1. Pass the 5 Second Test

Make sure your site passes the ”5 second test”. Within five seconds your visitors should know exactly what you do and why you’re great at doing it. Say what you do through images and text.

2. Try A New Lead Form (Or Sales Page)

A big bold change to the lead form, try it for a day, if it works then keep it (look at the industry leaders and see what they put on their conversion pages)

3. Publish Your Phone Number Prominantly

Put your telephone number at the top of every page and make sure its answered swiftly.

4. Improve Your SEO

Making your site great long term works, but short term links will do the trick, ask your friends, family, clients and supplier to link to you, make sure some links use in the anchor text of the keyword you’re trying to rank for, but only where it makes sense and don’t over do it. You can always buy a few links, but you run the risk of a Google penalty if caught.

5. Try PPC on Google Adwords

Geographically locate your campaign to as close an area as possible. (if your clients are only in New York then only target this area) use exactly the correct phrase people will be using to find your site, make the advert as close to this keyword as possible using keywords in the Title and first line. Ensure your landing page is relevant to the keyword your are buying and if possible put the search phrase in big text at the top of the landing page. If you’ve not got a large budget start small, a few keywords and bid to the bottom of the first page to test it out.

6. Test Your Website Response Time

If your site is loading slowly upgrade your hosting. You load time using an online test, or just test yourself by comparing inituavely against sites that have lightening load times like Google and Amazon. Site speed is directly propotional to profit. If your site is slow find a better host (but make sure your host is located in your target country)

7. Make Your Links Blue OR Make Them Obvious

And perhaps give them an underline for good measure. If you’re not going to make them blue then make sure they are obviously get someone that hasnt seen the site to buy and watch where they find are getting stuck, fix this problem

8. Put Conversation Tracking On Your Complete Sales Funnel

ok if now its 4pm and you’ve got an hour left get conversion tracking on each page of your sales channel, and in a weeks time see which page drops your conversion, this is now where you need to look at fixing.

9. Put Your Prices Up 10% For A Week

Compare the results (do this in a month you know sales are traditionally stead) if you’re a price sensitive comondity retailer this might not work, but if could be worth a go anyway.

10. Write One Page of Great Content

About your products that’s an awesome bit of information (if you havent got a blog just a static page uploaded on to your site and linked to will do).

11. Put Trust Logos On Your Home Page

and conversion page (memberships, qaulifications,
ask a trusted client for a two line testimonial and stick it on your site prominently.

12. Send A Targeted Inmail On LinkedIn

If you are on linked in, find a person you know will want your services or products using the search and send them a targeted polite inmail “reaching out” to see if they would like to hear about what you offer. If your not on LinkedIn sign up start building your network and once you have a network post them the link the meaty article you have just written in point 10.

13. Email Your Client Database

Write a “this is what I have been up to email” to your client database, if its just a few entries that is fine, you can tailor each one a bit closer.

14. Send A Blogger A Product To Review

Contact one blogger that you know has a good audience in your business sector, reach out to them and send them a product freebie to review.

15. search.twitter.com and @ Reply Someone Relevant

I tweeted today about the CRM Highrise, and got a great @reply back from the founder @jasonfried asking me a question.

Site: BackofTheNet.info
Communtiy: PES and FIFA (football games) on the Xbox & PS3 (players community)
Current montisation channel: Adsense
Size of community: >10k
Strengths: Active community; Links from xbox.com
Owners comment: “We get [>5k] unique visitors a day, most of them come for FIFA information, and the others are returning members. We have a custom built shoutbox (ajax + php) which gets most of our page hits as it’s where members go to chill out, chat, and arrange games & stuff.”

Ideas On Revenue Channel Growth

Ok, off the bat, this is a challenge. Gaming users want to play games not click ads, pay for upgrades, so we’re going to have to get pretty creative and try out lots of things. Key point here is try lots of new ideas, and trust the data you get from testing.

1. Increase The Community Size

Get more members, lots more. To give yourself the best chance you are going to need more users and traffic. Simplify the home page making a a sign up form with information why they should sign up and post sign up take them straight into the action. Also consider letting users get involved without signing up initially.

2. Build a Premium Feature

With enough loyal members a paid premium feature builds an instant revenue channel, and if that product is virtual you build it only once and sell it thousands of times, giving a huge gross profit (like software, drinks or wordpress themes)

Idea (i) – Paid Membership
By winning games all members earn virtual money, but to spend it on the site, (on cool stuff like virtual stadiums, fans bases, cups and medal cabinets etc), they need to become a paid member. This is same model as club penguin runs so effectively. There has to be real value to warrant the user wanting to spend their virtual money.

Idea (ii) – Gameplay Recording and Publishing App
Perhaps a stronger idea is to build a paid app to make recording and publishing goals (and other gameplay) super easy & and have these goals published on your site. This software would be expensive to build but may have application not only in football games but all types of console gaming and once you have built in once you can sell it again and again.

3. Simplify The Site

Streamline the site, take out anything unnecessary, make the design as professional as possible and benchmark it against the competition. Make the site clear and direct into the core proposition you are focusing on.

4. Chat Monitisation

Try monitising the chat system, Meebo is offering a simple way of doing this but I’ve haven’t tried it.

5. Content Library – Build The Adsense Revenue

Build a huge gaming library full of useful football gaming content and get your users to help you. Backofthenet has links from xbox.com so must have some level of search authority. Capitalise on this by building out an excellent resource which will gain traffic from search. This search traffic can then be monitised through adsense or what network or affiliate scheme works best. Blend the adsense ads, make the links the same colour as your normal links and put them in the navigation places for high CTR.

Trial, Error and Time…

To turn this site into a revenue machine is going to take lots of hard work, a splash of investment into new models, time to roll things out and building on ideas that work. In my view it can be done, but you’ve got to be in for the long haul. Good luck!

Su.pr home screen


I’ve used the service and it works really well. The benefits are:

- Post links direct to Twitter and Facebook status updates from Su.pr
- Get analytics data about these posts including optimum posting times for future posts
- The URL shortening service frames the page and put other popular content from your site alongside
- Get stumble opportunities from Tweets or Facebook updates
- SEO friendly and personal site URL shortening options (eg. http://yourdomain.com/a8kjk)

Unlike the Digg URL shortening where the benefit is only achieved if you get enough Diggs to reach the front page, Stumbleupon shorteners encourage stumbles, and a smaller number of stumbles equates to traffic from Stumbleupon.

The URL redirected page:

I’ve always been a fan of Stumbleupon although they are commonly forgotten as a social network. Su.pr should bring it back to the limelight. Using it for simple status updates on your blog via Twitter and Facebook will definately help the best content get more traffic, without any extra work.

The list has a definite online slant (I don’t have much experience in offline). Many channels are low cost or free just requiring time to get them going.

Please Help: Do have channels and ideas to add to the list? Please contribute your ideas in the comments at the bottom of this post

Search Marketing

• Paid Search or PPC – Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, plus lots more smaller players
• Search Engine Optimization – The best advertising channel for many businesses
• Local Search – Free local listing on Google Maps

Blogging

• Blogging – Showcase your products or expertise through your blog. Works great for service based business in which information can be given away
• RSS – Feed out your blog content direct to RSS subscribers
• Link Bait Content – Generate buzz and links through content
• Guest Posting – Guest post on authority blogs
• Paid Blog Posts – Reviewme

Social Networking Sites

• Stumbleupon – Paid and free models
• Twitter – Follow and connect with prospective customers and keep in touch with existing
• Facebook Ads – Demographic and geotarget ads can work for DM
• MySpace Ads
• Facebook Profiles/Pages – Apps / fans pages / personal profiles
• Mass Social News Sites – A story on digg or reddit may bring your site down!
• Niche Social News Sites – Eg Sphinn for SEO
• In Social Apps Ads – Socialmedia.com, fbx
• Forum Signature – Advertise in your forum signature

Email

• Blanket Mass Email – This is spam, so don’t do it.
• Email database – buy/rent – Send your message to an opt in bought database
• Email Shot Sponsorship – Sponsor a targeted website’s email shot
• Email Newsletter – A regular reason to stay in touch with your customers
• Application Emails – You can add marketing messages to other automated type emails you are sending out
• Targeted Sales Email – The better researched and targeted your email (recipient and email copy) the better
• Personal Email Footer – Add marketing messages at the bottom of your emails

Content Promotion

• Podcasts and itunes
• Online Videos – Start a channel and publish on YouTube
• Articles – Submit articles to ezinearticles & other article sites
• Teleseminars
• Free eBooks – build a targeted database by giving something away
• Question and Answer Websites – Yahoo Answers, Blurtit, Answerbag, WikiAnswers

Online Other

• Web Directories – Dmoz and Yahoo
• Widgets & Toolbars
• Virtual worlds, Secondlife – Would love to hear if this has worked for anyone
• Text Ads
• ISP level advertising – NebuAds
• Behavioral Targeting
• Spyware / Adware
• In Game Ads
• Gamevitorials – Make a Flash game for your brand

Mobile

• Mobile Search
• Mobile Ad networks
• Bluetooth Push
• Mobile Apps – iPhone and Android Apps
• SMS

Viral

• Viral – Google ‘will it blend’ for an example
• Viral Seeding – Paid version seeding the above
• Viral Loop – Gold dust, if the application spreads itself like Hotmail

Online Display

• Banner Ads – Remember to try the ad exchanges for low CPM’s
• Video Ads – Embedded ads in videos
• Popups / Popunders
• In Line Ads – Kontera, Vibrant Media
• Contextual Text/Banner Networks – Google Adsense
• Blog Ad Networks – BuySellAds, Federated Media
• Niche Banner Ads – Eg w00tmedia.net for cult websites

Online Marketplaces

• eBay – Sell anything on eBay
• Amazon Marketplace
• Supplier Portals – Wholesale/Import/Export Portals
• Service marketplaces – Get projects from elance & guru
• Classified Ads – Free ads on Craiglist, Gumtree & Google Base
• Niche Online Storefronts – eg Dreamstime for Images

Online Networking

• Linkedin – Build a network and Inmail rocks
• Niche Online Communities – For example econsultancy
• IM – Instant Messengers – Build your contact lists MSN, Gtalk, Skype

Distribution Channels

• Wholesalers
• Exporters
• Retailers

Online PR

• Local and Industry Directories
• Profile Page Promotion – From Wikipedia to Flickr
• Blog Reviews – Get your products reviewed by top bloggers to generate buzz

Offline PR

• Entering Business Competitions
• Corporate Events
• Interviews and quotes in Publications
• Writing for Publications – With a bio of course!
• Publicity Stunts
• Celeb Endorsements

Partnership Marketing

• Online Affiliate Programs
• Joint Ventures

Networking

• Corporate Entertainment
• Personal Networking – Build a great black book & keep in touch
• Tradeshow / Seminars – Go to events, places & seminars your clients are going to be & rub shoulders

Tradeshows

• Speaking engagements
• Stands
• Tradeshow Sponsorship
• Run Your Own Seminar

Promotional Material

• Flyers
• Branded Items
• Catalogues and Brochures
• Business Cards
• Stickers
• Promotional Gifts

Signage

• Vehicle Lettering & Car Stickers
• On Site Billboards – Construction industry standard
• Store Front Signs
• Walking Sandwich Boards – Also pointer sign holders

Cinema

• In Film Product Placement
• Pre Roll Ads

Television

• TV Ads
• Program Sponsorship
• Product Placement

Radio

• Radio Ads

Radio

• Program Sponsorship
• Product Placement

Outdoor Display

• Road side billboards
• Underground or Subways
• Buses and Vehicles – Regional target via routes
• Restrooms Billboards

Sponsorship

• Team Sponsorship
• Awards Sponsorship
• Bursary Sponsorship

Direct Marketing

• Directory Enquiries SMS Sponsorship
• SMS List Marketing
• Telesales Cold Calling
• Mailshots
• Personal handout
• Door to Door Cold Calling

Print

• Magazine Ads
• Newspaper Ads
• Publication Product Placement

Directories

• Yellow Pages – Plus other large directories
• Trade Directories

Doing Business Well

• Word of Mouth – If your product is awesome it will spread
• Referrals – Ok, so it’s the same as the above