Archive for Making Money Online
User Reviews Generate More Sales
Posted by: | CommentsI had an opportunity to attend a webinar yesterday with some of the PR group I do a lot of work with. The webinar was hosted by PRNews and titled Building Community & Reputation Online With Social Media Tools.
Sam Decker of Bazaarvoice was one of the presenters and he talked about using User Generated Content, such as user reviews to generate more sales at your site. As a matter of fact, a recent Sherpa study found that 58% of online shoppers prefer sites with reviews.
Who do you trust more when getting information on a potential purchase – a sales rep or marketer? Or do you trust someone else like you, who has already purchased the product you are looking at?
I think that there are two main reasons why word of mouth or user reviews are so powerful.
It’s all about the money
For one, we perceive that it is less likely that the reviewer has a monetary stake in the sale of the product, therefore they are really telling the truth as to how good the product is or is not. The sales rep or marketer will most definitely receive some form of monetary gain from the sale of the product.
It’s all about the experience
Secondly, who is going to be able to better tell us the benefits of a product, how it is used, what works great, and what the product’s downfalls are? The user who purchased, used and reviewed the product. After all, word of mouth advertising has been around for a long time has always been perceived as more “authentic”.
The sales pitch could tell us the product benefits, but we are naturally going to be more drawn to the product if other users can sing its praises or warn us of a sub-standard product.
What about paid reviews?
Does the fact that a reviewer was compensated in some way diminish the value of the review? I think it all depends on the source. If the reviewer does a nice job of giving us the products pros and cons and let’s the reader know that it is a paid review, then no, it doesn’t diminish the value of the review (in my opinion).
What does this mean for your business?
Let your customers do some of your sales work for you! Give them a platform to speak their minds whether through user reviews or comments. Then take that information and implement it in a meaningful way at your site by featuring top rated products or in the case of a blog, use the popularity plug in to help you feature your most popular posts.
The webinar was very interesting and over the next few days I will share more of the insights and statistics I found helpful.
Join the conversation! What do you think of user generated content for generating sales? What are some examples of sites that really implement this strategy well?
New Amazon Context Link Ads
Posted by: | CommentsThe Amazon affiliate program continues to grow. The latest is the beta release of their Context Ads program. The context links ads are automatically served based on your site’s content. The links show up within your content and then you can customize what the window looks like when someone mouses over your link.
It looks something like this when you mouse over a link:
If you have a site that is consumer oriented, especially one with product reviews, this may be worth giving a try.
The program is very easy to set up – you just paste a small script within your site’s code, and you only have to do it once. Amazon serves the links automatically based on the phrases and key words in your content. You can also choose the categories from which the products are served.
I think I may try it on one of my sites that gets decent traffic but not a lot of Adsense clicks and see how the two programs compare.
Has anyone else tried this out yet? What do you think of Amazon’s latest tool for monetizing your site? Is it a threat to Google Adsense or will it just make the market more competitive?
UPDATE – I had originally posted that you can’t run these two programs together, however, according to Jensense and ProBlogger.net, Adsense has changed the rules on this. Since they are displayed differently, they are okay.
What is Going on with Google Adsense?
Posted by: | CommentsI just did my morning peruse of all my favorite blogs. I couldn’t help but notice that just about everyone who is serving Google Adsense ads had the telltale Public Service Ads displayed. What’s up with that?
I think the first thing I am going to do when I get back in this afternoon is set up my Adsense blocks to display other ads – instead of the PSA’s – when Adsense can’t find the right content. At least that is what it appears that John Chow must have done, because his is one of the few sites I have visited this morning that is serving ads correctly.
So, does anyone know what is up with Google this morning? I hope they get it straightened out – I had a banner day yesterday and I’d like to keep that momentum going.
