Putting Yourself Out There
One of my biggest struggles with building a online business was getting customers. While I had been learning so much about building websites and trying to get traffic to them I could not understand why my sites were not making sales. The sites looked ok and there was a decent amount of traffic but no money. After giving up on a couple of sites that dealt with subjects I was not excited about I started thinking about what I could try next.
Staying in shape and being active has been a big part of my life. I play just about any sport I can in my free time and most of my travels take me on active vacations not sitting on a beach. I kept wondering how I could take this passion into a business. I decided to start a site as a daily journal keeping tabs on what workouts I did. The site got little bits if traffic here and there but not much. I put ads up on it and would get the occasional click but nothing to brag about.
Then one day a friend of mine who was training to go into the Marines asked me if I wanted to start doing the P90X workout with him. I had not heard about it but figured it would not hurt to try. After the first day I was so sore as this was the real deal. I thought I knew about fitness but man was I wrong. The program goes for 90 days and its 6 days a week of different workouts. It is the toughest workout regimen I have ever done.
At the end of the program I was very happy with it. My body had amazing changes and I was and still am in the best shape of my life. While doing it I continued to update my site as much as I could talking about my success and struggles. The company who makes the workout, Beachbody, spends millions of dollars a year in advertising and it generates a ton of searches. My site started getting some traffic now. Still though, it was getting maybe a dozen or so adsense clicks a day. There had to be a better way to earn some money with this.
I found out that Beachbody has a program where you sign up to be a Coach and you can promote all of their products. In turn they will pay you a 25% commission on anything you sell plus earn up to 7 more ways. This was the ticket. I signed up and started changing my links to the store they gave me and I took down the adsense ads as now I could earn at a minimum $30 a sale and not $.30 a click.
Traffic was holding steady, people were clicking on the store link, but no sales. What was I doing wrong? I took a step back and thought about it for a second. What would I do if I was searching for info about a health related product? Pictures!! How could I be so dumb. All that my site had on it was written posts. For a 6 month time period it was all I put on there. I had been promoting a health product without showing people what it did for me.
Even though I was timid about putting my photos on the site I decided to put myself out there. I had taken photos along the way so I had them available. I went for it and put my P90X results on the site. A couple of days went by with normal traffic levels and then I started noticing phrases involving “photos” show up in my stats. It was working!
My photos started showing up for various search terms on Google. I was definitely out there now. Since my photos were floating around the web I started learning how to create videos of my own showing people I could do the exercises. The videos get tons of views on YouTube. A funny thing started happening next. People started contacting me asking for info about it as they saw my photos and videos. I had become an expert in the field now as people wanted to see the person behind the computer screen. By adding the photos and videos to the site my traffic went from a couple thousand visitors a month to over twenty thousand. Comments have been on the up and up and now one question I hear a lot of is “where can I buy P90X?”
I learned that running a online business is tough and its even tougher if you are promoting something that involves getting people off their butts. The more I put myself out there, the more comfortable my visitors felt asking for help. This strategy has worked and I highly recommend anybody trying to start any type of online business do it.
Nice post, Keep it up!
thank’s for your information
Thanks for a great write up. I really agree with you that pictures can really help a blog stand out. I think I will make more of an effort integrating pictures into my blogs.
Totally right.
I made the same mistake-only for longer-before I started to put pictures on my blog. It’s funny but it makes a HUGE difference!
Why didn’t you tell me this a year ago eh?
Alex
This is the great info I got it. I never know how pictures can give high conversion to blog. Thanks for you great tips.
Great post, it is truly the small things that sometimes we
just seem to overlook, that is why when working by
yourself and not as a team, it lets others see
your overlooked mistakes to help you correct
them before it’s to late. I totally agree
that pictures are worth more than a thousand
words. great tip!
I’ve had the same experience with multiple blogs. It’s amazing how people search for photo’s and then end up regular visitors to your site. We’ve had people dig as far down as page 20 on Google images and end up visting us.
Well worth the time and effort to implement
Thanks for the information. I have to agree that pictures make the blog.
This has worked for me….when I started to add videos and pictures in my posts,I got more traffic, and the visitors read and viewed more pages.
Also by posting in the comments here has created lots of traffic for my blog.
The Stats plugin tells it all.
Thanks for creating more ways for bloggers to receive more traffic.
Mel Smith
Interesting read! Never knew pictures amde such a difference and had so much of an impact
Nice Informative Post! Will kepp this in mind.
Cheers
Sandeep
My website already get’s 20,000 hits a month but I still don’t make money from my ads. You’re so right about the pictures though. I get so many hits from Google image search.
I offer free design resources for Bloggers and I have made a few dollars from affiliate premium wordpress themes but nothing to write home about.
This situation applies to a lot of my sites. I think this is going to help me out with credibility and sales as it will give people the confidence to purchase things listed on my site network. I have sites that do get traffic but not many clicks on my aff links. Great, a whole new direction to go after and work for – CREDIBILITY!
wow
My website has been created, but I still do not make money from ads. Maybe I still have to study more harder.
this whole thing about pictures is so important – we have also found that by hosting the pictures on your own domain rather than anywhere else draws customers in too.
This is what I as missing, thanks! My German language blog about environmental friendly building in Thailand has some good content, however text, text, text, not one single picture. Now I know what to do, adding pictures, if possible videos, thanks again for making me aware of it.
stupid me, forgot to enter the website
I have the same problem, my site has high traffic but it doesn’t make money at all. Thanks for the info.
Regards,
Bali Web Design
I get no traffic with adsense, so I am also trying an affiliate program. Thanks for this great blog. I’m going to focus my efforts on rich content
spirit … spirit … successful and hopefully quick success always
thanks for the info.
Hey Brad, Thanks for the great tips. I think its definitely true that in today’s day and age of instant gratification people want to see pictures bc/ it’s faster than reading 1000 words. It also creates great proof when trying to sell a product.