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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-08

Posted at March 8, 2010
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Tweets, Peeps and Blurbs
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-01

Posted at March 1, 2010
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Hanging A Useful “Shingle”

Posted at February 22, 2010
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Recently, I was hired to do some third party consulting for Intuit with regard to how clients are using their Homestead Web site building tool for establishing their web presence, then provide a critique of the overall process of the “home grown web site” process. It was like stepping into a way-back machine.

Hordes of hobbyists and small business owners have really taken to Intuit’s hosting and site building service. I was able to review sites on all sorts of topics, from lawn care to terminal illness awareness. Some of the results were surprising in their innovation, but equally surprising was the sheer number of sites that looked and felt like they were built in 1999 using a a really old version of Front Page. I won’t call anyone out by linking to their sites, but I can describe some of the mistakes I saw repeatedly.

Why Am I Here? What Do I Do?

I guess my favorite has to be “the site without a purpose.” The list of sites I was asked to review were sites where the owners had requested feedback and suggestions for improvement. I assumed I would be looking at sites that were ready to be shown to the world. Alas, such was not the case… one of the sites I reviewed had two different business names on the main page – I didn’t know which business’ site I was on until I went digging around a little bit. If that’s not confusing to a site visitor, I don’t know what is. One of the first immutable rules of web development and design is that every page has to answer some important questions for the user, like: Why am I here? What do you want me to do?

sample landing page design by Monica Moody at badmoomoo.comIf a person lands on your site and confusion ensues, they’re not going to stick around. Having a clearly labeled site is a no-brainer, or should be. I can honestly say that I am no fan of MLM marketing pages, but those guys never let there be a doubt as to why you’re on their sites – they beat you over the head with the reason you’re there: Buy now! Order soon! Save $800 in the next five minutes! Click here to make easy money! Fill out this form to receive my secret E-book! Play this video to see how my system works! Sign up for free classes!

You know the routine – we don’t necessarily like the incessant nature of these pages, (of which, this image is a sample) but you have to admit, there’s absolutely no doubt as to why we’re on this page or what the site owner wants us to do: click here, fill out a form, buy now, watch my video…

The vast majority of the sites I reviewed all suffered from some form of “identity crisis,” the most prevalent being the site owner’s complete absence of any idea why they were putting the site there. They couldn’t tell the visitor what to do because the site owner themselves had no idea why the site was built.

Before you hang out your shingle, figure out exactly what your web site is supposed to do first. Brochure-ware sites are no longer useful. “Billboards on the Information Highway” are way outdated – don’t fool yourself into thinking your web site can be of any use to you if you’re just using it as an electronic business card. You don’t need bling. You need a purpose for the site to fulfill that makes it worth the trouble it took (and the money it costs) to keep it around.

Business VooDoo
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-22

Posted at February 22, 2010
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-15

Posted at February 15, 2010
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Avoid The Top Three Affiliate Marketing Fails – Part 1

Posted at December 1, 2009
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The Festive Season‘Tis the season to make money. Everyone and their dog needs an extra buck during the holiday season and folks are turning, in droves, to affiliate marketing on the internet as their “get rich quick” solution. I wish I could snap my fingers and get everyone’s attention at once before I point out a few things to them… alas, this little article series will have to do.

There are some basic features that most failed affiliate marketers share. There are more than three, but a few issues seem to show up over and over again – and I’m not even a person who voluntarily works with affiliate marketers and I see this… so they merit some individual attention.

Affiliate Marketing Fail #1 – Lack of Research

This is an odd conundrum. Folks who are jumping on the affiliate bandwagons are often using shortcuts to get into business for themselves… I don’t mean to insult anyone but that act in itself is just a tad bit lazy. So expecting new affiliate marketers who are all hyped up on the latest “Amway” presentation to slow down for five minutes and actually do some real research is probably futile. But the sad fact is that if you don’t stop and think out your plan of action, you will royally screw yourself.

I have two real life incidents to illustrate how folks who get all caught up in the hype (emotion) of the next great thing have wasted time and money because they failed to engage the brain (logic) and actually plan their moves. In another article I wrote about a gentlman who planned to take the world by storm by selling lessons on how to use Google. You see, he had paid some ridiculous amount of money to take a class himself on how to use Google – you know, how to use all the advanced operands and so forth. He took notes and downloaded recordings and basically copied the entire course and decided to sell it himself, as well as have affiliates sell his course for him. He spent several thousand dollars having a company re-do all the instructional work as new Flash presentations. He then hired the same company to build him a new Flash-based web site. He could afford this because he only had to spend 4 cents per click to bid on “google” in Adwords – Google’s keyword estimator said so. He was going to make a killing because his advertising, and that of his affiliates, would be so cheap.

Not once had this guy ever bothered to actually type in “google” into Google’s search field and see what came up. You can imagine my reaction to this “killer PPC strategy.” It was pretty much, “Dude, you really think Google is about to let anyone advertise on their brand for 4 cents a click? Wake up.” At one point he actually bid up to $10 a click and his ads still never ran.

Now I’m not talking about some heavy duty, all-night research here – this is basic. Type in a search term and see who you compete against. It’s not hard. If you see NO ONE advertising in the paid ad space, there’s a reason. There is no such thing as the magic keyword that no one ever thought to bid on…

But what if there are advertisers?

My second example is an actual affiliate, who decided that he could make a fortune using PPC to push ads to his affiliate site, which is how it’s supposed to work, right? He bought a domain name, paid someone to build a site, and was in the process of collecting bid proposals for PPC work when I ran across his RFP… to build an Adwords campaign for electronic cigarettes.

Ok, yes, there are people advertising these things because they spring up faster than Google can squash them. But the plain fact is that it is against Adwords policy to advertise any cigarette product, electronic or not. They state it quite plainly in their editorial guidelines. The same thing happened with a site that sold organic herbs who decided to carry and advertise absinthe… great idea. Too bad it’s against policy. Google disables the ads and if you keep re-enabling them, Google will ban your account, plain and simple. If you want to set up another account and try again, good luck – have some spare credit cards all with separate billing addresses and knock yourself out.

In both those cases, a complete lack of familiarity with PPC guidelines cost these folks more money than they ever made, simply because they didn’t take the time to research the market, or ask an expert before jumping into their venture with both feet.

If your businesses success is predicated on PPC success, you owe it to yourself to either dig down and get the facts or hire a consultant for an hour and get their opinion of your plan… and you must have a plan.

Business VooDoo
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