Bob's Work Site

Author: bobcaine

  • Which Form To Use

    Most form builder software offers more than one type of form. Picking the best type for your specific purpose can increase your sign up rate. The 6 most popular form types are

    1. Embedded – probably the most common form
    • Part of page content
    • Doesn’t follow user as they scroll
    • Great for home or landing pages
    • Doesn’t disrupt or infer with content
    • Doesn’t follow user
    • Can be missed if not eye catching or scrolled off screen
    1. Pop-up
    • Pops up after user defined criteria; e.g., time or percent of page
    • User can’t miss a pop-up usually appears in center of screen
    • Disruptive because it blocks content until subscribes or closes form
    • Can annoy visitors
    1. Exit intent
    • Appear when user tries to close screen or leave tab to continue user must subscribe or close form
    • Not disruptive because doesn’t appear until exiting
    • Good for landing page with an offer as a reminder
    • Could promote a different offer which may be more interesting to user
    • Great for pages where content is more important than subscribers
    1. Slide-in
    • Slides in from left or right side of page as opposed to just appearing like a pop-up
    • Can dictate when form appears like pop-ups
    • Usually follow user as they scroll
    • Great when you want content read and the form seen
    • Less annoying than pop-up
    1. Horizontal bar
    • Extends the entire width of display
    • Can be at the top or bottom of screen
    • Can be ‘sticky’ so always visible to user.
    • Not disruptive
    • Can’t put much information
    • Lower conversion than pop-up or slide-in forms because it is easily ignored
    1. Full page
    • Covers entire page
    • Like pop-ups except covers entire page
    • Have to be notice
    • Totally disruptive
    • Use relative content on form

    You may want to split test different form types on a lead capture. I want to try an embedded form vs. a pop-up. One thing to note: don’t use pop-up or slide-in forms for mobile viewing. Some form builders allow you choose which type of form to use when.

    Until Next Post,
    Bob Caine

    The Angry Crab surf badges were available today so I can make progress on my CTP SeaLifeHits Mastery challenge. YEAH!

  • Do You Send a Welcome Email?

    Do You Send a Welcome Email?

    I will bet your first reaction to the title of this post was, “Of course I do.” But you would be amazed at how many people don’t send a ‘proper’ Welcome email. A well thought out Welcome email will get you more opens, more clicks, better ‘deliverability’ and less spam complaints. This is the first email subscribers receive and it may be the most important.

    According to Aweber, welcome emails get open rates 4 times higher and click through rates 5 times higher than emails. They report often seeing welcome emails with greater than 90% open rate and greater than 50% click-through rate.

    Welcome emails are so successful because the subscriber receives them while their interest is high. Often these emails contain an incentive, so the subscribers want their freebies. Or, they are interested in the content of the subscription and want to see what the email says.

    Whatever their reason for opening your Welcome email, you will probably never get a better response from any email you send.

    There are 5 things every Welcome email should do

    1. Deliver the freebie – if you offered a freebie on your squeeze page, your Welcome email should deliver it and make sure it is easy for the subscriber to find. If you didn’t offer a freebie, try offering a blog post that will be of value to them.
    2. Ask to be whitelisted – By whitelisting you, a subscriber is sure to get your future emails. (Providing instructions on how to ‘whitelist’ can be helpful.) A clever way to get whitelisted is to ask the subscriber to reply to the email so you know they received it. This adds you to their contact list.
    3. Set Expectations – Tell the subscriber how often you will receive emails and what type of content will be in the emails. Providing this type of information will reduce unsubscribes and spam complaints.
    4. Introduce yourself – this is the perfect opportunity to begin a relationship with your subscriber. Remember people buy from those they know, like and trust. Introducing yourself or your company and what you are about will help them get to know you. Include your picture ore log if possible. It is never too soon to start your branding.
    5. Build anticipation – you want your subscribers to look forward to the next email; e.g., explain the benefits of being a subscriber, use teasers about future content, unannounced freebies. Anything you can think of the will increase the subscribers desire to open your next email.

    Also, remember the 75%/25% rule from CTP training. 75% pull (provide value) emails, 25% push (sell). I would recommend that at least your first 3 emails, work on building your relationship with the subscriber and give them something of value – tips, links to blog posts, links to pictures. You don’t want to sell anything. Selling something in the 4th email is probably OK or continue to build your relationship. Strong relationships have big rewards later.

    Until next time,
    Bob Caine

    Angry Crab

    PS – No Angry Crab surf badges today so still stuck on 3 of the required 10.

    PSS – My post from yesterday where I thought a CTP CupofTraffic Mastery challenge that would take almost 3 years to complete was too long. Got a reponse from @russellstockley, the owner of CupofTraffic. It said, ” I must admit I thought I had adjusted that one, so your post has prompted me to revisit and you will be pleased to know that you now recieve 8 points for logging in and yes this still means that the task is not instant, but then they are not supposed to be 🙂 ” Thank you @russellstockley.

  • Question Answered

    Question Answered

    Angry Crab

    If you read yesterday’s post, you will remember that I found the Angry Crab badge. Every time I found that badge before, the next day the Angry Crab surf badges replace the more common Turtle surf badges. So I speculated that if you found the Angry Crab badge one day, the next day would have the Angry Crab surf badges.

    Now I can tell you for sure that this is not true. I did not have the Angry Crab surf badges today. Darn it. So I guess I will agree what one surfer told me. The Angry Crab surf badges appear randomly. I will just have to surf SeaLifeHits each day and see which surf badges are used that day.

    The CTP SealifeHits Mastery challenge requires surfing 1000 sites 10 times with the Angry Crab surf badges. I have 3 out of 10. Who knows how long completing this task is going to take me but I will bet not as long as one of the CupofTraffic tasks.

    It dawned on me that not everyone reading my posts is a member of ClickTrackProfit and therefore doesn’t know about the mastery challenges. CTP is one of the best, if not the best, training hubs on the internet. The mastery challenges are exercises which encourage you to use your training to accomplish specific tasks and “MASTER” a particular internet site. There are seven mastery challenges. They are

    All but one of the challenges requires getting referrals to join the program and all but two require earning a certain amount of commission. Other common tasks require surfing sites for the traffic exchanges, read and writing a number of emails for the mailers. Again, these tasks are designed to create good affiliate marketing habits; e.g., creating posts like this one or regularly sending emails, and not meant to be easy.

    But there is one task in particular that I just don’t understand its purpose or at least the ‘why’ for length of time it will take. CupofTraffic has one task, Login Points, that will require almost 3 years to complete. When you login to CupofTraffic the first time each day, you receive one half of a point (.5). 500 points are needed to complete this task. That’s 1000 days of logging into CupofTraffic or 2 years and 270 days. What am I learning after say 180 days of logging in? This seems a little excessive to me maybe too excessive for me to bother with this challenge. What do you think? Let me know in your comments. (If there is a way to get more than .5 points in a day, I haven’t figured it out.)

    I will talk more about the Mastery challenges in future posts and keep you up to date on my progress.

  • Dreams!

    I have absolutely no idea what kind of dreams I had last night or any night. I never can. I never remember my dreams. But, I woke up this morning thinking about branding on traffic exchanges. Branding is one of the two big B’s in ClickTrackProfit.

    We know CTP thinks traffic exchanges are useful. There is a landing page creator. The gauntlet is designed to get feedback on capture and squeeze pages used on TEs. And, there are traffic exchanges in the mastery challenges. So, CTP recognizes traffic exchanges are part of affiliate marketing but in all the lessons, there is not a single reference or lesson about traffic exchanges. Surprising.

    Let’s think about branding on TEs. The best know and obvious place for branding is the squeeze and capture pages. You can create your own and most of the TEs I know have some pages they have created that you can brand. This is great and will be seen. But think of the other places that could be branded.

    Banners could definitely be branded. Unfortunately, I have never seen a TE that has branded banners. This means you have to create your own. If you use Adkreator, you can create 9 different size banners. If you use Canva, you can create banners. If you use graphics software like Gimp or PhotoShop, you can create banners. And of course you could always hire someone, to create some banners for you. Why would you do this? I think branded banners would make you stand out. No one else is doing it. The more you are seen, the more you will be remembered.

    But the biggest branding opportunity on TEs in my opinion, is the chat functionality that most traffic exchanges have. It is free and requires very little effort. I just recently started saying ‘HELLO’ on every TE I surf. This not only gets my brand out there but it gives me a chance to meet and talk to new people. I have met several new people since I started using chat.

    We all know ads on traffic exchanges do not have a high success rate but if we are going to use them, shouldn’t we use it to the fullest extent? I have read articles that say people need to see something at least 7 and as high as 21times before they buy. Wouldn’t you think exposing them on traffic exchanges would help email marketing? Aren’t they more likely to buy if they have seen it several times on TEs? I certainly think so.

    Angry Crab

    While I was surfing SeaLifeHits today I found the Angry Crab badge. This may mean that the Angry Crab surf badges will be used tomorrow.

    This just speculation on my part we will see what tomorrow brings.

    PS – As always your comments are not only welcome but encourage. My post will only improve with your help. Thank You in advance.

  • Steem Frustration Abated

    Steem Frustration Abated

    As you may have seen, I did manage to post to Steem yesterday. This is due to the generosity of @clicktrackprofit (Jon Olson) who delegated some Steem power to me. He also explained the reason for all the Steem cyrpto currencies being under maintenance. There is an attempt to take over Steem right now and this is a way to help prevent the take over. Also, @ph1102 sent me a link to another site where I could buy Steem. I haven’t tried it yet.

    Now, my Steem mystery is why I have almost all of my SP delegated when I have done absolutely nothing to delegate it.

    In Steemsavvy, I learned about steembottracker.com which can be used to track SP that a user has delegated. It showed that I have not delegated SP to anyone. Is there some kind of automatic delegation for newbies?

    I just got the answer about my delegated SP from Rob P. Crusin and CaptainBob on the CTP/SteemSavy server of Discord. As you see in the image above. I have 39.970 SP delegated. 14.970 of those are delegated by Steem itself when you open your account and is reduced as you earn SP on your own. The remaining 25 delegated SP is from Jon Olson when I ran out. Mystery solved.

    It is great to have community where support is available. I would highly recommend the CTP/SteemSavvy server on Discord and The Official ClickTrackProfit Telegram Group on Telegram. I had never heard of Telegram or Discord until CTP and SteemSavvy respectively. Luck for me. I really needed them today.

    For anyone who might be interested SteemSavvy is a great, totally free training site. Jon Olson created this site to help people become familiar with Steem and its functionality. I would highly recommend join this site to get you started on Steem. It is well worth it and will save you the frustration that Steem can create. Join SteemSavvy and save yourself a lot of frustration.

  • This Is Not The Post I Intended

    This Is Not The Post I Intended

    This replaces my intended March 4, 2020 post. I couldn’t post the post because I ran out of Steem power. I didn’t even know I had Steem power. To start with I thought, “No big deal, there has to be a way to buy Steem power.” Well, if there is I can’t find it. I spent hours trying to buy Steem power. Everything I tried lead me to Block Trade. At the moment, for some reason, Block Trade can’t deal with Steem crypto currency. All the Steem currencies are “under maintenance”.

    I looked high and low for a way to purchase Steem power. Every path I followed lead me to Block Trades. There has to be somewhere else to purchase Steem crypto. If there isn’t, sounds like a great opportunity for someone who knows what they are doing. That, unfortunately, is not me. I’m lucky to get logged into Steem at this point.

    If you can’t tell, I am brand new to crypto currency. I have always been amazed how a ‘currency’ without anything backing it other than “blind faith” could survive. But, not only are they surviving, they are flourishing. So I did learn a few things trying to buy Steem power. One place I can buy and sell crypto currencies is Steem-engine.com. Problem solved right. No, you have to have crypto to buy crypto. Catch 22???

    So where can I buy crypto using a traditional method or even PayPal. ClickTrackProfit training comes through again. In the CTPtalk.com training, there is a lesson on “Buy & Selling”. In that lesson, Jon Olson recommends coinbase.com to purchase a crypto currency using traditional methods. Thought I had my quest for Steem power solved. But, NO!

    You need verify your bank account to purchase crypto. With a lot of banks you can do this online. NOT MINE! At my bank, there is an account number and then there is the account number on the check which contains the main account number with a prefix and suffix. Neither one was accepted so they are going to make two small deposits so I can verify my account. This is going to take a couple of days, so until then I am stuck and can’t do anything on Steem.

    Very Frustrating day to say the least!

    I am going to try and post this since I received a little bit of Steem power today 3/5/20. I hope it is enough.

    PS – I have almost 15 Steem delegated. I have no idea how this happened. I just learned about ‘Delegating’ today on SteemSavvy. Anyone have any idea how this may have happened? THNX

  • It Has Been A Good Day

    It Has Been A Good Day

    It has been a good day. I actually managed to get everything done that I wanted on a day that had additional commitments. The plumber was here fixing a leak I have in the basement. This has reeked havoc with all the rain we have had in Alabama the last 3 weeks. And, the real time killer was taking our 7 month old, 75 pound puppy, Sarge. to training. It is fun and with a large dog necessary.

    Back to today’s accomplishments

    • I installed and used SteemPress. Now I can create my post in WordPress and it is automatically posted in Steemit as well. I still need to figure out tags but thanks to a comment by @lisamgentile, I learn about default tags which helps. Pictures transfer fine and the posts show up in Steemit very quickly. This is going to be a big help.
    • I completed my 3rd ‘surf 1000 sites’ on SeaLifeHits with the AngryCrab surf badges. Only need 7 more to complete the ‘Surf More’ Mastery task. I hope the Angry Crab surf badges show up tomorrow but that is not likely from what I know.
    • I did some work on cleaning up my blog bobswork.com but still have a lot to do. It has been so long since I used a WordPress blog that I am going to have to relearn a bunch of stuff.
    • I did 4 lessons in the CTP training. I would have liked to have done more but time didn’t allow more.
    • I did several Scavenger hunt’s on CTP.
    • And finally, I had enough time to write this post.

    Hopefully, I can be as productive tomorrow as I was today. I need to

    • Start cleaning up my blog
    • Create the second splash page I need for the SeaLifeHits Mastery Challenge
    • Of course create a new post in my quest to post 366 days in a row
    • Do the normal surfing necessary.
    • Do some CTP training
    • Comment on posts on Steemit and CTPtalk

    We will see what tomorrow brings.

    PS – As always, your comment are not ony welcome, they are encouraged. The only way I am going to get better is with your help. Thank You

  • Let’s Try SteemPress

    Let’s Try SteemPress

    Okay, I have copied the posts I already had on Steem. Now it is time to see how it works so this particular post will be short. What I hope to learn is

    • Did I set up everything correctly and this post gets to Steem
    • How long does it take for the post to get to Steem
    • Do pictures transfer
    • Do tags transfer
    • More questions I am sure once I see what happens.

    Angry CrabBefore I try this I do have to let everyone know the Angry Crabs are back today. YEAH! Personally, I hope they stay for a week but I know they won’t. I just have to take them as they come. After I surf 1000 sites today I will have 3 of 10 1000 site surfs with Angry Crab surf badges I need.

    Ok, lets see how SteemPress works. Hopefully I will have time this afternoon for another post.

  • The Angry Crabs Are Here

    angrycrab.png

    Yeah! The Angry Crab surf badges showed up today at SeaLifeHits. I thought maybe they showed up because I found the Angry Crab badge yesterday. But I had a comment from @crusin that says they just randomly appear and only last for a day. It is going to take a long time to finish each of the Mastery’s in ClickTrackProfits. Getting the referrals and commissions I need to complete the SeaLifeHits will probably take me even longer than the Angry Crab surf badges. 
    The good news is the the Angry Crab surf badges showed up. The bad news was that I had to surf 1000 sites and that takes time. I chose to forego the time I have allocated for training modules at ClickTrackProfit (CTP) for surfing. I hate not doing any training in a day because there is so much training and I am only 34% done. Maybe I can double up on training modules tomorrow.

    Another thing I am planning on doing tomorrow is start using Steempress. As I understand it, Steempress provides a bridge between my WordPress blog and my Steem blog. From what I have learned so far about Steempress, my post should show up here, Steemit, but I won’t know for sure until I try it. I am hoping that images get copied as well but noting I have read so far says that they get copied or not. I will just have to try it and see.

    Using Steempress is going to create more work because my WordPress blog is not in good shape. I am going to have to get it up to date with what I am doing now. I started the blog years ago when I was pursuing very different programs. I am going to have to change a lot.

    blogging.jpg

    By the way, the WordPress blog is http://moreincome4u.com. Please understand that I need some time to get it cleaned up

    PS – All constructive comments, good and bad, are not only welcome but encouraged. I can’t get any better without your help. Thanks in advance for your comments.#steempress#ctp#bobcaine#sealifehits

  • Side Tracked

    angrycrab.png

     Still no Angry Crab surf badges yesterday or today. But I did find the Angry Crab badge. Maybe that will turn on surf badges I need.

    Boy, did I get myself side tracked yesterday. I have been working my way through the training on ClickTrackProfit. (Any of you who are CTP members know there is a LOT of training.) I’m in section of the training called ‘Profit’. One of the modules is ‘Color Theory’. I got fascinated learning about color theory in advertising. It is one of those things I never gave a thought before.

    When I do splash pages, I have always just used the colors that looked good to me. I like a splash of color on the pages I create without going crazy. Black and white by itself would be boring. I almost always make “call to action buttons green but there was no thought be hind it. It turns out green is the best color for a ‘SUBMIT’ button. Split tests have shown over and over that green buttons get more clicks. Here is a list of colors and what they represent.

    • Red – exciting, bold
    • Orange – friendly, cheerful
    • Yellow – optimistic, warm
    • Green – healthy, peaceful, growth
    • Blue – dependable, strong
    • Purple – creative, imaginative, royal
    • Gray – neutrality, calm
    • Black – sophistication, simplicity

    Red headlines, black text, green button on a white back ground make very effective pages.

    If you are interested in learning more about color in advertising, just Google “Color in Marketing”. Here is on page I found particularly interesting.

    Color Psychology in Marketing: The Ultimate Guide

    So I spent a lot of time yesterday learning about color. So much time there wasn’t any time left for anything else.

    Thank You for Reading,
    Bob Caine

    paintcolor.webp

    PS – As always your constructive comments are not only welcome but encourage. I can’t get better without your help. Thank you in advance.#ctp#bobcaine#colorinadvertising