Free E-Mail Submit Landing Page
Posted on May 25th, 2009 by Scot 
8 Comments
Here is a high-converting free landing page design I use to collect e-mail addresses for RSS subscription. (Incentived offers)
The original template is open source, and I do not recall where I found it– but I have modified the template to drill down on collecting e-mail addresses, and it simply works great as an e-mail landing page template.
The current landing page has Feedburner integrated which can be edited easily if you want to collect e-mails for RSS subscriptions. You could also change it over to whatever mailing list you’re using by modifying the HTML. Let me know if you need any help.
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The Crab Bucket
Posted on April 13th, 2009 by Scot 1 Comment
Once when I was younger I read a story about a crab bucket. I don’t remember the exact story, and while a Google search would probably uncover the author very quickly, I’d like to tell the story here for safekeeping in my own words.
A man visiting California was walking along the beach when he came upon a fisherman with a bucket full of crabs. He noticed the bucket had no lid and he confronted the fisherman. “Why don’t you cover your bait bucket so the crabs don’t escape?”
“You don’t understand”, the fisherman replied. “If there were only one crab, it would surely escape with his own will very quickly. However, when there are many they will hold themselves down to share the same fate.”
And so the man quickly realized it is the same with people. Take a moment. Are you letting the crabs hold you back from your aspirations, dreams, ideas they will never realize?
If you are, before you know it you will soon be sharing the same fate they will. Sure, you may not succeed the first go around. You may not ever be as successful as you had imagined. But whatever you do– so long as you get yourself out of the crab bucket, you will never be the same.
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It’s Too Hard, I Quit!
Posted on February 19th, 2009 by Scot 4 Comments
I want to be an astronaut. Ah shucks it’s too hard. It’s too much to learn. It’s too much time preparing, and too little time doing. In around 50 years only 321 possible candidates have been selected from countless applicants. Geeze, that’s just too exclusive for me to even attempt. What if I fail?
Since that seems too hard, I guess I’ll be a doctor. A brain surgeon as a matter of fact. Then again becoming a brain surgeon takes decades of training at some of the top schools in the country. I can’t really ace a college admissions test to even begin the process, studying is too much work. Then comes affording school, and even beating out the fierce competition. That sounds like something that’s probably out of my comfort zone.
I guess I’ll just settle for being a corporate lawyer… Or maybe a New YorkTime’s Best Selling Author?…
Do you see the trend here?
Anything worth doing or being is worth working your ass off for. After all if it were easy, anyone could do it without trying. The curve is what makes the most prestigious careers, the highest of luxury lifestyles, and the most exotic toys just that– exclusive.
It’s only $152,000. Some people spend more on a domain name.
The curve is what keeps the losers from interfering with your business. It’s what keeps you in business. It’s why everyone drops their jaw when you drive buy in a brand new Porsche 911– because they can’t. It’s what makes others green with envy when they hear you’re taking your family on another vacation. Or just going out of the country for a while site-seeing.
And that’s the beauty of life, and why I love Capitalism. The ones that beat the curve enjoy it. The ones who can persevere can really experience life itself. And the ones who are too afraid to step out on a limb will continue their comfortable lifestyle being surrounded by the same comfortable people. Do you know the type I’m talking about? Is that you?
So is there a dip that’s stopping you from really breaking through? There are no limitations in life except those you create.
Just inspired by a second reading of Seth Godin’s “The Dip”. Such an awesome book. Also pick up “Tribes” if you haven’t already.
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Dominating SERPS
Posted on January 2nd, 2009 by Scot 2 Comments
When you’re marketing your product, whatever that may be, it’s important to rank highly in the SERPS for obvious reasons.
Having a #1 ranking vs #2 ranking for whatever your keyword may be could be the difference in thousands of dollars of profit every month. A recent Cornell study paints an interesting picture about engine rankings.
As you can see the #1 result gets over 40% more click-through than the #2, and it drops significantly from there. This is the easiest way to improve your revenues… Since you have the possibility to double your traffic/income by putting the little extra effort it takes in to beating out the top dog.
Most People Stop at One
But what if you were not only ranked #1, but you dominated the first page of Google with every, or nearly every result leading back some way to your website? You would then be not only taking the first 50% of traffic by being #1, but also the next 15, next 5, etc. for every result.
For instance… search for “Problogger” and see what you find. Darren has done an outstanding job of using social media to dominate the first page with all sites that lead back to him. Try Shoemoney.
Although those two are both fairly specific inquiries, you can see how social media can really direct organic (free) targeted traffic to your landing pages from a multitude of outlets.
I’ve been doing some work building links for specific pages on my blog one being the Free Landing Page Templates post I did a few weeks back. Right now my post on Digg is just barely outranking the actual website (probably to do with this blog being relatively new).
I outsourced a few hundred blog comments to the page to get it indexed fairly quickly (Pinging w/in Wordpress does a great job of this as it is but I wanted to give it a bit more juice), used OnlyWire to post the story to most of the major bookmarking sites, and also put about 100 links from other smaller bookmarking pages. Within 2 days I was ranked #10/11 right behind landingpagetemplates.net and I will continue to build this particular page to the top of the SERPS. Digg has brought me roughly 100 organic visitors (about 25% of my traffic for this keyword this month) just from being ranked right below me.
So, go out and get the most social real estate allowed for your keywords. Take advantage of Wordpress.com, Edublogs, Hubpages, Squidoo, etc. The usual. If it’s free why not use it to put more outlets to your landing page in the SERPS? Don’t put the hope of all of your organic traffic in one basket.
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Merry Christmas
Posted on December 25th, 2008 by Scot 3 Comments
Merry Christmas everyone! Just wanted to write a quick post to wish everyone a Happy Holiday and let you know I’m going to be back with some killer posts coming up this weekend.
In the meantime be jealous as my honey has given me something to truly be envious of: Monster Beats by Dre
Great quality and when paired with a Creative X-Fi soundcard… it’s true bliss. These are better sounding than any Sennheiser I’ve put on my head.
See you guys around this weekend, I’m excited for the posts coming up!
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Blow Up Your RSS Feedcount
Posted on December 21st, 2008 by Scot 2 Comments
I’ve contemplated about sharing this method to increase your RSS readers just because of the potential it really gives you to blow up your subscriber count literally overnight with legit readers. But I won’t be greedy.
There are other methods out there that suggest tricking the Feedburner chiclet counter, but why waste your time with that business when it’s not giving you REAL RSS subscribers?
Step 1: Create a product that relates to the niche at hand.
For this example I create the “Make $100 With Yahoo! Answers” E-book. It took me about 4 hours to find an HTML template for the book, customize it, and create the content for the book.
Since I already had been practicing the technique it didn’t require any research. It’s important to make a quality product. Don’t bother if you don’t have some time to write a decent product or you won’t have success with our next step.
Step 2: Set up e-mail subscriptions
You can use AWeber if you like and set up an auto-delivery of the book or use Feedburner and set up e-mail subscriptions. You can deliver the book directly to the e-mails registered or set up Feedvertising to deliver the book in every future post. You can also create a protected blog post and just send the password with Feedvertising.
Step 3: Market your product with a related forum
We’re going to incentivize the feed by having visitors register for our RSS feed before sending the book. But first we need traffic. Do a Google search to find a related forum to drive traffic to your offer.
For my book I used the Freebie forums at Digitalpoint. I sold the book for a week before opening it up for free to anyone who wanted to register to my feed and I got 100 subscribers the first day the offer was up.
You can also post it in the For Sale forums and offer the book for free to anyone who subscribes. This will create additional value for the product and of course you have no intention of selling any copies, but there are plenty of people asking for “review copies” that you will buff your subscribers in no time.
So that’s the secret. In theory it’s a simple concept. Get traffic and capture leads. But not many people are doing it. These are free qualified leads that are actively participating in your niche.
I’ve been practicing this technique in different niches for the last year and it truly works better than anything I have ever read anywhere else. Recently TheUniversityKid talked about a new blog launch where he hit the 1k subscriber mark within a few days using this method… That’s how powerful this is.
If you put this in to practice send me an e-mail and let me know how it worked out for you.
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How To Increase RSS Subscribers
Posted on December 18th, 2008 by Scot 4 Comments
Increasing your reach is important when you’re delivering marketing. Why is it important to increase the number of RSS subscribers you have to your blog? That answer is obvious… the real question everyone asks is how you do it. Every blogger wants more RSS readers.
And no I don’t mean by cheating the system… cheating the system might put numbers on the board but it does you no good if you still have the same number of people reading your message.
I’m going to share my secret of increasing my RSS feed count by over 100 subscribers in 24 hours with one simple method. If I weren’t so lazy I could’ve gotten it to 1,000 within a couple of days, if not overnight.
While you’re out wasting days, weeks, and even months whoring yourself out commenting on blogs, hoping someone might subscribe… I took 4 hours and not only did I make $1,000– I also bumped my subscribers significantly. You can too.
You can do the same thing I did over and over until you have thousands of subscribers. How did I do it? Stay tuned… I’m going to show you exactly the method I used and show you how you can make it work on your own blog.
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Stop! Yammer Time!
Posted on December 15th, 2008 by Scot 3 Comments
Heard of Yammer?
If not you’ve at least heard of Twitter. Yammer is Twitter for private groups (intranet-specifically). Yammer works the same way except it lets you interact with your group: share files, links and bounce ideas in real time.
My friend Stu from PimpMyPagerank sent me an invite to a new group he’s starting with people who work online as a hobby or a full-time job.
Stu writes:
“So Pimp”, I hear you ask, “How do I become one of the cool kids of SEO by joining your Yammer Group?”
Well I’m glad you asked!
Simply send us an email at yammer@pimpmypagerank.com, with your real name and your preferred user name for the network, and we’ll set you up, and email you back in a jiffy with your login details.
If you’re in to making money online– and are half-decent at it at least, you need to join DaPimp’s Yammer group! Stop by and say hey, chances are I’ll be in there as well.
Stu will create an account for you with a specific e-mail address, and you can join in on the conversation immediately. So what are you waiting for? Send Stu an e-mail! It’s always good to work around other like-minded people, and you may pick up a few tips/tricks in the process.
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Cashing In On Free Credit Reports
Posted on December 13th, 2008 by Scot 5 Comments
Nothing in life is free… and this especially holds true online. If you’re promoting free credit reports here is an idea to make a few extra bucks here and there (by a few I mean a few hundred)
Open An Apartment Complex
With the magic of the internet comes the magic of “make-believe.” If you want to have apartments for rent it takes a few minutes to start a classified ad and start renting out apartments. So, how will this help you make money with a free credit report offer? Simple, you make your prospective tenants get a free credit check before applying. Since this is a normal request from an apartment complex it shouldn’t bother a prospective tenant to get their credit checked… especially since it’s free of charge to them! (at least for the first 30 days…)
So, set up a classified ad on Craigslist or Apartments.com with a few pictures… maybe mention something about “preliminary credit check required, if haven’t completed will offer free of charge.” Sometimes this works and sometimes it’s better not to mention a credit check at all, just e-mail the prospect after you have a response with something like:
“With the amount of replies we’ve had, we are limited in resources and time and are asking all tenants to supply a copy of their recent credit report. You can obtain a copy by visiting (affiliate link) or have it done during tenant interview process at an additional $39.”
So, do you think they would rather bring a copy of a free report or pay $39 to have a report pulled before they move in to their “apartment”?
Conversion on offers like this will be high enough to alert your Affiliate Manager, so make sure you’re sending paid junk traffic to even it up a bit if this is something you decide to participate in. (This can be bought in many places… check the forums at Digitalpoint)
Some Additional Tips:
- Check the average going price in the locale you’re posting and mark yours down a few hundred to lure in the most prospective buyers. Make sure your listing includes a picture. The picture is imperative to your success.
- Don’t post a telephone number and if you do make sure its a VOIP line with no voicemail so it just rings forever/fax.
- Put the listing as “By Owner.”
- If the prospect bugs you afterward, just inform them you’re still looking for something for them… as of right now there are no vacancies… use your imagination.
This can also be used with job offers or car sales… anything you can imagine. And finally please… please… use this information for your knowledge only. Don’t actually do this ;).
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Site Flipping 101 E-Book
Posted on November 27th, 2008 by Scot 1 Comment
Jason Pereira from TheUniversityKid sent me over a copy of his Site-Flipping Guide For Noobs for review.
I’d like to take a few moments to first analyze the product itself and also the structure of his affiliate program and business for the book. I’d also like to discuss any opportunities I see where Jason may be able to capitalize to make more money with the recent launch of his affiliate program.
I’ve gotta say this is a great book for anyone just starting out with making money online or flipping websites. If you’ve ever sold a website on DigitalPoint or Sitepoint, there are a few tips and ideas here that never really struck me before, and I absolutely appreciate Jason for bringing them to my attention in this guide.
The first 22 pages will introduce you to the concept of flipping websites, the potential in flipping sites, and finally setting up web-hosting and installing Wordpress on your server. If you’ve never purchased hosting or installed Wordpress this could be helpful.
Otherwise skim through here and get to the real content. I’ll give you a tip if you’re new to the internet: Get hosting with Fantastico for one-click Wordpress installs so you don’t have to bother with MySQL databases, etc.
Pages 22-25 give us a few free high-quality Wordpress themes that will work well for flipping our websites as a few resources for finding more.
The rest of the book discusses the process of actually flipping the website– everything from the design to content. A lot of this may seem like useless information if you’ve been doing business online(hence the name FlipNOOBS) but for those of you just starting out or still learning, this is a great place to start.
The book is a grand total of 56 pages long (780KB) in PDF format. The text is readable with a large point font and was indented with readability in mind. Easy to understand writing style with lots of screenshots in every chapter for easy understanding.
It truly is an incredible value if you’re interested getting started with flipping websites. Buy a copy for a little under 15 bucks and see a return the first time you flip a website.
The Affiliate System
Once you’ve purchased the book you are able to sell copies at a 50% commission. The cost of the book is a little under $15.00 so you’ll net around $7.50 on each successful sale. Jason is using E-Junkie which I have promoted with in the past… and I just don’t really care for their affiliate system. I might recommend cutting out the middle man and going direct with a script like iDevAffiliate. E-Junkie is simple and gets the job done but it’s frustrating for me to use sometimes.
The Landing Page
I’m not really fond with REALLY long sales pages — I might implement a squeeze system to capture leads on the first page with a sample of the sales copy and then direct them to the sales letter to submit the order. But I haven’t access to Jason’s stats so he may be doing well going this route. The design itself isn’t horrible but might turn some off with the sales-type look.
Opportunities to Make More Money
Jason uses a few affiliate links inside the book but I would absolutely pair this book with an offer from Elegant Theme Designs to nearly double Jason’s commissions on every sale. Elegant Theme Designs offers an incredible value and if I were Jason I would write it in that you NEED to buy a theme from Elegant Theme Design to successfully use this product for an extra commission on every sale of the book.
Book Score: 4/5
Business Score: 3/5
The book gets high marks because even though there isn’t a heap of advanced information, it does well for the demographic it’s marketed to– noobs. The screen shots are easy to understand and the concepts Jason writes about truly will make you money. The value is there at only $14.95 and it’s worth the buy.
The business of selling the book and truly monetizing the product could be worked on a bit but overall I give it good marks. Getting rid of E-Junkie and doing some touch-up on the landing page would help dramatically. Adding a few more opportunities to catch leads and also diversify the income made would help this area significantly.
Congrats on a good product Jason and I look forward to your future releases.
Buy The Book Reviewed “FlipNoobs” Here
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