Ugly Theme: Making Money with Wordpress

Recent News and Posts:

3 Steps to Search Results Pages That Convert and Sell

What would you think if you went to the Hardware Store and asked for a hammer and the associate helping you simply said, “Sorry, we don’t have that, ask again.”

You’d expect the associate to suggest something.  Maybe you really meant a mallet, well in that case it’s aisle 5.  Or maybe you just spelled (or pronounced) hammer wrong, and you are actually only a few feet from the hammer section.

Unfortunately, most websites, when searched, come up with something just as agonizing as “Sorry, we don’t have that, ask again.”

So how do you make your Search Results Page Convert and Sell?

It’s really easy if you follow these 3 Steps:

Step 1.  Give Good Results.

This is the best way to get users where they really want to go.  Google makes a personal search engine available to webmasters on their site.  But, many webmasters can’t easily tweak their website’s search results, so the rest of this article will be focused on what to do with the search results (or lack thereof) your website already serves up.

Step 2.  Tell Users Nothing was Found and Lead Them Through Finding It.

Give the user a few choices.  Allow them to search again right there.  Or, give them your email address and let them email you to tell you what they were looking for.

Step 3.  Give Users a Sitemap Right There.

So maybe they are lost beyond all recollection.  Give them something else to look at or let them find the post they really wanted from your sitemap.

If we could keep all those frustrated visitors from leaving our site when they didn’t find the post they were looking for, we’d all have more money in our pockets.  Make this quick and easy fix to your Search Results page today.

Quadruple Your Sales With Related Content Links on Wordpress or HTML Sites

In the offline world, marketers have discovered that putting toothpaste next to floss works.  Placing tent stakes next to tents makes sense.  They found that they make more money when related items are easy to match.

In the online world, when money is measured in PageViews per Visitor, Click-Thrus, and a lot of time spent browsing your website and eventually buying or clicking on an ad, the same holds true.  You have to put like things with like things.

Wordpress makes this easy.  There are a host of plug-ins that will do just that and put all of the related posts in your blog somewhere in your post.

Where do you put the related posts on your website?  Well- at what point in the reading of the page is the user most likely to want to read something else?  The best place is at the bottom of the article, so if they want more to read it’s right there.

What do you do if you don’t have Wordpress?  Well, you could code links to other sections by hand.  It may take a few extras minutes, but it is REALLY time well spent.

Email Marketing: How to Grow Your Email List with Wordpress and Feedburner

A big email list is like a big pile of diamonds just waiting to be polished.  If you aren’t collecting email addresses from your website or blog, you are tossing unpolished diamonds to your competitors.

I’m going to tell you the best way to use free tools to build an email list and it’s going to take you about 10 minutes to implement this on your site.

Couple Wordpress (free blogging platform) and Feedburner (free RSS and email management) and build your list easily.

First, you need to get your website or blog up and running.  You’ll need to go and download Wordpress Blogging Platform and get it all set-up on your server.  Wordpress is famous for the “5 Minute Install” so this should be pretty easy.

Once that is set-up (or if you already have a Wordpress blog) go to Feedburner.com and sign-up for your free account.  You’ll claim your blog and can go into the options and allow people to sign-up for email delivery.

While you are on the Feedburner website, you can get the code to insert a box on your website that people can use to subscribe to your updates.  Copy and Paste that code.

Now, take that cody and go into your Wordpress Theme Presentation folder in your Wordpress Dashboard and insert that code at the bottom of the posts.  This part is a bit complicated for novices, but if you have a problem you can always email me.  You’ll want the code at the bottom of the post because it’s AFTER a user reads and trusts you that they’ll want to sign up.

Once a user signs up, Feedburner manages their email addresses and emails everyone a copy of each new post you do so you don’t even have to write extra!  If you ever want to send a pitch to your email list, you have access to all of their email addresses in the Feedburner back-end.

It’s easy and fast to get more people involved in your blog or website.  Take the time to set-up this feature on YOUR site now.

3 Steps To Designing 404 Pages that Convert and Sell Your Lost Visitors

Most 404 pages are terrible.  If you are reading this, chances are your’s is terrible too.

I’m going to lay this down to you short and simple: If you want a website that works, you need to make some simple changes to grease the bearings.  One simple way to do that is to improve your 404 or “Page Not Found” part of your site.

In case you didn’t know: a 404 page is a page of any website that comes up when a user types in or tries to go to a link that isn’t there.  That means when someone types in www.yoursite.com/wordd when they actually want to go to www.yoursite.com/word they are going to come to your 404 page.  Or, very often, if someone links to your site and you change your links around or remove the page they linked to, you are going to have a user come up with a 404 page.

So there are three steps to making your 404 page make you money and keep your visitors happy.

Step 1.  Tell Users they are lost.

Make it obvious that they are not just missing something- let them know they are lost so they don’t get confused and frustrated and leave.  On my 404 page, it simply says: “Whoops, this page is not found!”

Step 2.  Lead Users Through Fixing the Problem.

Give the user a few choices.  Tell them to type in the address again if they typed it in the first place.  Or, better yet, give them a search bar right there they can use.  Or, give them your email address and let them email you to tell you what they were looking for.

Step 3.  Give Users a Sitemap Right There.

So maybe they are lost beyond all recollection.  Give them something else to look at or let them find the post they really wanted from your sitemap.

Do these 3 Steps and you are building your way to a phenominal website.  Better yet, build this functionality into every site you ever make and never worry about it again.

Copyright © 2007 by Ugly Theme .