Current Events Are an Unlimited Source of Income

I’ve written about Poll Factory before, but if you aren’t using it in conjunction with current events, you’re missing out on a huge amount of cash. Asking visitors to your landing pages to answer a simple yes/no question can have amazing results in delivering them to your offers.

You will want to use offers that are incentivizable, and some networks don’t allow this. Those that do will clearly state that such offers can be incentivized.

What kind of questions should I ask?

Anything that’s hot right now. Look at Google Trends, or in your newspaper, watch the news and flip through magazines. Current events are absolutely everywhere!

Software like Poll Factory makes the process of creating unlimited polls very simple, but you can also do it manually without the software — it will only take you more time.

Season 8 of “American Idol” kicked off earlier this month and the first episode featured a contestant in a bikini who became an overnight Internet sensation. I created a poll that same night and ran it for three days until all the buzz started to die down.

Take a look below.

The top portion of the page is devoted entirely to the question. The yes and no buttons are linked to a CPA offer for a $50 gift card. Below the question are RSS news feeds pulled from Yahoo and Google with the search phrase “Katrina Darrell.” Because they are news feeds, they are updated automatically. See below.

Why do you need RSS feeds?

You don’t necessarily need RSS feeds on your poll page, but it should have some content. It all comes down to quality score in the eyes of Google. If you’re running an AdWords campaign and have a poll as your landing page, the Google bots will look at the page and decide whether it’s worthy or not. When it sees content and outgoing links to top ranking sites, it will give your site a better ranking and you’ll be able to bid less on keywords.

Here’s another example poll I ran just last weekend about President-elect Barack Obama. It got A LOT of clicks and was very profitable. Just like the “American Idol” poll, I showed RSS feeds, but have not included them in the example below.

Why are polls so popular?

It’s human nature to express your opinion and take part in sharing how you feel. Polls are fun, quick and easy. People take polls on all sorts of things, and if it’s a subject that matters to them, they will vote on it.

Switch up your polls every couple of days as news changes, and keep putting up fresh offers for your visitors to be directed to.

Quick Tip

Many people create polls and fail at getting any conversions from them. Having looked at several dozen polls being run by other marketers, they all focus on too big of a picture. If you were to do a poll on the World Series, you may think to ask, “What team will win the World Series? A or B?” This may seem like a logical question, but you need to be more specific. Instead of asking about a team, ask about a certain player. “Can player A make a comeback this year? or “Should team B extend player C’s contract?”

Think specifically and target your audience with precise keywords. Not only will you get more targeted visitors, but more conversions.

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