This is another addition to our ongoing series of tutorials and case studies on landing pages that work.

It occurred to me late last year, as I was readying yet another Landing Page Makeover, that the end of one year and the beginning of the next was a good time to do a “Where are they now?” post. So first things first, I went back and contacted all makeover participants from the very beginning of the series.

Of the more than 20 contacted, I learned that one is no longer in business, MagicPumpkinArt.com (Makeover #14) and two are in the midst of developing new products or revising their focus: TheLast10lbs.com (Makeover #4) and 4PsofPodcasting.com (Makeover #9).

The rest? Well, most did not respond to our request for follow-up details. (This is me sad ) But of those who did, I think you’ll find their answers interesting and their results encouraging. Here are the questions I posed:

1. Did you implement all/some/few or none of the recommendations made about your website?
2. If yes, did you see any tangible results — increased traffic, sign ups, conversions, sales? Were the results the same, better or worse after making the changes? Which changes produced the biggest results and why?
3. If no, what were the primary reasons? Was it a matter of time or cost to implement? Something else? Did you simply disagree with the recommendations? (Be honest, I can take it.)
4. Is there anything I could have done differently in preparing the makeover to be more useful to you, your business or your website?

And here are the responses I received (lightly edited for length):

From Carrie Kitze, EMKPress.com (Landing Page Makeover #6)

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We were poised to do a redesign when Roberta took a look at our site. Her suggestions were on point and helped us streamline and reorganize the site.

• We moved to a three column format and made more things clickable.
• Each product now has its own page and our resources are more organized for different types of readers to find. (It’s also just cleaner looking.)
• Our articles have been linked to by a variety of blogs/forums and when we note that an article has become popular to download, we cross sell products based on the demographics that are hitting that part of the site.

Results:

• We have seen a 50% increase in traffic to the site. Now more organized and informational, the site has given us more credibility in a cluttered landscape. We’ve seen an increase in article linking by adoption agencies and professionals, as well.

I would have liked to implement more recommendations but time and budget (mostly time since we are a small office) precluded us from doing more. Just re-reading her suggestions gives me additional ideas on tightening things up in the next few months as we add some additional resources.

Roberta’s suggestions were spot-on and many were easy to implement with measurable results.

From Kristen Galles, BookClubClassics.com (Marketing Plan Makeover #2 )

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I implemented every single suggestion. Her review sparked comments that led to a great discussion about the focus of my website, too.

Initially, when I first created BookClubClassics, I was most interested in selling customized book club discussion guides. However, after Roberta’s review, I realized that this would be a very time-consuming and inefficient way to make money. The guides required hours to create, and the availability of free discussion questions from publishers made my guides a “tough sell.” So, I stopped creating the guides and focused on increasing my readership instead.

Now I have time to create discussion questions (instead of full discussion guides) for those clubs who want guides with more substantial questions. These questions actually sell better than the full guides did!

In addition to Roberta’s general recommendations, her specific detail-oriented suggestions regarding the lay-out and presentation of my website were invaluable as well.

Results:

• Each month my readership continues to increase, as do my affiliate earnings.

From Daniel Horning, Marketing Director, HireAHelper.com (Landing Page Makeover #5)

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We implemented most of Roberta’s suggestions. Specifically:

• We added more content to our customer review system and added a link to “HireAHelper Protects You. Find out How.” with details about the customer’s transaction and our 100% refund policy.
• We added a list of customer reviews to the homepage, landing pages and trust elements. Our BBB logo is now in the top right hand corner of all our pages.
• Although Roberta felt that the term, “Day Labor” carries a bit of a negative connotation, we decided to keep it. However, we added more language using “General Help” and “Handyman” and that has helped.
• We applied the five-line max paragraph rule and white space recommendation to many of our pages. We also fixed misspellings and have a content review system in place in our office. Our logo is now clickable back to the homepage across the whole site.

Recommendations not implemented:

• We considered a new tagline but decided to stick with “Get Local Help. Cheap.” Adding anything to it would have diluted the importance of our 2 main points — local and cheap.
• We decided not to include specifics about our customer counts. However, we may revisit this suggestion to continue to boost and support customer confidence in the site, as well as add possible package plans.

Results:

• Our customers gained a clearer understanding of our service offerings, especially once they saw the customer reviews posted on the homepage/landing pages.
• It’s hard to track the impact that paragraph line counts and white space have on customers directly, but we definitely saw huge growth in the months after the recommendations both in an increase in visitors and an increase in how long they stayed on the site.
• We also saw an increase in the conversion rate to just above 6% the first month of 2008 and averaged around 4% throughout the rest of the year.
• The suggestions provided are still useful in our planning and development today.

From Nancy Owen Myers, Lunchsense.com (Landing Page Makeover #19)

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Roberta said:

Simplify the homepage!

I did rework the home page. It launches soon.

Choose one primary image that’s representative of everything else.

I used a whole family!

Choose one strong statement.

I went with — “It’s a big world! Better pack a lunch.” This and the whole family image convey that everyone can use this lunchbox.

Rework the navigation and rethink the color scheme.

I did a bunch of things simultaneously when this makeover went up — planned, scheduled, and undertook photography, started to work on new packaging, and reworked the website navigation, too.

Recommendations not implemented:

Test offers — free shipping, discounting, bundling.

I struggle with this as I’m philosophically opposed to “Buy this and get MORE! — but what if I don’t NEED more? That said, I do offer occasional percentage discounts and I can offer free shipping and such offers as appropriate. But I can’t run my biz on that.

Results:

• Overall, though, I think the recommendations were generally very good, and if nothing else I’m happier with my site.
• I often go in and tweak stuff in the website, and make sure I go through my site page by page every so often to make sure it all hangs together. Roberta’s makeover really helped me make that a priority.

(Roberta’s note — I’ll revisit with Nancy once her redesigned store is live.)

Roberta’s takeaways (and yours)

• You don’t have to make large, wholesale changes all at once, but do try and pick the elements that have the most potential for big impact, like testing headlines, adding additional calls to action, and editing content for better readability.
• Even small changes can make a difference — try testing text in your call to action links and buttons. You’d be amazed at the difference you’ll see between Buy Now, Join Now, or Find Out More Now.
• Push your value proposition forward while embracing your market reality. If there’s a lot of competition for your products/services, find what’s unique about yours — what only you can say — and get it out there. Be opening to reframing your goals as you learn more.

And lastly — Marketing is a process. Always be testing.

I do want to thank all the previous Maven Makeover participants who shared their findings with me (and those that didn’t, we know who you are.)

These brave souls subjected themselves to Roberta’s special brand of “tough marketing love” in a hugely popular public venue — and even paid for the privilege with a donation to Heifer International.

There’s a lot more to come in 2010 . . . so please stay tuned.

Additional note: As I was writing this post, news came in about the devastating earthquake in Haiti. If you’re a fan of my Maven Makeover series and have learned a little something along the way, please “pay it forward” and make a generous donation today to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Here’s your chance to be the Copywriting Maven’s next landing page makeover!

Got a landing page that’s more poop than pop? Willing to share with Copyblogger readers? Prepared to put a little of your own “skin in the game” for a Maven Makeover? Then click on Maven’s Landing Page Makeover page for all the details.

I’m booked for gratis “Heifer” critiques until 4/1/10. If you’re interested in a private critique/makeover or other services, please email me directly.

About the Author: Roberta Rosenberg is The Copywriting Maven at MGP Direct, Inc. Find her @CopywriterMaven on Twitter.

Right around a year ago now, I made my first cent online. It was literally a cent — $0.01 — and it showed up in my Google AdSense account after a certain number of people had viewed an ad for dog food or a shiatsu massager or whatever on my old humor blog.

That first cent was exciting, because it proved that you really could make money online in the way it seemed that everyone said you could — by creating sites populated with ads, and then sitting back and letting the earnings pile up. Then, if the gurus were to be believed, it was only a matter of time before I would be living in Hawaii, while bikini girls used the Mona Lisa to wax my Lamborghini.

So I read a ton about how to use AdSense, took a few courses, and built a bunch of little search-engine-optimized niche websites. I worked and worked and built and built, and eventually I amassed a couple dozen of these little moneymakers.

Slowly, visitors began to come to my sites, click on the expensive Google ads for lawyers and insurance, and make me some money. Then, reasonably content with my Google army, I put those sites on “set it and forget it” mode (like a Ronco Rotisserie) and started something new.

A different way to do it

Specifically, in April of last year, I started the Johnny B. Truant biz. The business model basically consisted of trying to write funny blog posts and generally just hanging out online, and then parlaying that good will into its logical succession, which is, of course, technology services.

I worked very hard, but it didn’t feel like work — especially compared to what I had been doing on the niche sites. It felt like being an amiable jackass in the right places, and meeting people, and kind of screwing around. Eventually it also started to feel like building a business, but that happened slowly and by degrees.

Nine months passed, with both venues making me money in their own unique way.

At the end of 2009, I recorded my second five-figure month in the JBT technology biz, after building between eighty and a hundred blogs for clients in December.

And at around the same time, I got my first ever AdSense check from Google. It was for $111.

The best way to “make money online” is probably not what you think.

Spend a few minutes Googling around for ways to make money online. Go ahead; I’ll wait.

If you didn’t do that search just now, it’s probably because you’ve tried it before and already knew what you would find. Almost every site, course, and guru out there will tell you that to make money online, you should sign up for AdSense (or maybe for a large advertiser’s affiliate program), rustle up some long-tail keywords, and start gaming Google traffic.

I’m not going to tell you that doesn’t work . . . but I am going to tell you that it didn’t work for me, and that it’s unlikely to work for you if you’re even one iota like me.

Here’s why I don’t like the AdSense strategy as a business model:

1. It’s not a business model. Any time you can talk about “monetization,” you’re probably not talking about a real business because “monetizing” a business is redundant. “Monetizing” is slapping a moneymaker on top of something that doesn’t naturally produce income. The way that 99.99% of people dive into AdSense, they’re simply putting something out there and waiting for the dollars to roll in. There is no real planning, no accounting forecasts, no intention down the road to improve workflow or expand offerings or enlarge the sales funnel, no exploiting the best abilities of yourself and partners to create benefit for others.
2. It doesn’t add value. Technicalities aside, there is no real product or service in the way most AdSense “make money online” campaigns are run. There is simply arbitrage. You’re not increasing widget sales; you’re trying to make sure more of the existing sales will occur through your ads. I learned my lesson trying to play the stock market (and failing) and then investing in real estate (and failing at an epic level): Sustainable incomes come from using your talents to create value for others, not from gambling and playing the numbers.
3. It contradicts the way the Net is supposed to work. Yes, yes, I know . . . some people blog in a heartfelt manner about cabinetry and run cabinetry ads, and visitors click them to buy cabinets and the site owner makes money. But most AdSense strategies are all about gaming the system. When I was creating insurance niche sites, I couldn’t have cared less about insurance. I was simply trying to draw traffic away from the legit insurance sites so that people would click on my ads instead of finding an insurance company a different way. That’s not the way that the Web is supposed to work . . . which is to efficiently connect the searcher and what she’s searching for.
4. It’s anonymous. Few “make money online” strategies will tell you to blog under your own name, include your own picture, and make a big deal about being the guy or gal who created this site. In fact, I spent a lot of my time trying to obscure who I was. Many courses even tell you to use hosting that will generate random, non-sequential IP addresses for each site, so that even Google won’t know that one person owns them all. Anonymity conflicts directly with what I consider to be the most important reasons for my success, which are honesty, authenticity, trust-building, and transparency.

You can do better, no matter who you are

I worked really, really, really hard on those AdSense sites. I worked 15-hour days; I wrote keyword-laced post after keyword-laced post; I entered them in article directories and put them through social media bulk submitters; I launched site after site, tweaked, customized, and researched.

And by doing that, I made $111 in a year.

Maybe I didn’t work hard enough. Maybe I used the wrong system. Maybe, if someone else had done it, they might have done it twice as well. And maybe that same person would have done it for three times as long as I did, building sites for the whole year instead of only doing it for four months.

So yeah, maybe that super-ambitious person might have made $888.

Now, stop and think about that for a second.

Anyone who doesn’t believe that they could start a business today, being themselves, playing to their own strengths, and creating value for others, and not make more than $888 in a year should . . . well, those people should really just stop reading about business right now.

Am I saying that you can’t use AdSense to make money online? No. Am I saying that every “system” for striking it rich on the Net — like creating anonymous niche sites that use AdWords ads to draw traffic to affiliate products — is an impossible scam? No.

I’m just saying that the average person is probably going to have better luck building a real business. Meaning:

• One that you can stand behind publicly.
• One that’s based on helping others in exchange for pay.
• One that benefits from being a real, authentic person.
• One that matches your best abilities to the needs of others.

This Third Tribe thing? This new internet era of being real and honest and open in business and marketing rather than relying on tricks, games, yellow-highlighted text, and the hard sell? It’s real, folks. And at least for me, using that approach turned my Google earnings into an afterthought.

If the “Third Tribe” style of doing business appeals to you, subscribe to the free Copyblogger newsletter, Internet Marketing for Smart People. We’re within a few days of announcing a brand-new tribe for online entrepreneurs. And our newsletter subscribers will be the very first to learn about it.

About the Author: Johnny B. Truant is an amiable jackass who may or may not have invented Post-It Notes. You can hire him to tell you how to do better than AdSense, or, failing that, you should at least follow him on Twitter because sometimes he tweets about zombies.