Measuring Traffic – Week 6

Measuring Traffic

The key to managing traffic is to measure – time to build some measuring traffic skills

At Internet Profits we are pushed to track daily traffic. We were taught to build specific tracking links so that we could identify with some precision where traffic is coming from. Now the bean counter in me understands this all very well. Accountants code their accounting systems so that they can analyse their data at a granular level.I have been slowly building this into my link tracking so that I can identify changes in traffic attraction and the way copy converts. The alert accountant picks up changes and takes action. But I am getting ahead of myself.  I also set out last week to start journalling what I have been doing. Well that is not happening just yet though I did spend time while I was on the road making a journal video

And here is the video – excuse the sound quality as I only had the laptop microphone with me. The video is less than 5 minutes as laptop I use only has Jing installed – 5 minute videos are free. I then discover what a pain it is to convert Shockwave videos to MP4 without a converter.

Lessons in Measuring Traffic

Week 5 action plan had a task to set up a new solo ad. I was not totally happy with conversion rates on my first run – just over 20%. Then I saw a post from one of the other Internet Profits partners who was getting conversions over 50%. He shared his landing page which looked a whole lot crisper than mine and was working better than mine. He agreed that I could use it as a base. I use Convertri to build my sales funnels. Convertri has a feature to clone other funnels from a URL. He agreed that I could clone his page. I wanted to test the software out. All the cloning did was copy the background image. I then spent the time to cut and paste across the sample page – made a few changes to make it sufficiently different. I ran a test email through it – it seemed to work as I expected. I then mapped the new landing page across to the blog page I had been using for my last solo ad. All good. Now to set up a new solo ad with the newly redirected blog page. Last time I ran a solo ad, traffic took a few days to get to the promised level of clicks. This time traffic was faster. Solo ad man was telling me what clicks were being delivered. First day, there were no opt-ins. I figured that the clicks were not yet enough to have enough for opt-ins. The campaign finished in a day and I had no opt-ins. Then I went through the layers of the integration. Clicks were coming but no opt-ins. I had not set it up right – a simple error in working with software new to me. Solid IT geek processes would have tested things all the way through.

Now there are lessons in setting up a new landing page too. Run a comparable test with the last landing page that was working. My solo ad platform allows one to put in multiple landing page links – and split the traffic. Had I done that I would have got 20% conversions on half or a quarter of the traffic instead of 32% on all going to nowhere. The sad part is I will never know what opportunity I have missed from those 62 people who signed up but did not get any followup. Now there is another lesson learned – when someone opts in, they get sent immediately to a bridge page – a few people did click the link but nobody converted. That page need works to realign with the new landing page.  I will add that to week 7 tasks

I set out week 6 tasks last time

• Integrate social media traffic: Not decided yet on best avenue. Did some tidy up on Facebook Mark Carrington Business Coach page. Join me there.
• Complete existing email list integration: My existing list has a copywriting base. Part of the grand plan when I started that list was to resell a course from my friend, Pete Godfrey, an Australian copywriter. Pete has just decided to offer a few licences to resell his latest Buyers Frenzy Course. I jumped at the chance as it brings another dimension to the Internet Profits story. It also meant that I could change the approach to integrating the existing lists. What I really like about the model is I now have two funnels to promote which are complementary but also self-standing. I have been burned before by too few baskets for eggs.
• Add a new solo ad. Done. I got better conversions – just have to swallow the mishap and do it again. The new campaign has been accepted and I have solved the opt-in integration problem.
• Start studying another paid ads platform: I will wait for my parallel project before I push this. I want to explore a few avenues other than Facebook. My parallel projects (coffee, drones, cooking) lend themselves to Youtube or Instagram audiences.

Celebrating Success

I travelled down to Canberra for my daughter’s graduation. Graduation ceremonies have been very emotional for me – my own and my 3 children. A few threads came out of the ceremony. The student speaker, an impressive young lady from India, reminded us that knowledge acquired is useless unless one applies it – like the knowledge about how IT systems need to be tested fully before they are implemented. She also had 3 lines of advice

1. Believe in something – a religion, your country, your mum, anything
2. Love yourself
3. Travel – expose yourself to other cultures

For my daughter the advice about knowledge will take some application. You see, she has taken a job in student theatre at a Melbourne university – I am sure knowledge about politics, philosophy and economics will be the heart of life in theatre. Theater is about life and that is what she studied.

Copywriting – more Coming Soon

I started out building my first list using a copywriting business-in-a-box from my friend and Australian copywriter Bret Thomson. One of my other Australian friends, Pete Godfrey, is also a copywriter. I have the resell rights on one of his Blacks Ops Sales Training courses which I have not done anything with. He has just launched his new Buyers Frenzy course and has kindly offered me resell rights. Between these two courses, I now have access to a whole new funnel I can construct on copywriting. I am itching to get my hands on the copy to start promoting and learning how the best copywriters do it. I like Pete Godfrey’s style.  Coming soon. Meanwhile you could grab Bret Thomson’s cheatsheets here – pop your email in and hit send.

Resources

Solo Ads: Traffic For Me is a traffic brokerage service that finds the best solo ad providers. They do all the work to get clean leads to your specification. Explore Traffic For Me – it works

Credit Ads: Guaranteed Solo Mails offers Pro members 8 mailings a month for free with 200 unique viewers guaranteed for each mailing. It also offers range of advertising models which you can buy with cash or credits from viewing mails or ads. It does provide a way to build an advertising budget by reading ads. Use the reading time to learn what copy works to attract you to click a link. Sign up for free

Banner Ads: LeadsLeap works unattended to deliver ads to its members. One can build credits for free ads by reading ads or just pay for a Pro account. It works well for me and delivers a steady trickle of leads unattended. Sign up for free

Grow Twitter Followers: Staged provides a platform for growing Twitter followers, managing engagement with them and sharing content (called stages). Sign up for free to grow your following and try out the content sharing features