Greetings,

I have a Web site that is a combination Blog, and sales tool for two self-published Italian cookbooks. I also sell two small e-books of Italian recipes. It's the small e-books that concern me here.

Over the course of time--and with no special effort on my part--my pages have percolated to page one or two of Google for nearly any search term relative to Italian food. That's my problem.

I've discovered, by looking at my Web statistics, that by a ratio of > 10:1, people reach my site by searching for 'Italian soup,' or 'Italian soups.' I've extrapolated, by the brief amount of time they've spent on my site, that they've been looking for a free collection of Italian soup recipes, and they've found my e-book instead.

I understand that the generally accepted wisdom of the Web is that you've just got to let them go, but I can't help wanting to try to convert at least a few of them. To that end, I've done a couple of things, although they haven't been effective.

First, I changed the sales copy on my "Ten Classic Italian Soup" page, to say, "I know how you got here. You're looking for a freebie, and you found me..etc" Second, I subscribed to MSN Messenger, and I've put a little note on the page that says, 'If I'm online, why not ask me a question. I'll do my best to answer in real time.'

Again, I understand that most of these folks are just going to click on by when they discover that I'm selling something. But I wonder if any of you good folks have another suggestion to help me get them to read just a little further before clicking the 'Back' button.

Thanks in advance,
Skip Lombardi
http://www.skiplombardi.com

P.S. Just to give you an indication of how quickly they leave, I have a link to a free sample recipe in the third or fourth paragraph of my sales page. In about one month, only three people have clicked on that link.

Quite simple.

At the top of the page put an opt in.

Free italian soup recipes by email.

And send them a couple spaced a few weeks apart and mention that they can get more Italian recipes in your ebook.

If you really want to you can tease them in a good humored way by giving them half the recipe out of your ebook in every second email and finish by saying: for the whole recipe take a look at this book you can download immediately and send them to your sales page.

But be sure to tell them that next week you'll send them a full recipe and do it.

You should really be looking at increasing your backend range of products in any case - more cookbooks and related products you might get affiliate commissions from like cookers, utensils etc.

That way a subscriber will be worth so much to you you could afford to give away good content free.

I hope this helps.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

I wouldn't be keen on the half-recipe idea. If it was me, I would feel annoyed. Especially as there are literally millions of recipes available for free on line. Other than that, I think Andrew's idea is good.

Jane

I think you could only do half a recipe on odd occassions and make it very funny - make it seem like a bit of fun instead of a sales ploy.

If you can't pull that off I agree. It would just annoy people and they'd unsubscribe.

The other thing you could offer is very short cooking tips - one paragraph or less.

Very few long emails by autoresponder are not read as much as you would hope and short emails have a high pull rate anyway.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh