photo credit:
A new study out from Germany indicates that bacteria-killing jets of plasma could soon replace the dental drills currently used to remove the cavities in our teeth making visits to the dentist’s office less painful.
Plasma is the fourth state of matter, after solids, liquids and gases. It is formed when gases are energized to the point where electrons fly off some or all of their atoms.
Researchers recently demonstrated that a small, blowtorch-like device emitting a relatively cool beam of purple plasma can eliminate oral bacteria in cavities, leaving more tooth structure intact than a drill does.
Get ready for this. The first dentist to market himself as a mad scientist wins.
From Business Opportunities Weblog.
Can you make a dollar a day online? Sure. Anyone can build a website that’ll generate a dollar a day in Google Adsense revenue. It’s almost as easy to make a product that you sells once a month for $30.
$1 is great, but realistically, it’s nothing, right?
But, what if you made 400 of these websites and products? Is $11,000 a month something? Definitely. There’s the trick.
Don’t try to make something online that’ll make you a rich — just try to make something simple that’ll generate $1 per day. Then make something else. Repeat. Do this every day. After a year, you’ll be making nearly $11,000 per month.
Redefine your plan and you’ll make a fortune.
How do you begin? You just do. Pick a topic and go. Basket weaving? Sure. Paint by numbers? Of course. Cheese? Anything, it doesn’t matter. You just need to start.
From Business Opportunities Weblog.
I have seen DirectCPV advertising on this blog for awhile, and decided I would try them out. Overall I oversee thousands of dollars per month spent on CPV through my accounts and those I manage, but really Media Traffic is the primary company used as they seem to be the most stable and well priced.
I decided to give DirectCPV a run for their money, so I dropped $100 into my campaign (their minimum deposit), and forgot to enter my $30 coupon code (JCH30) to give my total $130. This was stupid on my part so I kindly sent them a support request asking if they could add the coupon to my account, and instead they added an extra $20, bringing my total to $150 for the case study.
I created a campaign promoting a free dating on facebook application, and since there are so many people who use Facebook, I decided to do the case study with DirectCPV’s Run of Network (RON), which is basically untargeted and super cheap ($0.004 per view).
In only a few hours, the campaign was capped and I had received 37,269 unique views to my landing page. While DirectCPV has a much smaller overall user-base than its adware competitors, 40,000 impressions is a very small percentage of their network so they are able to send it very quickly, and their low total amount of users wouldn’t affect me.
While we pay about the same price using Media Traffic, we get a little bit more targeting (rather than anyone from anywhere), so the numbers converted quite a bit less than I am use to with Media Traffic. However we had to talk with everyone at Media Traffic to get such a deal, and if anyone planned on using DirectCPV on a daily basis spending hundreds of dollars, I certainly would talk to them as well to increase your rates which I am sure something could be arranged.
Pros:
- Very cost effective advertising
Starting at only $0.004 per view for CPV traffic is as low priced as it gets off the bat, so that works out well.
- No delays
With most CPV networks, any changes you make to your campaign takes 15+ minutes to execute on their servers, and if you are bidding on sites like facebook, that means a one second typo takes 15 minutes to fix and can run you up hundreds of dollars. With DirectCPV, their system seems closer to real time so that error can easily be fixed.
- Easy to sign up, fast approval
Their staff got back to my email fairly quickly, and my campaign was approved in a timely manner. When it comes to affiliates using CPV systems, waiting 12-24 hours for approval can be life and death of a timely campaign.
- Great support
They responded to my email and credited my account when I asked them to, and in a timely manner. I am definitely a fan of that in a network.
- Powerful referral system
They offer a 5% referral on all qualified advertisers (they have to spend over $125, which excludes all the people who do $100 minimum bid tests like me, bummer! =P). They also offer a $20 signup bonus for these advertisers, as well as entering you into a contest with multiple tiers, and a chance to win a BMW! You will need 100+ people spending $125+ to reach this tier however.
Cons:
- Small Network
For a CPV network, DirectCPV does not have the demographics that some of the oldest networks have, however their network is still large enough to not have a problem if you are a small to moderate sized advertiser, only the people spending a fortune every day will have a problem with capping.
- Site Navigation
The site has everything you need in one bar, however the system just isn’t as fluent as many other CPV networks I am use to, which to me is a con.
Conclusion:
Overall I am very satisfied with this network. It is very cost effective and the pros definitely can outweigh the cons depending on what your goals are with advertising. There are definitely strong alternatives to DirectCPV, but like anything, if you do split testing you can definitely make this network work for almost any industry online.
If I had tested with a larger budget, and worked directly with an affiliate manager to get the best targeting for the cheapest deals, I believe this network could very easily be on par or better conversions than Media Traffic and the other big networks. Split testing everything takes time and money, and this case study could have certainly been optimized better if I ran it longer with more direct stats.
If I were to start over with DirectCPV, I would certainly not use Run of Network traffic and would instead start targeting it a little bit more. When it comes to targeting, a little bit can go a long way when it comes to conversions, so my conversion numbers could have been a lot better even if I am spending more per click. Otherwise I would have tried to get my minimum bid down for RON, or even see if I could get them to do country targeting for RON prices like I have done with other CPV networks. (Hint: They need your business as much as you need theirs, work with them so you both make money!).
If you plan on using DirectCPV to promote affiliate offers, then their $0.01/view URL targeting would probably be the best bet unless the offer is international and accepts conversions from many countries.
I realize $150 is a small budget to write a case study on, but I wanted to share my thoughts for those users on the edge and I hope some of you can take this post as some food for thought when it comes to trying out new affiliate networks. If anyone has anything other thoughts about their experiences with DirectCPV, feel free to post them in the comments below.
My name is Collin LaHay and this case study and guest post was written by me. I am currently rebranding my blog’s domain to my new flagship site called Uber Link Building where I share link building strategies that can help you raise your ranks in the search engines and ultimately make more money online.
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IF you are not on the Video Boss list then you need to get on it now.
Andy just released another amazing video in the Video Boss series. I just finished it. Its unbelievable.
Our team watched the first video the other day and we were wondering how exactly Andy records his slides… We assumed it was with some software like screen flow or camtasia… but no… its much easier then that.
Its so enlightening to watch someone do an exact step by step complete walk through on making video’s that drastically increase conversions. Everything from what camera to use, to where to get images, to how to make slides, to how to word stuff, to how to put it all together. And its all 100% free.
Go check out the video boss’s newest movie the little boss.
You will thank me later I promise.
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The Video Boss Puts Out Another Amazing Video
Guest post by Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips.
I have been using Google AdSense to monetize my blogs and websites for as long as I remember. In fact it was the first method I ever tried (I made a whooping $15 on my first month… back in 2005). Over the years I migrated to other methods (e.g., direct sponsors and affiliate marketing), which made AdSense become merely an inventory filler. I was still making around $1,000 monthly from it, but whenever I could I would use other methods over it.
Then some months ago I started noticing an upward trend on the CPC of my sites, and I figured that I should give AdSense another try. I started applying some tricks here and there, and the next month I made over $3,000 with it (that is combining all my sites). I was pleasantly surprised, and I decided to keep using it actively on some sites.
In this article I want to share with you the tips and tricks I used to triple my AdSense earnings in one month.
1. I added units to my Big Websites
Daily Blog Tips and Daily Writing Tips are my largest websites in terms of traffic. They are getting close to one million monthly page views (combined). Despite that I was not using AdSense on them, mainly because the direct sponsorship model was working relatively well.
Some months ago I decided to load some AdSense units on the sites, however, and the results were very positive. Around 70% of the boost I generated to my earnings came from these two sites. At the same time I managed to keep the other monetization methods working fine, and no reader ever complained about the new ads (more on that later).
Even if your blog is already making money with direct sponsors and affiliate marketing, therefore, you could still manage to increment your earnings by strategically adding some AdSense units.
2. I added units to my Small Websites
As many webmasters do, I have a bunch of small websites scattered around the web. Some are on free hosted platforms like Blogger, and others are self hosted sites that I abandoned along the way. Most of these sites still get traffic, however. Not much, but combined the numbers get decent.
I figured that adding AdSense units to all these sites could yield some money, and I was right. The main reason is that, since these are abandoned sites and don’t have loyal visitors, I can place the units very aggressively. The result was a very high CTR (Click-through rate), which compensates the small traffic levels.
Don’t underestimate the earning potential of small websites, especially if you are willing to place AdSense units aggressively.
3. I used the Large Units
If you want to make money with AdSense you’ll inevitably need to use one of these units: the 336×280 large rectangle, the 300×250 rectangle, the 120×600 large skyscraper or the 728×90 leaderboard.
Whenever I tried to use smaller units the results were disappointing. Even if I positioned them aggressively the CTR was just too low.
All four units mentioned above can produce good results, but the best performing one is by far the 336×280 large rectangle, and that is the one I used to boost my earnings.
4. I placed the Units above the Fold
My first trial was to place the 336×280 large rectangle between the post and the comments section of my blogs. The results were OK. I then decided to try placing them below the post titles for one week, and the CTR skyrocketed. In fact I still need to find a placement/unit combination that will beat placing a 336×280 unit below post titles.
I knew this rule, but I guess I needed to test and get confirmation. The rule is: if you want to make money with Google AdSense, you must place your units above the fold.
5. I Focused on Organic Traffic
My main concern with adding a large AdSense unit right below my post titles was that some of the loyal readers could get annoyed with it. At the same time I knew that loyal readers become ad blind quite fast, and that the bulk of my money would come from organic visitors (i.e., people coming via search engines to my posts).
To solve this problem I decided to display the large rectangle only on posts older than seven days (using the Why Do Work WordPress plugin). It worked like a charm, as loyal readers don’t even notice the ad units when they are browsing through my recent posts, and organic visitors almost always see the ads because they usually land on posts older than seven days.
6. I started using AdSense for Search
I was not sure how much money I would be able to make with AdSense for Search, but I was not happy with the search results provided by WordPress, so I decided to give it a shot anyway.
Currently I am making around $60 monthly with AdSense for Search. It is not much, but if you sum it over one year we are talking about $720. On top of that the search results are as relevant as you’ll get, so it is a win win situation.
7. I started using AdSense for Feeds
Another AdSense product I decided to try was the AdSense for Feeds one. I opted to display the ads below my feed items (you can also place them on top, but this would be too intrusive in my opinion). The results here were pretty good, both in terms of CTR and earnings.
You obviously need a large RSS subscriber base to make this work, but I am guessing that even with a couple thousand subscribers you could already make $100 monthly from feed ads.
8. I played around with section targeting
Section targeting is an AdSense feature that allows you to suggest specific sections of your site that should be used when matching ads. You can read more about it here.
I found that on niche and small websites section targeting can help a lot. Often times Google was displaying unrelated ads on these sites because there weren’t enough pages. After using section targeting I managed to increase the relevancy of the ads and consequently the CTRs.
9. I tested with Different Colors and Fonts
If you enabled both image and text ads on your units you should be able to customize the colors and fonts. I did some testing with both of these factors, and it helped to increase the numbers. Nothing dramatic, but it was definitely worth my time.
You just need to track your CTR for a couple of weeks. Then change the color or font and track it for another week, seeing if you can beat the original CTR. If you can, keep the new format. If you the performance decreased, try a new color or font and track the CTR for another week, until you find the optimal combination.
On my sites the best results came from making the ad units merge with the look of the site, but on some sites contrasting colors perform better, so testing is a must.
Daniel is the owner of Daily Blog Tips. He is also the author of the Make Money Blogging ebook, which you can download for free by signing up to his newsletter.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
9 Tricks I Used To Triple My AdSense Earnings In 30 Days
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New listings placed this week in the ShoeMoney Marketplace:
Want to get your job, product, or announcement out to hundreds of thousands of very targeted ShoeMoney readers? Create a marketplace listing today!
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We got tired of eating Pho every week so this week, we decided to head to Nando’s Chicken in Kerrisdale for some flame grilled Portuguese chicken. Nando’s is one of my favorite places for chicken. The franchise has hundreds of locations around the world and Vancouver has been a very good market for them. Nando’s is also the first restaurant that allowed me to try out my new chip enable Visa card.
We had a nice turn out of ten people coming out for Nando’s famous Peri Peri chicken. The location is idea for a Dot Com meet up. It’s relatively quiet with a seating layout that promotes networking. This is the second Dot Com Pho we held at Nando’s and I can see us going there for more meet ups in the future.
For the Learning To Read Edition of Dot Com Pho, we have Stephen’s chicken lunch, Tris Hussey’s new blogging book, eBook reader smack down between the Amazon Kindle and the Apple iPhone, iPadInCanada.ca, the iPhone app of the week and other stuff. Anyone is welcome to join us for Dot Com Pho. Follow me on Twitter to find the time and location of the next one.
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A guest post by Josh Hanagarne.
World’s Strongest Librarian was about four months old when I got interested in sponsors. I’d read the articles about how to do it, and none of them sounded that plausible for me and my situation.
For one, my traffic wasn’t impressive, certainly not to the point where sponsors were approaching me. And, while my blog has become slightly more focused in its first ten months, it wasn’t targeted at any group of readers in particular, so I wasn’t sure how confident niche advertisers would be. It’s a little more focused now, but I can’t really think of a better term for my readers than “The Loyal Weird.”
So I tried a little sponsorship experiment. My expectations were virtually non-existent. I did it more out of curiosity than anything, hoping that it would engage readers and foster some good will.
Here’s what happened.
Auditions and criteria
I decided to hold “tryouts” for anyone who was interested in a sponsorship slot on World’s Strongest Librarian. If you like, you can read my initial post here. If you’re terrified of leaving this page because there’s so much wisdom in the air, here’s the summary of what I asked interested readers to do:
Dear potential sponsor, please give me:
- One paragraph on something you did in the last year that you are proud of
- Your URL
- A description of your blog/business
- Why you’re interested in running an ad on World’s Strongest Librarian
- Your pitch: Why you? Just how cool are you?
And I made it very clear that I did not care about the size or look of the blog. As long as a blogger wasn’t peddling anything heinous, illegal, or spammy, they had as good a chance as anyone.
I would run auditions for the rest of August and then make my decisions.
The plan at that point
I figured that I’d get a small response and run ads for the four people who responded out of pity. Then I’d run their ads for the month of September. When September was winding down, I would thank each blogger, ask them if they wanted to pay for another month or more to stick around, or part ways while remaining friends.
I figured I’d repeat this cycle for a few months until all of the ads were paid for. Then I’d end the auditions.
What I didn’t expect
I got a lot of responses. In fact, I got close to 100 auditions. Some were lengthy and hilarious. Others were half-hearted and poorly written. Some came very close to flat-out begging, and others were so standoffish that I couldn’t tell if they were actually interested or not.
The good things about this
Any reader response and engagement can feel like a huge win for the new blogger. So of course it was gratifying to see that there were people paying attention.
I also learned just how eclectic my reader base was. I got emails from bloggers covering every topic and angle imaginable. I got emails from foundations. I got emails from businesses. Word spread, and suddenly I had a bunch of new readers, and some readers I’d never engaged with came forth out of hiding.
The bad things about this
There’s really only one: because I had underestimated the response, I hadn’t really thought through my judging criteria. And suddenly I had a mountain of auditions to sift through. It was really, really hard to decide. And in a couple of cases, I wound up choosing in a more arbitrary manner than I was happy with, but I couldn’t figure out a better way at that point.
Here is my post announcing the winners.
This caused some hurt feelings, a lot of negative emails from disappointed applicants, demands for explanations of how I chose…and so on.
“Okay,” I thought. “Next round, I’ve got to do this better.”
There wasn’t going to be a next round.
The best things about this
A couple of the winners left after one month with no hard feelings between us. But several of them stayed…and paid. When I was able to show them their click-through rates and they told me how “sticky” the traffic from my blog had been, I didn’t need to convince them at all. And suddenly I had a very, very modest income from sponsors—but I had sponsors!
I was also spared the difficulty of going through another round of auditions and making people mad.
It also got a lot of people blogging about the experiment, and of course, the traffic was its own reward.
Suggestions for anyone interested in trying this
- Overestimate the response you’ll get, this way you (hopefully) won’t get overwhelmed
- Explain your judging criteria. You may still have some sore losers, but having a prior explanation to fall back on may be helpful
- Give it your own spin
- Decide which system you’re going to use to display ads with, and figure it out earlier than the night before you’re supposed to run the ads. I can be a real dunce. This was one prime example of my duncery.
Your own variant of this experiment could be a way to grab some sponsors and figure out how some things work before your numbers are commanding sponsors on their own.
Above all: enjoy it, have fun, and use this experiment opportunity to make connections, spark some creativity, and do your own thing.
Don’t try too hard to be like anyone else. You are not anyone else. This is a good thing, whether you believe it or not.
About the Author: Josh Hanagarne is the twitchy giant behind World’s Strongest Librarian, a blog about living with Tourette’s Syndrome, kettlebells, book recommendations, buying pants when you’re 6’8”, old-time strongman training, and much more. Please subscribe to Josh’s RSS Updates to stay in touch.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
How I Got Some Paying Sponsors Without Really Meaning To
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A selection of products to amuse and inspire.
The Drib
Pair it with your Snuggie and pig out on your sofa.
Wine Glass Holder Necklace
After a few glasses this will come in REAL handy.
Powerlung
Proven to make breathing more efficient and effective, according to “clinical independent studies” (none of which is detailed). But, can I still smoke while using it?
String Cat Toy
Watch Fluffy spaz out while you catch up on 24.
Photos by skymall.
From Business Opportunities Weblog.
AOL Small Business reports that while it’s been long established that numerous types of businesses can be franchised, from sign making to decorating homes for the holidays, there’s no denying that Mike Enos’ business is one of the more unique franchises in existence.
His company, Fast Wrap, literally shrink wraps boats, cars, trucks, airport towers, half-finished buildings … well, there’s nothing, they say, that they won’t wrap to protect from the weather and prying eyes.
“We wrapped a Ritz Carlton hotel that was under construction and had to be protected during the winter months,” says Enos, “and we’ve wrapped eight or 10 bombers for the military. We’ve done a Triple-A baseball stadium that was under construction and a terminal at the Sacramento Airport a few days ago — and a 30-foot FAA air tower in Reno. We have a crew on the Super Dome in New Orleans.”
Among other oddities, or at least objects you wouldn’t expect to need these services, Fast Wrap has even wrapped a half-constructed church, a 250,000-square-foot unfinished hospital, and alfalfa for a famer who wanted it stored properly.
The shrink wrap Enos’ company uses is fire-retardant, recyclable and available in four colors (two shades of green, blue and white).
And while a customer might pay $250 to wrap a boat, at $1.15 to $1.35 a square foot, depending on the size of the project, an entrepreneur wrapping, say, an 84,000-square-foot hotel could make — well, you can do the math.
Enos also thinks the unique factor is a selling point with attracting franchisees. “There’s no competition. There’s never been a franchise out there like this.”
Photo by Fast Wrap.
From Business Opportunities Weblog.
What Is CPV?
CPV stands for Cost Per View (it also goes by the name PPV – Pay Per View) and is one of the fastest growing advertising channels for affiliate marketers. Unlike the CPC model pioneered by Google, which charges you per ad click, the CPV model charges you every time someone views your site or landing page. For affiliate marketers, the CPV advertising model has been a gold mind and a well kept secret.
I discovered Cost Per View traffic about two years ago when I was on the Top Affiliate Challenge reality show. Johnathon Van Clute, the winner of the challenge, was using CPV traffic to generate over $4,000 per day of income from affiliate offers. Since then, I’ve been using CPV traffic to promote affiliate offers.
One of the CPV networks I deal with is DirectCPV. They’re a local company with offices in downtown Vancouver. DirectCPV is unique in that they allow advertisers with smaller budgets. You can set up an account with only a $100 deposit. Other CPV networks want you to spend at least $10,000 a month before they even talk to you. It’s because of this high deposit limit and highly selective nature of the networks that have kept CPV traffic as a secret society. DirectCPV is hoping to change all that.
Advantage of CPV Over CPC
The biggest advantage of CPV over CPC is cost. CPV is a lot less expensive. While the minimum bid on Google AdWords is 5 cents (and good luck getting that), you can start a CPV campaign for a low as 1 cent for targeted and only 0.4 cent for a run of network (RON). If you were running an email submit offer that pays $2, you would need to get 1 in 40 submitting their email in order to break even with a 5 cents CPC Google ads. However, with DirectCPV, you would only need 1 person out of 200 submitting in order to break even. If you’re using RON traffic, the number increases to 1 in 500!
Another advantage of CPV is there’s no need to worry about a quality score and you can direct link to the offer page in most cases. Your landing page will also be the first thing viewed because it pop up over anything else. This video explains how it all works.
Use Code JCH30 For $30 Bonus
Unlike other CPV networks, DirectCVP requires only a $100 deposit to start a campaign. However, if you enter JCH30 when you make your deposit, they’ll credit your account with an extra $30. It doesn’t cost anything to sign up for DirectCPV but you must deposit at least $100 before you can use the service. This is a very inexpensive way to test a new traffic source and you’ll get a $30 bonus to boot.
Sign Up For DirectCPV
Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!
Geeks are Sexy is a great site that provides new, reviews and tutorials about all things tech. They have a large selection of articles on blogging, information technology, science, hardware and consumer electronics, business and many others. It is a very interesting site definitely worth taking a look at if you want to kill some time. Check it out at www.geeksaresexy.com
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Geeks are Sexy
Do you want a formula to guarantee the success of your blog?
Yesterday I was interviewed by a journalist about blogging and half way though the interview he asked me what the formula for successful blogging was.
His question was innocent enough and asked without agenda but as I pondered it and pondered the many successful blogs that we see in our medium it became very clear to me that while it might be simpler to have a formula to follow to make our blogs succeed that there are many many different approaches to success in this field.
One of the things that I love about blogging is that there really is no wrong or right way to do what we do and for every ‘rule’ us people who blog about blogging might write – there is always an exception of a blog that has done the opposite and still had good results.
Yes there are some principles that we might see in many successful blogs – but even as I’ve been recently exploring some of these I see examples of blogs that buck the system and succeed despite doing so.
Last year I came up with a list of ‘debates’ in blogging to illustrate some of the diversity of approaches in blogging. Recently – after being accused of being too narrow in my focus – I revisited the list and added a number of ‘debates’ to illustrate the variety of approaches that bloggers take.
All in all I’ve come up with 29 areas that bloggers take different approaches in – yet there would be many many more.
Some of them are debates that might come down to a bloggers ethics, although most are simply different approaches that might be based more upon a bloggers goals, the niche that they’re in and the type of audience that they’re attempting to connect with.
29 Debates Bloggers Have about Blogging
- RSS Feeds - Full vs Partial Feeds
- Comment Sections – Comments vs No Comments
- Post Frequency – Post More vs Post Less
- How Many Blogs? – Focus upon One Single Blog vs Having Many Smaller Blogs
- Domain Names – long vs short, hyphens vs non hypens, .com vs other extensions (like .net, .org), local vs global domain extensions
- Hosting – hosted vs self hosted
- Post Titles – descriptive vs keywords
- Content – Link content vs Original content
- Paid Reviews – Happy to Write Paid Reviews vs Not Doing Paid Reviews
- Design – Professional Design vs Templates
- Links to External Sources – Should Open in a New Page vs Should Open in the Same Page
- Ownership – Use Social Media vs Build Your own properties
- Post Length – Long in Depth Posts vs Short, Sharp Posts
- Topic – Niche vs Broad Topics
- Dating Posts – Dates on Posts vs Non Dated
- Blogger Name – Anonymous blogging vs Using Your Name
- Subscribers – RSS is Best vs Email is Best
- SEO – Writing for Search Engines vs Writing for Humans
- Personal Blogging – Sticking to Topic vs Injecting Personality and Personal details
- Comment Moderation – Highly Regulated and Moderated vs Anything Goes
- Social Media vs Search – focus upon social media rather than search engines as traffic sources
- LinkBait – Anything goes (e.g.. Personal Attacks) vs Strong Boundaries Around What is and Isn’t Acceptable
- Bloggers Participation in Comments – Respond to Every Single Comment vs Let Readers Talk to Each Other and Don’t Interact
- Blog Platforms – WordPress vs ((Insert Other Platforms Here))
- Monetization – Blogs Should Be Monetized vs Blogs Should Never Be Monetized
- Affiliate Disclosure – Disclose every affiliate link vs Site Wide Disclosure vs No Disclosure
- When To Start Monetizing – From Day 1 vs Once You Have an Audience
- Text Links – To Sell them vs Not Selling Them
- Outsourcing – Outsourcing content (or other aspects of blogging) vs producing your own.
Some of the above debates are over things that some bloggers feel quite strongly about (there are a few that I do) – but in almost every one there are blogs doing a full spectrum of things.
I wanted to share this updated list mainly to celebrate our diversity and variety as bloggers and in the hope that those who might be looking for ‘the formula’ might see that there’s a wonderful array of choice at our finger tips and with that comes a lot of freedom to forge our own paths as individuals.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
29 Debates Bloggers Have about Blogging
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This post is part of the Friday Q&A section. Just use the contact form if you want to submit a question.
Vijay asks:
How to build a product landing page to sell our own products through our blog? Should we develop a page on the same domain, or should we put it on another domain?
In reality there are two questions there: the first one is about how to create landing pages, and the second one is whether you should place that landing page inside your blog or create a dedicated domain just for it. I will answer the latter question today, and the other one will be covered next Friday.
As usual, the answer depends. If the product you are talking about is connected or related with your blog, for example an ebook on the same topic you blog about, then I would recommend creating the landing page inside your own domain.
The advantage of this approach is that your regular visitors, who will certainly be interested in your product, will be more likely to make a purchase if they feel that your product is an extension of your blog. They are already used to your brand and design, they trust it, so clicking on a “Buy now!” button inside your existing domain would be easier. If instead you send them away to a new domain, with a different brand and design, some of these visitors might raise a barrier (because there is no more trust there) and end up not purchasing the product.
The disadvantage of creating a landing page inside your own domain is that you’ll need to work around the design elements already in place on your blog, and they might not be optimal for a landing page that has the goal of selling something. For example, you might need to keep your navigation bar and sidebar links there. This is not optimal because these links represent “exit points.” Ideally your landing page should have only one link, the “Buy now!” one. The more exit points you have the smaller your conversion rate will be.
That is why many bloggers and online marketers opt to create a new domain and design for their products. If you believe your product has potential to stand on its own (i.e. generate enough revenues to justify the effort of building a new website for it), and if the product is not completely connected with your blog, then going with this approach could work better. This is what I used for my Online Profits training program, for example.
The drawback here is that you’ll need to develop a second brand, separate from the one of your blog. The advantage is that you can completely customize the design on the new domain, and develop a brand that is more appropriate to sell the product or service in question.
Finally, you can also try a hybrid approach. You could create a landing page inside your own blog just for your readers, and then a second landing page on its own domain where you would send other sources of traffic, including PPC and media buys. Overtime you would be able to determine the best performing page, and you could abandon the other one.
Original Post: Should I Put My Product Landing Page Inside My Blog Or On A New Domain?
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