Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

One Stop Web Support Newsletter #28 On Its Way

The latest issue of One Stop Web Support Newsletter is scheduled to arrive early Sunday morning, April 16. This newsletter contains:

• Article—Determining Your Return on Investment (ROI)
• Review of "Article Announcer" article marketing software
• Review of "Turn Auction Traffic Into Cash"
• Special guest article by Jim Cockrum—FREE stuff to sell on eBay - a great idea!
• Success quote by Oscar Wilde

If you haven't signed up for my newsletter, you can do so at www.onestopwebsupport.com/newsletter-signup.htm. And I'll make it worth your while if you do. I'll give you $250 worth of free gifts for signing up!
Jeff

More Robert Bly Copywriting Tips
Top copywriting expert Robert Bly answered a question in the small group session I recently attended. Someone asked him what the "right" length was for sales copy. Rather than giving the cliched, "However long it needs to be" answer, he gave some fantastic guidelines:

• The more emotional your product is, the longer the copy you need.
• The more complicated the decision is to buy your product is, the longer the copy you need.
• The higher the price your product is, the longer the copy you need.
• The more complex your product is, the longer copy you need.

In short, there is no magic length of copy needed. Buying a simple commodity product like batteries has little emotion involved, no complicated decision process, low price, and little complexity. You can focus on a couple of key elements, such as reliability and long life and feel content that you've covered what your buyer is looking for.

Diamond jewelry, on the other hand, or any other complex, expensive, or emotion-charged product is a whole different story. It will take much longer copy to overcome the barriers to a sale.

But with this list of characteristics, you should be able to better judge how long your copy needs to be.
Jeff

Highlights from Perry Marshall Google AdWords Seminar - Bob Bly
Perhaps the highlight of a highly enjoyable and informative seminar I attended last weekend was the chance I had to sit down with one of the top copywriters in the country, Robert Bly. I sat down with him in a small group session on the final day. Here's one of the tips he passed on:

"When it comes to SEO copywriting, I take a different approach from the people who call themselves SEO copywriters. They'll start out writing for the search engines and try to make it somewhat appealing to readers—but only so far as they can without affecting their keyword densities.

"On the other hand, I try to write the strongest, most persuasive copy I can. Once I have a page that really works for readers, I start testing. I replace different headlines or subheads or body text with more SEO-friendly elements and I test each change. Usually, the conversion rates go down. But I don't look only at conversion rates; I look at overall sales.

If the more SEO-friendly element I'm testing builds the traffic to the point where the lower conversion rate still pulls higher sales, I'll leave it. If not, I switch back to the original element and test something else."

Great advice and a great reminder that neither traffic nor conversion rate is the ultimate metric we should focus on. In the end, the goal is to make sales. And whatever mix of SEO and copywriting accomplishes that best is what we need to do.
Jeff

Back at Last!
Things have been pretty hectic. Between a trip to Chicago for the Perry Marshall Google AdWords Seminar and picking up my son from college for Easter break, I've been on the road pretty constantly this past week.

I know I was in the middle of a series on different ways to make money online. But some of the stuff I brought back from the seminar is worth posting right away. So I'll put my existing series on hold to bring you some fresh and hot new stuff from the seminar, starting tomorrow.
Jeff