Obviously, the higher the rate the better.

The goal that every website owner, designer, and marketer continue to work on is finding better ways to keep inching that conversion rate higher and higher.

Simple factors like color, copy, and location of the call to action can drastically impact the rate of success (positively and negatively).

Below is an example of one of ASANT Media’s project’s, Chart Pattern Manifest, squeeze page that has a 44% conversion rate. Again, in other words, there is a 44% chance the user will sign up to the list when they visit the site.

To some 44% might seem low, but industry average for email lists are usually around 10-20%.

So what makes this particular squeeze page better?

Over the last couple of months, we have been testing out different formats, schemes, and copy material, below are some tips we have taken away to creating a compelling squeeze page.

1. Make it short – When you are giving something away for free, there shouldn’t be too much selling needed. If your offer is actually good, then a few sentences should suffice.

In our CPM example, you can see we pretty much summed everything up in the title of the page.

2. Make the form stand out – We found the best positioning for a form to be above the fold and to the right. It also helped to make the textfields larger and have the labels in a different font and color from the general text.

In our CPM example, we put the form labels in a green Georgia font and created large textfields and submit button (labeled ‘subscribe’).

3. Social proof – Everybody likes to be part of something. If you already have a signficant amount of users as part of your list, community, or whatever, then show it off.

In our CPM example, we simply threw up a counter of users subscribed to our service.

4. Identify persona – We tested this item a couple times. Is it important to let people know who is behind the product? We found it was important to create that relationship and let users know we aren’t hiding anything.

In our CPM example, we put “created by TheWildInvestor.com” in the first sentence. Even if users don’t know what that is they can check.

It is important to constantly test and tweak design factors when it comes to sales/squeeze pages to see what works best with your specific audience.

Whether it looks good or not, coding your site 100% in flash basically does more harm than good.

For those unfamiliar with how web coding and design works, there are basically two form of sites: flash and non-flash. Take the following example to help distinguish the difference:

Compare two identical parks: Park 1 is trapped within a glass box (flash site); Park 2 is not (non-flash site).

Which park do you think people will go to? Obviously the one not in a glass box because people can go into the park and interact with all the amenities it has to offer. Nobody just wants to look at the park just from the outside. This is exactly the effect flash has on a site.

1. Search engine spiders can’t read it.
2. Usability for readers is just horrendous.
3. There are no back buttons and no right click options.

Overall, the functionality and usability of flash sites are completely pointless and not solving our main problems.

Moreover, the overall design appeal of flash sites tend to be annoying to most users as well. In today’s internet world we have trained our head to think flashy, animated objects are spam. If we add all these things in our flash site, then what good does it do?

When flash is good to use. While I never believe flash is good except for some game or unique marketing campaign, there are coding techniques that allow flash to take on characteristics of non-flash sites; however, that requires some deep pockets, which is never really good on our bottom line.

With any business, revenue is usually generated in an exponential format… meaning your money grows exponentially over time. While you make a couple cents in the first month, the next month could bring a couple dollars, followed by a couple hundred, and so on. The ability to see passed the rough patch and keep you eye on the end goal is what separates successful ventures from fallen one.

Many times though our long-term revenue is not effected by our work, but the decisions we make for the short-term.

Probably one of the quickest and easiest ways to make money online is by selling your site. Through sites like Flippa, there are many ways to do it. Sites can sell for as low as couple dollars all the way up to tens of thousands. Pretty much a decent design and some content will easily fetch you between $100-200. If you start to build a portfolio of sites, that money can be very enticing because what difference does one less money make, right… WRONG!

But how do we know when we should sell or hold?

To anybody an instant $100 seem rather enticing, but you have to remember that that $100 is all you will make from that particular site. How much more money could you make if you held onto it a little bit longer? Are there any other tweaks and changes you could make to squeeze every penny out?

Even if you don’t have enough time, what happens if you could work on it a couple minutes each week? A measurement to consider when deciding to sell or not, is “did you take it as far as you can go?” If there is nothing left for you to do or you don’t know what else to do, then it could be time to move on.

Point is… experienced greatly in the make money online business… at the beginning, the amount of money you make compared to the hours you put in might make a child laborer look like a billionaire. When we aren’t making money, any amount looks good; however, remember to consider your long-term outlook before making any final decisions because it could end up meaning less money overall.

Take a second to think about this…

At some point of your business lifespan, you can change everything… except the company name. You can always change the product, logo, rebrand, and so on, but you can never change your company’s name. If anything, you have to create something else under another identity if you want to ditch your name.

For the most part people understand this, but because of that they are scared to be creative when choosing a name, rather they are looking for what I call a descriptive name (i.e. Bob’s Dry Cleaner, The Electronic Shack, etc).

While fundamentally there is nothing wrong with that, the truth is that a boring name does nothing for your brand awareness. Brand awareness is all about separating yourself from the competition. When the consumer is faced with similar options, will your name stand out from the rest?

Take a second to think about some of the popular business and product names today…

You’ve got Pepsi, Gatorade, Bounty, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. I could go on all day, but you get the point. The name of your company doesn’t matter. Its about your product and overall marketing exposure. Years before any of these companies or products were around you would have never known what they were or do, but now these names are almost synanomous with their use.

Instead of saying “go search it,” now they say  “Google it.”

Regardless of the paper towel being used, people say “get me a Bounty.”

To sum it up, the determinant of your business’s success is not about how clear your name is. A solid name should be unique and bold. In the end the product should make the name, and not the other way around.

The allure of starting something like a blog is enticing to most because they can make money without have to expense really any of their own. While you can relatively build and grow your site without have to spend to much extra, how do you know when and what to spend money on?

We need to first look at the essentials that we have to spend money on: Hosting and domain. These are annual payments and combined can cost you somewhere between $80-$100. Not bad especially when you consider of starting an actual brick-and-mortar store. Check out a bunch of cheap hosting companies that offer free domains with web hosting plans.

The next item you will probably need to spend money on is some sort of email management service. I personally use Aweber. Remember that the longer you wait to get your email list setup, the more potential leads you will lose. Make sure to do your research before choosing a service because it is almost near impossible to carry over your subscribers from one service to another. Generally these services will run you about $230 per year. See the benefits of having a mailing list.

So together with your hosting, domain, and email management service, the essentials of a site are pretty much covered and it will only cost you around $300 per year.

While many people already know about the top 3 items, the problem gets to the “smaller” items. Services and products that you could really do without, but could possibly do better with.

Examples of these items include: website design, software, hardware for videos and other media recording tools, and advertising.

Before we can really decide whether we need these items, we must first run a cost analysis…

Especially when your profit margin is narrow, people are always quick to say no to spending; however, this is kind of thinking will stunt any growth within your site. Instead we must weigh the costs with potential profits.

For example, if you know nothing about designing a site and you try to put something together that looks like a little kid made it, then is that really good for your business? Rather we must look at the benefit of spending a little more money on a design or WordPress theme compared to trying to make the site yourself. Obviously it might cost you more money overall; however, it will most likely bring in more money than had you designed the site yourself. Plus it is only a one time fee, so once you make up the difference the rest is profit.

Rather than trying to avoid spending, the key should be to finding the best deal. There are tons of people that will offer you designs or various locations to find cheap high-quality WordPress themes. Do a little bit of research and find the best value.

So the next time you come across a potential new cost, do not just throw the idea out the window. Think about the bottom line. Yes, you may have to put up more money, but will it bring in more than the current format?

Too many times, people create products, sell them, and then forget about them. Unless your product has some sort of expiration date when it just won’t be useful anymore, then why not clean off the cobwebs and market it again?

By updating your products, yourself are also giving you another chance to remind or inform people about your products. At the same time, you are improving the value of your current customers, so they will be more likely to buy any of your future products.

Remember, everything you have created demanded you to invest some time and/or money, so why let it go to waste? Be efficient, innovate, and reuse. Worse comes to worse you can always take that old product with a couple updates and then throw it on as a bonus for your next product.

Increase the value = increase the sales.

Create articles related to popular current events.

Regardless of your particular niche, you can almost always relate an article back to some current event. Here are a view reasons why it works:

1. Increase chance of ranking high in search engines. There is a reason why reporters try to be the first one to jump on the story, and then others quickly follow. After a big event or news story, see what the most search keywords are. Odds are it will be filled with that particular news story. You never know when you might happen to sneak into the top page.

2. You never know who is tracking you. Often times, many sites run some sort of “external related article” section at the bottom of their site. Either you signed up to be part of it, or somebody just happened to add you to the database. Whatever it is, by creating articles related to current events you also increase your chances of showing up in more related article sections.

The key point here is to take advantage of major events and leach off that traffic.

Learn more of these tactics and strategies with ASANT Media’s free Site Starter course.

Generally writer’s block occurs due to bad organization. Either you do not keep certain back-up articles ready to go, or you are not writing down idea topics when they first pop into your head. Whatever the reason is, it happens to the best of us, but that does not mean you still can’t push out quality articles.

The following are my 3 go-to formats when needing to overcome writer’s block:

1. List – Not only are lists easy to write, but they are very search engine friendly. Whatever your niche or topic is, create a list. Whether it be the top resources, freebies, or steps to do something, every niche has unlimited list ideas.

2. Review - Can’t think of anything new to write? Then why not review a product or service? No thinking involved. Check out the product, and then let people know what you think about it. If you are lucky, then you may even be able to make affiliate commissions off it.

3. Question/Answer – Through some social network like Twitter, see what people are asking, take one question, and turn the answer into a post. Once again, we are not only creating a solid article, but also a nice search engine friendly piece.

So the next time you go clueless about what to write, don’t go crazy just use one of these 3 go-to article formats.

Really quick, the importance of search engine traffic is that it is highly targeted. Getting this traffic organically means you are not paying for spots through something such as Adwords. So not only are you getting loads of targeted traffic, but you are also getting it for free.

Many times I get the question: what is the best way to boost search engine results?

Sure there are a variety of tricks, schemes, and tests you can do to try and increase your chances of landing a high ranking spot; but if I had  to give you just one step.. it would be content.

Yes, we have heard it over and over again. Content is king, but it is really true. With the emergence of mediums like video, I notice that many people are leaving the “old-fashion” text behind. Why bother writing, when you can just record, right?

Wrong!

If you are lucky, perhaps search engines can grab your videos from places like YouTube and such, but you are essentially leading them to YouTube, and then requiring them to click on another link that will take you to your site. In the online world, the more steps the less people that will follow through.

Content is king.

Search engine have spiders that crawl through web pages and pick up text. Even images could be considered text if you add “alt text” to them. If you are posting a video, then make sure to add a text summary on the same page. Handing out a free PDF or some other download? Unless you are making them subscribe or do something for it, then why bother locking it in a PDF file? Instead consider copying everything from the PDF and creating a page for it, and if you really want to, then you can attach the PDF for people to download if they want.

So while there are many tricks and gadget plays to try and game the system, remember that quality content is the overall king when it comes to boosting search engine traffic. After all, if spiders cannot read it, then how will they know what you are talking about?

In my years of experience, I have both tried and seen many different selling approaches, and they all usually involve different levels of aggressiveness. That being said, is your selling approach aggressive enough?

Because there are so many different products, niches, and services to sell it is hard to get a good gauge on what the best true level of aggressiveness is; however, I always feel that if you are not annoying some people with your approach then it just is not aggressive enough.

On your sales page, in your newsletters, and even within your ads, there should always be some form of call to action. At the same time, whatever you are pushing should be thrown into the face of potential customers multiple times.

Too many times sellers are scared to take chances. Afraid they might annoy some people and turn them away, but the truth is that if your content is good the “real potential customers” will always be there.

For an example, think of Best Buy. Nowadays, you will walk in and have to navigate your way through product displays in the front of the store, but because most people are interested with what the store actually has in it, they will put up with the displays. Best Buy will sell some of those highlighted products, keep actual interested customers willing to put up with the excessive displays, and lose a few people; however, the rewards are much higher than actually losing those few people. Why? Because they are still selling products, and odds are that the customers they lost were not really customers at all.

The process of analyzing how aggressive your selling approach should be may seem complex, but it is really not. Just remember that if you don’t tell people what they need to do, then odds are they probably won’t do it. It is better to lose a couple leads yet still make sales than pleasing everybody and making no money at all.