A common desire for humans, once we’ve surpassed our basic requirements for survival, is to be part of something bigger than ourselves, while making a contribution to the world. The huge growth of online sites like Youtube, Twitter and Facebook, which have the potential to give anyone a large audience are a great example of this in action. This same desire is why there are over 100 million active blogs out there, each with authors trying to connect to the bigger whole.

Even though there are thousands upon thousands of micro-niches and active communities discussing the most peculiar topics, there’s still only room for a handful of ‘rockstars’ to emerge from each of them. There are always going to be fewer influencers than there are people to be influenced. That’s common sense, not helped by the fact that gaining a following isn’t some paint-by-numbers process, and it certainly doesn’t happen overnight.

If you’ve read ‘Fooled by Randomness’ then you may believe that most success is just luck. That there are just so many people in the world that there simply has to be a small number who are wealthy, famous and successful.

Maybe my own desire to be part of something bigger is kicking in its defense mechanism, but I like to think success is waiting for the people who most consistently take right action towards their goals. For that reason I believe anyone has the potential to become a Niche Rockstar / Influencer / A-Lister / YouGetTheIdea.

The Benefits of Rockstardom

There are many benefits to becoming a Rockstar in your niche and having some level of influence. The first obvious result of having a large audience is that you instantly have access to connections all over the globe. I could go to most countries in the world now and quickly find people who would be happy to show me around. Before I continue, I want to say that I don’t think of myself as an A-Lister, but the following example is relevant.

When I was in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago I wrote about it on Facebook and Twitter. Within 24 hours I had five requests for meet-ups, a conference invite, and a woman offering to cook for me. All of which, of course, were much appreciated.

For some people, becoming a ‘Niche Rockstar’ can get them their dream job offers. It happened to me in 2007 and it’s just happened to tech blogger Louis Gray who, this week, announced he is now managing the social team for Google+.

For others, being a rockstar gives them enough of an audience to live from selling their own products or services. This is a path many of you are following, and I have to say…it’s a good time to be walking.

Ultimately, your increasing audience gives you an increasing influence which results in increasing feedback. Increased feedback results in increased opportunities which then continue to present you with a bigger and bigger megaphone in the spaces you want to work. In other words, you just get a lot more of everything.

Now that you can see what you benefits of aiming for rockstar status (or not, as I’ll cover in a second) actually are, I’ll say one last thing before I show you how to do that. Becoming an influencer is not about having 100,000 Twitter followers or constantly getting on the homepage of Reddit. It’s really about having an impact on your own niche community, however small or obscure it may be.

Outside the world of celebrity gossip, it’s nice to see that the true A-Listers are often the people doing the most good.

A recent comment that made me smile was on a Wired article showing how MIT researchers had invented a single drug that could cure most diseases. It said: “These are the type of people we should be getting autographs from.” I agree.

Why I’ll Always Be “Better” Than You…

…and you’ll always be better than me. The greatest mentality I think you can have when it comes to increasing your audience and influence is that of an Underdog. Some people ask me why my Twitter bio, for the last six months, has read “Z-List Blogger with 21 readers”. The answer, is that it’s just a simple reminder for myself that there’s always room to grow and improve what I’m sharing.

It’s important that I emphasise you should only have the mentality of an underdog, because underdogs are thought to have the smallest chance to succeed at something, and you don’t actually want to be in that position. Adopting the mindset of an underdog comes with a number of benefits.

First of all, you can make the mistakes that need to be made on the way to making miracles. Since the underdog obviously doesn’t have some holier than thou view about themselves they’re not going to be so worried about people’s reactions to things. They’re not going to be so worried about screwing up.

For example, the guy who thinks he is perfect with women is actually probably too scared to go and approach the hottest girl in the bar because he doesn’t want to lose the belief he has about himself. The guy that adopts an underdog mentality, on the other hand, looks at everything as a chance to learn and grow. He goes and talks to the girl, and more often than not the interaction will be a good one. If she gives the ‘why are you even talking to me’ look then it makes no difference to him.

For many of you right now, it’s probably easy to mentally view yourself as an underdog as you may literally be one. For those of you who have had some level of success and find this mindset harder to adopt, then I’ll just say that your goals aren’t high enough. If you set a target to do more public speaking this year than Tony Robbins, then I’m sure the mentality will come to you with ease.

My own goal, as I’ve mentioned a few times, is to try and produce the best content available on the topic of internet marketing. Why wouldn’t I set a goal like that? Even if I fall short, the bar is set so high that what I produce is still (hopefully) great work.

Steve Jobs touched on what I think is the core essence of the underdog at his 2005 Standford University Commencement Address:

“Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself.”

The underdog mentality helps give you all the characteristics that people genuinely like to see in others. No matter how much of an Apple fan boy you are, you likely wouldn’t mind a young group of impoverished kids in India making the next big thing in the smartphone space. In fact, you’d probably cheer them on without even meeting or knowing anything about them other than their goals and aspirations.

Finally, the underdog mentality ensures that you’re (rightly so) always learning more about your industry, the world around you, and yourself. To the underdog there’s never too much they can know about their niche. In fact, that’s my very next point…

Make Sure You Know More Than Anyone about X

If you see someone ask Tony Robbins a tough personal-development question, he always has a fast, relevant and useful reply. Mark Cuban is watching the streaming and broadcasting space like nobody else, even after making over $1bn from his related projects. Warren Buffett, the world’s richest man, doesn’t even work on a computer, but instead looks though dozens of papers that his assistants hand him on the stock market every single day.

And if that little speech doesn’t convince you that knowing your industry (and who’s in it) is incredibly important then I’ll add that every big company you can think of have staff dedicated to doing nothing but watching their competition and the markets they operate in. Heck, even your local water company are probably paying someone.

As a personal example, I’ve only had my Amazon Kindle for a couple of weeks yet I’ve already taken hundreds of notes on different books that are relevant to my interests:

I’m a total knowledge junkie when it comes to the subject of marketing. I’m mostly looking for the little ‘golden nugget’ ideas or well-written concepts, like the two you see above, rather than overall strategies (which I prefer to form myself). I don’t do this because I feel I have to, but because I just…love it. When you find the industry for you, you’ll feel the exact same way.

And as not so personal example, let me try and do things the ‘ViperChill way’ and get down and dirty with some stats, rather than making any guesses. For this example I’ve picked the totally random niche of ‘Green blogs’ and decided to analyse the market to show you the types of things I look for. I did this a couple of days ago, within a 45 minute time frame, and learned a ton about the industry with ease.

To begin, I went on over to the Green section of Technorati and opened up their list of top blogs. Opening them in new tabs, I could quickly see that Technorati’s top picks were pretty much spot on when it comes to identifying the industry leaders. The only ranking mistake on the part of Technorati was for Inhabitat, which on my quick examination really appears to be the biggest blog in the niche, and not the 8th largest.

I learned that:

• DeSmogBlog, although one of the smallest that I analysed, was chosen as one of Time Magazine’s Top 25 Blogs for 2011. This instantly shows that there’s a positive aura around the niche.
• Hundreds of different industries regularly reference green blogs in news sites, blogs and forums. Three of the five sites I looked at had in excess of 280,000 backlinks.
• All sites had more Twitter followers than Facebook fans, showing how popular the niche is in those networks. Three of the sites actually had in excess of 45,000 Twitter followers.
• CleanTechnica, while appearing small with just 1,665 Facebook fans and a 45K Alexa rank, actually has a very impressive 15,000 RSS subscribers. More signs that this is an industry that people like to follow.
• According to Compete, the biggest of the five is ThinkProgress.org with in excess of 450,000 unique (US) visitors per month with Grist.org in third, reportedly home to 240,000 unique (US) visitors per month.

It’s not just the stats that I want to look at, but the actual websites to see how they’re laid out, what topics they’re covering, how often they post and so on. The simple task of actually going through other sites in your niche should be enough to start giving you a few ideas.

In less than an hour I’m equipped with post ideas, design inspiration, proof that there’s money to be made if I were to operate in this industry and a clear indicator that Twitter should definitely be a social focus of mine. I also know that people in this niche don’t comment on some blogs very often, but there are ways to get some community activity:

I’ll save the contents of that post for those in the Green space who want to do a little research ;]

The most common form of monetisation was definitely ads, with DeSmogBlog being an exception and directing their traffic towards either the owners’ book or an economy report. All of the sites have multiple authors and write quite a few posts per day; something that would be difficult to replicate if you were doing things on your own.

Another job of this market research is to identify gaps that others may have overlooked. Some opportunities that came to mind include:

• Performing the data analysis and making the stats that so many of them quote on a daily basis instead of joining the noise by quoting them.
• Using a comments system like Disqus to stand out (where people can comment with multiple social profiles) instead of using a separate registration page as many of them require.
• Promoting a DIY Green guide which no other blogs are. Just from my observations I can see they’ve been popular on Clickbank.
• Creating pro-bono environment infographics and in return having my site and (possible graphic design services) being promoted

There are many more points I could make, but I’m sure you’re starting to get the idea. If you haven’t done this kind of analysis on the industry you’re in or about to enter, then I recommend you change that as soon as possible. Everything you need to know about the competition is out there in the open; that’s not something you can say in the offline world, so it would be a shame if you weren’t using the data to your advantage.

Do the Thing I’ll Admit You’re the Best At

“Just be yourself” is probably one of the most overused sayings out there but it points to the truth that there’s nobody who’s better at playing you, than you. Tucker Max took his self-entitled “jerk attitude” to the internet in the form of online stories and earned himself not only a book deal, but a Hollywood film actually called ‘Tucker Max’.

Regardless of what you think about Russell Brand’s comedy or acting abilities, you can’t deny that he’s a very unique celebrity character in the way that he presents himself. His writing ability is also incredible. Not just because of his wit, but the way he puts his own persona into the piece.

Naomi Dunford doesn’t hold back from swearing in her articles and I’m sure the same is true in real life. William Ray Johnson is someone I seem to hear more negative about things about then good, yet he now owns the most subscribed to channel on Youtube and can literally influence millions of people. Lady Gaga is one of the most extreme celebrities of our generation, which is partly why I’ve never been a fan (meat costumes? really?). Then I watched this and was blown away.

These examples of people just being themselves are of course going to mean that some people are instantly turned off by who they are and how they do what they do. Then again, I think that can be said for just about any kind of ‘persona’ you can adopt.

I receive plenty of emails from people asking me to write shorter articles, but receive far more comments from people asking me to keep doing what I do. Though both sides are listened to, neither really matter. I’m doing things how I want to see them done and I’ll hopefully continue to build an audience who like the same things. It’s not working out too badly so far.

It’s your quirks and your little differences that people pick up on. It’s the stories that you share passionately about your life. It’s not acting like you’re actually a rockstar. It’s just…doing you. And doing you is exactly what will help you grow your legion of loyal followers.

From My Private Archive: How to Connect With Influencers

All we want to talk about in this space is the tools we use and the results we can get from them, but what really matters of course, is people. Search engine spiders don’t buy your products and doubling your Twitter count with irrelevant followers won’t change your bottom line either. Real relationships are key to helping you grow your own audience, influence and value contributions.

Tamar’s research made it clear to me that influencers want you to keep things short and get to the point. But more importantly than that, they just want you to have something worth sharing. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, there are people who are on my radar like crazy, and I want to talk about what they’re doing, but if what they’re producing is nothing new and can be read / watched in hundreds of other places, then people stop trusting my recommendations.

In the Cloud Niche private archives I said:

Please, for your own sake, continue doing you when you eventually reach out to people. It’s really…weird…when people are just overly nice to me. Sure I appreciate the respect, but it’s really hard to talk to someone who is gushing over how amazing you are. Even more so when you don’t think that highly of yourself. After speaking to a number of far more successful people than I am, it turns out I’m not alone with that sentiment.

Finally, on my post, Cloud Jacking: 7 Steps to Dominate Your Niche, I had the following to say, which is still as relevant today as it was then:

“Instead of giving very specific advice here, which I can’t because thousands of people will read this and your audience is in lots of different communities, I’m going to share ideas for how you can engage in different platforms and with different people:

• Twitter: I find that the people I engage with most in Twitter a) Retweet my articles b) Ask thought provoking questions or discuss thought provoking topics and c) bust my balls. If you want to get involved with others on Twitter, I can only recommend you do the same. The more human aspects you can bring to the service, the better.
• Facebook: Facebook is a tricky one and to be honest, I don’t spend much time there. What I do recommend though is that if you have a profile, put a link to it on your website. That allows people who are viewing your website already to get in touch and create a deeper connection. I know a number of people who have success with Facebook Fan Pages (rather than Groups) and I think you should start engaging with the ones that are out there already until you build your own.
• Forums: I used to be a forum (message board) junkie a few years ago and definitely built my authority in some. The most important tip I have for forums is to put your website link in your signature (if possible) and then just forget about it. Forget you might get visitors for interacting in the site…just interact. Start engaging threads and provide excellent replies and you might quickly find people naturally starting threads about what you’re working on.
• Bloggers: Bloggers are busy. Well, most of them are. So, instead of trying to get on a bloggers radar by annoying them through email, connect in a way that they will love. This could mean stumbling their articles, linking to their blog posts, commenting on their articles and even retweeting them. Giving before you get applies here more than ever. Once you’ve been giving for a while then start to engage in more personal surroundings like email.
• Offline: If you can meet your audience and the influencers in an offline environment, this will help you more than anything. You can create great relationships online, but they are absolutely nothing in comparison the ones you can create offline. If you can go to conferences, tweetups, seminars or anything of the sort then get yourself there. I’m far more likely to help out someone I’ve met than “some guy I spoke to on the internet some time.”

There are two things you need to remember about the sites listed above. The first is that they have not been built for you to spam an audience. They are there as communication tools that allow you to ethically engage with your market. I recommend you use them as such. Secondly, these networks should not be what you do, they should be thought of like a megaphone to amplify what you’re already doing on your website.

Shine the Light on Others

One thing I always try and do (though could definitely do more of, like most) is highlight other people in the spaces I operate. I don’t want to highlight just anyone of course, but people who I think are doing great work. At least on my small radar, I think the likes of Adam, Kelvin and Rishi deserve a lot more attention for the unique content they’re putting out. I’m happy to give it to them (please do check out their sites).

Not only does sharing the work of others make you feel good, the act is also often reciprocated — though that shouldn’t be your motive for putting the spotlight on others. Sending people to various sites in your niche shows that you know your topic well and you aren’t afraid to join in the conversation.

Also, I always check out blogs that link to me purely out of curiosity in regards to what they’re saying. Sometimes those odd links put new blogs on my radar and start a conversation that leads to a stronger connection down the road.

“Shine the light on all of your friends, ’cause it all amounts to nothing in the end” – Jason Mraz.

At the end of the day, you’re never going to be the only person in your industry, so there’s no point in acting like it.

A Final, Important Point

You have everything you need and you’re going to die. There is absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing, that separates you from the rockstars in any industry. Most likely they had an audience of none one day, and they worked at their craft and consistently networked to get to where they are today. If you think you can’t do the same, then you’ve failed already, so get that out of your head.

Death has always been the biggest motivator in my life. In a positive way, I think about death daily, and how everything I do may be the last ‘thing’ I ever leave behind. For all I know this could be my last ever blog post so I would like to make it one worth reading when I’m gone. I’m not the only one to feel this way, again quoting Steve:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

(Note: It is pure coincidence that I have so many quotes from Steve on the day that he has announced his departure as Apple CEO. I assume the decision is for health reasons, so I wish him the best of luck in his recovery.)

The reason I say the above two points is because I have zero doubt that you’re going to fail at times on your path. Things aren’t all going to come together at once. I spent thousands of dollars having my software affiliateSkin developed, only to be – admittedly – in a poor position to offer support and too slow to react to the competition. This resulted in my closing down the product altogether. I could have adapted, but in all honesty my heart wasn’t in it. For now, I still think customising what people are already used to (WordPress) is the way to go. A lesson I couldn’t have learned so certainly without that ‘failure’.

For that reason I created ViperBar and with over 5,000 installs on blogs in hundreds of different industries, I would say it’s been a great success. By the way, we just updated it with a ton of new features (split-testing (!), hex code customisation, bar themes, sticky bar, etc.) so do check it out if you haven’t already. It’s free, as is the branding removal.

When I made CloudFlood I didn’t know what kind of success people would have with it. “1,000 new opt-ins per day” was the feedback from an initial report, and the site was even mentioned on a Forbes.com article in the last fortnight. If I had let my first software launch bother me, I wouldn’t have gone on to create two things which have helped so many people.

Remember: You are enough. You’re going to die. Start leaving that legacy, please?

Blog posts here at ViperChill generally receive a large number of comments. Within just a couple of hours, there’s a good chance I’ll have 30 or 40 in need of reply. The discussion really picks up when my post goes out to readers who have subscribed via email. Though less than a third of the audience here opts for email updates, I get more comments from these readers than anyone else.

Why? Quite simply, email subscribers are more engaged than anyone else. People can ignore your Tweets, Facebook udpates and even RSS updates, but they can’t ignore an email. Even if they simply delete it, they have to engage with you in some way. If you want tips on growing the most valuable readership of all, then this post is for you.

Since I started out in internet marketing around five years ago, it has been drummed into me by fellow marketers, forum members and bloggers, that “the money is in the list.” The list they are referring to is a list of email addresses from people who are interested in what you have to offer.

If you ask any marketer who is trying to make money if they would rather have an email subscriber, RSS reader, Twitter follower or even Facebook fan, every single one of them will tell you the first option. Email subscribers are more likely to engage in your content, talk about you to others, and purchase your products. This has been proven time and time again.

Case Study: My Squeeze Page Which Converted at 64%

I have some very profitable email lists in other industries I participate in. Though most of the traffic to my affiliate sites is through SEO, not all of my sales are directly attributed to it. In some niches, it’s better for me to grab a visitor’s email, give them value and then promote a product to them, rather than trying to sell to them straight away.

I have never built a list in the internet marketing niche before, besides my readership here at ViperChill, so I decided to create one. I highly doubt that I’ll be promoting any products to this list, but instead I’ll just focus on giving as much value as possible to those who have signed up.

A squeeze page, for those of you feeling confused, is simply a page which is designed with the sole aim of collecting a website visitors email address. The page I created for my case study was cloud: niche, and if you head on over there you can see how tempting it is to give away your email address.

The premise is simple: Give something away so valuable, that people want you to email them. For my side project, I thought it would be a good idea to regularly email people with profitable niches I discover. I simply don’t have time to build sites in every industry I come across, so I thought that I may as well give the ideas away.

In most industries, a 10% conversion rate on a squeeze page is considered to be phenomenal. So, to reach a 64% conversation rate is simply unheard of. Keep in mind that this means two out of every three people who visit the page, sign up to my offering.

Here’s what I did differently…

My Design Was Nothing Like a Traditional Squeeze Page

In most industries, the typical squeeze page you’ll find online tends to work best for conversions. You know the one I’m talking about: Red headings, flashing arrows and fake highlighter text. There were a few reasons I didn’t follow this approach when I created cloud: niche though.

First of all, I don’t “relate” to these types of pages at all. The ViperChill brand has been built on me being personal and offering value. If I go and create one of these typical squeeze pages, it’s going to harm my brand and I would be doing something I don’t feel good about, just to collect a few more email addresses.

Secondly, the type of squeeze page I mentioned have been totally overused in the internet marketing niche. The conversion tactics in place are so common now that they just don’t help conversions at all. In fact, I think because so many people are using the same practices, a site visitor ends up having one bad experience with that type of page, and vows never to sign up to one of them again.

I believe that having a design which was more professional than most definitely worked in my favour. It’s not something I paid hundreds of dollars for either. I found it on a free templates website and then customised it myself. It definitely wasn’t intended to be used as a squeeze page, but that’s exactly what I used it for.

If you look at the site, do you feel like I’m going to spam you with irrelevant information or fill the regular emails with ads? Probably not.

I Tested a Mini Mad Libs Format

A few months ago, the affiliate blogosphere was going crazy over a new style of opt-in form which claimed to increase opt-in rates as much as 40%. Basically, instead of having fields such as Name:_______ Email:_______ Phone Number:________ in a simple list, one marketer decided to do things differently.

They created an opt-in form which used a mad libs format. Instead of the above example, they worded their opt-in text along the lines of. My name is ______ and my email address is ________. If you wish to call me, you can do so on _________.

The underscores were the spaces left for the website visitor to fill in the information. The result? Twice as many people filling in the form. After this original case study, a number of other marketers tried it out and received similar results. You can probably understand now why I used the phrases “My name is” and “My email address is” instead of the simple one word field labels on cloud: niche.

I Promoted Something Relevant to My Audience

I received over 400 signups to the list on the first day I released it to the world. Instead of blogging about it (which I didn’t do until two weeks later) I simply shared it to some of the members of Cloud Living. This is something that is a great addition to the Cloud Living course and made signing up an obvious decision to most people.

Before you think I just duplicated my current audience, keep reading. Though some people who joined the list were already aware of me, the majority of people landing on the page weren’t aware of me previously. I’ll explain how in the next section of this post.

Though many people had no idea who I was, they still converted highly because I was offering something relevant to them (it’s likely they wanted to make money online) and because it made total sense. I wasn’t giving away some “Adsense Secrets” guide offering to make them thousands of dollars, which would have peaked suspicion.

Instead, I was simply offering to email them with niche ideas I discovered, but had no time to develop sites around. The offer was simple, honest, and it made sense to sign up.

How I Received 700 Free Visitors to My Page

This idea is pretty genius, if I say so myself, though I wont take credit for coming up with it. A few weeks ago my friend Kelvin Newman released an eBook about link building. Kelvin is someone I’ve spoken to online for a few years now and he clearly knows his stuff, so I was happy to check it out. Though his eBook was free, I still had to pay for it.

You see, Kelvin used a service called PayWithaTweet.com which meant that people had to Tweet or Facebook share a link to his website, in order to download the PDF. When I created cloud: niche, I decided to use the exact same service. It helped to bring a flood of traffic to my website, but after a few days, I really wasn’t happy with it.

First of all, I couldn’t use my own button image and instead had a choice of just three options. Secondly, the pop-up where people had to sign into Twitter or Facebook displayed flashing ads for the service creators website. And finally, the site name and buttons used the word ‘Pay’ with a dollar sign, which I believe would have confused a few people.

I decided to solve my own problem, by creating my own service. Thus, cloud: flood was born. It is 100% free, contains no ads, and you can even upload your own buttons. I can’t make it any fairer than that. If you do use the service, just please don’t go overboard with it. Getting so much free website traffic can be addictive .

How I Used It

When someone signs up to your email list, you can send them to a “Thank You” page of your choosing. I created mine at http://cloudniche.com/thanks/ for anyone who wants to bypass the process. The aim of the page was to remind people to confirm their subscription and to give them an offer.

The offer was for an eBook I only promote on this website. A 20-page guide which shows, in detail, how I grew this blog to over 10,000 subscribers in just 12 months. In order for people to get the guide though (you guessed it) they had to Tweet or Facebook share a link to my website.

The idea was simple, but it took off. Here’s a sample of just some of the tweets that were posted:

Traffic would pick up on random days, purely because a new person will tweet about the landing page in order to get the eBook, which sends another wave of visitors to my squeeze page. According to the bit.ly link (which was only used for Twitter) almost 700 people discovered my page because of it.

That’s probably why I quickly had over 1,000 people on the list.

Creative Ways to Flood Your Website With Traffic

Think about this for a second, if you don’t totally get the concept. Every time someone wants to download your product – in this case, an eBook – they must tweet a link to your website. Let’s say that one person who tweets your link has 500 followers, 50 of which go to your site, and 10 of which end up tweeting your link in order to get the freebie as well.

If they all have 500 followers, and 10% end up going to your website, you’ve now reached 5,000 people you wouldn’t have had access to earlier, and received 500 visitors on your website. The process to create this kind of system is also ridiculously simple…

Step One: You create something for free to give away to your website visitors. It could be an MP3 file if you’re a musician, a zip file full of PSD’s if you run a design blog, or simply an eBook on your topic of choice.

Step Two: You create a button on cloud: flood which includes the link to the file people will receive after they share your link, and a URL field for the link you want people to promote.

Step Three: You put the button on your site, and watch the traffic flood in.

If you already have quite a large audience, the exponential effect of this idea could literally threaten to take down your server. Especially if the freebie is valuable. Of course, I don’t recommend you use this for everything you want to give away to your audience, but definitely try it out on some things.

Can you think of any creative ways to use the tool? I would love to hear them in the comments. I’m giving away the domains Supercarblog.com (Supercar gets 22,000 exact searches per month) and eBookMillionaire.com to the best suggestions.

Everywhere I look it seems people are releasing eBooks and trying to cash in on their audience. There are quite a few success stories out there, but for the most part, people just aren’t making the sales they want. As I have had a lot of success with my own eBook, Cloud Living, I thought it would be helpful to a lot of people if I wrote a guide about the whole process.

For those of you who don’t know, Cloud Living is my eBook which teaches people how I make a living online. That being said, I want to make it clear that I don’t make a living by teaching people how to make a living online. My biggest successes are in personal services which offer an affiliate program and various sites I run in the health niche.

My Own Example

When I had the idea to create Cloud Living, I had just finished giving away a free eBook on blogging. It was 90 pages long and included most of what I know when it comes to growing a blog. As I don’t just make money through blogging, I wanted to make an expanded guide which offered tips on affiliate marketing.

In addition to that, I wanted to make the guide a resource for people who want to make cloud living (making money from the internet) a reality. Therefore, I included a number of interviews with people succeeding online and my own tips for getting things done, even if you have a full-time job.

The product ended up being around 176 pages and I couldn’t be happier with the end result. Something you may find interesting is that I genuinely just wanted to make $1,000 from releasing the guide. That way I knew I would have helped a lot of people and the months of work it took to put the guide together will have been somewhat worth it.

The result?

• On launch day, the eBook brought in over $4,000.
• Almost 700 copies of the guide have been purchased
• Approximately 80% of the $30,000 is purely from sales. The rest is through affiliate links inside the book
• January, 6 months after launch, is on track to be the second best month ever in terms of sales

Before I share how I made all of this possible, let’s look at some of the reasons for writing an eBook in the first place, apart from the obvious financial benefits.

Why Write an eBook?

The obvious answer to most people, is money. If that is your sole motivation though, then you’re missing out. There are actually quite a few reasons to write an eBook that you may not have initially thought of:

• Position Yourself as An Expert – Since launching Cloud Living, I have been absolutely overloaded with interview requests. The guide makes it clear that I know what I’m doing online, so people come to me for advice. If you write a rubbish guide, then nobody is going to think very highly of you. Yet, if you make the product the best you can make it, people will start to notice you. I now regularly see people refer to making money online as “Cloud Living’ and a number of “make money” blogs now exist with Cloud in the title. This alone shows me the big influence that some people can have.
• Having Your Own Product is Massive - Have you ever tried to promote a product someone else created on your own blog? I have in the personal development space and the conversions are, quite frankly, awful. Once, with 5,000 subscribers, I only pushed about 15 sales after writing a whole post on a product. Yet, when I release my own work, it sells really well. Remember that people read your site for you, so they’re more likely to buy a product if it has your name on.
• Help People – The eBooks that sell the best are the ones that fill a genuine need. Therefore, one good reason to write an eBook is to share knowledge on a topic you know a lot about, and truly help your buyers. A few days ago I received an email from someone telling me that they were now making over $10,000 a month thanks to my guide. There is no way I can describe in words how good reading that email made me feel — and it’s one of many.
• Constant Income – Having a $4,000 day was awesome, but it’s the constant income from selling eBook’s that I enjoy. I now have two products (1, 2) that I actively promote and earn a good passive income. Through nothing but a sidebar ad and regular website traffic, Cloud Living is on track to make around $3,000 this month. I think that’s pretty amazing considering the product was launched 6 months ago.

And, of course: to make money.

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Picking Your Topic

Many of you might be tempted to write an eBook now, but have absolutely no idea what you’re going to write it on. If that’s you, this section will help. For those of you who think you have an idea and are ready to roll with it, I still think you should continue reading. There are a lot of eBooks that sell well, and a lot more that sell poorly. Often, the topic of the eBook makes a massive difference to whether or not it will succeed in making money.

As a way to help you narrow down the ideas buzzing around your head right now, here are some of my suggestions to help you think of what topic you could write an eBook on:

• What You Know About – The easiest way to create a great product, of course, is to write on a topic you know inside out. I have been building websites for four years and making a living with them for almost two, so I knew my subject well. If you know about something, there’s also a good chance you’ll be passionate about it. This will make it far easier to keep working on the guide and also allows you to give the best advice possible.
• What Your Readers Want – As I have mentioned, it’s far easier to promote your own products (especially on a blog) than it is to promote things as an affiliate. If you have an audience already, why not find out what they want? You could do this by creating a poll and asking people specifically, or you could look at your most popular site pages / blog posts and see what your audience reacts to most.
• How Can You Offer the Most Value – Believe it or not, we don’t always know what we want. Therefore, asking your readers what they want in a guide may not really be what they want to purchase. As an extra ‘test’ to ensure you are going to write an eBook on the right topic, ask yourself what you could write about that would help people the most. It may not be something you have the most knowledge on, but you might know enough to honestly help people.
• Look Around Your Niche – Sites like StumbleUpon, Facebook and Twitter can be an absolute goldmine for product ideas. If you see what topics your industry really cares about, you can create a product that gives them exactly that. Additionally, you could check out the top blogs in your industry and see what they are promoting. It never hurts to ask someone if their product is selling well. While I don’t recommend you copy what other people are putting out there, this can give you some good ideas.

Hopefully these tips have given you topic ideas for your eBook. If you’re still looking for suggestions, leave a comment at the bottom of the post and I’m sure other readers here can help you brainstorm.

The Creation Process

Once you’ve decided you want to write an eBook and know what topic it’s going to be about, it’s time to get started. There are a number of eBook creation tools and software packages out there, but I keep the process fairly simple. First of all, I write everything in Open Office. This is a free office suite that works on all popular operating systems.

A lot of tools that can turn documents into PDF format do not allow custom security settings and most of them cannot export hyperlinks properly. Thankfully, Open Office does not have this problem. In terms of structure, I like to map out exactly what I’m going to talk about in the guide and get all of my content sections down first. From there, I can slowly work towards completing the guide by filling out a few each day.

After writing your guide, you probably want to work on the design. I use some nice covers (example) on my eBooks so that they look like real physical products. Of course, I do not pretend they are more than eBooks; it simply looks better. As well as giving the design an external look, you can also work on the internals. I like to start the first page of an eBook with another picture of the cover and copyright information.

From there, I design a nice footer that will display on every page so keep a general ‘theme’ running throughout the guide. And, finally, I replace all headings with an actual image file so that they look much better. A lot of people design their eBooks differently so you should look around before just following my own outline. To create the graphics I personally learned how to use Photoshop but you could also hire someone for cheap from Digitalpoint.

Once you have your eBook written and it’s looking pretty, you should then set-up a payment processor. This will allow you to receive money for your guide and have it automatically delivered to a buyer, instantly. I personally use e-Junkie to handle this process as it works perfectly and handles everything behind the scenes for just $5 per month. I noticed many other sites like Problogger and Copyblogger also use them.

Getting started with e-junkie is quick and totally free (7 day trial). You can upload your eBook PDF file into their admin area, set your price, and then you will receive a ‘Buy now’ link code. This allows you to send people straight to PayPal to buy your guide. Once the payment is approved, e-junkie will automatically send the buyer the eBook, without you having to do anything.

Now that everything is in order and the payment processor is sorted, you’re going to want to look at promoting your eBook.

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Marketing Your eBook

The sole task of writing an eBook is sadly not enough to bring you the benefits that we discussed earlier — you actually have to promote your work. The tactics involved in marketing an eBook are very similar to the tactics involved in marketing anything online, but I’ll still share my tips here:

• Your Audience – My aim is to always be totally honest with you guys so the first thing I must say is that it is much easier to sell and promote an eBook if you already have an established audience. Ask yourself whether it would be wise to build up your audience a bit first before launching your first product. Darren Rowse at Problogger didn’t launch an eBook until his 5th year of writing for the site, but managed to pull in an estimated $450,000 (based on my calculations using his public sales figures) from a $19 product. It’s never too late to launch a product, but it might be too early. If you have an established audience, that’s a great place to start to get your guide out there.
• Networking – A few months ago I attended a workshop in London which taught people how to quit their day jobs. I didn’t go to learn about that though (I already have quit my job), but to learn about how to teach people how to quit their job. This is because I write about personal development and find it fascinating. Although I didn’t go to this workshop to make money, I certainly met a few people who have since purchased eBooks from me.
• Affiliates – Out of the $4,500 or so that the eBook made on the day of launch, around $500 of this money was in affiliate commissions. I allow people to promote the product and if they refer a sale, I will give them 51% of $37, which is $18.87. I can do this because it is free for me to duplicate my PDF file, and I get my products in front of people who would not have otherwise known about them. To get affiliates, I like to focus on bloggers and gain their attention by regularly commenting or their site or maybe writing a few articles before pitching anything. Give and you will receive. You could also use a service like Clickbank, which I’m going to be testing shortly.
• Offline Press – The reason this month is going to be the second best month ever for Cloud Living is because I received some great offline press recently. I was featured in an article (pic) in the UK’s second biggest newspaper about people making a living online. This brought thousands of people to my website and resulted in a lot more sales than usual. If you can get featured in relevant, offline press, then that can do wonders for your online sales.
• Search Engine Traffic – I know some people who create eBooks solely for the sake of making money from the search engine traffic they are currently receiving. I also know people who purposefully build eBooks and websites in a niche because they can make money, not because they know about the subject. If you can find what problems people are searching for online, and rank in the top results of Google with a solution to that problem (your guide), then there’s a lot of money to be made. I have personally spoken to people making over $300,000 per year with this method.

If I had to estimate how many Cloud Living sales were based on these as a percentage, I would say:

• Original Audience: 75%
• Affiliates: 15%
• Offline Press: 5%
• Search Engines: 4%
• Networking: 1%

If you can pull off any of these methods well, you’re going to have a good chance at making sales and enjoying the other benefits that owning your own product has to offer. If you’re going to focus on just one or two, then definitely work to build up your own audience and gain a list of affiliates who would like to promote your product.

The Final Details That I Couldn’t Miss

I know this has been an absolutely monster post (although I’m sure you are used to them by now), but there are a few more points I want to talk about in order to make this guide as useful as possible. There a few things that didn’t really fit into the other sections here but definitely deserve to be discussed.

Handling Refunds

When I launched Cloud Living, I never mentioned any form of money-back guarantee. Maybe it would have increased sales, but there have literally only been 3 refunds in over 600 purchases. I actually meant to launch the product with a 30-day money-back guarantee but since it was selling well with that, I never made the change. If someone is clearly being scammy by purchasing the book and requesting a refund in the same day or something of that nature, then I will try not to give a refund as that only encourages scammers to con more people.

If someone seems even slightly legitimate though then I will happily give a refund as quickly as possible. It’s not worth the possible reputation management nightmare for the price of one guide.

Pricing

I personally like to price my products around the $27 – $37 range when working with eBooks. I know in the future, when I create bigger products with more features, that price will rise quite a lot. The price of your eBook should really be whatever you think it is worth. After all, you made it and if it doesn’t sell, you’re the one who has to deal with that.

Of course, ideally you will want to pick a price point that is going to get you sales from the start. Price too low and you run the risk of your product looking low-value and miss-worthy. Price it too high and you may alienate your audience with an out-of-reach price point. My advice for pricing is simple: see how other people in the niche are pricing their guides, for what, and start with something similar.

I personally think it’s better to price a product too low than too high. If you price it too low then at least you will get sales and can know to increase that. If you price your product too high and then have to bring that down, it will be clear to your audience that sales are low and you lose any social proof you may have had.

My Own Success

This guide is just my thoughts on creating a profitable eBook online. There may be better ways to do everything I have suggested, but these are the steps I take. $30,000 is nothing compared to some of the launches out there, but the result is something I’m proud of and also something I think many of you here would like to reach.

If you’ve made it this far, I have to try and tempt you to subscribe to the RSS feed (or get free email updates). Articles like this one are posted at least once per week. And yes, they really are this long.

When I write a blog post about WordPress, I don’t just post a link to a few of my favourite plugins, but instead write a 3,000+ word resource post. When I release a plugin like I did on Reputation Management, I don’t charge for it but instead give it away for free to the masses. So, when I have an announcement to make, you should know that I’m going to have some very big things to say.

The most noticeable change to ViperChill, is the introduction of a brand new redesign which makes its debut today. Though it’s the most noticeable, it’s not the biggest news I have to share with you all. If you’re anything like me, you probably want to see what the site looks like before you continue reading, so check it out if you’re currently seeing this in your inbox or feed reader.

A Fresh Look, for a Fresh Start

I did like the “old” ViperChill design, but it came with its limitations. First of all, I felt like there was just too much happening colour-wise which distracted people from what’s important: the content. With the addition of new plugins and services, I also wanted better page layouts to show them off, but with the previous design iteration this just wasn’t that easy.

In light of other changes which are happening – some of which I’m announcing below – I decided now was a better time than any to update the design of the site, just over a year after it was started. I’m sure some people won’t like it, but in all honesty I’m fine with that. I know people don’t come to my site for how it looks, but I do believe how a site looks can help you convert visitors into fans.

The new design aims to do exactly that.

“If I had given people what they wanted, I would have built a faster horsecart” – Henry Ford.

The main thing I had in mind when designing the new theme was simplicity. I wanted to dull down all aspects of the site which weren’t part of the main content, and highlight what I thought was important. If you look at the homepage, for example, you will see the main things that stand out are the popular posts, subscription options, and how many comments each post has (social proof).

The new changes aren’t just about what I want, of course. I reached out to fans of the ViperChill page on Facebook and received some great suggestions. Some of the most common being:

• “I want categories so I can read all of your posts on a certain topic”
• “I want a search box”
• “I want you to make it easier and more obvious to share content”

The categories are now back on the site, and you can find them on the right sidebar. I never added categories to the old design simply because I was trying to make it look as minimal and clean as possible. Ironically, I can add more “clutter” to this new design, and it still looks a lot cleaner. Please give me a day or two to finish “recategorising” (it’s a word, honest) all of the posts, since I added two more categories.

There is now a search box on the site, which you can find on the right in the footer.

Though I thought the old design made it very easy to share content, it is possible that I was overlooking this, as a few people did mention it to me. At the bottom of all posts you will now see very clear links (at least I think so?) to share posts on both Facebook and Twitter. I’ve never had a prominent Facebook share/like button on the site, so I’m curious to see how often it’s used.

As with the previous iteration of ViperChill, I took a theme “shell” and completely overhauled it. I do all design work myself, including graphics, so the work doesn’t cost me anything more than my own time.  If you see any bugs in the design, please do let me know. I have tested it across multiple platforms and browsers and everything looks fine, but these problems do creep in at times.

ViperChill Will No Longer Be a One-Man Operation

I’ve been thinking long and hard over the last few months about the direction I want to to go in online. As many of you know, this site makes up a tiny portion of my income, but it’s by far the one I have the most fun working on. I seriously couldn’t respond to 100+ comments every time I write an article if I didn’t love doing this.

While the growth the site has experienced and the audience it has built in a little over a year is amazing, it does come with its downsides. First of all, the amount of emails I get is beyond ridiculous. Even though I make it fairly difficult to contact me, I still get a lot of requests. And, just like comments, I feel obliged to reply to people simply because they took the time out to contact me.

Spending my whole day replying to emails and helping people one-on-one is obviously not as effective as writing a blog post which can help over 13,000 people. I also feel like I’m not offering as much value as I could be. I do pour my soul into every post I publish, and maybe I’m being a little harsh on myself here, but I could be doing so much more.

The other day I sent out this tweet:

My friend Pat replied with:

Before I wrote the tweet I was reminded how far I, him, and other ethical marketing bloggers out there have to go in order to help change the perceptions of this industry. Even if we can’t, at least we can do our part, and give the most value we can. I really want to leave a mark on this planet and I’m building a large enough audience where I can do exactly that. Now I just have to step up on the value front.

That’s why I’m…

Bringing on Two, Full-Time ViperChillers

And I’m paying them to help me give away as much free value as possible (read: I’m not releasing anything paid or new to cover their salaries). The first position I am bringing someone on for is sort of an intern slash assistant. This person will be handling my emails (don’t worry Cloud Living customers, I’ll still be receiving yours), dealing with any customer issues besides marketing questions, and interacting online as a part of this brand.

This is going to free up a huge portion of my time, and allow me to do what I think I do best: writing content.

The second position I am hiring for is a full-time developer. I seriously have more tool and resource ideas than you could ever think possible. What’s more, I genuinely believe every idea is a “OMG, people are going to love this!” kind of project. For the first three months or so, this person is going to be working on nothing but free tools to help you all with your online marketing efforts.

To start with, I’m working on a number of free WordPress plugins, so if there’s anything you want to see created, then send an email to mikey@viperchill.com. If it’s a good idea, there’s a 99% chance that I will make it for you. That’s the kind of value I want to be giving to you all.

The new additions will not be starting straight away, but will hopefully be starting in the next week or two once I have the business side of things drawn up. Oh, and they’ll both be working with me in Cape Town (but from the comfort of their own homes). This isn’t some “cool I can pay someone in India $4 per hour and tell the world about it” kind of operation. I want quality work, and I’m happy to pay for it.

ViperProof: Another Free WordPress Plugin

To start the value ball rolling, I’m releasing another free WordPress plugin today. You can see the plugin in action in the right side of the ViperChill footer. The aim of the plugin is to allow you to show forms of social proof very easily, to help you get more blog subscribers.

Not everyone can use their feed count as a “wow, this blog is popular” tool, especially if you’re just starting out. However, some blogs do have an impressive number of posts, comments, Facebook fans and Twitter followers. This plugin makes it very easy for you to show these off.

Head on over to our new WordPress Plugins page to get the download links and installation instructions for my latest offering.

Article Directories Resource

To give an example of how I want to use the new full-page-width features of the site, I put together a list of the most popular and powerful article directories. As most of you know, article directories can be a good and easy to way to get backlinks to your website. The data is static, for now, but it was compiled in the last 24 hours so it is very fresh and relevant.

Head on over to the article directories page to see it in action.

My General Resources Page

Though it wasn’t too long ago that I put together a list of my most commonly used internet marketing tools, I did want to put a better resources page online. From free analytics tools, link building software and niche research offerings, I’ve put together a list of the most common things I use. I will be updating this on a regular basis so keep checking back for more.

You can click the link in the site header, or go to the page here.

I Can Sleep Now?

I’ve literally worked 18 hours each day, for the past 5 days, to put all of this together (even the new plugin). Though the work load was quite extreme, hopefully you can see what is possible when you dedicate time to something. I’m going to fix any inevitable bugs which have cropped up with the new design and answer some comments, then I’m going into hibernation for the next 24 hours.

Happy Valentines Day to all of my female readers, and a massive “thank you” to all of you for being part of this awesome community.

Let me begin this post by saying that for the first time ever, ViperChill has crept under the 10,000 Alexa mark (!). The number doesn’t really mean that much, but it is nice for a site owner to see. What’s even more surprising is that I didn’t write a blog post for weeks. I guess my Cloud Blogging strategy has merit *wink*.

Today I’m going to reveal exactly what I’ve discovered about making money with blogs over the last four years. Your fellow blogger does not want you to see this because these simple tactics are guaranteed to help you make more money from blogging, and (possibly) reduce the potential income they can make themselves.
When I started my first blog ViperChill four years ago, it was a total failure in the normal blogging sense. I didn’t receive any comments, I didn’t gain more than 50 subscribers and nobody really linked to me. Yet financially, the blog was quite successful. It frequently attracted clients who were happy to pay thousands of dollars each month for my services.

Thankfully, these people were not looking for advice on growing their blogs, but on SEO, where I had attracted a lot of success in multiple industries.

I came back to this site on and off over the years. At times I made a respectable income from it, but overall, the effort that went into writing was just not worth the money I was making. If truth be told, my writing was awful, so I can’t complain. I spent a lot of time away from blogging and focused on affiliate marketing and other tactics, having fleeting (but more consistent) success in the process.

It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I decided to give blogging one last try. I built a site in the personal development niche called PluginID. Most of you know the story of that website, so I’m not going to go into it here. What I haven’t talked about however, is the monetisation strategies I would regularly observe in that niche.

It just so happens that now would be a good time to do exactly that.

The Personal Development Monetisation Strategy

I have a lot of friends in this industry, after being involved in it for so long, so I’m not going to talk down or anyone or point out anyone in specific. I’m also not going to be harsh, but just point out exactly what I observed.

Before I do that, I need to say something very important…

People follow what other people claim to make them money.

For this reason, many of the strategies in place today when it comes to making money, are from people who talk about making money. And to find the people talking about making money, you just need to take one peak at the internet marketing niche.

In the personal development industry – and pretty much all others – the main way that people make money is by creating their own products. At least that’s how it goes for blogs that aren’t reliant on Adsense or banner ads.

We see internet marketers creating products and making money. Then they talk about making money by creating products. And then bloggers look at how they can make money with products as well. The result is an internet literally flooded with information products (eBooks, online membership sites, video courses, podcasts) on every topic you can imagine.

Since we’ve followed internet marketers on how to make money in terms of product creation, we then need to look at them for how to sell those products as well. So, we create landing pages like they do and create affiliate programs like they do.

It works, so we continue to use their tips. The problem is that none of these big gurus in the IM niche started out by building blogs first. Instead, the majority rely on email marketing. Their strategies work well for how they build traffic, but who’s to say they’re really the best example to follow for your blog?

Surely there are other blog specifics ways to increase the income you make by selling products?

The method I’m personally going to use when selling information products is a little different to most. Instead of focusing on the big landing page and worrying about affiliates, I want to take the personal approach. Don’t get me wrong, those things work well and I’ll continue to use them, but I also think it’s time for something a little different.

When I discovered writing guest posts was a valuable traffic strategy, just writing 20 or 30 could guarantee thousands of subscribers. Now you have to write many, many more. Because everyone is guest blogging, the value of the tactic has gone down substantially. Though I didn’t discover guest blogging, I was one of the first (if not the first) to talk about it so openly as a viable way to grow your blog.

The key lesson from my guest blogging experiences is this: It was only because I tried something different, that results started to happen.

Based on that, I believe it’s necessary (critical, perhaps?) that we evolve. Especially when it comes to making money from our websites, which many of us are trying to do. I’ve been implementing the following strategies recently with a lot of success and I strongly believe that now is the time to put them into action.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Strategy One: The Community Pre-Sell

When I launched Cloud Living here in December 2010, I received over 500 sign-ups in the first 72 hours of the product going live. If you do the maths, that’s quite the launch. During the launch period the product converted like crazy, and I also get a lot of sales whenever I write about it in a post.

When I barely got any sales at all, is when traffic came from a link in the navigation bar here at ViperChill. This link sent the sales page a ton of traffic. Now, I know my landing page is actually pretty awful, and needs a lot of work, but the conversion rate was just abysmal compared to whenever I mentioned the product in a blog post.

The main reason I think the conversions differ so much is because people land on ViperChill, click on the link out of curiosity (the phrase “Cloud Living” doesn’t really reveal much) and then land suddenly find themselves on a product page. Some people probably wonder if they clicked on an ad.

That’s a problem, and it showed in the sales figures.

I thought about how I could change this for a while, and decided to try something different. Instead of that link instantly taking people to a product page, I would take them to a page on my site that would explain the product to them, and then tell them to click on the product site.

This does add a step between any potential sale – which most marketers tell you to avoid – but it massively cuts down on any confusion about what the page is.

Still though, the approach was fairly cold. Sales generated from links in posts or my initial launch process converted so well because people were warmed up to getting information from me. They may have been a subscriber for 6 months or they may just be 500 words into your first article by me. Either way, they were more open to my offerings in some way.

That’s when I decided to try something new.

Cloud Living is something that has helped countless people make thousands of dollars online. I know because I get emails from people telling me so, and also because people are happy to share that information in testimonials. The simple fact is that as long as people follow the information in the course, they will make money. Thankfully, a lot of people are following it.

Since I have this awesome feedback from buyers, I wanted new potential customers to see that. So, I added the Facebook commenting system to the page. Then, I emailed all members of Cloud Living and asked if they would stop by the page and leave an honest testimonial.

You can see the results for yourself.

The comments add a genuine layer of social proof to your offering and excite you about the product before even knowing what it is. Thanks to this, I’m seeing a huge boost in sales already.

Another great aspect of Facebook comments is that you can use the same comments in multiple places. For example, on the Cloud Living back-end I can ask people to leave a testimonial of the product, and then all of those testimonials can appear on my page here at ViperChill.

Of course, let someone know that the comment will appear in other places.

Being able to transfer and display real feedback from your other customers is very powerful.

Strategy Two: The Freebie > Upsell > List Change

The second part of my strategy is something I actually haven’t implemented on a large scale…yet. Since people are going to know the plan I have in place now for the future, I’m going to lose a lot of money by telling you all about it. Since I care more about you making money than me at this moment in time, I’ll give you this information to use successfully in your own niche.

This method simply involves creating a free product that is similar to a product you do/could actually charge for. The freebie can just be shorter or less valuable in other ways. For example, my plan is to clean up a free blogging eBook I have, and give it away on an independent website. In time, I’ll then ask people if they’re interested in my paid product on the same subject (Cloud Blogging).

I like this method because you’re giving value to your site visitors and not losing any credibility in the process. Even if they don’t like your sales pitch, they will appreciate the freebie and any other valuable information you send their way.

The aim is to make money from this of course, so the free information will also help people come to trust you as an expert on your topic. This tactic works so well that some people will literally feel obliged to purchase something from you.

If you want to implement this method, then you’ll need to start by creating a free product you’re happy to give away, and then place it on a website with an email opt-in box for people to get it. I personally use Aweber for the whole process, as they’re by far the most reliable email provider.

Email One: The Product

Your email list should be set-up to automatically deliver your free product as soon as someone opt’s-in for your list. Keep your message short, and the product links clear. You main aim is to ensure they download the freebie and get value from it. If they don’t download your free giveaway, the chances of converting them through follow-up messages diminishes greatly.

Email Two: The FAQ

Subject Line: Revealed: 10 More [Freebie Name] Secrets
Delay after First Email: 4 Days

In this email you answer the most common questions you may have received about the freebie. If you don’t have any questions, you can simply add more tips which weren’t included in the initial giveaway. This helps you to be seen as the expert in your niche and provides more value to your list subscribers.

The four day delay before this message gives people enough time to go through the original freebie. This mail will also prompt a few people to download or view the product who hadn’t yet done so. At this point, people are now looking forward to receiving emails from you.

Email Three: The Case Study

Subject Line: How [Customer Name] Used [Freebie Name] to Achieve [Achievement]
Delay after Second Email: 2 Days

People like to see other people having success with something – other than you – to give them more belief that what you’re saying, works. If you know what you’re talking about then you should know at least one person who has followed the advice you’re giving, in whatever industry, and been better off for doing so.

If you pick up a copy of my “10,000 Subscribers” eBook then you’ll see a great case study in there which really shows whether my method works. The more people you see succeeding at something, the more you believe it’s possible for you to do the same. It really is that simple.

At the bottom of this email mention that people have been requesting that you go into more detail on this topic, and possibly create a product (if true).

Email Four: The Product Launch

Subject Line: [Recipient First Name], I Went Ahead and Did It…
Delay after Third Email: 5-7 Days

In this fourth email it’s time to let people know about your paid product. Remember, this should be a large extension to the information you’re already offering. If you had a freebie about gardening, for example, then create a product around that. Though a product on something like “How to Install Your Own Solar Panels” might be somewhat relevant, it’s not as targeted an offer as it could be.

Introduce the product by continuing with your personal style of writing, and make it clear that due to seeing a need for this, you decided to create a product. If you can, offer some kind of discount to thank them for their support.

INTERVENING STEP: List Change

Because of the nature of the next email, we want to ensure that whoever buys the product doesn’t keep getting asked to purchase it. For that reason, you first of all need to setup an email opt-in when people purchase your product.

If you’re using something like Wishlist for WordPress (which we use) then you can do this automatically. Afterwards, you simply go to the list Automation rules in Aweber and say that if someone subscribes to the product list, take them off the freebie list.

This isn’t crucial, but I do recommend it. Otherwise, you’re just going to annoy people who have already handed over their cash. That’s not something I propose you do.

Email Five: The Follow Up

Subject Line: Do You Want the Good News or Bad News First?
Delay after Fourth Email: 2 Days

The final email in your sequence should be an update just after the product launch. While many people will buy from your previous email, other people take either another reminder, or just a little more convincing.

The subject line here is catchy and gets their attention. If you can get them to answer a subject line in their head, they’re more likely to open the email to see what it contains. The good news, in most cases, should just be you talking about how sales have been and sharing any positive customer feedback you may have.

The bad news, can be whatever you want. A common example of bad news could be that you only have a limited number of copies left, or you will be increasing the price shortly. This hint of scarcity persuades a lot of people to buy your product. Especially people who were previously sitting on the fence about purchasing. Just make sure the bad news is true, or it will damage your reputation.

All Is Not Lost

There will be, without a doubt, people on your list who didn’t buy your product, even after the two promotion emails. It may be because your product sales page converts poorly, so always continue to work on that. It may also be because you have what I like to call “Freebie seekers” on your list, who never really intend to buy anything online.

Follow-up emails to this list shouldn’t mention your product any time soon. Instead, continue to focus on your topic, but offer other things instead. You could for instance create another short eBook or audio file, and give it away to the list. Put the giveaway on the page where they have to Tweet or Facebook share your link in order to get it. You can use Cloud Flood to achieve this.

That way, even if they don’t buy anything, they are helping you to grow your list, and you’re more likely to elevate your “expert” status.

Remember: The information above is to be used as a guideline. Please test your own subject lines and sequences to see what works best for you. You may be able to go for the product pitch sooner, or it may work better to go for it later. Don’t be afraid to test your own ideas. The advice in that previous sentence is probably the key to my financial success at the moment.

Strategy Three: The Paypal Checkout Testimonial

One thing I’ve noticed with product launches – especially the Cloud Blogging launch – is that a lot of people will click on our Buy Now button, but not actually purchase the item. There is a measure for this called the “Cart Abandonment Rate” and our CAR was as high as 90% on some occasions.

I spoke with a few people on this topic, and watched some relevant marketing material, and was told that I should add a step between the sale and the Add to Cart screen. The reason people are more likely to click on an Add to Cart button in the first place is because it doesn’t imply commitment compared to words like Buy Now!.

Therefore, if you’re sending that traffic to an instant payment page, they often back out of the deal. The step, they told me, was a good place to insert product testimonials so further convince people that your offering is good.

Instead of adding an entirely new page, I took advantage of a little known feature in Paypal. The ability to add your own header to the Paypal payment pages. In this header I used a testimonial from one of our customers. Thanks to this, our cart abandonment rate has decreased dramatically.

Our testimonial in action on Paypal can be seen below:

I’ll continue to test which type of phrases work best, but I’m very happy with the results so far.

To implement this, you’ll first need to create a 750px x 90px graphic to use in that space. If you know how to create graphics then this should be easy for you. If not, get someone on Fiverr to do it for…erm…$5. (This is a joke at Diggy, since I like to tease him for the fact that he wrote “You can get a logo for $10 at Fiverr” in the unedited version of Cloud Blogging)

The picture also needs to be hosted on a secure server to prevent people getting encryption warnings when checking out. You can use a free service from e-Junkie called SSLPic to upload your graphic.

Then in Paypal simply head to Profile > Custom Page Design and enter your graphic URL in the header image field. May more sales start coming your way.

Strategy Four: Let Product Owners Talk to Each Other

I can’t tell you how well this works, since I’ve implemented it in a number of different ways. Going by my own experience and general logic though, I think this is something that every product creator should look into doing. One of the biggest benefits of Cloud Living, without question, is that members can communicate with each other freely.

At the bottom of every video in the course there is a comments section where people can ask questions and discuss things with each other. Just four months into the product, there are now 1,700 comments on the site. This not only adds a huge amount of value to the product, but shows new customers that this is a real product, that real people are using, and they can join this productive community as well.

On Cloud Blogging, I did things a little differently. First of all, the ‘Start the Course’ link in the members area takes you straight to an introductions page. This allows every member to share a little bit of information about themselves and really helps to build a solid community around the product, which I believe helps more people to take action with the advice we give.

Right now around 15% of our members have left an introduction (55 at the time of writing this) and myself and Diggy have personally replied to every single one. Whenever we reply to someone, they get a notification in Facebook, which I think helps take the community aspect of the product even further.

Facebook has sent 150+ visitors to the site thanks to this implementation

What would you rather purchase: An eBook on a topic, or that same information on a site which also allows you to ask questions and interact with other product buyers? I don’t think the choice is hard to make.

Even if you don’t run a membership site, you can still incorporate more community aspects into your offering. If you sell an eBook for example, you could simply send an email to all buyers asking them to introduce themselves on a private page of your site. Use something like Disqus or Facebook comments on the page and watch the discussions begin.

The Result

If you can put all of these strategies into play, then the result is going to be more sales, fewer refunds, and better feedback on your product offerings. To simplify the benefits of each:

• Strategy one gets people excited about your products before you even try to sell them
• Strategy two helps you give value to readers and make money in the process
• Strategy three increase the number of sales you actually make
• Strategy four allows you to shift the community feel of your blog into products

It took me weeks of testing and multiple product launches to figure out these strategies, but I can personally guarantee that they work well. Of course, I also tested a number of ideas which didn’t work so well, but I’ll save those for another blog post.

Now, just send me 10% of your extra sales and I’ll say we’re even .

As everyone knows, if you want to increase the amount of traffic you receive from search engines, you need to build backlinks to your websites. Each link is essentially a ‘vote’ which shows the likes of Google and Bing that you’re a trustworthy site. Because links are so crucial, marketers around the world have come up with hundreds of ways to build them.

Some of these tactics are easy to follow, while others require more obscure work, and some even cross the border when it comes to ethics. The backlink building tactic I want to talk about today is most commonly viewed as greyhat – not totally natural but not totally immoral either.

Just like all other advice I share on this site, this is something I’ve tested across multiple industries and have found to be working well for me. It’s not a tactic that hasn’t been written about before, but it is something that is currently highly effective, which I’ve increasingly been putting to use across my network of sites. Other marketers have their own name for this method of building links, but I like to refer to it as a link trio.

The Current Way

One of the most popular articles on this site is my in-depth guide on fifteen popular ways you can build links to your website. Search engine rankings rely so heavily on links that attaining them is often a very competitive challenge in just about all niches online. While this post contains what I believe to be one of the most effective ways to build backlinks, it is rather simplistic in nature.

The defacto way to increase the number of backlinks to your site often involves tactics like guest posting, article marketing, directory submissions, and even finding link sources by searching through your competitors’ backlink data. Article marketing, for example, simply requires you to write articles for sites like Ezine Articles which are relevant to your industry, and then include a link back to your site in the author bio.

There’s nothing too complex about this, and it tends to work very well in industries which aren’t too saturated or competitive. For every article you create, you get one or two backlinks to your site, and you then repeat the process on different topics, various industries, and across different article directories.

The same goes for guest posting, another common and highly effective way to build links to your site. You write an article for another blogger, include links back to your website, and repeat the process in order to amplify your link count.

Making Links Powerful

As I mentioned in the introduction, some links are more effective than others. It’s not so much the tactic you use to get the link, but more about where the link comes from that matters. Through my own experiments and research, it is becoming clearer by the day that the major search engines are giving more weight to the quality of backlinks you have, rather than the quantity.

Because of this, I would much rather have a site which has 100 powerful, quality links pointing to it, than 1,000 which anyone else can duplicate with ease. Some of the things that make links more powerful include:

• Relevance: If you’re running a site about viral marketing, it would be far more effective to get a link from a site which talks about internet marketing, rather than dog training. It would be even better to get a link from a site or page which covers viral marketing.
• Page Strength: The strength of a web page, in the way that I use the term, refers to how many links are pointing to that page. If it’s a brand new page on another domain and has no other links pointing to it, the quality of that link is often minimal. If the page has some PR and has been around for a while, then it can be very powerful.
• Anchor Text: Search Engines look at the text that is used in the link to your site, and not just the type of page or site it is on. You can use the example of Adobe ranking no.1 in Google for the phrase “Click here” – even though the text isn’t on their page – to see this in action.
• Domain Strength: The strength of a domain (links and age) contribute to the power of your link both in a general sense, and in terms of passing weight to any individual pages which may link to you.
• Outbound Links: Link Exchanges used to be a very popular and easy way to get links to your site which helped you rank, until the increase of outbound links on a page led to the decline of its importance. Ideally, the pages with links to your site on, shouldn’t have many links to other websites.

Most of this probably isn’t new to a lot of you, but the reason I covered it is because this Link Trio tactic relies heavily on page strength, so I wanted to make my definition of these terms clear.

Introducing Link Trio

After trying to explain this tactic to my friend this morning, I quickly discovered how difficult it was to describe in words, so please bare with me. I have tried my best to illustrate it in graphics below, but I recommend that you read this section to help you fully grasp this concept.

The best way to do so, I believe, would be to use an example. The friend I explained this to runs a relationship blog, so I’ll choose some phrases from that industry. Let’s say that I’m trying to rank for the phrase “relationship blog” but also trying to rank my post on online dating advice for the term “online dating”.

First of all, I could create articles on Ezine Articles, Go Articles and other directories, which talk about relationship blogging, and link to my homepage with my desired anchor text. I also create pages on these sites which talk about online dating advice, which link back to my blog post on the same topic.

At this stage, the only strength these pages have is thanks to the domains they’re hosted on. Ezine Articles, for example, is a very powerful domain, so the pages do have some strength, but because they have hundreds of thousands of articles on them, that weight is spread quite thinly. None of these pages have backlinks to them, so the links back to my site aren’t as powerful as they could be.

Now instead of just getting one link per article that I publish to these sites, I can easily make other pages that link to my site more powerful. Instead of just including a link back to my website, I can also add a link to another article I’ve written. In graphic form:

In this example, the strength of the page at Go Articles has increased because it has a relevant backlink to it, from Ezine Articles. Because the page is stronger, it increases the strength of the backlink back to my own website. Thus, for the same amount of work, I’ve created a link which is going to help me more.

You can then take this much further by implementing more free content websites, as shown below:

Although this graphic looks complex, all you have to remember is that every article links to a page on your site, and to an article on another website. It’s important that you don’t link two articles together in a form of link exchange, and you continue to link in a linear fashion. Doing so would minimise the benefits of this tactic.

Of course, you don’t just need to use article directories. You can do this with guest posts, increase the power of pages using social bookmarking services, and even link your own sites together if they’re in the same industry and have different C-class IP’s.

After implementing this tactic very recently for ViperChill, I’m now ranking third in Google for the term ‘viral marketing’ which is both highly popular and highly competitive. I’m sure those of you with some spare time can search through the backlink data for this site and find out how (if you do find it, please note that the work in question was not done by me, and purely for testing purposes).

I would love to hear what you think of this tactic, and as always, I’m happy to answer any questions in the comments…

One of the first lessons that newspaper journalists are taught is to structure their content so that the most important information is first, with the importance decreasing as you read through the piece. Pick up any newspaper around you and you’ll see that the first few sentences contain the most crucial elements of the event.

This not only creates impact, but also allows editors to simply snip off the bottom paragraph of a story if they need space for other articles. As the final paragraph is the least important, their editing does not affect the article too much. I’ve already shared how I personally became a much better writer (though I don’t rate myself that highly) and now I want to get into the specifics of how to create compelling content.

Your Headline

Your headline, in my opinion, is by far the most important element of your article or blog post. It of course matters what you say after the headline, but only if you can actually get people to read your article. The job of your headline is simply to get people to read the first sentence of your post.

Your headline doesn’t just need to be attractive to people who stop by your blog regularly. If you use Google Reader in a list format for example – like I do – then your headline determines whether myself or anyone else using the service will click on your listing to read the post. Similarly, if I see content posted on Facebook or retweeted on Twitter, that same headline will determine whether I click through to your website.

The following advice is my take on how to create a headline that draws your readers in and helps your content go viral.

Don’t tell me something I know: If your headline says something like “Why exercise is good for you” or “How to increase your feed subscribers” then I probably won’t read it. It gives me nothing but the expectation that I already know most of what the article is going to share. If you want someone to keep reading, you need them to feel like they’ll actually get value out of the time they’re going to spend doing so.

Headline example: Printer Cartridges Are Expensive

Challenge someones beliefs: One of my most popular posts on PluginID bore the title ‘Smoking is Good for you’. As everyone knows, there are many reasons why smoking is detrimental to your health, so this caused quite a stir and invoked the desire for people to continue reading. I followed up the title with a good twist in the article, which is important if you’re going to write your headline with such an angle.

If you write an article – with the content to back it up – which tells me why “running is bad for you”, “people don’t read blogs anymore” or “[common tactic] no longer works”, I’m going to read the post. Humans love taking in new information, but we hate holding on to information which is incorrect, so challenging beliefs can be a very powerful to get eyeballs on your content.

Headline example: Why Buying Another Printer is Cheaper Than Buying Ink

Offer a hidden insight: This one is very common in the internet marketing space, with titles offering ‘keys’, ‘secrets’ and ‘crucial aspects’ about different topics. I’ve used them myself in posts like this one and my article on ‘The Secret to Growing Your Blog Twice as Fast with Half the Effort‘.

This works so well because the title suggests that by reading the article, we’ll learn something we wouldn’t have known otherwise. A year or two ago I did this for a popular topic – how to increase feed subscribers – but in a way that was new and promised value. The title was ‘How to Increase RSS Subscribers (One Method You Probably Don’t Know About)’. Are you more likely to read that article than an article with the same title, but without the brackets?

Headline example: The Real Reason Behind the High-Cost of Printer Cartridges

Ask a question: If the question you ask is relevant and intriguing, people are going to read your post to see why you feel a certain way about something. Headlines with questions are also one of the best ways to get people to leave comments on your posts. The question automatically gives them something to say in response.

Discussions start from questions, and this is a great way to get a conversation going in your community, especially if you make bold statements on a hot topic. There’s a great example of this kind of post at Copyblogger, where the author asks: Is Commenting on Blogs a Smart Traffic Strategy? [Link]

Headline example: Do You Know Why Printer Ink is so Expensive? We Reveal the Truth

I’ve received a lot of praise for the headlines I use in posts and I’ve been asked numerous times whether headline writing comes naturally to me. The answer is no, it doesn’t. I find inspiration from magazine covers, books, and other bloggers along with my own imagination. I also spend quite a lot of time on each title and it’s never something I just “throw out there.”

Keep these ideas in mind, and you’ll soon be writing headlines which capture the attention of your audience and help your content go viral.

Your Introduction

If the job of your headline is to get people to read your introduction, then the job of your introduction is to get people to read further into the post. I believe that if your introduction is interesting and compelling enough, there’s a better chance that people will read your entire post, rather than just skimming through or ignoring it all together.

I definitely have a lot of work to do on my own introductions, but do have some advice to share which I think can help you.

List some interesting facts: I think the introduction for this post, regarding newspaper journalists, would have been interesting for most people. The information it shares must have some value, simply because I was able to remember this myself and then pass it on to you all. If you’ve naturally remembered a small nugget of information about a topic, there’s a good chance it’s interesting.

If your facts are both interesting and relevant then it’s a great way to keep people hooked on what you’re saying.

Offer a teaser for later in the post: If you could easily work out who the killer was at the start of an episode of CSI or figure out the plot of a movie after the first 5 minutes, we just wouldn’t watch them. Smart television and movie producers “sprinkle” teasers throughout the length of the production to keep you hooked until the end where you find the answers.

Promise your readers the answer to something you know they’ll care about, and make sure you stick to that promise, but only by offering small nuggets of information as they get towards the end of the post.

Ask a question: Though questions can make very effective headlines, I personally don’t like to use them in this way. I prefer to use them in introductions. This way, you can both ask the question and answer it to offer value straight away, or you can use it as a hook.

Similar to the last point, you could answer an intriguing question and then promise to answer it towards the end of the post. A good one from the book Made to Stick is the question, “What are the rings around the planet Saturn made of?” I’ll tell you at the end of the post .

Use Reverse Psychology: I recommend you use this sparingly as too much of this tactic will annoy readers rather than encourage them to read your post. I used this tactic in my ‘most important blog post‘ article when I wrote “This blog post is quite long so you probably shouldn’t read it. To the 50% of visitors who are still with me, I’ll say now that less than 1% of you will get to the end so you may as well leave now.”

I can imagine some people will take this too far and tell their readers in every post that they aren’t going to read it or they won’t enjoy it. Trust me, this tactic only works when you use it very, very sparingly. Think of some unique ways you can apply it and you’ll be on to a winner.

The Middle (The “Meat” of Your Content)

The middle of your post is where you get across your main points, provide value to your readers, and offer lessons you hope that they take away from the article. For example, in my post on How I received over 900,000 visits from Google in 30 days, I began by proving my facts and claims in the headline. The meat of the post was exactly how I was able to do that.

Although I mentioned this earlier, it’s very important that even if you have a great intro and a great headline, the meat of your content must match up to those high standards. If you have extravagant headlines and can’t follow them up with great information, you’re just going to annoy readers and they probably won’t come back.

In other words, if you’re going to offer some “secrets”, make sure they actually aren’t that well known.

Be personal: One of the best ways to get your points across is to speak about personal experiences. On the most basic level, this means that you should be open to sharing both your failures and your successes. In my article about generating more blog post ideas, I was more than willing to share that I had been struggling to come up with things to write about.

The reason that being personal works so well is because people can relate to what you’re saying. And, if people can relate to your content, they’re more likely to take your advice to heart and engage in your site. Don’t be afraid to use personal stories to help get your points across. It’s probably one of the most effective things you can do.

Provide concrete evidence or examples: I’m lucky enough right now to be in an industry where people know enough about what I’ve achieved to trust what I say. However, that wasn’t always the case, especially when I was blogging about personal development. In order to get your point across and have your ideas stick, it’s good to have enough information to backup your points so that they really can’t be disputed.

I often include images of ‘roadmaps’ when I talk about complicated subjects like my SEO strategy in big industries, and always try to include examples to help people create a picture in their mind of what I’m talking about. Evidence and examples might not help your post be more viral, but it will help solidify the ideas you’re trying to share.

List your most important points first: I can’t remember where I first read this, but it makes total sense, and it’s something I’ve tried to implement in all of my posts. If you’re writing a list post or ever just listing points in a certain order, put the most unique and/or valuable at the top of the list.

I believe the simple logic is that if you’re going to share points that are interesting and someone hasn’t heard before, they’re more likely to continue reading than if your initial points are just generic and nothing new.

Keep Your message simple: In most cases, it’s best to keep the message you’re sharing simple. Or, if it is complex, at least keep it to one idea. The best blog posts tell you one thing and they tell it well. Seth Godin is a master at this. If there’s a key message that someone can take from your article that they understand fully, then they’re more likely to pass that message on.

An example of this is my post on blogging partners, which was one of the most popular on the site. I said a lot about the subject, and covered it in-depth, but I really just stuck to one idea: If you want to grow your blog faster, find a blogging partner.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” – Leonardo Da Vinci

Your Summary and General Readability

The summary of your post, in my opinion, is the least important aspect of your article. The hardest part of anything you write is to get people to read it, and then continue reading it until the end. Similar to what newspaper journalists learn, your best information should be in the introduction and main sections of the article.

If you rely on the summary for people to “get” what you’re trying to say then you’ve just wasted 80% of your writing, in most cases. Although the summary isn’t as important as the other sections, there are some recommended ways to use it.

End with a powerful statement: The more articles I wrote, the more I found myself trying to end them with a message that left an impact on the reader. Movies do this all the time; if you’ve seen the end of Inception then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Just because you’ve got your main message out of the way, it doesn’t mean you should get lazy with your article. On two random guest posts that I’ve written, here were two of the endings:

• “Those thousands of subscribers are waiting for you. You’ve just got to be ready for them.” from Copyblogger.
• “Now, can you please promise me you’re going to share your value with the world? Because I can promise you, the world is waiting for it.” from TylerCruz.com

Start a discussion: This will be the third time I’ve mentioned starting discussions and asking questions. I do so because I believe that conversation is really at the heart of blogs, and one of the main things that makes them so different from static sites. Often times, people will want to leave a comment, but they just aren’t quite sure which part of the post to share their thoughts on.

You can use your summary to remind people of the most important points, and ask questions around any of them. This should help to get the comments flowing.

Summarise Your Post: Although very obvious (it is called a summary, after-all), I couldn’t leave this point out of the post. A good suggestion for ending is to pick the most important advice you’ve shared and repeat it in bullet-form. Another option, where relevant, is to give people an action plan as to the steps to take next after reading your advice.

My final suggestion, which is not directly related to making your content viral, would be to offer links to other relevant posts on your site. If people like what they’ve just read (and they probably did, if they made it to the end) then they’re likely going to want to see other articles you’ve written.

Readability

I generally break many rules when it comes to readability, but I still try to include the basics when I can. Even if you write the best posts in your industry, nobody is going to take the time to read them if you just list paragraph after paragraph without any formatting or line-breaks.

There aren’t many things to remember when it comes to making your posts scannable. Here are a few things that I think you should:

• Use Bullet Points: Just like I’m doing here, separate some lists into bullet form which not only breaks your post up into sections, but helps people skim your ideas if necessary
• Use Section Headings: I often use H2 and H3 tags to define different sections of my posts. This way, I have a clear outline of my beginning, middle and end, so visitors can decide to read just one section or all of them combined.
• Bold important sentences: If people are going to skim your posts, make it easier for them to take value from it by highlighting your most important points
• Use clear sentences: Unless you’re trying to appeal to English literature graduates, you don’t need to use fancy words or complex-sentence structures. Keep your sentences simple. And remember: What you say is far more important than how you say it.
• Break things up with images: Another good way to structure your content, without using headings, is to use relevant images to break things up. I like to have one in the introduction, as do many other bloggers, and more throughout the post, depending on the length of it

Many of these suggestions are aimed towards people who aren’t going to take the time to read every word that you write, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The whole point is that they’re reading your content and enjoying it in their own way, and then sharing it if they like it.

Many people will also skim an article first, and if it looks interesting, go back to read the whole thing in detail.

To those of you who read the whole post, and want to know the answer to my question about Saturn, the rings are believed to be made out of dust-covered ice. Are you going to use these tips to make sure that your next article is a hit?

of Links to Your Next Blog Post, Guaranteed

In the late 1800′s, Kaiser Wilhelm wanted to get rid of a number of his associates in the German government. Since many of them were old, he decided to set the age of retirement to 65 and successfully forced them out of their positions. To this day, we still use the same retirement age around the world.

If you’re wondering what the point of sharing that was then let me say this: There was no point. My headline led you to read the post introduction, and my first paragraph was good enough to get you to read the second. Since I have your attention, let me tell you one more thing: You have to keep people hooked on your content if you want to get links. People don’t share things they don’t read.

How do you get people hooked on your content? How do you write posts which people are more likely to share with their audience? How can you guarantee that people will read your blog post?

The answer, is to have an awesome idea and write excellent copy. But that’s such a vague response.

They say that around 80% of visitors to your blog will read your post title, but only about 20% will actually read the accompanying post. This means that the best way to get more links, is to get more people reading your post. Since you always get less people reading your post than you do your headline, you have to make your headline amazing, in order to engage as many visitors as possible.

I’ve analysed dozens of blogs to find out what types of headlines result in posts getting hundreds of links. Before I share the result of my findings, let’s give a quick personal example…

Drowning in Link-Juice

Though I think the following analysis is far more important than my own examples, some people will need some “proof” that I know what I’m talking about. For those people, here’s a few of my posts, with their accompanying link count:

• WordPress SEO: The Only Guide You Need – 433 links
• Guest Blogging: The Ultimate Guide – 297 links
• The Highest Converting Facebook Page I’ve Ever Seen – 307 links

And it’s not just in the marketing niche where I can do it either. Here’s an example for a guest post that I wrote in the personal development field:

• 8 Harsh Truths That Will Dramatically Improve Your Life – 225 links

Do you notice anything in common with those blog posts? Since I didn’t link to them, the commonality shouldn’t be too hard to spot. For those of you who are confused, they all – at least, in my opinion – have excellent headlines. They have headlines which make you want to read the post, and content which you’ll get value from.

They are ultimately the type of post that other sites naturally want to link to.

Getting links is so important not only for increased search engine rankings, but for the sheer number of new visitors who can land on your website when other blogs talk about you. As these links can decide whether you rise to the ranks of the A-list or continue to write for an audience of one, let’s look at how you can craft headlines which get read, and get links.

The Item-Hype Formula: Secret Template Revealed

The Item:Hype formula is simply the name I’ve attached to a style of headline I see that is both popular and effective. It basically allows you to create a title that catches people’s attention that can work in any industry. The name of this headline style is actually the headline style itself. Item: is the subject you’re talking about and Hype is the follow up which makes people want to read it.

For example, a post I referred to earlier, WordPress SEO: The Only Guide You Need. The start is the item – the topic I’m talking about – and after the colon is the hype.

Other bloggers have successfully used this title, in cases such as:

• Open Source Blogging: Feel Free to Steal My Content – 1,638 links
• Geek to Freak: How I Gained 34 lbs. of Muscle in 4 Weeks – 1,310 links

This simple strategy can even make shoes and conversion testing interesting. Don’t believe me?

• Vibram Five Fingers: The Barefoot Alternative – 607 links

There’s an alternative to going barefoot? People actually walk around barefoot? The headline creates questions in my mind, and I want to read the post to get answers. If you get creative, you can even flip this format around.

The Last Guide to Writing Headlines You’ll Ever Need…

…could easily have been a suitable headline for this post. It would have been a great example of another headline structure which gets attention, and ultimately links. The aim of this second type of headline is to provide some sort of ultimate ending, or hint of “finality” (I’m sure there’s a proper word for that) in the search for good content on a certain topic.

Based on how it is processed in our minds, it may even lead you to read a post on a topic you wouldn’t normally be interested in, since you don’t want to miss the chance to get the best content on that subject.

“What do you have to lose? It will only take a few minutes to read. I don’t want to regret not having read this in the future.”

That’s the thought process we want happening in the minds of our readers. Some popular headlines in this category include:

• 15 Coolest Firefox Tricks Ever – 697 links
• Zen To Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System – 1,277 links
• How to Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes – 1,407 links
• The Bloggers Guide to SEO – 2,540 links

The first headline makes me think two things. One, it’s okay that I missed other Firefox tricks guides posted online. Two, no better post has ever been written on this topic, so I should read it. If I was looking for a productivity system, then the second headline assures me that I’ve found the one I should be following.

Explore how you can use the “end of the search” concept in your post titles. Words like “Ultimate”, “Ever”, “Need”, and “Greatest” should help get you started.

Six Examples of Powerful Headlines

You can’t write a post on attractive headlines that doesn’t include the list post. It’s something that has been around for years and remains popular to this day. List posts are attractive because they give the idea of quality, variety, and a post that is easy to read. You can find them on almost every big blog out there, and they can easily go viral if done well.

• 10 Virtually Instant Ways to Improve Your Life – 232 links
• The Not-To-Do List: 9 Habits to Stop Now – 872 links
• 10 Benefits of Rising Early, and How to Do It – 1195 links
• 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity – 5,570 links
• 40+ Tips to Improve your Grammar and Punctuation – 209 links
• 279 Days to Overnight Success – 3,330 links

Of course, putting a number in your headline alone wont help to make the post a success. Think of using a list headline for an idea that already has the chance to go viral. For example, “Virtually Instant Ways to Improve Your Life” and “The Not-To-Do List: The Habits to Stop Now” are good titles, and brilliant post ideas. They’re simply made more attractive with the introduction of figures.

My Best Example By Far

The final headline concept I’ve found to work well is to invoke curiosity. You can peak someone’s interest so much that they have little choice but to click on your post headline — even if it isn’t clear what your article is about. Similarly, you can “tease” people and give them a taster with your headline. If the bait is tempting enough, you’ll get them to read the post.

Some articles that put this into action include:

• Travel Full-Time for Less than $14,000 Per Year – 369 links
• 7 Secrets of the Super Organised – 279 links
• 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job – 3,390 links

The first example is an excellent one in my opinion because it gives us the bait, and promises to solve it with a surprise. Being able to “travel full-time” is going to get anyone’s attention, especially if you couple it with such a low price point. The second headline makes me curious to know what those secrets are, and the third sounds interesting with a bit of controversy thrown in, so I want to read that as well.

Taking the idea from the first headline, I could also use the three other template examples in this post to craft attractive titles around the same concept:

• Travel Ninja: How to See the World on a Miniscule Budget (Item:Hype Formula)
• The Last Guide to Travel Hacking You’ll Ever Need to Read (Finality Formula)
• 21 Steps to Exploring the Planet for Next to Nothing (List Post Formula)
• Discover How Travelling the Globe Is Cheaper Than Renting An Apartment (Curiosity Formula)

It’s so easy to use these formulas to come up with headlines that are going to – quite simply – get a lot more people reading your content. If you just spend an hour or so trying to put these into practice, you should easily be able to come up with 20 ideas which follow a proven methods of getting links.

How to Quickly Make All Of This Irrelevant

It’s going to be next to impossible to get hundreds of links to your post if you read all of this but forget to take something very important into account. If you don’t have the content to “back up” your awesome headline, then it’s pointless crafting such a good headline in the first place.

Your headline, first and foremost, is purely designed to get people to read the rest of your post. Even though they’re reading it, they still have to enjoy it if they’re going to share it. If that wasn’t obvious.

If I’m going to write a post about WordPress SEO and call it “the only guide you need” then I can’t just give a few generic tips on the subject, I literally have to make it the best guide online. If I call Link Trio a “simple, yet powerful, link building tactic” then it has to be both simple to implement and highly effective.

Just adding this in for any nitpickers: The link counts for the posts are never going to be perfectly accurate. I took the counts from both the Yahoo Site Explorer and the Open Site Explorer. The point of the post remains intact: Good headlines help posts get links. Thanks to the following sites for providing me with these excellent examples: DumbLittleMan, ZenHabits, Lifehack, FourHourWorkWeek, Chris Guillebeau, SEO Book, Steve Pavlina and I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

Some of you may think that these sites are big, so that’s why they get hundreds of links to their posts.  I would personally argue that they’re big because they get hundreds of links to their posts. ViperChill certainly hasn’t grown to 14,000 subscribers so quickly because I write the same content as everyone else.

I’m giving away a free copy of Cloud Living to whoever creates the best headline, using an above formula, on the subject of kittens. Just leave a comment with your submission.

Update: Since there were so many entries, I decided to pick three winners. They are:

• The 9 Lives of Kittens: Your Ultimate Guide to Longevity – Debbi Lattuga
• I Can Haz Traffic? 7 Reasons Why Thousands of Visitors Read LOLCats Each Day, Instead of Your Website – Sarah Russell
• 7 Secrets to Raising Happy Kittens – Brian

Congrats to the winners, and thanks for all of the entries.

P.S. If you want to read more on this topic, my post 2,897 Words on Creating Viral Content may be just what you’re looking for.

As many of you will know, I love WordPress. I use it on most of my affiliate sites which make me thousands of dollars per month and I also use it on my blogs, such as this one. I’m certainly not alone when it comes to utilising this CMS though — tens of millions of sites online are powered by the software.

For all the great things there are to be said about WordPress, though, out-of-the-box SEO certainly isn’t one of its strong points. As I use the software so much and make a lot of my income thanks to search engine traffic, I have come to learn what works best in terms of optimising your WordPress setup.

Before I share my tips for getting more search traffic to your blog, I want to state that the following recommendations should be used with a little bit of caution. The majority of recommendations here are very obvious and totally fine, but there are others which some people may disagree with. Everything I share here has worked very well for me and the countless clients I have worked with, but I will mention on specific steps if any of them may be frowned upon by others.

Now that I have the “don’t sue me” disclaimer out of the way, we can get onto the good stuff.

The Basics

I thought it would be a good idea to split the “obvious” suggestions from the not-so-obvious and slightly more advanced tactics that I will share later in the post.

Title Tags

The title tag has long been thought of as the most important on-site factor in telling search engines what your site (or a page) is about. By default on older versions of WordPress, post titles would display as “Blog Name >> Post Title”. As your homepage is probably already ranking for your site name, you’re not helping yourself by putting your site name at the start of your title. You don’t need to rank for it more than once.

Instead of leaving things this way, I personally like to remove the blog name altogether. This isn’t just because I think it looks better, but because it works. A client I worked with last year received a massive boost in search traffic when we removed their brand name from title tags on their blog posts.

To change your title tags, I recommend you install this awesome SEO plugin. Once installed, log into your WordPress admin and go to Settings >> All in One SEO Pack. From there, I have entered the following:

• Home Title: Viral Marketing : ViperChill (This is the phrase I’m trying to get my site to rank for and a brand name)
• Post Title: %post_title%
• Page Title: %page_title% | %blog_title%

Those are the main ones, and I recommend you tweak the rest to your preferred preferences. The post and homepage titles are the most important.

Meta Tags

When you search for a site in Google, you’ll see a snippet of content under the page link. To control this, you can customise your meta description tag for the page. Similarly, you can also add keywords to your tag to tell search engines what your site is about. I should mention that Google announced a few months ago they do not crawl the keywords tag anymore.

A good few years ago the keywords used to be important as search engines had less ways to determine what a site is about. Now that technology is so advanced, search engines have better ways of determining rankings and relevance. I still like to put the keywords in there (for other search engines) and do this by enabling ‘dynamic’ keywords with the All in One SEO pack.

As far as descriptions go, there is no ideal way to automate the process. The best descriptions are hand written, and the plugin Headspace will allow you to configure them for each individual post. Headspace also allows you to auto-fill a posts meta-description based on the description of your category so if you post a lot, that may be useful for you.

Permalinks

Permalinks are simply the URL’s for your posts. By default, post titles tend to look like viperchill.com/?p=38 but if you look at the URL for this post you will see http://www.viperchill.com/wordpress-seo/. I’ll let you decide which one you think looks better. Not only does this new format tell someone what your page is about before clicking on it, the words in the URL will also be highlighted in search engine results if your post is relevant to the search query.

To change your permalinks, simply go to Settings >> Permalinks. I currently use the following format:

Some people like to have categories in there but I like to keep URL’s as short as possible. A friend pointed out that the quickest solution (in terms of querying your database) is to use /%post_id%/%postname%/. I would only really recommend this if you have a massive site built on WordPress, but it’s interesting to note.

It’s best to do this on a fresh blog, but if you’re making this change on a new blog then make sure you install this redirection plugin. It will move your old URL’s properly and in a search engine friendly manner. Also remember to shorten the post slug when you are writing an article, as by default the URL will use all of the words in your title.

Focus On a Keyphrase

Unless you’re very into branding, it’s a good idea to try to optimise your site around a keyphrase that can send you search traffic. Most blogs end up getting the majority of links to their homepage, so it’s a good idea to try and leverage those links by getting search engine rankings for a relevant phrase.

For ViperChill, I’m aiming to rank for the phrase ‘viral marketing’. Although it is fairly competitive, it has a decent search volume and it’s relevant to what this site is about: helping you build remarkable sites that others naturally want to share. The Google external keyword tool is a good place to start to see which phrases are popular in your audience. Make sure you select ‘All Countries and Territories’ on the left and then ‘Exact match’ on the right hand side to get accurate results.

Once you have this keyphrase, you can use it in:

• The title tag for your homepage
• The heading of your site
• Your logo
• As anchor text in links from other websites

The first and last items on this list are going to be the most crucial to helping you achieve higher search engine rankings.

Turn on Pingbacks

One way to get more links to your site (which increase search engine rankings) is actually to link to other people. If you are regularly supporting a site, it’s very likely that they’re going to return the favour. Especially if they’re in the same industry.  I recommend turning on the option in WordPress (if it’s not already enabled) which notifies other blogs when you have linked to them.

To do so, head on over to Settings >> Discussion, and choose the following options:

Use Alt Attributes Religiously

I’ve noticed fairly recently how much emphasis Google seem to be putting the alt attribute when it comes to not only ranking images highly, but also ranking your posts highly as well. Consider a search for the term ‘minimalist marketing’ and here is my site result.

The text minimalist-marketing, which I have highlighted, is actually not written anywhere on the page like that. Instead, it is the alt attribute for one of my images. WordPress applies alt attributes to images automatically, but they are generated based on the file name. Therefore, if you save your images as “minimalist-marketing.jpg” or whatever your content is about, then WordPress will automatically generate that text.

The alt tag is a way to tell search engines what your images are actually about. Not only will it help you get more search traffic to your images, but I think it helps the overall rankings of a page, as well.

Interlink

Interlinking simply means that you link from your blog posts to other blog posts. For example, I sometimes recommend guest blogging as a great way to build your authority in your niche and will then link to my guide on guest blogging. I also use the anchor text of the search query I’m trying to rank for if it doesn’t making my writing look robotic.

Not only is this useful in terms of SEO, but it also gives your readers more posts to read and thus increases your pageviews.

WWW or Non-WWW

On a lot of sites (and probably yours if this section title makes no sense), there are two ways to access them. For example, if you head on over to test.com, you will see it is both accessible at http://test.com and http://www.test.com. Try this on your own site and see if it is the same.

By default, WordPress handles this redirect for you, but it uses a 302 redirect. A 302 tells search engines the redirection is only temporary, but you really want to tell them it is permanent so that all of your link weight goes to one place. To do this, you need to implement a 301 redirect.

You can choose which one you want Google to list in Google Webmaster Tools, but it’s still necessary to do this. Whether you want to choose the www version or the non-www version of your site is completely up to you.

You will need to be able to edit your .htaccess file which can be found in the same folder that you installed WordPress on your server. Here is how the code in mine looks:

# Begin 301
RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.viperchill\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.viperchill.com/$1 [L,R=301]

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

I do have other code in my .htaccess for specific redirects, but that is all you need to redirect your site from the non-www version to the www version. Also, remember to change viperchill.com to whatever your domain name is.

If you want to redirect from the www to the non-www (which I do on a few sites), then swap lines 3 and 4 with this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^viperchill\.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://viperchill.com/$1 [R=301,L]

If that gives you any errors or doesn’t seem to do anything, make sure that your host allows you to edit the .htaccess file (most will).

The Next Level

I’ve just shared some of the most common tips you’ll find online about optimising WordPress, but now we’re going to go a bit deeper and share some slightly more advanced tactics. If you only do the above, then that’s a great start, but there are still areas you can improve upon.

Noindex Archive, Category, Pagination or Tag Pages

On ViperChill, I only use categories and I manually create my own sitemap, but I know that a lot of people have date based archives, categories, and tag pages. These might be great for usability, but for search engines, they’re really just lots of pages with links to your other pages.

In other words, the search engines don’t need to crawl through all of them to find your blog posts. For that reason, I apply the Noindex option to my Archives and Tag pages, and do this by installed the All In One SEO Pack I mentioned earlier. There are settings in the admin panel to help you decide what you want to block.

I recommend that you allow one of them to be followed (e.g. normal pagination, or categories) and then block the rest to “preserve” link juice.

NoFollow Certain Pages

I did say there may be some tactics that people frown upon in this post, and this is the first. The Nofollow attribute was first introduced by search engines to help stop spam on the web from ranking in search results. That’s why, by default, all links to commenters on your blog are automatically nofollowed.

Nofollowing scuplting, as it is commonly referred, is simply about keeping and diverting link juice (link weight) to the pages where you want it to go. For example, on every page on my site there is a link to the contact form. Does it really need to be a powerful page?

Just linking to the page once is enough to have it indexed in Google, and that’s all that matters for a number of my pages. Similarly, I nofollow links to my about page, my category links and my RSS feed. This means that the ‘weight’ from backlinks I’m getting to my own post won’t be spread to those pages.

A typical text link looks like this:

<a href=”http://www.viperchill.com”>ViperChill</a>

To make it nofollow, you would change the link like so:

<a href=”http://www.viperchill.com” rel=”nofollow”>ViperChill</a>

Again, Google have recently mentioned that they frown upon this (in some circumstances — not most) so use it at your own risk.

Nofollow Your Read More Link

If you show full posts on your homepage then you don’t need to worry about this. If, however, you just show a snippet of content, then it’s likely you also have a “read more” or “continue..” link in there somewhere. As your post title already links to the page with perfect anchor text, there’s no need to give juice to the read more link which simply takes people to the same page.

In your Theme Editor (Appearance >> Editor) open the relevant file (usually index.php), find the following text:

<a href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>”

Then simply add

<a href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” rel=”nofollow”

That’s it. You must make sure you are changing the read more permalink, and not the permalink to your post titles. If you’re unsure which is which, then make sure you contact your theme author. There are too many examples for me to go through them all here.

Turn Off Comment Pages

Unless you receive hundreds of comments per post (or you’re really, really picky about page speed), there really is no need to have paginated comments on your site. Older versions of WordPress never had this, but if you recently installed WordPress 2.7 from scratch, you’ll find that paginated comments is the default option.

These can be turned off in Settings >> Discussion and will ensure that your site doesn’t have tons of duplicate pages that are all showing very little unique content.

Sign-Up to Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is a must-use service for anyone who cares about search engine traffic to their sites. Not only will it tell you which keyphrases you are ranking highly for in Google, but it will also notify you when your site has been hacked, or if you have any broken links.

Sometimes you may find that another blogger has linked to you incorrectly and that a lot of visitors are landing on a 404 page. Because GWT makes you aware of this, you can redirect that page somewhere relevant to keep the link value and keep the visitors who are landing on your site.

Building Links

If you implement even just half of the suggestions I’ve presented here then you will probably have better on-site optimisation than 95% of the blogs in your industry. It’s essential to focus on content creation and engaging in your audience when building a blog, but it’s silly to neglect a huge traffic source when you can make all necessary changes in just an hour.

It’s also silly to write a guide on SEO without mentioning the most important factor in getting traffic from search engines (besides relevance): backlinks. Backlinks are simply links from other sites, to yours. Generally, the site ranking 1st for a search query in Google is going to have a lot more links than the site ranking 10th, or even 5th. It’s important that you spend time building links to your site so that the on-site optimisation that you’ve put in place can actually have an effect.

I won’t go into all of the ways that you can build links to your site as there are some great articles out there on the web, but I will list some of my favourite:

• Guest Posts – I really like links from guest posts as they send traffic, they’re relevant, and you can usually customise the anchor text of the link to be anything you want. If you want to learn more about this method, I have a written a detailed guide here.
• Write Awesome Content – There’s nothing better than writing an article that gets tons of links from relevant bloggers. If you put enough work into your content and regularly engage with other bloggers in the niche, they’re going to link to your posts.
• Link Out – When you link out, people link back. I don’t recommend link exchanges or filling up your blog roll, but if you find something on another site that your audience might enjoy, don’t be afraid to share it. You never know, that big blog might just send their 5-figure audience your way.
• Collaborate – Collaborating with other influencers in your niche is not only a great way to connect with more people, but it’s also a good way to get people talking about you. Oftentimes when I have interviewed people, they will link back to the interview from their own site. I also see people doing group projects which involve over 20 people and then end up having them all promote the one resource. If you can get other people involved, they’re going to help you spread the word.

If you enjoy learning about SEO and want to take your knowledge to the next level, then Sebastian and David are two people I recommend you follow.

Finally, don’t make the same mistake I did and scratch your head for two weeks wondering why your blog isn’t indexed. It turns out that a lot of one-click WordPress install solutions block search engines by default. You need to turn this off by going to Settings > Privacy.

Alternatively, you can ignore everything I’ve just written and still do quite well by remembering one thing: search engines follow people.

Note: As with everything SEO related, people have their disagreements on what works and what doesn’t. As stated at the start, these are things that work for myself and have when I had clients. Feel free to only implement certain things or try your own methods. I have updated parts of this post with information from people way smarter than I am.

Now and then I’ll have an idea which I just know is going to be a success. Sometimes though, I’m just plain wrong. Like the time I decided to email every single Technorati Top 100 blogger asking for their ‘secrets to success’. It took me longer than I would like to admit, and of the few replies (12 to be exact) I did receive, pretty much all said the same thing. An entire day wasted.

Thankfully, sometimes I’m right. My experiments with taking Facebook Fan pages to the next level is one example where my intuition has been spot on. Many of you know I’ve worked with some of the largest companies in the world (Nissan, Hewlett Packard, Land Rover) as there social media manager, and still consult with a few companies now and then. I had some ideas to increase the conversion rates on their Fan page, and the results blew me away.

I never implemented the ideas on ViperChill, simply because I wanted to blog about the process before anyone else decided to. However, you’ll be able to see what I’m talking about on the ViperChill Fan page as of today. I’ve also created a free template that you can all use on your own Fan page (in 7 colours!) to test the results yourself.

Next Level Facebook Fan Pages

By now, many of you are aware of the Static FBML app which allows you to show whatever you want on your fan page instead of the usual status updates. A common practice these days is to fill your ‘Welcome’ page with an enticing graphic which encourages people to ‘Like’ you Fan page. The number of people converted through this is usually way higher than the default Facebook setup.

My ideas, take things to the next level.

Add Personalisation With a User’s Name

After a lot of hacking and research, I was eventually able to figure out how to include a users name onto my Welcome page. If you head on over to the ViperChill fan page, you can see that I do this with a bit of humour by telling [Facebook Name] that I’ve been waiting for them. (You have to be logged into Facebook to see it, and not currently a fan)

Right now there doesn’t seem to be a way to use just someone’s first name, unless you get involved in some Ajax trickery which makes your Fan page act like an app. Though displaying the full name is not ideal, it definitely seems to be capturing people’s attention, and it’s converting into ‘Likes’.

Thrive on the Users “Engaged” State

Another change I implemented was to take advantage of the engaged state that users are in. If someone has just clicked “Like” on your page, they’re far more likely to perform some other type of action again. Through some more FBML trickery, I’m able to show the users a different image (but on the same page) after they have liked me. I’m currently using this opportunity to collect email addresses for my newly launched project, (cloud niche).

There are literally countless things you can do on this second “page” that users see, such as:

• Getting them to sign up to your email list
• Getting them to subscribe to your blog
• Encouraging them to share your fan page with their friends
• Giving them a bonus download as thanks
• Telling them more about yourself, and what you do

Test a few variations of the second page and see what works best for you.

7 Free Variations of My Page

And the best part about all of this? I’m giving away my exact fan page and don’t even need to touch Photoshop in order to edit the text on the page. I’ve created 7 versions of my template for you to use however you like. The colours included are: Black, White / Grey, Light Blue, Dark Blue, Green, Red and Gold.

Alternatively, you can use your own background images, but simply use my code for adding a second page and integrating the users Facebook name.

How to Setup A High-Converting Facebook Fan Page

1. First of all, you need to go to the ‘Create page’ option, which you can find here. The quickest page to set up is the one on the top right row, a Brand or Product page. Note that the first letter of your fan page name must be capitalised.

2. You will be shown your empty Facebook fan page. Under the image on the top left, click Edit Page. A new menu will appear, so click on the Apps option once it does. Scroll down the page until you see the app Static FBML. Add the application  to your page. Clicking on ‘Go to App’ will allow you to customise the text box.

3. The first field, Box Title, will be the name for your page tab, so use something like “Hey!” or “Welcome” here.

4. Download this zip file, which contains the template code and my 7 example templates. Each template comes with its own code. I have hosted the images online for you, but I recommend you put them on your own server.

5. Edit the part of each template where it says “Your Text Goes Here”.

Note that when you are the admin of the page, you will see things very differently. Log in with another account (or a friends) to see how the page will look to every else.

6. Go back to your Edit Page options, and this time select Manage Permissions. Change the Default Landing Tab to the page you have created with Static FBML.

7. Enjoy more people “Liking” your Fan page and then being converted in other ways through the second page.

If you have any questions, just leave a comment!