“7-point Checklist For Bloggers Who Want to Create a Profitable Blog” plus 2 more

7-point Checklist For Bloggers Who Want to Create a Profitable Blog
50% Discount Ends in 36 Hours on the Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing Kit
Behind the Scenes: How a ProBlogger Product Sales Page is Made

7-point Checklist For Bloggers Who Want to Create a Profitable Blog

Posted: 22 Sep 2011 02:00 PM PDT

This guest post is by Peter G. James Sinclair of Motivational Memo.

Before I aggressively started to build my Motivational Memo blog at the beginning of this year I had already owned a web design company for over seven years.

During that time I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly in web design, and now that I have entered the blogging industry I continue to see the same mistakes being made by many bloggers.

So use this quick checklist to analyze your own blog.

1. How well is your blog structured?

Have you clearly identified your audience?
What's in it for the client when they come to your blog?
Do you have a call to action?
Is your blog outstanding? What do you do differently from others?
Do you sell the right things—most profitable and easiest to deliver?
What are the best things you are doing in your niche?
Have you a clear purpose for each web page?
What action do you want your visitors to take?
Do you provide quality information?
Are you building a list?
Are you selling a product or service?
Are you gathering referrals?
Are you building a relationship with your readers?
Have you built credibility and authority in your niche?
Have you promoted your success through a Press, Awards, or Featured-in page?
Do you realize that you are building an asset that you can sell?
Do you know that you need more than one website if you want to make money from blogging?

2. How good is your written copy?

Do you write headlines that are benefit driven?
Does your writing stand out amongst the crowd?
Do you provide proof either through testimonials, comments, featured articles, endorsements, and statistics—in text, audio, and video format?
Is your call to action clear?
Does your offer provide great value?
Does every page have a benefit-laden headline?
Do you demonstrate how you stand out in your niche?
Do you use proof of claims you make about products/services?
Do you provide one call to action with clear instructions per web page above the fold?
Do you make no-brainer offers even for opt-in?
Are you enthusiastic without hype, but rather provide enthusiasm with substance?
Do you write the way you speak?
Do you avoid jargon?
Do you use a double-readership path—provide headlines and sub headlines that make it easy for readers to skim your piece before reading the entire article?

3. How descriptive is your domain name?

Is your domain name clever, quirky, or meaningless?
Have you used your business name, unless you are well known?
Have you used your personal name, unless you are well recognized?
Have you used a .net where there’s a .com site available?
Have you used the Google Keyword tool to identify some of the keywords people are searching for on the Internet in your niche?
Have you chosen a domain name that grabs your attention through clear communication?

4. How professional is your layout and formatting of graphics?

Do you use white writing on black or colored background that makes it hard for people to read?
Do you have a cluttered or confusing layout?
Is your top banner large or complex and slow to load?
Do you use big blocks of text?
Do you write text in all-capitals?
Do you provide captions (where appropriate) on photos that are keyword rich and benefit-driven?
Do you use too many fonts, colors, and sizes?
Is your blog quick to load?
Do you have a clean, simple, narrow banner at the top of your blog that creates the right feeling on your site?
Do you break up text with sub headings, bullet points, and photos?
Do you have a white background and use colored headlines and black text?

5. How easy is it for your potential customers to buy?

For blogs to make money, there is usually an attached web page that will promote products, courses, etc. So you might need to analyze these pages as well.

Do you provide an obvious way to buy online?
Do you use a secure payment processor?
Do you provide a number of ways for people to purchase—credit card, ClickBank, PayPal, or even for some an printable form, depending on your demographics?
Do you provide a money-back guarantee?
Do you allow for payments in customers’ local currencies?
Is your offer obvious, providing clear instruction for buying above the fold?
Do you use a recognized payment processer?

6. Are your visitor details being collected?

Is your opt-in above the fold?
Do you provide an incentive for visitors to provide their name and email?
Do you ask for too much information?
Do you have our opt-in on your sales pages, and did you know that if you do this you could reduce sales by up to 75%?
Do you communicate regularly with those who opt-in to your blog or newsletter, and did you know that responsiveness will halve after each three months of no communication?
Do you get at least a 25% opt-in result?
Do you offer something customers desperately want in return for their name and email?
Do you make it easy and obvious to opt in above the fold—a single opt in requiring minimal details?
Do you use an automated way to follow up?
Do you make offers to your list—your own products/services or others in return for an affiliate commission?
Do you give twice as much as you ask by providing good value?

7. How well are you marketing your blog?

Do you believe in the concept of “build it and they will come”?
Do you only using one or two marketing methods?
Do you only use online-to-online marketing?
Do you outsource the marketing or manage the outsourcing properly?
Do you test, monitor, and fine-tune?
Do you use out of date marketing methods or only use the latest craze in marketing?
Do you use multiple marketing methods—free and paid, tried and tested, and new?
Do you use offline-to-online marketing?
Do you understand your marketing strategy well enough to train others to help you?
Do you collect stats on results weekly, or per campaign?
Are you marketing to your existing list—email, social media, sms, hard mail, etc.?
Do you use SEO, Google Adwords, Google Places?
Do you use paid traffic, Facebook PPC, banner ads?
Do you build or buy lists in your niche or even pursue joint ventures?
Have you ever thought of buying an offline list and developing an online list?
Do you write guest articles for other blogs in your niche and even other niches?
Do you submit articles to directories?
Have you used offline free publicity?
Do you seek out referrals?
Do you interact regularly through social media—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn?
Do you run competitions?
Do you give things away to your database?
Do you conduct surveys?
Do you partner with online thought leaders in your niche?
Do you help your readers to engage one with another?

So there you have it. Tick off all the things that you are doing well, and then begin to implement all the things that you could do better. You will be amazed at the results.

Peter G. James Sinclair is in the 'heart to heart' resuscitation business and inspires, motivates and equips others to be all that they've been created to become. Receive your free copy of his latest eBook Personal Success Blueprint at http://www.selfdevelopmentmastermind.com and add him on Twitter @PeterGJSinclair—today!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

7-point Checklist For Bloggers Who Want to Create a Profitable Blog

50% Discount Ends in 36 Hours on the Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing Kit

Posted: 22 Sep 2011 10:01 AM PDT

online marketing kit for bloggers A few weeks ago here on ProBlogger we launched a product I’m really proud of—the Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing Kit written by the Web Marketing Ninja (the guy who has helped me shape my own blogging business model over the last few years).

The kit is essentially based around three things:

a comprehensive ebook
a library of 21 templates, documents and examples to help you develop your own blogging business model
a 70-minute bonus recording of a Q&A webinar that the Ninja, Chris Garrett, and myself did last week for buyers of the kit.

The kit is really about helping bloggers who want to get serious about turning their blog into a business to do just that. You can read the full details of what’s included and who it’s for here.

We launched the Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing Kit with a limited-time 50% discount (down from $99.99 to $49.99).

The kit has had some really positive reviews and feedback so we’ve left the discount open a little longer than we’d anticipated, but that discount ends in around 36 hours time (this Friday, US time).

So if you’re looking for some teaching from an experienced online marketer on how to make your blog profitable, grab your copy of the kit today.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

50% Discount Ends in 36 Hours on the Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing Kit

Behind the Scenes: How a ProBlogger Product Sales Page is Made

Posted: 22 Sep 2011 07:09 AM PDT

This post was written by the Web Marketing Ninja—author of The Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing, and a professional online marketer who's sharing his tips undercover here at ProBlogger. Curious? So are we!

I tweeted a couple of days ago how wonderfully evolutionary sales page copy can be as it passes between the different people who are working on it. At the time, I likened it to Chinese whispers with a happy ending.

It's a tweet that culminated from the copywriting process for Darren's brand new book on DPS, Click! How to take Gorgeous Photos of your Kids. The book's sales page presented some interesting challenges for me and reminded me of some important lessons that I thought would be good to share with you all.

The process

This is how the sales page for Click! came into being.

1. Thinking before writing

All of Darren's sales page start with a semi-workshop, usually with Darren, Jasmin, and myself. We're not at this stage thinking about the specific words we'll use—we're thinking about the core message we're hoping to convey and how we'll present it. We weigh up the core benefits of the product and pick which one we're going to lead with. It normally starts with a bit of a brain dump and ends with us exploring more specific personas—the ones for which we created the product in the first place.

With Click!, we started with a simple audience definition: "those who wanted to take photos of kids," but soon realized that it needed to run a little deeper than that. We came up with four target personas: moms, dads, grandparents, and pro photographers. Whilst the book is perfect for all of them, the key benefits of buying the book were distinctly different for each group. We discussed options to create a page that conveyed a message to all, but settled for focusing on moms. We felt they were more likely to respond emotionally to the sales page.

2. Engaging the word nerds

Often the hardest part in the copywriting process is to draw a line in the sand and put an initial draft into play. It can be quite daunting but among the team at ProBlogger we have a Georgina, and that always gets us off to a good start.

From a short brief from Jasmine, Georgina provided the first draft. This was always going to be a tricky one for her, as there was a strong emotional entanglement in the messages (Moms and capturing the memories of their kids), and that meant we'd need to tread a fine line between making an emotional connection and looking shallow. I think Georgina did a great job, and we could have run with this version right out of the box, however Darren and I always like to take things a little further.

3. The deliberation begins

I just realized something as I'm writing this post: I've known Georgina for over five years. She's used to me pulling apart her copy. But all's fair—she's changed as many of my words in the past with her editorial hat on. So the deliberation stage usually takes place with Darren and myself shooting it our over Skype. Sometimes we're only tweaking things here and there; other times we're making wholesale changes. A couple of hours later, we end up with a second version of the sales copy loaded up on Darren's blog.

With Click! I decided to re-write the whole first section, as I felt we could be a little stronger in our messaging, and a little shorter in words. I spent some time and came up with a version that Darren incorporated into the final sales page. There were a couple of things I wasn't 100% sure about, and I was keen to see what would happen in the next phase—the field test.

4. The first field test

There is nothing scientific about our field tests. Depending on the product, we'll usually pick a few connections from our networks, and get them to honestly tell us what they think of the sales page content. Formal tests would follow a more structured approach, with a little more thought put around specific questions, but we're usually running out of time, and with true blogger spirit, do what we can with what we've got.

With Click! It was pretty easy to contact all the moms we knew that were online at the time. But that was where the easy part ended! The response we got was interesting. The couple of phrases I wasn't sure about basically horrified every mom who saw them. It was back to the drawing board, pronto. Whilst I'd never call writing fun, all I can say is I'm glad we knew before we email a couple of hundred thousand people! Motivated by some of the suggested alternatives, we set about creating a second revision.

5. The second field test

Nine times out of ten we never get to this, however, in the case of Click! the moms had spoken, and we'd made some pretty extensive changes from their feedback—and hoped we were right. So we re-tested the copy. A few nervous minutes later, the feedback was much better and we had a sales page ready to ship.

6. Time to shine

Once we're happy, all our sales pages go through some pre-flight checks. A final pass at the copy to make sure as many typos are corrected as possible. Then we check and double-check that all the order buttons work, and the images are in place. Once that's done it's off to launch we go…

Whilst the lead-up is quite extensive, it's the result that matters. In the first nine hours of launch conversion rate of the sales page was around 10%—there's nothing wrong with that!

The lessons

There are a few important lessons that we can take from this latest sales page evolution:

You are not your customers

I'm not a mom, and I don't have any kids, so I need to be mindful that I'm writing a sales page for someone completely different from me. Seeing things from others' perspectives is the key to writing sales pages that will convert more people than just yourself. If you're ever unsure, seek feedback from others.

Small things can have a dramatic influence

Within the first version of this sales page, we included one sentence that struck the wrong chord with the reviews. There are over 500 words in this page, yet five seemingly innocent words could turn buyers away in droves. If there's anything that can show you the power of copy, this is it.

Revisions can be a good thing … and a bad thing

Suffice it to say my initial revisions did more harm than good. But the second revision turned things around sharply. You need to be careful not make changes for their own sake, and if you do, make sure you take a step forward rather than backward.

So there you have the life and times of a team ProBlogger sales page. And we haven't even started the A/B testing yet!

Stay tuned for more posts by the secretive Web Marketing Ninja — author of The Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing, and a professional online marketer for a major web brand.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Behind the Scenes: How a ProBlogger Product Sales Page is Made

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