Bob's Work Site

Category: ClickTrackProfit

  • Results Are In

    I would like to thank everyone who used their time to provide their thoughts on yesterday’s post. I ask whether people thought a HitsConnect tracking link, software for tracking advertising results, should work in CTP’s Gauntlet, a feature designed to provide feedback on web page design, should work or not. Well, the results are in and I want to share them with everyone.

    I didn’t have to spend much time analyzing the results. The were unanimous. 100% of the responses thought that a HitsConnect tracking link did not have to work in the Gauntlet since the Gauntlet is not suppose to be an advertising platform. I yield to the unanimous opinion. I will never bring it up again.

    The other question that occurred several times in the responses was, “Why would anyone use a HitsConnect tracking link in a non-advertising environment?”

    My answer to that question is, “I consider the Gauntlet as part of my testing of a new page and I want test my page exactly as it will run live.” I am sure I can attribute that philosophy to my 40+ years of delivering software to clients who expect perfect results. And, believe me, no matter how much we thought every scenario had been tested, the client would find one we never imagined.

    My favorite example of this is a system where the user entered the quantity of a product to be shipped to a store. There was a limited number of stores on a page and the user expected to complete 1 page at a time. We delivered the software after extensive testing. In less than 4 hours I get a call that says it doesn’t work. I talked with the user and the problem was that they could enter data past the end of the page. We test more and could not produce the result the user was describing. I went back to the user and ask them to show me. I watched and they were right and I saw the problem. They knew how to type and were not looking at the screen while entering data. None of the programmers knew how to type so they watched the screen as they entered data. The programmers saw they were ate the end of the screen and the users didn’t. We made a very small change that stopped the user after the last store and made a noise to let them know. Problem solved.

    Enough said, I am moving on in search of my next windmill. Thank you all again for your input.

    I look forward to your feedback to help me improve,
    Bob Caine

    PS – I switched pictures because It dawned on me that a real photo is probably more credible than a caricature.

  • Need Your Opinion Please

    This should be a fairly short post. I am writing it to get as many opinions as I can on a point of view as I can. But before I ask your opinion, I have a discovery to share. I write my posts in WordPress and let WordSteem send it Steemit for me. I learned yesterday that the ‘Featured Image’ option in WordPress does not transfer to Steemit. Those of you that use WordPress and WordSteem probably already knew this but I learned yesterday when the image I used with the post did not show up in Steem. Live and learn, keeps life interesting.

    OK, now for the point of view that Needs your opinion. (I wish there was a poll option for posts in Steem but if there is I can’t find a reference to it.)

    ClickTrackProfit has a feature called the Gauntlet. The purpose of the Gauntlet is to get other CTP members criticism of personally developed pages for use on the internet in one’s business. The Gauntlet provides a great way to perfect internet pages in a somewhat controlled environment. The Gauntlet is not intend to be an advertising platform.

    HitsConnect is an ad tracking and rotator system which provides detailed statistics. HitsConnects is used to track your traffic and results by generating a tracking url to use for advertising. In general, it used to help improve your online advertising efforts. HitsConnect is the recommended tracking system for ClickTrackProfit members to use.

    Your Opinion Please

    HitsConnect urls do not work in the CTP Gauntlet. With which of the following to you agree.

    1. HitsConnect should work in the Gauntlet since it is the recommended tracking software
    2. HitsConnect doesn’t have to work in the Gauntlet since the Gauntlet isn’t intended for advertising
    3. Another option I haven’t thought of

    Please leave a comment expressing your opinion. Thank You.

    I look forward, as always, to your comments,
    Bob Caine

  • One of Those Totally Befuddling Days

    I woke up this morning with my mind racing. Running through my mind was all the different things I have learned from the ClickTrackProfit training about building my business and how do I put them together. How do I use content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, blogging and build my list. How do I combine them all into a cohesive marketing plan?

    I have spent the day trying to figure out a marketing plan. For example, I want to put together a plan to recruit referrals for ClickTrackProfit and build my list. I have sent 1000’s of emails and what happens. I get a referral every now and then. Luck of who opens the email when. I have similar results with trying to build my list.

    I need a plan. An organized approach of what to do when. I realize a plan like can be different for every person but there must be some guidelines. I can throw out a bunch of buzz words but I don’t know how to arrange them to work best.

    • Split Testing
    • Content Marketing
    • Blogging
    • Autoresponder
    • Email Marketing
    • Etc, etc …

    Of course, then there is my impatience. I send emails for a week or so about a program. No results. This impatience I can fix. I can force myself to stick with a program and figure out a way to stay motivated. I will do this. I want to get to the magic $2.74/day. (If you don’t know why $2.74/day is important you need to join ClickTrackProfit.)

    I joined ClickTrackProfits many years ago. For reasons long forgotten, I started looking for another training hub. I tried this one and that one. Some that I tried cost $!000’s and had high monthly fees. Every one I joined had the same advice – advertise on Facebook. Finally, I had anther one of my morning epiphanies. I already belong to the best training available. Why did I abandon it? I don’t know but I am back and not leaving again.

    Does anyone know any books, blogs or post that could help me put a marketing plan together? I would really appreciate your knowledge on this topic. Thanks

    Until Next Time,
    Bob Caine

    PS – No Angry Crab Surfing badges today.

    The best training available at any price!
  • Get More emails Opened

    Get More emails Opened

    I finally took the time to consolidate various notes I had regarding email subject lines do’s and dont’s. I have been collecting expert suggestions about creating good emails subject lines for a long time. These notes were in all kind of places; in notebooks, random notepad entries, even post-it notes. Since I have this consolidated now, I thought I would share it and see what others thought of these little nuggets of knowledge.

    Do’s and Dont’s for email Subject Lines

    • Don’t use ALL CAPS – this can trigger spam filters which will send your emails to the spam folder
    • Do keep your subject line between 50 and 65 characters – definitely no more than 71 characters. Sometime shorter subjects can be effective but you should test these.
    • Do review your subject on a mobile phone – A mobile phone can cut off a subject line and leave awkward or inappropriate phrases. Send yourself a test email and review it on your phone.
    • Don’t mislead – you might be tempted to say something wild or even irrelevant in the subject – don’t do it. More people may open the email but more are likely to mark
    • your email as spam.

    Try these techniques to increase your open rates

    • Ask a question – use a question that people are asking about your content. This does require a little research
    • Mention pain points – use difficulties or problems common to your target audience or subscribers. Again a little research may be neede4d.
    • Talk about benefits – write about the benefits related to your content instead of features
    • Create curiosity – one way to do this is to hint at the content in the email. For example, “The answer to [________] is inside this email”.
    • Include first name – this is only for subscribers of course.

    Also, I have another note that says you should repeat your subject line at the beginning of your email. I wasn’t sure where to put that piece of information.

    I hope you find this collection of information useful. Please leave me a comment on any tips you have to increase open rates.

    Thank you in advance for your comments,
    Bob Caine

    PS – The Angry Crab surfing badges were available again today. I am at 5 of the 10 1000 site surfing days with the Angry Crab surfing badges I need. Crabs will probably disappear tomorrow. But there is always hope.

  • 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!

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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