Archive for August, 2008

Make Money With Bananas

  • Written by Josh
  • Posted August 30, 2008 at 10:51 am

This is a guest post brought to you by Shaun Connell, webmaster of Make Money, a free resource for those who want to make money online and think outside the “money box.” Find out what the money box is by visiting the site. If you would like to be a featured guest poster go to the guest poster page to learn more.

Every once in a while I stumble onto an analogy that just sticks in my mind. The analogy illustrates a concept or technique so well I can’t help but constantly refer back to the analogy.

For a perfect example, Seth Godin’s analogy in The Big Red Fez did the trick. I can’t think about internet marketing without instantly thinking of his illustration that demonstrated how you can get your visitors to do exactly what you want them to do.

So what was this amazing analogy? Before we discuss it, let’s do some internet marketing 101 for a refresher.

Back to the Basics

We’ve heard the basics a billion times and there’s a reason: mastering internet marketing is found in mastering the basics. Internet marketing tricks and “secret strategies” can be helpful, but they must never be seen as anything but compliments to the two “make money online” basics: writing great content and building links. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

Building the links is for generating traffic. Writing great content is for getting your traffic to take the actions you want them to take. Traffic without content that convinces your visitors to take action is simply a waste. Unless your visitors click ads, sign up for newsletters or check out your sales page, you might as well have never had the traffic. Unless your traffic takes action, you can’t make money.

Keep it Simple, Stupid!

So, what’s the easiest method of getting your traffic to do something? By making it hard to not do it. Your website/blog design should be showcased around the fundamentals of what your visitors should instantly do.

Remember, this is a business. Any page that doesn’t directly make money through readership is nothing more than a “squeeze page,” with its entire purpose to:

1. Build Trust
2. Funnel Traffic

This brings us back to the analogy by marketing genius Seth Godin. How should you organize your design and content? Simple:

Think of your visitors as a bunch of monkeys. These monkeys are at your website for a reason: they want a banana. If you want them to find the banana, just give it to them. On every page it should be obvious what the banana is.

So What Do You Do?

The Internet provides marketers with the greatest opportunity ever known to marketers: the ability to literally hand an eager audience information that they can monetize. They’re coming to you, so feel free to offer them relevant information that you can monetize.

If you want your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter, consider putting the opt-in at the bottom of every post. (Better yet: think about having your website store special cookies so that only those visitors who haven’t already signed up for it will see the opt-in field.)

If your main monetization strategy is AdSense, put it up under the left-hand side of the title, with the text wrapping around the ad.

If your main monetization strategy is an affiliate program, wrap up every post and article with a relevant affiliate link.

In the end, just think about what you want your visitors to do in an ideal visit. Now make sure they can do what you want them to do. Give the monkey a banana, and make money while you’re at it.

This is a guest post written by Shaun Connell, the webmaster behind the free internet marketing resource “Make Money“. That link is the banana. Click it. You know you want to.

7 Comments
Filed under: Adsense, Blog, Blogging, Business, Effective Marketing, Guest Post, Marketing, Marketing Ideas, Marketing Strategy, Unconventional Marketing

An ounce of energy equals a pound of return

  • Written by Josh
  • Posted August 28, 2008 at 7:16 am

So many times people and businesses say, “Why don’t you give me money something, and in return I will give you something.” Sometimes it works much better to give first. People don’t always want public recognition or awards in order to get motivated, but what they do want is to know that someone cares.

I used to work at a call center before starting out on my own online. When you take calls day after day helping people to solve their problems, you experience a wide variety of emotions even from one call to the next. One person you might talk to is completely ecstatic you fixed the problem and will always try to call just you back. Other callers are pissed and frustrated at their situation and let that come out on the phone (as if I caused the problem directly). They could care less about anybody, only the problem. It is very easy for me, and I am sure others, to respond in kind to flared up tempers, sometimes it’s required. What the customers on the phone are really saying is that they have a problem and want to know you will do everything possible to help them. That isn’t always easy to convey.

In order to drive the best customer experience possible, we have to ensure our customers that they do in fact matter and we will do all we can to take care of them. This is also the case when seeking out potential customers or managing your brand.

People love working for someone they can connect with and relate to. This is why it is important to meet with and connect to everyone in your organization regardless of their position. Studies have shown that having that connection reduces turnover rates, leads to higher productivity and overall good will throughout the office.

When looking for customers, leads, employees or promoting a brand, people want to feel important, included and irreplaceable. In order to make that happen, it is important to find ways to connect to people on a level that meets one if not more of those needs. Opening the door to subscribe to others’ blogs in my Google Reader was a way for me to follow the same people that follow me. Reciprocity, in essence. I like having readers and visitors frequent my blog, and I would like to do the same, but the truth is, there are only so many hours in the day. So in order to stay in touch, I offered to subscribe to anyone’s blog who posted a link. So easy, it’s not too late.

In the end, I am sure I gained even more subscribers of my own in a give and take respect and it also allowed me to subscribe and follow the people who frequent my blog. The key is to convert that same give and take into building your brand or gaining customers. This is why offering an hour of free consulting, troubleshooting or promoting is such a value tool. You are giving a little of what you have, the customer knows that you care and ultimately that ounce of energy multiplies into a pound return. The key is to use what you have and to find the balance that best fits.

11 Comments
Filed under: Business, Effective Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Ideas, Marketing Strategy, Unconventional Marketing

Leave me your RSS link

  • Written by Josh
  • Posted August 26, 2008 at 1:12 pm

RSS IconI am going to subscribe to everyone’s blog who leaves a link to his or her RSS in my comments (more than one RSS link is OK). So, if you would like to have an additional subscriber, leave your link below. I am finding that with work I am having less time to surf the blogs I typically do, so instead, I will subscribe. I usually breeze through my RSS reader once or twice a day and try to comment on all of the posts that intrigue me.

I know that posts have been a little less frequent lately. That is do to my business growing new heights in such a short time. I am letting the dust settle a bit and should be resuming a more normal posting schedule after Labor Day.

If you are new here and would like to subscribe to this blog Click Here.

37 Comments
Filed under: Effective Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Idea, Marketing Strategy, RSS, Unconventional Marketing