Tuesday, May 31, 2011

How to cash in on Hot Topics - Creating a great "sales" page

I did indeed tell you I am going to share secrets with you, but I dont think I can share secrets with you, unless I explain how these "secrets" work. It does wind me up those wonderful tutorials that say do this this and this, and you will be sucessful, But maybe they only give you how to find keywords, okay so once you have your keywords what then do you do.

I love writing and especially creative writing, however as yourselves and I know, these do not make big sales, So I try to have a balance, my more serious pages, and then there are my product review pages "sales pages" and I dont mind having them mixed in with my work, as I believe it helps build a good solid reputable foundation, and readers like that. i only ever do product reviews about things that I can or have used, and have indeed found useful, or suggest products that help me. I have found these more successful when I put in a personal recommendation . 

So you make product review pages, and still cant sell a thing. Sometimes we can even over complicate things....and make it more difficult than we should.

So I am going to take you through the full process, from starting with an idea. To publishing, and to maximising publicity.
Many of people online want to know how to make sales, what is the secret? We all strive to make that sale. We get so worked up about keyword research and where to post our pages for marketing so the search engines find us that sometimes we just look past eactly what people are looking for and end up makeing it "too technical" that our page focus disappears. We end up with no sales, and wonder why our customer who is looking for that item get bored and clicks to another page.
What about the "I will not bother doing that as there are already pages out there" ....how many timesw have you thought, "wish I had done that" and moved onto find your next topic? Well the page I am going to share with you today, is indeed one that I was actually reluctant to make, due to the amount of other related pages out there, however a chance day out made me change my mind as I spotted something, stopped to take a picture, and then I spoke to the owner, who had come out to ask why I was taking a picture? and they told me how hard a job they had "finding" the Decorations.

So I am going to reveal a page, that made sales in 2weeks, and actually still makes the odd sale today, even though the event is over.

So what hot topic did I jump on? The Royal Wedding of Course.
Now this was a local pub of ours, and when we passed it I could not resist stopping and taking a photo. It was so over the Top for a little country pub, we thought it hysterical. I knew the owner who came out to chat with me, and told me how hard it had been to eventually find the decorations online.

 As I went on my way home I saw many signs out for Royal Wedding Garden parties. I went onto Amazon who I am an affiliate from. And yes there indeed after a bit of searching I found the most outragous banners flags, party masks.
So
I created a page, now these were indeed ofr the UK market, however I also knew Amazon.com US had these items, so I also put a "text" link onto this page, for my US customers. (this is very important to note, as you will find out why later!)

I knew this was going to be a hot topic, and all the available URLS were already snapped up, and I decided NOT to look at my competition, as this can put pressure on your sometimes, (this is okay to do this for a hot Topic, but not recommended for a longer term page that you will work on and tweak)
So I grabbed the best URL, which was Garden Party Decorations....

This was more for fun. I wrote my introduction, with no keyword investigation, no traffic analysis, nothing....I was just writing a page about my mum having a Garden Party for the Royal wedding and I was in charge of finding the Garden decoration. This was indeed true.

I included silly Face Masks of the Royal couple,  Cake toppers, flags, banners....totally over the top.
i published this, posted in the SquidU forum to give the community a laugh, and left it.

So lets re-cap, No keyword research, No promotion, No backlinks apart from SquidU. Google traffic started within 12 hours, and never stopped, over 2 weeks you can see nearly 1,000 visitors.
 
This is a screen shot of my monthly traffic for April/May, this is what i would accept as fantastic results for a "hot topic" considering it was a page that just is made to cover a significant event.
  So how did I get traffic, what "marketing did i do to get traffic to my lens. To see this


Google Traffic 1st week 456


Now I did not post the lens on FB, or twitter, what I did was posted the picture of my local pub, as my friends all socialise there, and just said "have you seen what they have done to the local pub?" and put a link to my lens on the end, and just said, check out the cardboard cutouts of Wills and Kate,  this caught like wild fire, and even ended up being printed out by my brothers friend in australia for their office picture board!

but what was even more exciting to see was what happened over at amazon, I had used a "TEXT" link only for US customers.  And this is what I saw from April 1 to May

 Here is Amazon US Affiliates which I set up tracking individual tracking IDs useful for seeing what on page does sell and what does not, so I could monitor, I did not expect this at all considering everything on the page was for UK. Bearing in mind I only included a TET link to the US I sold $528.41 making $31.07, and I dont particularly like boasting and I do not see the point in it, or i would have included the stats for UK...I am sure you can imagine yourself that this was indeed a very worthwhile, hour, and the promotion side of it was fun, or so which I took out of my day to put this page together in. ...lol...because we were talking about a picture, not a "sales" page. My friend did indeed Buy her garden decorations from my page, but I never knew that until after the event, when she uploaded her garden picture onto FB too, saying it was my fault, I made her do it.    With no research, just a photo of something that was funny, and thought it would make a good page, but this photo I took, was what brought in my traffic, I posted on several sites that you could upload funny pictures, like redgage and included my link. (by the way sign up to redgage, and post interesting photos and links and you can make some extra money, may not be a lot but just let it mount up!
This picture is what got shared, not my page.

So what have we learned, sometimes capatilizing on a "Hot Topic" is very worth while. I hear so many times, "oh I didn't do that as someone else has", well do it differently, 
Sometimes taking an alternative route to promotion, finding a funny photo and sharing it, works better than "promoting" yourlink, I must admit I hate promoting my links or my work via FB or twitter to my friends and family, but this was different and fun. 

I do recommend keywords research, and never normally make a page without it, but sometimes just writing about it can work too.
Don't be held back, if you have an idea write about it, I was going to write about the Royal Wedding but put it off as I saw so many wonderful pages dedicated to it already, wonder how much I would have made if I had just made the page when I first thought about it. 

Hot Topics is a great way to cash in on the here and now, and I do like these pages, usually easy to put together, and okay won't last long but work alongside your other pages as you build them up. And you are Making money online. This is the disheartning part of working online, you are making Quality pages, but people who are going to "buy" want to find what they are specifically looking for there and then, and have their credit card in their hands, waiting to "find" their product. We just need to Show them where it is and how they can buy it. 

Do you know how to find hot topics?
The best way for keeping your finger on the pulse is Google Hot Trends
Some I would not touch with a barge pole, however you can watch and see how things start to appear, especially films, realitly TV shows, (you will get a few weekes out of them!) and up and coming pop stars/actors....who will have a continuing career. 
If you read this and found it interesting I would appreciate your feedback, Did this post help you through some frustrations of not making sales, or is there anything else I can explain to you about making sales with  "Hot Topics"

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I do belive there is always someone to thank for my knowledge, and have played a part in my success, now...a lot of to and fro about PotpieGirl but I did indeed buy her One Week Marketing, and this is where I got a "foundation" to niche marketing, I am a learner, I need to learn all the ins and out, yes there was information that I found useless, and there was information I found priceless. I belive in learning the knowledge, and in fact I still to this day recieve her emails, so people find it irritating, I don't I read every one of them, this lady is a successful online marketer doing eactly what you and I want to  do too, so Of course I read them , I may not click on her links, but if it interests me then I will. There may just be something that clicks for me, like jumping on the "Hot Topic Trends" Yes these guys make money from selling their secrets, but sometimes, they give you that little nugget of information that makes it click.










10 comments:

  1. Great post, Lisa. I haven't really worked with Hot Topics yet, but it sounds like it's very well worth looking into it...

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  2. Absoloutely Katie, I certainly don't focus on it, but for the amount of time it takes to whip up a page, to return it can ideed pay off!

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  3. Cool that you made alot of sales! I love it when that happens on my lenses! I did not make a Will and Kate lens. I knew it was popular, but I just did not know what to say about them.

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  4. Lisa I couldn't agree more with you - currently I am enjoying some lenses about a popular video game for kids- it's quite exciting to happen upon some good keywords that are absolutely relevant to current searchers. The lens I linked too is an example. Glad you made a blog, I'm followin' you -:)

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  5. Lisa, you don't make one point you should have - the page that's being produced still has to be of good quality and give punters what they want - the GPD lens had well mixed good products and they were well presented.

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  6. Lisa,
    I am very new to the world of IM and facing a huge learning curve but I have found that if you persevere it all seems to make sense (eventually).
    I created a squidoo account today and happened across this lens. Whilst it is a bit long, it is very informative and a very good read.

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  7. Sorry john for it being a bit long, but it took years for me to learn all this info, so this is the condensed version, you need to do what is said above, If not, then there is no point, there ARE no shortcuts! most new people to internt marketing give up, mostly in frustration at not being able to see the bigger picture, I wish you well on your journey

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  8. Very nice post Liz :)A lot of useful info here..

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  9. Hi, thanks for your submission to Blog Carnival: Blogging: Ninety Seventh edition. Your post is now published:

    http://thatsblog.com/blog-carnival-blogging/blog-carnival-blogging-ninety-seventh-edition

    -ThatsBlog.com

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  10. Excellent advice Lisa,

    Never did Hot Topics, but now considering it.

    Poutine

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