289 - Top 17 Mistakes: Tom talks Website Mistakes - Screw The Commute

289 – Top 17 Mistakes: Tom talks Website Mistakes

Website mistakes. I'm going to lay out the Top 17 website mistakes I've seen over the last twenty four years. I can pick almost any website apart that some web designer made because all they want is the money for making the Web site. They don't care if it makes money for you. So, make sure to read these show notes and let's fix it up for you.

Subscribe at:

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Google Podcasts

NOTE: Complete transcript available at the bottom of the page.

Screw The Commute Podcast Show Notes Episode 289

How To Automate Your Businesshttps://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

Internet Marketing Training Centerhttps://imtcva.org/

Higher Education Webinar – https://screwthecommute.com/webinars

[04:34] Tom's introduction to Website Mistakes

[07:54] #17 No plan or purpose for the website

[08:50] #16 Too many topics

[09:47] #15 No instant recognition

[11:07] #14 Site is not “responsive”

[12:01] #13 Form over function

[13:24] #12 No underlining and really, really avoid italics

[17:05] #11 Too much navigation

[19:10] #10 No obvious opt-in form

[20:15] #9 Not including social media

[21:54] #8 Broken links

[22:24] #7 Disappointment

[23:21] #6 Poor sales copy

[26:37] #5 Slow loading

[28:51] #4 Poor quality videos hosted on YouTube

[31:17] #3 No call to action

[33:17] #2 Overpaying for services

[37:40] #1 Poor or nonexistent keyword usage

[41:04] Sponsor message

Entrepreneurial Resources Mentioned in This Podcast

Higher Education Webinarhttps://screwthecommute.com/webinars

Screw The Commutehttps://screwthecommute.com/

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

Screw The Commute Podcast Apphttps://screwthecommute.com/app/

College Ripoff Quizhttps://imtcva.org/quiz

Know a young person for our Youth Episode Series? Send an email to Tom! – orders@antion.com

Have a Roku box? Find Tom's Public Speaking Channel there!https://channelstore.roku.com/details/267358/the-public-speaking-channel

How To Automate Your Businesshttps://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/

Internet Marketing Retreat and Joint Venture Programhttps://greatinternetmarketingtraining.com/

Copywriting 901https://copywriting901.com/

copywriting

Broken Link Checkerhttps://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/

Google PageSpeed Insightshttps://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Fatso Tennishttps://fatsotennis.com/

Google Keyword Planner Toolhttps://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/

Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krughttps://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-Usability-dp-0321965515/dp/0321965515/

FlowPlayerhttps://flowplayer.com/

Amazon S3https://aws.amazon.com/s3/

EVShttp://b153bjxsinxhrn6rhyc9vh4u0l.hop.clickbank.net/

Fiverrhttps://www.fiverr.com/

Internet Marketing Training Centerhttps://imtcva.org/

Related Episodes

Keyword Research – https://screwthecommute.com/1/

Voice Search – https://screwthecommute.com/130/

Alesia Abatie – https://screwthecommute.com/288/

More Entrepreneurial Resources for Home Based Business, Lifestyle Business, Passive Income, Professional Speaking and Online Business

I discovered a great new headline / subject line / subheading generator that will actually analyze which headlines and subject lines are best for your market. I negotiated a deal with the developer of this revolutionary and inexpensive software. Oh, and it's good on Mac and PC. Go here: http://jvz1.com/c/41743/183906

The WordPress Ecourse. Learn how to Make World Class Websites for $20 or less. https://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com/wordpressecourse

Build a website, wordpress training, wordpress website, web design

Entrepreneurial Facebook Group

Join our Private Facebook Group! One week trial for only a buck and then $37 a month, or save a ton with one payment of $297 for a year. Click the image to see all the details and sign up or go to https://www.greatinternetmarketing.com/screwthecommute/

After you sign up, check your email for instructions on getting in the group.

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

Want The Transcript for this episode?

Read Full Transcript

Episode 289 - Website Mistakes
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody it's Tom here with episode two hundred and eighty nine of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, I'm going to talk to you about website mistakes. I see these mistakes pretty much every day of my life. And if you'd download the full show notes of this episode, you'll have a great checklist to use any time you make or fix up your website. I hope you didn't miss Episode 289 Alesia Abatie. She told us what it is like to spend twenty five years freelancing in Hollywood and how there's plenty of work there if you're the right kind of person. She was a production manager and there's loads of work in that field. Now how would you like to hear your own voice here on screw the commute? Well, if the show has helped you out and this episode I gotta tell you it's going to help you out if you just pay attention and do even a couple of the things that I tell you in this episode. Your website will be way better and your web designer should have told you this already or should have known this, and they probably don't. In fact, I'm sure they don't. Most of them don't. But anyway, if the show has helped you out in any way, this episode or any of the others go to screwthecommute.com and look for a little blue sidebar that says send a voicemail. Click on it. Talk into your phone or computer. Tell me how the show helped you and and put your website on there. And then you'll get a big shout out on a future episode of Screw the Commute in your own voice. Now make sure you pick up a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And of course, all the stuff we talk about will be in the show notes for episode two eighty nine. So you go to screwthecommute/289 and you'll get all the stuff we're talking about. But this automation e-book we sell for twenty seven bucks. I mean it's one of the backbones of my entire business to handle things with speed and save me tons and tons of time. So check it out. screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And while you're over there, grab a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app and it has all kinds of tricks and and bells and whistles so you can take us with you on the road. Now we're still sitting here in the middle of this pandemic and I've been preaching since 1996 to learn how to sell from home, even if you keep a job. The dreaded JOB. I gotta tell you, though, my goal in life when people come to me like that is to make it too expensive for you to go to work anymore. Okay. Because the time spent in your own Internet business is exceeding or equaling your job salary. Plus you get tax deductions for it. You don't get tax deductions for your job. I've got to complete school on this. It's the only one of its kind in the country. It's IMTCVA.org and it would be a great gift. Better than going to a four year college. And and guess what? You know, I've been harping against college. I don't really care if you go to college, if you want to blow your money and learn how to protest. Good for you. But if you did this, you'd be earning money and paying your way and not be saddled with enormous amount of debt when you get out of this stupid college where they're teaching you how to protest. So if you don't believe me, the way they're ripping, ripping you off at college, just go to IMTCVA.org/quiz and takes two minutes to take a quiz and be prepared to be mad because you're going to see seven major ways colleges are fraudulently ripping you off. And if they weren't colleges, you know, I've got a TV show in development Hollywood called Scam Brigade and I know what fraud is. These people would be in jail if they weren't colleges and hadn't brainwashed you for one hundred years of how valuable they are. Yeah, yeah. Take the quiz and then tell me how valuable they are.

[00:04:37] All right. Let's get to the main event. Website mistakes. I can't tell you how many Web sites I've critiqued over the last twenty four years, probably at least ten thousand or so. And what's coming up is a list of things that I've noticed that Web site owners and web designers are doing wrong. And when I say wrong, I'm talking from the perspective of the site helping the owner to make money. Maybe the owner likes a certain element on their Web site because they think it looks nice and and maybe it does. But I've heard that a hundred times, hundreds of times. Oh, Tom. I really like it. It's so pretty. And they're referring to some ridiculous graphic or layout that admittedly looks nice, but it hurts their chances of selling their stuff. All right. If you're just doing this for ego or for fun, good. Do whatever you want. You can do all kinds of cool stuff on the Web site. But if you want to make money, you got to scrap a lot of that stuff. And most Web designers don't know any better. They were an out of work graphic artist yesterday and now they're Web expert. You know, that's so much B.S. I can pick almost any Web site apart that some Web designer made because they'd all they want is the money for making the Web site. They don't care if it makes money for you. They don't even know the elements that are needed to make money for you. So and they don't even though a lot of the graphic things that work in print but don't work on the Web, they slap in the same crap that they would put in a flyer on a Web page. That's just stupid with a capital T. They just don't know. And if you like them and they're nice to you and all this, it's your fault because you didn't learn what it takes. And when when you go broke later, you wonder why your Web site's not making any money. Well, come back and read these show notes and let's fix it up for you. Okay. All right. And back on web designers. I actually have a sign hanging at my school that says if you're web designer was so good at making Web sites that sell stuff, would they be working for you? Heck, no they'd be making websites that bring money directly to them. And on a continual basis. They wouldn't be working one at a time to get paid to make your Web site. No. So they just don't know. And some of them and they get defensive when I'm brought in and work and they work against me instead of trying to learn something. I mean, the smart web people listen to me because I make them more valuable. The dumbest ones are, ironically, the ones that think they know it all. Okay. I guess my twenty six years experience and hundreds of millions of dollars for me and my students don't count for much to them. Maybe not. They know it all. Well guess what? Even with what I just said, I don't know at all. Nobody knows at all. This is a vast field. But another sign I have at the school says I don't know everything about Internet marketing just enough to make a fortune. So that's what I want for you.

[00:07:57] Let's get into it. I don't know exactly how many tips I have here. I never really counted them up. I think there's about 17. But any one of them can make your site better. So here we go. You count if you feel like a lot of them aren't in any particular order. All right. No plan or purpose for their Web site. People get what I call a CSI. You know, that's not the TV show, that's crappy, stupid idea. And then they throw up a Web site without thinking through what exactly they want to accomplish with this site. And this allows the site to go off on all kinds of directions with no cohesive content that visitors can depend on. So they don't know what you're made of. And then they leave. You know, people want to deal with exactly what they know. They're going to get the benefit to them. All right. And that spins off into too many topics. That's the next step for the best chance of success. The fastest site should be about one topic. See, Google wants to please the searcher by giving the searcher the best possible sites based on what the person was searching for. If you lump multiple topics on one site, you're hurting your chances of being found in the search engines because you look like a jack of all trades. All right. So make another Web site. If you'd learned if you took the time to learn, you can make world class Web sites. And my students do. Four hundred hundred and fifty bucks. So it's it's not four or five thousand and a big, big risk to put your other topic on another Web site. It's you getting the knowledge to do it on the cheap. They do it world class on the cheap. That's what your knowledge will get you.

[00:09:49] All right.

[00:09:50] Next thing is no instant recognition. Now, when someone lands on your site, they should instantly know they're in the right place.

[00:10:01] So you put a tag line near the top of the site so they know, for instance, my fatso tennis. My funny side. This makes my hobbies tax deductible.

[00:10:12] But when somebody hits, they're not only does the domain name tell them what it's about, but it's the tag line, says the blog for Out of Shape. People who love tennis, you know, immediately if the site is for you or not, if you aren't out of shape, then the site isn't for you. If you are out of shape, then it is right. See, poor recognition is part of the cause of high bounce rates, which means people find your site, but they leave immediately.

[00:10:41] Well, yeah, we want Pete. We don't really care about the people that leave immediately. We want to grab the people that are interested in your topic. But if you don't tell them right off the bat, they don't know. And so they bounce, say. So, yeah, you're always going to get bounces. And that's fine if people come and they find out it isn't for them, but if it is for them and they don't know it, that's really sad because they're going to bounce anyway. All right. Now, the next really big one is I still see sites out there that aren't responsive. And that doesn't mean they you know, you can't click on something and it works that responds to you. That's different thing. Responsive means it looks good on a cell phone or tablet. Google came out years ago and said if your site doesn't look good on a cell phone or tablet, you're never going to see the light of day in the search results. You're behind the times and people won't stay anyway. Now, if you want to check real quick to see if your site's responsive, pull it up on your cell phone. If you have to, like, squinch your fingers, you know, make it bigger to read a little section of it. It ain't responsive. You don't have to do that when it's properly prepared. So you got to get your site responsive. All right. Next thing is form over function.

[00:12:08] See, many people at the creative web, designers, like I said, that were out of work. Graphic artist yesterday run away with design elements for coolness sake. See, Web sites should look just and good enough to represent you well, professionally and concentrate on the marketing elements rather than fancy design. Now, if you're in the fashion field, OK, if you're an art. OK, but most of us aren't in those fields. And you've got all this crazy stuff on there because you think it looks pretty, but it's hurting your marketing. I actually won best of the Web in Ink magazine with a six hundred dollar site and today's it would cost me one hundred fifty for the site. At the time it was 650 and it beat out three other million dollar Web sites and got best of the Web and Ink magazine and the the blind panel. That doesn't mean they were blind and couldn't see my site. But they didn't know who owned what chose me the winner. And their comments were we could find what we wanted fast and get around the site easily. That was all they cared about. Okay. Not all this fancy stuff. So don't do form over function. All right. Here's a couple things. No underlining and really, really avoid italics on a Web site. So first of all, if you underline something on a Web site underlining means to people, you can click on it. And so when they click on it and it's not clickable, it's just underlined for some kind of emphasis.

[00:13:51] Then they think something's wrong with your site. Now, again, you do not want people thinking that, you know, that they make a decision like almost instantly. One study said one twentieth of a second. If they're going to stay at your site, you don't want to give them excuses to think this site is not up. This stuff, it's not modern enough. It doesn't work. So underlining is an absolute no no. The underlines will appear if you have a regular looking link and they'll be clickable. And that's cool. That's fine. Now, here's the thing about italics. See the smaller a font. Well, let me talk about the actual screen that people watch stuff on. It's composed of vertical and horizontal dots called pixels. And when and when you put regular text on, it looks fine. But when you put italics on, it starts cutting at an angle across these pixels and starts to get fuzzy on the edges. The smaller the font, the worse it is. Now you can put a graphic or an italics in a big graphic, and that's a different story. So it's like a picture there. But avoid italics as part of your regular text. If you have to name the Washington Times or something. Put quotation marks around it. Maybe bolded if you want, but no italics and absolutely no underline.

[00:15:19] All right. Along with that is too much centering. Too much centering is considered amateurish and certainly you can center titles, you can center subheadings, you can center. That's about it. Okay, but I see these quotes or testimonials in these boxes, and they're all. Each one is that the whole paragraph is centered. That looks stupid. It's hard to read. It's it's just considered. And the then the good design of Web site world amateurish. So you're making people think, oh, this for this person's a goober. They just threw up this Web site. Okay. And you don't also want full justification now. Full justification means that the text lines up perfectly on the left and perfectly on the right, like a book and a book was a typesetting machine made this book so that it didn't look that all the spacing between the words and letters didn't look weird. But it's going to look weird on a Web page because you're not using a typesetting machine. So you use justified left on your text and ragged, right. And that cuts out all the weird word spacing and everything, and it opens up some white space, which is important because people get eye strain and headaches and you don't want them to feel like, oh, it's too hard to read this site. Make it easy on him as best you can. So no centering or very little centering and justified left, ragged. Right on the text.

[00:17:07] All right. Next thing, too much navigation.

[00:17:12] Back in the year 2000, a book came out called Don't Make Me Think. I think it's been revised a couple of times since then. And it was all about making it easy to move around your site without getting lost or confused. Now, here's something you can do if on the first screen of your Web site you have more than, I don't know, let's say eight places to click. When I say screen, I'm talking about the top screen. Now, if you scroll down, you can have more than eight. But right in the first screen that somebody sees, if you have more than eight places, the click. You probably need another Web site or you need to rethink and simplify your nav navigation. Here's one thing I forced my students to do on every Web site. I give you five. And this is you know, it doesn't always end up this way, but this is the way we start to force them into thinking easy navigation. I give them five navigation buttons and I say, OK.

[00:18:17] Home is one of them. Think about is another and contact is the other, you got two left.

[00:18:25] What are you going to do with them?

[00:18:27] Wow, it really makes him think, how can I really, you know, get the essence of this, what people were here for and only two navigation buttons say. And so. So, yeah, like I said, we might end up with more or maybe a drop down on there, some of them. But the thing is, is if you don't think in those terms, I've counted as much as one hundred and twenty places in the first screen that somebody could click on right now you get more than 10 people get confused in this site had one hundred and twenty.

[00:19:00] I wrote all the time fine ones that have 30, 40, 50 places that click in the opening screen. That's just crazy. You're just confusing the heck out of people. All right. Next is no obvious opt in form. Now, everybody at my level makes virtually all their money from email. And when you hear the money is in the list, believe it. All right. You got to get serious about getting people to opt in with their email address. And yeah, I know we got text. I know we have messenger marketing. I know we have all kinds of social media stuff. Guess what? Again, people at my level all making their biggest money off of email. Ignore that. And God help you. OK. So you got to get serious about it. That means every significant page has an opt in form. You'll use a pop up box when appropriate. And don't give me this cry and thing little like puppy, but doesn't matter what you like. They work. OK, so pop up boxes used judiciously. Put it in your signature file of your e mail and always tell people about it. Get the darn email address. That's where the money is.

[00:20:19] All right.

[00:20:19] Next thing is not including social media. Now, I critique so many Web sites, the theme that they used has these social media buttons on it and you click on them and they don't go anywhere or they go the wrong place. But he takes them. So it's up to you to check everything on your site and even get your friends to say, look, I want you to get a tablet out. I don't even want to be near you when you do. And I want you to go to my site, click on everything, make sure it goes where you thought it was going to go, jot down any mistakes you see and do that, because a lot of times you're too close to and you say, OK, I fixed that last week or did I? I can't remember. I'm busy. I forget it, you know. So get your friends to help you with that. But you got to include social media. I mean, social media can be a big waste of time if you get sucked into playing stupid games and yapping about your bunion operation. But it is a necessary evil for business.

[00:21:21] Google on the other search engines demand that you have a social social media indicators on your site to prove that you are worthy of high rankings. Say a lot of people try to get people to link to them. And a lot of times they cheat and they buy off a five or, you know, thousand links or something. While Google figured that out a long time ago and they say, guess what? If so many people are linking to you, somebody is talking about you and you better be able to prove it with your social media indicators. So make sure it's on there.

[00:21:57] All right. Next is broken links. I mean, nothing screams non-professional like links that don't go anywhere, OK? You got to review your site regularly or have someone else do it for you. But there's tools that will do this. Like there's one thing called brokenlinkcheck.com. I haven't checked it lately to make sure it's still working. But there's broken link checkers out there that you can put on your site that report to you when there's a link. It's not working. Very simple. Our next problem is disappointment. I lied about broken links, been screaming non-professional while this screams non-professional, louder than broken links. See, when you make people feel when they click on a link that they're going to see a certain thing that they want to see. And then you show them something else or make them search all over the place to find what you promised. You have just committed a massive Web sites in. The visitor will immediately think this site is too hard to figure out. Or worse yet, I can't trust this Web site and the owner of it. So make sure that when somebody clicks on something, they see immediately that they're the place that they thought that they were going to be. If you don't do that, like I said, they're going to leave and they're going to think you're not trustworthy. All right. Poor sales copies the next one. I had a lady just recently. Her stupid kid. I don't know the kid. I don't even know how old he is, who he is, what he is.

[00:23:35] But he talked her out of buying my copy writing course because he says, I know how to do that. I could do that. I'm going to do this for you. I asked her. I said, is your kid made many, many millions of dollars doing this? No. OK. There you go. All right. So I don't know much about this situation that this has happened to me in the past where some kid that was Microsoft certified, which has nothing absolutely on Earth to do with making money, talked her out of joining my program. No, no. I know all that stuff. Microsoft certified. Oh, you idiot. You're a freaking idiot. That's. That doesn't mean crap to anybody on Earth unless there's some network problem. All right. It has nothing to do with shopping carts and e-mail and advertising, copy and text, marketing and blogging and everything as your shopping cart system and email order. Responder's had nothing to do. I could have made this kid look like he was not even in preschool. He was so stupid. All right. But he's their kid or I love my kid in Kenya. That's that's the dumbest thing. One of the reasons people go out of business, because they they want to keep the family happy and they think their kids can do no wrong. And then they get. Then they go back to a job because they screwed up their whole Internet thing. Listening to this dumb kid. So poor sales copy. See you on a business site.

[00:25:03] Almost everything should be leading people in some way to buy something. Writing words, this cell is one of the most important things you can ever learn to do. I tell people it's the most important skill I ever developed in my 43 years of formal business and even since I was 10 years old, making flyers and selling stuff around town. And the words don't have the people here copywriting. All that's going to be cheesy and and know the work. The techniques are the same. The words you use for different audiences are different. Cheesy sells to some audiences. To some audiences, it would turn it off. But you still using the same techniques. So I created this site copywriting901.com to teach you how to write these words for written audio, video sales messages, Google ads, YouTube ads, Facebook ads. All of this stuff needs sales copy. And you couldn't possibly afford to pay for all the times you need even a letter you write. You want to move people to action with very subtle techniques. So it just irks the heck out of me when some little wet behind the ears, nobody talks their hurts their parents who loves them and nurture them. And now they're hurting their parents because they're little idiots. That entitled idiots. OK, that's my that's my mini rant there. See how passionate I am about this stuff, folks. OK, now next thing is slow loading. See, Google again came right out and said, if your site doesn't load fast, you will never get a high ranking.

[00:26:50] And we don't totally depend on Google anymore for high rankings. We use paid traffic, which is, you know, you can control it better. But the thing is, is I don't want you to shoot yourself in the foot with Google. But even worse than that, the people that visit your site aren't going to wait around forever to load. So however you get them there. This site needs to load really, really fast. If it doesn't, then they're going to leave. They're just going to bounce out of there because they're used to fast loading sites. So it contributes to a great user experience for them and they'll stick around longer. Now, there's tools online. We'll have a link in the show notes to a site that Google has that you can check the speed of your site. The nice thing about Google is, I mean, if there is something nice is that they'll tell you right away what's wrong with your site. They'll evaluate it for you. They'll say, hey, you should fix this. You should fix that. Guess what? Do it. All right. This is where geeks come in. I don't even know how to fix some of the things that Google tells me to fix. But I got people that do say that's what they're good for. That's what the technical people are. Good for you. As the business owner need to know what needs to be done. But you don't always need to know how to do it.

[00:28:14] Lot of the stuff you do, because it's so easy if somebody just two digit for 15 minutes, you'd be able to do stuff on your own.

[00:28:21] This isn't really one of them, but there's Google will evaluate it, tell you where the bad places of your site. And then you turn that over to a geek and make them fix it. Then you go back to Google once it's to sit to check on the person to see if they did a good job. You go back to Google. Have the site evaluated again if the problem is fixed. You know, the Web person did a good job. If it's not fixed fire, they don't know what they're doing.

[00:28:49] OK, so that's slow loading.

[00:28:54] Ok. Next one is poor quality videos hosted on YouTube. Now, don't get me wrong, I love YouTube. I love it. To drive traffic to your site. I love it because the in stream ads or the ones that you can click skip are the best bargain on the Internet. So, guys, I get sometimes a view of two cents and if they click skip before 30 seconds, I don't pay anything. So they see you get a lot of branding and for free. So anyway, I want you to use YouTube to drive people to the Web site. But once people were there, I don't want them to be able to easily leave your site and go to some stupid cat video, because YouTube is always going to make it easy to get back to YouTube, even though they allow you to embed the video in your site. That's not how we do it. We use a service like Amazon s three. It's a high quality file hosting place. And then we put a player on the site that hooks to Amazon S3 and the videos load beautifully, but they can't click and go back to YouTube once.

[00:30:13] Once they're watching videos on my site, say. And Amazon is not the only place. But what you don't want to do is try to put big videos on your cheap hosting service. Now, I just did a whole thing. I think it was last Monday on what you should know about hosting. So I would go back and listen to that. But on relatively inexpensive hosting. I mean, if you put one video up there, it might be a thousand times bigger than the whole your the rest of your Web site put together, literally. OK, so it's just going to bug your site down your hosting service if you get a lot of users going to kick you off. People will stutter. People won't be able to watch it easily. So, no, you don't host big videos on your Web site, and the video's better be good, too. You got to have good audio is your number one priority. People sometimes put up with questionable video, but they'll never stand for poor audio. So that's all lumped together. Poor quality videos posted on YouTube on your site. No, that's not the way to do it.

[00:31:20] All right. Next thing is no call to action.

[00:31:24] Now, in business, you've got to get people to do something and you must tell them to do it and tell them what to do. You can't assume that they will read between the lines and do what you want them to do. You could be clicking on a link or filling out an opt in form. It could be read in an article or watching a video. Whatever it is, you got to tell them to do it. One thing I like to do is to get people to click on a link is to put a command and a benefit in the text of the link.

[00:31:57] Pay attention to that, folks. That's made millions of dollars. That one little tip right here put a command and a benefit right in the link. The text of the links. And here's an example from my Wake Him Up speaking system. Click here to get standing ovations around the world.

[00:32:15] Now, the click here is the command and the standing ovations around the world is the big benefit of people that are interested in being a pro speaker say so that Formule alone will get you way more clicks this stuff, because there is a benefit in it. And you told the people what to do. One of the one of my sayings in the world is you should never overestimate the intelligence of your audience. Okay. I don't mean to be mean with that, but you've got to dumb it down to the lowest common denominator so that there's no question. At all. What to do and what you're going to get for doing it.

[00:32:59] Say that'll get you the most clicks the most everything on your Web site and then your business, really, if it's extremely clear to people what to do, how to do it and what they'll get out of it if you boiled that town.

[00:33:11] I mean, that's that's like a mission statement right there to for success. OK. No call to action. All right.

[00:33:20] Next is overpaying for services. Now, this is what I've preached against since 1997 when Microsoft front page came out. That was when the first time a normal human could make a Web page. Prior to that. Listen to this, folks. You had to depend on geeks writing HDMI all code. And it actually took. This is not an exaggeration. A year. All right. Three hundred and sixty five days. Unless it was a leap year, I can't remember. To get the picture of my Wake Him Up speaking book on my Web site. A year. OK, so so it was not easy back then, but as soon as Microsoft front page came out in 1997, people could put stuff on their Web sites very, very easily with no Web designer involved. And this is one of the top two skills which I attribute to my success online. Of course, the others copyrighting that I mentioned before. And now we use WordPress. It's the gold standard. Do not let any geek talk you into Drupal or or some other crap or Wix, this stupid stuff that they put on TV that they know you're you're you're you don't know what you're doing. And it sounds so easy. Oh, they get some celebrity to say that they used Wix for their Web site. No, they didn't. They got paid to say that. All right. So wordpress is the gold standard of the world. OK. Period. Nobody can dispute that. Hundreds of millions of installations. Everybody on earth develops for WordPress. Not all these other weird things.

[00:35:10] Ok.

[00:35:11] So anyway, you can make world class Web sites for less than one hundred bucks. I mean, I've got a whole course on this for like ninety seven bucks. I think it says screwthecommute.com/wordpressecourse. And you can use Fiverr.com for custom graphics and other services. Don't don't let them, you know, give you fake likes for Facebook and fake links. All that that will hurt you. But graphics there is you can get in really great graphics either. There's some lady that was Woman of the Year, woman business owner. The year in Arizona was paying twenty five hundred dollars for a book cover. I turned her on to fiver and she got four. I think she ended up paying maybe fifteen dollars and a gorgeous book cover off. All right. So so the other jackin, you know, giving you more options, five, 10, 15, 20, 50 dollars. But still it's a bargain compared to go on to a professional firm. Now I know some professional designers and yeah, you're going to get a top notch job out of them. But what's your budget? You've got to think about that. All right. So don't overpay for services. The more you learn, the less you'll pay. And I always tell people I ask them in front of audiences. I find somebody that's a big expert on something I don't know, engineering. Let's say I say, OK, if I started talking engineering to you, how long would it take for you to know? I don't have an idea what I'm talking about. I'm clueless. And they usually say, I don't know, 10, 15 seconds. All right. Well, you're lucky if you make it 10 to 15 seconds in front of a Web designer who instantly knows you don't know what you're talking about. And so they can tell you anything. And you said, oh, guys, I have to get that. I got to have a Web site. And how much you're gonna be? Well, baby. Thirty five hundred fifty. Five hundred. We'll have to see, you know, and probably take four months to develop.

[00:37:15] I'd punch him in the nose just for fun if you if you could. Like that movie. What is it.

[00:37:20] The Purge or one day of the year you can you can do stuff and wait for that day and then go punch him in and stuff. So, no, you can you can have a world class Web site up in a couple days for 150 bucks. And that's not any kind of B.S. We do it all the time. Say so. Don't overpay for services. Let's have a drum roll now. The number one biggest mistake I see on Web sites and in people's online businesses in general is poor or non-existent keyword usage. So for years, I thought that the number one most important thing you do before developing a Web site is to do keyword research. If you haven't done that, then nothing else. Much matters, because for most of us mere mortals who aren't international celebrities, we need to be found.

[00:38:21] And currently.

[00:38:24] The way that people and probably until they start embedding chips in your head, which might not be law with these vaccines, they want to put in you. But we're we work on words. And so to be found, even if you're doing paid advertising, it's still based on words of where you put the ads and how people trigger the ads. You don't want people that are. If you've got an archery product, you don't want people that are looking for golf stuff to see your ad and you've got to pay for it. Say so. No, you weren't targeted. And it comes from keyword research. Now, currently we use the Google keyword planner tool. It's kind of a pain in the neck define, but it works great. Once you get signed up and once you get all your keywords lined up, you must strategically place them in your Web site or blog. So, so. So they're found properly. Now, this could encompass an entire course in itself. I mean, you should listen to Episode one and then I think it's episode 130, because episode one of this was the number one mistake. So I made it episode one of Screw the Commute podcast. But then a couple years later, voice search has changed the way we do keyword research. I mean, you still want to learn the basics and then go and listen to the voice search and see how that's changed the way, because people talk into their cell phones and tablets different than they would type when they're looking for something. So you need to know this.

[00:40:07] So I'm just telling you that you need to learn keyword research and the utilization of these keywords from a cat credible source. And and that's I mean, just the number one thing is people get this CSI crappy, stupid idea, get the Web site, get a blog, get the social media, get Pinterest, get Facebook and Instagram and everything. And nobody wants what they're, you know, talk so or they can't find it because nobody types it the way they thought. You can't trust what you think. You've got to go with real numbers. And just to give you a few tips on at the.

[00:40:46] Keywords go in blog postings and links in the names of graphics in the AWALT description of graphics and captions entitled Bars of Web pages and heading tags in the domain names and just there's loads of places they. The return on investment of keyword research is enormous. So you've got to get serious about that. So we're happy to help you learn all this stuff. This is what I've been teaching people for 20. What is it? Since 1990. Late 96. Twenty four years. All right. So if you don't know this stuff, God help you. You know, you just say saying all the Internet doesn't work. No. You didn't implement all these things. And this is just this episode is just mistakes you're making on your Web site. OK. Just think of all my other Monday episodes on theme mess, things you're messing up on your shopping cart, things you're messing up on your email marketing, things you're messing up on your chat bots. Things are set up on your blogs. You know, it just goes on and on. The hosting was last week. All these things are what's necessary to make a good Internet business.

[00:41:56] hings are messing up on affiliate marketing of private label stuff, product production, all of these things we teach you. Hold your hand one on one in my great Internet marketing joint venture and retreat program where you spend an immersion weekend here. Now, we don't even let anybody come here for four months till they get some training under their belt. Now, in the pandemic, you can't come anyway, but we start training you immediately to fix these things up. That's why it's a year long program. Doesn't mean you have to wait a year to make money. But the thing is, is there's just enormous amounts to learn. It's I try to tell people it's like a crossword puzzle, a thousand piece crossword puzzle. But you don't have the box to show you, like, you know, even what the picture looks like. They wear the box for that. To put it all together for you. So. So check it out. GreatInternetmarketingtraining.com. We have an entry fee and then a percentage of profits. And you say what? You take part of my business. Yeah, I am. But here's the thing.

[00:43:01] Lot of people at my level were charge charge of 50 or 100 grand upfront to teach this stuff. And a lot of them wouldn't teach it once they got the money anyway. That's why I started the the scam brigade and the fraud anti fraud thing that I do.

[00:43:15] So when I started this around the year 2000 where I charged an entry fee and then a percentage of profits, people just flocked to it because they know for me to get my fifty thousand, they had to make two hundred thousand. And then I said, look, it's not fair for you to be stuck with me forever. So then it's capped. You don't owe me anything else.

[00:43:36] And then you're a bigger expert yourself on Internet marketing. So people just love this program. They said seventeen hundred students over 20 some years and still going strong. So I'd love to have you in here. So if we start immediately, as soon as you finish our agreement, boom, we start to start talking to me.

[00:43:56] And the thing about me is I'm fanatic. I work weekends, evenings, holidays. And the you have access to me and the other employees now.

[00:44:06] They work regular, you know, business hours. But we have freelancers that'll talk to you on the weekends and evenings, too. And you were all trained by me. So, you know, nobody on earth can compare with this program. If you're serious and want to do better, get in my dorm program, because it has never been a lawsuit, never been a refund request or charge back in 20 years. All right. So made lots of money for lots of people. And I'd love to do it for you, too. So check it out. GreatInternetmarketingtraining.com. And you also get gifted a scholarship to my school. That's 19000 dollar entry fee. If you're across the board, if you're military first responder or law enforcement or immediate family of any of those, that's ninety five hundred dollar scholarship. One person got in here. His daughter is making six thousand dollars a month. I haven't talked to her for two months. Is probably more than that now. People are throwing money at her to get her to take her their social media off their back. So she's opened up a whole agency and he had spent eighty thousand dollars on her crap education and she was working at some menial job, you know, so this is real stuff that can really change your life, can change your kid's life, your grandchildren. I'd love for a grandparent to talk to me about this and we'll get get a gift. A scholarship is the best legacy gift you could ever give to your grandchildren or your children, either one or nephews, nieces, whatever it is.

[00:45:43] All right. So that's my story. And I'm sticking to it. We got some great shows coming up, and I will catch you on the next episode this Wednesday. See ya later.

Join my distance learning school: https://www.IMTCVA.org
OR
Join the mentor program PLUS get a FREE Scholarship to the School: https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com