Developing a website

OK – so how do I put together a website that generates sales? We are not going to reinvent the wheel here we are simply going to base the layout of our website from one that we know already works well in your particular chosen niche. This is a tried and tested business strategy that Japanese companies employ quite successfully. To do this you will need to go to a marketplace for existing digital products such as Clickbank. Look for the most popular products in your niche, carefully look at their website and take your lead from there. Do not copy the site but use a similar structure, layout and features, which are common to most websites in the niche. If you haven’t done so already you will need to create a Clickbank account. When I started looking for an avenue to make money online a lot of internet marketers at the time pointed towards promoting products on Clickbank in exchange for a commission, in other words a product review website. The obvious issue here is that quite literally the world and its mother are also trying to promote the same popular digital products. It is quite difficult to rank on the first page of Google when the product is already well established and a number of good reviews have already been written and also well established on the search engine rankings. It is easier for the affiliates to promote your product rather than the other way around. swimming pool rnI found that I had more success with product reviews on my own ecommerce website. The product review was linked to the actual product page which helped with sales. As I was selling physical products I got to know the product cycles. For example I knew when a newer model was coming out so I could strike while the iron was hot and write a good review as soon as the product launched (or before hand in some cases). These product reviews generated lots of organic traffic from Google. However as they were branded products that other sites also sold I faced a lot of competition from the likes of Amazon and other ecommerce sites. Much to my own frustration I never really generated many sales from outside my own country, by the time shipping costs had been taken into account I just couldn’t compete on price against the local retailers and of course Amazon. You want your product to be available to as wide an audience as possible. You want to create your own unique product that can be sold on a global scale. By having your own digital product you don’t need to worry about shipping costs or manufacturing, warehousing, margins etc. Reviewing popular websites for key elements Once you have opened your Clickbank account go to the “Marketplace”, the Marketplace link is situated in the top right hand corner of the site. Once inside the Marketplace section on the Clickbank site - the left hand side of the page contains a list of product categories available for affiliates to promote. Let’s take “E-Business & E-Marketing”as our example. A list of products in this section will appear on the screen. There is lots of information about how to assess and choose Clickbank products to promote, particularly regarding how “Gravity” is calculated. Let’s not get side tracked here by Clickbank analytics, stay with me. Remember we are here to take a look at a good converting one page websites. Search by popularity and take a look at the first three sites. Do not get involved in complex search queries on Clickbank and take popularity as your guide. Getting out my notebook again I note the following from each of the sites in the E-Business & E-Marketing section of the Clickbank Marketplace: - The headline is an amount of money that can be earned per day from the product (promoting a very tangible benefit to the user). - A snapshot of earnings (reinforces the above point). - A video from the product owner selling the product (we will cover more on videos later in the plan). - OK, moving on to a second site, it has much of the same as the first site, with a few exceptions, including customer testimonials. - The second page is a bit longer in terms of sales copy and features a “how my life changed forever once I purchased product “X”. - More earnings screenshots. - Pictures of checks and then the email sign up/product download button at the bottom of the page. - The third site from a design perspective is much more appealing with a simple 3 step guide diagram as to how the product works. Key website fundamentals: 1. How much money can you potentially earn included in the website header banner. If you hire a graphic designer on oDesk ask them to design the website banner for you. 2. A video from the owner, which will be you mins (I have covered product videos in more detail later in the plan). 3. Customer testimonials 4. Earning screenshots 5. Simple step by step guide 6. Email capture box/product download button One thing to note from these sites is that none of them are overly sophisticated in terms of design. Using images on your website In terms of images, it’s very important that you use stock images. I can’t emphasize here how important it is not to simply do a Google image search and download an image that you like. As a newbie I did that and got landed with a sizeable royalty request that I could hardly afford at the time – lesson learned. The stock image website I use is Dreamstime.com, again like Clickbank if you don’t have an account sign up for one at Dreamstime, it should only take you a couple of minutes to do. Now much like the guys who put together the websites we reviewed earlier they either took their images from a stock image library like Dreamstime or took the photo themselves. Royalty Free Stock Photos Adding PayPal Buy Now buttons to your website I will assume that you are not overly familiar with PayPal. My apologies if you are and this chapter seems somewhat basic to you. I am trying to help out as many people as possible and will assume that not everybody has experience of PayPal. You will need to add a “Buy Now” button from PayPal to your home page template. This will allow people to purchase your ebook from you from your website. If you haven’t done so by now please go to PayPal and open up your account. Verify your PayPal account and link your bank account to your PayPal account by confirming two small deposits that PayPal will make into your bank account. You will also need to lift your withdrawal limits from your PayPal account by completing some additional details, such as your how many sales you expect to make per month, what your average sale price is, the website you are using to sell your goods on etc. It is a good idea to have this done in advance so you are not panicking trying to withdraw money from your PayPal account in order to pay for your Facebook advertising for example at a later stage. In order to add a “Buy Now” button to your website click on “Merchant Tools” from the top menu bar on PayPal. From the top left hand menu select “Website Payments Standard”. Select the “Buy Now” option by clicking on “Create one now”. Complete the form options as follows: Step 1: Choose a button type and enter your payment details. Button Type: Buy Now Item Name: Dan’s Profit Plan (the name of your eBook) Price and currency: EBook price (USD is the accepted global currency) Select: “Use my secure merchant account ID” radio button so that spammers can’t identify your email address. Step 2: Track inventory, profit & loss (optional) – You can skip this because you don’t hold inventory. Step 3: Customize advanced features (optional) Do you want to let your customer change order quantities? – Click “No” Can your customer add special instructions in a message to you? – Click “Yes” Do you need your customer's shipping address? – Click “No” Once you have the code for your Buy Now button copy and paste it onto your home-page.html file. This will now allow people to purchase your eBook from your website. If you haven’t done so already please set up an account with Aweber. In Aweber you will be able to create a simple email sign up form. You will then use the code that Aweber provides you with and enter it into the home-page.html template that I have provided you with (once you sign up to our free newsletter we email you the files automatically). You can send your customer a follow up email from your Aweber account with either a link to your eBook or include your eBook in your follow up email. I use Aweber to collect email addresses and maintain my list. Aweber is an extremely powerful tool. You should have already opened your Aweber account by now, just to let you know there is a small fee of approximately $15 per month however this will more than pay for itself once you are up and running. Once you have set up your account the first thing we want to do is set up your email sign up form. Therefore click on “Sign Up Forms”, then on “Create A Sign Up Form”. OK, let’s keep our form design simple. Use the same color as the color used in your website banner so that we have a professional and coordinated looking website. Pick a plain design, remove the header as we don’t need it. The only pieces of information you require are: - Name - Email - Submit button It is a good idea to rename the “submit” button to something like “Send me my free report” or “Send me X product”, people are more likely to provide you with their details if they are getting something back in return for doing so. rnName Email AddressrnFree Test DrivernPowered by AWeber Now let’s have a quick summary to check what tasks you should have now completed already: 1. Have your digital product written. 2. Opened up accounts with PayPal, Up Work, Clickbank, Dreamstime and Aweber. 3. Have a short list of 5/6 points of what you need to add to your site and what tasks you are going to assign to a graphic designer. I mentioned Up Work earlier in the plan, Up Work is essentially a website where you can outsource work and hire great candidates. Don’t waste time trying to master every task involved in building a profitable online business. Particularly when a lot of very good candidates on Up Work can complete the work to a higher standard, in a quicker timeframe and for a fraction of the price. You can outsource a lot of the tasks while you are working on key elements of your digital product. So if you think about it in theory building your own digital product should be done quite quickly so you can move on to the next one if your first one didn’t quite work out or promote it more if you have a winner on your hands. Don’t get hung up if your first digital product/site doesn’t work out, try again. The person who ultimately succeeds online or indeed in any field is the person that keeps going no matter what.