Internet Marketing

Creative Ways To Reduce Your Bounce Rate

by Melvin · Aug 17, 2011

As a blogger, its one of our goals to try to reduce our blog’s bounce rate. Of course, we all want to have people read our stuff and if possible stay on our site for a longer period of time. And do take note that its not just about staying on our blog doing nothing, its about them staying on our site but reading various content from us.

In this blog entry, I’ll discuss different ways on how we as a blogger can reduce our blog’s bounce rate.

What is Bounce Rate?

According to Google themselves, bounce rate is simply just the percentage of single or one-page visits on your site. This is also when a visitor exits on the same page as they entered. So as an example, if you visited this post and then left my blog through this post, you will be considered as a user who ‘bounced’ from my blog.

A very high bounce rate is indicative of various things like a).incorrect sets of audience for your site, b).poor content on your end and etc. So generally if you’re having a very high bounce rate, then you must be concerned that you’re falling into one of those two things I mentioned.

And you can read the following tips below on how you can reduce bounce rate on your site.

Ways to Reduce Bounce Rate

1. Have a landing page

I have been preaching on this method ever since and it seems that lots of bloggers don’t really understand the value of it. I’ve written a post on how using a landing page can increase your traffic but more importantly by using one, you are allowing yourself to attract the right people for your blog.

Think about it, a visitor is more likely to stay and navigate if he is directed to a specific landing page rather than straight to the homepage. Why would we want them to read our stuff more? We want to prove that we’re worth reading of course and that we know what we’re talking about.

2. Eliminate annoying elements

If you think about it, most people who navigate away from your site do it very quickly. Most of time its as quick as less than 10 seconds. There are various reasons for this but by analyzing it yourself, its more likely because they are annoyed on your site as a whole.

Most people don’t like ads, or they don’t like those lightbox popups. Some of them don’t like the sliders and all the fancy stuff. Obviously its hard to please everyone but you should at least try to please the majority. Easiest solution for this is to try minimizing your blog elements.

3. Write good content

Visitors don’t just land on your homepage or designated landing page. Most of the times they land on the specific blog post or article. With this, its very important to write good content to be able to persuade first time visitors to stay more and read more. You can do a simple test and compare your crappy posts from your best posts. You can easily spot the difference in bounce rate and see that your visitors stay with good content. Pretty fundamental tip!

4. Improve Loading Times

I am guilty of this myself. I used to sport themes before that load horribly slow due to lots of javascript stuff. As a result, lots of my readers probably just went away.

Make sure to work on always improving loading speed of your site. Check with Google Webmaster Central Site Performance Tool to see if your site is loading quick enough to satisfy the majority.

5. Minimize External Links

As bloggers, we’re naturally aren’t too shabby to hand out links to other bloggers. Its definitely not bad to give link loves but it sometimes has its own disadvantages and one of those is people going away from your own content. Another is diluting your pagerank although if you know me, I don’t really care that much about search benefits.

So just try to limit linking externally to other sites as it may be one of the reasons why your bounce rate is high.

Conclusion

Just like anything else, bounce rate is just a metric. I am always a proponent of studying your numbers and tweaking based on what it reflects. But still, you must never ever dwell too much on it. Don’t look at your bounce rate stats every 6 hours or so as it can obviously hamper your focus and productivity.

Personally, I do analyze my bounce rate a lot and do the necessary things that I think can help me out more in the long run. How about you? What’s your bounce rate and what’s your best tip to reduce it?

Is Lightbox Popup Still Effective For Marketing?

by Melvin · Jul 19, 2011

If you’ve been reading blogs ever since like me, then you probably know that the use of popup lightbox is widely popular. The growth of blogs switching to it and using it has been enormous over the past year and more and more people seemed to be convinced into using it themselves.

But is it still worth using it? That’s my question. Obviously, the use of popup lightbox has something to do with marketing (and ‘psychology’ for some) since some bloggers are reporting a ridiculous increase in conversions by using it. So logically, when people start using the same thing over and over, it becomes saturated and less effective.

What’s a Lightbox Popup?

Lightbox is actually a programming term which is a javascript application used to display images using modal dialogs. In internet marketing, its more of popup that contains something that’s being marketed to the blog’s audience. It could be a form where users can enter their email to subscribe to newsletter, an advertisement or simply just a message that you want to deliver. The idea with it is that its simple, yet elegant enough to capture the attention of the readers.

Before, most blogs are just using it to display pictures from their galleries but now it has become more than just that.

Here are some of the screenshots I’ve taken from some blogs in the internet marketing industry:

Those popups appear when you visit their blog. The behavior is that these lightbox popups would take the focus by putting itself on top of any other elements in the blog. Its highly customizable though. Some bloggers have it appear all the time in the homepage while some just prefer to display it once on first time visitors.

What I think of Lightbox Popups

For a fact, I’ve used lightbox popups before and I even used it here in this blog. I removed it because some of my users were complaining that its kind of obtrusive and they suggested that it might be harming user experience.I listened to them and took it off.

I know a lot of my peers are using it and are reporting decent and better conversions as oppose to not using one. But bare in mind, they’re promoting a heavily marketed product too that I think is widely popular.

I haven’t really had time tracking my conversions closely so I can’t speak that much. But personally I’m thinking that lightbox popups are becoming overused which leads me to think that it ‘might’ not be worth using it anymore. Maybe just like the Amazon orange button when it first started and now its not converting at all anymore. But what do you think?

Google Plus. That Damn Thing

by Melvin · Jul 13, 2011

I know its too late now to post about what Google Plus is and what I think about it but screw it, I’m gonna post about Google Plus anyway. 🙂

Google Plus was launched last June 28 although it was just like a week after before i got aware of it. Truth is it was just this Saturday that I got an account with it thanks to a very very beautiful lady named Pao (she gave me an invite). So I started using it and exploring it and quite frankly, its confusing. I mean just imagine how its so different coming from a platform like Facebook and then moving on to Google Plus and then thinking it just works like Facebook.

Anyway here’s my Google Plus account and you’re free to add me up if you think I deserve it. 😉 As of writing this blog entry, its already my fourth day using Google+ and I can definitely see its potential and how its so different from Facebook and Twitter as far as usability and worthiness are concern, yet they’re on the same plate when talking about ease of use. I see it as a combination of Facebook and Twitter plus LinkedIn. You can pretty much imagine it as something like Facebook yet with a professional ‘semi-corporate’ touch. With that, I don’t really see myself posting as often as I do on Twitter/Facebook as with Google Plus.

Google Plus for Internet Marketers

Well a lot of marketers and bloggers have already expressed their thoughts on how they can use Google Plus to market more and tap into a more “confined” audience. I would say I can’t agree no more.

Google Plus made it a lot easier to connect to the right people/demographics with the use of circles w/c is basically just like groups. The idea is that when you add people, you are allowed to place them inside these circles. So if 10 of these people are family members, then obviously I would place them inside the family circle and so on for the other groups.

With this you can ‘segment’ people that you are following and are following you and then share to them accordingly. Let’s say I’m voicing in something about internet marketing or a make money online tip, then what I will do is simply just allow people in that ‘circle’ to see it. The same way when you go personal and you don’t want your customers to see what you’re violent ramblings are. Now bare in mind that this is possible to when using Facebook, only that Google Plus has done a good job making this feature much more intuitive.

With that in mind, I’m seeing this tool as something that could potentially be in the same level as emails as far as marketing is concern. Because I feel that right now we’re getting into this point that a lot of people are getting more and more tired of the ‘usual’ marketing stuff and that they’re slowly tuning it out.

So does that mean Google Plus will be a good way to tap into a slightly different way to reach out and market to people? Absolutely! What’s remains unseen is how effective and worthy it could be since right now Google themselves are limiting people who can join and obviously they’re not gonna let marketers take over Google Plus. Google’s definitely not the easiest company to game with.

That’s my take with Google Plus and how it could impact us overall. How about you, what do you think of it? Perhaps, it might be a better idea to add me to Google Plus so I can test it out thoroughly and then let you know my findings. 🙂

Image credit goes to Dream Grow

Give Your Blog A Facelift!

by Melvin · Jul 10, 2011

Starting a blog is the simplest part of the process, but where it becomes difficult is holding onto the following that you have built. With so many people out there blogging, it’s hard to stand out from the white noise of the blogosphere. Many times it’s due to no fault of the blogger and more to do with the competition and viewers wanting something fresh and new. If you’ve noticed a lagging readership and a following that’s dwindling, consider giving your blog a facelift.

Reviving Old Posts

You’ve likely put a lot of resources in time and effort into coming up with each post. Though you’ve used them in the past, if the material is relevant, consider going back through your archives and pulling from the wealth of information that you’ve already offered to past readers. If it was a topical posting, then you probably should consider the shelf-life of it, but there’s no reason why good content shouldn’t continue to work for you. You don’t have to repurpose them and try and pass them off as fresh material. Use Tweet Old Posts. It might end up getting you some extra attention from people who didn’t follow you a year or two ago. The idea is to introduce new readers to older work. You might find that re-posting an article will get more traffic than when you were first starting out.

Socializing

We all know the power of social networking and when you put the power of information in the hands of people, it spreads like wildfire. It’s like taking the pulse of a demographic by getting their opinions trough something like a survey. Companies like Survey Head get in touch with people to see how relevant the content is. You want to be relevant to people and you should expose people to you content and allow the to freely react. By allowing readers the tools, on your site, to share your work with others you’re not only connecting to them but also their networks. It all snowballs from there. Tools like the Facebook Like feature are all about sharing information and making easier for people to interact and share content. Encourage readers to use these features and you’ll be amazed at what it will do for you numbers.

Guest Blogging

This approach works very similarly to social network. It is, in fact, a form of networking. Just as Facebook puts you in touch with a greater readership, making connections in the blogosphere could prove most beneficial for your success. You may have an excellent approach and opinion but you should realize that yours isn’t the only one. Consider this as a kind of free PR. By writing on other blogs as a guest, you’re getting your personality out there and connecting to an entirely new network of users that might not have otherwise ever heard about you. You’re trying to sell yourself and neglecting this avenue is a bad choice. You should also be commenting on other blogs. This is not a waste of time. Stay up to date and active in the blogosphere.

Try some of these approaches and try not to get disheartened. If you’ve been contemplating giving up because you’re just not seeing the excuse to keep it going, use some of these devices and see how it works. It might be just the thing you need to revitalize you lagging numbers and get your blog noticed.

Making Money Blogging What You Love

by Melvin · Apr 17, 2011

In a recent local blogging conference that I attended, I noticed that most bloggers here blog about things that they genuinely love and like. What I mean there is that they don’t blog about making money or blog about something that they would get easily bored. And of course that is always a good sign.

Just like majority of bloggers attending blogging conferences, these people want to make money with their blogs. In fact, maybe that’s a big reason why they attend conferences, to learn how to make money while blogging about something that they love.

But the question is, can you really make money blogging about what you love?

Two Part Answer

Yes

The first answer is yes, its possible. Look at a lot of famous bloggers out there. Darren Rowse for instance, loves photography so he has a blog with and he makes money. So that’s writing and blogging on a topic that he really feels good about. Look at the tech bloggers out there, they get a lot of free stuff because they write about technology. And writing for them isn’t hard at all since this is what they live and breath.

Another good example is myself. I blog about internet marketing and blogging and I make some money out of this blog too yet I really love to do internet marketing. I used to blog about basketball because I have passion for it and I made some money on that blog too. So the first of the two part answer is yes, it’s possible.

No

Obviously the second answer to the question is no (lol, its either yes or no so it shouldn’t be hard you to guess it ). One component that enables bloggers to make money from their blogs is the size of the market that they’re into. Imagine, most money is made because of things like advertising and selling products and stuff. And that only becomes possible when there’s enough people interested in that area/niche.

Take a look at the niches that we mentioned above. Internet marketing, technology, photography, making money online. Obviously what’s common with them is that a lot of people are looking for information about them. They’re scouring like mad people trying to find stuff to read regarding those things. For the most part, people are willing to spend for what they’re looking for! And when that’s the case, the thing that we love becomes profitable.

Now unfortunately it’s not a general rule which means it doesn’t apply to everything. Some people have interest in blogging about their own personal ramblings and they love to write about it. Problem is that’s not something that a lot of people are interested to so the size of the market is very slim and money is hard to make. Some others like to talk about let’s say naruto or some japanese anime. Maybe a good number of people are into the same thing but the monetization model that they can use is very limited thus very little can be made as well. Among all that, the size of the market is just one of the factors (but a very big factor to consider) that we must consider.

So that’s it. As what most people teach, the money can be made in blogging by finding the intercept between things that you care and things that enough people are interested too so that you’re not left out alone when you started blogging yourself. Not the most pleasing thing to hear but that’s how bloggers make good money out of doing something that they like.

I wanna know your opinion about. What do you think?

Studying How Internet Marketers Roll with Launches

by Melvin · Mar 12, 2011

If you’ve been following our industry lately, you probably have noticed the buzz around this thing called the Software System. I didn’t buy it nor am I against it. And in fact, I’m not here to review it or give my take on it. The reason why I opened that up is to study how internet marketers act or roll with these big-time launches by their industry friends and business partners.

It’s All About Affiliate Marketing

A long time ago, I wrote a post called Affiliate Marketing in blogs where I discussed that unlike in PPC-CPA space, affiliate marketing in blogs is all about building relationships and recommending products that are really really congruent not just with the market, but with their specific needs.

So for example, you can’t just promote a product about making money online in a making money online market. You have to dig deeper into that and find their inner needs. Is it making money through memberships? or about blogging? product launches? This just doesn’t apply to blogs, it applies to people with lists as well.

As you can see, you will get nowhere when you don’t identify the inner needs and desire of your market. With this, you really really have to be specific with your offer.

The Software System Launch

First and foremost, I would like to give this disclaimer that I’m not a product launch guru. I really am not that’s why I constantly watch and study different things. What I’m going to outline here is just all my 2 cents.

Obviously the software system isn’t your typical “make money on the internet” kind of hype. It focuses on creating softwares and selling them to a bunch of people and making tons of money. During that launch guys like John Chow, Jeremy Schoemoney, Jeff Walker, Frank Kern and a bunch of smaller marketers and bloggers jumped on the bandwagon and promoted it. For this post, I would be using the big 4 mentioned above.

During the period, these guys were emailing people like crazy and for almost everyday (twice a day for Kern for instance). Now let’s (briefly) take a look at some of their emails during the launch day:

John Chow’s Offer:

Jeff Walker’s offer:

Shoe’s offer:

Kern’s offer:

Noticed the same patterns in their emails on that launch day? Hmm, interesting…

Incentivization – the art of bribing

As funny as it may sound, all of them (and some more others) have this kind of a bribe to further more try to convince their readers to purchase UNDER their link. And all of them are claiming that by spending $2700 on that product, they would get over that price value in return. How unreal could that possibly be? Can I buy a Kia and get an Audi in return?

I know it sounds crazy but incentivization is a big part in launches and also a big reason why marketers (both the owner and the affiliate) make so much money. The incent value that they’re giving away is just the “perceived value”, not the real price tag but since a lot of smart marketers have built good communities around them, most people trust them and believe that they’re really getting a good value for the amount they’re spending (w/c maybe is true or maybe not).

So I think that’s the important thing to learn here. People’s averseness (means resisting) to buy something online these days makes it much harder for us, marketers to go out and sell our own stuff w/o giving away a lot in return. It also speaks on how crucial relationship building is in this type of business since people obviously won’t buy from you and anything you recommend, unless they trust you and see you as a prominent person in your market.

This trend started a long time ago and I believe it would only continue for a very long period of time. As an internet marketer and/or blogger, are you in this game too?

Minimizing Blog Elements and Why Should

by Melvin · Mar 5, 2011

One of the more noticeable changes in my recent blog redesign is that there are way fewer elements than ever. The 2.0 version of the blog before was probably the most cluttered design I ever had and even though I really, really like it, I realized that there really isn’t that much use for most of the elements in there. Heck that design even had 2 sidebars in it and a bunch of free space to play with.

I’m not sure if bloggers are aware but minimizing some of the elements is really the way to go. I would use this blog as an example. Before, I used to have so many elements and widgets on the sidebar, footer, header and etc. For instance, I had those recent readers widget, that mini navigator plugin, a bunch of list of links and a whole lot of redundancies (duplicate elements etc.). Then I evaluated, am I really using these elements? Do I benefit from putting some of it here and there? Or am I just wasting some space?

Obviously the easy answer is yes, I’m just wasting space. A recent reader widget is nothing but a widget to show some flair, a mini navigator plugin is a redundancy since users can navigate themselves using the menu bar, excessive number of ad zones also harm since no one’s really buying them. Aside from that I looked at my stats using a bunch of my tracking tools and I saw that users don’t really use most of the elements that I put in the blog. The behavior of most of my readers is that they check out a post or two and then comment and then leave. No one’s looking at this, no one’s clicking there and etc.

To add to that, I looked into my Google Webmaster Central and saw that my blog’s loading time is really slow (as slow as John Chow’s blog, lol). Those things have strongly convinced me that a change is needed.

Cut Out Some Elements!

So that’s my advice to you. Look, as an average web surfer/reader/lurker, we can only do so much on one’s site. I occasionally go to NBA.com but do I really use all of their features there? No, but NBA is an exception since its a large website and is widely visited by a lot of people all over the globe. But us bloggers? I know we all want to keep people browsing and staying for awhile but trust me, that’s not the way to go.

Another factor is loading time which I mentioned above. I live here in Asia and I know our internet here is just sub par comparing to countries like say US or Europe. If you have all those elements and 50% of your traffic is coming from a country that has a mediocre internet connection then that would give a bad user experience.

If those factors still don’t convince you then just remember the things I mentioned above. You have this, this and this in your sidebar and this in your footer. Ask yourself a question. What is this for? Do I benefit from it or does my readers benefit from this? Does it fit in well with my branding and stuff like that? Why not run some advance tracking tools on your blog to see if your readers are really noticing and using those things?

Believe it or not, I still feel that I need to remove some more elements here in this blog. I need to fill in some spots (dang I have four subfooters!) but I have to balance that with what I want and what I don’t want.

Lastly, look at some of the cluttered popular blogs around. Most of them made some redesigns recently and one thing to notice is that they have undergone a major revamp by removing things that they no longer need and by putting up a cleaner design. How about you? Are you ready to cut down the clutter and excess?