About Me...

Welcome! My name is Tiffany Washko and I am a freelance writer, newspaper journalist, Internet marketer, mother and wife, and I am an avid environmentlist. My sites and writings primarly focus on the natural lifestyle and green living. It is a truly great thing to profit by doing what you love. Go ahead and read some of my thoughts on life, business, and success!

Mom Marketer

One of the greatest blessings in my life has been the fact that I can stay home with my kids every day and make a good living online. I set my own hours and I love what I do. I can get to all my PTA meetings, volunteer at my children's schools, and still be able to pay for that trip to Disneyworld. On this blog I write about my insights, stories, and resources.

Archive: Internet Marketing

12 Hot Traffic Conversion Secrets

We hear a lot about traffic conversion…but what exactly is it? Well, the goal of any business site shouldMaking Money be good traffic conversion. Your site doesn’t have to be about business either. You could have a site or blog that focuses on crafts but the goal is the same…you need to convert your traffic to make a profit. You need to be able to turn a site visitor into a customer or a subscriber. That is how your site will make money and keep your prospect coming back. If we don’t manage to convert our site visitors they will go away and they may never wander back our way again. Getting viewers who click and pass on is no more productive than window shoppers at the mall. You make money online when you capture that traffic and convert the “lookers” into “buyers.” So what can you do?

12 tips to increase your traffic conversion:

1. Refine your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). What makes your product or site different, special, better or more desirable than others? That’s your USP. Now get the answer to that question down to one or two concise sentences. If you have trouble figuring out what your USP is how can you possibly be telling your visitors why they should stick around?

2. Sound friendly, but not slick. Your sales copy needs to sound like one friend excited to tell another friend about a great buy. This is especially important in affiliate marketing. If you are recommending a product, your visitors will respond better to a friendly voice..not that of an oily salesman. Avoid sounding like a high-pressure infomercial.

3. Ask for help. Give the viewers a reason to interact with you by asking for their opinion on a survey or product rating. You get useful information and keep them thinking about your product longer. People love to have something to contribute.

4. Simplify the offering. If you have three different products to sell, use three websites. Don’t make the mistake of trying to offer too much at once and confuse your audience. This might work for major retailers, but they already have a brand and a following.

5. Leave some open space. Prepare a sales page that’s easy to read with wide margins. You don’t have to fill every inch. That can get overwhelming! Leaving some white space helps the reader to better focus on the copy and feel as though reading it is a manageable task.

6. Strut your stuff. If your product has a good rating or endorsements from satisfied buyers, then let them brag about the product for you. This increases consumer confidence in YOU.

7. Cast with plenty of bait. In your sales letter and squeeze page, put out the “bait” for your offer over and over. Don’t skimp on bait. Better too many offers than not enough to convert that buyer who is still uncertain.

8. Find problems. Even after your sales page is complete, keep thinking about other problems that your product can solve. You might get a hint of new ways to promote your product by asking buyers how they use the product. Asking for feedback from your peers is another great way to get some insight. I recommend Mom Masterminds.

9. Use highlighting in moderation. Yes, highlights draw visual attention but too many highlights or excessive colors can frustrate online readers. Highlight the most important points only.

10. Package deals are increasingly popular. After presenting your USP, sweeten the offer with a package including several free items as part of the “Buy Now” deal. Limited time offers create a sense of urgency for the buyer to act. Make sure the offers are relevant to the product though.

11. Ask for the order. An old principle of sales that must never be ignored - ask for the order, ask again then ask again. Many people won’t act until the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th offer.

12. Say “Thank you.” Have a gracious, personal sounding, “Thank you” email with the order confirmation. It never hurts to show appreciation! Remember this isn’t the end of your relationship…just the beginning….so make a good impression.

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Making Improvements

Kelly McCausey has been talking a lot lately about examining and improving your existing business. Basically the idea kicked off around the start of the new year and instead of coming up with all sorts of new ideas for your business to expand it…you just knuckle down and an examine and improve what you already have.

While I do have some ideas and plans for NEW stuff I have also been starting to really examine ways to improve what I already have going for me. I started with my naturemoms.com site. I have been going through the site page by page…adding content, tweaking Adsense, examining the Adsense activity with Adpsy Tracker, adding new affiliate promotions, chucking affiliate promotions that didn’t perform very well last year, and generally just improving each page. Oh…and I added a nifty script to the footer that will keep my copyright date current. Thanks Lynette!

I had quite a few slap on the forehead moments when I realized that I was ignoring some prime affiliate promotion opportunities and I had tough decisions to make about dropping certain products and promotions. For instance, I had a quite a few banners promoting Earth Mama Angel Baby products but yet my last check from them was only $9.00….blah. So I decided to give up that real estate to a new product and test the waters.

I worked on that throughout January and still have 1/3 of the pages left to do but I am already seeing results. My Adsense revenue jumped $80 from the previous month and that particular site became my top Adsense earner. Amazon sales jumped about that much too and since I am switching out my Amazon tracking IDs I am better able to see where the sales are coming from. As suspected, one site dominates. So when I focus on my other big content site next month I will step up the Amazon promotions.

I am also “improving” my attitude about outsourcing. I am very much a control freak and I like to be able to everything myself. With the exception of a few tiny things I do EVERYTHING myself… BUT last month I made the leap and signed a 2 month contract to outsource some things that were weighing on me. Already I can see that it will be well worth the expense.

Here is to mining for the gold you already had!

Squidoo Tip for Poll Modules

One of the more fun features or modules on Squidoo is the poll module. It allows you to create a poll with a question or a statement and then multiple choices for your visitors to choose from. But did you know you you can hyperlink the poll choices to Amazon products…increasing your chances for affiliate sales?

It is actually very easy to do. Just login to your Amazon affiliate control panel, choose the appropriate tracking ID, and then start creating product links. Copy a text only version of the link and where Squidoo directs you to “Enter your poll response options” you enter your Amazon link instead of plain text.

Here is a picture of the process:

pollmodule.jpg

And here is a picture of the poll after the page is published and you get some voters. The best part about this trick is that the full affiliate commission goes to me. I don’t share it 50/50 with Squidoo as I would with many other modules.

poll-module.jpg

 In case you were wondering these two images are from different Squidoo Lenses. Hope this helps you boost your Squidoo profit!

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