Making Use of Your 404 Pages (no script needed)

It’s Edmund here with a business optimization tip: ever thought of doing something to your Error Pages, especially your 404 - Page Not Found error pages?

I’ve implemented this since several months ago, and noticed a slight, though not major, increase in my subscriptions. Probably thanks to the 404 Error Pages.

Here’s what I did:

This is one of the few types of pages that would show up if a visitor visits a web page that doesn’t exist on any of my websites. The visitor may have misspelled the web page URL, or the page genuinely doesn’t exist due to linking error (though I make doubly sure all of my web pages are linked correctly).

However instead of a blank, white page with a not-so-nice message - I turned my 404 Error Page into another means for getting new leads.

Initially, I depended on a script to do this. I wasn’t technically savvy (and still am not). But I learned that it’s actually possible, and actually easier, to do if you would just go to your web hosting’s cpanel.

The steps are easy and you can very well turn your 404 Error Pages - and perhaps other Error Pages if you want - to another means of capturing more new leads.

Here goes…

Step 1. Log into your hosting’s Cpanel. Look for an option called “Error Pages”.

Step 2. Choose 404. As you can see, there are other Error Pages you can choose to edit if you want to, but let’s not go off topic and stick to making use of your 404 ‘real estate’.

Step 3. Paste the HTML codes for your 404 Error Page. Start the web page with highlighting the Error, like Oops… Page Not Found! You can choose to publish your products for sale here, but from experience it’s better to offer a free gift and capture the leads. Since the visitor is probably looking for information.

When you are done, click on SAVE. Voila!

You can spend as little as a few minutes making this tweak to your website, depending on how many you have.

As said, you don’t need a third party script for this and you can carry the change out easily. You only need to do this once and you can literally set and forget.

CASE STUDY: How I Increased My Sales Revenue By Nearly 800% In 3 Years

Good, so I seem to be blogging more consistently now. At least once a week.

I’ve been wanting to write about this since a long time ago but it took me a while to put everything together, including my stats and past notes when doing my launches of any scale.

These results were taken from my smaller time sensitive Private Label Rights sales since November 2006 up until June 2009. The gradual increase in sales revenue from these time sensitive sales came from applying different approaches throughout.

To the tune of 800% in increase!

November 2006: $1,890.00 in 24 hours

The sale pulled off quite simply. 30 copies available. No One-Time Offer. No back end. Just purely Front-End sales. I carried out a sale similar to this 10 times in the interval of months. No surprise that the results were similar, too - ranging from $1,400 to $2,000.

September 2008: $4,127 in sales

I decided to carry out these sales on a less frequency but it will have to make up in sales power. This marked the first mini PLR sale with dramatic changes like:

- more PLR products in the package than usual (6 instead of 4) but at lower price
- added a sales video to the sales letter
- added One-Time Offer (OTO)
- recruited 5 affiliates to push the mini PLR sale

I more than doubled my sales revenue! My profit share was also more than I did from the first sale model.

January 2009: $7,315 in sales in 3 days

This was a major trend setter for the coming mini PLR sales I have in the pipeline. After my success with PLRGold: Videos I saw a bigger demand in multimedia PLR products. So I produced less PLR E-Books and created more Multimedia courses with Private Label Rights (a.k.a. audio E-Books).

I experienced my first big breakthrough in the mini sale model with this one. The successful principles of the previous sale were carried forward to this one, and included the following changes and additions:

- PLR E-Books have phased out
- Started selling multimedia based product with PLR (audio, video, transcript, presentation slides)
- used a lower priced One-Time Offer for testing purposes (actually it’s better to sell a higher priced OTO and more profitable too)
- recruited more than 5 affiliates

In fact I have documented the break down of the 72 Hour PLR Sale model in an early blog post here.

March 2009: $10,851!!

I carried out another time sensitive sale which broke the 5 figure mark! The only difference was recruiting slightly more affiliates and more aggressive marketing on Twitter from them, which I had least expected.

However in the first 24 hours, I was too ambitious and tried to put front a $297 One-Time Offer. None were sold. So I had to put up an emergency OTO in place that was priced lower i.e. $97. I suspect the jump in price was too big for the Front-End buyers or many of them had already owned the products from the OTO.

June 2009: $14,747!!

The ultimate one so far! This time around not only have I carried out the successful recipes from the previous sale forward to this one:

- This was the first unique PLR title of its own, focusing on brand building and the first PLR product to have BOTH male and female voice over
- This time’s One-Time Offer (OTO) is truly brand new; never made and released before - unlike previous OTOs.
- The OTO touches on a hot topic that will never fizzle out i.e. social media traffic
- I’ve also included a Downsell a.k.a. lite version of the One-Time Offer if the buyer passes it up
- Added the Virtual Smart Agent script that saved 7% of the sales
- There were more motivated affiliates even though I invited 10 people officially; I paid out to 26 people at the end of the campaign

So if you observe the latest results and compare it to my first try, notice I make 8 times more now? I guarantee you’re getting loads of ideas from this. Will write again when I get my next breakthrough!

When Small Changes Make An Impact (seriously!)

To be really, really honest with you…

I wasn’t a big believer in small changes making big differences. Hardly.

Until recently.

After discovering new things, strategies and approaches that work for my business, I was excited to carry out the changes throughout my network of websites. In hind sight, I also cannot help but wonder how much money I have been leaving on the table on these while.

Better late than never, nonetheless.

In spite of my busy schedule, I put business optimization on priority for the past two weeks, tweaking my websites and implementing the changes I have found to have worked splendidly well. You will be surprised how small changes can make a HUGE impact!

1. Adding the Virtual Smart Agent script to my sales pages.
The VSA is a script that pops up after a visitor attempts to leave your website. A virtual agent will appear in the pop-up window to negotiate real-time on your behalf and save the sale for you. It’s an ingenious concept but I didn’t believe in it initially… until I saw VSA in action for Mega Red Packet. VSA has saved 28% of the sales which otherwise would have been lost! 28%. The same script saved 20% of sales for Vince Tan during his Biggest Firesale 2008. And recently, I saved 7% more sales for my recent 3-day Private Label Rights sale. I wish I had implemented this way earlier! (but again like I said, better late than never.)

2. One simple email boosted daily sign ups for one of my membership sites from 20-30 a day to 30-40 a day!
At first, I didn’t store in any follow-up emails for a particular membership site I own, where members would sign up and receive these emails periodically. I added an email that the member would get 1 day after he signs up, asking him to tell his other friends about the membership site and I gave his affiliate link on the spot. This small change boosted the daily sign ups by 30%. Just like that!

3. Restructuring and adding more follow-up emails.
After identifying which products I affiliate for sell well and don’t sell well, I removed the poor sellers from the line of follow-up emails in my autoresponder in favor of the proven sellers. I’m constantly amazed at how many people are not maximizing their autoresponder privileges, given that you can store in as many follow-up emails as you want. Doing this pro-longs the lifespan of your product, which means products you have released before can be continuously marketed to the new crowd without the need to manually email over and over again. Some time back I talked about storing 14 follow-up emails in your autoresponder instead of the usual 7. Now I am experimenting with 21-24 follow-up emails.

4. Centralization.
I have had JVManager1 since 2005 but it was only early this year that I have centralized all of my websites on one centralized domain www.amloh-central.com. Don’t ask me why I paid attention to this late; I wonder why too. Again, I wish I had done it right from the start. Because ever since I used the centralization approach business became more effective. Affiliates sign up only once (not multiple times) and get their links all from one place which is obviously acting as a hub. They can choose to promote any product they want from the AMLOH-Central database, and their affiliate ID will always be the same. Sales and tracking can all be done from one single place. Talk about time and effort saving, too. If you want to know who is the ‘Godfather of Centralization’, John Delavera is your man.

Other changes I carried out, which remains to be observed for results, include:

1. Changing all of my 404 Page Not Found error pages. Visitors are prone to going to non-existent pages especially if they manually type a link. This is where I attempt to capture leads where possible, using a free report gift as a bait.

2. Added rotating banner ads to my blog (which you are seeing now on your right) and the secured areas in my membership sites.

3. Most of my Thank You pages now use a uniformed layout, bearing the AMLOH-Central logo. I also add further recommendations using the Amazon.com style - “Customers Who Have Purchased This Product Also Bought…”

If you already have a substantial business up and running, it pays to take some time off just to make small changes and optimize your websites for results that matter. And if you are just starting out, this just goes to show that proper planning comes a long way!

I’ll report further in the near future on the results from the tweaks and optimizations I am making.