EzSEO Newsletter # 184

This week:

1. Time for an Apple Rant

2. Affiliate Management Script

3. How to sell a product online - Part XI

4. Problems playing Flash Movies?

5. KRA to have a new Big Brother

Hi again.

In the last issue I complained about Windows Vista, and today I return the compliment by complaining about Apple. There is also the next instalment of the miniseries on selling your own product, plus more.

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1. Time for an Apple Rant
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After my complaints in the last issue over Windows Vista, I did actually go out and buy an Apple MacBook Pro laptop. At around 3 times more expensive than the equivalent PC laptop, it better be good ;O)

I was in the shop at the end of October to look at them, but the local Apple store did not have any with Apple’s new Leopard Operating system pre-installed. They were due in a couple of weeks. I said I would wait and get one when their new stock came in with the Leopard OS pre-installed.

That’s when the lady told me of a deal that they had with Apple, one that I thought was really cool, and Microsoft could learn from. If I bought my Mac now, with the old Tiger OS installed, Apple would send me the Leopard Operating System for around 9 euros (delivery cost I suppose). All I needed to do was call a phone number for details (which the lady in the shop gave me).

Great, I bought the laptop. However, the lady in the shop had one more surprise. She would get the techs at the shop to install a copy of Leopard on my laptop, so I could use it until my CD arrived. Even better.

When I got the Mac home, I was pleasantly surprised with the operating system, and the build quality of my machine etc. I even installed Windows Vista on it so I could dual boot the machine. Then I rang Apple for my OS upgrade.

Apple took my details, and sent me to a web page to order the CD. I went through the ordering process, and entered my address. When I pressed the 0rder button, I got some red text at the top saying my post code was invalid.

I checked, and double checked - it was correct. Eventually I noticed that the order form had automatically filled in the word “Peninsula” after I entered Spain as my country of residence. Well, I’m not on the Peninsula, I am on the Canary Islands. I phoned support, only to be told “Sorry, we don’t deliver to Tenerife. You will need to send it to someone on the Peninsula and get them to send it to you”.

Furious, I phoned the shop where I bought my Mac, and told them that Apple would not deliver my Operating System disk to Tenerife. The reply was “Yes, we know”.

The sales girl in the shop that told us we could get it sent here, was “not available” over the phone, and the girl we talked to said they couldn’t do anything. I told her I would return my laptop for a refund then, to which she replied - “let me speak to my boss”.

To cut a long story short, the shop is now going to try to get my operating system disk for me from Apple. They are an Apple distributor (the shop only sells Apple), but they say there is no guarantee.

Seems to me that someone at Apple needs to get a grip on reality. How on earth are they hoping to catch up will Microsoft if they treat their customers like this?

All this talk of Apple reminds me of a joke I heard when I was a kid.

What’s worse that biting into an apple to find a worm?

Biting into the apple and finding half a worm.

At the moment, my first bite of an Apple has left me with a nasty taste in my mouth.

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2. Affiliate Management Script
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When I first started the series on selling your own products online, I covered affiliate management scripts. I was moving my own affiliate program in-house to protect my affiliates from commission theft that is so prevalent at Clickbank, and I thought I had found the answer - Post Affiliate Pro. It checked all the boxes, and was very configurable.

However, several weeks on, my in-house program is not using Post Affiliate Pro any more. I am using something called Jam from jrox.com. I got an email asking about this switch, so felt I really should explain to everyone why I moved.

Post Affiliate Pro has an impressive feature list, making it highly configurable, which I loved. However, all of these features did make it less than user friendly. Michael Campbell helped me test the system, and his first comment was on how difficult it was to navigate from an affiliates point of view.

I persevered with the script, setting it up and recording some sales for Michael, but then it happened. I upgraded the script to the latest version and it stopped tracking.

I used the online tech support chat feature to talk with a technician about the problems I was having, but the support guy was really no help at all, and I got the impression he did not have a clue what the problem was. In the middle of the chat, he just disappeared. All of a sudden he was offline. I went back to their site to re-enter their chat support, but it said it was now offline. In fact I checked back for the next few hours and it remained offline.

I sent a letter of complaint to the support email address, and within minutes I got a reply from someone else apologizing. I then got an email from the techie I was talking to apologizing as well - his “internet connection had dropped”. He told me he would be back on in the morning if I wanted to chat. However, it was already too late. I was scouring the forums for a replacement. I found it in JAM, from jrox.com. The script was not as configurable as Post Affiliate Pro, but the things that were missing were not essential anyway.

I set up Jam, tested it, and within a couple of days, Michael Campbell had been migrated across to the Jam system, and his sales were once again tracking.

I have now been running Jam for a few weeks now, including for the launch of my new Fat Content Course, and I am very pleased with it. Tracking is excellent, and I have a lot more confidence that the correct affiliate is getting the commission they deserve.

If you are looking for an affiliate tracking system, Jam is a good one to look at. While the price is a little higher, I found that when I went to order, I was given an option to buy at half price (if I did it there and then). I can thoroughly recommend this script.

If you are looking for an affiliate tracking solution, and have questions, I am happy to answer them via my support desk (see resource box at the end of this mail). No emails please.

JAM by JROX

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3. How to sell a product online - Part XI
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In Part X of this mini-series, we looked at the simple questions I ask myself when I am writing a sales letter. These simple questions keep me focused, and they work well. As you write more sales letters, you might want to modify these questions for your own personal style, as having a question list really does take away a lot of the strain of writing any sort of content, but particularly sales letters.

Today, I want to look at something called the Zeigarnik Effect.

Before we start though, do a Google search for:

Zeigarnik Effect sales copy

I really recommend you read some of the articles that come in the top 10 of Google.

The Zeigarnik Effect is a mental state of tension caused by unfinished tasks. According to Wikipedia, “Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik first studied the phenomenon after her professor, Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin, noticed that a waiter had better recollections of still unpaid orders”.

OK, so what does this have to do with Internet Marketing? Well, if you have read those top 10 Google results, you should have a good idea by now.

Simply put, it means that you should ensure your sales letter guides your visitor from headline to Call to Action, WITHOUT distractions.

Think of your sales letter as a carefully guided path, which shows your readers the best sites and sounds along the way.

For a product sales letter, the best advice is to avoid any other distractions that will take your reader away from the path of the sales letter.

This doesn’t just apply to hyperlinks in the text of the sales letter (which create an unfinished task in the reader, and therefore a nervous tension), but flashy banners in the margins, unecessary graphics, subscription boxes, and even difficult to understand language. Try to write your sales copy in an easy to understand language. If someone is reading your page and they come across a word they don’t understand, it will divert their attention away from your sales message, and onto the word they don’t understand.

I really do suggest you take some time to read some of the articles in your Google search above, and make your own notes.

Here is something I try on my own sales pages. Imagine you are a visitor to your site (or better still, get a friend to read your page).

Start at the headline, and read right the way through the page. Anytime your attention is distracted, for whatever reason (whether it is a popup, a graphic, a flashy banner, a text link etc etc), make a note of it, e.g. as you scroll down the page, does a graphic scroll into view that distracts you?

These distractions are mostly (although not always) bad. Once you have your “distraction notes”, go through them and highlight the ones that you think will contribute to the Zeigarnik effect. Which ones will cause your reader to get distracted from the message of your sales letter? Which ones cause them to lose focus? And most importantly, which distractions are unnecessary?

Incorporating these ideas into a sales page is difficult. After all, you might consider links to websites in your testimonial boxes to be too distracting. Do you remove the links to your testimonials site? Or do you look for an alternative (e.g. using CSS to remove the underline, opening the link in a new window if someone does click, and even lightening the colour of the website link to reduce the “focus”). These steps would probably help reduce the distraction, but the only way to remove it would be to delete the link (therefore possibly upsetting the person who supplied the testimonial).

With each of your “distraction points”, you need to remove them, or limit their impact.

Here is an interesting question to leave you with.

If you are going to show a newsletter popup form (an in-your-face distraction) to your visitors, when is the best time? As soon as they arrive? Several seconds after they arrive? Or after they leave?

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4. Problems playing Flash Movies?
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Do you have problems sometimes when you try to play a flash video? Flash videos are found on more and more websites as a tool to sell products, or as training materials. You will have seen some of my own flash movies if you have signed up for my fr.ee 8 day video course on keyword research and handling over at:

Keyword Research & Handling Course

I have received a number of emails in the last few years from people who have been unable to watch my Flash videos on their computers.

The problem usually shows itself as the inability to play a flash video, and the browser informing you that you need to download the latest Flash plugin.

However, on going to update, you are told you already have the latest version. Sound familiar? I found an answer in a PC Magazine (PC Answers).

The problem it seems, is the Flash Player.

The first time you download it from a site requiring the plugin to play its videos, an “on-demand” version is installed. This version is not updated properly, and can cause the problems discussed above.

OK, here is the fix:

1. Uninstall the Flash Player via the Control Panel.

2. Download the complete Flash Player package (be careful where you get it from as some are the on-demand version).

Here is one page that has the full install:

http://www.softwarepatch.com/internet/flash.html

NOTE: Scroll down below the Google ads to find the download link.

3. Install the player.

That should solve your problems.

Let me know if you try this and it works for you.

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5. KRA to have a new Big Brother
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In the last couple of weeks I have been working on a “Pro” version of KRA.

If you are not familiar with KRA, you can read more here:

Keyword Results Analyzer

KRA is already a very powerful tool, and is loved by many for its ease of use, and the power it gives you to extract the correct words for any web page. The ability to find theme words for your pages in seconds is a real time saver. Simply put, KRA can map out the pages of your site, quickly, easily, and without ambiguity.

With the Pro version, I am looking to add a new dimension - something new and exciting. I am adding the ability to map out entire websites. I cannot say too much about this at the moment, but in a test, the version I am working on mapped out an entire 300 page web site (with theme words for every page), in around 5 minutes.

Once the site is mapped out, you can export in a variety of formats.

I will have more details soon. In fact, KRA owners may hear about it in the next week or so.

Just to warn you though, the Pro version will not be a fr.ee upgrade for current KRA owners. The reason for this is simple. The Pro version will be developed alongside the standard version as a completely separate application, and they will be priced differently. In fact, the pro version may be as much as double the cost of the standard version.

One thing I can tell you though is that current KRA owners will get a cheap upgrade path if you decide you want the new features. I’ll be sending out a message to all KRA owners as soon as a stable beta version is ready with details.

Well, that’s it for this issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online at my blog:

http://ezseonews.com/blog/index.php

For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives at:

http://ezseonews.com/archives

Have a great week!

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