Question from the new girl

[Gina71]

:)Hi everyone-

Okay, I've been reading all the posts here and the more experienced members have mentioned that there are a lot of new 4HWW-ers who show up here, post a few times and then get discouraged. I don't want to be one of those. I am not discouraged and I am committed to making this work.

I feel positive about the possibilities of this concept and have set up three muses in the past two weeks. All three are generating a little bit of interest (advertising for four days so far) but nothing exciting. (CTR is about .47% on my best ad with no conversions yet). I have between 3-8 opt-ins for each autoresponder.

Here is my question....

At what point do you "cut your losses" and try something else?
Because we have yet to make a sale, I have no idea if this is worthwhile or if I am wasting my money on PPC. $50 a day with 3 campaigns is adding up fast with no income yet. How long do you wait??

In the book, Tim says to test for 5 days and then decide if its a worthwhile muse. How will I know? 27 people are interested enough to ask for more info so far. But will they pay $$ eventually?

I am getting the feeling from this board that I just need to keep coming up with idea after idea - try them all out - and see what sticks.
Am I right?

Thanks guys....Gina71

[Sven]

Well, reading that resulted in a few "wows"!
Three muses in 2 weeks
Cut your losses Huh?
WOW, 50.-- a day, now I understand.

Let us see what it is that you are doing! URL's please!

1/2 % ctr is not great but paying 50.-- a day could be too expensive if no results come trough.
But it is a learning curve, why not halt the campains and wait for some painfull scrutiny? ;-)
Then go at it again.

[italian_job]

hello

I will assume you are using pay per click.

With a ctr of 0.47%, the immediate suggestion is to eliminate broad matches from your keywords and to stick to "keyword" and [keyword] only. Also, for the moment disable "content network" (just stick to "search" results). You can test content network at a later stage.

then do add the keyword tracking code to your signup newsletter thank you, so that at least you will know which keywords generate interest.

Start cutting your keywords, not your project altogether


hope this helps


Danny

[Gina71]

Thanks Sven and Danny - I appreciate the ideas.

OK - I have cut my keywords right back and now have less than 20 in each campaign - and almost all of them are exact quotes.

I am very willing to get some feedback here. Two of the muses are very specific - parents who aim to practice "positive parenting" or who send their kids to Montessori schools. The third muse is quite different, and I'm not ready to share that here just yet.

Last week, I asked for feedback here on my first muse and your ideas were so helpful. We've made a few changes with that one. I'm especially pleased with the photos on the main page - much better. But I wasn't able to get a balance between HTML and CSS, so its still very HTML - sorry Dan :) .

www.TheSourceApproach.com

My next muse is much cheaper - only $9.95. I guess I thought that might encourage people to buy because its not a big investment and the product is so simple. But so far that is not the case.
Note: Please remember I have no idea how to program a website. But I did this one myself. I'm sure it will be so obvious to all of you, but this is my first attempt. So, if you think the site is terrible, perhaps you can focus on the concept or the copy and be kind and suggest I use a professional designer next time. :o

www.KidsRoutines.com

Thanks in advance for your feedback!
Much appreciated...Gina71

[Gina71]

OMG!
I made my keywords very specific this morning and now I have had over 800 clicks on this muse today. But NO conversions and NO newsletter signups either.
Obviously my ads are interesting enough, but people don't want to pay 10 bucks for it??

www.KidsRoutines.com

My adwords ad only says exactly what the product is "Get your kids organized with our to-do lists for kids". I'm not offering anything free in the ad.

Any ideas why its not converting??
Thanks.

[Sven]

Well, I'm unsure...
Everything looks ok, even without the knowledge that you have no experience.

Could you try a different price? Sometimes people do not believe a product if it is to cheap.
Maybe ad some encouragement in a "buy now" sort of way?

To me it seems like a kind of instant solution if you do experience this problem.

[Gina71]

Thanks Sven.
I really think this will work once I iron out the "kinks".
I made these "to do" lists for my kids, then all my friends wanted them. It grew from there and we started selling the packs at our parenting workshops for $19. But those were printed and not customizable.
I thought this would be a great muse, and I hope it will be.

Maybe I should try a special price for a limited time only?
Like - they're normally $19, but till January 1 they are only $9?
Save $10. Does that sort of thing work?
(Damn. I wish I knew more about marketing and sales!)

[flyingduck]

Speaking as a parent ....I don't see the pain or the solution.
My pain as a parent would be things like:
- kids talking back - how to deal with discipline
- how to deal with rebelliousness - esp. in a public setting
- how to motivate my lazy child - esp. when he has homework...

specific problem with a specific answer...now I would be interested
in hearing what you would have to say about anything because
you've established the fact that you can solve one of my key
problems!

I would definitely buy from you if you had my answers, but
on this site (www.thesourceapproach.com) I think its too
generic.

I love Montessori and want you to succeed! Just want you
to get real specific before I would purchase from you.

And yes...marketing is a pain! :(

[kamakiri]

Nice start Gina. You are well ahead of most people.

There is a trap that many new classic Porsche owners I know fall into, and you are falling into it. People usually have an idea of what they want in a 911. In general you can pick up a decent one for $20-$30,000. To get it to the condition they want, it usually takes another $20,000. The sad part of the equation is that at the end of the process, you have spent $20,000 on a $20,000 car and end up with a car that you can sell for about $20,000.

If you didn't understand that story, read it again. It is easy to spend $1000 on adwords and sell $500 worth of product. Your results seem to be paying a lot to google, and not selling anything. From a parent's standpoint your products really don't appeal to me. I am not in your target market.

The first thing that struck me was your headline though. I enjoyed many a night at the Indian casinos in MN in my younger days, and one of my hard and fast rules was never buy insurance on a dealer's ace. I just do not like betting against myself. Regardless if it is a smart bet or not, I (and many others) do not like gambling against myself. In the same line, I would think that even really crappy parents (and many times more so in that case) think they are doing nothing wrong.

I have a few other points, but I think I have rambled on enough, but also, wouldn't it be "Kid's Routines" and not kids routines?

[Gina71]

Fair enough, Kamakiri & Flying Duck. You make some excellent points. I had not considered it quite like this. Thank you for your honesty.

These are great ideas and a fresh look at things. I appreciate it. Hopefully I can make some changes and come back with a new approach.
Thanks!
Gina71

[captaink]

Your buy options are waaay too low on the page.

::captaink::

[Gina71]

Okay -Thank you all so much for your ideas and feedback. I have made a lot of changes to both sites and to my adwords campaigns.
I now have a much better looking CTR (4.3) because I have totally eliminated all keywords except for three which are very specific. I also changed my ads and now have a catchy headline which seems to be working.

In summary:
CTR is at 4%.
I have approx 10 people signing up for my free newsletter each day. Opt-ins for the free newsletter are at 3%.
But still no conversions on either product.

So - this tells me that there are enough searches for my keywords, my ads are interesting, the landing page and topic are interesting, but my ad copy is not enticing them to buy now.

Is it possible these people will decide to buy from my newsletter links?
Does that happen?
Or do I have to get them to buy right away? Is it a case of "now or never"?
Is there any way to get feedback from site visitors to find out what they need to buy now?

I'm not sure what my next step should be.
Thanks for everything....
Gina71

[kamakiri]

Is it possible these people will decide to buy from my newsletter links?
Does that happen?
Or do I have to get them to buy right away? Is it a case of "now or never"?
Is there any way to get feedback from site visitors to find out what they need to buy now?

Whoa... Before we do anyt6hing go sign up for ETR. Aside from the great advice it gives, you will be sold on the same type of products daily. You don't have to buy anything there, but looking at what a really successful newsletter does will help you. They make boat loads of cash off that newsletter.

As for adding more incentive to buy now, I have seen pop ups that pop up when you navigate away. The ones asking if you really want to navigate away, and giving a yes or no click option. Adding a $5 discount on one of those might allow you to keep the customers who are wavering. The sad fact of the net is that once people navigate away from your site, they will never find it again.

Get feedback from those who signed up for the newsletter. Just send them a SHORT email with 3-5 questions about why they didn't buy. They can only ignore it. At best they might give you the kernel you are looking for to bring things together.

[tbootz]

I realize you said that you are no programmer and made the page yourself -and kindly asked us to judge the content rather than presentation but I am afraid that is not realistic. Presentation is just as if not more important than the actual content in a sales copy. The kid's website is poorly designed and unprofessional looking. I think spending money on PPC is rather pointless at this stage because the layout of your website will make any potential buyer click the back button. You are paying quite a lot on PPC, you should invest some of that into a good web design because no matter how attractive your product may be you are essentially eliminating all potential returns with an amateur presentation. Your conversions to buyers should increase dramatically with a more professional design.

[Gina71]

Tbootz- Just to be sure I understand, you are saying you can see a big difference between the two sites? One was professionally designed and the other was not. OR - are you saying they are both of poor quality?

I completely understand that a professional presentation is important. I must say that I have no idea what that means when it comes to web design. If I could see some sites that I know are successful, then I can model my own sites on those. When I do research, how do I know if those people are making sales off their sites? I don't want to model myself after an unsuccessful site.

After all the changes suggested here, I now have some conversions on one site. Thank you all for your help and honesty. I still have about a 5% CTR and from those visitors, about 5% sign up for the free newsletter. However, the conversions are at about .5%. To maintain an ongoing adwords campaign, the conversions need to increase.

Eventually, I know need to totally revamp the websites using a professional.

This site is so valuable. Thanks!

[sadu]

I'm using Firefox 3 - Kids Routines is displaying a few bugs
- the newsletter popup is Glitchy in Firefox and won't go away - people will be leaving based on this.
- Also there is a browser security warning because you are using https on the site - this will be scaring people off too. You are using PayPal, so you don't need your own secure server. It makes your site slower, causes duplicate content confusion for Google, and in this case is raising browser warnings for users. Lose the https, it's not needed.
- The footer on The Source approach is skewed on the buy now page (Firefox 3)

My opinions about the design are mixed - the site looks and feels like a one-page sales-pitch website, which is pretty much what it is. If this is the look you are trying to convey, I think it's ok for now, given that you don't want to pay for a professional until you are seeing potential in the site.

Kamakiri is right though, ask people why they aren't buying - my opinion doesn't count because I was never going to buy the product anyway. In the past, I have paid people $5 for their honest opinion of why they did / didn't buy, which can be money well-spent.

[Gina71]

Thank you for the specifics. I want to fix this up right away.
I am also using Firefox 3 and haven't experienced these problems. Any ideas why??
What does https mean and how do I get rid of it?
(I feel silly having to ask that, but I don't know.)

Thanks.
Gina71

[sadu]

Maybe it was something at my end - but I found the newsletter popup covering half my screen and not willing to go away until I refreshed the screen.

Browser issues are the bane of our existence. All you can do is keep things simple, use cross-platform javascript (eg jQuery) and test regularly in all the main browsers.

I have in the past wasted many Adwords dollars by sending paid traffic to a deleted page, or a page with security warnings etc. If you are getting clicks but not conversions, technical issues can definitely be part of the problem. One thing I do is try and visit revenue-generating sites from as many different machines as possible. When you go out to visit your mum, fire up her ancient computer and see how things look.

Talk to your web host about the https thing, as it's handled differently with every host. They should be able to help. If all your transactions are going through Paypal, there is no real reason for a secure certificate.

[Gina71]

fabulous.
Thank you for your help.
I will look into these problems and fix them as quickly as I can.

My head is full of muse ideas, and I want to get a solid formula for the internet side of things before I start any more muses. Once I figure this stuff out, I will feel more confident rolling things out in the future.

When I started this 4HWW journey, I don't think I ever considered my web design would be the weak link. I always thought if I had a good enough product it would sell with a basic website. I have a lot to learn! :)

I'm really enjoying this journey. It's challenging and fun.