online

If you’re like most of us, your website gets a shocking number of visitors who never sign up for anything, never take action, never give donations.

They just show up (who knows why?) and then leave.

Here’s a simple, look at this problem from the KISSmetrics blog: What The Highest Converting Websites Do Differently.

Conversions — people converting from visitors to action-takers — are what you want. And here are what the smart kids do to get them:


  1. They Make Their Unique Value Proposition(s) Clear
  2. They Test Their Calls-to-Actions
  3. They Test Their Headlines
  4. They Tend To Have Short Forms

Future Fundraising Now

Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on . Comment#

If there is anything at all that makes you feel overwhelmed with your online business, then that just means you have to learn a bit more and get more comfortable. Web businesses smart enough to give Amazon Money Machine a try and have stood the test of time will tell you the same thing, too. Historically, taking advantage of third party independent workers provides for increased time on higher priority activities. Take a look at all you do, and you just may find a way to create hybrid approaches that will give you even more leverage. There is nothing more frustrating than learning the hard way, and we are talking about getting educated about any new marketing or business method, first. However, regardless of how you approach outsourcing or anything else, just recover and roll with any mistakes you may make.

When you are running a content site that has few to little pictures in it to support your writing, your marketing is going to suffer. If you want to take the right approach, you need to make sure that you put images and graphics throughout your content. You should also go beyond just putting images into your content–as you will soon see. There is a lot you can do with color and graphics that will improve your site performance in several ways. Here are some introductory explanations of exactly what you can do, so keep reading.

Proper use of color is just one area of marketing that does not get enough attention–especially by smaller web based business. This is a meaty topic because color is used all over the place–not just in the images themselves, but in the themes and other graphic elements of your websites. One of the opportunities that gets missed most often is the use of colors in the pictures that get sprinkled throughout a website. It’s good to be extremely selective with your images both in terms of image content and color enhancements. When you want to accentuate or bring out emotion, these things matter. The internet can be confusing and overwhelming, and this leads many affiliates to try all kinds of things that simply don’t work. It’s all too easy to get diverted by ineffective actions or by following the wrong advice. Such missteps are nothing to be ashamed of, as we’ve all made them at one time or another. If you want to know the most profitable task you can focus on for your affiliate marketing business, it’s generating leads. You’ve certainly heard of the power of social media marketing by now, and the best way to use this is for generating leads. Your list will be much more profitable in the long run if you deliver as much value as possible to your subscribers rather than try to sell them lots of things.

For the most part, people on the Internet are becoming much better at selling, advertising and marketing. Even if this marketing strategy is being done in front of us, or down the road, we are aware of what is happening. When writing effective presell copy, think of talking to your best friend, and start writing everything down.

Since you would never give these people erroneous info, you need to imagine you are talking to them. What you write should be conversational, just like talking to your best friend. The attitude that you hear in your writing will shift dramatically when you have this frame of mind.

There are some important things that you need to keep in mind once you start to apply visual aids to a content site, especially if you haven’t ever used them before. Any graphic or image you place into your site needs to be relevant to whatever topic you are going to be discussing. When you stray from this, the only thing that happens is that your readers get confused about what you’re trying to tell them.

chris stoddard

Filed under Chris Stoddard by on . Comment#

The internet is the best place to look for just about anything you might need. Considering you can buy anything from environment friendly pencils to health insurance from the internet, the previous statement actually makes a lot of sense. And the fact that a lot of people nowadays choose to buy products online. As such, the internet is the best place for you to place an order for custom promotional bags if your business has a need for it. This is because you can find everything you need on the internet in less than an hour and pay for it and just wait for the item (or in this case, items) to be delivered to you. It is also quite easy to find affordable prices or deals on these kinds of products on the internet especially if you will order in bulk and you will place orders in advance. This works for businesses that would want to find affordable ways to promote their products and services.

But there are also a number of things you need to keep in mind when buying these bags over the internet. To start with, you need to be sure about the type and the number of custom made reusable grocery bags you will place an order for. This will help you save quite a lot of time and effort when browsing around various options. So be sure you know what it is you want to buy before you begin to shop around for it. Next, you need to be certain you can trust the online suppliers you are buying from. Take the time to learn as much as you can about the online suppliers you plan to buy these reusable bags from before you buy anything from them.

If you are wondering why, this is to help you ensure you aren’t about to buy substandard promotional bags. If there is a downside to buying stuff from online suppliers, it is the fact you can’t personally inspect the products before you pay for it. The only way you can be sure the bags you buy from websites such as www.customgrocerybags.com are of high quality is to make sure the online suppliers are reputable. This can be done by reading product reviews and testimonials written and posted online by the online suppliers’ previous customers. These reviews will give you firsthand info about the products and the quality of the services you can expect from the online sellers. This is the best way for you to be sure you will end up buying promotional items that serves your purpose of promoting products and services without costing you a lot of money.

chris stoddard

Filed under Chris Stoddard by on . Comment#

One of the cool things about email fundraising is you can send as many as you want, no additional cost, right?

Wrong. There can be a steep cost to sending too many emails, as reported in The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Social Philanthropy blog: The Dangers of an Inactive E-Mail List.

If you’re getting low open rates, email providers know that, and can consider you a spammer…

… if not enough supporters open the messages, the providers will stop delivering the messages to subscribers’ inboxes.

It seems grotesquely unfair, but your emails can get crushed by the actions of email providers. The best campaign ever conceived can fail because your previous campaigns didn’t get opened enough.

This means don’t mail your inactive email names too often. They’re the ones least likely to open your messages and get you labeled as a spammer.

Turns out good list hygiene and prudent contact schedules are just as important in email as direct mail. Who knew?

Future Fundraising Now

Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on . Comment#

Do your online campaigns fall flat? You might be missing something, such has the things outlined recently at Branded Out Loud blog: 12 Elements of a Great Online Fundraising Campaign. They include:


  • A concept that immediately makes donors feel good.
  • A great call to action.
  • Easy but profound ways for people to help.
  • Tools to help people spread the word about your campaign.
  • Success stories to showcase.
  • Tools to help people raise funds for you.

Pay especial attention to that second one, a great call to action. It’s the piece most often missed in online fundraising. (It’s often missing in fundraising of all media, in fact.)

You aren’t really fundraising until you’ve got a well-crafted fundraising offer: Something specific and compelling that your donor can do.

Future Fundraising Now

Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on . Comment#