1. convince the user to buy and
2. set the cookie

Maybe not in that order, either.

Learn to use Deeplinks

The key to setting cookies without selling is understanding deeplinks. Deeplinks are affiliate links that take the user to a page other than the merchant’s homepage. In doing so, your affiliate link can direct the user to just about any other page – on or off the merchant’s website.

In CJ, only some links can be deeplinked. In ShareASale, any of them can. See my post on Deeplinks & Sub IDs for more info. All networks have their own structure for deeplinks.

Free Downloads

One of the easiest things to do is to give something away: software, whitepapers, etc. Let’s look at Avanquest in ShareASale. The default link is:

<a href="http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=75110&u=132296&m=12081&urllink=&afftrack=">Avanquest Software</a>

KeepItPrivate™ Internet Privacy Pro has a trial version, at http://www.trialpay.com/custom/w_abt/?vwid=JJESLRSS. So you add the URL (encoded) to your ShareASale link, and you get

<a href="http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=75110&u=132296&m=12081&urllink=www.trialpay.com%2Fcustom%2Fw_abt%2F%3Fvwid%3DJJESLRSS&afftrack=">Avanquest Software</a>

Why would you set a cookie while giving stuff away for free? The free version may be limited, and the user will want to upgrade. Or, in this case, the free version requires some offer to be completed, and the user would rather just pay for the software.

Whitepapers are similar: show the PDF icon that everyone knows and offer up a whitepaper. Link that icon to your deeplinked URL. Or, even better, have them join your mailing list for a whitepaper, then the double-opt-in thank you page can show this hyperlinked icon. Now you have the user on your mailing list, and cookied.

Two Cookies

I’ve posted about setting cookies on two different affiliate networks on one click before, and I still use this when possible. Network tracking isn’t perfect, and I’ve found one merchant who will always prefer the CJ cookie over ShareASale (regardless of “last-click”) and in another case, I’m seeing 30% higher revenue when setting two cookies (I report back duplicate sales – although it shouldn’t happen, it does).

Webinars

Webinars are great for users to discover new features or learn about services. So when your merchant is hosting one, set-up an affiliate link which allows users to register. Then, if they like what they see and buy, your cookie is there. Raven Tools recently held Raven-U, educating current and prospective clients on what Raven Tools can do. So I tweeted:

I just registered for Raven University starting Feb. 5th. See the courses and register today! http://t.co/xxBeKn6Z #RavenU

February 1, 2013 11:02 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@ericnagel

Eric Nagel

I used bit.ly to mask the affiliate link, which can also sometimes get the merchant RTing your affiliate link out.

Other Uses

You can deeplink to contests (on the merchant’s site, or not) or answer pre-sale questions by directing your traffic to FAQ or support pages. There are dozens of opportunities when it comes to setting cookies via affiliate deeplinks.

• hours and dollars no longer correlated.
• Accountability – “…those who sent weekly progress reports to their friend accomplished significantly more than those who had unwritten goals…”
• what is a good short-term goal for your startup?
• Such it is with salaried employment and consulting. When the day is done you own nothing.
• Once you launch a product, you are instantly building equity.
• Roadblock #3: Lack of Goals
• Want to spend more time with your family
• define your goals and write them down.
• The hard part is that it sure feels productive to spend 4 hours doing research and it’s fun, to boot. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get you closer to launching.
• information diet.
• drip outsourcing; outsourcing small tasks as I perform my daily work.
• “dollarize”
• your price is less expensive than your competition due to the amount of money they will save in the long run.
• Putting a value on your time is a foundational step in becoming an entrepreneur, and it’s one many entrepreneurs never take.
• Work hard and play hard, but never do both at once.
• When reading blogs or books or listening to podcasts or audio books, take action notes.
• The entrepreneur is the dreamer, the visionary, and the creative mind. The manager is the person who thinks about return on investment (ROI), near-term success, and productivity. The technician gets the work done. She follows the manager’s guidance and is concerned about today’s success.
• Realization #2: Market Comes First, Marketing Second, Aesthetic Third, and Functionality a Distant Fourth
• You Will Never Be Done
• With processes in place it’s much easier to sell your product if/when you want to make an exit.
• why not work on a project you enjoy right now?
• find a market that is willing to pay them money for something.
• finding a group of people who need your something more than they need the money you’re charging for it.
• Word of mouth
• website, forum, blog, or magazine.
• since niche markets are small they have less competition, and less competition means you are able to charge more for your product, resulting in higher margins.
• if a market has a magazine devoted to it, it’s large enough to provide enough customers and if a full-page ad is less than $5,000, the market is small enough that you’ll be able to effectively market to it.
• Small industries tend to have a handful of thought leaders.
• find the thought leaders and convince them to adopt your product, you will receive massive exposure in a short period of time
• consumer products $19/month.
• small businesses $99/month
• What would we pay? What numbers feel right?
• Determine your product’s value.
• Use three tiers.
• Use the low end of your range as your lowest tier price. Multiply by 2 for your middle tier, and multiply your middle tier by 2 for the top tier.
• End in 7, 8 or 9.
• Determine the benefits of each tier.
• Hosted Web Applications
• your product is going to solve their problem for the right price, and they must make the purchase.
• Your number one goal, even beyond selling your product, is turning browsers into prospects.
• The best rewards are: a contest, a relevant four- or five- day email course, a relevant white paper, or a webinar.
• understand what your ideal customer wants to find on your website, what they want to find in your product, and what triggers will make them buy.
• What are their top three daily frustrations?
• Initially you want them to provide their email address.
• every page needs a call to action.
• The Core Pages • Home • Tour • Testimonials • Contact Us • Pricing & Purchase
• The #1 goal of your home page is to convince your visitors to click 1 link.
• If you choose to have an image for your home page, choose one that shows the result of your product.
• Your hook is your four-second sales pitch and it should be the headline of your home page.
• 5-7 word summaries of your product.
• one-minute screencast
• screen shots to be smaller with the ability to zoom in using the Highslide JS library, and include a clickable image of the video.
• one of the most important pages on your site. Do not launch without testimonials.
• Monitor mentions of your product using Google Alerts and add choice quotes and backlinks to this page.
• shows people that you will link to them if they write about your product.
• provide both a contact form in the browser and a separate email address.
• always provide a toll-free number, even if you let it go to voice mail and return the calls. Many customers are turned away when they see you don’t provide a phone number.
• including a physical address will inspire confidence for some visitors.
• Pricing & Purchase For SaaS applications this would be Pricing & Sign-up.
• put this as the link on the far right of your top navigation and add subtle highlighting either by bolding the text or changing the color.
• One of the best examples of a well-designed Pricing and Purchase page is at basecamphq.com/signup
• 30-day, no questions asked, money back guarantee.
• Give Something Away
• I recommend shooting for a PDF report from 5-15 pages.
• Offer an Email Course It sounds a bit hokey, but offering a free, five-day email course can be an exceptional draw.
• more technical or web-savvy audiences prefer a longer report or white paper, while more non-technical users prefer email courses.
• the one provider I recommend is MailChimp
• Think of your mailing list as a blog with a new post every 2-4 weeks
• A powerful tip I’ve used extensively is to use an autoresponder series,
• Monitor Current Events
• Take this information and share relevant links with a small amount of commentary. These are the best kinds of posts – easy to write but containing a lot of value for your audience.
• Idea #2: Q&A
• questions from customers or prospects. Answer the question in your email to solidify your place as an expert in this niche.
• Idea #3: Interviews
• sending a list of questions to someone (once you have their permission) and publishing them in your email. In exchange, the customer/blogger gets exposure for himself.
• as a general rule, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days, between 7am and 10:30am.
• Your “From” Name & Address
• your real name.
• Have One Goal for Each Email
• special price available only to those on the list, but that the price will only last for 48 hours.
• Tell them the day and time they will receive the email.
• gaining an understanding of your marketing is your first step to building a successful business.
• Traffic Strategies that Will Sustain a Business 1. A Mailing List 2. A Blog, Podcast or Video Blog 3. Organic Search
• in technical markets, you’ll be hard-pressed to build a mailing list of developers. Developers tend to stay away from things that clog their inbox, typically opting for RSS feeds instead.
• the real benefit happens if your content is reprinted elsewhere on the web. At that point, contact the webmaster of that site and offer to write unique content for them. That will provide unique content and a backlink to you.
• For articles, 500-700 words is best.
• Offer a Free Academic/Non-profit Version of Your Product in Exchange for a Link
• Contact companies whose products you use and offer to provide a testimonial if they will include a link to your website.
• before you launch your product, what are some processes you can avoid automating?
• As a startup, you’ll have plenty of time before you need to scale, and you may never need to scale if the idea doesn’t work.
• nearly anything I try to automate is easier to outsource first, and then automate down the line once the volume warrants it.
• If customers decide to use it, then you can automate it. If not, you can throw what little time you spent on it away. You develop the minimum required functionality to make the bare bones feature work; nothing more.
• outsourcing provides you with a written process for the task that serves as a blueprint if the time comes later to automate it.
• Any ongoing work that can be described in a written process can be outsourced to a VA and save incredible amounts of time for the founders.
• level 1 email support, level 1 sales questions, manning the live chat window on your website,
• following up on canceled subscriptions, and running month-end reports…getting
• finding blogs that deal with startups/microISVs and rank in the top 100k in Technorati. The deliverable was a Google spreadsheet containing the blog URL, blogger’s name and blogger’s email.
• Outsourcing is a learned skill,
• assign your VA an individual task and give them a deadline and maximum time to spend on the task.
• I now work almost exclusively with Filipinos. The main exceptions are my audio and video editors in the U.S. and Canada.
• ODesk under Admin Support -> Personal Assistant or Other.
• During an email exchange you can be certain that you’re catching a true glimpse of their English abilities.
• Properly utilizing a VA is a learned skill.
• assume they are not technically minded. They will have basic computing skills but are nowhere near techies, so you have to prepare instructions for them as if they were your mom or dad
• indicate they should work for 1 hour and then update you on their progress. In this manner you can both check if they’re doing it right, and see how long it’s taking them.
• Every time you receive a support request, your first thought should be “how can I make sure I never receive this question again.”
• a website or domain name typically sells for between 6 and 24 months of net profit.
• Websites that require a substantial amount of ongoing work can go as low as 2x or 3x monthly profit.
• startup founders looking for an exit to attempt to automate their startup first, and only when they are unable to do so, consider a sale.
• increasing your profit will increase your valuation.
• minimize the ongoing time investment through outsourcing and automation.
• the more you focus on these “exit strategy” tactics, the more efficient your business becomes.

Some of these may not make sense w/out the full context, but it’s what I highlighted while reading.

I really enjoyed the beginning of this book, “The Chasm Between Developer and Entrepreneur.” The chapter about Niches didn’t pertain to me much, as I already have my product under development. Other parts are more relevant to my partner, Todd Farmer, such as “Building a Killer Sales Website.” In my opinion, there was too much on SEO & PPC (in the “Startup Marketing” chapter), which should have been left to SEO and PPC books.

I’m sending a few copies of this book out, and looking forward to using this new information to successfully launch Monkey Finger!

So what are the pros and cons of each type of development?

Custom Programming

Pros

• Exactly what you want – no compromises
• Design is not limited by pre-existing programming
• No hacking things together to make it work for you (aka – Square peg in round hole, or, Frankenstein)

• Longer to build (in days, weeks, months)
• Costs more to build
• More bugs to find & squash
• Reinventing the wheel (or the checkout process, for example)

Off-The-Shelf Solution

Pros

• Cheaper
• Fewer bugs
• Other developers are familiar with the product

• Does 95% of what you need, but 50% more than what you want
• Exploitable (if others have the source code, they can find the holes)

In cases like this, I say it does 95% of what you need, and at the same time includes 50% more features than what you want. The 5% missing may be what pushes a client to a custom solution, or the additional features that aren’t needed may get in the way of a simple problem with an over-complicated solution.

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

I’m using MaxCDN – they’re offering 1TB for FREE (usually $39.95, or save 25% and pay only $29.96 with this MaxCDN coupon).

First step: signup with MaxCDN. Even if you’re not going to use this right away, get your free 1TB (expires Aug-31).

Once you have your account, you need to create a Pull Zone. Pull Zones are brilliant:

This Zone is for your every-day support files. A Pull Zone will automatically pull the data from a location that you specify upon the first request for the file. The files are served to the end user from either a subdomain of netdna-cdn.com or a custom domain (sub domain) of your choice that points to the CDN. The data is automatically purged from the server after an customizable amount of time.

• Pull Zone Name – Enter a zone name of at least 3 characters in length using letters and numbers, no special characters or spaces.
• Origin Server URL – Enter the complete directory path to your data on your origin server (including http://…). The origin server must be running on port 80. Your bucket will be populated automatically from your origin server as files are requested.
• Custom CDN Domain – This is the domain name that will redirect to our CDN server. You will point all the content that you want pulled from the CDN to this location (Example: netdna.mydomain.com)
• Label – Enter something that describes this zone
• Compression – Enable GZip compression on text, html, js, css or xml files

Click the Create button. Go to Manage Zones, and look at your Pull Zones. Click on the one you just created.

You’ll see it has a Temporary URL of something like ericnagel.ericnagelandasso.netdna-cdn.com. If you want to, edit your domain’s zone file and add a CNAME (Alias). In GoDaddy, it looks like this:

When you ask for a file from the CDN, the system will look to see if it has that file and, if so, serve it to you from the closest location possible. If not, it’ll grab the file, then give it to you and store it for future requests. Request files via:
ericnagel.ericnagelandasso.netdna-cdn.com/ wp-content/ uploads/ 2012/ 08/ getmonkeyfinger.gif (nospaces)

or, if you set-up the CNAME,
static.ericnagel.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/getmonkeyfinger.gif

You don’t have to upload anything – when a user requests a file, the CDN will pull the file from your server, and hold a copy of it for you.

So how do you get your WordPress blog to point references for images, css and JavaScript to the CDN, instead of the local copy of the data? Use CDN Linker!

I tried using W3 Total Cache but, yet again, it screwed up my site. For some reason I can never get that plugin working. Probably due to the security of my server / site being locked down so much

When you first load your site, things will be a bit slower as the CDN gathers the static content. But subsequent requests are handled by the CDN, and things will really speed up. Remember: site speed is an on-site SEO factor to consider.

You don’t have to be using WordPress to use a CDN! I’m using MaxCDN for the app side of Monkey Finger and it’s wonderful, and was easy to implement. I’m also using it for my online backups website, which is mostly static pages. If you have a non-WordPress site, just do a find/replace to get your images, css and js hosted with the CDN.

To diagnose if you were hit with Penguin, you need to get all of your links and look at the anchor text. If it’s the brand name or domain name, you’re OK. If it’s the keyword you told your SEO you want to rank for, you’re in trouble. You can get this data from Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools, Majestic SEO or SEOMoz’s Open Site Explorer. When using these tools, make sure to only look at external links.

Ahrefs.com is another tool to use to find if the sites linking to you were removed from Google’s SERPs. Go into the SERPs Analysis, Daily Stats, Keywords. Enter the sites that are linking to you, not your own site. If they’re dropping, or have 0′d out, your rankings will go down. Do something to offset these crap links.

Stop trying to exploit temporary opportunities.

#RCS = Real Company Shit

Make someone’s life easier. Create value. Build community.

Google Search+ Your World – get people to add you to Google Circles. Rel author will increase CTR on SERPs, but only if the author is recognized. Become recognized by speaking, helping people, producing videos (my tip (well, tip I got from Get Noticed Fast): use the same avatar in Gravatar, Twitter, Google+ – everywhere.)

“Building followers is the new linkbuilding” @wilreynolds #ase12

August 13, 2012 12:19 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@ericnagel

Eric Nagel

AuthorCrawler by Tom Anthony “examines the backlinks to a URL and crawls them looking for authorship markup… You’ll end up with a report allowing you to sort your backlinks by the social standing of the authors of those links.”

Easy Guest Post Opportunities

1. Grab all of your follower URLs from Twitter with FollowerWonk, now part of SEOMoz
2. Look at who’s commenting on your blog posts
3. Add these URLs to this Google Doc and see if they’re accepting “guest post”s.

Content Opportunities

First, turn off Google Instant. Then, search for questions: “how much should”, “how do I”, etc. Build the assets that other’s won’t. Then tell everyone.

Use INBOXq.com to “Find people asking questions about things you know.”

Twitter’s advanced search has a “Questions” checkbox.

Enter the keyword that you’re an expert on and help people. Or Twitter-stalk someone by setting the from:@twitterhandle, keyword is city name. Then, set-up If This Then That to get a text when that person asks a question about the city.

What’s the downside? Nothing. You’ll build more relationships, and connect with more people.

SEER had a booth in the Exhibit Hall, where they were giving free advice on SEO, analytics, PPC – all things Internet marketing. I took advantage of this opportunity and had Saurav Rimal look at one of my sites, and he gave me the bad news that I’m doing everything right I did get one bit of advice that I plan on implementing shortly. Everyone from the SEER team that I met were great, and have me contemplating making the 7-hour drive from Buffalo to Philly for upcoming Search Church events.

Website design is traditionally guided by gut instinct, copying the competition, or following so-called best practices. Yet none of these methods will always give you the best conversion rates.

Email marketers have split-tested their mailings more and for a longer period than website owners have tested their designs. Google Website Optimizer was the tool to use for split testing website elements, until they shut it down. Some of the features have been moved into Google Analytics under Content > Experiments.

When deciding what page to test, don’t start with the pages with the highest abandon or bounce rates. Instead, start closest to the money (or even beyond the money – the thank you or receipt page). Just make sure the page gets enough traffic and that it directly affects conversion rates.

While testing, remember: 75-80% of tests give no definitive results. That means you’re testing the wrong stuff.

Test Smart! Choose the right elements

• copy
• images
• buttons
• trust elements
• forms
• navigation
• search boxes
• videos
• overlays (test overlays first)

When testing images, add people. Where are the people looking (make them look at the call to action button). Avoid stock photography – users begin to recognize people (especially across niches).

Including a Trust Element doesn’t always increase conversions. Adding a trust element puts the question of trust into the user’s mind.

When designing forms, required fields only force users to enter content – not necessarily truthful content. The example Justin gave showed a 31% higher lift in quality leads with optional form fields. If a user didn’t enter their email address, it wasn’t a “qualified lead.” If this field was required, users would simply enter fake data to move on (dontspamme@goaway.com).

Also, forms should not have a “Submit” button. Make the button say what the action really is: “Sign Up” or “Get More Info.”

When testing, segment your audience (based on geolocation, device (mobile, iPad), traffic source, new vs. returning visitor, and site interaction).

Don’t fall in love with your idea – don’t leave money on the table

Measure Meticulously – Look for 95+% confidence from your data. How much conversion lift do you want? What’s the sample size going to be? How long will you test for?

Justin included many real-world examples, many of which stumped the crowed (we voted before results were given, choosing which test we thought won). After the results were shown, Justin explained why one version beat another. Some examples are:

• Including “Join 14,752 others” above an email signup caused a decrease in signups. The theory is that 14k isn’t a big enough number
• Rich HTML vs. text-only email went out to a B2B audience. The text-only version converted higher, as many users were reading on mobile devices.

Split testing is something I always say I need to do, but never seem to implement. While I enjoyed this session, Justin wasn’t able to stick around for Affiliate Karaoke later in the show, which was a disappointment.

I’ve covered split-testing before in a previous Affiliate Summit session, “How to Quadruple Revenue Using Existing Traffic“

First thing in the morning, as I wait for my first cup of coffee to hit my bloodstream, I’m on my phone. First, I go through email and answer anything urgent. Then, over to Facebook and catch up on what happened while I slept. And finally, I’ll open TweetDeck and go through my Twitter feed.

When I see a story I want to read, and click through, many times the linked site doesn’t have a mobile version of their site. When this happens, I end up going back and favoriting the tweet to read later. But making your site mobile-friendly isn’t difficult. In fact, if you use WordPress, you can have it done in less than 5 minutes.

Mobile Social Media Stats

43% of Twitter Users Access Twitter From a Mobile Phone. Facebook has 526 million daily active users on average in March 2012, and 488 million monthly active users who used Facebook mobile products in March 2012.

There’s plenty of mobile social media stats to read up on.

Of course, sharing our newest blog posts on social media sites has seemed to replace RSS feeds and e-mail lists. How much mobile traffic does your site get?

Mobile Traffic Statistics

Your stats package should be able to tell you how much of your traffic is from mobile visitors. In Google Analytics, go to Audience > Mobile > Overview. In this case, 801 of 2613 visitors, or 30% of the traffic is on a mobile device.

The site referenced above does NOT have a mobile version, and you can see pages per visit is down 23% and time on site is down 14.5% for mobile users. Compared to my own site, ericnagel.com, which has only a small amount of mobile traffic (less than 5%) but my mobile traffic has more pages per visit than my desktop traffic!

Now that you know you have mobile traffic, what do you do?

Detecting Mobile Users

Apparently you can handle the display of content just with CSS through “responsive web design”. But I suck at CSS.

A simple PHP script can let you know if your visitor is on a mobile device or not. Then, get a mobile website template and serve up the appropriate version for the user.

Web Design 101

Thankfully, I’ve been building websites for some time now. When I was your age, we had to worry about dial-up speeds. Anyone else remember testing load times on a 14.4 modem?

Optimize your images! If you’re reading this post, you’re probably on a fast broadband connection (or, you’re on a mobile device). Over a DSL line, a 46K image is no problem, but it can still be a pain on a mobile phone.

Know the difference between a GIF and a JPG, and keep lowering the quality of the image until your eye notices a difference, then go up 1 level. I learned all of this from Creating Killer Websites back in the late ’90′s – you can still get their tutorials from the Wayback machine.

Finally, if your image will only be 250×300 on your site, do NOT save it as 1024×768 and resize it via HTML or CSS.

WordPress Plugin

Thanks for reading along… here’s the 5 minute WordPress “fix” I promised you earlier: WP-Touch. WP-Touch will detect if the user is on a mobile device and, if so, show your content in a mobile-friendly format. Install… done.

Mobile use is on the rise (heck, even my Mom has a smart phone). It’s important to understand how much mobile traffic your site is getting, how to identify and design for those users, and finally how to encourage them to take action.

I encourage you to use those pretty social sharing buttons below and share this post with others

Why isn’t there an elegant way to e-mail a page?

I’m using a Thesis hook for my social sharing block (explained here) and replaced StumbleUpon with an email option:

<a href="mailto:?subject=<?= urlencode(get_the_title($post->ID)) ?>&body=<?= urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID) . "\n" . get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), '_yoast_wpseo_metadesc', true)) ?>" target="_blank"><img src="/wp-content/themes/thesis_18/custom/images/icon-email.png" width="59" height="20" border="0" alt="Email" /></a>

To get rid of “smart” quotes in the post title (e-mail subject), I also added

remove_filter('the_title', 'wptexturize');

No third party tools. No forms to fill out. Just click a button, and a user can email your page.

It’s the original sharing tool.