There is one thing that will never get old. And that is personalization and customization. If you own something – be it a physical object such as a phone, laptop or a virtual possession like an online game character or a blog – its a no brainer that you would want to customize it.

The whole purpose of customization (to me anyways) is not just to place our mark but to say ‘Hey I have that too, but mine’s different from the rest’.

Anyway, I’ve been on Twitter for a while now. Every time I browse another persons twitter profile, I’m always intrigued by the beautifully customized background they have. So finally i decided to customize my own.

What do you think?

Thanks a lot to Aronil for designing it for me.

I love it, but wouldn’t it be cooler if you could click on my website url and go to it? Or even click on the social network icons and be taken straight to the profile pages?

Well you can!

I found this from another twitterer, Todd Defren. On his page there is something called ClickableNow. You will see it at the bottom left pane on my Twitter background too.

ClickableNow is a free script that enables clickable links on Twitter background images. A number of people will place their website links on their Twitter background, but since it’s only an image, you won’t be able to click on it. Basically ClickableNow will allow you to make that image clickable. You can add in any link to your background – your blog url, audio file, video from youtube. Anything!

Personally I think this is very handy. Especially if you happen to associate with people via your twitter network.

Check out my Twitter profile to get an idea of how it works. Just roll your mouse over the left pane and you will see the rollover link colours meaning they are clickable. Like it? Then head on to ClickableNow to get your own clickable twitter background.

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Unlike the sales letter whereby it converts visitors into customers, the sole purpose of a Squeeze Page is to convert visitors into subscribers. However like the sales letter, your Squeeze Page is also a simple one-page website. There is nothing else on it except an opt-in form and perhaps essential links – like your customer support, how to contact you, your earning’s disclaimer and your privacy policy pages. These are definitely essential.

So once your visitors fill in your opt-in form, you funnel them into your opt-in mailing list which in effect, this allows you to build your own mailing list of prospects that you can later turn into customers. This is the mission of the Squeeze Page: to convert visitors into subscribers.

Now, this is very important because you see, if you use a sales letter to convert visitors into customers, let’s just say your sales letter is doing very well. You are converting at let’s say, 10% which means for every 100 visitors, you are getting 10 customers. Now this is a good conversion.

But no matter how good your conversions are, there will always be a big percentage of people who do not buy your product on first contact. And if you are achieving at a 10% conversion rate, this means that the other 90% of the traffic is not buying your product.

So where does this traffic go?

It goes wasted if you do not attempt to monetize them or at least, collect their leads. And this is where the importance of a Squeeze Page falls in. As already mentioned earlier, not everybody buys on first contact. Buyers are naturally skeptical. So you have to build a big rapport and relationship with them before they can start to trust you first.

Next, you will want to know how to effectively format your squeeze page.

Believe it or not, formatting your Squeeze Page is actually very, very simple. In fact, that’s an understatement. It’s actually oversimplified. A Squeeze Page consists of 4 main components and that’s all. It’s called:

1. Headline
2. Sub-Headline
3. Benefits
4. Call-to-Action

The Headline

In the headline, it has to be very compelling and you must qualify your prospecting visitor. Why should he subscribe to your mailing list? This is why the headline is very important. If you want to study great headlines, just take a look at the newspaper or great ad copies. You will notice which headline has captured your attention in the newspaper or which advertisement captured your attention the most. Plus, you’ll notice that they always use some really convincing words like: “Guaranteed” “Secrets” “How to…” “Discover…” These are some of the very powerful words you can use in your headline.

Sub-headline

The sub-headline acts as a hook which captures the attention of your prospects and causes them to continue reading. So what you need to apply here are actually the same principles you apply in writing a sales letter.

Benefits

There must also be benefits for your subscribers. Just because subscribing to your mailing list is free, it doesn’t mean that people will just part away with their names and e-mail addresses just like that. You need to give them an extremely good reason to opt-in and this is where your benefits come in. You write your benefits in bullet points and convince the person why he or she should join your mailing list. You can come up with some examples like:

• “Free tips and tricks on how to do something”
• “Secrets to…that cannot be found anywhere else”
• “Quick solutions to big problems”

This is very important because you’d want to put foot in the door.

Call to Action

Last but not least, you’d want to have a call to action. In this case, the only call to action your Squeeze Page has to offer is to get the visitors to sign up to your mailing list by parting his name and e-mail address to you. Do not ask for more information as this would reduce the likelihood of someone opting in.

One extra tip: Using video in your squeeze page will increase your opt-in rate. You can incorporate those 4 components in the form of a video. Below is an example of my squeeze page.

Next thing you need to get is an autoresponder.  In my next post, I will explain what is an autoresponder, its function, and most importantly, its significant in your Internet Business.

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For those who promote products from ClickBank, you might want to take note of the refund rate of these products. It wouldn’t be very wise to promote a product with high paying commission but also with high refund rate. There are four easy steps to calculating the refund rate for ClickBank products.

The formula is simply like this:

Step 1: (Product Price – 7.5%) – $1 = Net Commission
We begin with calculating the Net Commission where the formula is (Product Price – 7.5%) – $1.The percentage of 7.5% and $1 are actually ClickBank’s commission charges as an affiliate network to handle all the processing and administration. So by subtracting ClickBank’s commission off the product price, this equals to your ‘Net Commission’.

Step 2: Net Commission x Payout Percentage = Affiliate Commission
This is where you multiply your Net Commission with the Payout Percentage, it then equates to your Affiliate Commission.

Step 3: Affiliate Commission – $Earned/Sale = Refund Difference
Obtain the Refund Difference, you simply minus your Affiliate Commission over the Earned/Sale value.

Step 4: ($ Refund Difference ÷ Affiliate Commission) x 100 = Refund Percentage
The Refund Difference divided by the Affiliate Commission, multiplied by 100 then this equates to your Refund Percentage.

Now let’s demonstrate it more clearly with an example. I will use “Stream Online Movies” as our example product. There are 3 variables we need to take into consideration.

1. Product Price = $45.95
2. $Earned/Sale = $25.21
3. Payout Percentage = 75%

The product price is actually $45.95. The product pricing can be found by clicking on the ‘View Pitch Page’ that will direct you to the sales page offer and all you need to do is to search for the product price. For Stream Online Movies, you would need click on “Get Access”, register your email address and you’ll be taken to the sales offer page where you can see the product price. In other cases, the products price can usually be found by scrolling down to the bottom of the sales offer page.

The Earned per Sale amount is obtained from the first column of the ClickBank’s marketplace search results. For Stream Online Movies the Earned per Sale amount is $25.21. For this product, the payout percentage is 75%.

So now let’s work on the calculation.

Step 1: ($45.95 - 7.5%) = $41.50 (Net Commission)
You need to start by taking the Product Price, minus off 7.5% of ClickBank’s commission, minus a dollar and that equates to your Net Commission.

Step 2: ($41.50 x 75%) = $31.13  (Affiliate Commission)
Then using your Net Commission, multiply it by 75% of the Payout which equates to your Affiliate Commission; in this case, it would be $31.13.

Step 3: ($31.13 - $25.21) = $5.92 (Refund Difference)
Then minus off the Affiliate Commission with the Earned/Sale value and you’ll get a Refund Difference of only $5.92.

Step4: ($5.92 ÷ $31.13) = 19.01% (Refund Percentage)
The Refund Percentage is then calculated by $5.92 divided over the Affiliate Commission and multiplying it by 100. This equates to a relatively high refund percentage of 19.01%.

This goes to show that this product is moderately successful because 19.01% of their customers have requested for a refund. There are many products out there with various refund percentage. Refunds are normal in sales and marketing. Normally the kind of refund rate you’d want to look out for in a product is anything between 0 – 10%. Of course, the lower the refund rate, the better.

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