I’m changing my domain name for this blog. You can find new posts here: http://www.copywritingdean.com
I decided Stephensblog.com wasn’t the best domain for my business. My name (Stephen) is kind of hard to spell. Many people spell it wrong. And it’s spelled differently than it sounds.
A few days back I told you how to increase traffic to your website using my blog.
The 4 point plan was to exchange links with me, comment on my posts, link from a post of yours to mine and to follow me on Twitter.
Many of you did these things and I greatly appreciate it. I’m also glad to see you’re being proactive.
But I am disappointed with 2 things.
One, no one has exchanged links with me. I know, cry me a river. But I’m really trying to make this Wordpress Link Directory work. My next post will be on how to set it up on your blog just in case you’re unsure how to do it. And then hopefully you’ll exchange links.
Two, some of the comments that have appeared since I invited you to comment for SEO reasons have been, I guess predictably, skeptical. There were a couple that forced me to make a decision on whether or not they were spam or legitimate comments by a reader.
I want people to get some link love back to their sites, but I also want comments that constructively add to the conversation.
So here’s what we’re going to do.
I’ve changed the “DoFollow” plugin I’m using. It’s now Lucia’s Linky Love and it only changes your links from “nofollow” to “dofollow” after you’ve made 5 comments. This will protect the blog from drive by commenters.
At some point, I may raise the barrier to 10 comments before you receive link love from me. But for now it’s 5.
Now I don’t want you to leave a bunch of “junk” comments in order to hit the 5 comment barrier. So if you don’t have 5 comments yet, don’t worry! You can still get some link love from me by exchanging links in the link directory 
It’s here: http://www.stephensblog.com/dir
And if you want to start boosting your comment count now, why not let me know what you think about this policy? Leave a comment
Remember when I had Click2Mail send me a test postcard for ad campaign? I wrote about it here: Sending Postcards To Advertise Your Product Or Services.
Well it finally showed up yesterday. It took a LONG time…
…because of user error. My fault. I accidentally picked “standard mail” instead of “first class.” Instead of 4-5 days it took 9-15. (And I saved a whopping 11 cents!)
So that’s one mistake I noticed. The other is the graphics program I used to create the postcard.
Microsoft Paint just isn’t going to work! I saved the image I made in paint as a .jpg file, which looked fine until it showed up on a printed postcard. There’s too much noise surrounding the words… as a result of Paint not saving the .jpg at a high enough quality.
It’s possible that Paint might be able to work if I save it with another image format. But whatever…
Instead I’m going with Gimp. This is a free software program that acts a lot like Adobe Photoshop (a great program, but very expensive).
Gimp will be able to make a high quality screenshot and fix my postcard.
One more note. I took the advice to keep all of my content an inch up from the bottom in case the post office put a sticker on the bottom. The postcard did not get a sticker. In fact, I think the “sticker” was printed on the card.
However, I don’t want to risk it unless I need the extra space. So I’ll continue to heed that advice for a while.
I found this link this morning. Ken Mcarthur lists his best email subject lines (based on open rates) from 2008. It’s good to see people posting real data!
He also writes quite a bit about how to evaluate statistics. All in all, a great post. Go check it out!
Tonight I was struck with an idea that involved easily adding reciprocal links between blogs. I decided to do a google search to see if I could find anything that had already been created.
I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for, but it’s pretty close.
You can see an example of what it looks like here: http://www.stephensblog.com/dir
I love it. It encourages reciprocal links… and with the click of a button will delete any links that aren’t associated with a reciprocal link.
Brilliant. Love it. Try it. Wordpress Link Directory
Michel Fortin tipped me off to this awesome headline writing formula by Perry Belcher:
I downloaded this quite some time ago on a tip from a multivariate testing expert. I just started using it after I got back from the cruise, but it’s fantastic (and free).
Raise your hand if you’ve ever come up with a product that was a dud…
If you’ve ever created a product, there’s a good chance you’ve made one that couldn’t sell. People who are just beginning their business pursuits often forget to check if there’s a market for their “hot idea” before they create the product. This can lead to a waste of time, energy and a lot of money.
While there are more thorough ways of checking if your product has an audience, here are 3 quick ways to get a general idea of the demand.
1. Spyfu.com. This site lets you analyze pay-per-click data similar to what the old Overture tools used to do. Just type in your keyword and you’ll instantly see how many people are placing ads for that keyword, how many clicks they’re getting on average, and what it costs to run an ad.
If you see a website is running ads for a few months at a $1.00 click, you can be nearly 100% sure they’re making a profit from that market.
2. Amazon.com’s Magazine Section If you can find a magazine that’s focused on your market, chances are there’s enough people out there to support a product for this business. After all, there’s enough to support the magazine…
3. http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm. The Clickbank marketplace lists tons and tons of information products. Search for your keyword and look at the results.
If you see products similar to your idea, check out the “Gravity” number. The higher the number, the better the product is selling. Compare the number to other known hot sellers and you’ll get a decent idea of how popular that market is.
I’ve been watching my blogs web statistics lately. If you have a blog, I highly recommend doing that as well. Some things I’ve noticed…
1. This blog’s audience has grown every month since I started posting regularly in January.
2. There are a few topics my readers aren’t too interested in. I can tell, because when I post about them, my traffic stays about the same as if I hadn’t posted at all. If I didn’t know this, I could post this blog into the ground. But checking my stats lets me know to move on to something else, or… else!
3. My stats can tell me what keywords were used to find my blog in the search engines. This has helped me to discover which keywords I already rank well for, and which keywords I’m close to ranking well for. Some strategic posts can solidify my search engine ranking for those terms, and I get even more traffic.
4. Being ranked well for some keywords don’t help at all. For example, the keywords “Internet Advertising Copywriter” hasn’t gotten me a single hit, despite my ranking.
5. I’ve still got a lot of work to do
Most likely, your webhost has some sort of web statistics installed on your server already. Recently, my hosts stats program have become less reliable (along with a ton of other problems over the last 6 months). So I’ve started using www.statcounter.com. It’s free up to a point, but you need to upgrade if you’re getting more than 500 visitors. I’m going to see what the stats look like with the 500 visitors before I make my final decision.
Hi guys,
A free gift for you today…
In 2002 I set out to write an ebook based on this premise. I wanted to ask successful business people, if they lost their list and all their resources, how would they build up their business.
Since then, that model for an ebook has been copied several times. (And I was a dummy for never releasing my version.)
BUT, my guide was very different. It took on the angle of setting up Joint Ventures, or endorsed mailings, to generate a lot of sales fast. And remember, this is if you don’t know ANYONE first.
I’m giving you a free copy. Right click the link below and choose “Save Target As” to download the .pdf to your PC.
www.ebizknowitall.com/itscallednetworking.pdf
Let me know how you like it.
This week I’ve spending a lot of time getting caught up on blog technology, social bookmarking and other things that have had me surfing the net a lot. One blog I’ve been reading recently is from Rachel Rofe.
Apparently she’s the resource QUEEN. I should have known from her product, Top Secret Riches, that she would be the first to know about any valuable resource. But two links to great tools she’s provided on her blog this week have blown me away. And they will be immediately implemented in my business.
The first was Robot Replay, which records the actions of individual visitors when they hit your site… and then replays them for you to watch. Do you know what that can do for anyone who writes copy?! You can see exactly where your copy is doing it’s job, and where you’re losing the reader. I’ll be implementing this on my sales letters and clients’ sales letters very soon.
Next is FoldSpy. This software lets you take a peak at how much of your webpage the majority of your visitors can see without scrolling. Essentially, it lets you identify what is “above the fold” for most visitors to your sites. This is VERY important for things like squeeze pages, where you want to get the opt in box above the fold. It can also be useful for your blogs and sales pages, but that’s a bit more complicated.
Again, I’m thrilled to have these resources. And I recommend checking out Rachel’s blog and her list of resources.