» Selling Digital Products

Let Google Sell Your Products

Will — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:43:36 +0000

Using Conversion Optimizer, once you get 30 conversions (sales/opt-ins) in 30 days, you can have Google take over your campaign and get you maximum sales of your membership site or other products. You then only pay per conversion. They can be your biggest affiliate!

You will save tons of time as they will then manage your campaign, optimizing it for a ton of variables to get the most sales.

To learn all about partnering with Google I highly suggest you check out Get Money from Google by Perry Belcher. I’ve purchased it and there is a ton of great info in the mp3s, videos and PDFs about how to use create awesome ads using Adwords (even how the content network can make you money), continuity programs, landing pages, keywords and more.

Do You Make These Marketing Mistakes?

Will — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:52:59 +0000

Trying to making money online by selling information products, memberships or other things can be hugely discouraging at times. We see the ‘gurus’ making millions of dollars, know that billions of dollars are spent online every year and yet it always seems to be out of our grasp. So maybe we give up, or go back to our ‘day jobs’.

Once I joined the Info Marketers Zone by Jeff Smith, it was both exciting and humbling to realize the huge mistakes I’ve been making when it comes to selling products online. I had been taking lots of action with blogging, tweeting, creating content, but not seeing many results.

Some of the most fundamental errors that I have made are:

Not sending enough offers to my email list
If I sold something of mine or an affiliate on occasion I would be really happy not realizing that when we buy, we tend to buy a lot of other products in the same niche. You might buy lots of books, go to lots of seminars, and so on. So I started finding lots of affiliate offers on networks such as paydotcom, clickbank, commision junction, etc. You might not be into affiliate marketing but if you only have a few products you need a way to offer them more – this could be higher ticket items of yours, or affiliate products of others that you recommend.

Not building an email list properly in each niche
Collecting emails is often an afterthought, thrown up on a sidebar of your website. You need to convince people to sign up just like buying, by offering a free product of value to your customer. Create squeeze pages and send traffic to these pages. Get rid of any distracting menus, sidebars, etc. You need to focus the visitor on the action you want them to take.

Not researching keywords and competitors
Many of us have a passion and so we start creating content, writing blogs and articles about our topic. But we need to think about the keywords that will bring us the most profit (that lead to sales) by testing with Google adwords. Then we use these keywords in all of our content. By researching competitors (using spytools like compete.com) we can get lots of great keyword ideas (that bring traffic to them) and since the popular sites in our niche are popular for a reason, we can learn a lot from analyzing their sites.

Not focusing on benefits or the end result
We tend to emphasize the features and not the emotional benefits and desire that a customer has. I still do it unconsciously unless I edit my writing. So go over your website, make sure the call to action is clear, the benefits are clear and that you answer any possible objections your visitor might have.

One thing that was helpful is to go into your various accounts (paypal, affiliate networks, etc) and print off the reports for the month. Even if you only made $1 you should be proud that you made money online! And that this can be repeated and expanded with the right efforts.

Go here for the hottest 10 Tips On Starting a Subscription Site

Create Multiple Formats for Your Content

Will — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:36:54 +0000

There are lots of strategies on using membership sites (can be added to product sales for example), but I wanted to point that if you are just selling memberships you are missing out on potential sales. Here’s why I say this (using real experiences). I try to base my opinions on reality and actual test results as much as possible.

Recently I was working on selling a guitar lesson on using diminished scales for a local jazz guitar teacher. I wanted to try out Extreme Member’s product sales feature (which uses a membership to sell products – not ideal in my opinion). So I created a new membership for this product and the related pages (thank you page, product page, etc). As you create these pages they can show up in the sidebar under the Pages widget. During this process someone who was a already member of my guitar coaching program purchased the diminished scale lesson! They had a problem since it wasn’t fully integrated, but that made me realize that these customers will buy other things as well. Very interesting!

I also got an email from someone who recently canceled their subscription, saying they didn’t have enough time to practice guitar and didn’t want to pay monthly. So you need to offer your membership content as downloadable products for those who don’t want to join. It’s about offering a variety of options for your content. The great thing about these two points is that I received real feedback from taking real action. Now I just need time to get it all done!