200-Proof Marketing

As you know, I recently re-built this entire website. The new version not only looks better, but it’s also more functional and expandable.

The cool thing is that as I’m learning more about customizing this new setup, I’m having some great ideas for making it a better website.

As you can see the first of those ideas is my new “Ask Chad” page. Which will be “members only” soon (more on that later).

That’s something other marketers would charge $100-$500 a month for. But in the spirit of this site I made it free.

When I was getting started… (more…)

One thing that’s annoyed me for awhile is how so many people say to use a Red Headline.

My tests tell me this is entirely wrong. Black has always beaten Red in my tests for headline color. I’m currently testing this yet again, and Black and Blue are tied while Red is doing horribly.

Maybe some markets respond better to Red Headlines, but I sell to quite a few markets and not once has Red beaten Black.

I don’t get it… Why are people hanging on to the Red Headline, much less recommending it to others?

Test it for your self and you will see what I’m talking about. If you are currently using a Red Headline, you should immediately test a Black and/or Blue one.

My opinion:

Red screams Ad, while Black looks more like a helpful article. But then how do we explain Blue doing well? That’s a little odd.

I’m testing alot of things right now, and look forward to telling you the conclusive results when I get them. Already, I’m seeing something very interesting that has me excited about what I will test next. I just need to wait for the results to be statistically valid first.

Want some free marketing advice? Ask me anything you want to know by going to the new “Ask Chad” page.

Just click the”Ask Chad” link at the top right of this webpage to find out more…

Evidently a lot of people out there have trouble finding new niches to sell to. Once you know how, finding a new market/niche is easy.

I guess most people are looking for markets with no competition, which is their biggest mistake.

Don’t waste time trying to find that mythical untapped niche. You’ll create a lot of losers before you find it.

Like I’ve said before, the easiest way to find a niche is to look at whats already selling.

Just go to the Clickbank Marketplace and look at the top 20 products in the subcategory you are interested in.

I’ll look for one right now and give it to you free…

Ok, in the category Home & Family and the subcategory Marriage, I see an interesting product about wedding speeches. It looks like it’s selling pretty good.

Next I did a search for “wedding speeches” and took a look at the results as well as the Adwords ads.

Guess what?

We have a winner!

Organic search competition is definitely there but it’s beatable. More importantly the Adwords ads look weak. There’s the tell tale Ebay ad, a local ad (for me), and an ad about speeches in general.

Enough competition to tell you there’s money in the market, but not so much that you will be in a David vs. Goliath situation.

Next a back end or bonus product pops into my head: Get Over Your Fear of Speaking in Public

Easy money…

That’s all there is to it. I found a profitable niche in less than 10 minutes. If I had time I could have a product up in 3 to 5 days and within a month I would own that niche.

That may sound mean but one of the most common mistakes people make when writing copy is assuming their audience is smarter than they actually are.

It’s important to use the language of your market but don’t over complicate things. Stick to small words and avoid using terms your audience may not understand.

Your copy should be simple enough for a 5th grader to understand it.

The only exception is when you’re writing to an audience that you’re sure will understand certain terms (for example medical terms in copy meant for doctors).

Try to make it fast and easy to read. Keep your paragraphs short (three lines or less) and on target. Avoid long confusing paragraphs at all costs.

When you finish writing, go back and remove any boring parts.

By making it easy and fast to read, you will effectively keep your prospects eyes glued to your copy and increase your sales.

As Ray Edwards said recently on his blog: “Copy should read like conversation; it should flow naturally and be easy to listen to (or read).”

As you may have noticed, I tried to write exactly as I described in this post to give you an example.

I was just reading a post on Ryan Healy’s blog about a “200% Lowest Price Guarantee” a furniture store offers. They guarantee there price is the lowest or they will pay you 200% of the difference in price.

As I was reading, I remembered something Gary Halbert wrote about guarantees and how they could not only increase sales but also reduce refunds. I believe Gary’s example was a 200% money back guarantee for some kind of home business product that was getting hit hard by refunds.

The catch was that if you wanted the 200% refund, you had to provide proof (business license, merchant account records, etc) you actually followed the steps outlined in the product.

By setting the guarantee up that way he reduced the perceived risk and as Ryan said built trust. He also drastically cut the amount of refunds. Evidently most the customers asking for refunds never put the information in the product to use.

So if you’re looking for something to test, why not try testing a bold guarantee.

Which Guarantee do you think is better?

Try my Niche Annihilation System for 30 days. If you aren’t making at least $100 a week by the end of the 30 days, I’ll give you a quick 100% Refund.

OR

Try my Niche Annihilation System for 30 days. If you aren’t making at least $100 a week by the end of the 30 days, send me a link to your Niche’s website and links to the 10 “free ads” described in my system and I’ll not only refund your order, but I’ll send you a $100 dollar check just for trying my system.

No matter what happens you make money!

I don’t know about you but the second guarantee would tempt me a whole lot more than the first…

I have always dreamed of cruising around the Carribean on a yacht for months or even years at a time. Maybe it’s a result of me being a Parrot Head (Jimmy Buffet fan).

Until now I haven’t been able to afford that dream but I’m getting very close. My goal this year is to earn enough money to make buying this boat a no brainer:

The Fountaine Pajot Highland 35

Interior:

Pretty nice eh? I tend to lack focus and motivation so I’m hoping this will keep me motivated throughout the year.

I’ve been working with Google’s new Website Optimizer and I’m impressed. Multivariate Testing is much more powerful than A/B Split Testing, but it does take longer for reliable results. Still it’s faster than it seems since you are testing so many things.

The first test I set up was on my most profitable product’s sales page. Why? Because the more visitors and conversions a site gets, the quicker and easier it is to increase it’s profits. In all I am testing the maximum of 8 sections (I originally tried to test 10).

Here’s what I’m testing:

1. Two new background colors, a new shade of blue, and a purple-blue.
2. Headline quotes vs no quotes. (no quotes almost always wins)
3. Headline color - black (consistent winner), blue, and red
4. Using the word Discover instead of Learn (supposed to be better)
5. Size of an important image - big vs small
6. Background color of testimonial box - blue vs beige
7. Active or inactive link leading to another website of mine that helps build trust
8. Contact information vs no contact information (contact should win)

It’s still to early to say on any of those but I could make some pretty good guesses. The best part of testing for me is seeing the results. I love checking the reports to see which variables are doing the best. You may want to test new headlines, sections of copy, different guarantee’s, etc. I didn’t because I’ve already tested the crap out of this site and wanted to test these first.

It looks like it may be awhile for valid results but when I get them, I will let you know what they are.

There’s no excuse for anyone to buy testing software anymore. I haven’t tried them all but I doubt any can beat Google’s ease of use and reporting features. If you’re thinking of buying some testing software, do your self a favor and try Google’s Website Optimizer first.

Funny, I sound like a Google advertisement. I don’t like everything they do (that page quality score thing cost me a good bit of money), but I have to praise them for making such a great tool available to their advertisers.

Now stop reading and go set up some tests. The easiest way to make more money is often to improve what you’re already doing.

As many of you know the copywriting legend Gary Halbert died recently. His sons and John Carlton are orginizing a public memorial in LA. I would go if I wasn’t across the country but if you would like to go you can get the details from Gary’s website: http://www.TheGaryHalbertLetter.com/

Gary’s newsletters were an enourmous help to me when I was learning how to write copy that sells and anyone who hasn’t read and reread all of them should put it at the top of their to-do list. Those newsletters are a marketing gold mine and best of all they’re free. You can view them at the above site as well.

I’m sure you noticed that this blog looks entirely different. If not, you need to put down the bottle of Jack for awhile.

What you might not have known is that the old blog was running on custom PHP software I designed. Being a programmer, I like to create my own software so I can do what I want with it. But the reality is that Wordpress is much better than my software and I don’t have time to code the old software the way I want it.

The biggest motivation was a recent outbreak of spam. I didn’t have time to create my own spam blocking software, so it was time to switch. There nothing worse than seeing Viagra ads all over your website.

So far I really like wordpress. The plugins are cool and I really like alot of the other features.

I had to move all the old blog posts to the new blog and in doing so I lost all the comments attached to them. I started to go and redo the comments but decided not to. I also did some light editing of the posts/articles and removed some that were boring or that I didn’t like.

I still have alot to do, to get everything setup right so expect many changes over the next few weeks.

To those who use my Testing Calculator, it can still be found at the old address, but it will be a few days until I get it going with the new setup.