This is another addition to our ongoing series of tutorials and case studies on landing pages that work.
Nicole Johnson wants to get babies and their moms some much-needed rest. She’s packed napping plans, schedules, and strategies into her $37 ebook/consultation package. She’s tried different pricing, Google Adwords, different offers, freemiums, and more to pop conversion, but her results still ping between a snoozy 0.5 to 3%.
When you write a post for your blog, your headline is the last thing you should be thinking about.
OK, I realize this is Copyblogger heresy.
There’s a lot of emphasis on writing a good headline. Hell, I’ve written posts about how to write an eye-grabbing title myself. Brian wrote an entire series on headlines (including a post on why you should always write your headline first), and he’s been known to come up with some pretty catchy ones.
Things were going pretty well until I bit into my hamburger.
Ow.
Something was really wrong.
“Are you okay?” asked my date.
My eyes started watering. I was so confused, but I nodded.
I bit down harder and suddenly the hamburger flew out of my hands. I’ve never been so bewildered in my life. Only when I held my hand up did the sorry truth stare us in the face.
The entertainment and CGI world has been fawning over the movie Avatar for months, and it seems you can’t watch any entertainment news program without hearing about James Cameron’s groundbreaking 3D epic.
And even if Cameron went home last week without the armful of Oscars he expected, directing the highest-grossing movie of all time probably takes the sting out.
But despite the movie’s brilliant effects and the unique world it creates, you’ll likely feel as if you’ve heard its underlying story before. In fact, you may very well predict the ending about an hour into the film.
About 80% of your blog’s success comes from “ass in chair” time. That’s the time you spend writing posts, editing posts, finding the perfect image, connecting with fellow bloggers, answering comments, shaping up your SEO, and all the other tasks we teach you about here on Copyblogger.
You’ve got to get that stuff right. But great blogs are not built by “ass in chair” time alone.
There’s actually a significant element to your success that you may be neglecting with all that work and focus.
I’ve written a few contrarian things lately.
Specifically, I ranted a bit about why I think the most common “make money online” technique doesn’t work for most people, and about how, really, the most important ingredients of success are persistence and grit.
Then, on my own blog, I ranted about why “systems” for achieving specific results don’t work.
I got a lot of comments, emails, and tweets agreeing — too many people are looking for a quick fix, and we need to remember the basics: hard work, and good old-fashioned stick-to-it-iveness.
But believe it or not, there’s actually a problem with taking that train of thought too far.
