Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

Increasing conversions is always the best way to make more money. You don’t have to worry about things like getting more traffic (sometimes hard to do) or promoting a more expensive product to increase your income. By increasing conversion percentage, everything else can stay the same and you can still make more money. Okay, so how do we do this? This article is going to provide some answers.

If you’re an affiliate marketer, which is what most marketers are, it’s tough to increase conversions because you have no control over the sales page. Whatever the product creator has out there, that’s what you have to work with. So if his page converts at a paltry half a percent, there isn’t a lot you can do to change that. But there is something you CAN do.

Many times, an affiliate marketer can close a sale that might not have been closed simply by offering a bonus in addition to whatever the product creator is offering. Many times I’ll offer one of my own products, if it’s a fit to the product being sold or, if that’s not the case, I’ll offer my time to support that product. Many times, this will land me a sale that I would not have normally gotten.

Another way to increase conversions is to offer a free report or a newsletter to the prospect instead of sending them straight to the sales page. This way you get a chance to followup with them, which can always lead to more sales IF it’s done right. Crafting an autoresponder series with content that compliments the product is one way to do this.

But what if you’re promoting your own product? Well, the best way to increase conversions is simply to keep working on your sales page. Make changes and split test the changes against the original. Whichever version performs better, keep that one, can the other one, and then repeat the process with different changes. Keep doing this until you reach a conversion percentage that you’re happy with. Of course some people are never happy and do this forever, which is fine.

Point is, there are lots of ways to make more money without having to get more traffic or promoting a more expensive product. Sometimes, little changes can increase conversion percentage and make all the difference in the world.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of spinning your wheels trying to get your marketing off the ground? Haven’t got a clue what you’re doing and sick of being dead broke? Why not get some solid mentoring from somebody who has been EXACTLY where you are today? Check out my mentoring program at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/mentoring/mentoring.html and finally get yourself the one on one education that can FINALLY give you the success that you’ve been looking for.

One of the banes of Internet marketing is the file sharing site. Quite honestly, I don’t know how these are allowed to remain online, but that’s not my decision to make. Point is, these sites freely share our hard work. Question is, what can we do about it AND…more importantly…is it worth spending our time trying to fight this pestilence? This article will attempt to provide some concrete answers.

At the top of the list is to try to protect your work as best as possible. That means, at the very least, not having any static download links that can easily be indexed by the search engines. That’s just an open invitation to people stealing your work. Get something like DLGuard or some download manager program or service. This way, there isn’t one download page link for people to access.

Another thing you probably want to do is password protect your work. For software, this is easy enough to do with registration keys where you can disable any software that isn’t properly registered. For ebooks, you can consider EXE ebooks. PDF protection is weak at best and not something you really want to bother with.

Okay, but what about what happens once your product ends up on one of these sites? Well, here is the reality, as much as most people won’t want to hear it. Most of these sites are hosted in countries outside of the US and where, quite honestly, the hosting companies themselves don’t give a rat’s behind that our work has been pirated. So complaining to them will fall on deaf ears. Going to the FTC, if they can even be bothered with such a small matter, won’t help either. Most of these sites are outside their jurisdiction.

And even if you DO manage to get your file removed from one of these sites, there is a very good chance that it will end up on another site, if it already hasn’t. In fact, if you check, you will find that most products that are pirated end up on many sites. Just do a search for the product name itself and you’ll see.

Ultimately, the time you spend tracking down pirates and trying to put them out of business is your decision. For US sites, you want to send a DCMA to the hosting company with all the information that you have to prove that the work is yours and that this site has no right to sell it or give it away. If there are a number of sites, you might want to outsource this task.

Most people who download products from file sharing sites would have probably never purchased them anyway. It is the mentality of those looking for something for nothing. So you’re not really losing any money. In other words, I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it.

Do what you can…but don’t kill yourself.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim.

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One of the biggest complaints I get from Internet marketers is that a lot of the products that they purchase, especially the ones from the big name gurus, are crap. Well, instead of just complaining about it, there are a couple of things you can actively do about this increasingly annoying problem. This article is going to cover your options. Hopefully, you will find something here that appeals to you that you can carry out in your attempt to do away with all the garbage. Keep reading to find out more.

At the top of the list is something obvious and simple and yet, so many people don’t do it. Stop buying stuff. I mean for crying out loud…you buy one product from Joe Guru, find out it stinks and then you go out and buy yet another one? How many times do you have to get hit over the head before you finally figure out that it’s going to hurt. Just stop buying the stuff.

In addition to that, you don’t want to let the bad purchase just go at that. You want to ask for a refund to start with. If enough people refund all the crappy products out there, maybe these people will get a clue and start creating good products…especially if they don’t want to see their income sink into the ground. But don’t stop there.

Write reviews of these crappy products. Let others know what you think. You can post these reviews on your own blog, or better yet, if any of these product creators have their own blogs, post a review there as a comment to their latest offering. Sure, they might not approve it, but you never know. Point is, let yourself be heard.

Aside from not buying and letting others know about these crappy products, you could create your own product that actually DOES have some value. If you find a product that is lacking, sit down and think about what you would do to make it better and DO IT!

What’s that you say? You bought the product because it’s something you don’t know a lot about and wanted to learn…thus not knowing enough ABOUT the product TO make a better one? Then find an expert in the field. Interview the expert. Create the product based on what the expert tells you. You can even make that the selling point of the product itself…”Expert Reveals…” Take a look at all the products that have been created using this approach.

Point is, if you buy a crappy product, you don’t have to just take it. There ARE things you can do about it. I’ve just given you a couple.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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Let me start off by saying that a little skepticism is healthy. We should all realize that there is bad in this world and we have to be on the lookout for it. Having said that, there is a degree of skepticism that, to me, is a red flag and thus a clue that maybe I wouldn’t have a happy experience working with that particular person. In this article, through example, I am going to explain exactly what I mean. Keep reading to find out where I’m going with this.

This particular observation actually stems from a thread at the Warrior Forum. Somebody brought up the subject of testimonials, which is a subject that is very important to people running a home business. If you get testimonials for your service, you’re likely to get more business. However, there are methods for getting testimonials that aren’t exactly on the up and up. I won’t go into them here because I don’t want to give anybody ideas.

However, during the conversation, one member flat out said that anybody who gets testimonials is doing so through bribery. He didn’t say many people. He said EVERYBODY. Now, this tells me something about the person that goes way beyond just healthy skepticism. He essentially believes that all these people are dishonest. So I have to ask…is he one of them? If not, then he’s being a hypocrite. What, everybody is dishonest BUT him? If he IS one of these people, freely admitting to it, then do I want to do business with somebody who essentially is saying, I’ll do whatever I can to get ahead?

When you run into people who truly believe the worst in all of us, that says something about the person themselves. And in my opinion, this is not somebody who you want to do business with…even if you ARE one of these people the person is talking about. Why? Well, did you ever hear the saying, “No honor among thieves?” There is a reason why this is true. The very nature of being a thief means you can’t be trusted. So if you’re in business with somebody like that, even if you’re the same way, don’t you think there is a possibility that this person will stab you in the back the first chance he gets?

Like I said, a healthy dose of skepticism is fine. But when somebody believes the worst in everybody, you have to wonder what that says about them.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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Over the past few days, the Warrior Forum has been on display with a real knock down drag out about automation. In particular, automation when it comes to blog commenting. Well, it’s been one real heated debate to say the least, with neither side willing to give in. So, this article is going to give this author’s view on the subject of automation. I have no doubt that those who support it will find what they are about to read quite infuriating. And that’s just the way I intended it.

Let me start off by saying that not all automation is evil. Unfortunately, a lot of it can be used for creating more chaos than the good that could possibly come out of it. In this article, I want to focus primarily on blog commenting software. The concept is simple. You load up the software with your comment and then set it to run posting that comment on a number of blogs, hopefully relevant to the comment being posted.

Those who support this practice say that the blog owner has the ability to accept or reject the comment if they choose, so no harm done. Those who are against the practice, such as myself, say that the blog owner shouldn’t have to moderate comments that weren’t made by a real person who didn’t actually read the blog post. Blogs are made for human beings…not for software.

There you have it. There is my argument and nobody is going to tell me I’m wrong. But there is a bigger issue here than just blog commenting. Again, read the title of this article in case it has escaped you. It asks a simple question. Is automation killing Internet marketing? Sadly, it’s hurting it more than it’s helping it and here is why.

A lot of the automation has been put into place because of the way Google recognizes authority sites, or, in plain English, the sites that it puts at the top of the SERPs. Their main criteria seems to be two things. How many links people have pointing to your site and the content of the site itself. Sadly, the latter seems to be less important than the former. And thus, the backlinking wars were created.

But getting backlinks is a time consuming process. So, some genius decided to make a way to automate this process. The end result is that a lot of VRE ends up getting littered with crap. If you think I am kidding, ask the blog owners who have to clean out 10,000 worthless comments each day.

One day, Google is going to realize that their criteria for ranking sites is terribly flawed and will go to what it should really be…the content that’s on the site and how relevant it is to the problem it’s trying to solve.

Until then, automation is going to seriously hurt this industry.

To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim

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Everybody thinks they know they’re market. And then, after doing some testing (if they even bother testing at all) they discover that they really don’t know their market at all. And yes, this applies to me as well. Just when I thought I knew my market…bam. I’m hit with a dose of reality that came as quite a surprise to me. I’m going to share a true story and then give you some tips on zeroing in on YOUR market in order to understand their wants and needs.

In one market I cater to, I offered a product line where I sold 100 units of that product. Yes, this was a limited release for each product in the line. And while sales were good, only a few of the products actually sold out. So I thought, “What if I limit the next release to 50 and raise the price a little?” Well, I figured that with the increased scarcity, the product would sell out for certain. While sales just started a day ago, it appears this isn’t the case. It appears price is more an issue than number of units sold.

So what did I learn from this little experiment? I learned that I might as well just sell 100 units, even though I’d personally jump at the 50 unit deal myself, and ultimately make more money anyway. Boy…did I read my market all wrong. But that’s how you find out things like this. You have to test. You have to see where the sweet spot is.

Okay, so here are my tips. For starters, you need to gather as much data about your market as you can in regard to price, conversion, sales and so on. Then, when you make a change, note the change in the stats. Did sales go up or down? Did you get more or fewer complaints than usual? Was there no real change at all? You can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been.

Another thing you want to do is mix things up. Don’t be predictable. If your market knows what’s coming, they’re likely to say to themselves, “I can wait on this because I know that in X number of weeks, this thing will still be selling at this price.” If you mix things up and pull some surprises on them, they can’t sit back and relax. They’ll always wonder “what if?”

Sales is a game. Make no mistake about it. That’s why you see big retail stores coming up with these sales out of nowhere in addition to the usual days you’d expect, like Thanksgiving. If they were predictable, people would know just when to go and not go.

Keep your market guessing but understand what’s important to them, whether it’s price, quantity being sold or whatever.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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Laziness is becoming like a disease. If you hang out at Internet marketing forums, you can find this laziness in full display. People asking questions that could EASILY be answered in five seconds by going to Google. So I have to ask…does anybody know how to use search engines anymore? Yes, this is a rant. Read at your own risk. I’m holding nothing back here.

The questions asked range from, “Where can I find a list of article directories?” to “Where can I find a script that does…?” Did you know that if you went to Google and simply typed in “List of article directories” you would get, right at the top of the listings, a site that gives you the top 50 article directories online. Can you imagine that? And it only takes about five seconds to find it.

And the list goes on and on for stuff that a two year old could find with just a few keystrokes. So again, I have to ask…does anybody know how to use search engines anymore? Ah, but you see, this is really only the tip of the iceberg. See, I’ve got bigger fish to fry in this article. It’s true…the search engine question was just a setup for the bigger issue. What IS the bigger issue?

People are flat out lazy. You heard me. They don’t want to do any work, especially when it comes to research. Why go to a search engine and actually look for something when you can go to your favorite forum and type a few sentences and get all these people running to your aid? They’ll just hand you the whole thing on a silver platter. And why not? That’s what they’re there for.

Ah, but you see…the problem with this mentality is this. After a while, when you’ve become so dependent on others giving you the answers you’re looking for, when you finally run into something that nobody at the forum knows, or it’s something you need solved IMMDIATELY, and nobody replies soon enough, you’re up the creek without a paddle. You don’t know how to search for things and thus, you have no way of finding the answers you need.

So here is my tip for the day. When searching for something, start with the broadest term first. It probably won’t give you what you need but will give you a starting point. Then, you can start refining your search. For example, let’s say you’re looking for a inches to centimeters converter. You could start by typing in “inches to centimeters” and see what comes up. You’ll probably find what you’re looking for. But what if all the results show you actual physical calculators to buy but all you want is something online? You might then refine your search to “online inches to centimeters converter” or something like that. Then you’ll probably find an online calculator that’s free. If not, add “free” to your next search.

It takes time to learn how to use search engines. But if you don’t take that time, you’re going to be forever dependent on others.

And that is NO way to run a business.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of spinning your wheels trying to get your marketing off the ground? Haven’t got a clue what you’re doing and sick of being dead broke? Why not get some solid mentoring from somebody who has been EXACTLY where you are today? Check out my mentoring program at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/mentoring/mentoring.html and finally get yourself the one on one education that can FINALLY give you the success that you’ve been looking for.

If you’re concerned about SEO (who isn’t?) and you’re new to the game, you might want to read this article. Why? Well, things aren’t quite the way they were back in the good old days. Of course, if you’re new, you don’t remember the good old days. Or maybe you do and don’t realize how much has changed. Either way, this article will get you up to speed.

Okay, so just what WERE the good old days of search engine optimization? Well, when it came to on page optimization and keywords, essentially it went like this…use as many relevant keywords as you can throughout the page. But then the search engines saw what people were doing and started dropping the hammer on these sites. Maybe you were a victim yourself. I know I was. Yes, guilty as charged. Anyway, those days are dead and gone. What’s replaced them is a little tricky to work with, but well worth the effort. Why?

Well, it comes down to visitor experience. More specifically, you want YOUR visitors to have the best experience that they can have when visiting your site. And that means, if you have a site on, say, debt relief, they don’t want to see the phrase “debt relief” a hundred times on the page. Not only is that going to annoy the heck out of them, it’s going to tick off the search engines as well. And when that happens, your site disappears from the listings.

Okay, so what DO you want to do IF you want to rank for debt relief and related keywords? Actually, it’s quite simple but DOES take a little bit of thought. You want to mix up your keyword phrases while at the same time, make sure they’re still all loosely related. For example, using debt relief, you might want to use keyword phrases like “get out of debt,” “erase debt,” “relieve debt” and so on. Related phrases are easy enough to find by going to Google’s keyword tool. The key is to use these phrases in a natural way so that they don’t sound forced.

Like I said, it takes a little work, but if you want your sites to stay listed and even have a chance to rank well, you’ll take the time to do this simple little thing.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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By now, if you’re a blogger, you’ve probably heard about Zombie Blogging. If not, don’t worry, by the time you’re done reading this article, you’ll have an idea of what it is. But the question is this, is Zombie Blogging dead (no pun intended) or is it alive and well? Let’s take a look.

The reason I bring this up is because, if you head on over to the Warrior Forum, there is a thread that’s been started in regard to Zombie Blogging about how, if you’re using Blogger blogs to do this, after you hit four blogs, you get contacted by Google asking you to verify your phone number. Now, by itself, this is no big deal. I also understand why they’re doing this. They want to cut down on spam blogs. But it seems that if you don’t confirm, your blogs get zapped, even if they appear to be completely legit. Also, it seems you need to have a Gmail account and more than two of these, you’re on their radar.

What puzzles me completely about this whole thing is this. I have a Blogger account and I have 34 blogs on it. I have never been asked to confirm my phone number and don’t even have a Gmail account. So I have no idea what’s going on with these confirmations. Maybe it’s something new. Either way, if you do this by the book, there is no reason for your blogs to get zapped.

Okay, so what is Zombie Blogging? Well, in a nutshell, it’s a way to have content drip fed into your blog each day so that the blog builds up authority over time, then it ranks well, and THEN, after it’s established, you monetize it. If you want to know what the whole process is, just pick up a copy. I’ve read it and it’s excellent. It’s also an amusing read.

When dealing with Blogger and Google, you have to play by THEIR rules. Trust me, their rules are not all that horrible. All they want is good content on their search engine. They don’t want the kind of crap that a lot of people put up. Those who do it, you know what I’m talking about. Be nice to Google and they’ll be nice to you.

Anyway, Zombie Blogging is alive and well and I am sure that, used properly, it will continue to survive for a very long time.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim.

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Know what drives me more crazy than anything else? When people make blanket statements about things as if they were law. Just recently, a member of the Warrior Forum made a blanket statement that if you didn’t have any marketing books by people like Dan Kennedy and Joe Sugarman, you weren’t serious about your business. Well, this article is my rebuttal. Read it at your own peril.

Let me start off by saying that knowledge is power. And certainly reading is going to help you more than hurt you, provided that you read things worth reading. But a requirement for being serious about your business? That’s a blanket statement that I just can’t let go by unchallenged.

I am, admittedly, self taught. At least for the most part. I got a couple of ebooks early on that were okay, but nothing earth shattering. They are, by today’s standards, outdated…badly. They didn’t contain any of the topics that have helped make me successful today such as article marketing (didn’t even exist back then), list building or product creation. They helped me make a few bucks, but nothing to write home about.

My success came from rolling up my sleeves and getting to work. It came from going to forums and reading articles online. It came from trial and error…a lot of it. I admit, I had a lot of failures in the early days. Had I bought some of those books, maybe I would have learned sooner. And like I said, I’m not arguing that buying books can’t help you. It can.

The problem I have is when people assume that just because you DON’T go out and stock your library with all the “must have” books of the experts, that you’re not serious about your business. Let me tell you something. I would rather take somebody who has no book smarts but is willing to bust their butt and work hard over somebody who owns every marketing book in creation but refuses to get their hands dirty.

In my opinion, the ONLY requirement to be considered serious about your business and to be successful is to work at it every single day without fail and put in the time and effort required. By pure brute force, if you’re determined, you can be successful.

Having said that, if you feel like you’re missing a piece of a puzzle somewhere and a certain book can fill that piece in, get it. But for crying out loud, if you DO get it, don’t let it sit on your bookshelf and collect dust. Because that’s just a sin.

Books don’t make people serious and successful.

Only a solid work ethic does that.

And you can’t get that out of a book.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of spinning your wheels trying to get your marketing off the ground? Haven’t got a clue what you’re doing and sick of being dead broke? Why not get some solid mentoring from somebody who has been EXACTLY where you are today? Check out my mentoring program at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/mentoring/mentoring.html and finally get yourself the one on one education that can FINALLY give you the success that you’ve been looking for.