One of the most under-utilized pieces of website real estate out there is the About Us page.  While most webmasters treat it as a throw-away repository for a stock biography or company history, consider the mindset of the visitors who arrive on these pages. 

They’re interested enough in you and your brand to want to take the next step and learn more about you—indicating that they’re more receptive to sales or other conversions that those who have simply stumbled on to your Home page.

So why waste this valuable opportunity to engage visitors and increase conversions?!  Instead, use your “About” page as a springboard to increase engagement with your readers and the number of conversions that result from this valuable web content.

In general, there are three types of conversions that you can pursue from your About page: sales, leads and newsletter signups.  Let’s look at each of these in turn to determine when to implement each option and how to integrate each one effectively.

The most valuable piece of writing advice I ever got was from an editor at a print magazine after I’d handed in the first draft of an article. I’d spent hours poring over old issues to “get the tone right” and had fought my natural style every step of the way. The end result? A returned draft shot through with corrections and a one-line response: “Write from the inside and trust that we’ll get it.”

As a ProBlogger reader, you probably already know how rare it is to come across a site devoted to blogging that actually offers something besides the same old “rules” recycled in various forms. You know them: keep pieces short. Use bullets. Link to other articles, etc.

While it’s comforting, especially when you’re starting out, to find something—anything—to model posts after, it’s critical to understand that a reader will forgive a strong voice almost anything and a weak voice almost nothing.

Are the rules you’re following helping or hindering your voice? Here are the three biggest blogging “rules” I’ve broken … and the unexpected results I’ve enjoyed.

1. Make posts scannable

There’s a line of thinking behind blogging advice posts that insist pieces must be kept short and stuffed full of typographical tricks like boldfacing and bullets that assumes a typical reader has Attention Deficit Disorder. If you don’t hustle to offer value and get your point across at a glance, they’ll simply move on.

There is another way.

This guest post is by Patrick Meninga of Make Money with No Work.

Over the last four years, I created a single website that exceeded $2,000 in monthly income, and sold for six figures to one of my direct advertisers.

When I started this journey, I had no idea what I was doing.  I wasted a great deal of time using actions that were inefficient, wasteful, and unprofitable.  Looking back, it is easy to see which actions produced the most income.

My action checklist for creating a website and selling it for $200,000 looked like this:

• selected the perfect topic
• published a high volume of content
• created premium content to attract organic links
• pitched premium quality guest posts
• cultivated a community of fans
• negotiated direct advertising deals
• persisted through any setbacks
• sold when the right offer came along.

Select the perfect topic

I chose the perfect topic for my website.  The subject of addiction worked because:

1. I had expert knowledge and first-hand experience in it.
2. There was sufficient traffic and interest in the topic on the web.
3. There was money to made from related products and services.