CONTENT
* From the Editor
* Printable web pages
* Take better Travel Pictures, Tip # 6:
Get in touch with people
* Guest article: Why test?
- by Mark Joyner
* Do you need more subscribers to your newsletter?
* Learn from free marketing courses
All former
issues are available online at
www.StockPhotoNews.com
........................................................
FROM THE EDITOR
Happy Holidays to all readers! Still on travel in Thailand
but
mainly being based in Bangkok, I have spend even Christmas
in a
workshop without any family members around me. I hope you
have
done better. Anyway Thailand is a very charming country with
a
mixture of modern life and rural life.
My current more sporadic connection with Internet resources
has opened my eyes for a missing service many of us are not
providing from our websites:
We don't make it easy for our visitors to make simple prints
of
our central texts and information. In the case of my needs
I
would have liked to make prints of travel information from
time
to time to bring with me along my routes. Read more about
such
benefits in this issue of Stock Photo News.
You will also find a guest article by Mark Joyner, CEO,
Aesop.Com
because the content of it about the value of testing the
performance of your website goes so well together with the
ideas
of print pages.
Just before Christmas I could register from an internet
cafe?
that we now have more than 1000 professional subscribers
to this
newsletter. Welcome to all new readers - and thank you so
much
to all 'ol' readers for staying with us.
Still sitting far from my normal office and resources for
producing Stock Photo News, I apologize for not being as
well
informed as usual. And I apologize for a missing English
language correction before publication. Anyway, I hope you
will enjoy this issue and find useful information for your
work.
The web-based version will be uploaded later.
Enjoy your reading of Stock Photo News.
Soren Breiting
A-Z FOTOS "Find
Stock Photos from most of the World"
www.azFotos.com
Comments, tips and relevant articles are appreciated, please
email me at sb@azfotos.com
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........................................................
PRINTABLE WEB PAGES
It becomes more and more clear, that online presence has
to be
viewed as just one side of our total presence in the market
place. One aspect to improve for many websites would be to
make
it easy for visitors to make a print. This should be possible
both with longer texts and with pages displaying just overviews.
I can see for myself that I have quite a lot to do with my
own
website for A-Z Fotos on www.azFotos.com when the planned
revision without the controversial frames layout shall take
place in the nearest future.
Be aware of the potential of prints from your website as
a marketing
tool.
When you have your pages for printing designed take into
account
that the standard paper format for North America and Europe
is
different. The standard for Europe is the A4 format, which
is
slightly less wide and a little bit longer.
Some ideas for print pages
- Full contact information of all kinds on one page, including
a
map showing how to find you.
- Catalogue like pages.
- Reviews.
- Schedules for deadlines, publishing dates or the like.
- Annotated lists of useful resources.
- Product descriptions.
- Teasers of book chapters etc.
- Fax and mail order forms.
- Guaranties.
- Instructions in how to use your products.
- Frequent asked questions with answers.
- If you run an advanced customer support system make a
page that shows how easily to find the relevant email address
for a specific inquiry.
- Reports (longer in pdf format or zip)
- Online ebooks.
- Newsletters.
Remember to include on all print pages
- The full url of the page.
- The url of your home page.
- Basic contact information
- A short indication of which kind of product or service
you are
offering.
- If needed a copyright notion (but don't spoil the
potential of viral marketing).
Optimize your print pages
- Make your pages look valuable for the customer.
- Make the pages inviting to be filed.
- Avoid heavy graphics.
- I will recommend avoiding all banners etc.
- Make your printable pages look like they are designed to
paper,
e.g. make proper use of the space available and use a font
that
is good for reading on paper.
- Prints will typical be made without background color or
picture.
White text on back background will not be visible.
Please,
give me feed back if you have comments to sb@ azfotos.com
Soren Breiting
........................................................
Take better travel pictures. Tip # 6
GET IN TOUCH WITH PEOPLE
When you travel abroad ask people about the permission to
take
photos of them.
Are you in a traditional market place buy some fruits or
whatever before you ask for the photo. In that way you are
not
only more sure to get the permission, but often you get better
pictures because of the established relationship. If your
request is rejected be glad you didn't try to take the picture
without asking.
Be ready with your equipment before you ask for the permission
and take the first picture immediately.
Avoid offering the person a cigarette to pave the way even
if
this is often a used practice by some photographers. At least
I
find unethical, and the cigarettes are often visible on the
pictures.
Are you traveling in a group scan the members with a
photographer's eye to identify the most photogenic, and make
use
of them in your planned pictures.
When you include family members and friends in your pictures
think of how they would like to see themselves in the final
pictures. Have continued good luck with your travel photography.
Soren Breiting
........................................................
WHY TEST? - By Mark Joyner, CEO, Aesop.Com
Marketing should be treated like a science. If you are serious
about making money on the Internet, it is absolutely crucial
that you spend some time testing your results and refining
your
approach.
Let me drive this point home. Say for example you have a
website that gives you a visit to sale ratio of about 200
to 1.
Not really bad as far as web sites go. Most do far worse.
Now, assume that you get 5,000 visits per month. Do the
math.
That's 25 sales per month. If your profit from each sale
is
$50, you are making $1250 per month profit from your website.
Now, what would happen, if by changing one small thing on
your
website, you could improve that ratio to say 150 to 1. It
may
not seem significant, but let's see how it works on paper.
Now, instead of 25 sales per month, you are doing 33. Multiply
that by $50 and you are now making $1650 per month. That's
a
difference of $400. It's not like you're having to work any
harder for that additional $400. Your website is always there.
Now, the example I have shown you here is quite mild to
some of
the drastic improvements I have seen as a result of market
testing. All my life I've heard people say "don't work
hard -
work smart!"
This is excellent advice. Working smart means getting more
from
less effort.
Well, testing is a systematic way of helping you to work
smart.
It's just like the scientific method, really. You may remember
it from school. There are many versions of the scientific
method
for different disciplines and many scientists will argue
about
which approach is best. For our purposes, let's take a very
bare-boned and simple version. It's really all we need:
a. Generate a hypothesis.
b. Test your hypothesis by performing an experiment and
recording the results.
c. Perform calculations and draw conclusions.
d. Confirm or refine your original hypothesis.
For example, let's say in the above example, we hypothesize
that
by adding a money back guarantee, we will get a better visit
to
sale ratio. This is our hypothesis. To test this, we make
the
change on our websites and record our results. That's our
experiment. After a few weeks (or any period of time we
determine to be sufficient) we conclude the experiment and
perform calculation on our data. We then discover that the
visit to sale ratio did, indeed, improve during the course
of
our test run. We can then draw a conclusion that our original
hypothesis is correct. Seems pretty simple, right? Well,
actually no -
* Controls and Statistical Significance*
In the preceding example, we did a pretty straightforward
and
simple test. However, the results we have drawn may not be
valid.
For example, what if the majority of visitors we received
before
the test run came as the result of a banner ad campaign we
were
running? Then, without us knowing it, sometime during the
campaign a company favorably reviews our product and drives
people to our site. It could be the case that people who
read
that review were more likely to buy the product.
It could also be the case that they were much more likely
to buy
and that adding the guarantee lessened the effectiveness
of the
site. Or, it could even be the case that the guarantee did
increase the effectiveness of the site, but not as much as
we
thought.
The problem is, we just don't know. To address this issue
and
to improve the reliability of our tests, we need to establish
"
controls". A control is a measure that allows us to
isolate
the factors which are causing the effects we record.
For example, a better way to run this test would have been
to
run two websites at the same time. Both of them identical
in
every way (promoted the same way, designed the same way -
everything) except for the one element we think will make
a
difference. The site without the change is called the control
site. The site with the change is the test subject.
This same principle can be applied to any other type of
marketing. If you want to test the effectiveness of a banner
ad, run two banner ads on the same site for the same period
of
time. If you run one banner ad on one site and the other
on yet
a different site, you can't be sure that your results are
valid.
Using strict control techniques improves the chances that
your
findings will be valid.
* Statistical Significance*
Even if we use good controls, we can still never be sure
of our
results. There may be something affecting the test we haven't
thought of. That's why we also need to resolve ourselves
to the
fact that the results of one single test should not be accepted
as conclusive.
Rather, we need to perform a great many tests and look at
the
over all trends. Only after we have compiled a considerable
amount of information can we safely draw any conclusions.
Just how much testing is enough is up to you. You should
test
until you are satisfied, but be honest with yourself. Don't
just stop testing out of laziness!
* Turning tests into profits*
The idea here is to test as many different methods as possible,
discover the most effective method, and crank up the volume
on
your best method. When you get into serious volume and your
business is really doing well, even minor differences in
results
will have a major impact on the amount of money you take
home.
And sometimes very subtle and minor changes to a website
will
make huge differences in your results.
If you could find out which of your advertising campaigns
was
bringing in the most money for you, wouldn't it make sense
to
put more effort into that campaign? Or do more of that type
of
campaign? Wouldn't you be crazy not to?
In the following chapters...
http://foreverweb.com/cgi-foreverweb/kt.cgi?IM9009
... we'll show you exactly how to track and monitor the
results
of all of your Internet marketing efforts. After we show
you
the logic behind each method of testing, we'll show you the
physical tools and techniques you need to employ to track
your
success.
Tracking is just recording the results of one campaign or
another.
Testing is the systematic monitoring of these campaigns
to
discover what is working and what is not using the scientific
method.
Copyright 1999 Aesop.Com
Article by Mark Joyner, of 1,001 Killer Internet Marketing
Tactics. Mark is also the CEO of Aesop Marketing Corporation.
1001 KIMT is an absolute *must have* for anyone serious about
Internet marketing. It will dramatically boost the results
of
any campaign in a very real and measurable way. They are
offering a special right now where it comes with a bonus
database of over 6,000 media contacts (including email and
FAX
numbers). This could genuinely be the most important URL
you
visit all year: http://foreverweb.com/cgi-foreverweb/kt.cgi?IM9009
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Soren Breiting
........................................................
Copyright 2001 by Soren Breiting, A-Z FOTOS.
http://www.azFotos.com/ "Find Stock Photos from most
of the
World"
Email
me at: sb@ azfotos.com
You are welcome to forward this newsletter to a friend or
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Stock Photo News is a monthly newsletter edited by Soren
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My intention is to bring quality information which is not
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