I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how many of us focus exclusively on increasing our traffic vs. optimizing our existing traffic. So, I’ve decided to write an article outlining 7 hidden money pockets lying dormant in almost every online business.
Simple tweaks that can multiply your profits without generating any extra traffic…
1. Collect JUST email vs. name and email.
In general, the less information you collect on your squeeze page – the higher your conversion rate will be. In fact, collecting just the email address on your squeeze page Vs. Name and email has shown to increase conversion by 7-10%. And let’s face it – no one is fooled by that fake name stuff anymore. We all know it’s automated. So why not get an immediate boost in conversion and drop the name field?
When you have your sales funnel setup correctly, this one simple tweak will create a ripple effect throughout your entire sales process. Because of this small boost in conversion you now have more people seeing your one-time offer (after the squeeze page), more people seeing your upsells, more people reading your follow-up emails, etc…
By improving conversion on the front-end of your sales funnel, you create a ripple effect through your entire business.
2. Use the word FREE in your marketing.
Using the word “free” in your marketing messages almost always increases conversion.
There are a lot of different ways to weave this into your marketing. You can use the word “free” in your headlines, on your squeeze page, or your call to action buttons.
You can also position your offers as a “FREE trial” or a “30-Day Free Trial”.
Eben Pagan does this with almost all of his ‘Double Your Dating’ products‘.
In fact, our most effective squeeze page has a simple, two word headline at the very top of the page that simply says “FREE TRAFFIC!”
The word ‘Free’ is one of THE most powerful words in marketing and you can use it almost anywhere to increase conversion, increase click-throughs, and increase sales.
3. Add an Upsell.
This is a HUGE no-brainer… But it took me FOREVER to finally start implementing this in my own business. Who knows why. I guess I hate extra money 😉
One of the best times to increase your profit is while your customer has their credit card in hand. They’ve just raised their hand and said: “Yes, I want your widget 2000” and now is the perfect time to offer them MORE value. Now, notice I said MORE value. The goal with your upsell is to provide your customer with a killer offer that will add tremendous value to their existing purchase.
There will ALWAYS be a certain percentage of people who want to go to a higher level with you… whether that be through advanced training, group coaching, or done-for-you solutions. If you don’t provide your customers with this extra layer of value, you’re simply leaving money on the table and doing your customers a disservice.
Now personally, I’m not one who wants to have 3 or more upsells. You’ve got to think about the customer experience. And for me, excessive upsells and downsells is just plain annoying. However, I would highly recommend AT LEAST one upsell option that allows your customer to customize their order and add extra value to their purchase.
4. Exit Pop.
There will always be a certain number of people who leave your website for whatever reason.
Unfortunately, VERY few people online properly monetize (and capture) this exit traffic.
There’s definitely a wrong and right way to do this. I’m sure many of you have experienced the ‘wrong way’. You go to a page, try to exit and you’re put through a series of pop-up hell. One exit-pop after another. It’s never-ending.
That’s the wrong way of course 😉
But, exit pop-ups are VERY valuable when done properly.
For example, your sales letter should always have an exit pop that leads to a squeeze page where you can collect subscribers. Our affiliates are currently sending over 50,000 visitors to our Traffic Dashboard sales letter. Now imagine for a moment if we didn’t have an exit pop to capture the exit traffic. We’d be missing out on thousands of subscribers and sales. Plus, each of those subscribers is now cookied with an affiliate link and the affiliate will get credit on any sale that subscriber makes in the future. So as we send follow-up emails and redirect them BACK to the sales letter – that affiliate will get credit if and when they decide to purchase.
You always want to look for ways to monetize (and recoup) your exit traffic. Otherwise, you’ll be losing the majority of traffic that comes to your website.
5. Place 2-3 Ads on Your Thank-You Page.
Your thank-you page is one of THE most high traffic pages on your website – making it one of the most valuable pieces of virtual real estate online. The thank-you page is the page people see directly after the squeeze page, also commonly referred to as the confirmation page.
Unfortunately, most marketers are not monetizing this valuable real estate and therefore leaving thousands of dollars on the table.
In addition to thanking your visitors for subscribing, you should also place 2-3 affiliate ads on the page… also referred to as thank-you page ads. Within our business, we send people directly to our video sales letter after the squeeze page – which results in hundreds of additional sales. We then increase conversion even further through a follow-up series of emails.
Every business online has untapped Virtual Real Estate. One of the fastest ways to add additional profit streams to your business is to optimize your internal
virtual real estate. This could include:
- Download Pages
- Bonus Pages
- Exit Offers
- Member’s Area
- Log-In Pages
- Log-Out Pages
- Banner Space
- Etc…
What areas of your web site could be optimized for additional revenue?
6. Footer Links in your Email.
Here’s one that many people don’t think about.
One of the easiest ways to boost your revenue is to add some footer links to every outgoing email you send to your subscribers.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to simply list all of your products after the close of each email. I guarantee you’ll make more sales because
of it.
Or, if you’re an affiliate marketer, you could simply put this at the bottom of each email:
——————————————————–
***Here are some more FREE gifts you should check out***
And then link to 3-4 of your favorite affiliate offers.
Keep in mind that you would need to link to offers that gave away a free gift on the front-end. This could be through a squeeze page, rebrandable PDF, etc., but either way, this is one of the fastest ways to add an additional revenue stream from untapped virtual real estate.
Plus, you could even use this to barter virtual real estate with other marketers. So, for example, you could exchange footer links with another marketer so that you are both continuously generating a perpetual stream of traffic to each other.
7. Add additional follow up emails. Email more often!
Our final profit booster is one of the easiest of all – but very few people are doing it.
One of the easiest way to add additional revenue to your business is simply by adding additional follow-up emails. In fact, adding just one additional autoresponder email could potentially add thousands of dollars to your business over the course of this year. One of the easiest ways to do this is simply to take your most effective broadcast email (simply look for the one that produced the most revenue)
and then add it to your follow-up sequence so that it now goes out automatically to each new subscriber.
And, of course, another way to increase your profits is simply by mailing more often. Most people simply don’t email their list enough. If you’re only emailing your list once per week, you could easily double your income this year by sending an email 2-3 times per week.
Not only will you sell more but you’ll also be developing a deeper relationship with your subscribers – provided that you’re sending them value-driven emails.
Many top marketers swear by daily emails – meaning they send out an email every day. This included top guys like Daegan Smith, John Alanis, Lee McIntyre
Agora, and many others.
Now, a daily email is a bit much for me, simply because of time constraints, but almost all of us could be emailing more often and staying in contact with our subscribers on a more consistent basis – easily doubling our revenues for 2011.
If you implement even just a few of these strategies, you could immediately triple the value of every visitor who comes to your website.
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