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No matter what niche your blog is in, if you want to make money from your blog you should always be trying to optimize your conversions.

In the case of a blog, the term “conversion” can actually apply to quite a few areas. In simple terms, you can define a conversion as any time a visitor completes a specific desired action on your blog. For example, I may be building a list with my blog, and class one conversion as anytime a visitor opt’s-in to my list.

In this post, I’m going to break down conversions into three of what I think are the most popular conversion categories, and discuss what you can do to optimize your blog to maximize your conversions in each of these areas.

The three main conversion categories I’m going to focus on are:

• List Conversion
• Affiliate Conversion
• Product Conversion

At the end of this post I’m also going to discuss some general conversion boosting tips you can use on your blog to improve other less important conversions on your blog.

List Conversion

On my blogs and websites, I count a list conversion as anytime someone joins one of my mailing lists. I try and build a list on every website I launch, as this gives me the ability to communicate with these visitors even after they have left my site. I can use my lists to send offers for my own or affiliate products, or free content to my visitors, which can help me build better relationships with my visitors and create more buyers for every single person that opts-in.

I use three different strategies to help boost my opt-in/signup rates to lists on my websites and blogs:

Lightbox Optin Form

A lightbox is a box which appears over the top of my blog, and is designed to attract maximum attention from my readers.

This is the most obtrusive form of list building, but also the most effective. I use an awesome plugin called Popup Domination created by my friend Michael Dunlop to create really gorgeous looking lightbox optin forms with just a few clicks. In my tests so far on a range of blogs in different niche markets, I’ve found I’m increasing my conversions by between 200%-400% with this simple plugin.

Sidebar Optin Form

This is the most common type of list building element used on a blog. Having a sidebar optin box is a great idea, particularly as it is then a consistent element across your whole site. This means if someone enters your site through an inner page, they will still be exposed to the optin box.

The main problem with the sidebar optin is that it is becoming less effective as people get used to the optin box in this position. You will see on BusinessJolt.com I have made the optin box a bright color to ensure it stands out and attracts attention, as well as using a large attention grabbing headline for the box.

Another great strategy is to use arrows pointing to the box, or use an ecover graphic to give a digital representation of your product. If you need a nice looking ecover for your product, try my Ecover Creator 3D package.

Full Width Optin Form

The full width optin form is something I have been trialling on a few different blogs that I run. This is a great away to attract the attention of your visitors as soon as they hit the homepage of your site. Another advantage of the full width optin box is that you can provide more information about your offer or free gift, or in the case of my BusinessJolt form, add in a video or what I call the “video fakeout”.

The video fakeout is a graphic which appears to be a video, but when clicked or hovered over, it shows arrows to the optin box. This is to demonstrate that the visitor will get access to the videos when they optin. I’ve found that on some of my sites this can boost conversions quite considerably.

Create Page Specific Lightboxes

One clever strategy I’ve not yet tested, but have heard can be very effective, is to create specific lightbox popups for different pages on your blog. Each of these lightboxes would have an offer customized for the content on that page.

By doing this, you can optimize conversions by targeting the exact wants and needs of the visitors to that page based on the content of the page. Up till now this has been very difficult to do as it would require custom coding each individual lightbox, but I’ve been reliably informed by the creators of Popup Domination that this feature will be added very soon – so this is another great reason to grab this software now while the price is low!

Other List Conversion Tips

The other main conversion boosting tip I would give for increasing your list conversions is to ensure your offer is a good fit for your audience. By this I mean that if you have a fitness blog, you’re offering some kind of fitness related product or content – perhaps a 30 day fitness planning guide.

The better the offer “fits” your market, the more people will want to optin. One way to boost this is by testing different offers, or trying different benefits on your form to try and find what works best with your audience.

Affiliate Conversion

If you’re monetizing your site by promoting affiliate offers, you’ll want to maximise your return on every visitor that comes to your site. My first recommendation would be to ensure you can effectively track what links your visitors are clicking on. To do this on my sites, I use a service called GoTryThis.

GoTryThis Control Panel Allows Me To Create New Link Campaigns Fast

By using GoTryThis, I can create new link campaigns fast, and track exactly which links have been clicked on by my visitors. So for example if I created a new review page for a product, I could create a different link tracking ID for each link on the page, and see which had the best results. I can then use this information to improve the conversions of my future review pages.

You can also do more advanced affiliate linking strategies like cloaking affiliate links or direct linking to checkout pages where required.

If you don’t want to use a tool like GoTryThis to make your life easier, you can alternatively use tracking IDs on your affiliate URLs, provided that your merchant or affiliate program supports them. By doing this you can then see which tracking IDs generated the sale, and follow this back to your site to see which link is working best.

Affiliate Banner Review Strategy

If you’re using banners to promote affiliate products on your blog, this strategy can work really well and is definately worth testing.

Rather than linking directly to your affiliate offer sales page or website, you instead link your banner to an internal page or post on your site where you review the product. This allows you to pre-sell the prospect on product while they are still on your blog, and this can help boost conversions.

If you want to take this a step further, you could consider interviewing the product owner and putting the interview on your blog, which goes even further to building trust and respect for the product and its creator.

Another way to boost this strategy is by offering an exclusive bonus to your visitors for anyone that purchases through your link. This would be offered at the end of your review, and gives your visitors another incentive to buy (I’ve hardly seen anyone doing this on blogs!).

Test Different Banners Or Arrangements

It’s important to test different banners, and different arrangements of banners on your blog to maximise your conversions. There are a range of plugins available to help you do this, just do a search in Wordpress for “rotating ads” or “ad management”. If you’re tracking with GoTryThis you can also establish which banners or links are performing best on your sidebar.

Demonstrate Use Of The Affiliate Product

This is a really awesome way to boost affiliate conversions on your blog. No matter what kind of product you’re promoting, if you can demonstrate use of the product, and show results, you’re likely to improve your conversions considerably. For example, you might be promoting a training course on the graphic design software Photoshop. You might create a tutorial on how to create an effect within Photoshop, and then link to your training course and tell your visitors you learned all your Photoshop skills from the course you’re promoting.

This works even better if you can actually demonstrate the product in action, and show results to your visitors. Let’s say you were promoting the market research tool Market Samurai. You might show how you’re using the tool to find new untapped keywords, and then show your results from targetting these keywords. This positions your affiliate product as a natural progression for your visitor, meaning they’ll feel much more inclined to buy.

Build A List And Send Offers

I’ve already discussed list conversion strategies in this post, but if you’re not building a list on your affiliate blogs, you should be. Offer a free gift or some kind of short report, video or a useful tool and then follow up with your visitors with offers once they are subscribed. This means that even if your prospect doesn’t buy on the first visit to your site, you can keep sending them back there for new content, and also promote your affiliate offers alongside this.

Use High Impact Graphics

Using high impact graphics on your blog is one of the best ways to boost your conversions. You need to try and catch your visitors attention and show them a clear action to take when they have read your blog post, your review or whatever you have on your page.

High Impact Recommended Resources Box

On some pages of BusinessJolt.com you’ll see “Recommended Resources” boxes at the the end of posts. This box is designed to be eye-catching and to provide essential resources which fit well with the content of the post.

You can also try using arrows and immitate the usual blue hyperlinks with a graphic like below when promoting an affiliate product (or your own product)

This High Impact Graphic Helps Attract The Visitors Attention

Product Conversion

If you’re selling your own products through your blog (like I do on BusinessJolt.com), there are a few things you can do to help boost conversions. I know many people are against selling products through blogs as they think it devalues the blog, however I feel that if you offer high quality products that provide valuable solutions, along with providing great content for free on your blog, there’s no problem with it.

Here are some things you can try if you want to boost your product conversions on your blog (note that I usually advise that you don’t actually sell your product directly from your blog, and instead link to your product sales page or a separate page on your site where you can provide full details of your product):

Create A Products Page

This is a simple and easy step you can take to help boost your sales conversions. Create a page showing the different products you have available. This gives your visitors an immediate overview of what you have on offer, and they can identify what they may be interested in. I’m still trying different layouts and setups for my products page, but I have found that so far people prefer to click through to the sales letter to buy rather than just buying directly from the site.

Track Conversions & Goals

By using Google Analytics, you can track how many people click through from your blog to your sales page and then buy your product. You can do this by setting up individual goals for your products, so that each time someone completes a goal (i.e. purchases a product), one conversion is recorded.

By doing this, you can see where people are coming from when they purchase your product, and established your most profitable pages or areas of your sites.

Split Test Your Sales Pages

It goes without saying that you should be split testing your sales pages whenever possible. Split testing simply means testing two slightly different pages against each other to help optimize conversions. I usually test things like headlines, subheadlines and individual offers on my sales letters to establish the optimal conversion rate.

You can do all of this for free with Google Website Optimizer. If you want to know more about what to split test, check out this post where I give you all my favourite sales letter conversion boosting strategies.

Other Conversions

As well as the main categories of conversion I’ve discussed above, I know there are other smaller conversions that many of us target on our blogs. As I want this post to really cover all areas, I thought I’d include a few strategies to boost conversions on a few more blog areas:

• RSS Feed Subscribers – We all want more regular readers on our blog, so by getting people to subscribe to your RSS feed you can keep them alerted to new content. I recommend having a prominent RSS feed subscribe button or link on your blog, and ensure the button is above the fold, meaning it’s visible when the page first loads. Use an RSS icon too for increased conversions.
• Facebook Friends/Subscribers – If you want to build a following away from your blog on sites like Facebook, you need to also ensure you have a clearly visible link to join or add you on your blog. If you’re running a Facebook Page, you can also embed a widget which shows your current friends or page members on your sidebar, which can be good for boosting your following.
• Twitter Followers – Twitter is another great place to get people to follow you and keep them updated with your content. Again, you need to ensure you add prominent buttons on your site to encourage people to follow you on Twitter, and you can consider including a feed of your latest tweets on your site.

I hope you’ve found these conversion boosting tips useful, and if you’re not already optimizing your blog for conversions, this post should give you some ideas to think about. I’d also love to hear your ideas and strategies on what you’re doing to improve conversions on your blogs, so be sure to post your thoughts below!

Tags: blog conversion, blog conversions, conversion, conversions, improve blog conversions