Shane

I'm Shane Melaugh and I'm the guy writing most of the posts on this blog. My goal is to provide you with useful, straight-forward insights on how to grow your business by creating compelling offers, driving traffic and increasing conversions.

Contest Case Study, Part 1

Posted in: Traffic Generation|May 9, 201361 Comments

A few days ago, I launched my first “proper” online contest.

I had done a couple of very simple contests before, where I would compile entrants manually and pick winners via random numbers, but this was the first time I created a contest using a dedicated software to do so and with more bells and whistles I’d ever been able to add before.

In this post, I’ll show you all the results I got from running the contest and break down all the lessons I’ve learned from it. Be warned, though: what you’ll read below is probably not what you’re expecting…

App of the Week: Backup and Clone WordPress Sites

Posted in: App of the Week|April 19, 201312 Comments

Podcast Episode 14: Bootstrapping Your Way to Success

Posted in: Podcast|April 13, 201316 Comments

Travis Ketchum is the CEO of Contest Domination, an app that allows anyone to create viral contests that can be used to generate traffic and get more leads.

For anyone interested in building up their own business, Travis’ story is worth some close examination. Without any funding, he managed to bootstrap his way from a plugin to a successful SaaS business. In today’s podcast episode, he provides insights into how he managed to build and grow his company.

How to Get Your New Project to Market as Quickly as Possible

Posted in: Product Creation|April 11, 201330 Comments

There’s nothing worse than a never-ending project.

Maybe it’s because of perfectionism or because of a fear of selling, or maybe you started out with the wrong kind of product idea to begin with. Whatever the reason, when you keep treading water and a project never seems to come closer to the finish line, it saps your motivation and saps your budget until your business inevitably dies.

To survive and thrive online, you need to get your products and projects to market quickly. And in this post, you’ll discover exactly how you can do that.

Postling Review

Posted in: Reviews, Software|April 9, 20131 Comment

Postling provides a “social media inbox” – a simple interface for you to manage and monitor social media and even blogs.

Does Postling’s less-is-more approach make for the killer app you’ve been waiting for, or does the tool under-deliver?

Watch this quick video review and tour, to find out:

Web Stats: Alternatives to Google Analytics

Posted in: Software|April 6, 2013119 Comments

Google Analytics is a very popular tool for tracking website visitors, but it’s simply not the right solution for everyone.

A closer look under the hood reveals that there are a few things GA does not do well at all. Depending on your business model and your needs, an alternative analytics solution might serve you far better and be a lot more useful to your business. Whether you’re looking for something supplemental or something to completely replace GA, this post has got you covered.

Read on to discover the drawbacks of using Google’s own system and learn about the best Google Analytics alternatives.