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| eMarketing Tips and Tricks - March 4, 2003 |  |
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Check out our eMarketing Tools
Informative eBooks
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Today's Article: 20 Words that Kill - At Least when it Comes to Spam Filters
Today's Ask Dr. Ebiz:
A
PPC Approach
to e-Book Sales 2 0 Words that Kill - At Least when it Comes to Spam Filters by Alexandria K. Brown, 'The E-zine Queen' Spam, spam, spam. It's terrible not only for those of us on the receiving end, but for those of us who SEND email. This deluge of irritating junk has unfortunately interfered with legitimate e-zine publishers, because we're caught in the anti-spam crossfire. If you publish any type of email publication, there's a likely chance that your e-zine is NOT reaching a portion of your readers. Why? Their Internet service provider (ISP) or email program uses a spam filter. These software programs search for words and phrases that are typical of spam and assign each incoming email a 'score.' If your email has too many of these words and phrases, you receive a high score, and you may be blocked. << TOP 20 'KILLER' WORDS/PHRASES YOU MAY BE USING >> While there are other words that will cost you more 'points' than these do (e.g. sexual phrases), here are the most common 'trigger' words and phrases that you may be using in your e-zine: 1. amazing << WHAT'S A PUBLISHER TO DO? >> You have two choices when it comes to beating the filters. One is to avoid using these words and phrases altogether. I've found that hard to do. For example, in a recent issue, I discussed how to use your e-zine to increase business. Unfortunately the word 'increase' cost me a fat 1.4 points in SpamAssassin, one of the most popular filter programs. Your second choice is to disguise these words and phrases in clever ways by inserting keyboard symbols within them and/or replacing a letter in them with a symbol. The trick is not to make it too cryptic -- you want your readers to be able to understand what you're saying. For example, in my e-zine, I use 'fr*ee' for free. While some spam filters pick up on this trick and penalize you for doing it by adding onto your score, I've found that the points this tactic costs you penalize you much less than using the words and phrases themselves. It's not a perfect solution, but it's working for now. << TEST BEFORE YOU SEND >> It's a great idea to test how YOUR e-zine stacks up before you send it out. The good news is you can do this for FREE. Lyris' Content Checker (http://www.lyris.com/contentchecker/) tells you how your e-zine ranks in Spam Assassin. All you do is copy your e-zine text and paste it into the box on their site. They'll run your free report and email a copy to you. It usually arrives within minutes. The report will tell you exactly which words are costing you points. Usually you should only be concerned if your score is over 5 points. If so, you can either delete those words or disguise them, as I mentioned above. I test each issue of my e-zines in Content Checker before I publish them, and often I'm surprised (and relieved) that my score is low. That makes me a happy publisher. : ) (c) 2002 Alexandria K. Brown ABOUT THE AUTHOR
"A friend and I have thought about starting a website in which we sell information e-books. We purchased resale rights and sales webpages for five packages of web marketing e-books and webmaster software for $35 each, and we are paying a third party billing site 3.95% plus $1 per transaction ($50 set-up fee). The suggested resale price of these packages range from $25 to $250. We are college students looking for a way to make money to pay off our loans. What is the lowest typical conversion rate these days? Any information you could provide me with would be greatly appreciated." -- Morgan Enroughty A 4% to 5% conversion rate is considered good, but the average conversion rate is substantially under 2%, probably hovering at or below 0.5%. Two likely marketing approaches to investigate would be: (1) aggressive search engine positioning for an extremely competitive set of keywords. If you have less money than time, do your own search engine positioning using WebPosition Gold (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/webposition.htm). (2) A second approach would be Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising on Overture, Google, and FindWhat. While FindWhat's prices are a fraction of Overture's and Google's, so is their volume of click-through traffic. Smart marketers don't spend all their money on the most obvious -- and higher-priced -- keywords. Instead, they look to less-used keyphrases with a lower price. As they experiment, they often find specific keyphrases that generate a high conversion rate for a low cost-per-click. These keywords become the bedrock of their campaign.
If your e-books sell for $25 minimum, then you'll probably need to limit your advertising costs to half of that to make a decent profit (since you have no per-product costs to worry about). At a 0.5% conversion rate, that means limiting your average PPC bid price to about 5¢. The key to success will be to find little-used keywords that bring you enough combined traffic and good conversion rates. To fine-tune your PPC strategy read Andrew Goodman's 21 Ways to Maximize Profits on Google AdWords Select (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/pagezero.htm). The biggest challenge you face is the fierce competition that raises PPC ad prices and the degree of difficulty in getting top "free" search engine placement. The company that sold you resale rights and landing pages is only successful when they create more and more direct competition for you. Franchises in physical space usually come with an exclusive geographical territory to limit competition, but on the Internet, geographical distance has little meaning. For your next Internet project I suggest finding a niche product where you don't have such tough competition. Copyright 2002, Ralph F. Wilson. All rights reserved. Used by permission. |
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