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Archive for the 'Marketing' Category
June 29th, 2008
Earlier this month Andy Brice of Successful Software wrote a review of my ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website. The following is a quick highlight of Andy’s review:
“On the whole I think it is a very good introduction to marketing websites. At 136 pages there is plenty of ‘meat’ and a good balance between depth and breadth of coverage. Steph illustrates many of the topics with his own real-world experience with landlordmax.com.”
You can read his full review here. Thanks Andy for taking the time to review the book.
For those of you who are just hearing about this ebook for the first time, you can read the first 21 pages free here. You can also find several more reviews here. And if you’d like you can purchase it right now.
June 13th, 2008
Recently I purchased myself an iTouch, and I have to say it’s an amazing little device. My only complaint so far is that I purchased the 16Gb rather than the 32Gb (I always seem to be running out of room because of all the podcasts I load up on it). Actually, that’s not really true, I’m finding that iTunes on Windows is another of my complaints, it’s an extreme CPU hog. Just downloading files often brings the CPU usage to 100%. Who knows why…
In any case, here’s my current list of the best podcasts I was able to find:
Marketing
Software Development
Technology and Science
General
Some of these podcasts are obviously better than others, but overall I’ve enjoyed almost every podcasts from every single one of these sources. If I had to pick my favorites, they would be Ted Talks (the speakers at Ted are just amazing - I can’t say enough about these video podcasts), Internet Marketing Insider, StackOverFlow, Software Engineering Radio, and Java Posse. I’d also like to include IT Conversations in this list but it’s still too new to me. And don’t get me wrong, the others are great, these just happen to be the best of the best.
And if I’ve missed your podcast, or if you know of other great podcasts, please don’t hesitate to comment below. I’m always on the lookout for great podcasts, especially video based podcasts (video casts).
June 8th, 2008
Normally in the past I’ve posted updates about what we’re doing here at LandlordMax (as well as my other projects) every six months to a year. Well I’m now going to try to increase that frequency to every 2-3 months. I’m doing this because it forces me to look more frequently at our successes and failures in detail. I always do some checks each month, but by forcing myself to post about the more interesting metrics on a regular basis will force me to look deeper into these metrics. Hopefully finding some great nuggets of information along the way.
Firstly, the most exciting and good news is our traffic metrics at LandlordMax. Our traffic, as measured in by unique visitors, has increased by a whopping of 108% in the last 6 months!! That’s our biggest success as it is translating into more sales.
As well our revenue growth is continuing to be very positive, which is great to see. For those of you who are fairly new here, in early April I posted a graph of our sales revenues over the last few years. In that graph there was somewhat of a spike in 2008. I’m glad to report it wasn’t just a one-off spike for January and February, it’s a consistent growth in revenue. May is already looking like another very big month, possibly the biggest yet!
I decided to also push the data further and generate a moving average graph using a 12 month trailing period (which is why the first 12 months are missing from this graph). I have to admit I was surprised with the results, it’s much better than I expected! As you can see below, we’re definitely moving in the right direction. The real estate bust is not hampering our growth, so it’s not all bad news out there. It’s definitely not all doom and gloom for everyone as you can clearly see.
Some other interesting news, FollowSteph is still growing at a very good pace. In the last 6 months the traffic on this blog has grown by 46% which is great. Although I was hoping to more than double it every 6 months, I can’t complain with this growth rate. The good news is that the RSS feed subscription rate has grown much faster than that, it’s pretty doubled in the same amount of time.
As for the book Interview the Pros: What does it take to create a Successful Blog?, it’s still being edited by my publisher. These things take time, which I have to admit is excruiating for me. I like to have things moving, I’m not a big fan of waiting. But the good news is that the book already has it’s own official ISBN number assigned to it. And most of the book’s cover and back copy is ready to go. It’s going to be available in both as a soft and hard cover book. I’ll let you all know as soon as the editing phase is done, which hopefully will be sooner than later. As well I have to finish the website for the book pretty soon, so I can start to do some pre-marketing. I’ll let you all know when the website is available.
As for the ebook I wrote How to Generate Traffic to Your Website it’s done fairly well overall. I have to admit I was hoping for better results, but this topic seems to be saturated with lower quality ebooks. In other words a lot of people are suspicious of all books on this topic because of some bad experiences, so you really have to push hard to make the sale which isn’t really where I want to be (I don’t want to compete with the long spammy sales letters). However what’s been really interested is that ALL the reviews it’s gotten have been favorable! And each time a review came out there was definitely a spike in sales. But between reviews it’s pretty quiet. So I’m looking into what are my options for the future of this ebook…
Otherwise everything else is moving along very well. The biggest item is that we’re always working very hard on releasing the next major version of LandlordMax as soon as possible, which is coming together very nicely. Just extremely busy as usual.
May 26th, 2008
In my last post I debated whether or not affiliates are worth it for merchant’s, or in my particular case an ISVs (Independent Software Vendor). I personally believe that they’re worth it, but it takes time and effort to nurture for affiliates to be worthwhile. In any case, I promised I would write a follow-up with more detailed metrics, so here goes.
And for those of you who haven’t read the last post, I concluded with the following tip: If you do decide to go the affiliate route, you’ll find that almost all of your affiliates will fit into two main categories. Those that have 0-1 sales and those that have many sales. To maximize your results from your affiliates I recommend you increase the commissions of your higher performing affiliates, those that prove themselves. This will make them happy and work even harder to get you more customers.
To give you an idea of just how true that is, here’s our sales graph from ShareASale listing our affiliate sales distribution. You’ll find that 86% of our sales went to our Top 10 affiliates as illustrated in the graph below. That’s a whopping majority of the sales!!!
I apologize if the graph isn’t as clear as it can be, but the key thing to note is that the blue signifies the percentage of sales going to the Top 10 affiliates. It obviously dwarfs the rest.
Which made me think, can we get even more detailed metrics? Of course I could look at the raw data, filter it, and then generate my own chart, but luckily ShareASale offers a Bubble Chart of the top affiliates, which you can find below (I have left out the numbers and names of our affiliates for their privacy).
Looking at the above graph, it’s obvious that there are two super affiliates that bring in the majority of affiliate sales! I haven’t looked at the numbers in details, but I suspect they could count for half of all the affiliate sales. Following them there are two medium scale affiliates, and then everyone else. Therefore if we really want to maximize our results from our Affiliate program, we want to work closely with the top 2-4 affiliates. The others almost become noise. Not quite, you can obviously see that there are a number of affiliates getting some sales, but nothing in comparison to the super affiliates.
Which leads me to a bonus and unrelated last chart. I’m mainly posting it because I found it personally very interesting. But before I post it let me give you some context as to why I find it so interesting.
Before you purchase LandlordMax, you can try it for free for 30 days. And then, even after you purchase LandlordMax, you still have 30 days to get a refund if you’re not completely satisfied (for any reason). What does this all mean? Generally our customers have tried it before they decided to buy it, which is great (and I strongly recommend it). In other words they’re already comfortable with the software and know what they’re getting. They’re happy before they bought it. It also means we also rarely need to give out refunds. No company will ever not give out any refunds, but what I’m saying is that our number of refunds is almost non-existent.
That being said, when someone clicks on a link from our affiliates, they have 60 days within which to buy the software for our affiliates to collect their commissions. This gives them time to try the software for 30 days, as well as giving the purchaser time to ask for a refund (to protect us from fraudulent affiliates). Although rare, it balances out everything.
With that in context, below is the graph showing “Return days by gross sale amount”:
Notice anything? The majority of affiliate purchases happen on the same day that they clicked on the affiliate link! But what’s really astounding is that so far we’ve only had one affiliate refund (we actually had two but the second one was because someone accidentally purchased the software twice within 15 minutes). These are people who are buying LandlordMax the same day and not even trying it (sight unseen). This is very different than our internal sales cycle. I wish I could explain this but I just discovered it today when I was looking into the stats for this post. In either case, it’s very interesting and I plan to investigate it some more.
In any case, you now have an idea of what our affiliate sales metrics are like. Hopefully this will give you a better idea of whether it’s worth it or not for your company/website. Just remember that getting those super affiliates does take time, but when you find them they can make it all worth the effort.
May 22nd, 2008
The real answer is it depends. Having an affiliate network to sell your product does require a decent amount of work, so if you’re going to do it the biggest tip I can offer is that you use a service such as ShareASales.com (which is what we use). Don’t try to roll out your own (we initial did), it’s not worth it. Going with a service will alleviate a lot of the technical effort and costs. You’ll still have many issues to deal with, ranging approving affiliates, dealing with people trying to scam you, etc., but at least your cost of running it will be drastically reduced. If we hadn’t moved to a service we would have dropped our initial affiliate program. Actually we were in the process of dropping it when I found ShareaSale.com. It just costs too much to maintain in-house.
In any case, an affiliate program can be worth it if executed properly. To give you an idea of what’s possible, since 2005 (so in two and a half years) we’ve sold $9,408.00 worth of licenses of LandlordMax through our affiliates. Although this might not seem like a lot, based on the amount of effort it took to manage the affiliates, the commissions($1,808.10), the amortized cost over all customers to build the software, technical support, etc. we believe we made some profit. In terms of percentage of total sales it only accounts for a small percentage, but it does add up to more than nothing. In other words it’s an extra $7,599.90 ($9,408.00 - $1,808.10) we wouldn’t otherwise have.
The biggest negative issue we encountered was an affiliate who generated a bit more than a dozen sales (not included in the above totals) that resulted in fraudulent credit card purchases. Luckily we were able to spot him pretty quickly, it was fairly obvious what was going on. Although I don’t know for sure what his intentions were, I would guess that he was trying to get paid the commission before the credit cards were returned to us as chargebacks. In any case we were able to quickly cancel all their transactions as well as avoid the chargebacks by being proactive.
That and some affiliates do use more “aggressive” means of getting people to your product. You should be on the lookout for these types of affiliates and try to limit them to what you find acceptable for your company. Remember that if they go a little crazy and spam your product all over the place (or at least more than what you find acceptable), your company will be associated with the spam, and not the affiliate! You need to be vigilant about these affiliates.
Because of all this we now manually inspect every affiliate that applies, and we double check all their purchases. However other than this negative experience it’s been pretty positive overall for us. The thing to remember is that managing your affiliate program does take time, so you need to add this into your cost. That’s above the commissions you pay out. So your average profit margin will be much lower than a regular sale, if any at all.
Where you’ll really benefit from affiliates is in the total lifetime of your customers, assuming you have a good product or service. In other words it might not even be a bad thing if they’re loss leaders, as long as these customers buy from you again (for example future upgrades as in our case).
So to answer the original question, are affiliates worth it from the merchant’s perspective? It depends. The honest truth is that you need to try it out and see what numbers you come up with. That and you need to look at the total lifetime revenue of your customer, not just that initial purchase, otherwise you’ll probably lose out. And expect to spend a decent amount of time managing and monitoring your affiliates.
Quick Tip: If you do decide to go the affiliate route, you’ll find that almost all of your affiliates will fit into two main categories. Those that have 0-1 sales and those that have many sales. To maximize your results from your affiliates I recommend you increase the commissions of your higher performing affiliates, those that prove themselves. This will make them happy and work even harder to get you more customers.
May 14th, 2008
Mark Gladding founder of the company Tumbywood Software which sells the software Text2Go, a nice little program that will convert almost any text to audio, reviewed my ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website. You can read Mark’s full review of the ebook by clicking here.
Some of the highlights of his review include:
The book is based on Stephane’s experiences over the last few years of marketing and promoting his software company online. This makes the content highly relevant to myself, as I strive to improve the marketing of my own software product Text2Go. I found the examples and statistics quoted in the book fascinating.
The material would also be relevant to anyone starting a small online business, not just a software business. I’m sure the issues are the same. Limited time, little to no marketing budget and 100 tasks all competing for your attention.
Stephane covers an impression range of traffic generation techniques in his book, the highlights being SEO, content generation, freebies, blogging, Google Adwords, press releases and social networking.
I found each topic was covered to just the right level of detail. As you can imagine, separate books could easily be written about each of the above topics. However when running a small business you don’t have the time to become an expert on every possible online marketing strategy. Stephane provides enough information on each topic to get results. Each of the major topics also includes excellent references to more indepth sources of information.
Stephane’s writing style is clear and easy to follow. The writing is illustrated with plenty of interesting graphs and screenshots.
He concludes the review with:
In conclusion, How to Generate Traffic to Your Website contains a wealth of really useful information that’s well organised and clearly presented. I can wholeheartedly recommend it to other small online software and non-software business owners. At $28.95 (or a couple of hundred Google PPCs) the ROI will be very quick.
Something else that’s especially interesting (this is not in his review but was communicated through emails) is that Mark converted the ebook to speech using his software Text2Go and listened to it on his iPod commuting to and from work. How great is that!!!
May 12th, 2008
I recently got my hands on a copy of the book Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads. Overall I have to say it was a very good book, it really explained a lot of the key concepts in web conversions at a high level (sales conversions, lead conversions, etc.). For example I know our site isn’t perfect, and we already have a lot of work planned towards this end, but what I really liked is that most of the “enhancements” we’re planning for the future are described in this book. At least at a high level. This book is not about the details of the implementation, but it’s a high level description of what needs to be done and why.
Which is the key thing to remember about this book, it’s written at a high level, meaning it’s aimed at people who are newer to the concepts of website conversions (sales, leads, etc.). Therefore if you’re already well seasoned on concepts such as sales conversions it won’t be as exciting for you. It’s not as detailed or thorough as books like Call to Action, but it’s still very good. This book will be especially interesting for you if you’ve been mainly focusing your attention on traffic generation and ignoring any efforts on items such as sales conversions, etc..
I’d highly recommend this book for anyone who has a website where they’d like to increase their conversions, be it sales, leads, etc. It’s a good introduction and will get you going. What I really appreciated was the “Digging Deeper” chapter at the end. The authors really hand picked the best books and websites on the market to recommend as further resources to investigate. Personally I’ve almost read every single book they recommended, as well as follow most of the websites they recommended. Some examples of the books they recommended (which I’ve recommended - even reviewed - before here on my blog) include: Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. And some examples of the websites they recommend include: Marketing Sherpa, Guy Kawasaki’s website and blog,
Overall I recommend this book, especially if you’re just starting to get into the market of increasing the performance of your website. It’s not as advanced as some of the other books out there, but that’s not it’s intention. It’s a great book to start with and build up from. Well worth the purchase.
May 7th, 2008
As many of you know from my post yesterday (or from seeing it directly), my ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website was showcased on BitsDuJour.com for the day. As part of being on BitsDuJour, I offered a 49% discount, bringing the book down to an even $15.00.
Overall the results were positive. I really enjoyed working with Roger (my contact) at BitsDuJour. He was very professional, helpful, and really made the whole experience a pleasure. Thank you Roger.
In terms of results, there was a noticeable spike in sales of the ebook. It wasn’t quite as high as I wanted, I was hoping to replicate Bob Walsh’s success from some months back. Nonetheless it was pretty decent. I was able to sell a 45 copies of the ebook in one day, which is good. It’s a bit shy of my personal target of 200 sales but acceptable (I always aim high).
I suspect one of the bigger reasons for the differences in sales volume is due to the topic of my ebook (as well as price). What I mean by topic is that there are a lot more traffic generation ebooks out there, and to be honest many are pretty bad or very weak on content. So I can understand people’s trepidation. But my book is about over-delivering and under-promising, or as to quote someone who attended the seminar I gave last summer “if most courses are like drinking from a water fountain, than in comparison this course is like drinking from a water hydrant!” I can’t wait to hear people’s responses once they’ve had a chance to read the book!
In any case it was a good day. Doing the math, the revenues comes out to:
45 * $15 = $675
Of course it doesn’t end there, we now need to remove the commissions and other obvious costs:
PayPal charges = $33.75
BitsDuJour commission = $256.50
Total Profits = Total Revenues - costs
$675.00 - $256.50 - $33.75 = $418.50 Profits
The real profits are slightly less, I had to do a bit of related customer support which eats into my time (I’m not free either). But for simplicity let’s ignore that and say the profits for the day were $418.50 which is pretty good. I’m happy.
What interesting for me is that above the revenues it generated, it also created traffic to my website. My RSS feed count went up a bit. It also gave the ebook a lot more exposure, and hopefully that will result in more reviews. If you’re one of the people who bought the book and you do post a review online, please let me know, I’d love to read it (positive or negative).
Another really positive thing that came out of being on BitsDuJour is that it pushed me to update my sales page for the ebook. I knew it had to be done, I even mentioned it here on my blog as being higher on my to do list. Knowing which day specifically I was going to be on BitsDuJour pretty much committed me to a deadline, which apparently I needed. So that was a really good thing if nothing else.
The big question, would I do it again? Absolutely. The exposure was great and the revenue was good. Most importantly though I really enjoyed working with the people at BitsDuJour, even after the deal had expired they continue to treat me very well!
May 5th, 2008
The ebook I wrote (How to Generate Traffic to Your Website) will be on sale for $15.00, a huge 49% discount from the regular price, on BitsDuJour.com. This discount will be available ONLY TODAY so if you haven’t already purchased it, nows a great time!
The book has gotten many great and raving reviews, of which you can find some of the highlights below. Above the highlights, you can also click on each of the reviewers signatures to read their complete and full reviews.
In addition to this you can read the first 21 pages here for free to see for yourself what the book is like. This sample of the ebook includes the full detailed Table of Contents and a decent portion of the first chapter on SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Here are some highlights from the many reviews I promised:
It’s remarkably in depth. I’ve only read some of it so far, but what I’m most impressed with is the breadth of the coverage. It pretty much hits on everything someone starting a commercial website needs to think about.
Ian Landsman founder of UserScape
As someone who knows a fair bit about these topics, I found Steph’s down to earth - here’s-what-you-want-to-do-and-why - presentation very complete. His chapters on SEO, AdWords and press releases were some of the best material from a microISV’s point of view I’ve seen to date. Steph pulls from both the experience of his microISV - LandlordMax - and other sources to illustrate and illuminate his points.
The SEO chapter in particular is must reading for any microISV because it focuses on techniques that work today - not 5 years ago - and because it gives you for the time invested a solid set of strategies to start acting on now. MicroISVs seldom have the luxury to dive to the bottom of any of the many subjects we have to deal with.
Read Bob Walsh’s full review on 47Hats.com
[...] To my surprise I found that Steph has done an indepth analysis of the traffic generation process and the sheer volume of topics covered in the ebook itself, reveals the amount of research Steph has done to accomplish this book. [...]
Honestly, each section and category in itself could’ve easily made into another E-Book and believe me there are lot of e-books out there which deals with only 1/220th of what Steph’s written about in thie ebook, but sells for a higher price.
Steph’s done an amazing job on this ebook, and his hardwork is very evident from the research done, the topics and the sheer depth of information present on each topic.
I can assure you that this is NOT an ebook that will contain information that you’ve already read elsewhere.
Every page is simply worth the money you pay. And it’s cheaper that all those “I’ll teach you everything in two minutes” kind of books. [...]
Read Mani’s full review on BloggingTips.com
[...] Stephane has actually put a lot of work in the book, making it very easy to read, simple to find what you’re looking for and packed with some serious information about driving traffic to your sites. [...]
We consider ourselves pretty savvy, but Stephane’s book has made us look at a few of the methods descibed from a different angle. We’re not saying its all new and revolutionary, we’re saying its got everything you need to know to start increasing your traffic, drastically. [...]
Besides tons of written information, Stephane has also made sure that visual examples are placed throughout the book, to make sure you know what he’s trying to teach you. [...]
Stephane absolutely knows what he’s talking about, and a lot of this is also coming from his personal experiences as a webmaster. We’ve got nothing bad to say - in fact, looks like we’re going to have to redo our own ebook in the making.
Read the full review on JohnCow.com
But the selling point for me to get this eBook was the fact that it wasn’t like all those spammy-type eBooks out there. It gives you realistic and proven tips for the long run, rather than the short term deal. Again, the fundamentals that people often overlook. Matter of fact, I have seen quite a few eBooks and all of them tend to only be a few pages long, but not How to Generate Traffic to your Website. This eBook goes into so much depth that it tries to fill as much information within the 138 pages. And so far, every single page has been useful information for me.
So, for all of you guys looking to make money online, you need to build traffic to your site first and foremost and I’m going to go on record and guarantee that this eBook is going to help me in more ways than one.
Read Jason’s full review on DatMoney.com
One of the highlights of the book for me was the sense of balance and perspective that is shown. For example, it’s possible to endlessly tweak your Adwords campaigns or your onsite SEO. However, Stephane repeatly emphases the point that you need to look at the ROI of your time. I also think the fact that he’s not advocating a single traffic generation technique means that he’s not afraid of recommending you weigh up each technique when deciding on how to make your next improvement. One really useful tip he makes is to play to your strengths. For example if you write great content for your blog and you enjoy it, then do more of that rather than trying to become an expert in another technique such as Google Adwords.
[..]In conclusion, How to Generate Traffic to Your Website contains a wealth of really useful information that’s well organised and clearly presented. I can wholeheartedly recommend it to other small online software and non-software business owners. At $28.95 (or a couple of hundred Google PPCs) the ROI will be very quick.
Read Mark’s full review on Text2Go.com
Don’t wait, today’s a great day to bring the traffic to your website to the next level by buying the ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website. You won’t get a better price, and it’s only available today at this amazing 49% discount of $15.00. You can buy it right here and now by clicking here.
March 31st, 2008
It’s amazing how many dead blogs there are out there, blogs where the authors wrote for around two to three months before they called it quits. Well maybe it’s not so amazing. Blogging is very easy to start, it has almost not barrier to entry. However the path to successful blogging is very hard; it takes time, it takes energy, in other words it takes a lot of effort.
To give my favorite analogy, it’s like going to the gym. Ever notice how packed gyms are in January? All these people are trying to fulfill their New Year’s resolution of getting in shape. They all start with the best intentions. They go to the gym at least several times a week and each time they exercise like there’s no tomorrow. They’re on a mission, a mission to get fit. The race is on and their running at full throttle.
Fast forward two to three months and most of these same people are barely going to the gym once a month, if at all. What happened? The good intentions are still there, but once the excitement of starting something new has faded and it’s transitioned into work, well you know the outcome. What should have been a marathon from the start ended being a sprint to nowhere.
The same is true with blogs. Lots of people have started blogs. They get all excited and post almost every day when they first start. It’s excited. It’s all new. They start to get a little bit of traffic. Sure it’s mostly friends and family, but after a few weeks or some friends of friends start looking at their blog. Maybe even a little word of mouth if they’re lucky.
Then a few weeks pass. They start to realize that the blog isn’t going to magically grow. It will take a lot of time and effort, especially to write posts on a consistent basis. Even once a week starts to become a burden. The excitement has worn off and the traffic hasn’t grown by leaps and bounds. It’s growing, but not as expected.
Plus other life events start to take precedence. Instead of blogging tonight they find themselves watching the latest sports game, the latest episode of The Office or Heroes. Then last weekend they just had to attend that barbecue at Bob’s, he always throws the best barbecue, and boy can he barbecue those steaks! And then there’s this great new movie at the cinema that just couldn’t be missed, everyone’s talking about it. And more importantly, the daily grind, you know that thing called work, it’s tiring. There’s nothing wrong with taking a night off, but suddenly that night off has become a week off, then a month off, then it’s pretty much a permanent vacation.
This is why we see the internet littered with blogs that have about two to three months of content. That’s about as long as it takes for people’s excitement to wear off and fade to nothingness. It’s the same psychological principle that happens at the gym. Ever wonder why they push so hard for yearly memberships rather than monthly memberships? It’s the same issue with starting a business. It’s amazing how many times I hear people who stalled somewhere in the middle of writing a business plan. Well ok, maybe it’s not so amazing.
Implementation, execution, and especially perseverance are the keys to success. Blogging takes a lot of hard work and effort. It takes an enormous amount of persistence and patience. Don’t expect to succeed in a month, or even half a year. Exceptionally few do. Expect it will take you two to three years of consistent posting to really get going. To quote Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, “Can you write something of high quality on a daily basis on your chosen topic for the next 3 years? That’s 780 posts if you post each weekday for the next 3 years - 1560 if you post twice each weekday…”.
It’s not easy but it can be done. Decide on a posting schedule and keep at it. I really hate seeing great new blogs with lots of potential fall to the abyss.
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