If you're trying to make money online, sooner or later you have to face it. Conversion . That intimidating topic: how to get more buyers from the same amount of traffic. The only reason conversion is intimidating is that there are a lot of places you can go astray. Most of them aren't that hard to fix, but any one of a thousand little problems can keep you from getting the conversion you should have. I don't have a thousand tips for you today,

Ever wonder why conversion rates are so low? A "good" sales page will usually convert between 1 and 5 percent of its readers. Those numbers vary wildly depending on about a zillion factors, but that's the middle of the bell curve. So that means between 95 and 99 percent of people reject what you've got to offer. Seems a little depressing when you look at it that way, right? So are those 95â€"99 percent just a write-off, a necessary cost of doing business?

Well, not the whole summer. But we are giving ourselves a break. We spend a lot of time teaching people how to build smart, sustainable businesses with content. The kind of businesses that give us enough free time to have some decent work-life balance. After all, working your own schedule, to suit your own life, is one of the biggest benefits of running a business, right? Then it occurred to us " hm, maybe we should take some of our own advice. Many folks in the U.S.

Usually we save all the sneaky tricks and techniques for the newsletter , but today I'm feeling rambunctious so I decided I'd uncork some of the good stuff. Don't read today's post unless you want to reach out and scoop more than your fair share of customers and sales. If you're already making more money than you want, this one's not for you. Are you evil enough to join us? OK. Here are 7 dastardly, fiendish,

Remember those puzzles you used to do when you were six or seven? That mass of dots and numbers on a page just looked like a mess. But when you went through and connected dot 1 to dot 2, moving on through dots 100 and 101, you wound up with a picture of a pony. You might think you've outgrown connect-the-dots. But actually, it's one of the most important strategies for online entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to build profits with online marketing.

A young woman discovers in college that she is driven by a burning desire to succeed. She starts a business, struggles, goes through some lean years. Eventually her hard work begins to pay off. She has a good year. Then, a great year. The year after that blows the doors off. She gets everything she's worked so hard for. The prestigious client list. The Armani wardrobe. The BMW. The gorgeous house in the most expensive part of town. The money pours in, almost effortlessly.

Let's say you thought it would be pretty neat to climb Mount Everest. You find two "how-to" web sites that explain what's involved. One details a tough training regimen, spells out all of the financial costs, has a serious conversation with you about the risks, and gives you a complete list of the gear you'll need to maximize your chances of a successful ascent. Another tells you that since you go for a 20-minute run every day, you'll be totally fine. Nah,

Back when I was writing novels and working on getting them published, someone gave me a piece of advice. "You need talent, luck, and persistence. Pick any two." It's probably been twenty years since I heard those words, but I still think of them all the time. They don't just apply to getting book deals, of course. Whether you want to paint, write, play music, raise a happy kid, design beautiful houses, or run an online business that makes you happy and rich,

Ever wish there was just a blueprint you could follow to market your business? No, not a magic formula. Not a "push-button million-dollar cash machine." You're not lazy and you're not afraid to put the work in. But sometimes it's hard to figure out just what kind of work you're supposed to be doing. What if there was a straightforward road map that a reasonably intelligent person could follow? First you do Step A. It takes some time and attention,

Every once in awhile, someone asks me why I have pink hair. )You ever notice that no one asks why anyone has blonde hair, or red hair? But pink, it seems, requires a good reason.( There are a lot of ways I could answer that question, but the simplest is probably that I don't really buy into the standard set of rules about what "success" or "professionalism" look like. As it turns out, there are a lot of things I don't buy into.

"I don't know where I'm a-gonna go when the volcano blow." ~Jimmy Buffett Ever feel like you're trapped in a pseudo-reggae song written by a white guy from Mobile, Alabama? Some days it's a sick kid, or spouse, or dog. Some days it's a key vendor who disappears on you, or a merchant account that freezes a bunch of your funds, or a web host that implodes on launch day. Some days it's a choking cloud of ash that spreads over half of Europe. Rest assured,

When I talk with "normal" businesspeople )you know, the kind who have actual physical addresses, not just IP ones(, they always ask me the same thing. "I can see the appeal of that Twitter stuff for my teenage daughter " but how is it supposed to help my business?" Of course, you know the answer to this question. You're a social media power user. Maybe even a ninja.

Before I talk about our reasons for shutting down Inside the Third Tribe )our community of next-generation internet marketers(, I want to stress that it had nothing to do with our members. In fact, they've been amazing. More than 2,000 smart, motivated entrepreneurs, hungry for knowledge and passionately applying the education we provide. And it's not because I don't believe in the community. In fact,

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman? ~Woody Allen You've got to feel for insurance salesmen. They actually rank below used-car salesmen and bloggers on the list of people no one wants to hang out with. With only a slight edge over politicians . . . maybe. Pushy pitches, cheesy glad-handing, clumsy attempts to build rapport. And all those lame rehearsed messages to move the sale forward. The worst, right?

You've heard it a thousand times: the money's in the list. If you're serious about getting results online, you need to build a list of people who are paying attention to you, typically an email list. So how do you get people to sign up for your email newsletter? You probably already know the answer to this one: Reward them. Give subscribers something great as a "thank you" for signing up. This is usually some form of content " a useful video,

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.

When I first had the insane brilliant idea to start a business and get out of the alleged safety of the corporate world, I started by reading everything I could find. I wish I could remember where the thread started for me. It might have been Dan Kennedy, it might have been Michael Port, it could very well have been the Personal MBA . Each good resource led to three more. At some point, I found Copyblogger and Problogger and Seth Godin .

Like everyone else on the social web, I just read Seth Godin's new book Linchpin . It's a big book, not so much in number of pages, but in number of ideas. One core theme is the idea of emotional labor " bringing more human feeling and connection to your work, some essential part of yourself that can't be automated or outsourced. It strikes me that this gets to one of the key distinctions between different models for doing business online.

Those of you who subscribe to the Internet Marketing for Smart People email newsletter found out on Monday what Brian and I have been up to for the past few months. We knew it would be cool, because, well, we designed it to be cool. We wanted to build something people would really get value from. But still, when we saw what people were doing inside after the first day, we all looked around at one another and pulled a Keanu. Whoa.

Do you know this story? A scorpion needs to cross the river. He asks a friendly-looking frog to carry him across. "Do you think I'm stupid?" asks the frog. "You're a scorpion. You'll sting and kill me." "No I won't," says the scorpion. "That would be completely against my self interest. If I sting you, I'll fall in the river and drown." The frog sees the sense in this and agrees to carry the scorpion across the river. Halfway across,