Since I launched my latest product review PLR membership site (part of which includes a comparison table for top-selling products) I have decided to put together a guide on creating and using comparison charts on review blogs. Since I’m giving it away for free to members there, I thought why not include a post here too?

NOTE: This is going to be a long tutorial post, so if you want to have it on hand for future reference just click here to download the PDF guide (no opt-in required).

Creating comparison charts will help your readers see, at-a-glance, which product might be right for them by comparing the key specs of various products in a category.

You can also use price comparison charts on individual product review pages to help your visitors find the best price, and help yourself secure an affiliate commission.

Both are known to massively increase conversions if you do it properly, so here’s a method I’ve found for doing it (for free!)

Key Elements Of A WordPress Comparison Chart

Before putting together my first chart I did a bit of research into what other top sites were doing. Key elements include:

• A list of most common specifications for the product (obviously),
• A small image of each product,
• A star rating or a ranked order of products,
• An affiliate link to “buy now”,
• A link to read the full review on some other page on the blog.

Best FREE Plugin For Product Comparison Charts – WP-Table Reloaded

Although you could create a table within a page/ post using HTML code, I am not the kind of person to bother with that! Instead I search for a free plugin and found a great one.

>> WP-Table Reloaded <<

This plugin is fabulous. Here are a few of the features I like:

• Ability to reorder columns or rows after you’ve already completed the table,
• Allows users to sort, search and filter the information,
• The end result just looks good without fiddling around (important for busy people!)

STEP 1: Install The Plugin

If you’re already familiar with installing plugins this should be quick. If not, just follow these simple steps…

1. Click “Add New” on the plugins menu…
   
2. Search for “WP-Table Reloaded” and click “Install Now”
   
3. Wait for it to install then click “Activate” 

STEP 2: Compile Your Data

Personally I compiled my data before I even went into WordPress. I saved it all into an Excel Spreadsheet that I had to copy and paste over later. But you could do it on the fly and enter it into the table plugin as you go. Just make sure you keep saving it, you wouldn’t want to lose all that hard work!

(I’ve also looked into outsourcing this step of the process and can recommend oDesk as there’s a wide range of different price/ skill levels on there to suit most budgets).

STEP 3: Create Your Comparison Table

Now it’s time to put that information into your first comparison table. This is pretty easy…

1. Find WP-Table Reloaded under the tools menu in your WordPress dashboard…
   
2. First click “Add New Table” and then it’ll bring you to the table settings screen. Don’t worry if you’re not sure how many rows and columns you want yet, you can always alter this later…
   
3. Now it’s time to fill in each field. You can use HTML in these fields (more on adding your images and links below) or just enter the text, for example…
   
   

The best thing about using this plugin is you can go back and change the data at any time (for example if you originally made a mistake, or if the details later changed). All you do is select the table from the WP-Table Reloaded menu and edit it instead of creating a new one.

STEP 4: Adding Product Images, Buy Buttons and Links

1. Upload your product image or a buy now button image (click here for some Amazon.com buy buttons) to the WordPress media library (you may want to resize any image you use on your computer first before you upload, to help make the images in your table roughly the same size)…
   
2. Copy the link to the uploaded image…
   
3.  Use HTML code to insert the image into the required table cell e.g. <img src=”http://imagelinkgoeshere.com”>
   
4. To add a hyperlink to your image or to any text in the table, just add standard HTML code e.g. <a href=”http://youraffiliatelinkhere.com”>anchor text or image code goes here</a>
   

TIP: Use the Pretty Link plugin to create links for your products so that if you ever need to change the links, you don’t need to edit all your posts and tables, just change the link within the Pretty Link plugin settings and it’ll update them all.

STEP 5: Insert the Table Into A Post/ Page

1. From the WP-Table Reloaded plugin menu, select “List Tables” then click “Get Shortcode”…
   
2. Copy that shortcode and paste it where you want it to go in your page or post…
   
3. Publish your post and you’ll see your table. You can edit the post or table at any time. Here’s a sample of how it looks:
   
   

TIP: I recommend playing around with and tweaking the various settings in WP-Table Reloaded to change the way the table is displayed. If you want, you can turn off user sorting of columns, get rid of the search bar and so on.

IMPORTANT: How To Make Sure Your Table Displays Correctly

Sometimes product comparison tables can be pretty big, so I recommend breaking them up to make sure they fit smoothly on a page within your blog’s theme. Here are a few ideas for separating products:

• One table for budget options, one for high end options,
• Different tables for different types of product e.g. Android smartphones vs other operating systems,
• Different tables for products that were released in different years/ months,
• Use the “full width” page template option if your theme has one. This means your table post/ page won’t have a sidebar and your table will fit in better.

How To Make Price Comparison Tables On Your Product Review Websites

If you want to compare prices for one product from different retailers, you can still do this using the method I wrote about above. The only downside is that prices change pretty often and you will have to keep updating them. I looked for a while trying to find a way to do this, and I’m pretty sure some people have managed to do it for free by accessing price data feeds and setting it up themselves, but it was all above my head.

I found a plugin that’ll do it all for you. It doesn’t look particularly fancy but it does the job well, especially since it makes it quite easy to sign up for affiliate programs for any prices it has found where you’re not already a member (it works with Amazon, Commission Junction, Affiliate Window and some other affiliate networks).

Unfortunately this is a paid plugin but you can get a $7 30-day trial if you want to test

>> Comparipress Price Comparison WordPress Plugin <<
25% discount coupon code: 25OFF

I have bought it and can verify that it works very well and does most things automatically, including finding all the networks you’re signed up to and updating the prices every day, but I haven’t been using it for very long yet.

Conclusion

As you can see, you really don’t need fancy plugins or expensive themes to put together an extra element that’ll really help give your product review websites a boost. I haven’t used these nearly as much as I should have – a while ago I created a site with a comparison chart and barely any content (or traffic!) and I still made some sales from it! I think they have huge potential which is why I’ve incorporated it into my PLR and my own websites.

Links Mentioned In This Post

I know this post has turned out to be pretty long, so here are the links again:

• Product PLR Monthly (25% discount coupon code: warrior)
• WP-Table Reloaded Plugin
• Pretty Link Plugin
• Amazon Add To Cart Buttons
• Comparipress Plugin (25% discount coupon code: 25OFF)

DOWNLOAD THE PDF: Just click here to download the PDF file if you want it for future reference (no opt-in required).

I am by no means an expert on product comparison tables, this is just a way I found of creating them. If you have any other tips or ideas about boosting conversions please share them below

If you’ve been a reader here for a while then you’ll know that I started building lists for my PLR website, and for this blog, quite a long time ago. These lists already showed me the power of email marketing for my business, but it’s only recently that I finally kicked myself into gear to build lists on my most important niche sites.

Now, I know quite a bit about emailing people from my PLR related lists. I’ve tested a lot of different methods, but I still think I have a lot to learn. And I feel like these niche site lists will be a different animal. All I know for sure is that I have nothing to lose and everything to gain from making sure I am at least trying to collect emails on my niche sites!

Here’s the method I’ve been using to set them all up.

Step 1: Sign Up To An Email Marketing Service

Step 1 is to sign up for an email marketing service. I personally use Aweber, who offer a $1 30 day trial. That’s long enough for you to get started If I could start all over again I’d sign up to this straight away and build a list from day 1. I know it’s become cliche for people to talk about lists in this way, but honestly it’s true! Your list is a huge asset.

Step 2: Find Suitable Content

If you’re going to get people to hand over your email address then I’m sure most of you know that you need to give them an incentive to do so. Here, I give some free eBooks that I wrote. For my PLR lists, I give a free PLR pack and random free articles as long as they’re subscribed. If I didn’t, I doubt many people would want to sign up.

But for my niche sites I don’t have the time to create everything from scratch myself. That was originally the plan, but I know I’ll never get around to do anything if I feel I have all of that to do. It’s all about taking action and getting things done, and I’ve found the easiest way to do that is to use PLR content.

Note – you don’t even need to worry about non-unique content when it comes to emails. You can feel 100% happy using PLR as-is because it’s not indexed by the search engines.

So I go to my favourite PLR sites to look for article packs, eBooks, reports or autoresponder messages to use for my incentive:

• My PLR site, Net PLR
• PLR Mini Mart
• All Star PLR
• Easy PLR
• PLR A La Carte
• My hard drive! I have a lot of PLR already

Step 3: Format The Content

I pretty much always change PLR I buy in some way. Even if it’s good quality, I want to include my voice in it, or simply cut it down or add to it depending on what I need it for.

For the lists I just set up yesterday I managed to find some article packs at PLR Mini Mart. Unfortunately these weren’t in report or eBook form, so I wouldn’t use them as such (I was trying to save time so I didn’t want to spend time creating an eBook from them).

I decided to use the articles to create an email eCourse. This basically just means a series of informational emails spread over the course of a couple of weeks after they sign up. For this all I did was add a few personalized sentences to the beginning and end, and cut out some parts of the articles because I don’t generally like emails to be as long as articles. I got it ready to paste into my email program.

Step 4: Set Up the New Email List

I find this part pretty tedious. It’s time to set up the new list in Aweber – create a confirmation email and load up all my messages as a “Follow Up” sequence. By using the follow up function, it means the emails will be sent out at the intervals I set. For example, email 2 might go out 1 day after email one, and email 3 might go out 3 days after email two. It’s really hands off once it’s been set up properly!

Step 5: Add Web Forms To My Site

Thankfully this is as simple as copying and pasting the Aweber code (it’s really easy to use) into my sidebar widget. I always try to make sure it’s above the fold so that everyone who visits will notice the form. I include a sentence about the bonus they will be getting to help encourage a sign up.

Step 6: Add A Newsletter Page

I haven’t done this on all of my sites yet, but I plan to add a newsletter page with even more detailed information about the free bonus I’m offering, what subscribers can expect from my newsletter, and the opt in form again.

Step 7: Set Up My Subscribers Magnet Tool To Boost Signups

I bought the MaxBlogPress Subscribers Magnet plugin last year as a way to boost sign ups and I am 100% sure (though I haven’t done any scientific analysis) that it’s improved my conversions. For example, I was getting a couple of subscribers every few days on one niche site, then I added this plugin and I’ve been getting more like a couple a day.

So this is the last stage in the email list set up. You can see what this plugin does on this site -

• It automatically fills in your name and email if you’ve ever commented here,
• It adds an opt in form within your comment,
• It adds a checkbox near the comment box so you can choose to subscribe when you comment,
• It adds an opt in form to the end of each post.

It also has some extra features that I choose not to use, like a footer bar opt in form and silently adding subscribers when they comment (I would never do this, I think it would annoy people).

Step 8: What Next?

Now that I’ve added the forms to my niche sites, and that I have follow up emails queued, I at least know that things are taking care of themselves. But in future I’m going to email them when I have new blog posts or new special deals on these sites, and hopefully send out some affiliate reviews too to make some extra money.

I really should have been doing this sooner, but at least I’m finally taking action! On one site I put up the opt in before I even had a freebie ready and I was still getting subscribers without any effort whatsoever! I’m looking forward to building a relationship with these people and building my niche sites to the next level

Yesterday I was feeling pretty down about my internet business. It’s not so much the money I was feeling down about, more the fact that I was not doing anything to earn money. I procrastinated the whole day, and did so a lot last week too. There are things I need to do that I know will earn me money, yet I couldn’t bring myself to do them. As a result, I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself.

But I am not one to post depressing things online. In fact, usually writing about what’s bothering me helps me to find some kind of solution that gets me back on track again. So this post is about the ways in which I’m planning to get over this rough patch.

1) Earnings Reports On Hold?

Although I’m doing well this month, I’m still feeling the pressure of earnings reports. On the one hand, it’s great to be accountable, and have a force that makes me want to improve the earnings I get to report here every month. But on the other hand, I sometimes feel disappointed at my progress, and compare myself to others. I know I shouldn’t do this, as I obviously spend a lot of my time on active income sources as well as passive, but I can’t always stop myself. Although I still haven’t decided yet, just knowing that I can put them on hold for a few months (perhaps until the new year) makes me feel a lot better.

2) Trying To Set More Realistic Goals

Sometimes when I put my to-do list together for the day, I have everything planned to the minute. Can you guess how well that works out? Although it sometimes makes me super productive, it often ends up with tasks that get pushed back every single day. And, when I start pushing tasks back, it lets me get lazy and makes me thinks those tasks aren’t important. Finding the balance between goals that push me and goals that are achievable is definitely something I need to work on.

3) Taking Proper Time Out

When you’re trying to work but don’t do anything, it’s just procrastination. Not fun! But when you can’t work and realise the fact, taking real time off to just relax is so much more worthwhile. That’s what I did today. After a little work I had a headache and was feeling tired so decided to lie down and relax for a while. I do feel better for it – less of a day wasted, more of a legitimate day off.

4) Focusing On What Goes Right Rather Than What Goes Wrong

When I don’t achieve the goals I want to achieve I often beat myself up. This is related to the point above. Instead of just thinking about the fact that it’s perfectly OK to have time out when you’re self employed, I push myself trying to work. It obviously doesn’t work when I spend the day procrastinating!

Jack left a great comment on my last post about a method he uses to stay on track. This will be helpful for point 2, but also for making me realise my achievements rather than failures. He simply lists what he did each day that went towards his overall goal, and reviews it monthly to make sure he’s on track. Pretty simple but it sounds like a smart idea to me! I’m going to start doing this today.

5) Recognize How Far I’ve Come

Ironically, last week when I reflected on how unfocused I’ve been for the last year, I wasn’t feeling down about it. But this week I’m starting to feel a bit worse about the fact that I could have achieved so much more if I’d stayed on track. I need to get rid of those negative thoughts!

The truth is I did really well with site flipping – I probably still would be if the market hadn’t changed. I could have continued to do it maybe for lower prices, but decided to change direction instead. And so far, I’m doing really well with PLR. Even if my niche sites haven’t taken off, I have those achievements to be proud of. (Thanks to my friends over at the Niche Blogger forum for making me realise this!)

The truth is that becoming self employed is a huge learning curve, and I always say it. I seem to take two steps forward and then one step back. That’s fine, nobody is perfect and I just need to remember that!

Today I received an email that has made me feel quite discouraged. But I am refusing to see it as a negative thing, rather confirmation that my new plans (which I wrote about here) are the right choice for me.

An Email From Google Adsense

The email told me that Google have disabled Adsense ads on one of my websites because it breaks their policies. They also reminded me to be careful not to break any more policies or I could get my whole Adsense account disabled. Thankfully they’re not disabling the account right away. Specifically, the policy in question is:

It is important for a site displaying Google ads to comply with Google’s webmaster quality guidelines. Specifically, the site should offer significant value to the user by providing a useful and information-rich site. Additionally, Google ads may not be displayed on ‘cookie cutter’ pages.

About My Site

Now, there are a few reasons why I think Google have pulled me up on this:

1. My site uses the Clickbump “XFactor” style green sidebar template,
2. My site only has five pages of content (around 400 words each),
3. But my ads do have text above them (some people say putting ads directly under the header is a violation),
4. And my content is not spun (I would never ever put up spun gibberish) – it makes sense and provides useful information on the topic. The problem is that it’s very limited, because the keyword phrase I chose is related to a type of product that doesn’t actually exist. So this is what my content has to say. Probably not good enough!

So, I know for a fact that this site is a lot better, and a lot more useful, than a lot of other XFactor micro niche sites out there. But at the same time, the content is very limited and I am not going to complain that Adsense has noticed. After all, it was only last night when I was telling my partner – “look at my best performing Adsense site, isn’t it crap?!” I think I had this one coming.

Looking On The Positive Side

Like I just said, this is my best performing Adsense site. This month it’s made me over $100, while my other sites have made little more than that combined! Isn’t it ironic that I try so hard and never have a site take off like this until this one did?

Not only this, but the site is related to a winter keyword, which means every month since August it’s been really picking up in terms of traffic. I even added extra content in August, so you can imagine how bad the site was until then.

So, my Adsense earnings are going to take a hit – especially since I’m going to go and disable Adsense on a few other sites to be careful (I will switch them with some other ads but I don’t have too much hope!). My earnings have already taken a huge hit this month (I’ll write more about that in my earnings report). But I am going to look at this positively!

Confirmation of My New Plans

If anything, this is a sign that what I’ve decided is definitely the right way to go. I have not been putting up these kind of useless sites for a while now. Of course, I still left up the old sites, but any new sites have been full of useful content, with posts that sometimes top 1000 words. These take a long time to write, but I’ve already seen how it’s working.

My Halloween site, for example, is getting over 100 visitors a day now (this is a good number for me) without much promotion except a couple of Ezine Articles. The bulk of the traffic is coming from very long tail keywords, and I’m also going to follow this strategy for my Christmas site. My main problem now comes in knowing where to place my affiliate links, whether to place banners or text links, and getting the traffic to convert.

I’m Enjoying Building Websites Again

When I was churning out site after site, like the one that Adsense has now disabled ads on, it was difficult and a real chore. I could never keep up with the goals I set for myself and always ended up taking extended breaks where I wouldn’t work on my sites at all.

Now I’ve only been working on one or two sites at a time it’s so much easier to balance my workload. It’s easier to keep track of which long tail keywords are doing well, and which pages need promotion. And I can get much more involved in the topic which, ultimately, makes my content even more useful.

Making authority sites is so much more fun!

I may not have seen the results of all my hard work yet, but I feel like these little signs are showing I’m on the right track. So, yes, I am feeling pretty discouraged about losing earnings from that site. But at least it’ll keep me on track to make sure that everything I put out is truly useful.

I mentioned a few days ago that I’m going all out on an article marketing campaign for one of my sites – but this post isn’t about that. It’s more about the strategy I use for new sites. As soon as I can after I get the site up and running (sometimes it takes me a few weeks to get round to it), I’ll write an article to Ezine Articles, and manually rewrite it to do a bulk submission through Unique Article Wizard.

I’ve been checking my rankings and have noticed that this is most definitely giving my sites a boost in the search engines. I usually check my rankings every Friday but didn’t do it last week, so this is over a period of about two weeks up to today that I’ve noticed the change with my latest sites.

• One of my new sites, an exact keyword domain, ranked in initially at number 10 (setup before Mayday). In the middle of May I submitted the Ezine Article and started off the UAW submission. It climbed to positions 7+8 with 24 backlinks within a week. Now, after the submission’s gone to a few hundred sites in UAW, it’s gone to positions 4+5 with 60 backlinks.
• Another one set up at the same time initially ranked at number 15. It climbed to 7+8 with 27 backlinks after the submission started, and today is at 8+9 with 71 backlinks.
• Another very recent site (just a couple of weeks old) ranked at 101 after I set it up (unfortunately I left it without content for a while – in my experience if you don’t put content in but it’s indexed for a few weeks, its ranking goes lower than other exact keyword domains I’ve had). Then after submitting the Ezine Article a couple of days ago, it’s at position 75. Not fantastic I know, but I’ve only just had the UAW approved and put all the content on the site.

From what I can see, it’s clear that the EZA and UAW has a real effect. EZA is a great way to boost your sites initially, but the UAW is also affecting it over time. In the case of site 2 above, it did go down by 1 point, but the backlinks went up – so I’ll have to keep an eye on this to see how useful my method is.

Unfortunately I’ve been pretty bad at tracking results like this but I’m going to make sure I do it more often. After all, time is money and I don’t want to be wasting it on things that don’t work.

Another observation: my main keyword rankings have been unaffected, or even improved, since the Mayday update. However, it’s clear my Adsense click through rates and cost per click have gone down. I also have quite a few sites high up in the SERPS that just aren’t converting – so I’ve got a lot of work to do! At least these initial results look promising.

Other Details About My Progress

It’s hard to work right now as I’m so excited I’m going to see Stevie Wonder tomorrow night and Paul McCartney on Sunday! I am a HUGE Beatles fan so I keep finding myself sneaking off to Youtube to watch live performances and getting myself excited. I also need to get myself ready as I’m getting the coach to London quite early tomorrow (it was a bargain, only £5 even though it’s a 2 hour+ journey!)

But I’m still proud with what I’ve done and just trying to push through today before I start getting really excited. For the rest of today I’m going to carry on manually spinning that big batch of articles (and hopefully submit a few) which I’ll finish next week.

Also on the agenda: upload 10 blog posts I wrote previously, rewrite a couple of my latest Ezine Articles so I can do that initial UAW submission for a couple of my sites, and maybe write a few blog posts.