Several months ago I posted that I would be working on my sales letter for Niche AdSense Themes for WordPress.  You probably remember that this was one of my very first products, and that I am always learning by doing.  Man, that first product seems like a lifetime ago.

Edit -- See my special guest post invitation to real copy writers in the post comments.

Since I was "learning" on that product I did a "toss" rather than a launch.  What I mean by a "toss" is that I did not do a full court press trying to get anyone and everyone to promote the themes.  Rather, I worked with a few friends to do an initial promotion:

• Josh Spaulding and Garry Conn promoted the themes to their lists and blogs.
• Josh featured the themes in his excellent eBook $5 Formula.
• Caroline Middlebrook featured the themes in her excellent Niche Site Video
• James Jones sent my Micro Niche Finder Video to his list

The Results Of My First Attempt

Well, I learned a lot about having a product.  I thought that you might be able to learn some stuff too.  I actually made lots of sales.  From my perspective, it was a huge success (and continues to sell).

But, as usual, there were lots of opportunities to improve.  Here are some highlights (and opportunities to improve):

• Highly targeted traffic from a list that was expected to convert at 5% or more only converted at 3.5%.  What's worse,  less targeted list traffic converted very poorly.
• Less targeted traffic from blogs in the make money online niche converted at much less than 1%
• Traffic from ClickBank affiliates was converting at a very low rate.

Increasing Sales Page Conversions

So, I decided that based on that information, that I needed to look at the sales page.  Since I am a glutton for punishment, I posted a request for feedback on and criticism of my sales page on both the Warrior Forum and Digital Point Forums.  Well, as you can imagine, I got some.  You need flame-retardant undies to withstand the comments I got.

Note to new Internet Marketers out there -- don't get your self-esteem wrapped up in your sales copy if you are going to ask for feedback on a forum.  And, be prepared to hear from people that have no idea what they are talking about.

I also got some very helpful feedback from of my very own readers.  That was awesome, and I really appreciate it when readers take the time to comment.  Here are some feedback highlights:

• Work on the headline and sub-headline. It was described by one guy on the Warrior Forum as a "confusing wreck." The great thing was that he offered me a couple of much better alternative headlines that really illustrated his point.
• Work on the copy -- let it breath. Again, a member of the Warrior Forum supplied new copy to illustrate the point.  I got similar feedback from a reader of the blog.
• Make the site look more professional. The one comment from Digital Point pointed out the fact that a website that was selling wordpress themes needed to be "very professional looking."   I agreed.  Josh actually made fun of my graphics (several times).

Taking Action

So, based on all that feedback, I changed the sales template to something more professional, I changed the headline, and I re-did the copy.  Conversions are up considerably.  You can see the new Niche AdSense Themes for WordPress sales page here and you can compare it to the old sales page.

What do you think?  Did I make it better or worse?  Time and split testing will tell (I will be making a post on how to implement split testing next week).

Let me know your thoughts.

Regards,
Mark