Online dating is a huge market online.  We straddle the fence between Match.com and BlackSingles.com.

For us, BlackSingles has a better reception as far as media conducive to our demographic and better yet, they take the time to keep their banners fresh and up to date.  Our experience shows that Match.com has a seemingly larger database of potential dates…. But what good is that if no one is getting to those landing pages?

Here is an example of the testing that you should clearly do to effectively monetize traffic via all of your affiliate programs.

Goal: To get as many site visitors into a conversion funnel to become a dating customer.

Traffic Sources: Mostly organic traffic on one of our test sites:  www.blackatlanta.com

Our ClickThrough Stats:

Dating Impressions and Click Throughs for Multiple Banners

Please note that Revenue can still be generated on this clickthroughs!   As with most affiliate programs, we are most concerned with:

• setting that all important cookie
• getting them to sign up for an email list for the affiliates to market and convert
• a direct conversion, (which did not happen yet on these clicks)
  

Banners:

Banner 2401

Banner 2408

Banner 2413

Results

So out of 253 banner impressions, the 3 different banners got varying degrees of rotation.

Per the results, Banner 2413 was the winner with 80 impressions and 4 clickthroughs (5% ).  This banner also received ALL clickthroughs!

Some Reflections

Now, some may say that should clearly promote a winner only after a solid test number of impressions given.  Sure, we could have waited for 100 impressions a piece for ALL banners, but sometimes, a HUNCH can help you in making money.  Just ask Warren Buffet.

So clearly, the last piece of this is that we immediately go into our ad server and deactivate the two losers!

Now, these results were click through summaries for that the Affiliate program has provided to us.  You can use your analytics program or vendor programs… JUST GET STARTED!!!!

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Update:  as of 2/10/09, Our study still stands… The Click through rate has decreased…. but with over 300 shows a piece, still has a better click through than the other two.

Click Through Is Still The Winner

DEFINITELY turning all traffic towards Banner 2413.

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Hair Braiding Tests

We utilize Zac Johnson’s Landing Page template to see if we can get a domain name ranked, and start sending traffic to an Affiliate Program.

In our articles Hair Braiding: How Hair Braiding Videos Padded My Pockets and Zac Johnson: Comparison Landing Page Template | SlimChews.net , we went over:

• Hair braiding DVD’s as an affiliate revenue stream
• Landing page templates, of which a couple great ones are located over at Zac Johnson’s blog.

Today, we launch an experiment to:

1. get a DOT BIZ domain name ranked, and hopefully well for the terms “hair braiding” or “hair braids”.  www.hairbraids.biz
2. utilize landing page templates by Zac, which we have definitely used successfully for conversions.

We will eventually utilize Google Optimizer to do an A/B test against Zac’s product comparison landing page and the regular landing page template available at his site.

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I was telling a colleague the other day that one of our sites, brought in about 600K visitors from January – November 2008.  The site is well monetized… or at least coded for offers… but conversions are low.  We talked about Quality vs. Quantity of traffic in our post “What’s More Important:  Quality or Quantity?”

What does work is this:  Google Adsense… Why?

Organic/Relevant Search Engine Traffic

My hypothesis is that the contextual basis of Google’s algorithms deliver the most conducive content based on the organic traffic coming to the site.  (WELL… EVERYONE knows what Google Adsense does in delivery of the contextual ads based on the content –>  So, it’s really not a hypothesis.  More so a confirmation!)

As we see in the graphic, the results of the search engine search are very pertinent to the user’s interest… So we have the best opportunity to make that cash.

So for 2009… As a marketer, I am faced with a good problems to have….  Having lots of traffic, but with a need to segment and address it….. or  finding ways to get more qualified traffic for conversions.

2.1 Million Page views.

If I can convert 1% of these page views from January – November 2008, with a $5 offer… how sweet life will be for 2009!   1% is 21,000 of the page views… OR Perhaps doubling that and making $2.50 per page view … Can you do the math with me?

For 2009, in a recession-ridden economy, it is very important for your site to have the best opportunity to convert.  To do this, you must either:

• Feed your site’s ecommerce engine the best fuel (qualified traffic) OR
• Have ways in place to study, analyze, and segment the traffic that you have, in order to convert.

The all so famous sales funnel

That famous sales funnel is so correct… IN 2009, let’s all focus on increasing the leads, and as our friend Mwangi stated in his comment for increasing “…sales, sales, sales!”

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Click Here, or watch the video below

Click Here…

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In our article “Size Length and Size Matter? Home Page Testing on BlackAtlanta.com…”, we discuss landing page bounce rates.

High bounce rates normally means 1 of 2 things:

1. Marketing Deficiencies: You have lost the attention of the user based on how they got to your page (PPC or Organic Positioning) This happens because you have not properly matched landing page content to the reason the site visitor lands on your page. If using PPC, your landing page needs to cater to the content of the Ad!
2. Technical Glitches: Perhaps the page loads too slowly and the site visitor just … well, uh… BOUNCES off of our your page on to other surfing fun.

Now, if a page has a high bounce rate, you should use analytics to find out how they are coming to the page. At that time, you will be able to determine what you can improve. For example, if they are coming from Google search to your page for the keyword “cool pianos”, you need to cater that landing page to COOL PIANOS.

Now, here is the challenge: Because the page has a high bounce rate, once you improve the page, you need some immediate attention-grabbing content and/or features.

My suggestion is to install an analytics program such as Google Analytics. Learn which pages and section of your website are getting traffic and WHY. Then, even if you are getting high bounce rates, strategize on how to take advantage of that traffic coming to the page.

Catch the attention of your visitor ABOVE THE FOLD OF THE PAGE!!!

Lastly, if you are PAYING via PPC ads, SUSPEND and pause your campaigns until you figure out what you can do to decrease bounce rate while improving the completion of the desired action.

Read more on our experience with BOUNCE RATES at http://blackinternetmarketing.com/size-length-and-size-matter-home-page-testing-on-blackatlantacom/-/Black-Internet-Marketing/2008/11/10/

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WinningTheWeb.com has ranked the top 100 Internet Marketing blogs on the internet.  (How long will it take us to get there?!!?!?!?!)

I like how they have ranked them based on many criteria like:

• Feedburner RSS Subscribers
• Alexa Rank
• Compete Rank
• Technorati Rank
• Google Page rank
• Yahoo Inbound Links
• StumbleUpon Reviews
• del.icio.us Votes
• Links from Winning the Web
• User Votes

Pretty sweet compilation in their own algorithm.  Check it out!

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Slim Chews: Lose 20 Lbs in ony 6 Weeksl

In our post describing the importance of the landing page experience and good search engine optimization, we announced testing a review site based on weight loss.  Today, we show a screen shot of SEO excellence.

As our a world-renown blog and podcast guru, Mwangi at TheDisplacedAfrican.com, questioned the reason behind showing you publicly our experiments.  We remind our readers that we are not just another “make Moolah” with our tongues hanging out type blog or site, but a site that tries to add another level of value to our readers.

As a guy who has been in web development and strategy for almost 10 years, I am not the professed guru of internet marketing, nor do I show the $100K Google Checks.  So what we do work on though, is showing our clients and readers proof in our own way.

On to Proof… 

In our article on creating a landing page based on a niche affiliate product, we launched www.SlimChews.net.  Read that post in your spare time…

Two ways for Traffic…

As you know, we can always

1. PAY to send traffic to a site.  OR, if skilled enough and let’s face it… LUCKY enough,
2. We could gain traffic naturally through search engine optimization.

SEO Keywords Results for Our Experiment

For the affiliate product of “Slim Chews”, a weight loss that at some time or another must have been reviewed by Oprah and featured on TV, we wanted to be found for:

• Slim Chews
• SlimChews

Our target audience would be those who are familiar with the product or had heard of the it.

Results:  Since posting that blog post on October 21, 2008, we have gained a good share.  See below.

Keyword:  “SlimChews” position #2 (as of 11/18/08).

Please note: Through our SEO value, we “own” position 2,3,4,5 via our SEO. Although these are other sites, it funnels traffic back to our landing page.

SlimChews Search from 11/18/08

Keyword: “Slim Chews” position #1/551,000 Results! (as of 11/18/08).

"Slim Chews" Search from 11/18/08

Keep checking us out! And if you need to lose weight with a system reviewed on Oprah, click here!

Please let us know your thoughts below via our comments section!

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The concept of BlackAtlanta.com will be launched into Detroit, New York City, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Richmond, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Jackson, Norfolk, Washington DC, Buffalo, Cleveland, Baton Rouge, St. Louis, Gary, Birmingham, Sheveport, Indianapolis, Louisville, Oakland, San Francisco, Newark, Mobile, Jacksonville, Little Rock, Columbus, Savannah, Cincinnati, Tampa, Kansas City, Flint, Durham, and Tulsa.

The Expansion marks an unprecendented accomplishment in the African American community, as this many BLACK dot coms have never been launched.

Owned by Rob Tentronck, these domains, from BlackBaltimore.com to BlackDurham.com and all in between will be a major asset to African American communities all over.  The expansion utilizes Brandon Johnson’s advanced web internet marketing strategies, as evident on the site BlackAtlanta.com.

Please call 800-864-2848 for more information!  We are in need of developers, publicists, and investment partners.  Advanced advertising partnerships and opportunities exist now and we look for the community to jump in on the benefits of this expansion.  Here we come world!

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BlackAtlanta.com currently runs on a popular flavor of a Content Management System.  Normally, as many of you may know, a CMS runs dynamically from a Database and generates the page content based on the structure of the page requested.  Modules, components, content, etc. are all placed into the page based on the specific page or channel requested.

Our test was to determine whether we could reduce bounce rates between:

• A short version of the page, where the whole page was above the fold.  Options in navigation and choice were limited.
• Or the regular version of the site.  A very LONG page with many options.  (Image shown to the right –>  very long so we really decreased the size )

Based on analytics, (Powered by Google), we were able to assess that “Black Atlanta Events” was a very high keyword searched regularly on the site.  As seen below, we thought that we would:

• “bait” users by placing the Events link in the top left hand hot zone of the page.
• We even thought that we would make the font larger to further entice…
• Reduce the number of options on the page by taking away navigation
• Steer users into a reduced number of channels through graphical content boxes.

We ran this test between November 5-7, 2008 and compared this mini-home page landing page against the regular landing page (home page) between October 29-31, 2008.

Hypothesis

We hypothesized that the limited option landing page would funnel users into more popular areas of the site immediately, and thus reduce the bounce rate.

Now, Google defines the bounce rate as:

The percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.

Now, all traffic was organically driven.  So keyword relevancy would be high based on Google’s strict algorithmic excellence   LOL!!!

Our findings.

We honestly pulled the plug early on this assessment.  We found an immediate reduction in the total number of page views, AFTER the click through.  In other words, those that stayed and beat our Bounce rate…. were only looking at a few pages and THEN bouncing.

Bounce Rate

Although we did see the Bounce Rate INCREASE by a little over 8% with the shortened page, we cannot fully call the test conclusive, as the number of page views sent to the shortened landing page was only 28% of what the normal long page received.

Time on Page

Strangely enough, the time spend on the page almost doubled with the shortened page.

Conclusions

As stated above, very few conclusions can be made without truly increasing the number of test page impressions, where the home page was the entry point.

I AM a betting man though.  So here are my conjectures:

1. The Increased bounce rate experienced on the landing page, could be improved with a simpler layout.
2. The bounce rate also had less “flair”, meaning that the bored user left the page.
3. Our other experiments on landing pages that are longer than the fold of the page, show that with the use of Clicktale, a large percentage of users actually scroll down the page past the fold and some even scroll back up, until they find where the click will be.  This is an interesting observation, that means that most users don’t mind scrolling if the content is appealing enough and if they feel the page has the content that attracted the click through.

We will continue to tweak our landing pages and improve hot zone studies.  For the time being though, we will allow this user demographic base to continue to get what we project they like…. Longer pages… More Content, More choices…and yes… more sizable length

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You have heard about Widgets for years… either a widget was a Marvel comic book character as seen to the right here, or a very limited Sit Com from the 90s… or if some of you are financial gurus, it is a product that professors and theory guys use to generically define a product….

In the internet world, the widgets can be a great feature to your site.  If you use widgets that don’t necessarily belong to you, then a widget on your website could for example, display the weather, or display news, or be a sign up form for an email list.  Get it?

So let’s work through an example of a widget. In my further definition, it “Decentralizes” a website.  Literally using the internet to create a Spider web effect BACK to the website that provided the content.

In this example, I show you how we have used widgets on our site, www.blackatlanta.com to drive place some of our great content on sites like Myspace, facebook, and other websites, that provide cool pictures, photos, and more on those sites.  However, when people want more of the same, they can click and be driven back to our site.

Decentralization:  Again, the theory for the “widget owner” is to provide lots of great items on other sites, and point them back to the “CENTRAL” source.  This increases:

• Branding:  Awareness of your site and its content.
• Traffic:  If placed properly, a widget can increase your traffic, as site visitors may click through to find your site.
• Viral Placement: YES!!!!  We have not talked about this yet, but most widgets have a famous SHARE or EMBED feature.  This allows OTHER people to actively place your widget also for you.

With the viral placement feature, can you see how we would create a web of traffic back to your site?

Ok, so before this post gets incredibly long and boring, let’s simply look at a widget.

This widget is again, showing the latest videos from our site www.blackatlanta.com

• One can enjoy the content on this site.
• Share it.
• And then click to go to our site BlackAtlanta.com for more !

Find some widgets and liven up your site. Or find a way to WIDGETIZE your site!

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