Steven Aitchison has a strong blog. Most people would regard his site as a success (in fact he claims it as the “biggest personal development blog in the UK) ..

• It looks good (using a slightly customized Thesis install)
• Steven is a good writer therefore the articles are excellent (in fact freelance writing is one of the services Steven offers)
• He has a large blog and email audience, with nearly 7k RSS subscribers alone (dwarfing some blogging and internet marketing blogs)
• Traffic is very healthy, and growing (again, dwarfing some blogs that provide traffic advice)
• Comments are plentiful
• His books are selling on Amazon

So why would he ask for a blog critique when he is doing so many things right? With stats like these, Steven could be giving advice rather than asking for it.

Fact is, all of us can use a set of fresh eyes. There is always something that could be improved.

In Steven’s case, he wants to take his blog to the next level, and crucially wants to earn more money from it.

Making More Money from Your Blog

As regular readers will know, one of the things I teach is the “ARC System” which stands for

• Attraction – Getting people to come to you
• Retention – Getting people to stay
• Conversion – Getting people to take an action, usually a purchase

Steven is doing well with the first two, and wants to boost the last one significantly. The great news is, making sales is a very much easier prospect when you already have traffic and audience. Traffic means you have sufficient page views to test and tweak things without having to wait a year for results. Audience means that Steven has built up some trust, which means he will not have to try quite as hard to get his sales copy absolutely perfect.

Tell People About Your Products

Here is where we get to the “do as I say, not as I do” advice

You see, I have a similar failing to Steven that hurts my sales but is likely hurting Steven’s more. We are both too “shy” about promoting our own products and services. (My issue is out of complacency – when I am already too busy I am less incentivised to go seeking new opportunties, in fact I am considering not taking on any more consulting work). Again though Steven is doing a lot of things right:

• Book button for Amazon in sidebar
• Mentions of freelancing in author bio
• Banner for Amazon book after articles
• Pages for life coaching and freelance writing

So what should Steven do differently?

In terms of the blog itself there are only minor tweaks I could find. A blog designer would be my suggestion if there is budget, just to give it a more unique look and to “warm” it up (very cold and blue right now). Also, remove Tweetmeme from pages, only have it on single articles.

Monetization options abound for this site, due to the traffic and email list strength, from advertising through to affiliate sales, but I do think the coaching and products should be the main focus. Affiliate sales would make a nice supplimentary income, help teach you about better product launches, and provide networking opportunities.

The main pressing issues are more around marketing:

Audience Targeting

The first issue I see is, who exactly is your audience and target customer?

You must understand the pressing needs of your audience before you can sell them something they really want. In my Authority Blogger Course I know some people have become frustrate with all the planning they must do, until they realize that if they go headlong into promoting and writing they ultimately fail. If you can not identify your clear audience and what you can do for them, how will the audience? Plus, if you do not know who your audience should be, then how can you attract more of them from the right places?

This is where having a lot of traffic can be a bad thing – it can cloud you to the fact that your traffic source is not providing buyers, just readers. If you want to make money then you need more people in the market for what you offer, and to be able to clearly articulate that offer to them in a way that they connect with.

Right now for example Steven is telling people to hire him as a freelance writer and addiction worker in the same sentence. He is selling a “make money with clickbank” product (confusingly not sold through ClickBank) beside an ebook on how to make friends. When you look in Google, one of the most popular articles recently was one on improving your eyesight … what is your site’s clear purpose?

You must give your products visibility

People need to know about your products and services if they are going to buy them. Steven has links to his products and services, but not always in context and not always in the most visible places.

Here is a little challenge for you. Steven has written 4 ebooks, go see if you can find them.

I will give you a hint, they are not on his “Store” page

• Mention products and services in articles
• Have a page listing your products and services in one place
• Put product mentions into blog emails, newsletter emails, guest post bio, and in your forum, email signatures

You will sell a lot more product from email than you will your sidebar due to banner blindness and also the fact that you can guide people over time to more detailed information.

Launch your products

As well as giving your existing products visibility, you must warm up your audience and give them repeat mentions so that people have an opportunity to hear about your product and all the ways it matches their needs.

Take a hint from Hollywood and their marketing, and movie trailers in particular. Film and comic geeks have been going crazy over every little snippet about Iron Man 2. Pieces of news dripped out over time, such as cast, possible plot points, and so on. Then there was the poster, then a teaser trailer, then a full trailer, then a more complete trailer … this goes on for months. I’m not suggesting you go on for months, a week or so can be sufficient.

• Mention you have a product coming
• Inform your audience about the product
• Give firm details about the product features and benefits
• Tell your readers why they need to act (eg. price increase, bonuses going away)
• Answer questions and objections

Pre-Sell Products

Sometimes it is not enough to put a product on sale or even launch a product. Customers do not always know that they need whatever it is you are supplying. In cases like these you need to put your product in context to something that interests them. You can see an example of my pre-sell content here. The key thing is it must be a valuable article that happens to warm people up to what you are selling, it is not a sales letter.

Sell Your Products

A table of contents and a buy button is not enough to sell a product. Heck, it is not enough to give a product away. So you must explain your offer:

• Who is the product for?
• What problem does the product solve?
• What does the product contain?
• Why would this product benefit them?
• What proof do you have that your product delivers and you are credible to sell it?
• Why should someone buy this from you and not someone else?
• How is this product better or different? What advantages does this product have?
• In what format is the product delivered?
• Why is the product good value?
• Anything else you would need to know to buy or consume the product?
• Why buy now rather than go away and think about it?
• … and so on (This explains why sales pages tend to be long, the more complex the offer the more needs to be explained!)

Keep Your Customers

Once you have sold a customer a product or service once they are much more likely to buy than someone brand new to your site. There is a lot of long term benefit to encouraging people to become a repeat customer.

The problem with Amazon and any other physical product sold through a third party merchant is you do not know who is buying from you. Darren and I have the same problem with the Problogger book. You need to put something into the book so that customers can identify with you that they have bought so that you can keep in touch. So supply a bonus that they have to register for, etc.

When people raise their hands as customers, tell them what their next logical step is, and sell it to them.

Bottom Line

Steven has an excellent foundation for a great business. He just needs to decide which business he is in exactly.

Once you have a definite and unique positioning then you will not only sell more directly, but also be able to bring in JV partners to help you in your launches, selling even more product and also generating more traffic and visibility for yourself.

Actions to Make More Money:

1. Who is your target audience?
2. What do they want/need right now that you can supply?
3. Where can you reach more of these people?
4. How can you communicate your offer to them in a way they take up?
5. What more can you offer the ones who do take your offer?

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This text has been taken from the article How to Sell More From Your Blog (Blog Critique: Steven Aitchison). © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com

They say if you use positive visualization, then your outcome will improve.

Then there are the people who tell you that if you use the “Law of Attraction”, that is if you ask the universe for something, and you believe, then what you ask for will come to you.

The problem is, for most people, experience does not match what they are taught. And that sucks.

In the headline I make a promise that you can make positive thinking work. How?

Let’s look at this pragmatically. Being upbeat and happy has to be better than being pessimistic and miserable, just out of pure quality of life benefit. So even if positive thinking had no other impact but to make you live life a little happier, then it has to be a good thing.

From a medical science point of view too, how you think has a profound impact on your body. Just look up the word “Placebo” then keep digging, if you want your mind blown.

What about those “big” material outcomes, like manifesting huge Cribs-style mansions, your dream date, or a Bugatti Veyron (in deep red please, with chrome trim)?

I actually do think you can convince the universe, reality, or the deity of your choice to give you a break on this stuff. Many successful people have claimed visualization or affirmations have brought them a great deal of that success. Some of the stuff I have experienced has lead me to think there is something to it.

This does not, however, mean that there has to be anything magical about it.

In fact, being a lapsed programmer, I think a lot of it has to do with the squidgy grey computer we have between our ears, and the coding we supply it.

Computer programmers have a term that I think applies well:

Garbage in; Garbage out

That is, if you shovel in bad code or data, don’t expect the results to be brilliant.

Think about what you are saying to yourself about the things you want. If you are constantly sending your bio computer the instruction to fail then that is what you will do.

Are you telling yourself things like …

“I am going to fail.

I don’t deserve this.

Why do I even bother.

This person hates me, they are just being polite.

Don’t look up, if nobody notices me I can just slip out.

Stupid stupid stupid.

What is the point, it won’t work.

What if everyone hates it?”

… because if you are, then you are putting garbage in and all you can expect to get out is garbage.

If instead you code your autopilot to be expecting success, and looking out for ways that your on-board computron can help you achieve that, then your results are likely to be much better. That’s not woo-woo, it’s actually one of your brain’s jobs!

It’s not just brain programming that makes all the difference though.

Think about those much-discussed visualizing athletes. As well as visualizing, what do they also do? (Ignoring those who sit around eating cookie dough ice cream instead of training, but through the power of visualization still miraculously win gold at the Olympics).

Pick out any winning athlete and I can guarantee they train very hard. Sorry to the folks who wanted to rely just on visualization, but it ain’t gonna happen. Nobody gives out gold medals just because the universe thinks you are awesome (if that did happen I wouldn’t be able to move for gold, right? right?).

So, what do you need, if not just thinking real hard?

• Mindset (as mentioned above)
• Training (daily learning and practice)
• Action (because theory is not enough, you have to take steps rather than just think about it)

Pretty simple really, and I am positive that if you follow that you will get more of the results that you are wanting

What say you? Please share your thoughts (positive or negative) in the comments ….

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This text has been taken from the article Why Positive Thinking Doesn’t Work for You and How to Fix it. © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com

1. I have a compulsion to fix things
2. I never think I have done enough

Do you have the same problems?

The mission here is to go from someone who is never happy with their work, never quite complete, to being someone who finishes and moves on.

I have managed it (with a great deal of effort on occasion), and so can you.

My big ah-ha moment came when I realized what I was seeing when I looked at my work, and how I felt about what I produced. Listen to your inner voice, what do you hear?

• That could be better
• Something is still missing
• This should really be HD and better lit
• I could polish that a bit more
• My design skills are lame
• Ebooks should have more pages than this
• Will anyone understand my accent?
• If I had that software I could add a neat effect there
• Graphics would really spice up this page

… and on and on …

Essentially I would only see what was missing, think about the problems I have with it, or tell myself it is still not good enough … all excuses, and not really thinking about if the end customer/reader/viewer would get value.

I know I will never be Shakespeare. My customers do not expect Hollywood-style wizz-bang special effects. You just want some useful content. Why beat yourself up when you know perfection is not just impossible, but unneccessary?

Rather than see faults, look at what is there.

Perhaps it is because I started out as an IT-geek, a Mr Fixit of the computer world, I see the world as broken systems that I have to fix. My brain is wired to see the problems rather than the good. Instead of feeling pleasure in accomplishments, my neurons get tangled over what I perceive as missing.

This can be a good thing of course, we all know people who are the other way round and who deliver too early, bodge and fudge, and who really ought to take more care. But that doesn’t help us “perfection seekers” so we need some coping mechanishms

The key is focusing on delivery rather than endlessly polishing. Get version one done and delivered. You can always release a version 2, 3, or whatever. But your priority should be to get the first complete and out of the door.

How to Become a Finisher

1. Set yourself achievable goals – Some people are motivated by stretch goals, but if you are the sort of person who would take the instruction to “reach for the stars” literally and start planning your trip to NASA, perhaps a more realistic goal is in order. Also, remember, don’t try to eat the whole elephant in one gulp. Break the project or challenge down into chewable bite sized pieces.
2. Decide what the finished end product will look like before you start – If your tasks are presented as “get better at sports”, “get fitter” or “learn to cook”, how on earth will you know when you are done? You can always get better, learn more, be more. Decide how you will know when you are done. Make tasks that are “done or not done”, a tick in a box. When your tasks are complete … stop.
3. Focus on delivering – What is the basic feature set your product MUST have? Just do that. How can you complete the project in the most simple, pragmatic way? Do that. My last project was to release a new product. I decided it was not complete until someone had bought it because otherwise I could have written a whole ebook and not released it. By saying someone had to have bought it that meant I knew I needed a buy button, a sales page, and needed to let people know it was there. I also put a deadline on it to stop me endlessly polishing. This meant in the end I launched it without a logo or any of the other aesthetic niceities that I would have endlessly fussed over. So far a couple of hundred people have bought it and enjoyed it. Nobody has complained about the lack of logo
4. Make progress and celebrate it – We often get into a gold medal mentality where there is only a winner and a whole bunch of losers. Sorry but that is just rubbish. So what if your product launch didn’t raise a million dollars? So what if so-and-so has a gajillion RSS subscribers and you don’t. Celebrate the one customer you have. Celebrate the 100 people who want to hear from you. Then set your next goal. Be proud of the achievments you do create rather than sad that you are not living up to some fake ideal.
5. Fail. A lot. – Someone once said something along the lines of “show me someone who has made no mistakes and I will show you someone who has never achieved much”. Getting things done owes a lot to being prepared to fail, making progress every day. Rather than aiming to achieve perfection one time, decide to learn so you can make steady improvements. This is why I have avoided any new years resolutions. Instead I am setting daily goals and ticking them off. Each time I do something I am aiming to do it better than the last time. Not perfect, better. Make mistakes. Improve, learn from your mistakes. Make more mistakes.

Got any more tips for becoming a finisher? Please share in the comments …

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This text has been taken from the article Defeating Procrastination: Become a Finisher. © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com

You might have already seen some of my fellow bloggers talking about this product. So much that I actually avoided posting about it because I felt with my Authority Blogger launch you might have gotten sick of hearing me toot my horn, until Michelle gave me an email bottom-kicking …

So here I am telling you about it.

beyond-blogging is an ebook by two friends from the blogosphere, Mike and Nathan. Both very cool guys, and judging from the names they managed to get to agree to interviews, very persuasive.

What they have done is grilled a whole bunch of successful bloggers to find out why they are successful and what makes them tick, then they distilled what they learned in a way that you can be inspired and model for your own success.

Very cool, and nicely done.

Now it is not for everyone, for example it is not a step by step guide to blogging, and it is very much aimed at people who want to build a business. Neither is it cheap, at $47 (I think, I believe the price is going up). I’d have liked the multimedia from the interviews too. There are other books on the market if you want something more for getting started (*cough* ProBlogger book *cough*), or lower cost.

If however you want to get inside the head of some people who have been there and done that, at a fraction of the price of sitting down with them 1:1 then this is for you. Just check them out …

I’m happy to say I am featured along with some of my fellow blogging buddies. It’s a great book and I am sure anyone who reads it will be inspired and informed a whole bunch of times. When someone buys it through my link you get a great ebook and also I get a little something for my efforts (about enough to keep me in Chicken Tikka Masala or something) but I would suggest any blogger check it out even if I had nothing to do with it and nothing to gain.

Check out the full details here … and if you buy, thanks for the curry

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This text has been taken from the article Go Beyond Blogging in 2010. © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com

Auckland, New Zealand

I’m sat taking some time out from our travels down under to let you know about a couple of great giveaways.

Yes, I am on my travels again. This time touring the other side of the planet. We are down in Auckland, New Zealand right now, after a quick stop in Singapore and just before we head to Sydney, and then Melbourne Australia. Ordinarily I wouldn’t be updating my blog with a vacation update but this news is too good.

How good? My friend Sean is giving away an entire audio course. Not only is he giving it away, it’s a course that he is currently selling right now on his website for $2500.

Go get it now before he comes to his senses.

You will need to opt in and part of the terms and conditions is that after you have gone through the course you will provide feedback. So Sean gets your opt-in and a testimonial, you get a full online course that you can play on your iPod completely free of charge. Seems like a good deal to me!

While we are on the topic of free information, I should have told you a little while ago that another friend Daniel Scocco is giving away his ebook on making money blogging. It’s 54 pages, covering Content, Design & Usability, Networking, Promotion and Monetization.

Opt-in to get the ebook here.

I’m going to go finish my “Flat White” and chocolate brownie now while you go and sign up for those great offers before they disappear. Om Nom Nom

Chris “G’day’ Garrett

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This text has been taken from the article Brilliant Free Stuff from Friends. © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com

Gary crushing it at Web 2.0 Expo NY

Today I am happy (and more than a little relieved) to be able to share with you this quick and informal interview I grabbed last week with Gary Vay.Ner.Chuk.

Gary has quickly become a fixture on the convention scene, TV celebrity and a media darling because of his larger than life energy and positive personality, and also his expertise in personal branding, social media and business.

Right now he is in the process of the launch his brilliant new book, “Crush It“.

I was fortunate to grab 30 technical gremlin frustrated minutes where I got to ask him about his philosophy behind business and life. Thankfully by patching the legible bits I managed to salvage a lot of the interview. Check it out right here …

… or download the mp3 (under 20mins) to listen offline.

Signed Book Winners

• @rawarrior
• Jade Craven
• Dave Sabol

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This text has been taken from the article Gary Vaynerchuck Interview. © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com

As part of the launch of Social Media Examiner I will be doing a live video chat along with Mike Stelzner. It’s free and easy to join in, and should be good fun!

• 10:00 New York time
• 15:00 London time

Check out the full details here.

Also, while you are there, check out my first article for the site …

“How to Create Headlines that Go Viral With Social Media“

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This text has been taken from the article Join Me For a Live Chat. © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com

Business Blogging Made Simple

Order now and get instant access …

Save $10 – offer ends 14th Today! (Offer extended)

I am really proud of this new book, I think the Wordtracker folks have done a grand editing and design job, and I know you will recoup your investment many times over by implementing my step by step plan

Check out the full details

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This text has been taken from the article Get My New Business-Blogging Book with $10 Off. © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com

Got personal branding or social media questions? How would you like to get answers from one of the biggest new media rockstars on the planet?

Gary Vaynerchuk is one of my favorite people in social media and he is in crazy demand right now due to his massively successful business projects, his new book (Crush It), and the arrival of his child. I am pinching myself right now because he has given me a slot in his super-busy schedule.

Frankly I am also a little cautious – I do not want to mess up this chance to get some GaryVee wisdom on record.

This is where you come in!

As well as giving me a chance at an interview, he has also signed three books which are yours to win.

All you have to do is tweet or comment on this post to ask your question for Gary. Right before the interview on the 8th October I will select the winners at random.

• Click Here to Create Your Tweet

(If you tweet manually, make sure you include the #q4garyvee “hastag” so I can track and collate the questions, do NOT bombard Gary’s Twitter account with your questions!)

Of course you might also get your question read out in the interview

What do you want to know? Ask your question now to be in with a chance of winning!

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This text has been taken from the article Climb Inside Gary Vaynerchuk’s Brain and Crush It. © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com

Win Copywriting Success Summit Tickets

It’s time to announce the winners of our Copywriting Success Summit 2009 Competition!

This was a very close thing, and Mike and I debated back and forth. There were some very cool entries, some excellent creativity and fun responses, others more serious, but we felt the winner we chose would get a lot of value out of the Summit and be able to directly put everything to direct use …

Before I announce the winners, I need to remind you that today is the last day to save $200 on the Summit! Remember it is 100% online or over the telephone, with all recordings and replays made available if you miss any of the sessions. No travel necessary, follow the great information and ideas directly from your home or office. These folks are going to really boost your copywriting in ways you will love! And I am doing a session too.

Book your ticket for the Copywriting Success Summit 2009 now and save $200

Grand Prize Winner:

This post from Sherice Jacob – Web Designer, Copywriter, Author

Twitter Prize:

Random Twitter Winner – random.org selected Tweet #254 … @ABCWriter Nancy Adams from Michigan, USA

Congratulations to the winners

Commiserations and sorry to everyone who missed out. There were a gajillion twitter entries, my Twitter @replies stream has been filled to the brim for days, heh. The competition goodness isn’t over, I have more great stuff lined up, so look out for that.

While we are on the topic of prizes, my good friend Gareth is giving away a Flip Video Camera over on our travel blog, FiveAMTraveller – get over there and win yourself a cool video gadget now!

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This text has been taken from the article Copywriting Summit Winners!. © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com

Win Copywriting Success Summit Tickets

As mentioned in a previous post, Mike Stelzner is putting on another one of his fantastic online summits. This time it is the Copywriting Success Summit 2009, billed as the “largest online event dedicated to helping you successfully market your writing business”.

Now you have the exclusive chance to win two valuable seats to the event!

The line-up is an all-star cast. And me. Peter Bowerman (Well-Fed Writer author), Steve Slaunwhite (Start & Run a Copywriting Business author), Michael Stelzner (Writing White Papers author), Marcia Yudkin (Persuading on Paper author), Nick Usborne (Net Words author), Casey Hibbard (Stories That Sell author), Chris Marlow (the original copywriter’s coach), Pete Savage and Ed Gandia.

You are going to hear about great topics such as:

• Write Marketing: How to Attract Opportunity by Shining the Spotlight on Others
• Using Social Media to Grow Your Writing Business
• Maximizing the Income Potential of Your Freelance Writing Business
• How to Turn More Prospects Into Clients
• How to Win Copywriting Clients With Direct Marketing
• Painlessly Mastering the Process of Prospecting
• How to Get Customers Coming Back for More
• Attracting Prospects With Blogging
• The Faster, Safer Way to Make the Leap to a Full-Time Copywriting Business

Go here to see the full details of the more than a dozen sessions …

This event does not require any travel (no hotel, rental car or wasted time). You simply attend sessions online and meet the experts and network with peers from the comfort of your home or office. Pretty cool, eh?

Here’s What You Could Win!

There are two prizes:

1. Twitter Prize: Valued at $497
One ticket to Copywriting Success Summit 2009

2. Grand prize: Valued at $1,693.90!
Two tickets to Copywriting Success Summit 2009 (one for you and one for a friend)

PLUS

• A consultation with Peter Bowerman, author of The Well-Fed Writer (Peter will spend an hour with you, helping you market your business)
• A site-critique by me (I will identify actionable steps you can take to improve your blog)
• A copy of the Problogger book by Darren Rowse and me
• A copy of the book Writing White Papers by Michael Stelzner

Think how your business could be boosted by this package? Just the consult with Peter is priceless; he’s sold more than 40,000 books on growing your writing business!

Enter for Twitter Prize

Simply post a Tweet on Twitter using the button included here, or simply copy and paste the below Tweet message. This automatically qualifies you for an entry into the prize drawing to win a free seat at the summit. You may tweet up to 5 times between now and 23rd September 2009. The tweet must contain “#css09yes” to qualify. We will select the winner randomly on the 24th September 2009.
The Tweet:

Win a FREE ticket to Copywriting Success Summit
2009: http://chrisg.com/RDTy #css09yes

How to Win the Grand Prize

To win the grand prize, write a blog post (no longer than 1,000 words) explaining why you want to win a seat at the Copywriting Success Summit 2009. Have your post published by midnight 23rd September 2009 (GMT). So we are notified about your post you will need to leave a trackback on this blog post or comment with a link.

Remember the grand prize includes two summit tickets, a consultation with Peter Bowerman, a site-critique and two awesome books, so it is well worth getting your friends on board. The more friends who enter the more chances you have of getting a seat yourself

UPDATE: Already purchased a ticket? No problem. If you win, you get your money back and free access to the summit!

Good Luck!

The winners will be selected by Mike Stelzner and I, and announced right here on this blog on the 24th September 2009.

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This text has been taken from the article Win Tickets to Copywriting Success Summit 2009. © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com

Today’s blog critique is for Medical Practice Trends, an information resource for doctors and medical practice administrators. This blog is a perfect example of how content, marketing and user interface need to come together to deliver an overall experience, as the team here have excellent expertise that is currently being let down by conflicting and competing design elements.

The first thing that strikes you when you arrive at the site is many different elements all competing for attention. While this kind of magazine style theme is popular, it is vital that you deliver the content within a well considered hierarchy.

Think about magazines or papers on a newsstand. There will be a major headline, and then more headlines in decresing importance. You will have one huge image that demands attention, usually with something inviting or instantly attractive, such as a celebrity face.

On the page in question though, each headline has equal priority because they are all of equal size, in similar sized boxes, and the most stand-out image is one of a zombie. If you strictly adhered to the “15 second rule” and had to decide what the site was about within 15 seconds, how accurate would your assessment be?

Our big lesson from this is an important one for all website owners and builders.

Understand and Organize Around Reader Missions

This site ranks pretty well for some useful keywords. There has been some effective work done in article marketing. There are funnels leading to lists. That part seems to be well in place. Now you need to take a step back and consider the following:

1. Who do we want to attract? – Work on creating audience profiles for every type of visitor that you want to draw in.
2. Where do we find those people? – For each profile determine the most likely place to find these people (as well as search engines).
3. What are those people looking for? – Do keyword research for each profile and also work out the information needs of each reader.
4. What will they want to see when they arrive? – Your visitor needs to be instantly reassured that they have arrived at the right place. Show them they have found what they are looking for without distraction.
5. What can we offer them? – Once they have found what they were promised, now what? What is your offering for each type of profile? You need to cater your products and service to the needs and language of each profile, creating new landing pages if necessary. Connect those information needs and your offerings to create a crumb trail to lead visitors from your funnel to your most desired actions.

Right now when people arrive on the homepage (and 90% of the site links point to the homepage), the average user is going to be confused. If the content that drove them to the site is good then a percentage will overcome this and go hunting around, those not pre-sold on the site will go away because too many options are worse than too few. Overwhelm me with choices and I do not make a choice, I hit ‘back’.

We need to take your content and rearrange it to lead your visitor by the hand all the way to conversion (email or sale).

Design Tweaks

Design is as much about removing elements as adding. Here are some tweaks, items to remove, and tips for how to focus the experience and help the reader get more out of their visit, and do what you want them to do!

1. Remove the date – It makes sense for a magazine, but not for a homepage that focuses the visitor on what is important (to them, or to you). You need to only keep elements that work towards driving the reader on their mission or towards your most desired action.
2. Give more impact – The current header is almost shy, and the repetition of the domain is unnecessary. Create a real first impression, big and bold, with graphical elements that subconciously imply what the site is about.
3. Promote the benefits – A good strapline but can be made much more compelling. Think of why the reader might want to dig deeper, what do they take away from your site? Rather than describe what the site or company is, tell the reader what they get in a way that makes them say “Yes! I need some of that!”
4. Powered by .. – The Powered By sign is a little confusing, and works as a speed bump without any context. Better to have in the sidebar with a link to what that is?
5. Confusing Navigation - Again, work towards a benefit and user centered approach. Are these navigation headings what the reader is looking for in the exact language they would use? Again it needs to be about the user mission, rather than a description of what you have.
6. How new media savvy are your prospects? – Do your average target readers know what podcasts are? If not, try to simplify the language and the visual elements to concepts they immediately see the benefit in.
7. Cartoons are fun, but … – I like cartoons, but the impact of this front and center on the homepage makes me worry a bit.
8. Blog posts AND articles - Why the differentiation between blog posts and articles? Should there be a difference? Would it be less confusing to just have the headlines without labeling as one or the other? Many business people either do not know or do not care what a blog is, providing they get the information they need, so do not add descriptions and labels unless they really aid understanding and use.
9. Good solid headlines – As mentioned earlier, the content is good, and the headlines seem to me to speak to your target market, so do not bury them down there, put them up top where they can be seen, big and bold.
10. Push Your Opt-in – I imagine your most wanted response from the reader is to sign up to the email list, but every other design element is drawing the reader AWAY from noticing this. Even the colours are muted. Emphasize this box, use colour, depth, and attractive graphics. Pull the reader in rather than shyly hide away!
11. Video – Again, the video is kind of hiding away, and on many monitors it will be below the area where you need to scroll to see it. With so many buttons and links above it, it is unlikely many people get to it.
12. Reduce Categories – You need to reduce the number of categories down. Keep to around 5 – 7 categories, keep it simple.
13. Lose the tweets – Unless your tweets are completely non-social (in which case you need to start being more social!) then you should not put your tweets on your homepage. Website visitors do not want to see your conversations, but to be a good Tweeter you need to be conversational. Therefore tweets on your site do not work.
14. Put the about link up top – One of the things your visitor is going to want to see is an about box or page. Right now the cleanest link is in the footer. Put it up where it can be seen.

In Summary – Be User-Centric

It is a jargon phrase that gets over used but the intent is true. You need to focus on what the audience wants and needs and how you can achieve your aims by leading them to what they are after. You can work this out through your analytics, brainstorming, click tracking (such as Crazy Egg and Clicktale),  through interviewing customers, and by observing people reading the site.

I would recommend a new homepage with only the following elements:

1. Inviting header that really speaks to your benefits
2. Introduction video
3. Opt-in box
4. Headlines
5. About and Contact

This would answer the major questions of

• Where am I?
• Why should I care?
• What can I do?

Right now the user is likely to be confused. Make it easy for them to find your great stuff and they will reward you!

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This text has been taken from the article Medical Practice Trends Blog Critique. © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com

Read on, there is some great business building content up for grabs and all you need to “pay” is your email address!

My friend and white paper mentor Mike Stelzner has just launched his “Copywriting Success Summit 2009” which I am going to be presenting at. My session will be about building your freelance copywriting business using blogging. It will be awesome.

Mike just put out a great round up of advice from his copywriting guru friends (and me), that you can find here.

Even better, as a gift for entering your email to find out more, you get a fantastic one hour video along with PDF downloads by Bob Bly called “How to Be a Highly Paid Copywriter as a One-Person Business”.

It’s more than the title would imply, and I encourage you to at least check it out.

• Getting more leads into your copywriting business
• Motivating your prospect to buy your services from you
• Creating an information kit and “bait pieces” that pre-sell your expertise

I am sure you realize this is very in-sync with my Authority Blogger process

Even if you work in a different field, this presentation has some excellent advice for anyone looking to build a freelance service business online.

Get it now, click and add your email on the page linked here because this is advice you would ordinarily have to pay big bucks for and you are getting it for the price of an email address!

You will find the sign up box over in the right hand column, and after you confirm your email address you will be taken to the video page.

Enjoy!

PS.

You might be wondering if those are affiliate links? You bet they are. My name is on it, of course I support it.

In this case, yes the Copywriting Summit will be awesome but you do not have to pay anything to get the free content. Just add your email address. Or not, it’s up to you. Bob really knows how to build a freelance copywriting business and he lays it all out for you, so I would at least take a look if I was you

As fair warning for anyone who is only here for my free stuff, I am going to be talking about my forthcoming Authority Blogger 2.0 Course a fair amount over the coming weeks, and that is a product you need to buy. Just thought you would want to know in case that factors into your decision to read

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This text has been taken from the article Want to Know How to be a Highly Paid Copywriter?. © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com

The main component of my membership site is WordPress. One of the free reports that Brian is giving away with his Teaching Sells launch is “How to Build and Launch a Quick and Easy Membership Site” and I was pleased to see he explains that you can build a membership site using the blog software. Back though when I started building Authority Blogger, almost everyone I knew scoffed at using WordPress to build a membership site – the “done thing” was to use Joomla, Drupal, specific offerings like Membergate, and various other online services.

When I logged into Brian’s Teaching Sells course I was nearly persuaded to go the Joomla route – it really is a very good system, but I knew I wanted to get something out quickly and easily, and being the geek I am, I would have spent time procrastinating learning a new system.

I had some experience with Drupal, enough to know I didn’t want to build another membership site around it. Joomla, as mentioned, was going to be a learning curve I did not want to face, and I knew WordPress inside out. There was really no other choice for me at the time.

Authority Blogger Construction

I went with the following solutions:

• WordPress as the content management system
• Amember as the membership solution
• VBulletin for the forum

My big mistake was with the forum – I set that up first only to find I could not retrospectively add Amember control without screwing up the existing user accounts. Amember along with the VB plugin can integrate, I just set it up wrong. Lesson learned. This means when someone joins I have to get them to sign up again, this time at the forum and manually give them permissions to the members-only forum area.

Now I know there are easier ways, but this approach worked for me all the same

1. When you first visit you see the public-facing WordPress installation. This contains some pages of information that drive you to either sign up, buy or go to the forum. Members can also see the login link here.
2. When you buy or log in you go through an Amember installation. I actually outsourced setting this up – it’s not the simplest of software – but you can also get installation as part of the license purchase.
3. Within the Amember-controlled membership directory I created another WordPress install. This is where the lessons are kept and all the mindmaps, process map flowcharts and ebook PDF downloads. Go to anything in that directory on the server and you are asked to login, including going to the lesson web pages.
4. For video and audio I use Amazon S3 hosting – for speed and also because these multimedia files get BIG, so I do not want bandwidth charges!
5. To make the course easy and fun to consume, lessons are structured as bite-sized blog posts, grouped together as series using the in-series plugin, which unfortunately is no longer supported by the developer. Grouping the lessons into series creates a bunch of “mini courses”, so there is for example one on blog seo, another on launching your blog, and one on product creation, etc etc. This also means I can keep adding and adding – there are now around 100 individual lessons and I do not see me ending soon, heh.

A nice touch about Amember is every customer can also be an affiliate so they get commissions for recommending the course to friends and colleagues. I think that is nice, a recommendation from an existing customer and user of a service is always more persuasive than someone who has not used a product.

I am currently working on a “version 2″ refresh for the coming season, and because of the modular structure and organization being based on WordPress, that is much more efficient to do. It makes me glad I chose to go the way I did.

Now though there is another option for creating WordPress based membership sites called Wishlist Member. Check out the video here. So far I have been very impressed with it, much easier for us WordPress jockies. My next courses will be built around Wishlist rather than Amember.

I hope that answers your questions but do let me know in the comments if there is anything I haven’t explained or anything you would like me to expand on …

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This text has been taken from the article How I Built My Authority Blogger Member Site. © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com

Day after launch

After a week

As you can see, after I week the site had received 8,000 page views, from nearly 5,000 visitors. In fact, the reason why I didn’t post this case study earlier is that it is still getting visits and I didn’t want to draw conclusions too early. As well as visits, it also gained over 200 email sign ups, and was retweeted over 300 times.

Of course I have launched lots of new sites over the years. My friend Gareth and I launched a Fantasy Formula 1 site using Twitter earlier, but that was just a bit of fun. I wanted to see what would happen if I gave it a little more of a push.

The site I was launching is Social Media Work book – the site is for a forthcoming product I am working on, with a view right now to gain feedback about what people want to know about social media. This launch was purely to put it on the map, get some visibility and links. A secondary goal was to gain some opt-ins, but because it was not a priority I worked a plan that involved more of a viral element than to drive opt-ins.

So what did I do?

1. First I built the site in WordPress using the DIYThemes Thesis Theme and the openhook plugin and sent small trickles of traffic to it to test response. In the lead up to the launch I achieved over a 50% opt-in conversion rate on the home page, which was higher than my expectations so I did not spend any more time on it, hence it is not the most elegant of designs but it works! Once the launch was under way and people were sent to my content page, opt-ins dropped to 6% at best, and 4.5% on average, but this is not surprising when you think the landing page people were sent to was not focused on gaining subscribers but on delivering content.
   

   Conversion Rates in Testing

2. As mentioned above, the goal of the site right now is to get people to submit social media questions in return for free goodies. There is a kind of catch-22 there as I need to know what people are struggling with before I can create the goodies, but I can’t get people to submit questions without that ethical bribe. Thankfully enough people submitted questions through the test phase that I had a challenge I knew I could answer right away.
3. Consistently people were saying they struggled with issues around content, visibility, traffic, and getting clicks. I knew in my Authority Blogger Course materials I had a nice little report that I could repurpose quickly, and the launch was on.
4. I grabbed my 102 Proven Headline Formulas report and created an e-cover graphic for it, slapped up a page.
   

   102 Proven Social Media Headline Formulas

5. As my goal was a viral effect leading to visibility and links, I added the TweetMeme and Tell-a-friend WordPress plugins. TweetMeme worked very well, the tell a friend not so much. The benefit of a Tell-a-friend script though is that you can see what people are saying about your content, which is a very valuable insight!
6. All what was left was to seed out into Twitter and ask people to retweet … which thankfully my followers did, over 300 times

Traffic Sources

I have to confess that while the experiment was to use Twitter, and Twitter did drive the majority of the results, other traffic sources did naturally come into play!

Traffic Sources

Had I got onto the Digg front page the traffic would have been far higher, but I wanted to see how Twitter would work out and that is what I focused on. You can see that Twitter was the main traffic driver, we can say that the majority of the “Direct” traffic was desktop Twitter application users as few to no people knew of the domain before launch, and Ow.ly is the Hootsuite URL shortener.

Limiting myself to Twitter did constrain how much I could do, and a multiple channel approach is always better, but it does allow me to hone my approach for future campaigns. I am a testing freak

Search traffic

Recall one of the aims was to get links to prime the site for search? With essentially this one free report I had met that goal already, which I did not fully expect to happen so quickly.

At the time of writing the site has gained around 80 links with around 5o to the report landing page. Not bad going so far.

Of course now I need to keep following up so that I do not lose the momentum, and I need to work towards creating and launching my product which is the whole point of the exercise!

If you are interested in what I do next and how that works out, then you need to subscribe now because I will be keeping you updated right here with progress

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This text has been taken from the article Case Study: Can You Launch a New Site With Twitter Alone?. © 2008 Chris Garrett chrisg.com