Tuesday, May 31, 2011

How to cash in on Hot Topics - Creating a great "sales" page

I did indeed tell you I am going to share secrets with you, but I dont think I can share secrets with you, unless I explain how these "secrets" work. It does wind me up those wonderful tutorials that say do this this and this, and you will be sucessful, But maybe they only give you how to find keywords, okay so once you have your keywords what then do you do.

I love writing and especially creative writing, however as yourselves and I know, these do not make big sales, So I try to have a balance, my more serious pages, and then there are my product review pages "sales pages" and I dont mind having them mixed in with my work, as I believe it helps build a good solid reputable foundation, and readers like that. i only ever do product reviews about things that I can or have used, and have indeed found useful, or suggest products that help me. I have found these more successful when I put in a personal recommendation . 

So you make product review pages, and still cant sell a thing. Sometimes we can even over complicate things....and make it more difficult than we should.

So I am going to take you through the full process, from starting with an idea. To publishing, and to maximising publicity.
Many of people online want to know how to make sales, what is the secret? We all strive to make that sale. We get so worked up about keyword research and where to post our pages for marketing so the search engines find us that sometimes we just look past eactly what people are looking for and end up makeing it "too technical" that our page focus disappears. We end up with no sales, and wonder why our customer who is looking for that item get bored and clicks to another page.
What about the "I will not bother doing that as there are already pages out there" ....how many timesw have you thought, "wish I had done that" and moved onto find your next topic? Well the page I am going to share with you today, is indeed one that I was actually reluctant to make, due to the amount of other related pages out there, however a chance day out made me change my mind as I spotted something, stopped to take a picture, and then I spoke to the owner, who had come out to ask why I was taking a picture? and they told me how hard a job they had "finding" the Decorations.

So I am going to reveal a page, that made sales in 2weeks, and actually still makes the odd sale today, even though the event is over.

So what hot topic did I jump on? The Royal Wedding of Course.
Now this was a local pub of ours, and when we passed it I could not resist stopping and taking a photo. It was so over the Top for a little country pub, we thought it hysterical. I knew the owner who came out to chat with me, and told me how hard it had been to eventually find the decorations online.

 As I went on my way home I saw many signs out for Royal Wedding Garden parties. I went onto Amazon who I am an affiliate from. And yes there indeed after a bit of searching I found the most outragous banners flags, party masks.
So
I created a page, now these were indeed ofr the UK market, however I also knew Amazon.com US had these items, so I also put a "text" link onto this page, for my US customers. (this is very important to note, as you will find out why later!)

I knew this was going to be a hot topic, and all the available URLS were already snapped up, and I decided NOT to look at my competition, as this can put pressure on your sometimes, (this is okay to do this for a hot Topic, but not recommended for a longer term page that you will work on and tweak)
So I grabbed the best URL, which was Garden Party Decorations....

This was more for fun. I wrote my introduction, with no keyword investigation, no traffic analysis, nothing....I was just writing a page about my mum having a Garden Party for the Royal wedding and I was in charge of finding the Garden decoration. This was indeed true.

I included silly Face Masks of the Royal couple,  Cake toppers, flags, banners....totally over the top.
i published this, posted in the SquidU forum to give the community a laugh, and left it.

So lets re-cap, No keyword research, No promotion, No backlinks apart from SquidU. Google traffic started within 12 hours, and never stopped, over 2 weeks you can see nearly 1,000 visitors.
 
This is a screen shot of my monthly traffic for April/May, this is what i would accept as fantastic results for a "hot topic" considering it was a page that just is made to cover a significant event.
  So how did I get traffic, what "marketing did i do to get traffic to my lens. To see this


Google Traffic 1st week 456


Now I did not post the lens on FB, or twitter, what I did was posted the picture of my local pub, as my friends all socialise there, and just said "have you seen what they have done to the local pub?" and put a link to my lens on the end, and just said, check out the cardboard cutouts of Wills and Kate,  this caught like wild fire, and even ended up being printed out by my brothers friend in australia for their office picture board!

but what was even more exciting to see was what happened over at amazon, I had used a "TEXT" link only for US customers.  And this is what I saw from April 1 to May

 Here is Amazon US Affiliates which I set up tracking individual tracking IDs useful for seeing what on page does sell and what does not, so I could monitor, I did not expect this at all considering everything on the page was for UK. Bearing in mind I only included a TET link to the US I sold $528.41 making $31.07, and I dont particularly like boasting and I do not see the point in it, or i would have included the stats for UK...I am sure you can imagine yourself that this was indeed a very worthwhile, hour, and the promotion side of it was fun, or so which I took out of my day to put this page together in. ...lol...because we were talking about a picture, not a "sales" page. My friend did indeed Buy her garden decorations from my page, but I never knew that until after the event, when she uploaded her garden picture onto FB too, saying it was my fault, I made her do it.    With no research, just a photo of something that was funny, and thought it would make a good page, but this photo I took, was what brought in my traffic, I posted on several sites that you could upload funny pictures, like redgage and included my link. (by the way sign up to redgage, and post interesting photos and links and you can make some extra money, may not be a lot but just let it mount up!
This picture is what got shared, not my page.

So what have we learned, sometimes capatilizing on a "Hot Topic" is very worth while. I hear so many times, "oh I didn't do that as someone else has", well do it differently, 
Sometimes taking an alternative route to promotion, finding a funny photo and sharing it, works better than "promoting" yourlink, I must admit I hate promoting my links or my work via FB or twitter to my friends and family, but this was different and fun. 

I do recommend keywords research, and never normally make a page without it, but sometimes just writing about it can work too.
Don't be held back, if you have an idea write about it, I was going to write about the Royal Wedding but put it off as I saw so many wonderful pages dedicated to it already, wonder how much I would have made if I had just made the page when I first thought about it. 

Hot Topics is a great way to cash in on the here and now, and I do like these pages, usually easy to put together, and okay won't last long but work alongside your other pages as you build them up. And you are Making money online. This is the disheartning part of working online, you are making Quality pages, but people who are going to "buy" want to find what they are specifically looking for there and then, and have their credit card in their hands, waiting to "find" their product. We just need to Show them where it is and how they can buy it. 

Do you know how to find hot topics?
The best way for keeping your finger on the pulse is Google Hot Trends
Some I would not touch with a barge pole, however you can watch and see how things start to appear, especially films, realitly TV shows, (you will get a few weekes out of them!) and up and coming pop stars/actors....who will have a continuing career. 
If you read this and found it interesting I would appreciate your feedback, Did this post help you through some frustrations of not making sales, or is there anything else I can explain to you about making sales with  "Hot Topics"

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I do belive there is always someone to thank for my knowledge, and have played a part in my success, now...a lot of to and fro about PotpieGirl but I did indeed buy her One Week Marketing, and this is where I got a "foundation" to niche marketing, I am a learner, I need to learn all the ins and out, yes there was information that I found useless, and there was information I found priceless. I belive in learning the knowledge, and in fact I still to this day recieve her emails, so people find it irritating, I don't I read every one of them, this lady is a successful online marketer doing eactly what you and I want to  do too, so Of course I read them , I may not click on her links, but if it interests me then I will. There may just be something that clicks for me, like jumping on the "Hot Topic Trends" Yes these guys make money from selling their secrets, but sometimes, they give you that little nugget of information that makes it click.










Friday, May 27, 2011

Introduction to A Work at home Mom

When I decided to try my hand at working online to make additional income for my family. I had no former computer knowledge, I could switch it on and that was about it.

I have now been "working online" for over 2 years, and looking back there are many things I wish I had known when I started writing online.
Keywords
SEO
Backlinks
Images and how to use them properly.
How to Pick a niche
How to make Sales
Writing Article to Drive Traffic to your site.

Nobody tells you that information...in fact many want to charge for secrets for their ebook that tells you how to indeed make millions overnight, my view is run as fast as you can from these. I have included links to some of my best and most popular articles about these subjects, for your information, just remember to come back.

I have indeed learned my craft from many successful online marketers, and followed their findings closely. the Internet is not confusing, it is all the confusing information out there that's the trouble.

Over the years, I have been luck and built up a successful reputation for article writing, product reviews, and creative writing.  Taking part in online communities, and writing Guest Blog posts.

The purpose of this blog moms Work at home blog, is to give share that success and give you the same opportunity I have had, to take your interests, passions and ideas, and be able to write about them, any one can do that,  so how do you make money from your writing?

There are many ways, from Article writing to having your own website, or freelance writing.

I hope not to only inspire you to try working from home, but also to help motivate, as it can indeed be a lonely journey at times, until you start to build up your online network.


Please note, all comments on this Blog will allow 1 "dofollow" from the Authors link. So I encourage you to leave a message, and a link back to your site. Tell me who you are, how you got here, what is it you are planing to do working online...etc All comments are moderated
I like to help support and encourage my fellow work at home moms and dads.
Don't worry about understanding dofollow links just now, but bear in mind creating links to your site is very worthwhile, just post an introduction to yourself and include your blog or website URL. I will also like to feature other networkers examples of how they have found success online too. So if I come accross something I find useful you have written about I shall let you know and write a review for you.

this post has been edited to ADD THIS -PAGE 1 of GOOGLE  Within 50 minutes, using my all ethical, (no Blackhat) Marketing Techniques.

What do you think of that, I can't believe it!
Lisa