Today’s makeover is for Scott Whitney’s Four Ps of Podcasting CD. When he first contacted me in October his site was live only a short time, but having taken a fresh look, there’s still a lot that Scott could be doing to pop conversions.
He uses a series of landing pages - smart - each one keyed to one search phrase - even smarter - so he’s definitely on the right track. But he still wasn’t selling near enough CDs, so let’s see what we can do to give Scott a nice boost to end-of-year sales.
Today’s makeover is for Steve Lee’s fiction thriller, What If …? Trying to sell a novel direct is a daunting task, and frankly few will sell enough copies to be profitable. (Those that did usually had a tremendous ‘hook’ and lucked into the right place, right time, right message astral alignment to generate a lot of buzz.) When he wrote me last month, he was seeing a 1% conversion. His desire is to double, perhaps even triple the rate.
Today’s makeover is for Chuck Frey’s ebook, Mind-Mapping Software: How to Select the Perfect Program for Your Needs. Chuck lives and breathes this stuff. He’s the Mind-Mapping “Man” but he’s been struggling getting a handle on his target market. (In fact, this is the second ebook effort I’ve reviewed. The first, I thought, needed an entire marketing plan “re-think”, hence the quick side-step to a project that lent itself to this format far better.
Chuck actually has some pretty good marketing language throughout this page. Unfortunately, it’s buried under ho-hum heads and subheads. You’ll see what I mean when you take a look at the current page.
Although I’ve generally confined myself to reviewing individual landing pages, I thought it might be interesting to take an overall look at a book publisher’s site, with specific focus on the homepage. Carrie Kitze is the publisher behind EMK Press. EMK Press is a niche publisher specializing in books about adoption. I’ve known Carrie for several years as my online store, AdoptShoppe, carries several of her company’s titles. Carrie has asked me to review/critique her site to help her generate more newsletter subscriptions, more book sales, and more effective information distribution.
Today’s makeover is for Mike Glanz. He’s looking to energize and increase his ROI for his site, HireAHelper. This site is all about finding local help for lawns, moving, cleaning, and the other kinds of chores that are necessary but a drag and drain on most busy homeowners.
Unlike high-priced companies or taking a chance on what you might find on craigslist.com, HireAHelper provides reviews, a secure method of payment, and a list of qualified helpers. Sounds like a neat service, but Mike tells me that visitors who are coming through his PPC ads don’t seem to understand the site concept once they get there. They are unsure or uneducated about ordering local services online.
And that must be so because Mike writes that his conversion rate is .9%. Value to Mike is $15-$20 per sale.
Let’s see what the Copywriting Maven can do to help Mike move more local services to more people.
Today’s makeover is for Victor Holtreman’s ebook, The Last 10 Pounds. He’s sold 1,000 copies at $12.95 each, but conversion lately has been lacking at just .87%. He’s looking to pop his conversion rate and sell more books.
Here’s the background:
