Your Best Source of Quality Traffic Is Found in the Money Moment.
The “Money Moment” is the most profitable screen real estate on the net and yet it is overlooked by virtually every site on the net.
I first started talking about the Money Moment as the “Magic Moment” in 1998 and was, according to the Association of Internet Professionals, the first to speak of it publicly. I was an evangelist on the topic. For years I rallied audiences of literally thousands with the fervor of a politician in hopes that one day websites would wake-up to this neglected opportunity.
It’s now nearly 6 years later and I am dumbfounded by still how few capitalize on the Money Moment. It is available on every type of site — subscription, advertiser-supported content, blogs, brochureware and especially retailing — usually in more than one place. Yet in most cases, it remains completely ignored.
I’m going to start off by defining this opportunity in a retailing environment – where it is most easily seen and viable — and then backtrack to other site types.
In web sales, the Money Moment occurs after an online purchase. After your customer has filled out the order form. After he has hit the submit button. It’s literally the last screen of the customer’s visit to a transaction site when a purchase has been made. You might also think of this screen as the “thank you” or “confirmation” page.
And this is where pure profit is being shredded. The customer is at the natural end of a browsing cycle. There he sits, mouse in hand, ready to click on just about anything. But what is he usually offered? One, a link back to the homepage of the site where the purchase was just made, or two, a linkless screen — what I call a “cyber dead-end.”
Now consider the fact that we know one very important thing about this person. This is a person who buys stuff online. What I find so egregious is how this customer, who once had been cajoled, enticed and otherwise shepherded to your site, is now abandoned.
So how can you take advantage of this selling opportunity?
Simply contact sites with germane products and services and arrange to have your link featured on the Money Moment page (along with great copy and photos/graphics) — exclusively, if you can. For the privilege, offer a higher commission on sales from this location since the quality of traffic is above average. (You can also engineer these deals in reverse to amplify your revenue as an affiliate of other sites as well.)
The key to the Money Moment is not just that these people have made a purchase, it’s also that they are naturally at the end of a browsing cycle. They are in a state of trust (we know this because they just made a purchase), but they are also just a click away from going somewhere else. You can take advantage of this relationship by negotiating to have links to your site available at these moments. All it takes is a few sentences which can be as simple as “if you like our site you might also like JaclynEaston.com because ... ”
This is far more effective than a banner ad, which is strictly an advertisement, not an endorsement as in the above example. Endorsements will bring you more traffic and higher quality traffic. Besides, when people encounter banner ads strewn throughout a site they are in a state of flow — reading articles, comparing products — they are rarely willing to be interrupted no matter how alluring the signage.
Some people claim that pop-ups get around this problem because people don’t lose their place on the original site. True. However, their focus is still somewhere else and they don’t want to be distracted. Pop-ups are like flies. People wave them away without even looking at them. This is why banners and pop-ups are a distant second and third to the number one choice of the Money Moment.
As I said earlier, the Money Moment occurs on every type of site. Given the criteria of a ‘conclusion during the browsing process’, we can find it on non-retail sites where any of the following occurs:
1) Newsletter sign-ups;
2) Closing a “print this” option box;
3) Completing a survey;
4) Completing a contest entry;
5) Completing an e-mail this to a friend/yourself;
6) After “logging off.”
With this in mind, I want to challenge you to find sites which are compatible with what you are selling and investigate how they are using their Money Moments. I can promise you that at least 50% of them are points of abandonment ripe for your offer and that your click-through will be double, triple or quadruple that of traditional banners.