Reducing Your Support Needs
By Paul Kleinmeulman

If you are selling any product, then no doubt you have had at least one support request. It’s a very important part of business, customer service, but it doesn’t directly grow your business. On the other hand, if you are handling your support poorly very soon word gets around and you are losing business left and right.

This article is NOT about how to hire somebody to do your support, which is something that I have done for the past 3 years, and I strongly recommend you do the same. It is about how to reduce your support needs right at the start, reducing the bottle necks so you don’t have as many support issues.

Here are 3 suggestions…

1) Make Your Sales Process Simple

When I launched My Mind Shift (http://www.MyMindShift.com ), via a new membership type sales system, I quickly discovered that over 50% of customers, were not able to login after they created their membership. This was because they had to click on an email link to be fully registered, a double optin method. For some reason, most of the customers, didn’t receive that email, and I was getting a lot support emails saying "I can’t login" and I had take approximately 5 minutes for each customer, to login to the admin, approve them manually, and write them an email with their username and password to try again.

When you have over 140 sales in one day, it quickly builds up to be a huge task.

Immediately, I hired a coder, to change that bottleneck and remove the need to click the link in the email, before they could login and as soon as this new system was applied it removed all these extra support issues I was getting.

The system still has some issues, such as with the OTO and the download page so I have decided to scrap that membership system entirely, as it is more trouble then it is worth.

In my experience, the simpler the system the better.

Sales Page => Payment Processor => Customer List => Download Page

Works like a charm… reducing support issues tremendously.

2)  Use Video Where You Can

If you have any difficult part for a customer to do for example, downloading an mp3 file, then don’t just tell them how to do it, show them via onscreen video.

Don’t overestimate the technical experience of your customers, especially in some niche markets. Your product might be the first online product that this customer has ever bought, and downloading the product is 100% foreign to them (some don’t even know what downloading means).

Make their first experience easy, by showing them exactly how to download your files or how to install your script. The competent customers will just skip over this, but for first timers, it will save you a lot of support issues.

But don’t just leave it at video, some people prefer to read, so give them an instruction manual with detailed screenshots.

3)  Have A Frequently Asked Questions Section On Your Sales Page & Download Page

Another major part of support, is the questions that people have. Answer them before they ask, via a frequently asked questions section, on your sales page and your download page. I have found that most people’s questions are similar, so by answering one question before it is asked, you could be reducing your support by 20%.

So there you have it, 3 ways to instantly reduce your support issues. Take the effort once, and you could be permanently reducing your support issues in the future.

All the best to your online success,

Sincerely,

Paul Kleinmeulman
Australia

10 Ways To Grow Your Business In 5 to 30 Minutes
By Paul Kleinmeulman

It’s 5:30pm, you have just come back from work and there is 30 minutes before dinner. You are feeling motivated to do something to grow your business, and you need to do it while your wife is not looking ;).

What do you do?

Most people would check their email, or read a sales page, or read a few forum posts… but that doesn’t really grow your business does it?

No it’s dead time, it’s treading water, and you have been doing that for far too long. It’s time to change that attitude and do something that will grow your business even with those few spare minutes of your time.

Here are 10 ways to grow your business with just 5 to 30 minutes.

1) Write An Article or Blog Post

Writing an article can take time, especially when you have to do research, or you have come back from work and mentally drained. But with the right mindset and an ounce of motivation, you can use your time to grow your business. You must put content out there if you expect people to find you. This article took less then 20 minutes to write, you can do it.

2) Submit An Article or Old Blog Post

Along the same lines is to take that article or old articles you have previously written for your blog and submit them to different article directories. I find that it is easy to write articles, but I don’t get around to submitting them very often. 5 to 30 minutes is just the right amount of time to submit one article to numerous different places.

3) Research And Write For Links

Building links to your web site is very important, and not just for search engine optimization, and increasing your ranking. It is also building relationships with other related sites (how else will they hear about you?). 5 to 30 minutes is just enough time to research and contact webmasters requesting links, and putting links to their site on yours.

Or if you don’t want to do it yourself, then take the time to write or video showing how somebody else can do it for you.

4) Research And Write To JV Partners Or Affiliates

Emailing JV partners or affiliates shouldn’t just be a ‘one off when you launch’ thing… You should be constantly contacting new JV partners and or affiliates to promote your products. Take 30 minutes and send them a personalized message on how you can help each other.

5) Add Another Message To Your Autoresponder

What is so good about an autoresponder? It sends out messages when you are not there, building relationships, and promoting products. But you need to fill it first, most people just have 7 messages… BEEEEEP… WRONG!

Use this dead time, and add another message to your autoresponder, either a content message, or a promotion message, or even just a link to your blog if you are adding content to it regularly.

This is a great example, of doing something once, and getting paid for it constantly.

6) Add A "Recommended Product" To Your Download Page

Your download page, is most likely your most underutilized page on your whole website. Take the time to add a ‘Recommended Product’ for your targeted customers and increase your $ value per customer.

7) Rotate Some Ads On Your Blog

If you have had the same ads on your blog for more then a month, then take 30 minutes, to rotate them, and give your blog a minor face lift. We are not talking about a major redesign here, we are just talking about a few changes, so people can notice the difference, and it looks like you genuinely care about your blog.

Write A Script For Your Next Video

I’m the type of person who can’t record a video in less then 30 minutes, I need a lot of preparation time, but I can write a small script in that time. Take the time, to write your next JV video, or a personal message to add to your autoresponder or website, to grow your relationship with your prospects. And then record it later. Or if you care somebody who can just record… then just do it.

9) Research Your Competition

Most people when they come home from work, just want to waste the time and surf the net. Ok but how about we do something useful with our time. How about you do a little bit of spy work on your competition.

Find out…

What keywords they are using for Adwords?
How long they have been online?
Who is linking to them?
How many links do they have?
How many articles they have in Ezine Articles?
etc,

And then see what they are doing that you are not and then do it better!

10) Brainstorm How You Can Drive More Traffic To Your Websites

You can’t have enough traffic, and there are times when you need to think out of the box. Take that dead time and sit down with a pen and piece of paper and think of all the methods you are NOT using to drive traffic to your websites.

Try and come up with 30 different methods, and sort through your list, to find the ones that are going to give maximum results for minimum time. And then use your next spare 30 minutes to do number 1 and so on.

10 things only just cracks the surface, as I was writing this article, I was thinking about all the other things, I could add. Why don’t you take the time to write your own list right now, you will find that it really focuses your mind? Post it near your monitor, and the next time, you want to waste those precious minutes online, do something constructive instead.

Hope that helps,

All the best for your online success.

Sincerely,

Paul Kleinmeulman
Australia

Make More Money Without More Niches…
By Paul Kleinmeulman

As promised this is an article to continue on from yesterday.

You want to make more money right? Of course you do, we all do.

So if one niche is making $100/day how do we make it $200/day or $1000/day without entering another niche?

Let me share with you 5 different ways to make more money from a single niche without going into other markets.

1)  Increase Conversion

If you want to make more money without getting more traffic, then simply increase your conversions. If you sales page is converting at 1% by increasing your conversion rate to 2% you have suddenly doubled your profit, without any extra traffic.

To do this you must test, test, test again, via A-B split tests or multivariate testing and tracking. I recommend starting with your headline, and testing a variety of different versions of your sales page to find out which one works best.

Also I recommend you try video (don’t forget to test, that it does increase conversions) as an easy option to be more personal to your potential customers, and convey more information quicker.

2)  Increase Traffic

The formula is simple, Traffic * Conversion = Sales. We’ve already increased the conversion, so to double our efforts, increase the traffic as well.

Write more content, and get it out in more places. Think social media, article directories and related sites.

Get more links to your site. Use banners, ask for links, create WordPress templates be creative.

Find more partners and affiliates to promote your site. You don’t get, if you don’t ask.

Use invite a friends with rewards.

SEO your site, target your main keywords better.

Multiply your sites, to target more keywords.

Focus on a new method of traffic everyday, and build up that site to dominate every avenue of traffic.

3)  Increase Profit / Sale

If you want to make more money, then make sure you are maximizing your profit per sale. Increase the price (test it to see if that increasing the price, decreases your conversion rate, sometimes it increases conversion).

Turn your digital product into a physical product and maximize your profits that way.

Add more bonuses to your product, and justify the price increase or update and revise it to version 2.

4)  Increase Profit / Customer

The good thing about customers, is most of the time, they buy more then just one item. Don’t stop at the first sale.

Give them a One Time Offer (OTO), but don’t stop at one there either. Give them upsell after upsell. I know marketers that have over 6 upsells in a row, personally I think that is just annoying, but who can argue with more profits.

Build the relationship, and offer follow up or advanced courses/products to your customers to take them to the next level. Promote related affiliate products.

More sales for more products = more profits.

5) Don’t Waste Traffic

A prospect has read your sales page, but doesn’t want to buy (at this time)… what happens? They leave and you lose the customer forever.

Don’t waste that traffic, build a prospect list, via an exit popup or one of those ’save a sale’ scripts, you know the ones with the ‘operator’ that ‘talks’ to them.

Give them something free, and build your email list, to build that relationship with your prospect, so you make more sales.

So there you have it, 5 ways to make more money from your niche, without entering a new one. Can you do this? Absolutely… Is any of this too hard for you? NO!

Implement these 5 methods, before you enter another niche, to maximize your profits and minimize your headaches.

All the best for your online success,

Sincerely,

Paul Kleinmeulman
Australia

I was going to call this new post "Just Because You Build It Doesn’t Mean They Will Come" but I went with "StumbleUpon Traffic Sucks" instead because that was exactly what I said when I launched my new site http://www.SleepWinks.com just over a week ago.

I did a pretty quiet launch… Did a couple of blog posts (one here and one at My Mind Shift Blog ) and then posted it at a few social bookmarking sites.

No emails, no affiliates.

And the results were disappointing to say the least.

Approximately 30 sign ups and no viralness (will update you on this one in the next week or so).

Did I get traffic? Yes I did… I got some. I got over 150 hits from StumbleUpon… Guess how many signed up? Maybe 2 maximum… could be less.

That was when I said… "StumbleUpon Traffic Sucks"

I know what you are thinking… "Your squeeze page just isn’t converting, Paul"

And you are absolutely right. For non-targeted, ’self improvement’ stumbleuponers my site does not convert at all, maybe 1% if I was lucky.

But this is where I get excited.

I went away for the weekend and enjoyed a nice camping trip… The End ;).

Kidding… Well actually I did go, and had a fantastic long weekend, perfect weather, cold enough for a fire, but warm enough to swim. Friend brought his speed boat as well… yeah it was great, thanks for asking ;).

Anyway this week when I got home, actually just 2 days ago now… I sent out an email to my MyMindShift affiliates saying I had a new affiliate program. A few of them signed up.

When I woke up the next morning (3am… yep I’m still doing it)… I discovered that my email exploded with notifications from Aweber saying people had signed up to my list.

Within 42 minutes of one affiliate signing up to my affiliate page (http://www.sleepwinks.com/affiliates ), I had the first subscriber sign up to the optin via his affiliate link (I can tell because his Id is automatically embedded for lifetime commissions) and when I woke up 4 hours later he had already sent over 140 subscribers and they are still coming in every few minutes 2 days later. I loved watching it.

So far he has sent over 370 subscribers with a conversion rate of over 68.5% (didn’t you just say this page didn’t convert… WRONG! ).

Moral of the story…

Affiliates 2 | Social Networking 0

All the best to your online success,

Sincerely,

Paul Kleinmeulman
Australia

P. S. Challenge repeat. Give me a list of how many viral/traffic multiplying methods am I using at http://www.SleepWinks.com Hint it is more than 3.

Guy Siverson From http://search-engine-optimization-and-beyond.com/

Wrote a comment on my blog last week.

Here is some of it…

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I’m going to repeat myself from my last comment… but adding HitTail to the mix helps you target to long-tail keywords which are the low hanging fruit of the internet.

I use HitTail with LinkTator2 for the best results.

/////////////

Well I know Linktator2 works like gangbusters but…

"What the heck is HitTail?" I said to myself "And what does it do?"

Well I immediately signed up for a free account at http://www.HitTail.com (gosh I wish that was an affiliate link) and I have been watching it like a hawk ever since.

Let me tell you something…

I absolutely love this free SEO tool.

All you do is add a little snippet of code to your index page, and then it does the rest.

Specifically it tracks the visits to your site and lists all the search engine phrases that people used to find your site.

It then gives you suggestions and a big long list of keywords that were used.

It’s awesome.

Check out this big long list of keywords from my new site at http://www.MyMindShift.com

I wanted to include it as an image here… but it is so big that you wont be able to read it if I do.

My Long Tail Keywords

Notice that my top 10 keywords make up for 40% of my traffic, but my long tail keywords make up for 60% of my traffic.

Very eye opening… and let me tell you that those long tail keywords are more targeted and would result in a higher conversion rate (can’t prove that yet because XConversions is not working properly yet).

Search Engine Optimization is exciting and I highly recommend HitTail to help you even more.

All the best,

Sincerely,

Paul Kleinmeulman
Australia

P.S. Thanks Guy I appreciate the suggestion mate… it is awesome!