Part of the guide: Blog Traffic
Blogging takes time, effort and skill. In fact; running a profitable blog requires so much time and knowledge that very few people ever pull it off. Getting the traffic is simple. However converting that traffic into subscribers and sales is freaking difficult. Conversion optimization is a massive subject…
After I published around 100 posts on this blog I was getting well over 1000 daily visitors. At the time I was expecting immense results. I was expecting to generate hundreds of daily leads and make bundles of cash. After all; it took me well over 6 months to achieve those 1000 daily visitors.
I was frustrated; I was only getting 10-15 new subscribers a day and making 1-2 sales a week off the product I was promoting. After several weeks of frustration, I decided I needed more traffic. Soon after that I stumbled across some guy’s blog who claimed to convert 20% of his visitors into subscribers.
I was mesmerized by his claim and wondered “could it be possible”. A few hours later…
I made peace with the fact that I didn’t need more traffic; I needed to improve my conversions. Since that day I’ve discovered the secrets of conversion optimization and am about to reveal a few of them right here:
1. Redirect New Visitors To Opt-in Page On Blog
I don’t actually use this one, as it feels a little spammy to me personally. However when I did do this; it kicked ass. Simple stuff; just redirect all first time visitors to an opt-in page on your blog. The opt-in page should be a simple capture page built for the purpose of gaining blog subscribers.
It can say “You’re new here, if you’d like to learn this, that and this… just fill out the form below and get on the email list for updates”. That’s essentially all that needs to be said. Just make sure you have a link that says “Not interested? Click here to go to the blog”.
By simply redirecting all first time visitors to a capture page, you’ll dramatically increase conversions – I did.
2. Minimize Ads In Sidebar
Too many ads mean a high bounce rate. Generally the more clutter your blog has, the less attractive it will be. Seriously – you don’t need dozens of ads. A few large 250×300 or four 125×125 ads are enough. Anymore and it’s just overkill. It’s been proven countless times, the fewer ads you have the longer people will stay on your blog. Saying that, it definitely depends on the theme and layout you’re using. You just need to figure out which ads are actually making money, and kill the rest.
3. Create A Free Report
Having a free report you can give away is vital. No matter what you need to build an email list. To build a list, you need to give something away for free. Many blogs just promote their “free blog updates” when really, that’s not enough to entice readers to opt-in. You need to craft a free 10-30+ page report and give it away in return for reader’s subscriptions.
Once you’ve created it, just set up a nice opt-in form and create a dedicated page for giving it away. Give the page some attention by placing it in a high trafficked area of your blog!
4. Create A Tools Page
You have been paid late before
You have watched the number on the dashboard not match the number in your account. What is different now is simple: it settles on a public contract you can check yourself, not a dashboard I control.
Read the contract →Most participants earn little to nothing. No income is guaranteed. You can verify every payout on the public smart contract.
If you’re in the Internet Marketing niche then this will work amazingly. Create a page with a list of tools you use in your business. You can list everything: domain registrants, hosting services, link building tools, screen capture software, autoresponder services and more. Lastly, make sure you use your affiliate links. A lot of your readers will check out your tools page and end up buying several of them.
Just make sure it looks like a resource page, don’t come across as too pitchy.
That’s it, 4 simple and interesting ways to increase conversions on your blog.
In Prosperity,
David Wood
P.S. Leave me your thoughts, comments and questions in the box below. Also put your name and email in the form on the right for more blogging tips, tricks and secrets.
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Comments (carried over from the previous site)
SuccessWithSamantha, January 28, 2012, 10:22
Thanks for the great tips Dave! I’m planning to add a tools page this week!
Tyronne Ratcliff, January 28, 2012, 10:30
Creating a “tools page” is a great way to make recommendations to your readers, and of course a great way to monetize a section of your site, the best way to do this would be to let your readers know that you’ll make money on a few of the products you recommend if they happen to click on any of your links and make a purchase, from what I hear that tactic works well, great post by the way.
Galen Morgigno, January 28, 2012, 11:15
Great tips my friend. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Three posts a day. One email a day.
Everything I publish, in one short daily email. Real numbers, no hype, unsubscribe in one click.
Get paid 100%, on-chain, the second the sale clears
Most affiliates earn little, and that is disclosed up front. The difference here is not a promise about what you will make. It is that you can verify every payout yourself, on a public contract, in about twelve seconds.
See how the payout works →Most participants earn little to nothing. No income is guaranteed. You can verify every payout on the public smart contract.
The part that actually lands here is the admission before the tips — real frustration after months of traffic without much to show for it. Most posts like this skip straight to the tips and leave that part out entirely. Good that this one didn’t.
I think what’s easy to miss in the ads section is that it isn’t “remove all ads,” it’s “kill the ones that aren’t earning their place” — that’s a much more useful instruction than the heading makes it sound, and worth separating from the redirect and tools-page ideas, which are a different kind of advice entirely.
The redirect-new-visitors idea is the only one of the four that’s actually a one-time setup — configure it once in whatever plugin handles new-visitor detection and forget it. The free report and tools page both need ongoing upkeep the post doesn’t mention: reports go stale, tools pages need re-checking every few months or half the links rot.
Trina, “configure it once and forget it” assumes plugin comfort a lot of us don’t have, but more than that — I’m not sure I love being someone’s first-time visitor and getting redirected to a squeeze page before I’ve read a word. The post admits this itself, calling it “a little spammy,” then recommends it anyway.
Anneke, from having sat on training calls where this exact redirect tactic got pushed for years: it works, in the narrow sense of raising opt-in numbers, and it also raises bounce and first-impression complaints, which almost never got tracked alongside the win. I can’t tell you which effect is bigger for a given blog, only that the metric usually reported is the one that looks good.