Help!

[Spurt]

I'm a total novice. Website up and running (www.pianounlocked.com) but am floundering.

Any thoughts on what sort of budget do I need for Adwords given the ebook sells for $30? Any tips on what I can do to attract traffic to my site?

Any advice gratefully received. It's really hard to have put all this work in and so far not be getting any significant results. Maybe my website isn't good enough.... :(

[JeffWilliamson]

The site isnt bad looking but most effective sales sites I have seen have a top to bottom layout that draw's the reader's eye downward. You have some nice looking stuff on the site but I find myself looking at the pictures side to side rather than reading the text in the middle.

As for Adwords the best way is to make minor changes and split test everything. Only change one thing at a time, determine the better ad then duplicate it and change one more thing. Keep repeating until you have a top ad.

Adwords is tricky if you are new to it (and sometimes even with experience), have you given any thought to growing organic traffic instead?

[sub8hr]

The site isnt bad looking but most effective sales sites I have seen have a top to bottom layout that draw's the reader's eye downward. You have some nice looking stuff on the site but I find myself looking at the pictures side to side rather than reading the text in the middle.

Ditto, the page doesn't flow. My 10s the average person spends looking at the page saw the picture on the left, didn't feel like squinting to read the caption and my eyes didn't get drawn to a header that enticed me to read any of the main text. There's a lot of information on the page, but you could make improvements by modifying the layout to draw the reader's attention to the important parts.

[Spurt]

Thanks, guys. I appreciate the constructive criticism!

I know you're right. I know this may sound hard to believe, but I have worked so hard to get this site up and to try to make it work. I definitely need to improve the layout, as you say.

Can you recommend a good Web page editor? At the moment I'm stuck using the edit feature on domainsinseconds and frankly it is very very crude indeed.

[clanshrapnel]

Related to getting people to buy, you'll want to post your credentials, i.e., 'Why should I buy from you instead of the other piano teaching ebooks?'

That'll help you with conversions a lot so that the people who DO come to your page actually end up buying the product.

You can also try ezines and youtube videos to further advertise your site.

For webeditor, if you can't hire someone on elance or another programming-for-hire website (highly recommended), you can try Wix or FrontPage. I say ditch all of the do-it-yourself website makers and hire someone to make it for you on the cheap.

[Spurt]

Thanks for that. Very useful.

I'm feeling rather disheartened at the moment. I've only been up and running for a week but it's taken a lot of work just to get to this stage. Not selling anything at the moment. I suppose it takes weeks or even months to establish a web presence and for sales to get going.

Any thoughts on that anybody??

[sub8hr]

Thanks for that. Very useful.

I'm feeling rather disheartened at the moment. I've only been up and running for a week but it's taken a lot of work just to get to this stage. Not selling anything at the moment. I suppose it takes weeks or even months to establish a web presence and for sales to get going.

Any thoughts on that anybody??

I've had mine up for 2-3 weeks now with one inquiry and no sales. =)

Just looking at my site stats though, I haven't statistically got enough site visitors to yield any sales, so I'm not too disappointed. I know that marketing and driving traffic to the site is my biggest challenge right now and I just need to put the time in to it.

Until you are getting significant traffic (1000s of users per day) I wouldn't expect much. If you aren't using Google analytics or some kind of tool to track traffic to your website, you should be.

[Zenit]

My advice is that you MUST create demand. With this I mean that you have all what you need (the structure, the product,...) but you don't have clients yet. So don't just put a little Adword's ad, try to hand out some leaflets or smthing like that to let the people know what are you selling. OK, maybe not leaflets, but make your product be known!

Hope this had helped you. Regards: Zenit.

[JKohlbach]

Here are some ideas:

- Contact music stores in your area, state, country, give them a free sample of the work and perhaps get them to sell as affiliates.
- Cross market your product with other related products.
- Get in contact with bloggers in the industry.
- Find out what magazines are related and read and see if they want to do an article, maybe pitch an article of your piano learning system and (if you're game) your competitors.
- Think about what is exciting about your product and try to get others excited and passionate about it too.

[kamakiri]

I'm feeling rather disheartened at the moment. I've only been up and running for a week but it's taken a lot of work just to get to this stage.

Dude - Sadly you have only done the easy part. Starting is always the easy part. Finishing is where you really need to put your nose to the grind stone. Failure is a very large possibility here. Embrace it. Your next muse will go smoother, and when that one fails, your next will be even smoother. Failure is not a bad thing.

If you have thin skin stop reading now. I am not one of your potential customers, I don't care about the piano, but if I was these are the reasons I would not buy from you:

On to your muse. No sugar coating here buddy: The copy sucks. Never write in the passive. Not a little, not one sentence, NEVER!

You would need 10 lessons...
Why you should...
...has been studying
I was really impressed.....You mean that guy isn't impressed any more?

And this ?: "Excellent writing style. Very readable"

With such poor writing style on your site, a testimonial like this would only turn me off, on top of that, people don't search for piano training material on the basis of "Excellent writing style" , They want training material because they want to get better at the piano. Focus on the results, not the product.

Things like "Look inside the book over there ---->?????????

Dude, this is the internet, not a pirate map, no greater than symbol marks the spot stuff here. Put a link where you can use it. Your 'arrows' point to nothing anyway.

Click here (http://www.pianounlocked.com/images/ebookSample.pdf) to see contents of
The Piano Unlocked

Make that a graphic button.

Speaking of buttons, your 'buy now' button is weak. Make it a big honking thing in the shape of a sparkly piano or something.


Never abbreviate Christmas.

You have a 100% BETTER-THAN-MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE!!, with no explanation, I am very curious as to why 100% could possibly be better than my money back. Logically 100% is exactly that, nothing more, nothing less.

[Spurt]

kamakiri - I know, the whole thing sucks, you're right. And I'm very grateful that you spared me the sugar coating. The truth is the truth and I want to hear it. You are doing me a massive favour.

Here's my attitude - I'm a novice, I know. I have lots to learn, I know. But I am going to keep going and keep going and keep going until I get sales and get this to work.

I'm going to rewrite the whole thing over the weekend. I got someone on elance to design the site and although I like the outer bits, the middle section with the text looks rubbish. The text doesn't really explain what the benefits are and, like you say, doesn't explain the results properly.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE will you look at the revised site next week if I post a message here for you next week?

[clanshrapnel]

The sales copy is looking better. At least you acknowledge why people should come to you.

Even more importantly, if you really want to be convincing, you'll have to explain why your ebook and technique is better than your competitors. What qualifies you as a good teacher? What experience do you have as a teacher?

You may also consider showing a picture of yourself to further build trust with your customer. Even better is if you show yourself teaching someone at the keyboard.

[kamakiri]

Spurt - The whole thing does not suck. I am far better at copyrighting than I am at web sites, so I see fixing the copy as the lowest hanging fruit. Web design, hosting, adwords leaves me baffled. Some days I literally feel like this chick (http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1891074).

The bottom line is that everyone is at some point a complete noob. Tim didn't quote Tom Watson for no reason either. Here is the entire quote for you again.

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that's where you will find success.Robin Sharma mentioned it today on his vlog as well (http://www.robinsharma.com/life_coach_ic_blog_496.htm). My goal is not to make you feel bad in any way, and I am glad you appreciate it. Many many posters get one negative comment and go back to the 50HWW because they get discouraged. Even more people give up 10 yards from the finish line, because they feel like they have done 'sooo much work'. My uncle told me the other day that he was too busy working to make any money on his side business. Now if that isn't the most absurd thing you have ever heard, I don't know what is.

The bottom line is that starting is easy. Just look through all of the threads from posters with less than 5 posts. "I am soo excited to live the life of the NR!" cliches. Hmmm. having money, mobility, and freedom... that sounds like one hell of a life, I will subscribe (who wouldn't?). Sadly, the only thing that is free and easy is welfare. The sticker price on living the NR lifestyle is not measured in dollars, money is often the last thing you need to become a part of the group.

Joining the NR is a challenge, and once you are there, it is even harder to stay a part of. Sadly, your piano book has a usable life of 2-4 months, if and when it goes live. What is next on the menu? You should have 3-4 ideas in the pipeline in preparation.

The great thing about what you are doing now is that it is repeatable, and it gets easier each time you do it. The first pizza shop I build out from scratch took weeks. Now after 21 stores, I could build out one in my sleep, and the stresses I had during those first few build outs are gone.

Keep your chin up and I will be happy to review your site after you make the updates.