Did the standard add/remove stuff in windows to remove the toolbar, that was fine. Problem was my default browser 404 page was being hijacked still by the babylon search results. In addons->extensions there was no removal button, only a disable button.

The extension doesn’t install itself into your default profile folder, as all the legit extensions do. Instead it puts itself in C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxextensions (on windows 7). Delete the little shit and restart firefox and you should be ok.

Thats all!

Financial Offer

One of my full sized landing pages for a financial offer. The photos are easily interchangeable as the sticky tape corners are seperate divs. No hard coded images on here.

Retro Gaming Toolbar

This ones for a PPV gaming offer: The aim was an eyecatching, quick-loading lander which was relvant to the offer. In PPV, click through rate is a massive factor when it comes to profitability.

Coupon Code Site

Another PPV lander for a coupon code site. Despite the large amount of graphics, its all still text based, and can easily be edited.

Credit Report Offer

Simple, fast loading PPV lander that does the job and then some:

If you fancy a bespoke lander of your own then just send me a message or hit me up on AIM, my nick is getlanders.

F.A.B.

Features Advantages Benefits Virgil

Theres an old rule of thumb with advertising copy, the acronymn F.A.B.

I personally think this sounds kind of cheesey, but it holds true in this case. FAB stands for Features, Advantages, Benefits. ( The A is also known to stand for ‘Attributes’, but who cares lets just get to the good stuff.)

In order of increasing effectiveness, features, advantages and benefits are how you sell pretty much anything at all. With PPV however, we sell the benefits primarily, as they’re the most effective.

Features

Features are not as effective as Benefits.

Say for example, you’ve made an ad to sell a motorbike. Here are some of its features

• Radial Mount Monoblock Calipers
• Electronically Controlled Steering Damper
• BPF (Big Piston Frontfork)

Unless you’re a total motorcycle geek, none of these features are really going to do it for you, they won’t blow you away and make you want the bike. There are more effective ways of persuading someone to buy, especially if they’re not quite in ‘buy mode’ and are just browsing.

Advantages

Advantages are basically features on steroids. Better at performing the sell, things like:

• 25 years of Supersports know-how.
• A perfect blend of track engineering and road ready design.
• The first 1000cc production bike to be fitted with Big Piston Frontforks.

Hmm, thats better. ’25 years of Supersports knowhow’ instills trust in the reader, increasing the chance of a purchase.
‘A perfect blend of track engineering and road ready design’ implies that this bike has been designed for both track and road, and its going to handle well’.
‘The first 1000cc production bike to be fitted with Big Piston Frontforks.’ this is more subtle, its letting the customer know that they’re going to be part of a ‘special club’ of riders with Big Piston Frontforks. Not really a deal clincher. We need something with more ‘Kapow!’ Cue the benefits.

Benefits

These are the ultimate weapons in our sales arsenal. Most people who are potential customers have a need, a problem, and need a solution. The benefits are the answer.

• ‘…allows you to maintain speed when taking on corners…’
• ‘…even smoother downshift and greater stability when approaching trickier bends.’
• ‘Ride quality is improved thanks to big piston forks’
• ‘monoblock front brake calipers increase overall stopping power’

These benefits imply that the rider is going to get a faster, smoother ride, with great handling and greater stopping power. All things that will  persuade the rider to buy. These are the answer to the questions that anyone in the market for a sportsbike is going to have.

Finally, there are the DEEPER benefits. These are more obvious, they appeal to the potential riders heart and desire, not just their head.
‘A feeling of raw, blood pumping power that comes with every twist of the throttle.’ This line is pure gold, its pretty much the sole reason anyone buys a sports bike, its the deal clincher.

Demonstration of how an ad follows the F.A.B principle.

As the above picture shows, this ad is a combination of Features, Advantages & Benefits. That pretty much sums up all sales copy. Simple eh?

Summary

Armed with this knowledge, and the fact that you only have a small area to grab the readers attention, you should aim to focus on Benefits & Deeper Benefits, in order to increase your Click Through Rate/Conversion Rate. The bulleted list is king.

Next week I’ll be looking at the perfect complement to killer sales copy. Eye catching and engaging sales images.

Good luck with your PPV campaigns. Catch you soon. Any questions post em in the comments, I’ll be glad to help.

Chris.

Headline free advertising - Good for beer, bad for ringtones.

I’m kicking off my mini-series by talking about headlines. Its pretty obvious that headlines are one of the most crucial things in your PPV ad. First off, don’t try and follow in the footsteps of huge companies by doing away with your headline. Headline-free ads are to perk up brand awareness by showing an impressive but familiar product image that we can already relate to, like a sports car. I doubt if BMW give two hoots about CTR.

So for pimping offers with PPV forget this, we NEED headlines. I know of three basic types, listed in order of effectiveness:

Self-Obsession Headlines:

These are the best (in general) in my experience. For this reason, they are the most common too. These headlines usually express a benefit straight way, or a solution to a problem. Something the reader WANTS, and if the user clicks through to your offer, GETS.

Make $1000 whilst you sleep.
Lose Weight By Eating Nothing But Krispy Kremes.
Find Your Perfect Partner Now.

OK, the second one stretches the truth a little too much, but you get the idea of what a Self-Obsession Headline is.

Announcement (or News) Headlines:

Headlines that announce something amazing to the world, such as:

The New Super-Absorbent Wonder Cloth.
Rezv – The Anti Aging Medical Breakthrough.
Revealed – A way of Curing Acne

Curiosity Arousing Headlines:

These headlines are often overlooked, but can work wonders under the right circumstances. They’re the ‘off the wall’ headlines, to grab interest but not necessarily explain what the offer is about straight way.

30 and Single?
You think you’re clever?
Want to retire in 10 years?

Its not possible to group every headline into these three basic categories, as headlines can be a mixture of these types. The rule of thumb is to come up with something that’s going to grab attention as soon as your pop-up is shown to them, and urge them to read on.

Improve Wordy Headlines:

Sometimes its hard to get a headline down in to a couple of words and still get the message across. If you have to use longer headlines and don’t want the reader to suffer from ‘banner blindness’, you can emphasise certain key words. The trick is to emphasise the RIGHT words. The ones with MEANING. A few examples to show this in action:

Good example: LOSE WEIGHT FAST the easy way.

Poor Example: Lose weight fast THE EASY WAY.

See, THE EASY WAY, although its a positive thing is quite generic, doesn’t really have much meaning on its own.

Good example: Medical breakthrough – A proven way to STOP BACK PAIN.

Poor Example: MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGH – A proven way to stop back pain.

OK, so an even better headline in this instance would be simply STOP BACK PAIN, but you get the idea. Emphasise key words with meaning.

Killer Headline Checklist:

I’m sticking the most proven methods into a checklist. Try to match at least some of these and it’ll make your life a lot easier. They’re been around for much longer than the Internet, but, and I’m emphasising the words with meaning here, they’re PROVEN TO WORK.

1. Ask a question with your headline – Raises self-interest and curiosity.
2. Be specific to the target demographic – Make the reader think its especially for them. Look at PPV keyword insertion, insert the domain name in there, for example: Welcome About.com Reader…
3. Offer valuable information – Similar to an ebook offer, this one applies to sign-ups.
4. Begin your headline with a common key word or phrase – How To, Wanted, Which, New, Now, Announcing, Get, Advice, If, Why, At Last.
5. Put a reduced price in your headline – Works in competitive product-based niches.
6. Put a time limited offer in there – Imply a sense of urgency, example ‘Only 12 Available’ or ‘Ends Midnight’.
7. Feature an exclusive special offer – Similar to the demographic targeted headline. Make the reader think they’re getting special treatment.
8. Challenge the reader – A classic, urge the reader to challenge your claims. ‘Better results or your money back’ kind of thing.
9. Offer a solution – They have a problem, you have the cure!
10. Put a testimonial as a headline – Social proof: If it works for them it must work for me…
11. Delay the reader with a warning - Stop! Don’t buy muscle pills until you read this. This will urge the reader to continue to the copy.
12. Use a one word headline,two word,or three word headline – Simply put, some of the most effective headlines are really short.
    Get X Now.
    Get Laid.
    Girls! etc.
13. Write your headline in the style of a news story – This has been used for years, these days in farticles.
14. Feature an additional free offer or bonus product – Bribe them, offer them a carrot, it works.
15. Feature the price in your headline – Good for commonly used items or subscription sites.
16. Offer a money back guarantee or free trial – Reduce the risk to the reader. No-one wants to blow hard-earned cash on a crappy product, so reassure the user the user that your product is good enough to offer a risk-free trial, or a money back offer.

Hope some of this helps, please don’t hold back and hit me hard with comments. My next post is going to be specifically about offer benefits, and the importance of them.

More to come soon, take care

Chris.

For my first post I’m going to write something useful, I thought I’d do a six part series for starters.

This post is the  introduction to that series. I’ll be  taking one of my PPV landing pages and going through what makes a decent LP, each post will focus on a specific section:

(This post)  – Introduction
Headlines
Benefits
Images
Call To Actions
Putting It All together

Headline:

This is probably one of the most important points of a lander, be it PPV or whatever. After the ‘reader’ (that’s what I’ll refer to the person who gets shown the popup as) has glanced at the page and had an initial flash of color and image, they naturally go straight to the largest bit of text on the page, to see what the page is about. This is usually the header, and its role is to make the reader want to read more. Headlines can also prompt the reader to stop and think, often by asking a question.

In part two of this series (my next post) I’ll examine headlines in further detail, and give you some good and bad examples.

Benefits:

For my debt elinination PPV lander, for example, you don’t need to write a 500 word essay on how getting out of debt can change your life for the better, or give you more disposable income, or ease stress or whatever. For a start you don’t have room on a 750×550 area, and what’s more, you don’t have a strong enough grip on the reader’s attention. They were probably just killing time surfing the web on the same sites they usually go on, which is probably how they got the adware installed in the first place.

In part three I’ll discuss ways to deliver the benefits of your PPV offer to your audience, in as quick a time as possible.

Images:

With the exception of perfume, porn, and beer, and other ‘desirable’ items, an image is there to support the ad copy and add relevance.

The image in the debt lander is one of happiness, joy, positivity & FREEDOM. All of these are what you get when you eliminate your debts. You don’t have to be some kind of frigging creative genius here, it’s not rocket science. Just have something that is relevant to the subject matter.

In part Four, I’ll explain how the right images can massively boost CTR, and how using images incorrectly can adversely effect your campaigns, resulting in PPV disasters.

Call To Action:

The whole point of your PPV lander is obviously to get the reader to do something. This ‘something’ should result in you getting some $$$, so it’s crucial to get this one right.

You should have already laid the ‘groundwork’ with your headline, benefits and sexy images. The call to action should give the reader a clear and simple instruction on what to do next.

In part Five, I’ll look at what is possibly your most crucial element, and how you can follow simple rules to maximize the click through rate of your call to action.

My forthcoming series aims to help you pick a good lander, and help prevent you from blowing buckets of cash sending traffic to a sub-standard LP. I hope sharing some of my tips with you guys will make your campaigns less likely to bomb and more likely to succeed.

I’ll let you know when the second part is ready, and if you’re a subscriber to my mailing list then you’ll be notified first.

Good luck with your campaigns guys.