I’m starting a series of articles with gems I find in the marketing books I’m reading. Yes, it is true, you really can find wisdom in dead-tree books!

Today’s gem is from “Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results”. I’m really enjoying this book and learning a lot from it. The gem I’m going to share is one that I felt compelled to walk around at work and read to coworkers.

For Heaven Sakes, Let them Pee

Imagine you are sitting in a car in the middle of a long road trip. You really have to pee. It is all you can think about. Your eyes are peeled for the nearest rest stop. […] Meanwhile, your beloved is sitting next to you, chattering about how lovely the scenery is. Needles to say, you’re not that interested nor are you being even remotely attentive.
[…]
I think that many visitors to online retail stores are on a long road trip and they have to pee. They have a goal and they want to be successful in that goal, they aren’t looking to be distracted until that goal is satisfied. […] And what is their experience at your store? My guess it’s almost exactly like our poor driver’s experience: they’re trying to ignore information that’s distracting, annoying, and as far as they’re concerned, completely irrelevant to their goal. They’re wading through banners and sale stickers. They’re searching through a sea of chattering navigation links.
[…]
Ask yourself: when she arrives at my store, does my customer have to pee and, if she does, am I letting her? […] Respect the fact that many customers have something in mind when they arrive and that they’re not looking to be distracted. When they arrive, let them pee. You’ll be amazed how interested they get in the scenery when they’re done.

I think that is an absolutely brilliant observation and metaphor. Why do I need to register at your frickin’ site? Just let me put things in the cart! Quit upselling so hard (you listening, GoDaddy?).

Technorati Tags: Marketing, bryan eisenberg, jeffrey eisenberg, call to action, conversion

Finally! After two months, the great god Google has finally ranked my new crop of blogs. Woohoo! This site has a giant “4″!

And the crowd goes wild. *clap clap clap*

Technorati Tags: google, sandbox, pagerank

Excellent quote from one of my daily reads, talking about blogs.

If you think this is just a game of bubbles, bandwagons, favoritism and knowing the right people, as opposed to having good ideas and plain old hard work- Fine, go ahead and believe it. Nobody cares. Just don’t be surprised when you get left behind, same as you did every other time the world changed.

Sometimes I think that what drives the nay-sayers is simple “fear of looking dumb”. They seem to be afraid they’ll start doing something just when it stops being popular, and so they’ll look dumb. Sometimes I think that it is just a driving need to fill column inches with text, even if it doesn’t mean much.

For what it is worth, I don’t care if “Blogs as a business model” has “peaked”. If it has, then some of the heart-not-in-it folks will drop off and clear the air a bit. You can’t force a good blog, and it is painful to see some people try, convinced that it will be profitable if they can just force it long enough.

Even after using the internet every day for almost as long as it has been in existence, I still find myself amazed at how much really great information remains to be found. Know what I mean? Of course, the net is far too big to really know everything of interest to everyone, but you’d think I would have found all the best sites in my focus areas by now, right?

I don’t know how I’ve missed John Carlton’s Big Damn Blog until now. I am extremely impressed, and I’m planning to spend the morning reading all his archives, something I rarely ever do on any blog. A couple quotes which will illustrate what I’m talking about.

A motivational quote:

Just one more reason to stay rooted in the classic stuff — good old-fashioned salesmanship, down-to-earth conversational copy, and becoming a go-to guy in your market. There will no longer be calming breaks in the information-overload flooding through every one of your prospects’ heads.

The best defense against becoming overwhelmed is to stay connected with reliable sources of good info. If you want to dominate your market, you need to be one of those sources. Part of the “reliable core” of the Web, where mysteries are figured out and handled.

And a writing tip:

David Ogilvy, the advertising legend who brought genuine excitement and classic salesmanship to Madison Avenue, wrote about the value of naps for a writer. He wasn’t referring to not being tired, but rather to using the power of your unconscious – his trick was to load up on information about a project… and then go catch forty winks, telling his mind to have something for him when he awoke.

Technorati Tags: guru, John Carlton, marketing

Todd gives 21 Tips for Improved Website Credibility on his StuntDubl blog. Since I am in the process of launching a new store, these tips were very helpful for me and well timed.

In particular, I liked:

• About Page
• Pictures of REAL people
• References
• Link to good people
• No 404’s
• Write like a real person
• Have a freakin’ sense of humor

Technorati Tags: Credibility, popularity, trustworthiness

Writing headlines for articles always takes me an inordinate amount of time. I know how important they are for search engine rankings, and since I use my headlines as my permalinks, it is even more important for me to write memorable, attractive ones.

The Advanced Marketing Institute Headline Analyser is exactly the tool for me. It lets you try out various headlines, and then gives Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) scores for them. Higher is better, and a 50% or better score is considered a great headline.

For this article, I tried several variations until I managed to score a stellar 66% EMV rating.

• Powerful headlines - 0%
• Sweet powerful headlines - 33%
• Create sweet powerful headlines - 50%
• Cool headline tool - 66% (ding ding ding, we have a winner)

Technorati Tags: copywriting, webtools, headlines

I’ve been using GoDaddy as my domain registrar for a few years. At the moment, I have about 15 domains registered through them. But, after reading one too many horror stories of them acting as judge, jury, and executioner, I’ve decided to avoid them from now on. In addition, I’ll be transferring any domains I plan to do any newsletters with, prior to starting those newsletters.

You see, a few months ago, they decided to impose an arbitrary $200 fee on “spammers”. How it works is that when they get “complaints” (no one knows the magic number to trigger the draconian action), they suspend the domain and demand the owner pay $200 and promise never to spam again. Notice, guilty without trial there. If the domain owner wants to transfer the site out, they demand a $50 “administration” fee as a final insult.

Too risky for me

In a day when a documented, proven opted-in newsletter subscription might be flagged as spam by someone who’d rather just report spam than unsubscribe, this is an unacceptable risk for me as a marketer. I do not and will not spam. I carefully track every opt-in, and always unsubscribe those who ask. But, that doesn’t matter to bullies and giant corporations, especially when they can simply use the spam claim as a thin excuse to extort money.

So, what I did to choose a new registrar was very simple. I ran Whois queries on various affiliate and newsletter sites I respect, and noted which registrars they used. Then, I read DN Forum to get a feel for the “rep” of the companies. In the end, I chose to use Namecheap, for their $8.88 price tag and their free name cloaking. That name cloaking is a service GoDaddy charges for, by the way, and which makes Namecheap actually less expensive when directly compared.

I almost chose Joker due to their rep for not playing nice with courts. Some think that is bad, but I like a registrar who’ll fight for their customers. But, in the end I just felt better about the features at Namecheap.

Technorati Tags: registrars, GoDaddy, Namecheap, joker

It took an afternoon of work, but my latest site is finally live! Gift Observer is a site dedicated to talking about gifts and gift giving. Obviously, there is a lot of marketing I can do with the site concept, but I have even bigger goals than just reviewing things that I am promoting via affiliate links.

The world has enough “quick links to small gifts” sites, so that I not where I’ll be focusing my energy. Instead, I’m focusing on actually being of service to my readers, by finding interesting stuff and creative ideas, and by providing them some real value-added services. Not just same-old-same-old, the site will be growing within a month or so to include a great application I am writing. This app is going to make a big splash in the niche. I’ve never seen a real competitor, though I am sure there will be some in this space sometime this year.

Basically, I’ve launched the blog part of the site before the application part, to make sure that I am well and truly out of the Google Sandbox before next fall. Every little bit of juice will help me hit critical mass with this site!

Technorati Tags: Gift Observer, Gifts

Recently, several of my applications to affiliate programs have been turned down. One of the AMs was kind enough to let me know it was because my site didn’t have a privacy policy. That was a good point, so I quickly slapped one together using the BBB Online recommended Privacy Generator Tool.

Still, I’ve been rejected by a few more since then. I was wondering why, when I came across a great thread at ABestWeb on this very topic. Reading it was fairly painful, actually, since the reasons are so obvious. Affiliate Managers are looking for people who make money, who aren’t sleazy, and who aren’t a giant pain to work with. D’oh! Of course.

I’m not a pain, I think, but I don’t have enough history on CJ to meet some merchants’ standards. They don’t want affiliates who are going to drag down their EPC rates. Of course they don’t, since that is one of the key criteria many affiliates use when selecting programs. My EPC averages $25. That isn’t shabby by any means, but if I am trying to join a program which has an EPC over $100, then my much lower average might be worrisome. I might reasonably be considered to be at risk of bringing down their lofty payout rates.

Solution? Longevity, performance, and a history with good AMs. I’m workin’ on it.

Technorati Tags: Affiliate, Affiliate Manager, CJ, Commision Junction