Improving Your Conversion Reduces The Need To Constantly Promote
By Jack Humphrey, Sat Dec 10th

Copyright 2005 Jack Humphrey

I just got off the phone with Michael Fortin, one of the topcopywriters and conversion experts on the web.

We were doing a teleseminar for our members on conversion andtesting for website owners wanting more out of the traffic theyalready enjoy, rather than constantly having to promote theirsites to support low conversion rates. Specifically, we weretalking about all the things you can do to test different "callsto action."

A call to action is anything you are trying to get people to doon any particular site or page of a site. It could be buying aproduct or service, getting people on an announcement list ornewsletter, or getting people to click on your advertising links.

Most web publishers are so happy when they finally have a siteup that they consider their work done and get right to marketingit. Once the traffic rolls in, they enjoy whatever sales orclicks they get and try to make more money by driving MOREtraffic to the site.

Then they start building another site. And another. And another.

This is a disturbing trend that is creating a massive amount ofwaste. Both in resources and time. Especially when it comes toniche publishers who are building massive networks of sites ondifferent topics in order to capture emails, generateadvertising revenue, sell affiliated products and services, orto build their lists to generate backend sales to theirsubscribers.

The waste is generated when people are in too big a hurry tobuild more sites, add more products, and get more traffic tosites that can convert sometimes 1000% BETTER than they do now.

They are moving at a hectic pace, in this scenario, to buildbuild build, when their income goals can most often easily bemet without so much waste.

One example of waste is when someone builds a content-dry sitethat has nothing but Adsense and some links on it. People hitthat kind of site and can't wait to find a reason to leave. Thethinking is, "Great! My 'click thru ratio' is sky high! I amgetting almost everyone to click on my ads!"

But here's what's happening in reality: you are working VERYhard to get traffic to such a site, only to "burn" it on a 35cent click! No email capture, no followup, and most importantlyno desire on the part of the visitor to EVER see your site again!

Would you rather have someone come through your site and clickimmediately on an advertiser's link, never to return? Or wouldyou rather have someone come to your site, read some greatcontent, sign up for your list



and not click on ANY links thatfirst time?

I will take scenario #2 any day of the week. And I won't havemade a single penny off of that person with that initial action.But I will in the future!

If you have a site that you constantly test and tweak forperformance (beyond its ability to repulse your visitors intoclicking on an advertisement just to get to a QUALITY site) thenyou have a real business.

You can test and track SO MANY variables to make a site moreprofitable than it is now. Every site on the web can performbetter than it does right now. Every single one!

The people who understand this never stop testing their calls toaction to get their visitors to do more than something thatresults in a one-time action.

Traffic is the most expensive thing on the web both in the timeit takes to get it and the resources you have to use up for eachand every hit.

The traffic you have now might be all the traffic you EVER needon a daily basis to make a killing with your site. You willnever know until you test and track everything about your site.

The headlines, the offers, the opt-in forms, the guarantees,testimonials, bullets, adsense placement, followup... In short,every webmaster on the net has a lot of work to do on every sitethey own if they really want to reap the kinds of profits theirsites are actually capable of pulling in.

Most people get a site up and are happy with the sales or clicksthey get and move on. NO! You are leaving so much money on thetable thinking you are done with a site right after you put itup.

That site is the worst it should ever be! Wasting another domainfee, hosting fee, bandwidth and the costs associated withgetting traffic to a brand new site before you have optimizedyour current site for the very best conversion it can pull isNOT good business practice.

I know people who have literally thousands of domains. And onething I can guarantee you is this: They are making a pittance,even if they are making $60,000 a DAY, in comparison to whatthey COULD be making with far fewer sites and more testing andtweaking of that smaller group!

And Fortin seems to agree. He is going to be at my seminar inNew Orleans September 9th - 11th, 2005 to expose everyone whoattends to just how much money they have left on the table overthe years because they have never tested different aspects oftheir calls to action.

It is enlightening, as well as depressing to find out how muchmoney you COULD have made all this time had you tested from thebeginning!

But the point is, you cannot go back to get all those lostsubscribers, sales, or clicks. You can only start testing todayto capture more money from each site you own. Therebyalleviating the need to have a massive network of sites allperforming at half their potential or much less!

About the author:Jack Humphrey is Managing Partner at Content Desk. He is alsothe author of Power Linking 2005, now in its 4th edition.http://www.power-linking-profits.com To learn more about theprofitable niche publishing industry, check outhttp://contentdesk.com/mardigras