) and the download they get on email #12 is a 1/3 sample of the product with a sales link in it. It only went out yesterday so I don't know how many people will purchase because of that sample.

Change that I'm making:
- I'm adding another sales email in at number #9 and probably another one at #10 and pushing the second sequence back.
- Playing with the titles of the low opening emails and the content of the low click through emails

SALES

This sequence was to sell an ebook. Even though I almost double the price of the book, conversion rate from opt in to purchase remained steady at 3.51%

With the increase in traffic that's happened over hte last month, I almost doubled the revenue from book sales.

OTHER CONVERSION RATE OPTIMISATION STUFF

I'm almost finished setting up the new site and should be testing the new optin tools within a week. I'm just waiting on a few little technical changes to be made to the site and the new internal layout of my free book to be finished. Current optin rate is up on last month at 2.76%. Last month was 2.52%

The autoresopnder sequence that takes a book purchaser through to purchasing the workshop is currently running with the sales email to be sent tomorrow. Should be interesting to see what kind of sales conversion rates come through that.

I'll put the email conversion rates up soon.

almograz

Dude I've never watched mass control... But I reckon you should have way way more sales e-mails.

A rule of thumb that a very good copywriter friend of mine (wrote copy that sold $12 million) is:
1 email that gives value
1 sales email

Gives them a lot more options to buy. And it's pretty fucking simple.

I know you're of the kind that doesn't believe people need to be weird and act according to a formula so don't get too caught up in it

as long as you're giving value and giving them an opportunity / reminder that there is ever BETTER content if they care to open their wallet, you're on top of it. Just my 2c.

Good stuff to read this bro.

Louey37

At the moment, I've got it set up so that the Mass Control sequence rolls on but in the side bar of every email, there's a link to my book.

At the moment, the book sales page is the 4th most traffic site behind to of my mega KW landing pages and my home page. It seems like it's working so I think I'll keep going with it. I just need to get better at writing this shit now.

When I've got some more spare time in the future, I might put together an autoreponsder sequence that goes like what you're suggesting and split test it to see how it works. It's just that they take so much time to write out.

You know how painful I find copy writing...

Ishbal

so how much are you making daily?

Louey37

About $1,000,000... Wait. Did you say DAILY or HOURLY?

james319

This is so fricking inspiring! I've just read through the entire thread. Thanks for doing this, Louey!

Louey37

No worries mate. All I can say is get into it!

Louey37

Taken my first big hit...

The google update a few das ago kicked my arse... Traffic is down 25%.

I didn't lose any ranking for my major KW's but all the long tails I ranked using shit article marketing links fell out of the rankings completely.

But for some reason, optins are up 20%. Strange... Not sure why but I hit a record for optins yesterday.

Lets see how this plays out.

FireWater

Nice progress.

What are you doing for SEO apart from the few services you bought here?

Louey37

LESSON -- Little things make big differences.

I'd noticed a drop off in book sales over the last few days and I couldn't work out what was causing it.

I logged on and saw that the traffic to the book sales page had dropped by 60% when I changed the anchor text in the menu bar to the page.

I changed the anchor text to a different variation of the first anchor text and the traffic increased by 80% over night.

Little things make BIG difference.

Lesson learned.

Louey37

I did a whole bunch of on site optimization before I kicked off things here but I'm not sure what else I could do. Is there something specific you want to know more about?

FireWater

Off-page - I was thinking you might have done more link building to produce your current traffic levels?

All of your traffic is organic search right?

almograz

I've seen some drops for one of my sites and almost exactly the same thing - record sales that day. Weird shit.

If you want a good service to rank longtails with links that actually have juice (and almost unlimited anchor texts):
ALN Service End Of The World Sale - 45 Daily In-Content PR Blog Links

I LOVE those guys.

<3

almograz

Lol. He did a fuckton of linkbuilding. You got to do linkbuilding to build your ranking - unless you have a natural source that actually gets people linking to you.

Louey37

Just checked out those ALN guys. The control panel looks great. I love the idea of being able to play around without having to send through emails and not get responses for 5 days.

I've just sent them an email to see if their special is still running and then I'll sign up.

Have you seen good movement with it?

Louey37

Just signed up mate. They look great. I bought a 3 pack and will probably grab another one in a few days.

Louey37

HUGE WIN!

Today, I received an order for a spot in my workshop and that put me into the $xx,xxx range for the first time ever in a month.

An average month turns over $2k - $3k and I've even had one month that hit $7k but today is the first time I've EVER cracked $10k.

Mind you, it's only $10k of orders and I seriously doubt I'll collect all of it. Even if I do, it'll be spread out over 2 months, but still, it's a great day.

Given the nature of what I do, I doubt I'll do much more than $2k more orders this month but I should collect all of that this month.

So, if you're wondering if it's possible to go from 'I don't know if I can do this' to 'fuck yeah, this shit is really possible', then let me tell you, it is.


L.

Louey37

LEARNING LESSON - There's no point in making long sales

When I run a discount, 30% of orders are placed in the first 24 hours. 69% are made in the last 24 hours. Fuck all is done in between.

The only thing you do by running a long sale is make yourself look desperate to move stock.

Three to four days max. Everything outside that is a waste of time.

Louey37

SHIT JUST GOT SERIOUS

Email sequences are up and running, conversions are happening, copy writers and writing, and I just set up my first Website Optimiser experiment.

Yes. It's serious time.

almograz

Fuck yeah to everything in the last 10 days!!

Louey37

LEARNING LESSON - Make sure you read the instructions very carefully when you're doing something new. Don't just rush ahead.

Otherwise, 4 days worth of your google website optimiser results wont be worth shit.

Louey37

LEARNING LESSON - You don't know shit until you test it.

Finally have some data back from G Website Optimiser. After 360 views each, the results are starting to come in.

Control conversion rate - 1.36%

Variation 1 conversion rate - 3.67%

Money.

I thought the control was better. Turns out I was very wrong. It's time to put the entire site through Website Optimiser.