John H. Lutz III 6920 Roosevelt Way NE #207 Seattle WA 98115 Writing Samples and Internet Marketing Examples 1. The affiliate program I developed this program from scratch for Ayurvedaonline.com. This page can function as a writing sample and as an example of my ability to develop innovative Internet marketing programs as they become necessary. This affiliate program was the first of its kind for a well-known alternative medicine school in the US (initially developed in 2003). http://www.ayurvedaonline.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=AFCL&Store_Code=ayu1 There is nothing out there in the alternative medicine field which offers affiliates the potential to make the level of comission payouts mentioned in the program's details. The details requiring purchases to be made in the exact method described within the program details keep the business from having to pay out commission fees to affiliates for all of the sales initiated by affiliate web sites. For example, when a visitor from an affiliate’s web site visits Ayurvedaonline.com, does not make a purchase, but later visits Ayurvedaonline.com and makes a purchase, this situation would not generate a commission payout. This helps lower company's total fees paid to affiliates. The high dollar school enrollment payout commissions and the high dollar average commission payouts listed for each product category strongly encourage new affiliate account signups. Many affiliates have signed up for the program by locating the program on their own -- before the program was ever marketed! This means that the affiliate sites are finding this program on their own (without and "reach" marketing dollars spent to achieve this result), setting up links to Ayurvedaonline.com, and raising Ayurvedaonline's ranking on Google and other search engines solely based on the affiliate program details! Due to the incoming links this program has the ability to generate (1000s) and the fact that incoming links are the primary factor considered by search engines in determining a site's placement within the search engine's search results, Ayurvedaonline.com would surely have attained a Top 5000 site ranking on the Internet (15 million page views per month) if this program was agressively marketed on the Internet (hours were never allocated to achieve this result). The above projected web traffic figures are higher than the web traffic results generated by many Fortune 500 companies. The actual final web traffic ranking for the site was #100,000 on the Internet - a ranking higher than 99.53% of the sites on the Internet (accomplished without incoming link generation efforts, without SEM and without paid search engine submissions). 2. The FAQ and Academic Policies web page functions as a primary sales tool for the school’s educational programs: http://www.ayurvedaonline.com/academy/academicpolicies.htm.
The below information describes the "beneficial sales closing quality" of each of the FAQ questions listed on this web page (use your browser's back button to return to this web page).
Yes...educational course sales have similar hard-sell sales methods as those used to sell other high dollar items! I would have preferred to sell the course by focusing more on the course's beneficial, educational content (more of a soft-sell method). This could have been easily accomplished by posting much of the course content online. All of the medical condition terms and remedies would draw lots of traffic to the site (if the pages were formatted correctly, and the content was marketed effectively). The business owner, in my opinion, was over protective of his course content, and would not allow me to post much of this content online. Since content is king on the Internet, and I did not have much content to work with, I was somewhat forced to use the harder sell methods mentioned above. I can sell either way, but I strongly prefer to sell by overwhelming consumers with product benefits (and education) rather than hard sell (non-educating) methods. I highly prefer to focus on win-win sales methods - which build product advocates (and advance the product knowledge of both the buyer and the seller) and lead to lots of free marketing and future product sales. The choice of hard sell/manipulate vs. soft sell/educate seems like such a simple one... not sure my many sales people do not focus on the second option! The combination of the both methods (hard and soft sales techniques), of course, is extremely effective. 3. Example of the use of a combination of hard-sell and soft-sell methods: In response to consumer questions about the school's educational programs, I would reply with e-mails containing links to exact sections of the above web page (and other web pages) to answer their questions. I would send newsletters to the business' contacts telling them to check out the recipe and health article databases (which both have links to course and product sales options). The goal was to get the visitors back onto the web site - back into our “store” - the "well- developed online sales funnel", back to viewing our most effectively developed marketing materials, and back to viewing marketing related web pages to possibly share with friends. I added the recipe, health articles, news and events (not kept current after I left full-time work on the project) and community board (recently deactivated by the boss due to spammers; spammers can be blocked by requiring message approval before posting) web site sections to provide a [believable] reason for suggesting that visitors should check out the web site in further detail. I then added sales links within e-mails and within the web pages for the visitors to come across. (I call these "product sales land mines"...not the best term...maybe "unexpected highly visible purchasing options" would be a better term.) These efforts significantly helped increase the page views per visitor for the web site, which is one of the most important web stats to monitor in regards to Internet marketing efforts. 4. *Page views per visitor* is a measure of how well the site is interacting with visitors, and how "deep" the site is taking visitors into the online sales process. The methods listed above (and others I utilized) resulted in Ayurvedaonline.com achieving over 16 page views per visitor. Google (the #3 site on the Internet, after Yahoo and MSN) generates only 6 page views per visitor, but has a much higher "reach" (percentage of Internet users visiting the company's site - primarily because of the effectiveness of their Internet search feature - a service). This means that Google's web site is receiving lots of "drive by" traffic (using the site search feature), without interacting with site visitors very effectively and selling site services to them. 95% of Google's overall revenue, or more, comes from the ads on the right side of the pages of Google's search results. These ads sell because Google offers a useful service (which generates lots of web traffic for the site), not because Google sells it's products very effectively. Google therefore does not actually interact very effectively with site visitors...and sell products and services very effectively. The Google ads are everywhere (very good reach), because the company offers a valuable service, which is the primary reason for Google's continued financial success. [This content was originally written in mid-December 2005. Google's incredible stock figures began dropping significantly in mid-January, 2006.] A site which interacts well with it's visitors is MySpace.com, the #14 site on the Internet (as of 12/05...and rising rapidly), which generates an incredible 39 page views per visitor. This results in multiple opportunities to sell a variety of products and services to site visitors (and advertising space on the site to other businesses) and the potential to overtake Google in terms of overall web traffic -- as it is harder to generate increased page views per visitor than it is to generate increased reach. On MySpace.com, each new visitor views almost 40 pages per visit. If the site can gain new visitors effectively, it could easily become the most visited site on the Internet (or at least a Top 5 site). Like Google, though, people primarily visit the site for a service it offers (social and business networking). For analysis of any site's reach and page views per visit, type the site's name into the Alexa.com search box, select traffic details, then view the site's overall traffic rank, reach, page views per visitor, and trends (3 months of rate of increase or decrease in web traffic). These stats are located below the graph on the traffic details web page. Sites which sell their products and services very effectively: Amazon.com (the #11 site on the Internet, with 8 page views per visitor), E-bay.com (the #7 site on the Internet, with 17 page views per visitor), and Yahoo.com (the #1 site on the Internet, with 16 page views per visitor). Reach is attained through various methods: Gaining new market share, managing communications with current and new contacts, and managing the contact data of current and new site visitors very effectively. Developing "visitor advocates" who forward web pages to friends (free marketing, called "word of mouse" marketing), delivering outstanding customer service, and adapting to changing consumer needs and interests are all key factors in improving a web site's reach (and a business' overall financial success). I developed a 9000 member Outlook contact database (from scratch) while working for Ayurvedaonline.com...a significant tool for improving the site's reach and the business' overall financial success. Page views per visitor and reach are the factors which generate an incredible web presence and outstanding online sales. My ability to write and publish user preferred content, market this content to current and new site visitors and generate reach (through affiliate marketing, effective customer service, contact management, and other equally effective methods not mentioned above) define my ability to develop any company's web site (with significant consumer preferred content, products or services) into a Top 5000 or Top 1000 site on the Internet. These skills are equally effective in generating results for B2B and B2C type web sites. The final Site Traffic Rankings, Reach, Page Views per Visitor and Rate of Traffic Increase figures I achieved on Ayurvedaonline.com were some of the highest figures listed on Alexa.com...out of all of the sites on the Internet. The above web page is an image of Ayurvedaonline.com's Alexa ranking taken 2 months after I reduced my work on Ayurvedaonline.com (while preparing to move back to the East coast). The April and May Alexa rankings (2 months prior to these results) stated that Ayurvedaonline.com had achieved the following:
Ayurvedaonline was basically non-functional (less than 10 visitors per day, outdated content, non-functional shopping cart) when I began work on the project 2 years ago. See the following links, which very accurately describe the results of my work on the project:
The current Alexa.com rankings for Ayurvedaonline.com are significantly lower (especially the page views per visitor), as I am no longer working full-time on the project (as of June, 2005). In Summary: I can develop innovative web-based marketing programs, sell very effectively through hard or soft sell methods, write effective consumer preferred/search engine recognizable content, produce outstanding reach and page views per visitor, retain current customers with effective customer service, gain new customers through a variety of marketing methods, manage large amounts of information (including customer data), and analyze web trends very easily and very effectively. These skills result in the ability to have an incredible impact on the financial success of any future employer's business and web site. Other Sales Copy Writing and Marketing Examples: 5. The school's main web page: http://www.ayurvedaonline.com/academy/info.htm | before/after Industry leader/authority in the field brand image promoted, bulleted mission statement, picture of the director with the most well-known author in the field (teaching a class for the school), multiple links to the course details, online registration pages and FAQ page above. Also links to the faculty and advisors pages, enhancing school's image as an authority in the field. 6. Online registration instructions: http://www.ayurvedaonline.com/academy/info.htm#registeronline I developed the entire online enrollment process for this alternative medicine school. Notice the quick, easy instructions. I did not get to the point of making the Admissions Essay and Admission Application forms capable of online submittal (boss would not allocate time for this). 7. Admissions application form: http://www.ayurvedaonline.com/academy/application.htm I rewrote this entire form, listing single classes and distance learning options before and along with the $4500 Level 1 (original sole purchase) option, then insisted on the Level 1, Level 2 and Master’s degree course listing sequence (when the Director wanted to list the classes in a Master’s degree first sequence). Product sales need to be presented in a low price item/gain interest first method; then, attempts can be made to sell the higher priced, higher margin items. 8. Course details main page: http://www.ayurvedaonline.com/academy/capcoursedescription.htm | before/after I broke the $4500 course up into ten individual $450 courses, then listed each individual course as a product available for sale within the online store. The course description paragraphs on this page now contain links to the product sales pages of online store. Also, I added suggested reading items to this page, which contain links to product sales pages of the online store. 9. Current Specials product category of the online store: before/after http://www.ayurvedaonline.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=ayu1&Category_Code=CS I suggested and produced all of the bundled items listed in the current specials section of the online store, which resulted in a 3 fold increase in online sales per transactions (along with the online course purchasing options). Some summer intensive classes are still listed there, since I stopped working on the project, for the most part, back in June. 10. Online store main page: http://www.ayurvedaonline.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc? | before/after Easily understood product category navigation on the left, ordered by:
Note: Many products do not have pictures due the boss not allocating time for this. In my opinion, this was not a good decision, as pictures definitely help sell products. Since the goal of the business was primarily to sell the $5000 educational courses, and we only had so much time, this decision is somewhat understandable. The lack of pictures on some items hurt the brand image, though, so I definitely did not agree with the decision. I voiced my opinion, which was countered with “focus on selling the school’s educational programs”. I followed the boss’ decision, while maintaining my focus on the bigger goals. ************************************************************************************************************************************* Other Writing Samples and Internet Marketing Examples:
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