Guest Posting Site – From Conception To Paying Members In Just 10 Days

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As many of you know I always like to have a handful of SEO clients to work on. I do this for 2 reasons. Firstly, they pay me (I’m not an idiot). Secondly, it helps me stay on top of what is working now in the SEO world.

Over the years I have found myself developing new tools that make my life easier when I do SEO for these clients.

Guest Post Tracker falls under this category.

One of the main branding and link building strategies I like to use is submitting guest posts.

Guest posts are awesome for 2 reasons.

First, if you choose the right blog who has the same audience as yours, it can drive awesome converting traffic instantly (more on that in a bit).

Second, the power you get from an SEO standpoint from links in those guest posts (or author bio) really do make a difference in your rankings.

So what is Guest Post Tracker?

As I was doing the SEO for both my websites and my clients one thing I noticed was that it was extremely time consuming to try and find blogs that would actually allow a guest post.

So then I went to some of the “ultimate” list of blogs that a few bloggers had already put together and probably half of the blogs in those lists didn’t accept guest posts anymore.

So I started putting together my own list. As my list got bigger and bigger it became very easy to find a related blog and submit a guest post.

I shared the list with some SEO friends and they loved it!

I knew I was on to something.

I was working with the list so much that I wanted more features added to it.

For example, I wanted an easy way to track which blogs I had submitted to for each SEO client. I also wanted to easily sort blogs by category.

But the list kept growing. When I got to over 500 websites I realized my Google spreadsheet wasn’t working anymore.

So I set out to build GuestPostTracker.com.

The funny thing was, I had the idea to build it, I got on the phone with my programmer and in less than 10 days it was finished.

It was easily the fastest project I had ever embarked upon.

The website turned out amazing, better than I expected.

gptforp

The site has 3 huge advantages over any other list of blogs that accept guest posts out there.

1. The site is always updated. I add (and sometimes remove) new blogs almost every single day. You don’t have to waste time looking for blogs.

2. The list is searchable by category. This makes your life really easy when you only want blogs in a certain category.

3. Submission tracking. The software allows you to mark any blog that you have submitted a guest post to. So when you look down the list you see which blogs you’ve submitted to, that date you submitted and what anchor text you were targeting.

These three features made this list of blogs extremely useful to me as an SEO guy and anyone else that wanted to promote their website through guest posting.

It was ready for the masses.

I decided to charge just $5/mo for people to use the software. This would help cover my programming costs plus the cost to keep the list updated.

How I Started Getting Sign Ups Without Spending A Dime

Like I mentioned earlier, guest posting can be an amazing advertising tool if you do it right.

I found a blog (business2community.com) that I knew was a good match with my new business. I didn’t know how much traffic a guest post there would bring me but I did want a strong link to get my new site indexed.

So I asked one of my SEO friends who is a contributor (he was using the software) to post an article about the new software. He posted the guest post entitled, “3 Must Have SEO Tools For 2016 You’ve Never Heard Of Before“.

2 days after he posted the article it was live on the site.

Now keep in mind the site was brand new and I was just trying to get it indexed from a good authority site.

But once the article went live, people started signing up.

To my surprise not only was the guest post driving traffic, people were signing up.

The conversion rate on the site was close to 3% which is phenomenal.

I knew the guest posting site was useful but I was thrilled to see people agreed with me and were signing up.

This whole process I had just gone through proved how valuable having a good updated list of blogs that accept guest posts really is.

I picked a blog from my list, submitted a guest post and saw a boost in traffic and sales instantly. Awesome.

So as I saw the amazing response to the site with such small amount of traffic I am really excited about the future of this site.

3000 Users By The End Of The Year

I’m setting some ambitious goals for this site. I want to be at 3000 users by the end of the year.

This means that I need to get about 150,000 unique visitors over the rest of the year which averages out to be almost 14,000 visitors per month. From those 14k visitors I need to average about 273 sign ups a month.

The first part of my traffic strategy is to continue to get engaging guest posts on high value blogs that match my audience.

The second part of the strategy is to approach the bloggers who already own the search rankings for all of the “list of guest posting blogs” and pay to advertise on those lists. I’ve already approached 2 of the highest ranking blogs and they have agreed to allow me to do that.

Third strategy is to target through SEO the hundreds of phrases that will drive targeted traffic. One of the cool things about this niche is people not only search for broad terms (ie “guest posting site”) but they also search by category (ie “submit health guest post”). So I will spend time targeting all of those niche phrases as well.

As it has been well documented in articles like this one: https://springhillmarketing.co.uk/the-ultimate-guide-to-blogging-for-seo-success/ creating smart blog posts that target specific key phrases and solve the problems of my target audience is the fourth part of my SEO strategy.

14,000 visitors in a month is a lot but with the right traffic strategies I am confident I can make it happen.

Website Flipping Case Study: These 3 Crazy Simple Website Tweaks Led To An 860% Revenue Boost

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How I Bought A Website For $3700 And In 4 Months Increased The Revenue By 860% Without Spending A Dime Or Doing Any SEO…And Then Sold The Site For Over $30k.

transaction

So many times website owners have complained to me that they don’t know SEO and they struggle increasing the traffic to their websites so the website flipping methods I teach won’t work for them.

I recognize that SEO can be difficult and take time (but can easily be learned if you want to know how to do it) so I set out to prove that I could buy a website that had traffic, and without doing any SEO or website promotion I could increase the revenue significantly.

Check out this website flipping case study:

Using the prospecting method I invented I went out looking to find a website to buy. I was looking in the healthcare education leads niche.

I found a site that fit several of the important criteria I was looking for.

– It already had good traffic.
– It was making some money but not a lot.
– The site was not converting well.
– It was already set up to get education leads.

I look for websites that match these criteria because I know I can make quick changes that will have a positive impact on the revenue of the website.

So I emailed the owner and negotiated the purchase of the website. It really is amazing how many website owners are ready and willing to sell their websites if someone simply approaches them and asks.

I assume this is because most people that start and run websites are serial entrepreneurs and they get bored quickly and like moving on to other projects.

As soon as I found out the owner of the website was willing to sell I asked the appropriate questions and we got into the numbers of the website.

The 2 big numbers I cared about was unique visitors to the site each month, and total revenue each month.

The site owner gave me access to Google analytics and I was able to verify that the website was getting about 4,000 unique visitors each month.

He also told me that the site was making $208 each month which with that much traffic I had no reason to doubt him. In fact just running some quick numbers I was able to see that each visitor was worth $0.05 per visitor.

visitorvalue

Because I have experience in this industry and had run a website that had a value of over $1.00 per visitor I knew that this website had a ton of potential to make things happen quickly.

Because of this I had no problem offering the website owner an 18 month multiple (monthly revenue x 18 months). I usually don’t go that high unless I see a ton of potential in a website.

Here is the data from the website:

websitedata

So I purchased the website for $3700. Here is what the homepage looked like when I got it. It wasn’t a terrible design but it didn’t drive the visitors to do what I wanted them to do.

oldsite

How This Website Makes Money

The way that this website makes money is it collects leads for schools that offer healthcare education programs. The owner of the website had signed up with a company that has agreements with all of the schools. The website owner put “Request Info” forms on the site and sent leads to this company.

So a visitor to the website would come and see the form on the bottom of the page or over in the left hand navigation as shown in the screenshot above and they could request information from different schools.

Anytime a visitor to the website requested information from a school the owner of the website would get paid a small commission usually between $15-$30.

I had used this same monetization method with other sites in this industry and I knew it was the best way to monetize the site so I had no plans to change it. I did however use a different company that I already had a relationship with that also had agreements with all of the schools, Quinstreet.

As soon as I got control of the site I immediately made 2 very quick tweaks to the website. These changes took me literally 30 minutes to an hour to get set up.

Tweak #1: Moved The Lead Form Above The Fold

tweak1

Only about 1/3 of the homepage is viewable (above the fold) when you first come to the website. This meant that in order for someone to see the lead form and fill it out they had to scroll down to the bottom or look in the left hand navigation which most people wouldn’t do.

I wanted the lead form front and center and right in their faces as soon as they came to the site. So I moved it to the top of the home page.

I also removed the lead form from the left hand navigation. I didn’t test whether having it there increased conversions, I just made a gut decision to take it out and focus on the one form being above the fold.

This change took me about 15-30 minutes to do.

Tweak #2: Popup Lead Form

tweak2

I know that many if not every person hates popup windows. Or at least they say they do, and many of you are probably scared to use them because you don’t want to offend your website visitors.

The reality of popup windows is they work. They work because you are forcing your visitors to make a decision. They have to decide either “Yes I am going to fill out this form right now,” or “No I don’t want to fill it out right now.” There is no other option. They can’t do anything else until they make that decision.

Because you are forcing them into a decision many of them will choose Yes. It has been proven time and time again that popup windows increase conversions.

So this is the second tweak I made. I just gave my visitors the chance to decide for themselves Yes or No whether they wanted to fill out a form.

The wordpress plugin I used for the popup window is XYZ Lightbox. I like this because it has flexibility in what you can put in the popup window. I needed to be able to put a picture and a javascript form.

Tweak #3: Add State Pages To Each Category

tweak3

This change took a little more time to implement. I knew that some of the schools I was providing leads for had campus across the country. So I wanted to be able to allow a website visitor to search for programs by State.

So I added state pages to each of the different healthcare programs. When a user would click on their state the page would populate with the schools in that state. They could then choose any or all of the schools and request information from them.

This change took me about a day to get set up.

The purpose of these 3 minor tweaks to the site was to give the visitors more opportunities to do what I wanted them to do, and that was to request information from one or more of these colleges.

I was simply trying to guide them instead of letting them try to figure out the site for themselves. It’s similar to how a retailer will put all of their high margin products right up front and center so you have to see them and pass by them to get to anything else.

860% Increase In Revenue From The 3 Tweaks

The changes took about 2 days to get totally implemented and then I just watched and waited. I didn’t try to promote the site. I didn’t try to do SEO. I just wanted to see what the 4000 visitors per month would do with the changes.

The results were amazing. I was surprised to see how much of a difference these 3 small changes made.

Within 4 months the revenue increased from $208/mo to $1992/mo in month 4. A 860% increase in revenue. It was awesome to see what could be done with just a few changes to the site itself.

It was all about increase revenue per visitor. We didn’t need more traffic we just needed to monetize the traffic better.

So what was the new revenue per visitor after the changes? $0.50 per visitor.

$0.50/visitor was much more like what I would expect in this industry. That is a number an investor will drool at. So what happened? An investor came and offered an 17 month multiple for the site.

The offer was $34,000 for a website I had just purchased 4 months previous for $3,700. A 719% return on my initial investment.

newwebsitedata

All from 3 tiny changes that took less than 2 days. Not a bad 2 days work.

So to recap, the three changes I made had to do with pointing the visitor in the direction of what I wanted them to do. My goal for this website was to get the visitors to the site to request information from healthcare colleges so they could potentially enroll and become students.

I didn’t care if they read any of the copy on the site, I just wanted them to see the form and fill out the form. Now I understand that providing good content that is engaging helps increase customer satisfaction and can increase conversions as well. On this test though I didn’t care about that. I just wanted to see how quickly and dramatically I could increase revenue per visitor.

I accomplished this by moving the form above the fold on each page of the site. Then since that wasn’t in your face enough I added the pop up form to the site. If the visitors somehow ignored those first two changes I also added state pages that listed all of the schools by state for each program. Again, this was to give my visitors as many possible opportunities to request information from schools.

I think the biggest takeaway from this test was that if you want your visitors to do something you have to make it so easy and brainless that they actually have a hard time doing something else.

Do you want to learn how build websites you can sell for big profits?

For the past 6 years I have been finding undervalued websites, buying them for super cheap, fixing them up and then selling them when the time is right. Some people call it website flipping. I started Prosperly to teach others how to do the same thing.

If this is something you would be interested in, click the button below and watch another case study of a site I sold. You won’t be sorry.

150kin9forblogposts
Also, after you sign up I will immediately send you the video case study where I walk you through how I bought a site for $500, fixed it up and sold it 9 months later for $150,000.

 

I have been buying and selling websites successfully for many years and would love to show you the ropes. Just click on the button above and lets get started.

Homepage Split Test To Increase Conversions

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So if you have read much of the posts here at Prosperly that I have written you know I talk a lot about the importance of running split tests on your site all the time to always be improving conversions.

Google has free testing software called website optimizer that is awesome. I use it all the time. I just started a new test and thought I would show you what kind of things I test.

So when you run tests to increase conversion, the more different you can make the two versions that are running against each other the better. You will get better results that way because the optimizer will be able to give you a definitive answer on which version is better more quickly.

Sometimes when you run tests the two versions you run against each other will make no difference in conversions. This happens more than I would expect.

Anyway here is the test I am running now:

and this is the new version that I am testing against the original:

You can see from the 2 screenshots that I have removed the bullets and replaced them with a button trying to get people to sign up right away. I know that conventional wisdom says not to ask for the sale too soon on your page but I also am offering a free trial so I wanted to see how placing the button there would perform.

I also changed the sub headline to reflect the bullet points that I removed. (Wanted to keep those benefits on the page.)

Which one do you think will perform better? Post your guess in the comments section below.

Tell Your Visitors What To Do…They Dont Know

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I know, I know it has been a long time since I last wrote. I have been busy with filmmaking and other projects but I’m back.

Onto the good stuff…

I often run tests on pages of my site through crazyegg.com. They show you exactly where visitors are clicking on your website. It is very useful to see if your visitors are doing what you want them to do.

So on the home page of LawnCareDirectory.com I have a section that pushes people who want to start a lawn care business to a kit that I sell. I have a picture of the kit and 2 buttons one that goes to the kit and one that goes to a free lawn business course.

When I created this part of the site the button that went to the kit said “Lawn Business Kit” which I mainly did so I could fit the text on the button.

So I ran a crazyegg report on the home page and had it track about 1600 visitors to that page. Here is a snapshot of that section of the home page. The little colorful dots are individual clicks:

So as you can see with over 1600 visitors to the site that part of the page only got 3 random clicks not one of which was on one of the buttons.

So when I realized how ineffective that button was I knew right away why. I learned a long time ago that if you want someone to click on something you need to tell them why they should.

You need to make a call to action. Don’t try to be un-intrusive with your visitors. They don’t know their way around your site. They need guidance.

So I changed the top button from “Lawn Business Kit” to say “Start Your Business Now” and ran another report through crazy egg. This time I only did 500 visitors but the difference was stunning:

Not only did people actually click on that button, but by changing the text it also got visitors to click on the button below it as well. It’s amazing what one minor tweak can do to your website’s usability.

I should probably keep playing with the text on these buttons until I find what generates the most click through.

How focused home page design will increase conversions

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I recently sat through a webinar by Marketing Experiments. They are a web marketing company that puts on free webinars all the time showing the results of testing different elements on a website and how it increase conversion.

The webinar I attended was on getting singular focus on your home page. Chances are that on your home page you are trying to cater to every single person that comes to your website. Unfortunately this is a backwards way of thinking.

The right strategy is to figure out exactly what your primary goal is for your visitors and make that as prominent and easy to find as possible.

For example, one of the websites I run is Lawn Care Directory. It is national (US based) directory of lawn care and landscaping companies. I really wanted to cater to people that were searching for a lawn professional and so I changed the design of my home page to cater to that group of people immediately when they came to the site.

Here is the OLD design:

Here is the NEW design:

Here is the crazy egg report on how the new design is doing. This is a heatmap that shows where on the page people are clicking:

As you can see the result of giving the visitors to the site one main option eliminates confusion for the visitor and drives them to do the thing I want them to do. So it is a Win Win.

The secondary goals that I have on the home page are still available and represented but I give the most weight and real estate to the thing that is my number 1 goal.