Oh! The Pain! I can't stop myself! I MUST tell you . . .

[PhilnCedarPark]

Sorry for the title lol - but it did make you look . . .

Please folks - I have checked out some of the sites you all have created, and the truth is making a decent web site that converts visitors into buyers is hard. I actually am not going to comment on anything specific here - just want to add some useful stuff you can do this afternoon to keep from wasting TIME and MONEY. I have no relationships to the sites I list below, but PLEASE - there are a lot of mistakes being made.

I make my living off of high-end web campaigns and web sites - I am a enterprise-level web architect who also spends a lot time on the business side as well. These are links I send business clients to for a bit of education.

Who's Asking? A Roundup of Q&A Sites (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/question_and_answer_sites.php)
Read/Write Web is a bit tech-heavy but an ABSOLUTE must. Make sure to check out the whole site, just not the page I linked to. If the list on this one page (which prompted me to write this) doesn't give you 10 different ideas in 10 minutes GO READ THE BOOK AGAIN!!!

Survey: Mobile Users Most Receptive To Paid-Search Ads (http://searchengineland.com/070626-094542.php)

Search Engine Land is full of fantastic guides and articles like this! Get smart on the rules (and scams) in PPC. ANY question you have on search, placement, etc - start here!

Smashing Magazine (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/)
Smashing Magazine is the #1 source for examples and inspiration for web site look and feel. Read it! Want free templates for your blog (and yes everyone needs a blog but that is another story for another time) or icons or pictures or fonts? Get inspired here!

WuFoo (http://wufoo.com/)
Your web site needs a good form. Visitors hate forms in general - and bad forms they REALLY hate! Forms are very hard, and also easy for bad guys to hack unless you really know what you are doing. Or use WuFoo.

http://www.browsercam.com/
A couple of folks in this forum have launched sites that are broken on FireFox and/or Safari. Ugh. Make sure your site looks good on any browser with this service (they have a free trial).

Just a few ideas - but if you dont' know what funnels, link bait, and cross-site scripting is (or whether these are good or bad) - spend a little time comparing sites you would spend money at and set yourself some minimum design goals. Before you pay money to a developer in India you found on eLance - find yourself a neighborhood geek who can tell you whether they are building you a decent site or a house of sticks.

[RichB]

I was also thinking maybe having as simple a test site as Tim recommends in the book may be a reason "sales" are slow.

To what do you attribute the success of simple sites like pxmethod.com ?

[onemoretry]

PhilnCedarPark:

Thank you for that post. I agree with much of your commentary; there are so many one-off sites with sales copy that most of the money being made using this avenue are simply the sites that cater to designing, building and deploying those sites, and not the sites themselves.

I found a lot of inspiration from reading Tim's book, but he does not suggest anything different than "this stuff is hard to do and not everyone can do it". I think the best possible advice is to make sure you have excellent content in both your sites and your product. This is contrary to Tim's sentiments that one shouldn't spend too much time worrying about your content, but that advertising model is likely on its last legs.

You mentioned blogs. I absolutely agree that every one and each product must have a blog to establish authenticity in the new web economy, and the blog cannot be established just for this reason alone. It actually has to establish authenticity by *being authentic*.

In fact I would suggest a blog as a smarter alternative to an eBook that someone slams out over the weekend. A blog is an organic story that, with careful writing and a good education in RSS (i.e. FeedBurner), tagging (i.e. Technorati), CSS and blog hosting (i.e. Typepad, Wordpress), analysis (i.e. Google Analytics), monetization (i.e. Revver, AdSense, TextLinkAds), peer commentary (i.e. Digg, Reddit) is a better way to earn money. But you need to be prepared to post good content nearly daily for years. Yes, years. This route is hard, too, but it can generate several hundred dollars a day.

If you insist on the product route do something physical, auditory, or visual. Put the eBook on a CD, or at least have the option, as a bare minimum.

Personally I am working on three muses in tandem. One is a DVD video product (with a well designed site and a blog), one is a pure blog (with niche content that I have personal expertise in and a specific audience), and the last is a Web 2.0 social networking site (which I am developing myself, using AJAX and other current technologies).

The latter is the most potentially lucrative as it fills a real need that hasn't been addressed but I have no intention of rushing it out the door or farming it out to outsourcers, or trying to find VC money to get fat and lazy off. You can't buy an audience, you have to grow it. Try going to the gym and getting "jacked" in one weekend.

Your muse should not be something you lean on, but you should lean into your muses. Does that make sense? I recommend Seth Godin's "The Dip" book as a good companion to Tim's book to help add a little reality to the mix. You have to want it, and work hard through the Dip to get it. Tim made mistakes with BrainQUICKEN but he pounded it out through the Dip and now he is able to reflect on what worked and what didn't. The mistakes you make in your niche, passion, or industry are not covered in his book. For those you'll have to write your own when you make it to the other side.

[onemoretry]

I was also thinking maybe having as simple a test site as Tim recommends in the book may be a reason "sales" are slow.

To what do you attribute the success of simple sites like pxmethod.com ?

I have no real authority, but my hunch about PXMethod is that it is highly targeted and it literally drips with its target market. Consider the sales copy. It is clearly written for students. The statistics are focused on student productivity. The words themselves are the same you'd find in a college. Many words the general public wouldn't even understand, or, at the very least, they would get bored and find another site. There is no flash or glitzy WOW!-type marketing.

It reads like a college report. Perfect. Exactly. Tim wanted students to hit the site in a search for an edge in their college work, he knew what words they would use, they arrive at his site and find an intelligently written piece of copy that appeals to science and measurement.

IMHO, this is why PXMethod works. Typical one-page web marketing would have fallen on its face trying to sell to this specific crowd that Tim wanted. Actually I think that the tired web marketing ploy of "If you order by <insert web browser timestamp here> you'll get blah blah" that he posts at the bottom of his copy hurts his credibility on that page. If he made thr page even more collegiate, added a video "lecture" (posting it on revver so he could make money even from viewing it) then it could really zoom. Not that Tim needs advice in this regard.

[PhilnCedarPark]

Dead on for pxmethod - want to target the student market it should look more like myspace than Amazon :) For what PX Method is selling, its a decent layout. But it also does look professional. Never underestimate the power of curved corners!

Yes - a blog is free to set up - and yes, if you don't mind playing with a control panel even free blogs can have their own domain name.

If you want a good solid site - try CMS is simple (http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/). You can create a professional-looking site and manage it WITHOUT programming once it is set up. If you know nothing about web design or programming, advertise on eLance or CraigsList about installation, setup, and skinning but be specific about THIS EXACT PRODUCT. The software itself is free and powerful for what it does. Offer $450 for the works.

For blogs, go with a hosting company that provides WordPress then google for free WordPress themes. Again, if you know nothing hit elance and craigslist but again, be specific about the product - WordPress. Personally, I user blogger for everything bloggish but I never do any customization in the blog outside of stylesheets- I do both PHP and AJAX a lot and prefer to operate in a clean environment. But thats probably WAY to geeky for this forum - and hey, its the weekend.

[Webzu]

Good points.

I like Joomla (http://www.joomla.org/) for CMS. I have a few sites running on Joomla without complaints and it's free.

My blogs are on wordpress and I love it Very easy to use and they rank well in the SE's.

[RichB]

So are those of of putting up sites similiar to pxmethod for dry testing purposes wasting our time? Is it better to just write up the ad and see how many clicks we can get and if it looks promising then go full tilt into a site rather than put up a one-pager and base our go/no go on simulated orders?

For instance, my current dry test site is www.trimuscle.com
I know the site isn't going to blow any minds, but as far as I was concerned that wasn't the point at this stage. I've had 160 clicks in a few days, but no orders. Now that could be because the content stinks, the site itself isn't credible to the user, or a combination. Based on the response do I put the time and dollars into putting this into production, which would require building the actual product, or do I kill the idea and try another muse until I find one with a better order rate?

And if I have a WYSIWYG editor I don't think I need a CMS do I?

I'll take any criticisms you can muster on my site as well, bring it.

[PhilnCedarPark]

1. You say "Please fill out our secure order form. Your information is strictly confidential and is protected by law." Actually the law doesn't say squat about privacy in the USA. But the BIG problem is that almost all users will see that the form is in fact not secure (only HTTP) - and would never enter CC in this kind of form.

2. Design - brown and orange are 'cool' colors. You need hot colors. Posting more about this later.

3. Content is a bit long.

4. Why not be honest - say you are in beta (thats the thing these days) your first batch is no longer available but if they enter their email address (and nothing else) they will be notified when all is set in the next 30 days.

[RichB]

thanks for the feedback.
The reason for not just taking emails from interested people is that interested does not equal willing to buy.

I thought my content may be too slim..interesting..

I look forward to your continued input and what colors you recommend.

[Marcie]

I am curious about the colors too. How is orange a cool color? In any case, orange is a 'cheap' color, that is why fast food places use it a lot. However, I didn't really feel like the site was cheaply done (I like the layout/images) so I am not sure that affected me. It *may* make me feel like I am getting a bargain. I clicked on your buy now button & I agree that form does not look secure and that probably would stop me...HTH!

[NatalieMac]

You're calling that a "secure" order form, and it is definitely not secure.

Also, saying that someone's information is protected by law is useless when your form isn't secure and your customer's information is subject to be stolen *and* when you don't have a privacy policy posted at your site.

Um, orange is a 'hot' color - I think it works in the context of this site.

[darrin365]

Good points.

I like Joomla (http://www.joomla.org/) for CMS. I have a few sites running on Joomla without complaints and it's free.

My blogs are on wordpress and I love it Very easy to use and they rank well in the SE's.

I second Joomla! I did this (http://www.pastigo.com) in Joomla, plus several components...and lots of blood, sweat, tears and a bit of cursing. :)

[Vagabond]

I agree with so many of the opinions that have been posted so far. I feel like some people are expecting this whole thing to be a little bit too easy and the 4HWW def reinforces that.

You can't really expect to make decent money off some eBook you slapped together in a couple nights! Tim used to spend 80 hour weeks getting his BrainQuicken product moving and once he did it became sustainable and he was able to keep it moving with less energy... thats the beauty of momentum.

I also think that many people are becoming a bit too savvy for the website layout that Tim recommends. I think its important to have a website with some really good content than just a couple pages of sales copy. For example, I think Rich should add a couple pages that digs a little deeper and shows maybe the science behind his product (I for one know that athletes/triathletes/marathoners/bodybuilder etc. tend to be savvy when it comes to training so I feel like they might be a bit turned off) I think a better layout would be:
-Landing Page - Peak their interest and drive to the Discover the benefits page
- Discover the Benefits - this would be heavily sales
- Why It works - Sales related but also explain the science behind it because the consumer will have doubts at this point
- Testimonials and a Guarantee
- Order Page
- Blog/Articles or some content...

Also, I really liked the idea of adding tangible products to Rich's muse. Put the mp3 download onto a CD, a guide to the techniques that can be used in tandem with the cd, and maybe a workbook that tracks the progress. I think the USPS has priority shipping envelopes for around $4.00 so you can charge $4 for S/H and say free upgrade to Priority Mail. I've actually found that works well whenever I've sold something online. To me, just having a download cheapens the product and would prob cause me not to buy it.

I think you should also offer something free for an email address. For example, pick some really interesting visualization exercise that would cause people to go "WOW!" at their computer or the first chapter. A really good book that i've picked up and learned a lot from is called "Duct Tape Marketing" and for $15 or whatever on amazon people on here really looking to make a few bucks would be foolish NOT to buy it.

I was reading a book on sales copy and one tip I learned that I think is incredibly valuable is try and put yourself in the customers mind and anticipate the questions they will ask themselves while theyre reading your page. What will their concerns be? Doubts? Worries? Then strategically answer them while leading them through the page. Have someone read the page and write down their reactions as they go through it...

In the end, people LIKE buying things, they just need the reassurance that theyre not getting ripped off or taken advantage of.

[RichB]

First, thanks to all for the input, I greatly appreciate the criticisms and feedback.

Awesome post Vaga. I will reevaluate how I'm going about things.

I'm still cautious of devoting too much time and money to a product that performed so terribly with AdWords and this one. I hardly got clicks, so the site quality doesn't play a role in that. I may consider this one in the near future with different keywords and site, etc.

However, my other muse test did much better with CTR than this I will take the advice and develop a more rich site and pursue this one under the assumption that I received no "orders" do to the site quality.

Thanks again, I'll let you all know how it goes and when the site is up. It won't be a few hours this time :)

Rich

[Vagabond]

First, thanks to all for the input, I greatly appreciate the criticisms and feedback.

Awesome post Vaga. I will reevaluate how I'm going about things.

I'm still cautious of devoting too much time and money to a product that performed so terribly with AdWords and this one. I hardly got clicks, so the site quality doesn't play a role in that. I may consider this one in the near future with different keywords and site, etc.

However, my other muse test did much better with CTR than this I will take the advice and develop a more rich site and pursue this one under the assumption that I received no "orders" do to the site quality.

Thanks again, I'll let you all know how it goes and when the site is up. It won't be a few hours this time :)

Rich


No prob, thats what this forum is for.

To be honest, you prob dont need to actually create the product yet, after you redesign the webpage you'll be able to track the clicks and see if people are at least progressing through the pages and spending some time browsing the site.

[Webzu]

I second Joomla! I did this (http://www.pastigo.com) in Joomla, plus several components...and lots of blood, sweat, tears and a bit of cursing. :)

Very nice! I couldn't even tell it was powered by Joomla with your design. Awesome work!

[MarkRoX]

I second Joomla! I did this (http://www.pastigo.com) in Joomla, plus several components...and lots of blood, sweat, tears and a bit of cursing. :)

That sounds like my experience editing this flash site template I'm gonna be using... especially since I don't actually know flash.

[PhilnCedarPark]

See http://www.joomlart.com/ for design ideas

[RichB]

What do you think of the template I choose in my CMS thread?

[cartoonfan1983]

I did this (http://www.pastigo.com) in Joomla, plus several components...and lots of blood, sweat, tears and a bit of cursing. :)

Is this your muse, Darrin? If it is, I love it! So very professional.