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

Let's face it. When it comes to search, there is only one game in town -- Google. Another fact that you should face is that the built-in search in WordPress is not that great. Put those two ideas together and it's clear that what you need to do is integrate Google's Custom Search (GCS) into you blog. You get a better search, and some opportunity to generate AdSense revenue.

To be honest, I'd be surprised if you generate much in the way of revenue. The reason to do this integration is to improve your readers experience. Frankly, if you always use user experience as the reason that you do things to your blog, you will often come out ahead in the long run in any case.

Google Custom Search Overview

As you can see, I have successfully integrated GCS into my sidebar. To do this, you basically need 3 things.

1. You need a Google AdSense account
2. You need code for your sidebar
3. You need code for the results page

The way GCS works is that you first create a custom configuration in your Google AdSense account.  The result of that step is the generation of two pieces of JavaScript.  One piece of JavaScript goes in your sidebar (or wherever you want the search bar).  This first piece of JavaScript is the code that presents the search box and search button to the user.  That code includes information that points to your search configuration on the Google AdSense servers.

When a search is submitted by your visitor, the first JavaScript program runs and loads the a results page that you have specified in your AdSense configuration.  In our case, that results page is regular WordPress page that has some JavaScript in it.    The results page JavaScript is the second script provided by Google mentioned above.   That code interfaces with the Google AdSense servers to get and format the results and AdSense ads.

Best Ways To Implement Google Custom Search

There are at least two ways to implement this Google Custom Search integration.  You can do it manually by following the excellent documentation provided by on Maki's blog over at DoshDosh.com, or your can use the Google Custom Search plugin.

As part of my research for this article, I tried the plugin.  Unfortunately, my theme was not compatible with it (I think because of some customizations that I have done to the WordPress theme code and file locations).  I suspect that most simple themes will work just fine.

I like to understand how things work, so I used the instructions at DoshDosh.  If you try to implement this and have problems, please feel free to leave a comment and I will try to assist.

Parting thoughts about Google Custom Search

Some things to consider based on my experience with this.

1. Don't expect to make tons of money on AdSense for search ads.
2. Try the plugin first.  It's easier to implement if it works.
3. If you have a narrow page area like I do, ads to the right will not work.  I recommend that you use ads on the top and bottom (specified in the AdSense search setup interface).

Let me know if you try this and you get it to work, or if you need some help.

Thanks,
Mark

Well, it has been about two weeks since I did a trial launch of my first product, Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress.  As you may know from reading my about page, I started working on internet marketing in November of 2007 as a part time hobby.  The goal of this blog is to tell people about my experience.  So, I think that it is important to let you know what I learned launching this first product, and how it went.

There is a lot to say, so this will be delivered in several parts.  This is Part 1.

Where Digital Products Fit In MY Plan

The first important question to address is why I am interested in digital products.  So far, my internet-marketing strategy has been to work on four things:

• Passive AdSense mini-sites following Josh Spaulding's $5 Formula
• Affiliate mini-sites using phpBay and other affiliate offers through CJ and Pepperjam, etc
• Building email lists for direct marketing
• Creation of digital products.

As a part time internet entrepreneur, I am very interested in creating streams of income where I can scale revenue without significantly increasing the time needed to support that income.  That why passive income streams like AdSense sites and think affiliate site are so attractive.

Once the sites are set up and marketed, the only remaining issue is traffic and some low-touch maintainence.  For traffic, long-term strategies like SEO and article marketing can be used in combination to drive traffic over the long haul relatively easily.

If you work hard at AdSense sites, for example, you can earn high four (even five) figures per month just like Tim Gorman.  It is reasonable to expect to make a few dollars per day from a passive AdSense site - so you can do the math.

Why Sell Digital Products

Digtal products are different, and a lot more exciting.  If you can create something digital that someone might want (an eBook or software for example), you can then create a sales page and sells that product and start taking orders.   In some sense, this is similar to AdSense sites and thin affiliate sites:  you are converting traffic to dollars.  However, there are some critical differences:

• Revenue per action can be very high with digital products.  While an AdSense click might get you a dollar, the price of digital products can range from free to thousands of dollars.  A typical price for an ebook might be $27.
• You can have an army of affiliates.  This is not actually unique to digital products, but it is different from AdSense and affiliate sites.  With those business models, you are the affiliate.  When you own your own digital products, you can have affiliates working for you.
• You can upsell.  There is no better time to sell someone something than when they already have their credit card out and have decided to trust you with it.
• You can capture email addresses and sell on the "back end".  This is perhaps the most powerful idea.  Once someone has purchased from you once (and has given you permission to contact them), you can sell to them again.  In this case, they already know that you provide quality products, so trust as high.  This relationship can last a very long time.

Most of the truly rich internet entrepreneurs have digital products as a central part of their business strategy.

Selecting The Product

There are lots of things to consider when selecting a digital product.  Most guru's will tell you identify a market first, and then build a product.  You need to do market research and lots of other things prior to launch.  Honestly, I was much more random about my product selection.

During my work on AdSense sites I heard a lot of people say that WordPress was not a good choice for AdSense mini-sites because of two issues:

• The resulting sites looked like blogs and not "information sites"
• It was hard to control the placement of AdSense ads

I wanted to use WordPress, however, for lots of good reasons

• Speed of deployment (easy to crank up a new WordPress mini-site
• Lots of good plugins for things like sitemaps, SEO, analytics, etc.
• Easy to update with fresh content
• Support for pinging, etc.

So, I did the obvious thing -- I worked with an AdSense min-site guru to understand a perfect site, and I built a WordPress theme that copied the layout of that exactly.  In fact, I actually hired out some of the theme code and the graphics.   More on this later this week.

Then, I put myself in the place of the customer.  What would I want in a package if I was trying to get started with AdSense and WordPress?  I settled on the following five things

• Several themes -- not just one -- with good generic graphics that could apply to lots of different niches.  For example, a medical graphic could apply to any mini-site on any medical topic.  I thought that these "specific" graphical templates look more authoratative than generic templates like ProSense, for example (I love ProSense, by the way -- I just think my stuff is better).
• The same templates in HTML. I wanted to get past the "what if I don't like WordPress" objection that people might have.  Many gurus recommended static sites.  I think WordPress is a better answer.  Including a static HTML version of the templates reduces the risk of trying WordPress for the customer.  If they don't like WordPress, they could still use the HTML templates.
• Some free reports about how to make money with AdSense.  For the complete new person, I wanted to include instructions on how to use the themes to make money.
• Some free content. Again, for someone getting started, having some PLR content that they could "slap" into their site allowed them to get going quickly.

So, I now had a digital product.  I needed a mini-site to promote it, a price, affiliates, a way to take money, a way to handle support, etc.  More on all this later this week.

Best regards,
Mark

Hello all;

Well, I am finally launching my first product on June 30.  I have done a ton of research and testing and I have collaborated with a couple of super-secret underground adsense gurus to create 12 adsense-optimized wordpress themes, complete with niche graphics.  The adsense placement is based on research by a known (but secret) adsense guru and the graphics were made by another guru that makes his living off of adsense clicks.

I am really excited about this because I am going to be able to offer the 12 themes at a great price, and there is a fantastic affiliate program that will pay a 75% commission to affiliates.  The affiliate program ad associated promotional resources will be located at http://www.nicheadsensethemes.com/affiliates
-- probably by Monday June 23.

So, keep your eye on http://www.nicheadsensethemes.com for further information.  There is lots of work for me to do, so I will be a bit scarce for the next few days.

Best regards,
Mark

photo credit: Matthew Oliphant

I think most of you are probably aware of the contest that Garry Conn is running against John Cow. Basically, the two of them are in a death match to build and sell the best blog in one month. The winner is the site that sells for the most on SitePoint.com.  Participation in this contest is a great way to learn about internet marketing strategy.

As it turns out, some heavy hitters are in Garry's corner.  Joel Comm has contributed a copy of his highly acclaimed Secret Classroom course.  You can win a copy of the course (so read on below).

And now, a message from the Cow Slayer, Garry Conn

Hey everyone, this is Garry Conn here and you have probably heard the news that John Cow and I are going head to head in a make money online competition to see who can build a blog and sell it for the most money in SitePoint after 30 days. I just unveiled my niche blog titled, Debt Consolidation Book and I want to briefly tell you about the blog and how you can win some really amazing prizes by contributing and telling people about it.

Debt Consolidation Book is a web site where you can read articles written by people who provide their opinions and tips on how to get out of debt. Additionally, you can get 13 high quality debt consolidation books for free. These 13 free debt consolidation books will teach you some amazing debt consolidation, debt elimination and debt reduction strategies. Many people have all kinds of debts and one of the most common is credit card debt. Debt Consolidation Book is geared towards helping people who have credit card debt as well as most all forms of debt.

In this competition against John Cow, you have a huge opportunity to win the Secret Classroom DVD Box Set from Joel Comm. This is an educational make money online study course worth over $520 dollars.

How Do I Win Secret Classroom

Winning Joel Comm's Secret Classroom worth over $520 dollars is very simple. As you probably already know, I am not a very complicated individual. When I run contests, participating in them are very easy to do and take very little amount of your time. Your time is one of many things I respect and I don't want to take up a lot of it. It will literally take you all of five minutes to participate in the contest. Simple, quick and easy.

If you would like to have a chance to win the Secret Classroom DVD Box Set from Joel Comm here is what you need to do. It's very simple.

1. Download a copy of this article that you are reading here and then publish it on your blog. This is a Zip File. Simply extract it and copy and paste the HTML code into your blog post.
2. Join the Debt Consolidation Book mailing list and score your free copies of the 13 free eBooks! You will get over 275 pages of high quality material for free!
3. Subscribe to the Debt Consolidation Book RSS Feed by Email.
4. Drop a comment on this post to let me know that you have entered the contest by doing the above three steps.

Optionally, I would really appreciate it if I could get some votes:

1. Click Here to vote on Digg.com.
2. Click Here to add to StumbleUpon.
3. Click Here to add to your Google Bookmarks.
4. Click Here to add to your Technorati Faves.
5. Click Here to add to FaceBook.
6. Click Here to add to Del.icio.us.
7. Click Here to add to your Yahoo Bookmarks.
8. Click Here to add to Propeller.
9. Click Here to add to Mixx.

Remember the first four steps above are not optional and you have to complete step four by dropping a comment on my post which will let me know that you have officially entered the contest to win Secret Classroom. The second steps 1 thru 9 are totally optional but will literally take you less than a minute to complete.

Join My Make Money Online Newsletter

I invite you to join my make money online mailing list and you'll receive a free copy of the AFFAdMax WordPress theme. This is the same high quality and professionally designed WordPress theme I designed from scratch that I am using on Debt Consolidation Book! You'll be the first to score a copy as soon as I release it in the next week or two.

Good Luck Winning Joel Comm's Secret Classroom

Good luck with winning Secret Classroom. I will be assigning each participant in the contest a number and on Monday June 2nd, I will use Randomizer to generate the winning number. It's a very simple random draw contest that could potentially win you a prize worth over $520 dollars. Also be sure to join my free make money online classroom so that you can learn more about how to make money online and stay in the loop with future events in the competition against John Cow.

I hear a lot of the Internet Marketing gurus brag about how they cannot even write their own landing pages. They argue that most (or all) of the technical stuff should be outsourced so you can spend time on marketing instead of hacking. There is no money in hacking, they proclaim. I see their point, and who am I to argue? After all, the number of "million dollar launches" that I have been involved in is exactly zero.

I do wonder sometimes how you know if outsourced technical jobs are being done correctly if you don't understand the underlying technology, but that is a subject for another blog post. This post is about code. And one thing you can say about internet marketing specifically, and the internet in general -- there is a lot of code out there. Code makes things work, and the quality of code can make or break a project (or an application).

WordPress is a great example of a situation where coding quality is absolutely critical. Apart from the core engine, there are hundreds upon hundreds of plugins that depend on the quality of the core code. Those plugins, if improperly written, can crash other plugins or even crash WordPress itself. In addition to that, there are themes which are really just code. If your theme is not written well, it can break too.

Last week, I was working with an excellent WordPress theme developer on a new theme. We were doing all of our testing on a site that was recently upgraded to WordPress 2.5, and were using some stock WordPress 2.5 template files. During our testing we found that some of the stock WordPress 2.5 theme files did not run on a WordPress 2.3 install. Now this is understandable -- after all, why would anybody expect something designed specifically for WordPress 2.3 to run in WordPress 2.5. (Note that he was doing all the work -- I was just along for the ride).

As it happens, the theme test we were working on crashed in WordPress 2.3 because it depended on the new gravatars function called in comments.php. Gravatars is the cool function now native to WordPress 2.5 that puts the author's picture next to their comment. The code in the them looks like this:

echo get_avatar( $comment, 32 );

See the problem? The theme called get_avatar without checking the return status (if available) or at least whether or not the function existed. Luckily, php provides for situations like this. The "function_exists" function lets you test to make sure that a function is there before you call it. So, a better way to call a function like this is:

if( function_exists('get_avatar')) { echo get_avatar( $comment, 32 );

This tests to make sure that there is a function called get_avatar available to be called. It does not say anything about whether or not the call is successful. Now, you can reasonably make the argument that there is no need to test for get_avatar in a WordPress 2.5 theme since only a knuckle head would run WordPress 2.5 code under WordPress 2.3. I get that. But I also believe that it is always good practice to design code so that it is robust against unexpected circumstances.

Always use protection.

Regards,
Mark

P.S. The theme that I was working on is called SEOAdMax by Garry Conn. It is available for free.

So, I was crusing around on Spyfu.com today, and I saw lots of listings involving mesothelioma. Now, to be completely honest with you, I did not know that mesothelioma was the disease that you get from asbestos. Go figure. It is a high cost keyword (from an Adwords point of view) - no doubt because some well-meaning and some slimy lawyers are building huge lists of class action lawsuit clients. In fact, spyfu.com say it can pay as much as $50 per click.

So, I said to myself -- "Self, what would Micro Niche Finder say about this?" As it turns out, it says that there are some long tail keywords out there with very low competition. Now, I remember what happened with HistoryOfElvis - I was able to rank easily for a silly long tail keyword -- Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie because there was zero competition. So, I said to myself -- "Self, let's put up a long tail page about mesothelioma just to see what happens." I agreed with myself, so my next post will be a long tail keyword targeted post about mesothelioma.

I'll see what happens over the next week and blog about the results.

Now, if my millions of readers go out and do the same thing, it will goof up my experiment. Instead, I recommend you run your own experiment with Micro Niche Finder in a non-mesothelioma area and comment here with your results.

Thanks,
Mark

Update on Micro Niche Finder Experiment

I threw this initial post up rather quickly. Then I threw up a post about mesothelioma just as fast. It was a completely worthless 300 word article targeted at the keyword phrase that I had selected. So, I go to thinking -- here I am, adding worthless content to the internet so I can capture a click from some pour soul whose husband or wife has this terrible disease. After reviewing the search results pages in Google, I quickly discovered that this particular keyword and groups of similar keywords are very abused. In fact, the mesothelioma group of keywords initially appeared on a list of high CPC that has been floating around the Internet for almost 4 years!

So, I called my friend Garry Conn. I have really not known him all that long, but I respect his opinion a great deal already. In fact, he designed this WordPress Theme for me, and has given me advice on several occasions. (By the way, you can actually call him directly yourself -- the number is on his blog). Anyway, I asked Garry -- what's my blog about? He had a really strong reaction that confirmed my gut feeling. This blog is not about MFA pages and other trickery designed to game the system (and neither am I).

At this moment, I am very interested in using Micro Niche Finder; however, I am quickly learning that some keywords can be detrimental to the health of my conscience an my blog

So, I am out of the mesothelioma business after about 3 or 4 hours. Sorry for the distraction.

As always, your comments are appreciated.

Thanks,
Mark

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins
• Getting listed in Google
• Making Money with phpBay
• Adding PopShops to your site

Over the last to days, we have talked about how you could diversify your niche income by taking advantage of the eBay affiliate sales program using phpBay Pro and how you can make affiliate sales of niche items using PopShops. The third piece to our monetization puzzle is, of course, Adsense.

If you don't know about Adsense, you are living under a rock. In fact, you are living under the same rock that I was under until my wife learned about Adsense on the Today show and asked me about it three months ago. Adsense ads are everywhere, but I never stopped to think about how I could benefit from them.

If you are following along in Caroline's eBook on how to build a niche site with WordPress, you will be using the Prosense template from Dosh Dosh. That is a great template because the Adsense stuff is already done for you. All you need to do there is change your publisher ID, and optionally set your ad channel. I wonder how many clicks Dosh Dosh gets from people who forget to change that?

In our case, I wanted something a little different for HistoryofElvis.com, so I am using the k2 WordPress template. To make Adsense work with that, I am also using the Adsense Manager WordPress pluging. There are other managers, and you are free to choose the one that you really like. I am placing the following Adsense ad blocks on my nice site:

• An Adsense for search box at the top of the middle column.
• An Adsense link unit block at the top of the middle column, just under the search box
• An Adsense skyscraper adunit in the second column under the link unit
• An Adsense link unit at the top of every page at the start of the 1st post
• An Adsense ad unit at the end of single posts

I usually set one ad channel for the entire site. that way, I can tell the difference between ad clicks coming from historyofelvis.com and those coming from masonworld.com. If traffic gets high, it might be worth setting one channel for each ad placement. But, until we have enough traffic to optimize for, it does not make much sense.

In my case for the k2 theme, I actually edited the theme to so that the Adsense ads related to posts (the link unit at the top and the ad unit at the bottom) would appear where I wanted them. So, if you know a little php, this is a nice thing you can do (and something that you don't need to do if you are using the Prosense template from Dosh Dosh.) If you want to attempt that, be sure to check out the complete usage instructions for Adsense Manager. The other thing that I like about Adsense Manager is that you can send a percentage of the click revenue to the plugin developer. Pretty neat.

So, that is about is for Adsense. There are 16 other Adsense Plugins for WordPress if you don't care for Adsense Manager.

Tomorrow, talk about one more revenue tool from Amazon.com.

The boys over at The Success Space are Giving Away a Copy of a Premium WordPress Theme.  They are running a contest to give away a copy of the premium theme, Revolution.  It is a cool magazine style theme.  Looks cool, eh?  Hope I win.   I really like this viral marketing stuff.  I need to have a contest of my own...hmmm.

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site

Now that is done, and we are ready to make things look nice. Caroline covers the Prosense template -- which is great. I really like Prosense because it is clean, easy to use, and ready for Adsense. I am not crazy about the way that Prosense jams ads into the top of single posts (a personal taste thing). So, I am actually going to recommend that you use the k2 template for two reasons:

• I plan to take control of Adsense placement
• K2 supports a banner graphic natively
• It is widely used and well supported in general

Note that it is possible to take control of Adsense placement in Prosense easily with just a little php programming. I just really like K2. Note that the latter point above about wide distribution means that plugins often (but not always) play well with k2.

You can get the k2 theme from www.getk2.com (where else?).

As I mentioned, one reason that I use k2 is built-in banner graphic support. What I recommend is that you search for a copy write-free image that is related to your niche. Once selected, size and crop the image to 950x200 pixels (the default size for k2). If you are a graphics guru, you can do some manipulation of the header with your tool of choice. For example, I use Paint Shop Pro to resize, crop and edit banner images. It's really nice and has lots of advanced features.  It's not the cheapest image software on the block, but it's not the most expensive either.

You can install the k2 theme by downloading it to your hard drive, uploading it to the wordpress/wp-content/themes directory and unzipping and installing (the latter from the WordPress admin interface.) The banner you create can be uploaded from the Presentation menu. As you can see on HistoryOfElvis.com, I have updated the banner to include a picture of Elvis. Nice and clean, it is my belief that little touches like this will set your site apart from all of this MFA (Made For Adsense) sites out there.

Once you have k2 installed with a banner graphic, you can drag some widgets to display comments, pages, posts and feeds into the rightmost column. I'll be reserving the middle column for ads (Adsense and Amazon for sure) and some affiliate links.

Tomorrow we discuss adding some plugins (including my favorite, phpBay).

See you then.

%RELATEDPOSTS%