Testing, One, Two, Three.

[Fred Conquest]

How do you know which merchant to promote? The answer is to test them.

Here's what to look for besides sales - click thru rate is primary. If you spin 1,000 banners and you don't get a 1% CTR, it tells you people are not interested in the product, merchant or the deal posted. If you spin text ads, you should and you do not get 2% CTR you have a bad ad, the offer is not good or people are not interested in what you have, no matter how good you think it is.

If people are don't look by clicking, you need to move on. Bad ads and banners are everywhere. As Gary Halbert use to say when we were doing snail mail programs - the number one priority of any direct mail program is to get people to open the envelope.

Most merchants have no clue about how to get their envelope open which is just another way to say click over from an email or ad.

The internet is direct marketing on steroids ... but who want to learn how to do direct marketing these days?

So, if people are not 'opening' your online 'envelope' keep tweaking it until they do ... if you can't get them to do it, move on.

The real secret to profits online, is to find merchants who convert traffic into sales and to focus on those merhants.

[~Ed~]

This is a very interesting subject to me. I enjoy analyzing the different "snail mail" ads we receive. For instance, Qwest has been sending out ads in black envelopes. Not sure what it is about black, but I tend to open them. Also, a lot of junk mail comes in envelopes with addresses that appear to be (and are in many cases) handwritten. They're obviously trying to look like personal mail. So how do you do it on the web? You try to compose an appeal that hasn't been over used but is... well... appealing. Seems like the "saves you money" appeal would be the most effective.

[Fred Conquest]

I have been going over a bunch of stuff for the last two days ...

Conclusion: The whole world is taking stupid pills. Conservatives are imbeciles posing as idiots. Liberals are idiots posing as morons. Everyone says they want to make money, but no one wants to do anything to make the money. They think everyday is Christmas and they have all been good enough to get gifts.

So how about we make everyday Christmas except December 25th. We can all use that day to actually think about what we are doing to ourselves. Now there would be those that complain, but, hey, how hard would it be for everyone to actually spend just ONE day a year THINKING about how they are going to survive the next year.

It's probably too much to ask.

So enjoy the day and get ready for economic disaster. It will be here shortly, not to mention a mini-ice age showing up just in time for the world to be producing lesser amounts of oil and natural gas because there just is not any more of it to be found that can increase supply over demand.

So as the old time singer Al Jolson used to croon, 'You ain't seen nuthing yet.'

But, as Charles Dickens pointed out: It's the best of times. It's the worst of times. If you take the road less traveled, you can do very well and survive to fight another day.