Marketing Blog

Perform a Landing Page Analysis on your Blog

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:50:00 -0500

A Guest Post by Warren Davies from GenerallyThinking.com.

It’s pretty clear that if we want to be pro bloggers, we can’t relypurely on producing fantastic content. We have to optimise our pagesfor search engines, build backlinks from relevant sources, as well asputting our heart and soul into our content to make it as valuable aspossible for the reader.

But what if the reader gets what they want from the post and thenleaves? Well, that’s nice of us to solve their problem, but it’s notgoing to help us earn the money and freedom we want!

We need to entice first time visitors further into our blogs, exposethem to its different areas and articles, make them feel like a kid ina candy store when they see all the information inside!

One way we can do this is through a landing page analysis – to seewhich pages people are landing on, checking the metrics for thesepages, and then optimising them so that they are better placed toconvert first time visitors into regular readers. Here’s a 4 step plan.

Step 1 – Identify Problem Pages

This is easy to do with Google Analytics – just go to Content ->Top Landing Pages, and check the chart at the bottom of the page. Theseare the pages that visitors are most likely to enter your site through.Now check the column to the far right – Bounce Rate. This is thepercentage of visitors who leave your site without looking at anotherpage on your blog. They hit the landing page, get what they want (ornot) then leave.

If you have any high bounce rates in this section (80%+), you’remissing out on further page views from these first-time visitors. Thisis vital; pulling readers further into your site is essential toconverting visitors to subscribers and/or sales.

Step 2 – Analysis

Before we start optimising the page, we need to do some more research. Here are the two main things you can do:

Click on the name of each post, and look at the Time on Page. Is itsignificantly lower than the time it takes to read the article? If so,it’s likely that the reader is not finding the answer to the questionthey had when they clicked through.Ask them. Set up a Poll on the page, entitled “Help me improve thisarticle: What information were you asking for?” Give a few options, anddon’t forget to add ‘something else’ as an option. Alternatively, asimple “Did you find the information you were looking for?” can beuseful. Experiment with putting it at the top and bottom of the post,to see if people are reading the whole article before bouncing.Check the entrance sources for the post on Google Analytics. Arepeople mostly finding the article through Google images? This mightaccount for the high bounce rate.

Step 3 – Optimise

You should now have some ideas on how you might optimise thearticle. Perhaps there’s more information you want to add, maybe youwant to shorten it, or then again maybe you want to make it moreappealing and add more images. Then again, maybe the site design isunattractive, or there are too many ads or other annoying things on thepage. Whatever you do, don’t assume; test.

Also, do ensure that there are links and pathways to other contenton your site! This is essential. Maybe your related posts plug-in andcategory list are not effective – you might have to tell/coax yourreader into looking deeper.

If you have several ideas on how to optimise the page, you may wantto use Google Web Optimiser to run several new versions of the page.Each visitor will be randomly directed to one of your test pages, andyou can compare the metrics against each other at the end of the test.

Step 4 – Check Results

One week should be a good enough time frame to compare the beforeand after effects. Going back to Google Analytics, bring up the ContentDetail page for the entrance article you’ve been playing with. Set thedate for the week leading up to the day you edited the page (but notincluding that day). Copy and paste the stats into a text editor orExcel; the main ones you’re interested in are Time on Page, BounceRate, and Exit %. Then set the date for the seven days after youoptimsed the article. Again, copy and paste the results, and compare.

How did you do? If you were successful, you may have seen anincrease in the Time on Page – although maybe not – but certainly adecrease in the Bounce Rate and Exit %. This would indicate that morereaders are looking further into your site – congratulations!

What if there was no difference? Then go back to step 2. Conductfurther research on how you might improve the page. Ensure you havelinks to other content on your blog, and that the wording of yourarticle makes these links seem like essential further reading.

What’s a ‘good’ bounce rate?Unfortunately, it’s impossible to give a one-size-fits-all figure toaim for. It depends on many factors. A bounce could mean the visitorliterally only wanted one piece of information, and left because theygot it. The ambiguity of the keyword you’re targeting will beimportant. If you’re getting a high bounce rate from an 8-wordkeyphrase, it’s probably a worse situation than the same bounce ratefor a 2-word keyphrase. Your domain name could play a role too –‘Problogger’ is pretty clear, but would an article on, say,‘marketingtips’ be specific to blogging, or to offline marketing? Maybeyou’d have to read it to find out.

Having said that, bounce rates over 80% generally mean there’s work to be done.

Landing Page Analysis – A Case StudyI performed a landing page analysis analysis onGenerallyThinking.com, my psychology blog. My top landing page by farwas my post on personal strengths and weaknesses.This article proved hugely successful with search engines, and accountsfor 25% of the overall traffic of the site! However, the bounce rateand time on page were dismal, as you can see below:

Time on Page – 00:01:35Bounce Rate – 86.67%Exit % – 82.98%I ran a WP-Poll asking what people were looking for at the bottom ofthe page, and got no results. I put it to the top of the page, and gota few replies, but still not many. Clearly, people weren’t reading tothe bottom – there was a need unfulfilled. The data I collected fromthe poll indicated that people wanted more information on strengthsthan I was offering – the article was too focused on weaknesses.

So, I ripped out the section on how to manage and work around yourweaknesses completely, and posted it as a new article. Then I re-wrotethe post as a portal, giving a basic overview of personal strengths andweaknesses, including how and why they could be identified – but notgiving too much away. I preferred to point to other articles on my sitethat cover these topics in depth.

I uploaded the new page, waited, and then tested the results as described above. Here they are:

Time on Page – 00:02:31Bounce Rate – 66.67%Exit % – 66.20%Fantastic! Time on Page increased by a minute, bounce rate reducedby 20% and Exit % reduced by nearly the same amount. A little moretweaking and playing with images might improve things further.

(By the way, if Darren will forgive the flagrant self-promotion thatarticle’s worth a read actually – what successful entrepreneur wouldsay personal development is not an important part of their craft?)

How much could you improve your site by performing an entranceanalysis? Remember – don’t make assumptions; test and measureeverything!

Warren Davies is a positive psychology student at the University of East London, who runs a psychology blog at GenerallyThinking.com

9 Things to Do To Make Sure Your Next Blog Post is Read by More than Your Mom

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:42:00 -0500

Blog Promotion, Featured Posts 138 comments

Two days back I explored the myth that all you need to do is write great content on a blog for it to get readers and introduced the idea of ?seeding? content rather than ?forcing? it upon readers.

Today I want to take the ?seeding? idea a step further and give a few examples of ways that you can do it - and in the process hopefully grow your readership beyond your immediate family (not that there?s anything wrong with Mom reading your blog).

I should say that while this post contains 9 ways to promote a blog post - that I rarely use all of them at once. Keep in mind that the idea of ?seeding? is not about forcing things but rather it is about getting things going and then letting something organic happen. You might need to put a little more effort into things somewhere along the way to keep momentum going (like ?watering the garden? helps a seed to grow) but the idea isn?t for force things.

So without further ado - let me share a few of the techniques that I use to ?seed? content:

1. Tweet it

I find that one of the most effective ways to get a link to a new blog post ?out there? is simply to tweet it. Tweeting a link is quick and easy to do - and if you do it well it can be quite effective at both driving direct traffic to a blog post but also in starting other little viral events on other sites.

The effectiveness of this does depend a little on the size of your follower group - but other factors you can have a little more control over include:

timing your tweets to be during peak times when lots of people are on Twitter.
doing a followup tweet to your original one (I only do this on important posts and usually try to change the wording so as not to annoy people too much)
the wording of your tweet (give people a reason to click it)
making your tweet ?ReTweetable? by not making it too long (I keep these seeding tweets to under 120 characters to leave room for people to retweet them).

I find that when something does well on Twitter (and not every post will) that it can often trigger a secondary event on a site like Delicious. This in turn can trigger blogs to link to my posts or other social bookmarking sites to pick up links.

2. Facebook Status Updates (and other social media)

This is of course similar to Tweeting a link. I?ve not had as much success with Facebook as a promotional tool for my blogs but know of a few bloggers in different niches who find it to be more effective. Whether it sends loads of traffic or not it can be helpful in an overall strategy.

Similarly I sometimes also use other social media sites like LinkedIn?s status update if I feel that the content I?m promoting is better suited to other audiences. Again - it depends partly upon the size of your network on these sites but even a small but relevant network on these sites can trigger other bloggers to link up or secondary organic submissions on other social sites by those in your network. You never know what impact sharing a link in these sites can have until you do it.

3. Pitch it to another Blogger

Is the post you?re promoting relevant to the audience of another blog?

This is a question I?m always asking myself as I?m writing blog posts. As I write I jot down the names of other bloggers that have an audience that might find what I?m writing helpful. This means that when it comes time to promote the blog post I have a ready made list of people to shoot out an email to to let them know about my post.

I don?t send these emails out often, nor do I send them out to the same group of bloggers repeatedly - but if I genuinely think my post is of high quality and that the blogger will find it relevant I will.

Check out these suggestions on how to pitch other bloggers for some more tips on how to do this effectively.

4. Pitch it to another Twitter User

This is similar to pitching another blogger but can have a great impact as well. In fact I recently had a link from a blogger who both posted on his blog and tweeted the link and the Tweet converted much better for me in terms of traffic.

The key once again is to make sure that the link is relevant to the Tweeter and the type of thing that you?ve seen them sharing on twitter with others.

5. Share a Link in a ?Signature?

Many bloggers have links to the front page of their blogs in both email signatures and forum signatures - but what about directing people to an individual post? There are a variety of tools out there that highlight latest posts (feedburner has one) and they make a lot of sense to me because you?re sending people to standalone articles that you?ve written rather than a sometimes confusing front page of a blog.

6. Bookmark it

This is one that I don?t tend to do myself these days but I know many bloggers who do so I?ll include it. It entails submitting your post to a site like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious etc.

I don?t tend to do this any more as I find many of these sites have algorithms that penalize a site if it?s submitted by the same person over and over. What I do instead is occasionally shoot a link to another user of these sites in the hope that they?ll submit it for me. Having said this - I also find that as your traffic grows the submissions become more and more organic from regular readers so there?s less need for me personally to be involved in these types of ?seedings? in social bookmarkting sites.

7. Guest Posts

Another method that I?ve seen a number of bloggers using with real effect lately is to link to your important blog post in a guest post on someone else?s blog.

Most people who guest post on another blog tend to link back to the front page of their blog in the byline. This is a good general link to get but if you have an important post that you?ve written that relates to the guest post you?re writing you should find a way to incorporate a link to that post - either as the byline link or if the blogger allows it - within the blog post itself.

8. Give readers an easy way to share it

Hopefully with some of the above techniques you?ve got a few readers over to your blog - now you want them to share it with others.

There are many ways to make your blog post ?sharable?. I tend to use a combination of templated techniques as well as a few custom ones that I add to posts once on posts that I think will do well on social media sites.

Templated techniques - there are many ways to build social media buttons into your blog. There are heaps of tools and plugins that will do this for you. The key in my experience is not to have too many buttons/options but to choose just a few that relate well to your audience.
Custom techniques - if I notice that one of my posts is starting to do well on Twitter or Digg or some other social media site I generally will either add an extra button to a post or add a text link pointing people to where they can tweet or digg the post. I find that these more obvious little additions to a post can often tip it over the edge to a viral traffic event.

9. Newsletters

This is a way that I often ?tip? posts that are doing OK over the edge into a viral traffic event. It usually works like this:

A - I write a post that I think MIGHT do well as a viral post

B - I time the publishing of that post for a Thursday morning - an update goes out via RSS to my subscribers

C - I use some of the above techniques to get the post seeded (Twitter, Facebook etc)

D - I wait until the post is submitted to Digg and then add a Digg button to the post (or some other social bookmarking site)

E - I then send out a newsletter to my list including a prominent link to the post

What I find is that without the last step (sending a newsletter) the post can do quite well - but when I send the newsletter I quite often see a ?tipping point? with the post and it?ll go viral on multiple social media sites at once on the back of the extra traffic that I?ve been able to send to the traffic via the newsletter.

2 Final Words of Advice

Let me finish with two words that I think are key to much of the above - persistence and relationships.

1. Persistence - There?s a real need for persistence in seeding content. Much of what I?ve described above are things that I?ve been doing for years and they?ve only become more effective the longer that I?ve done them.

My experience of finding readers is that it is all about momentum. In the early days to find just a handful of readers can be a real challenge - the above methods may not bring thousands of people through the door - however the 10 than they do bring in on your first day could lead to 100 next month which could lead to the thousands in the coming year.

You may get lucky and your seed may grow into something big in the early days of your blog - but even small results can grow slowly into big things over time. Each reader that you bring into your loyal readership is important because they have a network of their own that they could help spread word of your blog to.

2. Relationships - The other key to much of the above is to be as relational as possible. Much of the above relies upon people sharing your posts with others once you alert them to the existence of your posts. So put aside regular time to grow your network, to build a presence on sites like Twitter, to build trust and influence on other sites outside of your blog - this networking can pay off in a big way over the long term. Just do keep these other social networking sites in perspective - they?re not the main game themselves but should be used to build up your home base.

How to Create Reader Profiles/Personas to Inspire

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:23:00 -0400

How to Create Reader Profiles/Personas to Inspire

Featured Posts, Miscellaneous Blog Tips 50 comments

One of the techniques that I?ve employed in my blogging over the last 6 months behind the scenes is to create Reader Profiles (or Personas).

The technique is simply - open up a word document and begin to describe a type of reader that you?re either attempting to write for or who is already reading your blog. I?ll show you some examples of reader profiles that I have created below - but in short the task is to describe who they are, what their interests are, why they might be reading your blog and what their needs are.

The idea is that you end up with a picture of who you?re writing for that you can then use to inspire and inform you in your blogging.

Before I talk about the benefits of doing this and give a few thoughts on how to do one for your own blog - let me show you one that I created a while back for my photography site (click to enlarge).

The profile above describes one of the types of readers that we have on DPS - people who largely use their cameras to photograph their kids.

The profile describes why she reads DPS, some of her dreams, the type of photography she?s into, how else she uses the web, a little about her demographics, the level she?s at etc.

Here?s another one from a different type of reader at DPS:

Again - I?ve described another type of reader in a similar way to the first.

In each of these cases the reader profile is based upon a reader group already within the community - however this same exercise could be done with potential readers - or the type of person you want to read your blog if you?re just starting up a blog and don?t yet have readers.

Why Do I Create Reader Profiles?

Hopefully you can already see some of the benefits of these kinds of reader profiles - but let me list a few of the things I?ve enjoyed about having done this exercise:

It Personalises the blogging experience - I find that having a person (real or pretend) in mind as I write reminds me that there are real people on the other end of my posts. There are people with faces, names and needs - I find it inspiring to visualise them as they read what I?m writing - it also helps me to write in a more personal tone.
It informs my writing - having these kinds of personas before me and in mind as I write reminds me of some of the needs, problems and questions that readers might have. As a result I tend to write more practical posts that are written with real reader needs in mind. Often as I write I visualise the questions and reactions that these different readers might have to my posts and then try to build answers into what I?m writing based upon these questions and reactions.
It identifies opportunities - I remember writing the first profile above (Grace) and having the realisation that quite a few of my readers have mentioned that they have dreams of one day making some money from their photography. This triggered me to start a section in our forum on making money with photography which has been really popular.
It can be helpful for recruiting advertisers - often when talking with potential advertisers the question you?re asked is ?what type of reader do you have?. Having these pre prepared personas can be really useful in answering that question. It also shows that you?ve thought about your readers and run a professional site.
It identifies ways to connect with your readership - you?ll notice I?ve included details in the profiles on how the reader uses the web. It?s really useful to know what other sites your reader uses and what places of presence that they have as this can identify opportunities to identify places where people like the readers you already have (or those that you want) hang out.

How to Create a Reader Profile?

There are no real rules - you can see I?ve developed a certain style in my personas above. I added a picture to each of the type of person in the profile to further personalise it. I also tried to include information on these kinds of areas:

Demographics
Financial Situation
Needs/Challenges
How they use the Web
Motivations for Reading DPS
Experience with the topic - Level
Dreams

I?m sure that others would include other types of information - if you?ve done this type of thing before please feel free to share your suggestions and tips in comments below.

Let me finish this post off with one last persona - again for DPS.

11 Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:57:00 -0400

I have earned $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program since I began using it as a way to make money online late in 2003. Around half of that amount was made within the last 12 months.

In this post I want to share what I?ve learned along the way on how to make money with Amazon.

While Amazon?s Associates program is not my largest income stream (I rank how I make money blogging here) it was actually the first experiment that I did with monetizing blogs. I began to experiment with it in the last quarter of 2003 (just before I started using AdSense).

I started using it on a personal blog that had been going for around 12 months and had around a thousand readers a day - the first quarter was not spectacular in terms of earnings - I made $31.80 (around 30 cents a day) and almost gave it away.

I?m glad I stuck with it - here?s a chart of the quarterly earnings since the last quarter of 2003 (note, it doesn?t include July or August of this year as that?s an incomplete quarter so the overall figures from this period is below the $119k figure mentioned above):

As you can see there has been some ups and downs since the early days but the overall trajectory has been positive. It?s a little hard to see in the chart, as it is quarterly, but Decembers are always great months - last December is still the best month I?ve ever had despite last quarter being a record over a 3 month period.

So what have I learned on the way to earning six figures from Amazon?

Today I want to share 11 tips on what I?ve learned in making money blogging from the Amazon Associates Program. Tomorrow I?ll share another 10 (update: You can read Part 2 here).

1. Traffic Traffic Traffic

Let?s start with the most obvious point - one of the biggest factors in the upward swing in my Amazon earnings has been a corresponding upward swing traffic.

As with most ways of making money from blogging the more eyeballs that see your affiliate promotions - the better chance you have of it converting (of course this is a generalization as not all kinds of traffic converts - but more of that in the next point).

While I do think it?s worth starting to experiment with affiliate promotions early on in your blog (even before you have a heap of traffic) your main focus in the early days needs to be upon creating great content and building traffic to your blog.

2. Loyalty and Trust Convert

One of the other major factors that has come into play with the increase in earnings that I?ve had has been the type of readership I?ve managed to gather on my blogs. While I do get a fair bit of search engine traffic I?ve found that in most cases (and there is an exception below) search visitors are not converting with affiliate programs on my blogs - instead it is loyal and repeat readers.

The main reason for this is that those readers who connect with you on a daily basis over the long haul develop a trust with you (and your blog) and so when you make a recommendation or do a review they?re more likely to take that advice.

3. The Intent of Readers Matters

Another big factor in the equation of Amazon conversions is the intent that your readers have when they visit your blog. Why are they there and at what stage in the ?buying cycle? are they at?

I began to think about this just over a year ago as I looked at the growing traffic on my photography site but realized that my Amazon earnings didn?t seem to be keeping up with the traffic growth that I was experiencing. What I realized is that DPS was a blog that was largely writing about ?tips on how to use a camera? and that as a result it wasn?t really drawing readers to it who were in a ?buying mood?. In fact a survey that I did found that many of my readers had recently purchased a camera and were on my site specifically because they wanted to learn how to use it.

As a result I added to the mix of new content on the site more articles relevant to people buying a digital camera. I wrote tips with advice on buying cameras, reviews of digital cameras and equipment etc. This culminated in a while new section on the blog devoted to ?gear?.

Slowly this has attracted new readers to the blog - readers who are researching their next camera purchase - readers who are more likely to click a link to Amazon and who once there are more likely to make a purchase.

This is where search traffic can convert with affiliate programs - ie when you?re writing content that people in a ?buying mood? are searching for.

4. Relevancy Matters

This is another common sense tip that many of us (yes I failed on this one in my early days) mess up. The more relevant to your audience the products are that you promote the better chance you?ll have of converting.

Promote iPods on your blog that largely talks about spirituality and you are unlikely to convert (believe me, I tried) - promote relevant books, CDs and DVDs instead.
Promote perfume on your travel blog and you?re unlikely to see many sales - travel books, luggage and other travel products will work better.

Sometimes it is hard to find a product that matches your topic (Amazon doesn?t work with every topic) but try different products related to your topic and track what converts best for your audience.

5. Get People in the Door and Let Amazon Do What they?re Good At

One of the great things about Amazon is that it is a site people are familiar with, that they trust and that is very good at converting people to be buyers. They have honed their site to present people with relevant products to them (based upon previous surfing and buying habits) and over many years have tweaked their site to convert well.

As a result I find that once you get people to visit Amazon (pretty much for any reason) that a percentage of them will naturally end up buying something. The cool thing is that whether they buy the thing you linked to or not - you?ll earn a commission.

While I find specific promotions of particular products work best with Amazon - I also have had some success by getting people in the door for other reasons. For example I recently ran a post on DPS that gave readers a hypothetical $1000 to spend on photography gear and asked them to surf around Amazon and choose what they wanted to buy. The result was 350 comments and quite a few sales.

While a ?get people in the door? strategy might seem to grate a little with my ?Relevancy? tip in point #4 - the key is to get people in the door in a relevant way. Once they?re there the purchases they make might not be ?relevant? to your blog but their motivation to visit should be.

6. Social Proof Marketing 1 - Best Seller Lists

People are more willing to make a purchase if they feel that they?re not alone and if they know that others have and are buying with them. I?m sure there?s some insightful psychological reasons for this but from where I sit buying seems to somehow have become a communal activity.

One of the most powerful social proof marketing strategies that I?ve used with promoting Amazon affiliate links is creating ?Best Seller? type lists for readers to show them what is currently popular in terms of purchases in our community.

The best example that I can give of this technique in action is my Popular Digital Cameras and Gear page on DPS. It?s a page that I update every three months, that I link to prominently on the blog and that converts really well. To construct it I simply go through the reports/stats that Amazon gives affiliates to look at what products are selling the best from within my community. I then pull it into different categories of products and ?Waahlaaa? - we have a best seller list.

It converts well because readers know that others in their community are buying these products too - there?s a Wisdom of the Crowd mentality going on I guess. Another quick example of this was a recent post - 23 Photography Book Reviews [Ranked] where I ranked the top selling photography books in order of sales but also linked to reviews we?d done of each of them on the blog.

Note: the key with these ?best seller? lists is to drive traffic to them. One way to do this is to link prominently to these pages from within your blog and to link to them from within other posts from time to time on your blog so that the post doesn?t just convert for a day or two while your post is the most recent one on your blog.

7. Social Proof Marketing 2 - Reader Reviews

I used to do all of the reviews of photography books on DPS. It was mainly because I couldn?t find anyone else to do them and probably partly a little because I?m a control freak.

However one day I had a reader offer to write a book review for me. Because I knew the reader I thought it?d be OK so published it. As with all my reviews it had an affiliate link to Amazon in it. I was a little skeptical about whether it?d convert though because I thought my readers might not respond as well to a stranger?s review of the book as opposed to my own. I was wrong.

The review not only converted as well as my normal reviews - but did even better than normal! This could have been for many reasons but one that I suspect came into play was the way that I introduced the reviewer as a ?DPS reader?. I didn?t build them up to be an expert, I just presented them as a normal reader with no agenda wanting to share some thoughts on a book that had helped them.

I suspect that the social proof concept came into play a little here. Readers saw another reader recommending something in a genuine way and wanted to get a copy for themselves.

Note: interestingly Amazon themselves uses reader reviews as a fairly major feature of their site.

8. Genuine Recommendations and Reviews

There are two main ways that I promote Amazon links. The first is in ?Reviews? for products (the second I?ll cover below in the next point). These links are where I or one of my writers will genuinely look over and test a product and give it the once over.

I insist my writers actually read the books, test the cameras and use the software products that they review and encourage them to be as genuine and unbiased as possible so as to point out both the pros and cons of the product. While there?s some temptation to hype up a product and only talk about it?s positives a real review will help your reader relationship over the long haul and I find actually helps promote sales.

Review links work well because it?s usually people who are considering buying a product who really read reviews - it comes down to the buying mood/intent mentioned in point #3.

9. Informational Links

The other type of link that I use to Amazon is when I?m mentioning a product in passing and/or a new product is announced that is relevant for my niche. For example when the Nikon D300s was announced recently by Nikon we immediately posted about the news because it was a notable and anticipated camera announcement. The camera was not yet available in stores and we were not able to get a review sample yet - but it was available for Pre-Order on Amazon so we linked to it.

There was no recommendation or review attached to the link but it was a relevant link for readers who wanted to know more about it (price, specs, pictures etc). Some readers pre-ordered the cameras from that link.

Similarly if we?re writing about Photoshop or another photography post production software we?ll usually include a link to the software. Again it?s not a review link but rather an informational/contextual type link. These don?t tend to convert as well in terms of sales but they do get people ?in the door? at Amazon and can help a little with sales from time to time.

10. Contextual is King

One of the biggest reasons my initial attempts with Amazon fell flat on their face and simply didn?t convert was that I thought it?d be enough to slap an image based button on my sidebar that featured a product or that was simply a banner ad to Amazon.

Amazon give publishers a lot of these type banners but despite trying almost all of them I?ve had little or no success with using them at all. Instead - 99% of my conversions have come from links to Amazon from within blog posts when I?m writing about the products themselves.

By all means experiment with the widgets and buttons Amazon gives you - if they do convert for you then more power to you - but every blogger I?ve talked to that has had success with Amazon tells me that it is contextual links from within blog posts that work best.

11. Promote Specials, Promotions and Discounts

There?s hardly a product on Amazon that does not have a listed discount on it. Most books are as much as 30% off recommended retail prices and at different times during the year Amazon runs other special discounts and promotions on different single products or in different product categories.

Keep an eye out for these kinds of promotions because they can be well worthwhile promoting (if relevant to your readership). In fact last time Amazon had cameras on special I promoted it to my newsletter readers and had readers emailing me to thank me for letting them know about it.

Another related tip is that when you?re writing a review of a product and Amazon have a listed discount - include a note about the discount in the post (see yesterdays post about Chris Brogan?s new book for an example).

11 More Amazon Associates Tips Tomorrow

I?ve got another set of tips to share with you on how to make money with the Amazon Associates program tomorrow (update: You can read it here. I?ve also added a 3rd post to the series with 10 more tips for making money with Amazon Associates).

I?d love to hear how you?ve gone with promoting this program? Have you had any success? What tips would you give?