Welcome to post number 3 of my niche site challenge. As you may know from posts one and two I am participating in the niche site duel being run by Pat Flyn.
My strategy has been a little different from the traditional strategies that most of the other guys have been using. And I am not sure if I have picked the correct strategy or not, but at the very least I am learning lots which is the most important thing. Including picking up some awesome linking strategies from makemoneybuzz.
The main reason I chose this route was to experiment with video. With screen casting, driving traffic to and from videos as I am working on another project which is due to launch in a couple of weeks. I knew this and figured I should get some practice in before going full force on a project that I am more comfortable with and that has much larger potential.
The site that I have chosen is http://www.sleepapneastop.com
This was actually the first squeeze page I have ever designed right after going through some training on how to build them.
Here is what I did.
1. Installed WordPress and downloaded a free squeeze page theme from wordpresssqueezepage.com. I’m not going to show you how to install WordPress, there are plenty of guides out there including guides written up by the other participants of this competition. But if you have any questions, just ask.
2. Registered with Aweber to give me pretty email sign up (opt in) boxes and to track and manage my email campaign. Aweber is an amazing piece of software. You can build all sorts of sign up boxes, set up automated email responses, split test emails, track clicks. Basically do anything. If you are thinking of doing any sort of email marketing, get Aweber.
2. Crafted a story around my product. Taking this angle can seem a little on the morally grey side. Again, this is just an experiement. And we all know that stories sell. So I crafted a story about a guy named Peter Evans who used to suffer from sleep apnea but managed to fix it and now he has the secrets to show you how.
4. Created a small, relevant ebook that I give away for free by rewriting some content I found on the web. I think its only about 1000 words and took me a couple of hours including formatting. This gives people incentive to sign up and get the free report. People like free stuff.
5. Built the squeeze page. A few things I have picked up before and after I built the squeeze page:
- Don’t have big flashy header images. Just have a simple, red title.
- Make sure that your op-tin box is above the first line. The line refers to the first thing you see when the site loads up. You shouldn’t have to scroll down to see the sign up box.
- Also, above the line should be short, punchy and with a strong call to action towards the sign up box. The aim here is to get people to enter their email addresses. Nothing else. Your headline should sell the majority of the people.
- If a reader isn’t sold on your headline, start going down into benefits of the product, then into your story.
- Finally try to capture with another sign up box.
- Use a light background (which I am not doing!)
- Split test your squeeze page using Google Website Optimiser (which I am not doing!)
As I said, this was my first squeeze page so its probably not the most awesomest thing ever. It was an interesting process and so far I have learned a lot. More experimenting to come and soon I will start to show results. Between Blogworld and my other new and exciting project, this site has been about 2% of my time so its definitely not where it should be but I still think it has potential so will keep slugging away at it slowly.
2 responses to “Designing a Squeeze Page – Niche Site Duel 03”
Hey! I found your blog through looking at my backlinks and finding you linking to my site in this article. I’m glad you found some value in my site 🙂
I haven’t heard of your blog before so I started looking and am really impressed so far! I got through all of your niche duel posts and am really curious to see how your video marketing will turn out. I’ve always thought that Google likes various types of content (like news, photos, videos, shopping, etc) but I’m not sure if you could rank for a tough keyword with just video alone. I really want to see you succeed, because if you do, that means that other really hard keywords are penetrable too with untapped media such as video!
Pretty exciting stuff! I subscribed to your RSS and am looking forward to more exciting posts by you
~Patrick
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for the kind words. Yes, I found your site really useful in different methods of driving traffic and links – although I noticed you just got sandboxed 😛
The goal with my niche site experiment is not to make my site rank. I dont care about the ranking of my site. Its to make my videos rank, so they drive traffic to my squeeze page and I build a list. I wont be able to rank the site as there is no content…
Basically trying to use video as an alternative to paid advertising.
Well see how it works out. Either way, Its been a good learning experience that I have used in other projects so Im glad I did it 🙂