How to Make Your Internet Marketing Work

by Charlie Cook
©2007 In Mind Communications, LLC, all rights reserved.

"This past week one of my web pages started getting ten times the usual number of visitors but hasn’t generated a single sale. What do I do?" - Janet

While I was away in Scotland a couple of weeks ago, Janet called from Salt Lake City and she called again the day I returned. It turned out an affiliate partner had given one of her web pages top exposure on their site, and as a result she was getting a ton of traffic to the targeted page. But none of it was making her any money and she was frustrated big time.

Do you own or market a web site? What do you think is the most important factor in making your site a financial success?

If you guessed that the answer is getting more people to your site, you’d have lots of company. The conventional wisdom is that you put up a web site and then try to get a top search engine listing or use your advertising campaign to bring in visitors. The number of visitors you bring in should determine the amount of money you make.

Want to know the truth about internet marketing?

A top search engine position or a link from an affiliate can get a high volume of traffic to your site, but there isn’t a direct correlation between traffic and sales.

Getting visitors to your site is important, but it’s not traffic that ultimately matters. What does matter is how much of that traffic you actually sell to; the percentage of visitors you convert to buyers. The conversion rate of each page on your site determines whether you have a profitable web site or just another internet marketing expense with minimal returns.

Frustrated with the lack of sales from your site?  Ready to find out how to start selling more? Discover how to make your site convert more visitors to buyers with this link >>

Want to see a great example of a site that gets tons of traffic but hardly pays its own way? I can pick on this web site because it’s one of my own.

Ten years ago I put up my first site, www.newsletteraccess.com. Today you can find it in the number one or two spot on Google for ‘newsletter’ or ‘newsletters’, and it enjoys top positioning for a whole host of related keywords. As a result, the site gets lots of traffic. That should be good news but…

Actually, I’m embarrassed by this long-neglected site. www.newsletteraccess.com gets 40 to 45,000 visitors each month, but very few are converted to paying clients. The site makes some money but could do much better, given the number of visitors.

The problem? Like all too many sites on the web it was planned and designed without an understanding of how to convert traffic to clients.

If you’re a subscriber to this newsletter, ‘More Business’, you know that my current site is www.marketingforsuccess.com. This site enjoys many top ten search engine listings as well as hundreds of links from other sites. As a result, it gets about the same amount of traffic as www.newsletteraccess.com.

But there is a big difference…

Marketingforsuccess.com generates 40-50 times more revenue because it’s written and designed to convert visitors into clients. These two sites have very similar amounts of traffic, but one makes lots of money and the other doesn’t. Surprised by the difference?

You can sell more, even with the existing traffic your site is getting!

Many web site owners give up on their sites prematurely because they don’t have a top search engine listing. But you can make more sales with the same amount of traffic you’re getting now by converting more site visitors to paying customers. Find out how. Use this link to claim your copy Creating Web Sites That Sell >>

Janet had signed on with me to work on lead conversion on her website earlier this year. I had showed her how to organize the page layout and rewrite the copy to grab visitors’ attention and get them interested in her products and services. I was, to say the least, a little concerned when she left me a message saying that her web page wasn’t converting visitors to clients after the work we’d done.

Turns out that the web page in question was one we hadn’t revised. She went on to tell me that the reason she was so frustrated was that the pages modified with my input had increased their conversion rates by 400%. She knew that the page that was getting a high volume of referral traffic could do the same with the right changes.

Have you been worrying about getting traffic to your site? Stop! This shouldn’t be your first web site marketing priority.

Before you spend another dime on search engine positioning or pay-per-click ads to get visitors to your web site, do yourself a favor and find out how to convert more of the people who come to your site into paying clients and customers.

Once you have a site that turns visitors into cash, you can begin to spend time and money to drive traffic to your website. Of course, when your site converts more visitors to sales, you’ll have more money to spend on online advertising on hiring a top SEO firm.

Ready to turn more visitors to your web site into cash? It’s not going to happen by magic or if you wait another week.

Discover the insider secrets to making your web site convert prospects into buyers, and make your site’s profits grow. Use this link to claim your copy of Creating Web Sites That Sell >