How To Create Landing Pages to Sell My Products?

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Posted on 15th February 2010 by admin in blogging

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questions and answersThis post is part of the Friday Q&A section. Just use the contact form if you want to submit a question.

Vijay asks:

How to build a product landing page to sell our own products through our blog? Should we develop a page on the same domain, or should we put it on another domain?

Last week I answered to the second part of the question above. You can read that here: Should I Put My Product Landing Page Inside My Blog Or On A New Domain?.

Now let’s talk about the first part: how to create landing pages for your products and services.

If you decided to host your landing page inside your existing website you have two options: you can either use a normal page template to create a landing page (i.e., just create a new page on WordPress or on your publishing software), or create a new template.

Many people opt to use a normal page template because it is easier and fast. If you want to see an example check the landing page that Darren Rowse create for his 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook. As you can see it is a normal page, with all the default elements (e.g., header, sidebar, footer and so on).

If you have time and know a bit of web design you could create a new template for your landing page, including only important elements of your design (e.g., the logo) and removing than unnecessary ones that might distract potential buyers (e.g., ads, external links and so on). You can see an example of that with the Freelance X Factor that Brian Clark launched a while ago. He basically create a landing page inside his blog to sell the course. The product is not available right now, but you can get an idea of how the landing page looked like compared to the default design of the blog homepage.

WordPress users can create new page templates easily. You’ll just need to download the page.php file from your theme, create a copy of it, rename the copy (e.g., to landingpage.php), and then customize at will. You might need to create a new header.php and sidebar.php files (e.g., by calling them header2.php and sidebar2.php), but that is easy as well. Once you are done, simply upload the new template to your server and create a new page using that template.

If you are going to host your landing page on a new domain, you’ll need to find a template to use there as the landing page. The easiest option is to use a simple HTML/CSS template, which you just need to customize and upload to the server. There are dozens of free landing templates on the web, just search on Google for “free landing page” and “free sales templates.”

Obviously the free templates won’t look that great. If you have a product that is selling well, or that you believe will sell well, it might be worth it to invest in a custom design. Landing pages usually have simple layouts, so you probably won’t need to spend more than $300 to get one done.

Finally, you can also load a CMS on your new domain and create your landing page on top of that. One example of this technique would be to install WordPress on your domain and use a landing page theme like the Squeeze theme. You’ll need to spend some extra time installing and tweaking WordPress, but this solution offers many more features than a simple HTML/CSS template.

You might also be wondering what you should include inside your sales page, what are the best practices and so on. Well, that deserves a post of its own, so stay tuned!


Original Post: How To Create Landing Pages to Sell My Products?

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MacGyver Guide To Blogging – 13 Free Tools

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Posted on 1st February 2010 by admin in blogging

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MacGyver

If MacGyver has taught us anything, it’s that you don’t need big expensive tools to get the job done. The same goes for blogging.

There are plenty of free blogging tools and resources to do everything from creating SEO friendly sites to keyword research and analytics. Why spend the money on a tool when you could use that money on internet marketing services or to grow your company?

Here are 13 free blogging tools and resources that MacGyver would be proud of.

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WordPress

MacGyver would surly use the most popular, customizable, powerful, and completely free, blogging software on the internet. WordPress offers a large number of feature and hundreds of plugins that will make any blog successful. From newbies to web design professionals, WordPress is a great choice for ease of use, search engine optimization and price.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics

MacGyver’s got to keep tabs on his site and know where his traffic is coming from.  For this, Google Analytics is a no brainer. No need to spend hundreds on an analytics package, Google Analytics as all the features you need at a price that can’t be beat.

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The Only Must Have Item For A Successful Blog

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Posted on 1st February 2010 by admin in blogging

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Believe it or not, there is only one item you need to have a successful blog; and that’s ambition.

Ambition Ambition – Photo from hlkljgk

It doesn’t matter if you use WordPress, Blogger or TypePad. It doesn’t matter if you are an industry thought leader or a virtual unknown. As long as you have the ambition to post often, the ability to stick with it, and can be patient, you’ll be successful in time.

Yes, there are other things that can help make your blog successful but if you don’t put forth the effort to create good content in the first place, all the tools and plugins in the world won’t do you any good.

Are Trackbacks & Pingbacks Dead?

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Posted on 1st February 2010 by admin in blogging

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Trackbacks and Pingbacks Dead?The idea of trackbacks and pingbacks are great. It’s a way of getting notified when someone else posts about you on their blog. However, spammers have taken over and it makes you wonder if there is any value in trackbacks anymore.

My guess is that most bloggers will say that the value is little to none. The number of spammy trackbacks are overwhelming at times and, even if you do have a good spam plugin protecting you, the ones that get through are not quality. The chances that a good trackback comes into your site is rare, but when it does, it is great to see.

The idea of trackbacks is fantastic, however it is to easy for spammers to abuse; and they know that. The system has been corrupt for a while and it makes a blogger think that it may be time to just disable them and forget about them.

What do you think?

Do you still see value in trackbacks and pingbacks? Or have you disabled them and let them die?

Yes, trackbacks/pingbacks are dead. Lets turn them off.

If you’d like to disable trackbacks on your WordPress blog, go into your blogs settings and then click ‘discussion’ and un-check the box for ‘Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)’