Now that you have a website and your autoresponder, it's time to create a product of real value that you can give away. There are a couple types of products that you can give away, but I would highly recommend information so that's what I'm going to talk about.
Information is quick and cheap to produce, all you have to do is know a bit about your prospects, which shouldn't be a problem since you did Step #2 right?
Since you know what your market is trying to achieve by searching the internet, all you have to do is give it to them. Brainstorm a bit and figure out what their number 1 goal is. If you can get them 1 step closer to reaching that goal with your information, you've got a winner.
For example, if you're in the dog training niche, what is the biggest, most pressing concern a new dog owner has? Probably potty training right? A dog that jumps up on people or doesn't come right when you call him is much more bearable than a dog that always soils your carpet.
If you can write just a few pages about something that your prospect can take action on and achieve, you'll have gained their trust. Remember, this is your first impression so you want to make it as good as possible. If you just give them a crappy ebook about dog history or something, they won't care if you send them another email. But if you taught them how to potty train their pup and it worked, they'll be excited to hear from you to learn more, this is what you're after!
Here's a list of questions you can ask about your prospects to come up with a killer lead magnet…
- What is the #1 goal they could achieve, and how can you get them 1 step closer to that goal?
- What keeps them up at night?
- What do they desire most?
- What are they afraid of?
- What other products have they bought/been sold?
- What frustrates them every day?
Delivery
There are a variety of ways to deliver your information, I have experience with two of them so I will suggest you use those.
First is an ebook. Ebooks are simple to make and pretty much everyone that has an internet connection can read them. All you have to do is type up your info into a Word document or OpenOffice doc, and hit the "convert to pdf" button. It couldn't really get any simpler.
Then you zip the file and deliver it to your new prospect's with a download page and your autoresponder.
The second delivery method I learned from my fellow marketer, Igor Kheifets. It's a great way to instantly deliver your information and move your new subscriber down a line of steps. Note: this won't work if you have 30 pages of information to give away. In fact it works best with about 3 pages, or a couple videos.
Basically what you do is spread your lead magnet out across several web pages. So if you have a Step 1, Step 2, and Step 3. Direct them to step 1 right after they subscribe. Then at the bottom of step 1 put a link that says "Go on to Step #2" and so on.
When they hit the last step, you can put a link at the bottom that leads them to one of your products, an affiliate product, or anything else that you want them to see and may help them learn more about the topic.
This delivery system makes sure that they see your content immediately and move down the path that you want them to.
Using WordPress to do this can save you a lot of time since it's so user friendly. However, I wouldn't suggest you use normal blog posts or pages because of the high number of links that could distract your new subscribers and send them elsewhere. If you're not an HTML geek like me you can pick up my WordPress landing page templates, they work perfect for this sort of thing.
After you have your lead magnet all ready to go, you've got to hook it up to your autoresponder so your new subscribers will be instantly taken to it after they sign up.
To do this just log in to Aweber and create a new list. Follow the simple instructions to get it all set up. When you create your web form during step #2 there is an area that you can customize where new signups are directed. In that box, choose "custom URL" and put in the URL of your download page (if you chose ebook) or your step #1 web page (if you chose the second option).
That's it! You're one step closer to gathering subscribers and building your list.
ACTION STEPS: Create Your Lead Magnet
Step #1: Brainstorm your ideal prospect's biggest, most urgent problem and how you can fix it.
Step #2: Write a short information product that contains actionable content to help your new subscriber reach his/her goal.
Step #3: Decide on a delivery method; ebook or web pages.
Step #4: Create your pdf with openoffice (what I use), or create your web pages that will deliver your content. Pick up these WordPress templates if you'd like an easy way to do it.
Step #5: Hook your new subscriber magnet to your autoresponder. (It's the URL that your web form redirects to if you're using single opt-in)
There you have it! In just a few hours you could have a hot lead magnet that will build trust with your subscribers and have them asking for more!
Wow! It's been awhile since I posted step #3 to the List Building Crash Course, but I'm back and hopefully will get this thing back on schedule. Today I'm going to dive in to step #4 of starting your list…Getting the essential tools.
So far if you've been following this tutorial, you should have your market all picked out and your WordPress blog up and running. Now you need to start building your list, so let's get an autoresponder!
It's very important that you don't skimp here. This is how you are going to communicate with the massive list that you are going to build. If you go for a cheap or free method, you may find that the huge list of email addresses you've spent time and money building is worthless because your emails get caught in spam filters and don't get read!
As your business progresses, you are going to be sending thousands of emails to thousands of people weekly, and if only 3% of those emails get to inboxes, your business will be sunk. And I can guarantee that if you do it yourself this will be the case.
The best way to build a stress free list that you can communicate with is to start out right from the beginning. This means having someone else (with more resources and knowledge than you) manage your list. Thankfully this is extremely cheap to do too. For just $20/month you can have Aweber manage your email list and send out any followups you want them to. Plus you can make an unlimited number of new lists so there's lots of versatility.
If you think $20 per month seems too expensive, then you need to go back to step #1 and get your business mindset back. This is a business expense (that you can write off by the way) and is a necessary part of owning an internet business. Plus once you get serious about your business making $20 a month from your list will be no problem at all, so don't worry about it! Investing in the right tools will pay you back exponentially in the long run.
ACTION STEPS:
1. Go to Aweber right now and buy their autoresponder for $20/month. I believe you can even get your first month free, which will allow you to get your list up and running and earning money before you even pay anything.
2. That's it for today! It's an easy step, but so important to having a thriving online business. Do it now.
Welcome to the List Building Crash Course…Step #3! Now that you are in the business mindset (step #1) and know your market (step #2) it's time to establish your online presence.
So here's the key question…Do you have a website that acts as your business hub?
I don't suspect you would start a brick & mortar business without having a place of business, so why would you start an online business without having a hub that is your online place of business?
I know you may not want to spend any money because you were told on the internet "You can make money for free!" which I guess is true, but it's so much harder. Plus, all your work affiliate marketing is not building on something you will ultimately benefit from. Remember, we are trying to build a business, not just make a few bucks online.
And a normal part of any business is expenses. But unlike the old brick and mortar businesses, it only costs like $20 to start a business online, instead of paying thousands of dollars a month to pay for a building and all the physical things you need in the traditional business.
By having your own website, you can point all your marketing efforts to that site, getting your business name out there and known instead of promoting some other site like Squidoo or Hubpages like crazy. It's much more effective to build your own site in the long run, and actually not that much less effective in the short-term.
Sure Hubpages will rank higher and faster right out of the gate, but you don't control those properties, which makes them hazardous to your income. If they decide your content doesn't fit their site all of a sudden you're sunk. But if you've got your own site your good to go.
So I hope, by now, you are convinced that you definitely need your very own website. So go get one! It's so easy to get your first website up and running that I'm going to give you some simple steps to do it right now, no more procrastinating!
Your First Website Up and Running In 1 Hour Or Less
ACTION STEPS
Step #1: Go to Namecheap.com and register a domain name. If you've already got a clever business name or something grab that. Or you can do something similar to what I did and register your-name.com or something similar. Just make sure it isn't something that you'll hate in the near future and you're good to go. This step will cost you a whopping $9.69.
Step #2: Go to Hostgator.com and buy a hosting plan. The one I use is called the "Baby plan" and is only $10/month, talk about low business expenses! I would avoid getting the smallest plan because it only supports 1 domain, and in the future (maybe right now) you will want to be able to easily add new domains. If you're feeling real professional and want a toll free number for your visitors to be able to call go for the "Business plan."
All of Hostgator's plans are pretty good, they give you unlimited disk space and bandwidth so, in my opinion, it's the best option for your first hosting plan.
Step #3: Login to Namecheap.com, go to "manage domains," and click on the domain you just purchased. Then go to modify Domain Name Servers (DNS) and point the DNS of your new domain to your Hostgator account. You can find the DNS in the welcome email that Hostgator will send to you. (They look like this: ns###.hostgator.com)
 Step #4: Install WordPress onto your new domain. This is insanely easy with Hostgators cpanel setup. Type in this address into your browser: http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel. This will take you to your new website's cpanel. From there click on the little Fantastico icon, then scroll down to WordPress and select that. Then just click "New Installation" and follow the simple steps to instantly install WordPress onto your website.
Step #5: Customization. You've now got a website up and running, but it's probably using a default WP theme and doesn't look very good. So what you want to do is browse through some themes and find a good one that you like and fits your business. Don't spend too much time on this step, you could literally customize your site for hours, but it won't do much for your business, so try to stick to productive activities.
Another important customization step is adding plugins to your new site. You can find them by logging into your wp admin area, then navigating to "Plugins" then "Add New." This will give you a search box where you can enter keywords to find the plugins you want to install. Here's my top 10 list that I install on every site I make:
- All-in-one SEO (Great little SEO plugin)
- All-in-one Webmaster (to make integrating with Google webmaster easy)
- Contact Form 7 (easy contact form so I don't have my email published)
- Google Analytics for WP (web tracking is a must)
- Google Web Optimizer (split testing made easy)
- cbnet ping optimizer (so your blog does ping spam SE's)
- prettylink (easy link customization/redirection/cloaking)
- smart sharing (adds the cool floating share window. Can't find this through WP site, get it here
- Exclude Page From Navigation (So I can create squeeze pages and not have them on my WP menu)
- Google XML sitemaps (auto uploads sitemap to Google)
There are a ton more plugins, but I try to keep things as simple as possible. Start with these 10 and get them all set up and operational, including Akismet that is already installed on your site.
Step #6: Create Some Pages. Your website should be pretty good-looking now, so you've got an official business hub on the internet, congratulations!
Now you can create some content pages like an About Me, Contact, Privacy Policy, all that stuff, and maybe even write a couple small blog posts about your business and where you're headed.
You're now set to start getting visitors to YOUR website, and can now create squeeze pages and host download pages and everything you need to run an online business. See you in step #4 where we discuss autoresponders, why you need one, and what you should and shouldn't be looking for in one.
So now that we know that we have to get in the right mindset, that we need to focus on building a business slowly, not just trying to make money online. It's time to dig in and get started with our marketing plan. If you missed step #1, read about the internet marketing mindset here.
And like I said I'll be tagging everything with [LBCC] since it's the List Building Crash Course…so it's easy to find. =)
Choosing Your Market
It's really important that you do this step and put a lot of thought into it. If you just go with the first thing that sounds good, it will be really hard to build a sustainable business, especially if it's not something that you enjoy. That said, think about what you like to do and how you could sell information to people who like the same things.
There are a ton of markets out there so it's not necessary to go into one or the other just because "it seems like there's money in it." If you're passionate about something, you'll find the money in your market. If you go into a market that seems like there's money in, but you have no passion or drive to continue, you'll never succeed with your business because it will just be too hard to keep going.
Getting To Know Your Market
Choosing the market you're going to dive into is not quite enough. If you want to be effective in your niche you need to have intimate knowledge about the people you will be marketing to. Remember, in order to build a business in your market, you must provide value. In order to provide value, you must know what your market deems as valuable (seems simple right?)
Truthfully this can be one of the harder things to figure out, at least it was (and is) for me. I tend to focus too much on myself and how I see things in my market, instead of focusing entirely on what OTHER people think/feel/need. To figure out what your market needs you must become one of them. Start frequenting the forums, start conversations with people and learn what kind of questions they have. Once you figure out what they are looking for, then you can give them what they need.
ACTION STEPS:
I decided that I need to include action steps on each one of these posts. After all, theory is good but what do you do with it?
#1: Brainstorm some ideas about some markets that you would LIKE to get into. Not that you think would be good money makers. What do you want to do? What areas would you like to become an expert in? You don't have to be an expert in your desired field yet, but you should want to become one. Reaching expert status will help you make more sales and build a bigger audience faster.
#2: Once you have your business ideas, you better see if there is money in it. I know I said that you'll find the money, which is true to a point. But if it's something obscure then you may have trouble finding the people in your market. To do this, visit some sites like Clickbank.com and Amazon.com and do some keyword searches for your niche. See if there are products already being sold to those people. If so, then you've got a green light to go forward.
#3: Now that you know what market you'll be diving into, start getting to know those people. Visit forums and Yahoo answers and do Google searches to figure out what kinds of questions they have. Where do they need help and what goals do they have? Once you know who your prospects are, what they need, and what goals they are trying to achieve, then you'll be set to give them exactly what they want.
Write all this stuff down! It's very important to keep a log of what you're doing. That way in the future if you start to lose focus you can 'reset' and see what your business plan was in the beginning.
As always if you have any questions or comments please leave them below, I'd be happy to help in anyway I can!
When I first heard about the ability to make money using the internet, I totally avoided anything that talked about mindset. I believe that was one of my biggest mistakes. If I had my mind in the right spot and really focused when I first got started online, I believe I would be much farther along in my business than I am today.
So don't just skip over this part because it doesn't seem important right now. The mindset you bring into this business is the only thing you've got to start with, so make sure it's solid and in the right place.
The Internet Marketing Mindset
The first thing that you have to get through your head is that your goal should not be to "make money online." If you do, you'll end up bouncing from program to program that promises just that: easy money with the internet.
Instead, you've got to see it as starting a business, because that is what you're going to be doing.
You wouldn't just go out and start a brick and mortar business with no plan or budget or any structure of any kind. So don't do it with your new internet business. Just because it costs hardly anything to get started, you should still treat it as a real business that you own and are committed to making succeed.
If you don't have the drive to stick in there when it's hard, then you will never have a successful online business.
But if you DO treat it like a business and commit to never giving up, once you've got your business up and running it will pay you back exponentially for the time that you put in it. The internet is a truly powerful medium to use to build a business with.
So whatever you do don't fall into the trap of "I'm just going to make money with the internet." When it doesn't happen immediately you'll get very discouraged.
When you get into the business mindset you know you're in it for the long haul. So it doesn't seem like a big deal to spend a couple bucks on the tools you need to run your business. When you're just starting to build your list of prospects, you're not going to be getting 500 new subscribers per day. It may start at just 1 per day, then 5 per day, and as long as you keep working at it in a smart way, that number will keep increasing.
When you start looking at it this way, your goals will be a little farther out and much more realistic. So instead of being disappointed when you can't quit your job after a couple weeks of work, you'll be focused on building your business up so you WILL succeed and be able to quit your job and work from home maybe in a year or two. Sure it may come sooner, but you're setting yourself up for failure if you believe the hypey sales letters that say you can make $50,000 next month and be set for life.
Commit to your business, don't get distracted, and focus on growing your business slowly over time.
I've decided that I don't post to my blog nearly often enough, so I am going to start a complete, step by step tutorial that will give me something to post about in a sequential order. So here's what I'm going to do…
I know that one of the hardest things to do when you're getting started with internet marketing is focusing down to one project and really working on that.
When you're new I think the most important project to focus on is building a list in your market. It doesn't matter if you're in the gardening niche, gaming niche, or IM niche, a list of people who are interested in your subject will be an extremely valuable asset in your business (maybe the most valuable).
Once you have a list you will be able to send instant traffic anywhere, have leverage to get JV partners, and make it easy to make monthly income with affiliate sales. Building this audience will be key for your business to thrive.
Some marketers will tell you that you should immediately sell something and build a list of paying customers right out of the gate. The only problem I have with this is if you're just getting started, then it's hard to sell something. It took me a long time before I created a product that I thought was worth money. Of course this is mostly just a mental block, but until you have enough experience in your market then you may not have the confidence to move forward and ask for money.
Another thing to consider is that it takes a lot of work to create a product. It's not like all you have to do is write a 30 page word document. There's other things that go into a product like sales copy, payment processing, graphics, etc. that can be very hard for someone new to wrap their head around. So start simple.
After you do have a list of people who signed up to get something free from you, then you can turn those people who already know you into buyers once you do release a product of your own.
But for the time being, there's no harm in giving good stuff away for free then selling proven affiliate products to your list. Another bonus of doing this is that once you do create a product of your own, you can go to the owners of the affiliate products you've been selling and many times they will be happy to promote your product because you've been helping them out by selling theirs.
This post is rapidly getting much longer than I intended. So I'm going to try to wrap it up…
Here's the bottom line:
BUILDING A LIST IS IMPORTANT!
So I want to show you the simplest way you can start building a list fast. My goal is to post a new step once every couple days for you to work on. Each step is going to be insanely simple and easy to implement. If you just follow the steps that I lay out you will have your list up and running by the time we get done. Subscribers will be coming into your account and your online business will be officially started (if it's not already)
I was originally going to put this all into a book and charge for it, but I decided that I would rather deliver it in a step by step tutorial fashion so anyone can access it and get their business started fast and easily. That way it will be available to reference any time online on my blog.
I would really like this to be as interactive as possible. I want to know what steps you're struggling with and how I can better help you. So please let me know if you have questions using the comments below and I'll get them answered as we go. And even if you get in a little late, I always check the comments so don't hesitate to comment on an older post, I WANT to hear from you!
I'm really excited to get this started (and I hope you are too!) so I'm going to get to work and I'll see you in a couple days! If you haven't yet, subscribe to the RSS feed and you'll be able to get instantly updated when I post the next step.
Have a great sunday!
Tyson
If you're goal is to build a business online, then you need to be building a list in your niche. But how do you know that you're getting the best conversion rate possible out of your squeeze page? There's nothing worse than spending a bunch of time and money driving traffic to a page that doesn't convert your visitors into prospects. I'm going to go over 3 easy ways that you can increase your opt-in rates…starting today.
#1: Sell The Benefits
You've probably heard this before, but are you doing it? When I was first starting out I knew that benefits would sell, not features, but it was hard for me to figure out what the benefits of my products were. I'm a real math-oriented type of guy so it's easier for me to see logic than emotion, and that will KILL your conversion rates.
Here's an example: If you're selling a book on fish care and fish tank maintenance, a couple of the features might be that you will teach your customers how to keep their tank clean and their fish well fed & healthy.
But what's the benefit? No one wants to pay money to learn how to do chores (like cleaning). What people DO want is the end result. So really stress how your book will make their fish beautiful, live longer so they don't have to keep buying them, energetic & fun to watch, and whatever else fish lovers want out of their fish.
To find the benefits of your product, you REALLY have to know your market, their desires, goals, plans, etc.
#2: Test Everything & Track Your Results
Sure you KNOW that you need to be testing and tracking everything you do, but again…are you?
The truth is that testing and tracking your pages is a pain, but it really doesn't take that long if you just dive in and do it. Make a checklist of all the things you do everytime you set up a new page or campaign. That way you'll remember to do everything to keep it working.
But is it really worth it? Here's the deal. If you look around you'll see a lot of similarities in the squeeze pages you visit from other marketers. That's because everyone copies each other because they think that's what works best.
But what if they're wrong? Then you're copying a design that doesn't work.
When you start testing and tracking for yourself, it will empower you to KNOW what really works and what doesn't in your particular market. And remember, what YOU think looks good is NOT always what your customer will like.
#3: Make Their Next Action Obvious
When someone first visits your squeeze page, what do they see? Is it abundantly clear what they should do?
If your squeeze page has graphics, links, a menu, related posts, or even worse…ads, then you're losing a LOT of your visitors. You're telling them that they have other options, and a big chunk of your visitors will leave your page because they are either overwhelmed, or their ADD kicks in and they click on a different link.
Make it obvious what their next step should be.
If your page has anything that's NOT on the list below, you could be throwing your traffic down the tube…
- BIG headline that grabs their attention
- BULLETS and description that sell the benefits (remember #1?) of the product
- E-COVER of the report you're giving away (not always applicable)
- CALL TO ACTION – use clear language and arrows and a big button to make sure your visitor knows what to do to get your information.
This is something you can do right now…and it WILL increase your conversions.
If you need help creating a simple squeeze page with no distractions that converts, check out this new set of WordPress landing page templates. They will allow you to create professional pages inside WordPress without changing your theme…and fast.
Dive in and do these steps before you spend anymore time and money driving traffic to your blog or squeeze page. Making some small changes can have a drastic effect on your overall business, so don't procrastinate with this stuff!
So far I've tested my three crappy traffic methods for roughly 30 days, so it's time to wrap it up and post my final results. I've been testing traffic exchanges, list builder sites, and safelists to see if they are a viable means to grow my business.
Here's the total results after 4 weeks of crappy traffic:
Safelists:
Safelists have been my least effective form of traffic, averaging only 4-5 visits per day over the course of the month. They also converted extremely low, at 2.2% for a free giveaway.
I personally think safelists are for the most part dead because of all the automation and software that has come out to manage email accounts. For example, even though I was a member of all four of these sites for a whole month, the only emails I personally saw were the ones from the admin. The rest went out to email accounts that I hardly ever check or are automatically cleaned every day.
I suspected that it'd be hard to get anyone's attention using these things, and that seems to be the case. I don't believe that I will be pursuing safelist advertising any further in my business.
Traffic Exchanges:
Traffic exchanges are by far the biggest source of traffic that I've gotten from any of the 3 sources. The conversion rate of the traffic, however, is a different story. An overall .08% conversion rate on a free offer. Traffic exchanges were also my biggest time sink as well. I upgraded in 3 of the exchanges, which got me more visits, but as you can see it didn't do too much in the way of results.
On most days, I was spending an hour surfing 6-8 of these at a time, which I can now put to better use. But I think this is the main reason why these just don't work anymore (if they used to, I dunno). Today, with tabbed browsing available in most all browsers, I could have one window open and just plow through sites without even glancing at them. I can only assume the other people surfing these sites are doing the same thing.
List Builder Sites:
List Builder
|
Visits
|
Subscribers
|
Conversion Rate
|
| List Joe |
781 |
8 |
1.02% |
| Viral URL |
49 |
12 |
24.5% |
TOTAL
|
830
|
20 |
2.4% |
I would have to say that these list builder sites were the best out of the 3 traffic sources. They brought a little traffic, but it definitely converted the best. The only problem was the steep price to pay to be able to send emails out to their lists. And even then, the traffic and conversions were pretty poor.
One of the reasons these sites didn't convert real well for me could have been my offer. I'm not sure about ViralURL but ListJoe is comprised mostly of new marketers, and my ebook about squeeze pages could have been a little advanced for them.
I would venture a guess to say that these type of sites might bring some decent traffic and opt-ins if they are kept up to date well and you have a great product for newbies to giveaway.
The Wrap Up
Well there you have it, the results from 30 days of testing 3 different crappy traffic sources. It was certainly a learning experience for me, as I now have a greater knowledge of what will and won't work for my business. From here on out, I won't be using any of these 3 traffic sources to build my business further.
Here's my biggest problem with these types of traffic methods: They aren't adding anything of value to the internet. It's just people moving back and forth exchanging pageviews and emails. So instead of spending my time surfing and trading views, I'm going to focus on content marketing from here onward.
This means that I'll be spending much more time writing and creating videos than thinking up clever email subjects that will draw people's attention and surfing the web. I think it will help my blog grow, as well as draw in new readers that are looking for information about building an online business.
I hope you enjoyed the case study, have a great weekend!
Tyson
May 12 – May 18
This post will be the results of Week 4 of my Crappy Traffic Case Study – A quest to see if I could get results from "crappy traffic." I set out this case study with high hopes that something could be gleaned from these traffic sources, but truthfully after looking at my results, they do seem just a little…crappy.
Let's dive right in and see if anything changed with the different traffic sources I was using. First up, safelists.
Safelists
This whole week I did pretty good sending out my email blasts every day to the various safelists that I am signed up to. Let's see how they did:
As you can see, again I didn't even get 1 subscriber, and out of all 4 safelists I got a whopping 33 visits to my squeeze page. This could be that my whole marketing process isn't tuned perfectly, but my squeeze page usually converts at 40%. So who's to say? Let's keep going…
Traffic Exchanges
While this traffic method has spiked my traffic stats, they haven't done much for my conversions or conversion rates for that matter. I think I got 4 or 5 good surfing days in this week, so it wasn't every day, but close enough. Let's see how my traffic and conversions were this week.
Well…for me anyway, this last week definitely sealed the deal. Traffic exchanges are NOT a method that I will use in my business. Almost 3000 visits to my splash pages and not 1 new subscriber. This final week seems to be gearing up to be my worst yet =P I think the list builder sites are the only method that gave me some results this week, let's see…
List Builders
As a quick reminder, I previously signed up with 2 different list builder sites, List Joe and Viral URL. I took the one time offer upgrade on each so I could email 3000 people every 3 days at each site. This week I got 2 mailings out, so technically I sent 12,000 emails this week. Here are the results:
Visits were down quite a bit at List Joe this week, while visits were up at ViralURL. Listjoe of course is set up to give people credits when they click your link, so that is the reason for the 0% conversion rate. Those people who clicked my link likely just wanted to get credits, not see my site.
Viral URL, however, seems to convert fairly well, at 33% this week. The only problem is…it is extremely unresponsive. If I sent an email to 6000 people I would be very concerned if I only got 15 to clickthrough on my link. But at least they are real people who show interest.
Wrap up
Well as you can see this final week was the one that showed the least results out of my whole case study.
Tomorrow I plan on posting a final review that shares the total visits, subscribers, and conversion rates from all the traffic methods I used over the case study month. I'll also share my opinion of these traffic sources and where I plan on heading next with my business.
See you then!
For the week of May 5 to May 11, 2010
If you've been following this case study then you know what I'm up to. If not, here's my plan…
I am testing out 3 different sources of traffic that have gotten the reputation of "crappy traffic." These are traffic exchanges, safelists, and list builder sites. My goal has been to test these pretty thoroughly for 4 whole weeks to test and see if there's any results to be had from them. I've always been somewhat skeptical, so I decided to test it out for myself and quit listening to everyone else.
The first 3 weeks have come and gone already, and this will be the update for week 3 to see my results. To see the previous weeks, follow these links: Case Study Start, Week 1, Week 2.
One more week then I will conclude my test and give my opinion on each source and the final results of the test.
Let's dive in and see how week 3 went!
Safelists
During week 3 I did pretty good with my safelist submitting, I think I only missed 1 day. I've been testing different headlines to see if they pull results better than others, but the traffic has been so low that there's nothing really to go off of. As you can see below, I only got 26 visitors all week from the 4 safelists…and 0 subscribers.
So far safelists have been my lowest performing group of the 3 traffic sources.
Last week I had 34 visits total, but still 0 subscribers so I wouldn't consider this week much of a change. Though I did get a whopping 3 visits from I Post Ad, up from 0 last week =P
Traffic Sources
These, as expected, have been my highest source of traffic. Conversions however are a different story. My alexa ranking has shot up because of this, but that's about it.
I missed quite a few days of surfing for an hour last week, as it's been hard to force myself to do this 'busy work' with the results I've been getting. For the 4th week of my study, I'm going to hit it hard so I can end my test with a bang.
Let's check the stats:
If you recall from last week I changed out Traffic Taxis for Traffic Punk to get the extra bonus from the three exchanges that I'm upgraded with. As you can see those are the ones that have been sending me the bulk of my traffic. This is a good reminder to me too that I need to assign credits to my sites to be sure that they actually get visits =)
Despite the fact that I didn't get around to surfing the free exchanges so much I only had 400 less visits. But I also went down from 5 subscribers to 3. Again these conversion numbers are so low that it's making it really hard to test anything and get worthwhile results. This week I'm making it a goal to surf a little more so we'll see if that helps.
List Builder Sites
I believe this weeks stats from my list mailings are from 2 mailings to each of the sites lists. That means I emailed 12,000 with my offer, so let's see what happened.
So even though I had one less mailing this week it seems the end result stayed about the same. I got a little less traffic from Viral URL from the week before, and a little more from List Joe. As you can see Viral URL's conversion rate is much higher, but that's mostly because List Joe gives an incentive to click their links.
I believe I get my next mailing on friday, then monday, so again I'll only have 2 mailings to show results for in the next update.
Total Subscribers this week: 9 down from 11 last week.
Next week's update will be the last in this case study series, then I'll be posting my review of these traffic source and give you my opinion of them. I'll also be sharing the next route that I'm going to take with my business.
Have a great day!
Tyson
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