Dear Friend,

I’m going to tell you how to install an upgradable version of STA for free.  It’s a limited version, but still powerful.  So read this post carefully if you’re interested.

It’s the first month of my new sales system, and I’m getting a lot done. 

(Just to remind you, I decided to sell STA only two days a month — the first Monday and Tuesday of each month.  The next opportunity will be May 5th and 6th.)

At the time I write this, there were 22 replies to the post I made explaining my reasons for the new schedule.

Some people liked the new system.  Others were a little more doubtfult about it working in the long run.  Pretty much everyone had something helpful to say.  Many gave good advice about outsourcing.  Thanks again to everyone who commented.

There was one concern raised that I want to address . . .

What about someone who wants to

get started with STA mid-month?

Well, I think I have a solution that will be a win-win.

I’m going to give people a chance to install a version of STA any time they like.  It will have all the features of STA, except it will only be a single-variable version, and it will lack the conversion summary and interaction reports.  Other than that, it still has all the other features:

• The same battle-tested STA tracking engine
• Multiple outcomes per test
• Drill down to the visitor level
• Visitor path tracking
• Exclude bad traffic by ip, agent, or referring domain
• Filter results by ad codes, keyword, domain, date.
• Integrate with Clickbank, CJ, and other affiliate networks that allow tracking IDs.
• Upgrades seamlessly to STA — your projects will be imported, and you won’t have to install STA once the free version is installed.
• Etc, . . .

Here’s How this benefits you . . .

If you think you might want to use STA, you can install it any time you want. 

If you’re wondering if STA will work with your current setup, you can just try it.  Install it, and see if you can integrate it.  I don’t always know if STA will work in a set of special circumstances.  This way, you can just see for yourself without paying anything up front.

When you purhcase STA, you won’t have to do another installation.  It will already be installed.  You’ll just load a single page into your browser, and you’ll be upgraded — with all your old projects imported automatically.

If you just want to try STA out before buying it, you can run an unlimited number of simple (single variable) split tests, and get a feel for most of what STA does before you upgrade to the ACCELERATED version.

I’m not asking for any payment information. All I ask is that you read the download page carefully, download the software, and use it.

This will benefit you,

but it will also benefit me.

It will cut down on many of the kinds of support requests I get.  Many people want to know ahead of time whether STA will work on some server configuration that I’m unfamiliar with.  Or they’ll want to know if they can integrate it with XYZ 3rd party software.  This way, I can just say, “I’m not sure . . . but you can feel free to install STA at no charge and see if it works.”

Also, sometimes a customer will get hung up on a step during installation.  STA is pretty easy to install, and it usually goes smoothly, but sometimes a host will mess things up by requiring a strange host name for database access or something.  When money is involved, the stress levels go up.  This way a user can take her or his time installing, and not feel the same anxiety.  And I will have more customers who already have STA installed at time of purchase.

Anyway, I am giving the download link to everyone in my “free course” autoresponder series.  If you’re already subscribed, you’ll get a broadcast message (that’s probably how you got here today). And new subscribers will get a message about this in the follow up sequence.

If you stumbled across this message in some other way, you can get my free course here:

http://www.splittestaccelerator.com/free_mvt_course.php

Please, if you’re thinking about purchasing STA — either this month (May 5th or 6th, 2008), or sometime in the future — take advantage of this. 

And if you hear anyone asking about good free split testing software, let them know that there’s a premium simple split tester available for free — almost certainly better than any other free split testing software, and probably better than the paid versions as well.  Just give out the link I mentioned a couple lines up.

Thanks.  And feel free to leave comments below.

Jim

Dear Friend,

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Split Test Accelerator comes off the market after April 8th (tomorrow relative to time of writing), and will remain off the market until May 5th.

By the way, thank you for all the great comments.  I’m taking all the wishes, advice, and so forth to heart.  Seriously.  I will revisit all the comments from time to time as I evaluate how the new arrangement is going.

For now, I’m testing the new arrangement, and I look forward to getting a lot of good work done during the break

Now, I want to tell you about something new.

STA has a great new feature

that will help you make more affiliate sales.

If you sell affiliate products (as an affiliate) through networks like Clickbank or Commission Junction, you can now use STA to run Taguchi tests on your affiliate pre-sell pages, and track conversions with the TID tracking codes they allow you to insert in your affiliate link.

That means you can try to double your sales through testing, even though you don’t control the thankyou page.  STA can rotate all your testing ideas for you, and keep track of which customers saw which elements on the page.

Clickbank calls it a ‘TID’, Commission Junction calls it an ‘SID’.  Other networks might call it something else.  You’ll know it by how it works.

When you insert a TID into your affiliate link, it looks something like this:

<a href=’http://affiliate-link?tid=444′>visit merchant now!</a>

To use this feature with STA, you just use the STA visitor id number for your TID. 

And the visitor id number can be automatically inserted into your link on your landing page.

 You just make your link look like this:

<a href=’http://affiliate-link?tid=<?php echo $visid;?>‘>visit merchant now!</a>

Then, you collect the TIDs from your sales report from the affiliate network (like Clickbank or CJ), and you feed them back into a special page, and all the multi-variate conversion data will show up in your reports, just like any other test you run with STA.   Here’s what the new TID entry page looks like:

Let me explain the numbered features.

#1:  This is where you enter the TIDs.  If the affiliate sale is your primary outcome, and you’re not tracking ROI (this is the most typical case), you can enter them one per line.  It’s as simple as it could be.

If an affiliate sale is not the primary outcome, or if you want to optimize for ROI instead of straight conversions, there are other simple formats for the data in those cases as well. (Note:  I don’t usually advise optimizing for ROI in most cases, because the variances are huge compared to the straight conversion case, and it takes a lot longer to get actionable information).

#2: This shows you what your affiliate link should look like.

#3:  This part explains how to format your data in the three main cases.

That’s it.  All you have to do is get the list of sales from your affiliate network sales report. Extract the TIDs from each sale, and feed them back into STA.  And then you will get the conversion data you need for your Taguchi test on your affiliate presales page. 

STA has kept track of which factors were on the page for each of these visitors, and it will give credit to the right options every time.

It’s pretty neat. 

Now, it might get even better, depending on how you drive traffic to your page . . .

Do You Use Adwords?

If you use adwords to drive traffic to your affiliate presell pages, things are really good with STA:

• STA tracks the actual long tail keyword the visitor used to find your page.
• It keeps track of which content network sites drive traffic, and what the conversion rates are for each, so you can decide which content network sites to exclude.
• It allows you to use an adgroup or ad-level tracking code, so you can track the conversion rates of your ads and adgroups
• You can even see how all the factors on your landing page perform for each ad, adgroup or keyword.

It’s kind of funny, . . .

The Split Test Accelerator

 is revealing itself to be 

an affiliate marketer’s dream. 

I’ve seen several tools pop up recently that just do some of these things.  And none of them let you run Taguchi tests on your landing page.

STA has done most of these things all along.  I just didn’t know to mention them until these other tools came out.

And, of course, STA is a great tracking and Taguchi-testing tool as well.

 Anyway, I hope to have a video about this made up for next month’s sales cycle.  But I wanted you to know that the new TID feature was live and running already, in case you wanted to get started.

 Remember, Tuesday, April 8th (tomorrow) is the last day STA will be available this month (until May 5th).

Here’s the link to the sales page:

http://www.splittestaccelerator.com

Good Success!

Jim

P.S. feel free to coment on the new affiliate product tracking features. I’m sure I haven’t covered all the bases here.

NOTE: STA is now available 24/7/365.  This post should be of historical interest only at this point
Dear Friend,

I told you last week that I would take STA off the market soon.  It’s true.

Let me tell you the “what” and the”why” of it.

The What

Basically, it boils down to this: STA will be available for purchase only on the first Monday and Tuesday of every month.

That means STA will be available this month only on April 7th and April 8th.

Now this first month, I’m not actually pulling STA off the market between now and April 8th, so you can purchase any time between now and then.  But after April 8th you won’t be able to get it again until May 5th and 6th. And after that it will be June 2nd and 3rd.

Also, I’m only going to field sales-related questions for 7 days leading up to and including the days it’s available for purchase.  So I will field sales-related questions for the two days it is for sale, and for the 5 days prior to that. If I get any sales related questions outside of that window, I probably won’t read them.

I will, of course, continue to answer customer questions at all times.  And I’m open to Joint Venture proposals at any time as well.  But I won’t field any sales-related questions.

As for customer service after purchase, nothing will change. You will still have direct email support for a full 6 months after purchase.

Now I know this sounds a little brazen, so let me explain myself a bit.  I think there are some pretty good reasons for doing things this way.  I think you’ll see how the new arrangement might benefit you, so hear me out, and then let me know what you think.

The Why

Why am I doing this?

Basically, it’s because I wear too many hats all the time.  In my little corner of the business world I’m the sales guy, the programmer, the copywriter, the tester, the new product developer, the customer service representative, and, yes, I even do the taxes

I’m sure some of you can relate to this.

And here’s the thing: Many people who have used multiple split testing products have told me that STA is the best testing product on the market for small businesses.

That might be true, and I work hard to try to make sure it is true.  Many people love it.  I could impress you with a list of heavy hitters who use it. There are dozens of names you would recognize in an instant.  STA has kind of spread by word of mouth in certain circles.  

But among the average small business owner, it’s not the most used testing and tracking product on the market at this point.

And that’s because I’ve been doing way too many jobs all by myself, and I haven’t juggled all the jobs very effectively.

Now it’s not the number of jobs that’s a problem.  It’s that not all the jobs are the same. They all require different levels of focus.

If you’re a programmer, you know that when you’re working on a programming project, you need vast stretches of uninterrupted time.

The mere possibility of being interrupted takes some of the attention away from the task and doesn’t allow you to focus as well as you need to.

Same goes for most product development projects, whether it involves writing, recording audio or video, or programming.

Unfortunately, in the past, when I’ve put on the product development hat, I’ve still had on the sales and customer service hats.

And that has put me at the mercy of other people’s schedules to some degree. Because many of the questions I get aren’t things I can just shoot off quick answers to.

And that means I can’t focus as well on product development.

And that means it takes me twice as long to do new creative work . . .

. . . and it’s a whole lot less enjoyable when it’s riddled through with start and stop episodes.

Waaaaah! Poor Baby!

OK, I’m not saying all this for sympathy.  I don’t need sympathy, because I came up with a solution

Going forward I’m going to wear the sales hat for only 1 week per month.  The week after that I might have to field a few questions about installation and setup, and then I should have a good 2+ weeks every month available to focus on creating new things.

So how does this benefit you?

Well, I think you’ll enjoy some of the new things I’m planning on creating   Some of it involves STA 5.0.  And there are some other projects in the works as well.

I’ll say more about that in another message soon.

Stay tuned.

Jim

P.S., please, feel free to leave your comments below.