It seems like my inbox is flooded with promises of “ninja ways to increase conversions” from some guru who got a special insight from a drunk guy in a Russian bar that generated an extra $100k in profit. B.S. radar going crazy yet?

Besides the obvious problems with this kind of nonsense, is that even if these tricks DO work – it never lasts. The name of the game should be sustainability of income.

Worst yet, the refund rates from people who feel duped by whatever method you used to get them to buy feel taken advantage of and even betrayed.

And in case you haven’t noticed, a customer who feels betrayed is not only a high PR risk but they are next to impossible to keep around with their wallet open.

People hate to feel tricked. (DUH!)

So while there are thousands of things you can do to make a sales page better such as better copywriting, split testing images, better explaining your value proposition etc there is one thing that blew ALL of those out of the water for me.

I found that changing one little thing in the way I approached sales pages created a massive 381% increase in sales conversions and historically low refund rates for my product.

It completely blew the doors off of my business and I’ll never be turning back.

Treating Your Customers Like Humans

This is going to sound silly when you say it out loud, but the biggest flaw with 99% of the marketing advice out there is that people can easily forget that you have to treat your customers like humans.

Have you ever wondered why there is a massive difference between “warm traffic” (clicks you send) compared to “cold traffic” (clicks that any external source sends) in terms of conversions and earnings per click?

People buy from people they trust, be a stellar resource and the customers will flock to you in the masses. [Tweet This Quote]

It’s almost sad how shocked and amazed most people are when you put just a little more effort into customer retention and being accessible to their needs. Luckily this gives you a drastic advantage that will create lifelong customers who will go bonkers for what you do and even be willing to pay more money for the same product if you’re the one selling it.

How To Earn Customer Love

Be super accessible to your potential and existing customers and be available for contact across every major communication channel.

Your potential customers want to know they are going to get the support they need before they buy, and people who have bought need to be blown away with how hard you are willing to work to keep their business through stellar support on all channels.

I know it sounds like a lot of work, but you need to ask yourself something.

“If I worked THIS hard to get a sale in the first place, how hard should I be willing to work to keep it?”

The answer to that should be that you are willing to work AT LEAST as hard to keep someone as you are willing to acquire them in the first place.

Think about how much energy went into getting that customer between capital expenses, media budgets and leaning on the credibility of your affiliates. It’s a massive effort to get someone to trust you enough to open their wallet the first time, so it’s your obligation to make them feel great about their experience even if they end up wanting a refund.

The Secret Sauce for 381% Improvement

Wondering what I did differently that completely blew my (already good) conversion numbers out of the water?

I installed a live sales and support chat service on my sales and documentation pages.

Now, when I have my regular messenger up and running anyone on the site can instant message with me to ask my questions from pre-sale to support.

The results (sales increases aside) have been stunning. Not only will you sell way more product and shrink your refund to near-zero ranges, you are going to learn SO much about your customer base.

People will tell me the exact use cases they are thinking about using my stuff for, or at the very least gives them an authentically awesome first line of response for any issues they might be having.

Everyone works their tail off to make sure that there is as little friction as possible to get a customers money, but what about a no-friction communication strategy?

How To Do It

There are several to kill it with live chat, but two services in particular stick out as the market leaders. These are the same people who are being used for major brands like Salesforce.com, Hipmunk, 99designs and many more.

One thing both of these services have in common is that they tightly integrate with support ticket and CRM systems for a complete customer cycle solution.

1. Olark

This is the exact service that I use on Contest Domination for the huge gains mentioned above. It’s a breeze to install and even easier to use, when someone shows up to your site you can set an in browser chat window to pop-up with a custom message that gets the conversation started.

If your chat is set to away or you aren’t logged in, customers can still drop you a note and Olark will send you an email with the message so you can follow up right away.

I love how the messenger name is filled with all kinds of customer information like location, browser, page they are currently viewing and how they go there (Facebook, Google search etc)

To get started with the Olark, my favorite live chat service click here.

2. Snap Engage

Snap Engage is impressive in it’s own right and has an a-list roster of current customers.

The functionality and feature set is pretty similar to Olark, it basically comes down to personal preference and what feature set you need.

Differences here are primarily that Olark starts at a lower price point, however with Snap Engage you can get an SSL certificate on a much less expensive plan.

Trial Snap Engage by clicking here.

How do you plan to wow your customers with amazing availability and prove that you aren’t just another vendor that is easily replaced?

The trendy feature of every analytics tool right now is real-time data. You’ll get to watch visitors move through your site so you can pull insights in real-time and react immediately.

This sounds great in theory but it’s a waste of your time.

Why? Because you need two things in order to get any value from real-time analytics.

Thing #1: Massive Amounts of Data

Go into your analytics and look at the traffic for a specific page. Now look at the traffic for a single day of that single page. Most likely, you’re now dealing with a very small data set.

When you have small data sets, it’s incredibly difficult to pull insights from them. When the data set is this small, a single outlier (a visitor behaving completely differently than normal) can throw all the data off. If you’re not careful, you could optimize for the outlier instead of your real customers.

Real-time makes that data set even smaller because you’re only looking at current visitors. Instead of seeing how your customers behave, you’re looking at a VERY small percentage of your traffic.

And when a data set is this small, you can’t grab insights from it. Real-time data doesn’t even become an option until you have massive amounts of it.

Even when you have massive amounts of data, looking at metrics even on a daily basis (let alone real-time) isn’t that valuable. There’s simply too much volatility from one day to the next. The only way to pull insights is by looking at the data on a weekly or monthly basis. Then use daily reports to deconstruct specific events.

Here’s a good rule of thumb: if you don’t employ a data scientist, you don’t have enough data to analyze it in real-time.

Thing #2: The Ability to Act Immediately

For the sake of argument, let’s say you have more than enough traffic to get good data within a few hours.

So you roll out some changes on your home page. 4 hours later, we have enough data to see how people are using it. We discover that no one clicks on the fancy new slider. So we want to redesign it.

Honestly time: will you be able to redesign and relaunch the slider within a couple of hours? I HIGHLY doubt it. Your team is busy and they’re already working on other projects at this point. Revamping the slider is a high priority but it’s not an emergency. Assuming the schedule of your team is somewhat flexible, you won’t be able to get to it until tomorrow at the earliest.

And since you can’t act on it till tomorrow, there’s no reason to keep checking on the data every hour. You’ll just be wasting your time.

This rule applies to any report, not just real-time data. If you have a weekly KPI report, you better be able to act on that data within the week. If nothing will change until next month, make it a monthly report. Your time is extremely valuable, don’t waste it by looking at data you can’t act on.

Now, there are two circumstances where you’ll have both of these conditions (good data and the ability to act).

Split Tests

Many split test vendors give you data that’s nearly real-time. And they allow you to quickly make changes to your tests (dropping the poor performer and selecting a winner). With enough traffic, you can act on this data immediately.

Product launches are a perfect example. When you launch a new product, the first 24 hours is critical to your success. Especially if you have carefully planned marketing campaigns driving traffic. You want sales to be as high as possible to hit that tipping point where word-of-mouth starts to kick in and work for you.

But this is the first time you’ve published your product page. The copy, layout, and offer are all untested. Building multiple versions, running a split test, and optimizing for conversions during this 24 hour window is critical to figuring out what works the best. So set up your split tests (Google Website Optimizer, Visual Website Optimizer, and Optimizely are your best options) and make the winning version permanent as soon as you have statistically significant data.

Since you’re looking for very specific data (conversion rates) and you have an influx of traffic to give you good data, you can act on it immediately through your split testing tool. Real-time data helps immensely in situations like this.

Now, this may not apply to all your split tests. you’ll need hundreds of conversions in order for real-time data to be of any value.

Social Games

If you have released a social game on Facebook, the iPhone, or iPad, you are drowning in data. Especially if you’ve achieved any degree of success. In this case, real-time data can help you figure out how your users are evolving through your game.

But the second constraint still applies. Your engineering team has to be iterating super rapidly for the real-time data to matter for anyone. If they push out product updates on a weekly basis (which is still crazy fast), ignore your real-time reports and focus on your daily or weekly metrics. Only use real-time data if it will impact the changes you make to the product today. If nothing will happen till tomorrow, use daily reports.

Bottom Line

When looking at any metric or KPI report, ask yourself two questions:

1. Do I have enough data for it to be statistically significant?
2. Can I act on this data before the next report?

If the answer is no for either of these, stop looking at the data. Either pick different metrics altogether or extend the time between your reports.

And when it comes to real-time data, you’ll rarely have either of these. Instead, focus on daily, weekly, or monthly reports for your KPIs. Your time is simply too valuable to be looking at data that doesn’t tell you anything.

About the author: Lars Lofgren, the KISSmetrics Marketing Analyst and has a Google Analytics Individual Qualification (he’s certified). Learn how to grow your business at his marketing blog or follow him on Twitter @larslofgren.

If you use any of the very popular Woo Themes then you may have woken up to a bit of a nasty surprise today – but there is a solution!

They sent out an email letting all of their users know that they’ve been getting pummeled by a DDoS (Denial of service, basically people who want to hurt their business) attack.

This not only made their site intermittent, but has left a gapping security hole that needed to be patched up. They suggest updating the underlying architecture that their themes rely on called the WooFramework.

However, when many people go and click the “update framework” option in WordPress it’s saying their Framework is up-to-date when it’s actually just not updating.

Don’t worry though, I’ve got you covered on how to manually secure your site. After all even the website for my popular WordPress plugin Contest Domination was running on a modified WooTheme so I had to secure that as soon as possible.

Patching the WooFramework

If you are lucky enough to click “Update Framework” and see version 5.3.12 then you are golden. This the most current version at the time of this post and solves the vulnerability.

However, if you were like me or countless others you’ll need to get your hands a little dirty manually update the framework and protect yourself.

Fire up your favorite FTP client and find:

wp-content/themes/theme_name/functions/ because this is where the work is.

You are going to want to download the latest Framework files (click here to download). Unzip the file and upload the contents of the Framework folder into /functions/

Head back to “Update Framework” section within WordPress and you should be all set.

What’s a Framework?

Frameworks were built to expand upon the base functionality of a standard WordPress install – and that’s a very good thing for the consumer.

The product that really invented the space was Thesis by DIY Themes, who integrated most of the popular plugin functionality into an easy to use package.

You can think of Frameworks as a layer that sits on top of WordPress to give you clean and easy access to the features you most desire right out of the box.

While many WordPress purists will argue against Frameworks, the reality is that very few people can be a developer or afford to hire one.

Great WooFramework Alternatives

While Woo Themes is a very popular service, it’s worth noting that many people are enjoying the benefits of Frameworks who haven’t had their face melted by malicious attacks.

It’s up for debate as to why that is, maybe it’s because these people aren’t interested.. maybe it’s because these other options have better code that is less susceptible.

I’ll let you make that decision, but here’s two excellent options that I use on many of my other sites and haven’t had any of the issues that the WooThemes/Framework has had.

1. Thesis by DIY Themes

Arguably the founder of the Framework space, Thesis has been used by thousands of websites including Matt Cutts of Google and even on this site too.

I’ve been using Thesis for years and been quite happy with the feature set that it ships with. While WordPress has been slowly catching up, there is no arguing that my sites running on Thesis run faster and are easier to use out of the box when they have Thesis instead of just a plain WordPress installation.

Having met the guy behind it all, Chris Pearson, he mentioned to me that customers of Thesis will be getting a free upgrade to the highly anticipated Thesis 2 when it ships.

That’s a whole lot of value.

Get Thesis by DIY Themes here.

Pro-tip: Get more out of Thesis

You’ll notice something about Thesis sites, while the extra functionality is killer, some definitely look better than others.

A smart kid named Alex Mangini is cranking out some pretty impressive skins for Thesis, including the one seen on this blog called Marketers Delight 2.

To put it simply: Thesis is your secret weapon and Kolakube makes it pretty.

Get awesome Thesis skins from Kolakube here.

2. Genesis by StuidoPress

Very similar to Thesis in a lot of ways, Genesis has more customers than Thesis – however that’s doesn’t always make it better.

There is a trade off between the two platforms, I’ve used both and they each have their unique qualities.

Genesis has a few more built-in widgets to make life easier but Thesis tends run a little lighter and was a better commenting system etc.

Additionally, I feel that the skins from Kolakube for Thesis are much better than the ones from StudioPress for Genesis.

But of course design, like many things, is subjective so I urge you to make your own decision.

Get Genesis by StudioPress here

Pick a theme for Genesis from StudioPress here

Both of the options listed here would be great alternatives to the WooThemes Framework and offer increased flexibility and functionality in my humble opinion.

For those of us who run a blog, own a website or work in Internet Marketing, the goal has and will always be to get as many visitors to our site to convert as possible.

While the conversion part may be a little different for some of us (sales, reads, shares, subscriptions, etc), the work behind it is all the same.

We treat our website like a house, we would ideally like everyone to walk through the front door to the homepage. But in Google’s eyes you’ve left every door unlocked, windows open and even the code to the garage pasted on the wall. Every page of a website has the possibility to make the first impression for a new visitor.

This is why website owners must pay close attention to every potential landing page on their site. We treat each one of the pages as if it were the homepage.

Everything from design to SEO efforts, all so they hopefully sit down for coffee stay for dessert and end the night converting with you (like what I did there?)

While I may not be an expert I have noticed through research, experimenting and experience, four aspects of a landing page that people quickly look for before popping their cherry as a new customer, subscriber or reader.

Trust

The biggest factor of a website when surfing the net nowadays has to be trust. Like a sloppy drunk at the bar or a middle aged man driving a van with a pencil thin mustache and glasses, your website can put off the same questionable suspicions.

Hooking up with a random and visiting a dubious website can both result in a virus of some sort.

Posting awards, seals and badges are always a good way to get people’s attention and quickly gain trust.

Are you part of the Better Business Bureau? Does your website have a secure checkout? You pay for these things in order to make visitors feel more comfortable, why not put them front and center, show them off and prove to the visitor that you care.

We work hard to be the best at something and awards and recognitions make us feel good. It makes customers feel the same. Even though celebrities may claim to have their Grammy or Oscar sitting in the closet, their movies and CDS always say award winner on them for a reason.

Use this same tactic on your site.

Design

The overall design of a landing page can easily effect your conversion rate. And it all goes back to trust.

If the first page they see looks like it was made back in 1995 with Geocities, still has a hit counter and plastered with animated gifs everywhere, users are going to bounce.

While that may be more of an extreme example, other more subtle factors of your design could hurt your conversion rate. A huge mistake from an internet marketer’s perspective has been focusing too much on Google and not the audience.

While it may be nice to be on the first page of a search query, if you’ve flooded a landing page with keywords and doesn’t read well any more people are going to start to question.

Scattered images and bad CSS really draw people away as well. When reworking the design of your site, it’s always good practice to check layout on multiple browsers as each have very small differences that can make HUGE differences in the appearance of your site.

Call to Action

Ever shop on a website and have chosen the product you want, now you’re ready to checkout and pay, but you can’t find the “checkout” button?

Yeah, that should never happen.

The call to action button(s) must be above the fold and easy to identify.

This is true for every call to action button on a landing page. Subscription forms, social sharing, whatever the case may be, even if they really like what you have to offer, they aren’t going to go digging around for long to help you out.

There’s too much other stuff out there and not enough time to view it all.

Test

I’m not talking about giving your visitors an exam before they complete their sale, it’s more of a test for yourself.

I wouldn’t have figured out these other effective key changes to landing pages without experimenting a little, going over the numbers in analytics, making changes and repeating the process over and over again.

Raising your conversion rate isn’t an easy task for a lazy man. It takes time and effort. I might have given you a cheat sheet for success, but it will still be on you to see what works best for you and your landing pages.

About the author: Matt Powers is an Internet Marketer at Blue Soda Promo, an online promotional products company. BSP imprints logos on items like custom tote bags, stress balls, koozies, sunglasses and polo shirts at ridiculously low prices. We make your brand POP!

There has been a lot of buzz recently about the sky rocketing cost of getting an education in the United States because, most recently, there is talk about the Government stepping in to do something about a proposed doubling of student interest rates.

It’s worth nothing that not too long ago, student debt exceeded credit card in the United States.

Read that sound bite again, I’ll wait.

Student Loan Debt > Credit Card Debt.

The Entrepreneurs Dilemma

If you knew me back as an 18 year old, back in 2006 you might have chuckled.

You see, I was running quite a profitable business drop-shipping 200-300 laptops per day on eBay and all was right with the world.

I was even having to hack the school filter to run my business (and then I sold access for others to get around the filter for a quick buck too since I had setup my own proxy server at home haha).

The point of telling you this was that, for an 18 year old I was making way too much money. It’s not to brag, but rather to give you context.

I was 18 and “crushing it”, but it had been beaten in to me that to be successful there was a way of going about things.

1. You went to College and got a respectable degree
2. Good jobs were supposed to be easy to come by, and you work your way up
3. It didn’t matter how much school costs, you were just supposed to do it

This couldn’t have been any more misleading. Did I have a great experience at school? ABSOLUTELY, there are definitely perks to doing it.

BUT, were those perks worth the current cost of entry? I’d say for at least 50% of people going to school it’s a horrible financial decision.

With college tuitions raising 8-16% per year and loan rates proposed to double.. When will people weigh entrepreneurial opportunity costs?

— Travis Ketchum (@travisketchum) April 24, 2012

More Education = More Opportunity… Right?

There are extremes to everything, and for some degrees higher education is essential.

I don’t know about you, but I probably don’t want the High School drop out doing an organ transplant for me.

So what about all the less technical degrees like advertising, marketing etc?

I think we are in for a big fundamental shift in the way candidates are selected for positions in the near future, and in a lot of areas it’s already happening.

No degree? No problem, just prove that you have drive, experience and creative thinking.

Organizations are going to start caring more about hiring creative winners than they will about hiring “well educated” personnel.

Think I’m kidding? Take a look at where the money is flowing these days and you’ll see what I mean.

Kids are getting millions in funding for awesome inventions, drop-outs are getting backing from some of the smartest investors in the business right now, and our biggest champions of industry in the past 30 years have almost all been drop-outs themselves.

Be Smart About Your Experiences

In days gone by, higher education was more about expanding your mind and being a well-rounded individual.

At some point in the process though it turned into a race for specialization into particular professions and professor salaries bloated.

Now with tenure the low producing professors can’t be swept away and there are major financial cracks in the funding model of Universities.

My question is, if being around a bunch of other smart people is the enlightening part of College and where the real value is, do you need a degree to prove that you’ve learned something intangible?

I feel like most people fall into one of three categories, based on my experiences.

1. Technical interest that requires more education

This individual is going to school for all the right reasons, and can justify the expenditure because of the earning power that these types of degrees typically yield.

These types of professions include things like any medical field (doctor, nursing etc), high technology (computer science, electrical engineering), and other highly technical jobs.

2. Looking to really do a vocational job they enjoy

These types of people would actually best be served by focused vocational schools, and not by the costly four year programs most end up doing.

Plenty of people could make a return on their school expenses by going to a super focused school and skipping most of the classes they are never going to need or use.

3. Hoping to be an inspired entrepreneur

This third and final group is the one that really speaks to me. These people are the entrepreneurial sprits that execute on new ideas by starting new business and taking risks.

Entrepreneurs I feel are the least served by putting down serious money and being saddled with debt for an education.

Having been through the ringer so to speak in a 4 year program (which was wicked fun), and then trying my hand at the corporate world (I made it 9 months before I was ready to claw my face off.. needless to say I jumped ship to do my own thing).

I’d have to say that if the thought of running with a lean team to build something cool gets you going, then maybe taking the risk on running your own business is a better bet.

Think about it, if the average student who would of went to school for upwards of 70k (at a public school, which is the current prediction last I checked) and instead spent that on smart moves in building real marketplace value they could have amazingly different returns. They don’t wait for someone to make a decision and hire them, which they’d probably hate anyway.. instead they don’t ask for permission, they just change things.

What’s the worst that could really happen? Even if you blow the same amount as tuition, in my opinion you’d still have more at the end of the run than you would at the end of a college degree.

You’d have tangible experiences and would have learned, first hand what does and doesn’t work so you can avoid those mistakes when it comes to running things for someone else.

In the new order of things, most people are only going to care about experience – the kind of experience you can only get by doing instead of listening.

What’s one way almost everyone tells you is a great way to get links and attention?

Guest posting! But it’s a ton of work.

There’s usually big process in approaching people to let you write excellent content for them. It’s a bunch of back and forth that I want to try and minimize, and I’d also like to have a fresh perspective for my readers to benefit from.

So if you’d be interested in having your content on The College Startup, simply register by clicking here, then send an email to travis [at] contestdomination [dot] com with a link to your post along with a good picture selection.

Hopefully we can all benefit from this open invitation.

It’s pretty typical for people in the “Internet marketing world” to basically just try to out market each other, and we have to work so incredibly hard to try and stay ahead of the game.

To make matters worse every time we find something that works, it has an expiration date on it before other marketers take noticed and copy you. Which seems fine until you realize that people desensitize to ANYTHING when they see it over and over so everyone’s effectiveness goes down in the long run.

But what happens when you take those skills and put it to work for people who have been sticking to the old rules of engagement?

I recently did just that for one of my favorite car blogs, AskaVWSalesGuy.com who had recently just been banned from AdSense for the POTENTIAL of invalid clicks, even though no bad traffic had been reported.

Jay, the guy who runs the blog had put out a call for sponsors but I knew I’d be able to help him build a real asset through his LIST instead of living and dying off of ad revenue.

Simply Copying What Works

As you can see from the image above, I took what was working quite well with this blog and applied to his content.

Without using any light boxes etc I was able to start collecting leads for him immediately. We used the standard feature box and sidebar opt-in, but a few other places account for nearly 40% of his leads right now too.

The “post footer” opt-in (which also shows up after 3 main posts on the home page) and his about page are hot zones for leads. The about page is probably the most overlooked area for putting a call to action for people to sign-up for your newsletter.

I think I literally spent 5 minutes start to finish creating his about page, dropped in an image and an opt-in and now it’s 20%+ of all opt-ins. Crazy returns.

Explosive Opt-ins

As I mentioned above, he quickly went from NO list at all to getting tons of opt-ins literally overnight. So what’s up?

Well, Jay had been a persistent blogger since 2009 following the old school rules of engagement and success. He blogged frequently but more important consistently!

All that content makes him an authority to Google because he has such a breadth of content (roughly 800 posts) all about VW vehicles without duplicating much content at all. Even though his posts are short, they deliver the kind of content his users are looking for and therefore he has low bounce rates too.

While any site you add opt-ins on see a less than natural opt-in curve to start, I’m confident that with the mix of new readers he gets every day from his massive number of back links and organic traffic (these are notably parallel for traffic) that he will continue to get a lot of fresh faces on his list and in no time will have a massive, laser focused list.

Diamond in the Rough

It’s rare to find these kinds of sites, where someone has plugged along for so long consistently simply because they loved what they did without any expectation of financial return.

I offered to help turn it into an asset that he can monetize without being annoying because I was afraid that with him losing AdSense he might not be willing to keep up his consistently and I selfishly liked his blog

This is also a nice reminder, that if you are just into blogging for the money instead of for the love of whatever you are talking about then you are in the wrong industry and need to find a new job because it’s likely never going to work.

I love working with people I meet through The College Startup, but I’ve always felt like something was missing.

People either love or hate forums, but I always thought it would make a welcome addition to the community here. And while I had played around with countless solutions they all seemed to more or less suck.. a lot.

Finally, I found bbPress (after it had gone through many updates that seemed pretty cool). However, it had some glaring issues running on Thesis that were complete show stoppers until a wise blogger created a fix (thread linked here).

After having a fix for the last thing standing in my way I’m pleased to bring you the Internet marketing forum section of TheCollegeStartup!

If you want to check it out, keep in mind it’s brand new but you can go here. To get started you are going to need to register with this site first so you have an account, which can be done by registering here.

Looking forward to see what you guys do with it and how you can help each other. I’ll personally be there in there too answering questions when I can.

This is a guest post by Matt Smith. Matt (@MattASmitty) is an online sales and marketing dude. Currently Matt runs BusinessPirate.com, which teaches you how to build your own video course business.

So you want to be an online marketer? The dreams of controlling a million person email list and having thousands of consumers visiting your site daily. Ahh how sweet it sounds

Before you get too excited let me tell you one certainty I have uncovered regarding online marketing: online marketing is all about partnerships and business development.

The online marketing world really revolves around partnerships, business development deals, and relationships. (we are NOT talking about advertising here)

How do you get your site featured on TechCrunch or Mashable?

I bet having a personal relationship with the editor would help. I am not saying that all high profile tech news sites only cover people they know. What I am saying is the better your relationship with the publisher the higher the probability that they will cover you.

How do you get a publisher to cover and link to you? A give-away is a fantastic tactic. Reach out to the site owner and offer to give free product to his readers. Ideally you team up on a simply Twitter and comment contest.

Readers tweet a predetermined message and comment on the giveaway post to be entered in the contest. Both you and the partner benefit from this exposure.

To setup a giveaway like this you have to essentially sell the partner on the giveaway. There is nothing fancy or challenging about setting up this promo it just requires manning up and pitching publishers.

If the product you are giving away is solid then this makes the entire process much easier. Please don’t try and give-away a crappy product. This makes you look like a cheapskate!

Another hot example is to run a contest with WordPress using Contest Domination. Buy the plugin, install it, and pick an epic prize. Then partner up with a publisher who has some serious reach. You and the partner promote the contest through your channels and BOOM you get a ton of emails via the Contest Domination promo. Your sales/marketing hustle helps you build your email list!

Now can you see why I say online marketing is really about business development and sales? Giveaways and contests are really mini bizdev deals. You are partnering with the publisher.

Yes this is marketing but to set it up requires sales hustle. Another great example of a bizdev marketing partnership is utilizing someone else’s email list.

Promoting your product to 100,000 people via email is a guaranteed way to generate some serious sales. Too bad you have 39 people on your email list.

Well get creative and try to leverage somebody else’s list. Reach out the partner and tell them you’d like to offer his list some amazing free goodies.

Give-away free stuff to this email list in order to a) convert them to your email list b) get them familiar with your product c) try to upsell them more stuff.

Leveraging a 3rd party email list is a much bigger bizdev marketing deal but it is super powerful. A traditional giveaway could lead to a few hundred hits but leveraging the right email list could lead to a few hundred sales!

The final example of a bizdev marketing deal is guest posting. You are essentially pitching someone to post your content on their blog. This still requires the online marketer to man up and make it rain.

In summary, online marketing requires sales hustle and relationship building. To be a top notch online marketer in 2012 you need to be a badass salesman.

I have a point of contention with the way many people approach online marketing.

There appears to be an arms race to the number of likes, follows and blog page views with little regard to what they mean.

Let me explain, there are many services out there that will email a crazy large database or pay convince people to connect with your social profiles so that you can admire how popular you are.

Even if these new likes, followers and page views are REAL (let’s not even get into the world of bot traffic) there is still a HUGE problem. All of these visitors and new social connections don’t mean ANYTHING unless they are targeted and filtered down to be qualified buyers.

Now I’m not talking about constantly pitching your audience, or needing to generate revenue out of them immediately as if they were just some cog in your wheelhouse. What I’m talking about though is getting the attention of the RIGHT people instead of just ANY people – a notable difference that seems to be overlooked too often.

Getting the right people

I’d rather have 1,000 decision makers and buyers engage with my content than 100 million non-buying traffic.

Unless you are simply in the business of selling ad space on an impression basis (which wouldn’t sustain for long with non-buyers), then you should want the exact same thing for anything you do.

A great example of people approaching their business backwards is the deep seated desire for tech startups to get on TechCrunch. If you privately ask any of them, they will tell you two things.

1. It’s not nearly as much traffic as you think you’re going to get
2. The conversion rate of sign-ups (even to a free product, but even worse with a paid product) are typically garbage

“How could this be?” you might ask yourself. After all, isn’t the demographic of such a site laser targeted with decision makers who can make or break your business?

A few of them, sure. But most of the people who spend a ton of time on TechCrunch are there because they want to be just another scrappy (read: broke) entrepreneur and likely aren’t in your target demographic anyway.

How’s that for a gotcha?

Sure they get a TON of traffic, but there are much more effective ways of building a business filled with qualified customers.

The code of qualification

So now you are probably on board with the idea that a smaller audience who is highly engaged and ready for you to solve their problems is more useful and effective non-targeted/non-qualified users.

Now your problem isn’t just “how do I increase the number of visitors I get”, but rather “how do I qualify my traffic and make it profitable”.

Here is the general forumla/code I use when trying to decipher what kind of value my traffic has and turning them into loyal customers.

1. Remove all the distractions and have a clear call to action.

Many blogs and company websites have the same problem: too much going on.

Simplicity is golden when you have just a few seconds to earn a prospects attention. Don’t waste it with your Twitter feed.

Decide (with confidence) what the primary and secondary things you want someone to do when first engaging with your content and stick to it in that priority.

(Example: Priority 1, Opt-in to a newsletter. Priority 2, Get them to read a particularly popular piece of content)

2. Capture the lead with a compelling offer your ideal customer would go crazy for.

It’s like beating a dead horse but some people still don’t get it. A targeted email list is key to building an asset online.

There are many services out there, I personally love what Aweber has to offer in terms of features & price.

Give your audience a reason to give your their email. Perhaps it’s for more great content, or in exchange for an eBook you wrote or free download you have to offer.

3. Write amazingly useful content that solves most of the problems your customer has.

Do you have any idea why “warm” traffic that already knows you converts infinitely better than “cold” traffic from somewhere else?

Because “warm” traffic trusts you and has learned a thing or two from you before.

It’s really that simple folks, create something unique that speaks to your audience and they will thank you for it in the form of joining your email list, attending webinars and more importantly buying what you have to offer when it solves their problems.

If you give people what they want and solve their problems, marketing is actually pretty easy.

4. Offer a speedier solution for a specific problem that costs at least $7.

After you’ve lured the right audience by creating the right content and the right offer the hardest work has been done.

You’ve gone the extra mile to get a users attention, congratulations. Now how do convert that brief moment of attention into an actual customer?

There is an interesting little threshold I’ve found with the way humans behave and I’m going to let you in on the little secret.

If you can convince a lead to spend at least $7, you can very likely earn their business for just about anything you offer as long as it’s a quality offering.

Make sure that in-between offers and launches that you continue to give them awesome value but that’s the basis of success.

Summary

Qualify a lead by leading them down a very targeted path and get them to open their wallets for at least a $7 purchase and the rest simply doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about the opt-outs of your non-buyers, you don’t want them holding you back anyway.

You should only care about earning the continued support of your customers not the reader only web traffic.

So what are you waiting for? Go clean up your call to action and build a list with Aweber.