SiteSell Blog

Busting Urban Myths About SBI!

Ken's Blog

Over the past decade, SBI! has built a worldwide reputation for enabling people to build profitable online businesses. SBI! has grown from a specialty affiliate product into the only complete e-business building product.

Along the way, it's attracted many urban myths. I'm sure everyone has seen at least one such inaccurate story about SBI!, even repeated by big-name gurus (who are, of course, just repeating what they've read, not actually doing any fact-checking).

I'm also sure many SBIers were initially persuaded not to start with SBI! due to one such myth that they read at the time.

Now, on the one hand...

It's nice to know that mediocre, even "good," products don't attract enough attention to develop urban myths. Still, they can hurt SiteSell's reputation and interfere with sales, which is why we launched...

http://urbanmyths.sitesell.com/

This new landing page covers 15 of the most persistent SBI! urban myths. Some of the most common ones are...

Produce Credible Sales Videos

E-business Tips

You do not need to be Quentin Tarentino to produce a high-quality, credible video. And the results are worth the effort.

Final point... enable your affiliates to send those whom they reach directly to your sales video. They'll thank you!

Could you be communicating more clearly in video? Do it!

A/B Split Testing for Your Google AdSense Ads

Google AdSense & Contextual Advertising

While quick and dirty testing of your Google AdSense ads can give you some answers over a long stretch of time, A/B testing can give you answers in a much shorter period. How? By testing two different formats, colors or placements simultaneously.

How To Do A/B Split Testing

Google has provided some code that will allow you to make a change to the ad you're already running, letting you run two ads, each one appearing 50% of the time. This will give you more accurate data than making changes one after the other.

There are a few things to remember when doing A/B split testing...

Why Do Whiny Webmasters/SEOers Think Google Owes Them a Living?

Ken's Blog

Every now and then, Webmasters start yowling at the moon when their tricks are neutralized by Google, with dramatic results. Their rankings and traffic have dropped dramatically (50-80%). "Help me, Google."

Here's the thing...

While they howl, they rarely give the actual site URL. I mean, if everything I was doing was above board, I'd give my site. Wouldn't you? How else could a group begin to gather data and form conclusions without real sites.

The very few who do give their sites? Well, they're junk -- no content of value. I don't know how they ever managed to fool Google for as long as they did, but the principles outlined in The Tao of SBI! are simply asserting themselves again...

Tricks won't last forever. Actually...

Google AdSense - Test Which Ads Work Best For You

Google AdSense & Contextual Advertising

We've covered various strategies for maximizing your Google AdSense income. But how do you know which ones work best on your site? Experiment and test.

How To Do "Quick and Dirty" Testing

Your testing does not have to be complicated to give you good information. You only need to track two things... the number of impressions, and the CTR. These two numbers will give you all the information you need to make the right choices.

A larger number of impressions will give you more reliable information. And as the CTR increases, the number of impressions needed to make an informed decision decreases.

For example, if you're getting a 5% CTR for one page and 1% for another, you may be able to decide that the increase (or decrease) is accurate and reliable after only 250 impressions. But if you're getting 0.1% CTR vs. 0.15% CTR, you may need 10,000 impressions to be sure (although you would probably want to change BOTH those pages due to the very low CTR).

Placement Strategies for Maximizing Google AdSense Income

Google AdSense & Contextual Advertising

The amount you make per click with Google Adsense can vary tremendously, and so can the actual Click-Through Rate (CTR). Consistently high earnings are possible, if you can manage to keep low-paying ads off your pages. It's a demanding strategic challenge but very do-able.

The following page placement strategies should give you a much greater Click-Through Rate for much less work.

Strategy #1) Draw subtle attention to the presence of the ads through smart positioning and formatting and frequency.

We would all love to increase the CTR. So yes... position AdSense ads most advantageously... and place them up to the maximum of three times per page.

Place an ad where your visitors' eyeballs are most likely to flow. That will vary from page to page, and even according to how each page is structured. Common "best locations"...

• above the fold

• in the flow of the content, and/or

• at the bottom right of a page (giving your visitor a place to go next).

Strategies for Maximizing Google AdSense Income - Part 9

Google AdSense & Contextual Advertising

The last two strategies for maximizing Google AdSense income discuss Interest-based ads and Google's Ad Planner Publisher Center. Don't worry if you never heard about those features. It's easy to participate.

Strategy #13) Consider Interest-based Ads.

If you choose to offer Interest-based Ads (currently, the default is to show these ads), then Google places a cookie on your visitor's browser, and then looks for that cookie every time they visit a site with AdSense ads on it.

If that cookie shows that your visitor is very interested in American football (based on preferences he sets in the Ads Preferences Manager, plus the number of football-related Web sites with AdSense ads, plus the number of football YouTube videos he watches), for example, even though he's visiting your site about green energy, he will see some ads about football. This increases the likelihood that your visitor will click on an ad.

Note, however, that if ads based on your keywords have much better cost-per-click rates, you may want to deactivate this feature. Fewer clicks, each worth more, may be more valuable to you than a lot of low paying clicks.

You'll find the Interest-based Ads preference in the My Account tab after you log into your AdSense account. You must also change your privacy policy to reflect that Google is placing a cookie on your visitors' computers. Even if you opt out of Interest-based Ads, you still need to update your privacy policy.

Tap-A-Tune Test

The other day I watched some of the videos from the SBI! Facebook 15-Second Video Challenge and I was struck not only by how well SBIers "get" SBI!, but by how well they distill the experience, what SBI! means, down to a 15-second message. For example...

http://bit.ly/b1Bp4d

Why was I so intrigued? SBI! is a big product. It's a challenge to explain it so visitors to our sites can understand and believe what SBI! can do for them. That's why I know that it's a major challenge to reduce it all to a 15 second explanation. And yet, SBIers do it so darn well.

I was reminded of what I call the "Tap-A-Tune Test"...

Study Your Customers

E-business Tips

Everything moves fast on the Web, including the nature of your customers. Without really trying, we've seen a great growth in travel sites. Time to emphasize what was already happening naturally!

Have you looked at the nature of your customers lately? What are they doing with your product? You just may find some pleasant, exploitable surprises!

Strategies for Maximizing Google AdSense Income - Part 8

Google AdSense & Contextual Advertising

Monetizing your RSS feed with Google AdSense for Feeds seems like a no-brainer. However, there is a potential downside to this strategy that you need to know before deciding.

Strategy #12) Replace your RSS feed with AdSense for Feeds.

Google allows you to add AdSense ads to an RSS feed. This means that you can monetize your feed. However, each "article" in your feed (Google calls them "items") offers only a snippet of a page (approximately the first 150 characters of page content, plus the title). With so little content, you run the risk of alienating readers if you place an ad before or after every item.

Google uses a service called FeedBurner (a company founded in 2004 and acquired by Google in 2007) for their AdSense for Feeds option.

Unlike RSS feeds on their own, a FeedBurner feed...