A few months ago during the redesign of ShoeMoney.com I noticed this area next to our social links:

At the time there was a random post being displayed. Sure, that would have gotten some clicks but it occurred to me that there had to be a better way. Obviously some posts are better than others, and it doesn’t make any sense to rotate through low quality posts when there are the gems that people love but may be a few years old and the new ShoeMoney.com reader might not ever see them.

So here’s what I did:

We went through and tagged a selection of posts that we considered the “Best of ShoeMoney”.

Then I added some simple code to the header file so that it would execute on every page load. The code checks to see if the current page being loaded is a “Best of ShoeMoney” post, and if it is, it adds it to a cookie on the users machine.
if(is_single()) {
$tags = get_the_tags();
foreach($tags as $tag) {
if($tag->name == "Best Of ShoeMoney") {
if($_COOKIE['haveuseen']) {
$seen_posts = unserialize($_COOKIE['haveuseen']);
} else {
$seen_posts = array();
}
if(!in_array($wp_query->post->ID,$seen_posts)) {
array_push($seen_posts,$wp_query->post->ID);
}
setcookie('haveuseen',serialize($seen_posts),time()+(60*60*24*365),'/','shoemoney.com');
}
}
}


Finally, in the template code I run a get_posts() and exclude the posts in the cookie that people have already seen. This way, on every page load they are exposed to a “Best of ShoeMoney” story that they haven’t read yet.

The result?

Posts that were completely dead with traffic suddenly saw a spike when it was implemented:

Send this post to your programmer and have them implement this today for an instant boost in pageviews!

Video presents an interesting problem for the online marketer. While video is extremely powerful and engaging, we give up a lot of “features” that a standard HTML sales page has. It’s very possible that your flashy, engaging video presentation does a worse job of conveying your message than a good page. Even worse, it’s very hard to do any kind of testing or optimization like you can with a split-tested sales page.

Enter Event Tracking in Google Analytics. Event Tracking allows you to track all sorts of events on your web site which could be an entire series of articles by themselves. Want to know how many people are clicking various buttons on your site? Event Tracking can tell you.

What we care about with video, is how many people are finishing the video? As Jeremy mentioned in another post, 90% of the people who finish the ShoeMoney System video BUY. More finishers = More buyers.

Fortunately, with FlowPlayer this is very easy. The meat of it is this snippet of code you place in your FlowPlayer config:

onStart: function(clip) {
pageTracker._trackEvent("Videos", "Play", clip.url);
},

// track finish event for this clip
onFinish: function(clip) {
pageTracker._trackEvent("Videos", "Finish", clip.url);
}

That’s it.

After gathering data, in your Analytics account under Content->Event Tracking you will have stats on Plays, Pauses, and Finishes. Of course, since this is GA, you can also look at all kinds of other dimensions of this data.

Now it’s your turn to implement, and figure out how to use this new data to make more money.

Welcome to the first Tech Talk Tuesday.

Most readers of this blog are self-employed in some fashion. If you are, you probably know that there are hassles that come with being self-employed. One of the biggest is the amount of paper that seems to stack up. Bank accounts, taxes, investments, payrolls, lawyers, receipts, bills, invoices the list goes on. I have found a solution that has made our lives so much easier.

Steps:

1) Go to Amazon and buy a Fujitsu S300M or S1500M. I recommend the S300M unless you have a really out of control paper situation. The 300 does basically everything the 1500 does.

2) Get an Evernote account. It’s free to try, but you’re going to want to upgrade to get the search within documents.

What’s this going to do?

The Fujitsu ScanSnap allows you to 1-button scan directly into Evernote. Evernote allows you to search within all of your documents even if they are just scanned PDFs, as well as tag them however you want.

This is a game-changer for most people. Suddenly instead of having to file things into a file cabinet, and not be able to find them when you need them, you can just search all of your documents.

Here are instructions for the S300M and Evernote on a Mac

Or Scan to Evernote on Windows.

My desk is clear for the first time in years.

I’ve got some interesting data following the ShoeMoney System launch that I want to share.

This time around I used genetify to do multi-variate testing with an optimizing algorithm. Let me show you why this is important.

Let’s say we got 50,000 unique visitors to our landing page.

3.0% conversion rate	5.0% conversion rate

So you say, great, orange converted better. So what? Everyone knows orange buttons convert better. Well you’re right, but we also tested some much more interesting things that I’m not willing to share. But, let me show you something more important.

Assume we had 50,000 unique visitors, with a $200 sale price.

50,000 * 3% = 1500 = $300,000
50,000 * 5% = 2500 = $500,000

If we had simply 50/50 split tested to SEE which result was better:

25,000 * 3% + 25,000 * 5% = $150,000 + $250,000 = $400,000

But using a genetic algorithm that optimized in real-time for the best conversion rate:

10,000 * 3% + 40,000 * 5% = $60,000 + $400,000 = $460,000

Because our algorithm optimized itself for the best conversion, we made an extra 15% in revenue.

The coolest thing about MVT with a genetic algorithm is that it will find combinations that work the best that you would never have dreamed of.

If you aren’t using the tools available, you are leaving money on the table.

At this point, for online marketers Twitter and Facebook are no longer just ways to chat with our friends and colleagues. Both platforms provide a rich environment for user and customer acquisition. The biggest problem though, is that there are virtually no analytics or metrics other than follower/friend counts.

From what I’ve seen, Ad.ly is well on their way to changing that.

Would you like to see more data like that on your followers? I thought so. How about this:

All you have to do is head over to Ad.ly analytics and the authorize your
Twitter account. It takes less than 15 seconds and you’re up and
running.

Right now you can see follower statistics like: gender
breakdown, percent engaged, location (domestic and global), most
influential and my personal favorite,
the time of day you tweet and time of day you get retweeted. Twitter
marketers and rabid users are going to love this tool. They also have
an paid version of the product that will allow you to dig much deeper into your follower data. I am a bit skeptical that average users will pay for this but you never know? It’s worth a shot I suppose.

A few things I’d like to see right off the bat:

• Suggestions on optimal time to tweet based on when I will get the most retweets
• An analysis of my social graph and a suggestion of who I should convince to follow me to extend my reach the most in the sectors that matter to me.
• Pull in all my click data from bit.ly etc and show me which links I’ve posted that are the most popular.

This is hot stuff, and if they keep improving it I doubt that Twitter will be able to avoid acquiring these guys. You heard it here first.

Sometimes I feel like its every day that someone comes to me with the opportunity of a lifetime. It will require no capital investment, just a little tiny bit of my time, and will have enormous returns. I (almost) always pass.

But how do you know when to pass up these great chances to become a gazillionaire? I think I’m lucky in that I was jaded against these fantastic opportunities when I was younger. One time in elementary school a kid promised me that he had the other red property on McDonalds monopoly. Since I had the matching red one, it was a shoe-in to win the Dodge Viper. I was already explaining to my mom how I was going to get the Viper and sell it and then invest the money in the stock market. Guess who never produced the final red property?

In college a friend approached me with a GREAT business idea. He had everything planned out, and all I needed to do was build the web site. He offered me a slice of what was going to be this huge pie. I thought it seemed pretty solid so I told him I’d be happy to be involved but I wanted to just be paid for my time instead of taking a percentage. He decided to find someone else to build the site. This weekend I found out they went completely bankrupt.

So whats the point? How do you know?

1) If it’s too good to be true, it is. No one is going to offer you 45% return on your money with ZERO RISK. Unless they’re pushing blow. Maybe you’re ok with that, but assess the risk.

2) How much of your time is it really going to take? If someone offers you 10% of their company for something that will take you 10 minutes, GO FOR IT. Or email me and I will. If on the other hand you size it up and realize it may take 110% of your valuable time, its probably not worth the risk.

3) Use your experience and trust your gut. Maybe you’ll pass up a great opportunity, but the statistics are in your favor for making a good decision. You’ve probably been burned before, put everything you know together and really analyze it.

4) Be skeptical as hell. About everything.

5) Protect your interests. If you’re investing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, what is a couple grand to pay a good lawyer to protect you with a iron-clad contract? Same goes with your precious time. GET IT IN WRITING.

Now excuse me while I go buy some stock in this company I just got an email about.

Luis asks:

Teddy asks:

Blogging Experiment asks:

Stavanger asks:

corey asks:

Kiley asks:

Paul Bradish asks:

Modern Worker asks:

koen asks:

Dave, have you got a mac too, like shoe
and how did you get in contact with shoe?

eTown Landlord asks:

Joe asks:

web professor asks:

Theo asks:

aRo` asks:

Leonid Shalimov asks:

1 Million?!?! Ahh, congrats. Good for him .

Bjorgvin asks:

michael webster asks:

Chon asks:

chrisblogging.com asks:

Blain Reinkensmeyer asks:

Dave Dugdale asks:

Mong asks:

Jay Tillery asks:

Rob asks:

Georgie Casey asks:

Scott asks:

devtrench blog asks:

Cristi√°n asks:

More M asks:

Grivon asks:

JeffPosaka asks:

Ron asks:

Mike asks:

ferrarislave asks:

2 questions in 1 post. Please answer both if you
can Do you use any web frameworks (django, cakephp, rails). I know
Perl is your favorite language, but what do you think of Python?
Those are my two questions. Thanks Shoe and thanks Dave!

Tim Linden asks:

eddie asks:

nate asks:

Gecko Tales asks:

Jonathan Volk asks:

Seriously, when are you and Shoe coming out with a Rap single I can promote for my ringtones campaign!

I kid, actually I’m just curious as to what you plan to do in the future? Goals, ambitions, etc.

eTown Landlord asks:

CPA Affiliates asks:

art asks:

Tom asks:

Mason asks:

Is your relationship with shoe more than just a friend thing? j/k j/k

Here’s my real question…
Do you have a college degree?

Tracy asks:

John Wallace asks:

David Dellanave: When I was like 11 my best friend’s brother called me Della-dillsmack. Around the same time I started IRC’ing and I needed a nickname. I didn’t know I would have to own it for the rest of my life

BlueDevilMedia asks:

Web Design & Marketing asks:

Paul. asks:

Matthew asks:

Web Designer asks:

Coin Counter asks:

Sami asks:

workingcanuck asks:

Grivon asks:

Tim Spangler asks:

JohnC asks:

TechZilo asks:

Bulbboy asks:

SEO Blogs asks:

mrrbob asks:

Matt asks:

TechZilo asks:

stupid 3gp asks:

TechZilo asks: