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Copywriting Pro Tips for More Conversions

Copywriting Pro Tips for More Conversions ..... or

Copywriting : A few Tips to help You Sell More Product

Tips to Sell more

Make your Conversions go through the roof

My Secret Zoom Method for Escalating Your Sales 1000X overnight

Write Copy like a Master and have a queue of Clients at your Door

I came up with these five different titles in just a few seconds, there are of course infinite numbers of ways to say the same thing…. but which one will actually SELL? Copywriting If ever there was a skill in demand, it is copywriting. It is everywhere

Blog posts

Sales Pages

Landing Pages

Ads Online

Ads on TV

Ads on the Radio

Billboards

Emails

If you can learn the art of persuading a prospect to buy, you will have a great skill, even a career. Good copywriters cost a fortune to hire. Every Marketer needs good persuasive copy to get sales. This article is a description of some of the more common methods of selling and some of the things to consider before you lay out your copy. Good copywriting is however not something you can attain, by simply reading an article or two or by buying a course. It takes practice. Follow the main points in this introductory article and try writing your first Ad or post. Most people’s first attempts are rubbish so don’t worry too much. In later articles in this series, I will expand on some of the main components such as Headlines, USP and Hook and you will see how to improve your piece to make it work. If you get to the point where your copy is working well and your sales are rocketing, you will have a marketable skill in huge demand. There are big differences in the copy used in Blog Posts, Sales pages, Emails and all the others in the above list. The way you would word a blog post for example would be greatly different to an Ad. Also don’t mix up presentation with Copy. Strictly speaking, a copywriter deals only with words that sell, not the format of the presentation, although on occasions it might be prudent to point out obvious problems, for instance, if the webpage designer puts your copy onto a background which obscures or makes reading your copy difficult, then obviously the copy will not do its job.

Copywriting BasicsHere are a few major points which should be considered, before you publish.What you say in your copy depends on the prospects position in the buying cycle. If he is totally unaware of the problem or solution, your text needs to bring these to his attention, whereas if you have sent him several emails outlining the problem the solution and your product to solve the problem – then your text has a much more narrow focusWhat’s in it for ME : Your copy should focus on benefits for the client like  time saving, cost saving,  NOT the sellers features like dimensions, quality, tech, company history etc.Who is your Client: be sure to compose a customer Avatar, know who you are selling to, age sex, demographic, wants, needs, pain, or problem. Selling tech to a young tech savvy guy is going to be totally different to a computer phobic 60+ year old.

The Buying Cycle:

What level of product/service AWARENESS does your reader have? If the page you are composing is a landing page, you need to know the content or Ad that sent them here. The Headline and copy for someone Unaware of the product, is going to be vastly different from the copy aimed at those Fully Aware of the problem/pain/product

Levels of Awareness:

Unaware

Aware of Problem but Not Aware of your Product

Solution Aware

Product Aware

Unaware:

They don’t even know that they have the problem that you are selling the solution for. They need indoctrination. Introduce the problem. Diagnose the problem. The Ad that they clicked will have had a wide scope, they may have found your content on a blog post describing the problem or telling a story on Facebook.

Aware of Problem but Not Aware of your Product: Empathise and concentrate on Pain, Solution and Benefits

Solution Aware:

Here you can use social proof, previous customer feedback or reviews. Also, introduce what is special and unique about YOUR solution

Product Aware: They know all about your product (and its competitors) may also be on a list receiving your emails. All you need to do is re-present (if possible) a new improved offer OR maybe introduce some scarcity like “this month only” or “last 100” What you say in your copy depends on the prospect's position in the buying cycle. If he is totally unaware of the problem or solution, your text needs to bring these to his attention, whereas if you have sent him several 'educational' emails outlining the problem or the solution and your product to solve the problem – then your text has a much more narrow focus

The Headline

This is such an important part of the Sales letter/blog post that I leave it until the post is complete before composing it.  The Hook ( below ) will give you the main components of your headline. SEO is important for Blog posts – but not necessarily your job if you are just the copywriter.

The Headline is what readers see in search results so it must grab attention, but not appear spammy. If I had titled this post “How to 10X your Sales with my Secret Zoom Generator Method” you would suspect it to be a scam, so don’t go overboard

What is your USP

State it clearly, concisely and with brevity. Who are you helping. With What Problem to Achieve what benefit through which Unique Solution

Show the prospect that you understand their pain/problem. Create Trust, empathy. Speak to the person directly and use the appropriate language for that niche eg. For Doctors – their ‘customers’ are patients, For retail – ‘customers’, For legal businesses it would be ‘Client’

Tell a Story or Educate the reader

Introduce the solution, avoid hyperbole, tell a story, must be believable. Or try an educational method, set out the steps to take to solve the problem but – Leave out sufficient details to make them unable to succeed without YOUR proprietary method

Tell them WHAT to do, but not HOW to do it

Tell them the 5 things that this product is NOT

eg. Competitor products have fillers but ours is pure, Our product is not diluted, Ours protects against xyz, Ours has no abc which is filtered out

Describe some methods to do X, but not the best way

Tell them the mistakes that lead to problems or

What NOT to do when trying to do X

In each case you explain the details, establishing your credibility and expertise. What Benefits does your solution have over others?

List and expand on the benefits and list the features. The features create the logical reason to buy. The benefits will create the ALL IMPORTANT emotional reason to buy

Create a HOOK – an idea which grabs attention and persuades the reader to find out more

If testimonials or user feedback / reviews are available use them

How to Stop procrastination

The last bit of buyer resistance is Procrastination. You simply need a reason they should buy NOW, eg. you can use ‘scarcity’

Price Scarcity – the price will rise soon

Premium Scarcity – the bonuses only available for limited time

Quantity – only limited number left

Offer Scarcity – the cart will close soon Note: Don’t always use scarcity it can look spammy. You can just get the prospect to imagine how it feels to have your product X completed, installed.OR you can show how NOT doing X is not an option because – market conditions are moving OR all your competitors are all doing X.CTA – Call to ACTION. Be clear, give precise instructions on how to go forward. Be sure there is only one possible action on the page – leave off the navigation menu and sidebar or any other distractions. You can however use two ( or more ) buy buttons – going to the same Check-Out page, it may be prudent to include one above the fold and one  right at the bottom of the page ( where almost all readers expect it to be )

Simplify your text if possible Scan over your page when it is complete and if it is possible to remove anything that can be misunderstood. Remove anything that you can say in simpler terms, then do so. To be accepted by the widest audience, it should be written with quite a young reading age in mind.

Checkout my original article https://my-computer-tuition.co.uk/copywriting-pro-tips-for-more-conversions/     which will be updated with more on USPs , hooks and Choosing a title

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How to Do Affiliate Marketing

It could be written “How can I tell folk about this new product or service and earn money doing it”

Remember back in school, when you delivered the morning paper to the neighbourhood, sometimes there would be a flyer from the local takeaway inserted in the paper. Or, as happened to me,  the circus came to town and someone from the show turned up at  my TV shop one morning , He offered me a few free tickets if I would hand out the circus flyers to all my customers and put a circus poster in the window.

How many times have you noticed some new product that your neighbour bought and you asked about where you can get one, or maybe the other way around – “hey, nice sneakers, where did you buy those?”

These are all examples , that are or could be used to gain a commission or “kick back” for increasing sales. All of the above of course are done “Off line” . With the internet came the opportunity to sell to the whole world , getting huge audiences to look at your products.

So Online you first look for an affiliate program. Many big shops like Wallmart, B&Q, Amazon have affiliate programs that are free to join.  Some of them outsource the affiliate program admin to Affiliate Specialists like Affiliate Window or CJ Affiliates. Usually if you Google “affiliate program” + name of the store, you’ll be able to find it easily.

Once you are a member, they will give you your own Affiliate Link . You simply promote, including this link in your articles and Adverts  some product or service belonging to the owner in exchange for a commission, once you successfully make a sale.

To make the process better, promote your article and test versions of  the Ads until you find the best one.

Actually there is another simpler form of Affiliate marketing, called CPA (cost per action) where you only have to provide LEADS, not even make the sale!  Very easy, can be very lucrative. More on this later

Examples of Affiliate Marketing

These are  easy to find  all over the web. Ever seen those boxes at the end of a magazine blog article?

At first glance they look like articles, but of course these are ads, more exactly they are Native Ads. They don’t stand out as Ads, plus the headlines are usually extraordinary, making them highly clickable.  Advertisers are getting really sneaky. They can check your IP address and include some relevant content, lets say you are in Kentucky USA, this can be made to trigger a Headline “ Kentucky Woman First to Win Over $4,000,000 in lottery” or “ How Kentucky Woman makes $4000 a day doing this…”

I wouldn’t advocate such things, but just notice them next time you’re reading online, you will be amazed how often it happens.

Whats the Purpose of an Advert?

The answer  most people give is “ to sell stuff” . No I would argue the purpose is simply to get your attention. The selling is done on the bridge page and Sellers own product page or VSL ( video sales letter) which is a very popular method at the moment.  One of the most successful marketers today Gerry Crammer makes simple images like hand drawn faces or anything out-of-the-ordinary a giant squid on a beach for example and is responsible for tens of thousands of dollars in sales.

What Kind of Ad Works Best?

Just do what is already working.  Pioneers are great, but you only hear about the few that are successful, not the majority, who lost a ton of money trying a new method , then gave up.

What kind of Product is Best to Promote?

Sell what is selling NOW. Here we will have to do some research. Google trends is a good tool to check for product popularity. One fairly easy strategy is to follow the native ads, in the example click through to the end, find out which products are being sold. There is one simple truth here, no one pays for ads, continuously, unless they are making money.

Next, find the products home page. Look up the amount of traffic ( web visitors ) that page is getting, one great , free resource to use is similarweb.com, for which you can sign up for a free account. Type in your product page address and see how much traffic they are getting, where it is being referred from ( eg Facebook ads, Bing Ads….) and what country are these visitors from. You now have all that is required  to start a successful ad campaign going.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Actually Work?

This is one example scenario, our user is on Facebook, sees an ad for some products he is interested in, he clicks the ad and is taken to an Affiliate bridge Page where there are more details, like price, size, color etc finally he clicks to buy and is taken to Amazon on a link which has our Affiliate ID on it, so Amazon recognises our sale and rewards us with a commission.  There are simpler ways and more sophisticated ways to make an affiliate link, but this is the basic model that most marketers use.

Direct Linking

Why bother going to a bridge page I hear you ask. Why not go straight to the Offer-Page from the Ad? Well in most advertising scenarios, the ads are seen on big platforms like Facebook, Google, YouTube etc. They all have their own Terms and Conditions one of which is usually No Affiliate Links. In most cases it would be ok, if you are promoting your own book, for instance. But promoting slimming pills – definitely would not, in fact Facebook has become very intolerant of any such links and is very likely to ban your ad account permanently! Anything to do with weight loss, any images even slightly hinting at too much exposed skin is also likely to be banned. Facebooks ad industry is huge and they are top  dog…. at the moment and they wield a powerful sword over their advertisers.  Advertisers  love FB because they have so  much demographic information available to laser target the potential customers.

I note that This month saw Australia put a limitation on Facebook as regards ads , so this might be an indicator of the way things will go in the future.

So that is basically why we should use a bridge page. The linking to the product then takes place OFF Facebooks page, so your account is safe again. The bridge page should be totally congruent with the subject , so a  slimming product could be linked from within a Bridge Page about “How to Maintain good  health when on a diet” for example. This avoids direct mention of anything medical or Weight loss oriented.

Whats in a link?

The links take our visitor to the next place, so part of the link is an HTML ‘anchor’ which has the web address in it. The rest is usually unique and has our Affiliate ID, this is sometimes disguised, just in case someone tampers with the link to divert the sale commission. Eg.

Here the offer vendor is Clickbank and our ID is hidden along with the product code in the bit before “.hop.” This link has an extra tracking section ( tid ) on the end, used to distinguish this offer from other offers.  We can make use of this when setting up our tracking software.

Affiliate Disclosure

The FTC Federal Trade Commission requires that you disclose the fact that you make a commission with each sale on your site, so make sure it is there. As everyone is obliged to do this, its no longer a disadvantage to see this on a website.

Which  Platform is Best for Promoting my Products

This depends on your own preference in most cases, although videos on YouTube are superb for anything visual or explaining “how to do…..” if it’s a practical matter like component assembly. However, videos can be included in a blog easily, so you get the benefit of the visitor being able to skip through to the part that he or she is interested in , quickly and include a lot of detail in graphs, lists, links to other sites, images, coding, downloads and many other things.

YouTube’s algorithm is simpler than Google’s. YouTube videos will rank more easily if you include the right tags, tags are a big help and the main way YouTube searches work. If  you are going to use YouTube as your platform, install Tube Buddy or Vid  IQ in your browser. Either of these will allow you to find out which tags are in all your competitors videos.

Although YouTube videos rank quicker, at the moment Google is still  putting blogs in the majority of the top 10 for each search  result (serp) . It is well worth the effort of writing many articles, which will  rank for many search terms and you will appear in multiple sets of serps for your search term or keyword.

Relevance is the key. If you want to sell tents, write about all sorts of tents, tents for high temperature, low temperature, windy conditions, waterproof materials used in tents, price points on your selection of tents, durability  of tents , cover the subject thoroughly.

These 3 links give you the easiest way to make an insertable text link, Image link or both. Write your article reviewing the item an insert the Text+Image link at the end

This is the html code, the image is served by Amazon’s own server together with the correct price.

You can see, similar to the previous example, the affiliate ID xyzmarketing and the product code ( asin) = B083V589M5

Even if you don’t use Amazon directly, many affiliates  have stopped since the recent downturn in commissions from Amazon, at the height of the first Covid lockdown, Amazons profits rose tremendously and they decided they did not need so many affiliates. Amazon does provide us with amazing research tools though.  Their products are arranged so you can easily compare similar ones and then promote them direct through the manufacturers own affiliate programs . Amazons Best Selling category, is so useful to pick good  products to promote. Amazons reviews often tell of  particularly good or bad lines.

How to start Affiliate Marketing without investment using Free Traffic

Is that a real thing?  Yes, but for long term products.  All of this article so far has relied on paid Advertising- which works instantly and you get the results instantly.

It takes so long to get a website ranking well enough – in the top 10 on page one, for a search term. That is will only work for long term things. One exception to this is Pinterest traffic. It IS possible to build up a Pinterest account fast, so you’re getting that traffic flowing. But it only works in certain niches , great for USA traffic and feminine type products , although this too is changing slowly. I wrote an article outlining a Pinterest strategy on this blog.

My own first success was with Halogen Ovens. I built up  a website with a page per review plus comparison tables and other pages devoted to maintenance and recipes. It became very popular with several number one positions for various search terms. All the products were from Amazon  making research very easy and quick. I even expanded the site to cover UK and US products.  One  month of solid work on the site, gave me  a good few years of income, it still earns a little even now 6 years  on.

So – don’t expect anything other than evergreen products like kitchen appliances, household cleaners and maybe financial products to last long  enough to make it worthwhile building up a blog.

Free traffic is marvellous. For beginners in IM it is usually the chosen route, as mistakes with anyone inexperienced with Ad accounts can be very costly. Also the results with free traffic from Google will last a long time ; But with a lot of products changing rapidly, ads are really the only way to get your affiliate funnel up and running fast  enough to make a good return.  The reason many big Aff marketers use funnel builders, rather than the basic wordpress editor, is because they need the pages up very quickly to take advantage of new offers.

Does Affiliate Marketing Still Work

Yes, absolutely. Many marketers are very successful once they find their own favourite niches and have some experience. Four, Five and even Six figure per year profits from Aff Mktg is totally possible

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How to Make Money Online in 2021 (the ultimate guide)

How to Make Money Online in 2021

For a long time, I’ve been teaching/coaching individuals out in the real world how to make the most of the internet when it comes to business online.

From about 2020 April though began a turbulent year with the Corona Virus, I  decided it was time to go fulltime online and help more people startup new businesses. Many people are working at home and may continue at home , but many more face uncertain times and possibly losing their jobs as companies go broke. Travel for example and Hotel trades have been  hit very hard.

How to make a side Income or How to become a Full Time Blogger?

At this time, it doesn’t matter whether you have chosen blogging as a Full time Occupation or Side Income , the process is just the same.

So, you are new, you have limited knowledge , limited resources especially cash and time, how can you make the best start? What is the best, quickest and most profitable route to success in making money online?

What I found with most of my enthusiastic clients that have tried to research it, was, not  a lack of knowledge, but an overload of knowledge. Too much information is available and as any marketer will tell you, give too many options , your prospect will be unable to make a choice and you will lose the sale.

There is also a lot of mis-information.  So many YouTube videos promoting the idea that you can do 1 hours work a week and earn thousands. It is of course rubbish. But people are desperate and will fall for these scams or at best half truths.

What CAN you do?

You could start :

an online shop

a blog

a review site

a membership site

a business service helping existing businesses

a  marketing agency

teaching – write a course

an SEO agency

Affiliate marketing

CPA marketing

But which one to choose?

All of these methods make money online and from anywhere in the world. No longer do you have to buy a property, buy goods, pay staff, advertise…. at enormous expense. You can even try out one of the above see if it works, if not tear it down and start something else. If you did that in the real bricks-and-mortar world, you would probably be bankrupt!  Online you can easily start another business overnight.

making it profitable though, is not so easy.

Build a website and instant riches! No that doesn’t exist, it never did.

If you go about it the right way, in not too many months from now, you’ll have some income building up. I’ll tell you how I managed to make a full time income from the internet and guide you though the pitfalls.

What is Possible? How much  can you make with a Blog or  Online Service?Grant Sabatier is a dedicated blogger, blogging every day, his blog readership has exploded, his content can be found in Googles search engine for a LOT of blogging terms..

Seriously, if you keep at it and keep building, your traffic and revenue will continue to grow. In my first year blogging, I made about $25,000. In year 2 I made about $150,000 and in my 3rd year, I made over $400,000. I’m on pace (crossing my fingers) to make over $1 million in year 4 from this blog. And I’m able to write all of the posts on my laptop wherever I am. No matter what, keep at it! While it takes time to build momentum, blogging = freedom.”

read Grants article here .

Your circumstances will obviously be different to mine, but by following my course I give you a very good chance of making it to the full-time income level and beyond. One of my favourite marketers, Tony Shepherd, writing about starting an online blogging business ,going part-time to full-time and how much to aim for,  said – you don’t have to wait until you’re  making 100,000 dollars/pounds a year, just enough to replace your JOB income -which is very true. Like most of us, when he started, he did it part time until it took off .

Many people have unrealistic goals and no plan. If you can stick to the plan I am  setting out for you, put in the work and you will succeed. It’s a  lot easier to persist with a plan if you can see it working, so one of the most important things to incorporate into your plan is measurement.  At the very minimum, once your site, shop or agency is started you need to register it on Google Analytics, to see your visitors data and stats.  

Google Search Console is another FREE and very helpful service provided by Google,  once you are up and running, it will tell you which are your most popular pages for visitors,so you can concentrate your efforts in the right direction.

Also, Google SC will tell you whether your site has any errors on its pages and how to eliminate them.

Below is a basic description of each of the types of business in the list above. See which you think is your ‘cup of tea’, which of them appeals to you, which is a good start, you can then direct your research in that direction,  to see the major advantages and disadvantages, see if it’s a good ‘fit’ for your skills and lifestyle.

After all, if writing is not your strongpoint, blogging wouldn’t be a good choice.  If you are starting on a shoestring budget, then paid ads are not a great choice as it can take a few campaigns to get going before you see a profit.

Similarly to succeed on YouTube, are you ok appearing on camera? True you could just do voice overs or employ an actor or partner with an out-going guy who would do your YouTube videos, but its not ideal.

An Online Shop

Shopify and other Commerce Software based sites have become very popular. You can cash in on trending products or supply ever-green niche products. Although I can see many problems with clothing sites ( the trend towards higher numbers of returned goods ) many people have used the very popular Tspring and Redbubble type models to quickly build online stores with amazing sales.

Teaching - Write a Course

Teaching – Write a Course

If you’re someone who can dash off 1000 word articles, then this is going to appeal  to you. If not articles, then videos  can also be used as a medium to teach.

Once you’ve written/recorded your course, it can be available 24/7 either on your own site or on one (or more) Course Selling Sites . Which means it’s a completely hands off operation and you can go on to write another and another….. building your potential income.

Blogs - So many ways to go!

Blogging –  

My favourite and the easiest (and most anonymous for those who like to be out of the limelight ) way to earn.  There must be an infinite number of possible niches or groups of niches available and a LOT of ways to monetise them.

Some ways to monitise don’t even involve selling. If you can create an interesting blog, one which attracts loads of visitors, then putting GoogleAdsense on your pages will net you quite a significant income. Most though use affiliate products to earn their rewards

Another type of Blog - A review site

Take a subject you know, find the best 10 selling items in that category and review them all in detail – good points and bad.

Review physical goods.

Review information products

Send the visitor to a vendor to purchase and collect the commission.

A Business Service

I think we can all think of a local business that isn’t doing too well.

All businesses need customers.

With our web-skills we can put together a special webpage offering the services that , that particular business is involved in. Run ads to it and send the leads to that business.. If the business wants to continue getting the leads each day – you can offer them a monthly deal.

A Marketing or SEO Agency

The services offered by your business services enterprise – building website, running ads, social media posts, can be expanded until you’re running a full Marketing Agency many such Agencies deal with SEO search engine optimisation, which on its own will boost the number of visitors to a website very significantly.

Affiliate Marketing

Become a promoter, you have non of the hassle of customer services, returns, staff, wages, security…. just write article pages , run ads to them promoting the goods and collect the commissions. Find thousands of offers to promote on Offervault, Amazon, Clickbank….etc

Once set up all these  promo pages run on automatic, you can multiply your income with multiple pages and sites

CPA Marketing

Very similar to Affiliate model marketing but with a lower barrier to success, since with CPA (cost per action) you only have to get a response, you don’t have to SELL anything. Usually all an advertiser wants is a lead, so  you could be collecting an email for example. Although the payout is tiny, there are thousands of CPA offers and it would typically take only an hour to study the offer and put up a promo page.

Always Build Assets

Whichever method you choose to make your online fortune, don’t fall into the mistake of building your assets on properties you don’t own.

What do I mean?

If your  Marketing effort is on a blog. Host that blog on your own server for example Hostgator. DO NOT use Wix, Weebly, WordPress free site, Google sites or any other free site provider. You can be shut down, for any infringement, and lose everything, as you don’t OWN those sites

Avoid Losing your Work

For another example, Facebook is notorious for shutting down pages and groups and ad accounts for minor infringements of its rules. When this happens its extremely tough to reverse any bans it imposes.

Suppose you had just spent 4 or 5 months building up a Facebook ad account which was converting well. Such an asset is worth a lot and will have cost a lot to set up and fine-tune into a money making venture. Now FB comes along and shuts it down, you might have overlooked some new ad policy. Overnight your income drops to zero ! Extremely bad news.

So always apply the old adage about eggs and baskets. Split your ads into Facebook and Google ads. OR Split the campaign into two or more ad accounts. Many marketers using FB actually have a test account that their ads will initially go into , like a sandbox. Then having been accepted, they can migrate into the main account  without the fear that it will be shut down.

Take Backups Frequently

There is no excuse for not doing this , there are many backup and restore plugins, many are free, one of the biggest is UpDraft. Free to use, on multiple sites, automatically backs up your WordPress site database, your content and even plugins and other site materials. This is an absolute life-saver if your server goes down. Restoring is very simple. Without it, well as you can imagine, you’d have to rewrite all your website pages. Very Bad News and again for a successful site this could mean zero income until its done.

The Magic List

By collecting your customers email address , you can build the most valuable asset possible in the online world….. An email list

Many marketers offer this advice and its true, most of  the cost of doing business is in the initial acquisition of that customer. Once you have a regular reader or a satisfied customer that has bought from you, they are 5 to 10 times more likely to buy from you again, than a new prospect visiting your website. It costs zero for you to send out your latest product details, your new course or the latest gadget news.

A customer list is the nearest thing to a magic button for making money.  If you have say 5000 people on your list that know you or have bought from you, you can send out a “broadcast” email about your latest software or course  at $50 and could potentially sell to say 10% of your list. That’s an instant 500 X $50 = $25000 ! Magic.

What do I recommend for beginners? So that you make the least possible mistakes and achieve total success the quickest way possible