กHow To Make Readers Desperately and Uncontrollabl

กHow To Make Readers Desperately and Uncontrollably Wanting To Buy Your Productก

by: Steve Atlas

Are you looking for ways of persuading your web site visitors to buy your product or service? Or for ways of writing a sales letter so that you sell more?

Then you need to understand why people buy in the first place.

People buy things because they want to. Not necessarily because they need to.

We don’t need to buy expensive designer clothes, for instance, but we want to. Because we want to look good, and great clothes makes us look good. Why do we want to look good? In many cases, simply to attract the opposite sex.

This is why so many designer clothes ads use sex to sell.

Itกs simple, but it works. In a magazine ad – by placing a guy in a particular designer suit next to a couple of beautiful women, the readers subconsciously thinks that by buying that suit, he too will attract beautiful women.

Emotion makes you buy. Wanting to achieve something makes you buy.

You need to trigger the readerกs desire for your product. Not necessarily by focusing on your product, but on how his life will change when buying this product.

Focus on the potential customer, not your product.

You can’t force people to buy. Unfortunately, some of you might say.

But why force someone, when you can make them want to buy voluntarily? With much better results? Trigger their emotions so that they want to buy. Make them want your product. Feed them with emotional triggers so that they get excited about the project. Let them so the sales job.

How to trigger their emotions?

Tell your reader how his or her life will change after buying your product. Are you selling power shower heads? Tell them how fantastic youกll feel every morning using these heads. Describe it. Compare your power shower heads to the ordinary, cheap shower heads.

Show them how the features of the product will benefit the buyer.

Appeal to his or her emotions.

Are you selling cars? Let the prospect sit in the car, let him drive the car. Point out all the little details, like the high quality leather that is used on the seats. (Don’t say a word yet about how much this costs extra.) Paint him a picture…describe to him how wonderful itกll be to drive this car every day. Describe how the product will change his life.

Make them want your product.

But in order for the emotional appeals to work, you need to use logic, too. Because the prospect must justify his uncontrollable urge to buy.

After the initial emotional appeal, give him all kinds of logical reassurances of why it’s OK to buy. Tell him how much money he will save using your product, tell him you’ve reduced the price of your product so that if he likes it he’d be much better off buying straight away, tell him that you will give him additional bonuses if he buys immediately, and the best trick of all…

Tell your potential customer that he can return the product to you at any time and get a full refund if he’s not entirely happy about it.

This is the ultimate logical appeal.

If he wants your product; if you’ve made him want your product the main thing holding him back is money. If you take away this risk, he’s got nothing to loose.

Use emotion to get your readers to desire your product by showing them how they will benefit from the product. Use logic to take away their resistance to buying. Use logic to take away all the risks.

About The Author

Steve Atlas writes regularly for the Internet Marketing Dictionary http://www.internetmarketingdictionary.com

This article was posted on February 08, 2003

by Steve Atlas

10 HighImpact Viral Marketing Strategies

10 HighImpact Viral Marketing Strategies

by: Keith Gloster

The term กviral marketingก has been tossed around the Internet for the past two or three years now. If youกve been marketing online for a while, chances are that youกve heard legendary marketers like Mark Joyner, Marlon Sanders and Yanik Silver refer to this term countless times.

But do you REALLY understand what this marketing term means and how it can greatly impact the success of your online business?

If not, hereกs a brief definition:

Viral marketing involves allowing people to give away and use your free product or service in order to multiply your marketing quickly over the Internet.

The idea behind viral marketing is that you include your ad with the freebie people give away or use. Below are ten high impact viral marketing strategies:

Allow people to reprint your articles on their web site, in their ezine, newsletter, magazine or ebooks. Include your resource box and the option for article reprints at the bottom of each article.

Allow people to use any of your freebies as free bonuses for products or services they sell. Include your ad inside all of your freebies.

Allow people to use your online discussion board for their own web site. Some people don’t have one. Just include your banner ad at the top of the board.

Allow people to sign up for a free web site on your server. Since you are giving away the space, require them to include your banner ad at the top of the site.

Allow people to add their link to your free web site directory. Just require that they return a link back to your web site, advertising your directory.

Allow people to provide your free online service to their web site, visitors, or ezine subscribers. They could be free email, email consulting, search engine submissions, etc.

Allow people to give away your free software. Just include your business advertisement inside the software program.

Allow people to give away your free web design graphics, fonts, templates, etc. Just include your ad on them or require people to link directly to your web site.

Allow people to place an advertisement in your free ebook if, in exchange, they give away the ebook to their web visitors or ezine subscribers.

Allow people to give away your free ebook to their visitors. Then, their visitors will also give it away. This will just continue to spread your ad all over the Internet.

Now that you have a better understanding of viral marketing and the above 10 strategies, whatกs next? Start experimenting with what youกve discovered. Use one or more of these proven strategies. Brand yourself and grow your list and income exponentially.

Copyright 2005 Keith Gloster

About The Author

Keith Gloster provides advice on effective traffic and lead generation tools and techniques. For more creative strategies on permissionbased direct email marketing and lead generation, and to claim some valuable bonuses, you can subscribe to his popular newsletter at: http://www.freemlmleadsgenerator.com.

This article was posted on March 13

by Keith Gloster

The Best Of The Best In Postcards

The Best Of The Best In Postcards

by: Florie Lyn Masarate

There are some learning in life that people have to go through with in order to learn the lessons that come with it. This may sound dramatic but it really helps people in getting things right and knowing the best of the best.

This is also true in printing. People getting printing materials that tend to be informational or is into marketing certain products and services are clearly becoming an expert on what they consider the best not just in presentation but also in contents.

Take, for example, small printing materials like postcards. People receiving them have always been amazed at the development that these cards have undergone through the years. They started simply with the just some words and contact details, but now even graphic designs are being put into them. These cards are becoming marketing tools also, as they are handy and easy to give out to potential clients. Not only that, postcards is now sent through emails. Just look at what postcards have become. Other than these things what are the highlights that postcards must have?

Postcards are better off without an envelope. You know why? Because people being busy bodies always on the run, are likely not to have time to open these envelopes to look at what it contain. There are a lot of things that people have to do in a day, letters to read and reading your postcards will just add to the trash mails that people ignore most of the time. The tendency is for them to throw it away without even bothering to read what it says. So giving them postcards sans the envelope, you get assured that somehow, and even in a fraction of a second, they have seen and read what your postcards say. Having seen them first, before throwing them away is something that you cannot have done with an envelope. And the next time you send them that same card again, they will remember having received one before throwing it away again.

Promoting one thing at a time in your postcards and sending them time and time again helps, a lot. This is making them aware of what you are marketing, may it be a product or s service. Having them sent over again to potential customers is not necessarily wasting time and money. It is making them aware of what they are missing and what they should know about. Do not mind raising some tempers, at least they remembered you having sent them more than once. Repetition and persistence works, in time.

For comments and inquiries about the article visit http://www.ucreative.com

About The Author

Florie Lyn Masarate got the flair for reading and writing when she received a subscription of the school newsletter in kindergarten. She got her first article published on that same newsletter in the third grade.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 03

by Florie Lyn Masarate

Flea Marketing Lessons

Flea Marketing Lessons

by: David Leonhardt

A few days ago, I was signing copies of my book – Climb Your Stairway to Heaven: the 9 habits of maximum happiness – at the flea market. Nobody expects an author to sign books at a flea market. Some people sell a few wornover books, but authors just don’t do book signings at flea markets. Especially not books about finding happiness.

Iกve never been afraid to be different, to take the road less traveled, to wander off the beaten path and run gleefully right over a cliff. Fortunately for me, the flea market is on low ground and I had the chance to learn a few things just watching people.

Pop Quiz: Is it best to wedge your booth between other booths piled with junk, where nobody even notices you are there? Or is it better to have a booth out in the open away from the clutter, where people can easily see you and get to your booth?

I learned the hard way. My booth was out in the open away from the clutter, where people could easily pick up speed and zoom right past. (But I was right next to a support beam, so at least I knew the roof wouldn’t cave in on me.)

Apparently, the sales process at the flea market works like this:

Step one, some fool actually stops to look at a toasteroven with only three coils missing, partially blocking the aisle.

Step two, a traffic jam ensues as more people come along and completely block the aisle.

Step three, to relieve their boredom, they buy ‘treasuresก they would gladly have passed by if they could just have picked up enough momentum to keep walking. Isn’t that a lot like how กgurusก sell stuff on the Internet?

Step four, they go home and brag about their great กfindก and how it cost them almost 14 cents less than any of the other กHappiness is surviving your own cookingก commemorative plaques in their collection.

I leaned my second lesson. To sell anything, you have to slow people down. So I stood in front of my booth.

กFree bookmark, sir?ก

Sir hesitates, then takes the bookmark.

กIt features the nine habits of maximum happiness.ก

Sir studies the bookmark.

กSame habits as in my book right here.ก

Sir looks up at the display for a moment. Then he starts moving again, staring down at the bookmark, mumbling something under his breath and BANG! hits the support beam. กOoh,ก I thought. กA few thousand more times and that beam might not hold. That could be dangerous.ก

Fortunately, I decided to relocate, standing with my back to the beam so people would pass safely to one side. Don’t kill your customers: a brilliant idea whose time had come. I learned my third lesson after running through just 34 first aid kits.

I went through the same routine with Broadeyed Lady and her husband, except that she missed the beam. She continued walking as she read the 9 habits of happiness on the bookmark, then suddenly slapped it against her husbandกs chest. กHere. Read this,ก she commanded.

Ouch. Thatกs gotta hurt. Good thing I was giving away bookmarks and not paperweights.

I thought Broadeyed Lady was a unique character, until Hunched Old Lady did the same thing. And so did Spunky Crewcut Girl. And Grizzly Guy, too. I guess itกs easy to expect others to change, rather than ourselves.

In fairness, few people used my happiness bookmark as a domestic weapon, a fact the judge took into consideration later that day. He even commended me for not giving away paperweights.

But he did order me to recount, without looking at my notes, the lessons I had learned watching people at the flea market. Letกs see …

Slow down, or youกll never spend your kidsก inheritance on priceless knick knacks.

Grab peopleกs attention or they will just whiz by.

Don’t kill your customers

Don’t expect people to change for you, even if you do wield a loaded bookmark.

About The Author

The author is David Leonhardt, The Happy Guy. To receive his satirical happiness column weekly in your inbox, sign up at http://TheHappyGuy.com/positivethinkingfreeezine.html or read more columns at http://TheHappyGuy.com/selfactualizationarticles.html. Visit his home page กFinding Happiness and Selfactualizationก at http://TheHappyGuy.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on September 10, 2003

by David Leonhardt

A TimeSaving Programming Tactic that Doesn’t Work

A TimeSaving Programming Tactic that Doesn’t Work

by: V. Berba Velasco Jr., Ph.D.

Let’s say that you have a software project that’s under severe time pressure. Let’s say that this deadline is so tight that you already know it will involve many late nights of black coffee and frenetic programming. What can you do to make this process go faster?

I honestly don’t know, since the correct answer will depend on one’s individual circumstances. However, I can tell you how many programmers do respond under such circumstances. They decide to save time by skipping over the software planning and design phase, and immediately start coding away.

To an inexperienced or otherwise undisciplined programmer, this seems to make sense. After all, the finished product is what truly matters, right? The customer doesn’t care about flowcharts, class diagrams or software architectures. All they want is something that works.

It seems to make sense, but it’s a foolhardy approach. That way lies madness. We’ve all heard that an ounce of planning is worth a pound of cure, but in the world of software development, this adage is often forgotten.

If a real estate developer needs to get a house built quickly, does he save time by skipping over the architectural design phase? Does he decide to dispense with blueprints, and just start laying down concrete? Of course not. He knows that the results would be chaotic, and that work will progress more slowly without careful forethought and a concrete plan.

Yet that’s the approach that many people take when it comes to software. They decide to just start coding away, thinking that this makes the software development process more efficient. On fairly simple projects, this might work. On anything of moderate complexity though, such an approach is doomed to fail. Sure, you may save time at first. However, without a concrete software plan and a carefully considered design, problems are bound to catch up with you before long. Many of these problems won’t become clear until the testing phase comes around, and by then, it may be too late.

Sadly, such reckless thinking is often encouraged in the corporate world. Due to time constraints, a misguided manager may instruct his team to skip over the design work and just start hacking away. This makes the team seem focused and productive, but this strategy can wreak havoc on the project timeline. What’s more, the resultant code is often a tangled, poorly documented, chaotic mess. If this software must be maintained for years to come, then you have a recipe for disaster.

Mind you, I’m not saying that an elaborate design is always necessary. If time is short, then one might not have the luxury of an intricate software plan with exhaustive design documentation. However, one should at least have a general software architecture laid out—one which is detailed enough to make the software development process smoother and easier. Programmers rarely err on the side of overplanning, but they frequently fall into the trap of insufficient design detail. Don’t make this mistake, if you really want to save time.

About The Author

V. Berba Velasco Jr. is proud to work as a senior electrical and software engineer at Cellular Technology Ltd (http://www.immunospot.com, http://www.elispotanalyzers.de, http://www.elispot.cn) a biotechnology company that prides itself on its standards of excellence.

This article was posted on November 17, 2004

by V. Berba Velasco Jr., Ph.D.

Top 10 Ways To Irritate Your Visitors

Top 10 Ways To Irritate Your Visitors

by: Marc Singer

Letกs face it. It is really hard to come up with new ways to fully irritate visitors to your site.

I thought I would share some ways that I have found to irritate visitors and drive them away, thereby saving you money on your hosting bills. These tips are not in order according to their effectiveness, however #1 is by far the most effective. For 100% effectiveness, use any three of these techniques.

1. Install a script to disable everyoneกs right mouse click button. When someone tries to rightclick, be sure to pop up a really insulting warning that accuses them of trying to steal your secret HTML code. Disabling the right click button will allow you to:

Keep the visitor from bookmarking your site

Keep the visitor from using the forward and back browser functions

Keep the visitor from opening your links in a new window

Keep the visitor from stopping a slow loading or hung page

Keep the visitor from using the Reload function to correct a display problem

Keep the visitor from printing your secret content

Keep the visitor from using such illegal tools as the Google site information tool

Admittedly the visitors can do all of these things with the buttons at the top of the browser, but maybe they won’t know that and simply go away as you intended when you disabled their dangerous rightclick button.

2. Create a really long page then starts playing your favorite song and put the stop and volume controls at the very bottom of the page. This will make sure they do one of the following:

Listen to the entire song all the way through 5 times while reading your content, which proves them worthy of experiencing your site

Try desperately to find the Stop button

Go somewhere else to stop the song from playing.

3. Decide in advance what screen resolution your visitors must use in order to see your pages. It is absolutely a great way to drive them off when they have to scroll from side to side to read sentences of information. You can make this 100% effective by making your pages so wide that no monitor can display it.

4. The really professional irritator will not settle for just one obscure browser plugin. Go for the gold. Use several bloated plugins that no one has already installed. This should drive away all newbies because they usually have no idea how to install even one plugin, much less three. Experienced surfers will be glad to spend 20 minutes installing plugins to view your unique content.

5. When the visitor arrives at your site, be sure to pop up at least two ads behind their browser window and a minimum of two ads in front of their window. This will give them lots of options in where to go now that they have been sufficiently irritated to desire to leave right away. Even more important is the way you treat the occasional hard case that actually stays on your site after all of your efforts. When they leave, remind them to never return.

Start popping up windows all over their monitor with windows that multiply every time they try to close them.

6. Sign up to use a really slowloading hit counter and put the button inside of a TABLE so that nothing appears until the hitcounter responds. This is possibly the best way to keep visitors from stealing from you as it keeps them from even reading your content and possibly typing it into their site from memory. For this to work reliably, you must avoid putting the height and width into the call for the hit counter graphic. You can improve the effectiveness of this technique by inserting not only a hit counter button, but a long string of banner exchange banners.

7. For the occasional visitor that inadvertently makes their way to your ezine subscription form, fear not. All is not lost. You can still rid yourself of them by asking lots and lots of personal questions. Don’t just ask for their email address. Ask for their mailing address, phone number, sex, age, hobbies, religion, race and some other things best not discussed here. This technique works equally well when applied to your order forms and minimizes your trip to the UPS office to ship products.

8. Splash page. You gotta have a Splash Page. Lots of slow loading animation. If you can combine this with the requirement to download another obscure plugin, youกll have hit a home run. Iกm especially impressed by the many sites that have upped the ante to include two splash pages before you ever get to even the first word of content. Stunning! Brilliant!

9. Reconfigure the visitorกs browser window. This will drive them crazy! People hate it when you run a script on your pages that expands the userกs browser window to fill the entire screen and then do away with all of the browser Toolbar features such as the Navigation Toolbar and the Location Toolbar,

10 Finally, an oldie but goodie. Make your background dark and your text just a shade or two brighter. This makes it impossible to read your text and will rid you of visitors before they have a chance to clog up you server logs. If this is not possible on your site, use the alternate technique of putting most of your content in PDF files so that the visitor has to download them and launch another application. Very effective.

Did I mention that all of these cool ways to irritate visitors work even better at driving away the people reviewing your site for places like Yahoo, LookSmart and other directories to whom youกve paid large sums of money to review your site and add it to their directory?

About The Author

Marc Oswald Singer

CEO WSP Advertising Inc.

http://www.wspromotion.com/

This article was posted on September 06, 2004

by Marc Singer

6 tips for Keeping Aurora Away from your computer.

6 tips for Keeping Aurora Away from your computer… and 1 tip to Fix it if Aurora has Gotten You

by: Zach Keyer

1. Stay away from nonstandard search engines… trust google.com and yahoo.com, all else be wary!

2. Do not download unknown files to your computer whether sent via an email stranger or a popup asking permission to download… กJust Say NOก

3. If you borrow someoneกs floppy disk or CD with word documents or web pages and .EXE files… SCAN it with a virus scanner before opening anything on the disk.

5. Run an antivirus scanner weekly.. and preferably have one running 247 on your computer in the background

6. Install microsoft AntiSpy… it alrets you to any attempt to download and install software that is being done behind the scenes

Final Tip:

Now If Aurora already has infested your computer, You are getting popups and all kinds of problems… you want to go to: http://www.reikihealingstories.com/Aurora_no_more.htm

And Youกll see the 3minute fix that finally worked for me.

About The Author

Zach Keyer

Brought To You By: http://www.reikihealingstories.com/Aurora_no_more.htm

Hater of Aurora and other Computer Viruses

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 05

by Zach Keyer

6 Things I Know About Postcards That You Don’t

6 Things I Know About Postcards That You Don’t

by: Joy Gendusa

In my plethora of experience tucked away between these ears, I have managed to cull out for you what I consider the ขbest of the bestข – in other words, I took the most proven details about postcards that were significant to you starting a postcard campaign and really winning at it. So here goes the most incisive higlights about postcards.

1) I know that a postcard is better than something in an envelope.

For many reasons, the main one being, in an envelope you can’t make your potential customer see your message.

People are fast. We see and read very quickly – actually much more quickly than we even realize.. Think about yourself – how fast do you go through your mail and process out what you want to keep and what you don’t want to keep? Pretty darn fast. It takes fractions of seconds to go through and process in your mind ขbill, bill, advertisement, bill, advertisement, letter…ข And it also takes fractions of seconds to decide whether you are even going to bother giving more attention to the pieces that you designated as advertisements.

With a postcard, even if they throw it away, they already saw your message regardless of whether they think they did or not. They saw it enough to throw it away, didn’t they?

And the next time they get that same postcard in the mail, they see it again as they throw it in the trash.

Let’s face it junk mail gets thrown away. And postcards are junk mail to a lot of people.

Although they may be junk mail, postcards get read no matter what – even if thrown away without reading them, they get seen. It’s like the phoenix rising up from the ashes.

2) I know that if you are not doing repeat mail with your postcards you are flushing your money down the toilet.

Repeat mailings cannot be repeated enough. DO REPEAT MAILINGS! DO REPEAT MAILINGS! DO REPEAT MAILINGS! A one shot in the dark postcard mailing is not going to change your business, your bottom line, your life or your anything.

The long and the short of it is, if you are not up to confronting that you need to do a campaign then don’t bother being in business. Sorry if I sound a bit harsh!

3) I know that the best price is not best necessarily the best postcard.

The cheapest is not necessarily the best. The old adage ขyou get what you pay forข applies here. Get whatever potential postcard company you interview to send you samples. Make sure the postcard is a very good, quality, stiff card that catches your attention. Get them to give you customer references. Call those references and find out what they think of that company’s service, product, etc.

There is a lot of behindthescenes work that goes into getting your postcard done right. If they screw up printing, if they don’t get your mailing out on deadline, etc. – doing it dirt cheap might not mean getting the quality service you need or want.

4) I know that although most people, if surveyed, say they like full color on both sides, the truth is black on white on the back of the postcard gets a better response. Why? Because full color on both sides is confusing. On the other hand, if you have a very aesthetic, pleasingtotheeye front with a great headline you just want to turn that postcard over and simply get the message on the back. You want good eye trail.

Eye trail is where your eye goes when you look at the postcard. You can have good eye trail with full color on both sides – but it has to be done correctly. Usually when you give people a choice to do full color on both sides they go overboard and the creative juices start flying, not flowing, flying with, ขWOW!!! full color on both sides?!!ข And they make it too busy. You don’t want it to be dispersing – you want it to go like a trail. Have a start, a middle and an end.

Example:

Did YOU Notice this Postcard?

Your Customers Will Notice Yours Too!

5000 Full Color

Superglossy postcards

for only

$389

Look at it from the customer viewpoint – really look at it from their viewpoint and you can see what I mean by eye trail.

5) I know that you should promote only one thing at a time on your postcard.

Even if you sell lots of different products, you only promote one of them. It is fine to mention them on the back of the postcard bullet pointed. But your main focus on the front of your postcard needs to be one product, service, item, what have you – just one thing.

Say you have a flooring store and a furniture showroom in the back. Your postcard should only talk about flooring. It is not that people who are looking for flooring are not also looking for furniture – it’s just too much information on the front of postcard.

The purpose of a postcard is to get your prospect interested with one thing. You can put on the back as just a mention: ขWe also have a giant showroom full of furniture.ข

But on the front – one item! ONE ITEM!

If a company sells hot tubs, aboveground pools and jungle gyms they need to pick the one that gives them the most income and make their postcard about that.

6) And I know that a person could grow a company with no other marketing media.

With postcards alone, one could take a company from zero to over a million bucks in revenue or more. How do I know? Because I did it.

We mailed postcards every single week, and the more postcards we mailed out, the more we grew. Yes, it is good to diversify and as we grew and became more successful and had more money to try other media, we did. Some we kept and some we nixed. Postcards are a staple that works no matter what.

These six points of postcard marketing data are proven techniques of making your postcards WOW your prospective clients while at the same time being faithful to the timehonored methods that have proven to get more bang for your buck. These tips are what will put your postcard in a class all by itself.

About The Author

Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998; her only assets a computer and a phone. In 2004 the company did close to $9 million in sales and employs over 60 persons. She knows so much about postcards because that is the only marketing medium she used to grow her company in its first few years. She attributes her explosive growth to her ability to choose incredible staff and her innate marketing savvy. Now she’s sharing her marketing secrets with others. For more free marketing advice, visit her website at www.postcardmania.com

This article was posted on March 15

by Joy Gendusa

Never Underestimate the Value of Giving Things Awa

Never Underestimate the Value of Giving Things Away

by: Colin Plant

I remember as kid hearing these words on a regular basis. In fact this philosophy was reenforced so much by my parents in my younger years that it has become a part of who I am today. But, Iกm also a businessperson who enjoys earning a living, and in business, our primary goal is to maximize profits. So we have what appears to be an obvious conflict here. How does one remain profitable, let alone increase profit levels if they’re giving things away?

This really isn’t a new concept. In the traditional business world itกs been done for years. It usually comes in one of two forms or a combination of both. The first is giveaways that are used to lure customers into making a purchase or as thinly veiled advertisements. Weกve all seen these tactics. Contests you can win if you purchase a product, free Tupperware for applying for a department store credit card, a pen or a mug for every $20.00 of gasoline from a particular service center. You get the idea. Weกve also seen large companies and wealthy business owners throw a lot of money and/or resources at กgood causesก. Iกm sure that some genuinely do this for the betterment of society. The skeptic in me though suspects that often this philanthropy is nothing more than an attempt to buy credibility and respect as opposed to earning it.

So how does all of this apply to online business and how is a small online businessperson able to capitalize on it? Actually, when we look at the online world we don’t have to look very far to realize the potential value of giving things away. In fact much of the technology we use online was กgivenก to us by a few brilliant people who were more interested in sharing their inventions and ideas with the world than becoming millionaires. It should be noted that many of these people as a result of their efforts have in time done very well for themselves. They have earned a great deal of respect, a loyal following and incomes to match as a nice little bonus. Indeed on the Internet today there exists an entire culture of people with this mindset. Why do they do it? Why give it away for free? Are they crazy? The individual reasons are as abundant as the number of individuals but they all share one common thing. An understanding that by providing value to people, they will receive value in return. It may be money, fame, additional resources to continue with projects, respect or simply the feeling of accomplishment that comes with a job well done. Not so crazy…and thereกs a reason why quite a few fortune 500 companies are embracing the philosophies of the open source software movement. The business world can learn a lot from these ideas.

However, there has to be a balance when it comes to business. If you are in a position where you don’t need to worry about profits and don’t have any expectation of future ROI, fine. Give everything away and someday you may very well be rewarded. Unfortunately there is realty to contend with! The reality is that we are here to make money. So what can you give that won’t hurt your profit margin? Lots of things! If you’re really smart about you will actually be able to boost your profit margin considerably.

Consider all of the things you have in your ‘inventory’ of assets. This includes tangible items like cash on hand, products, etc. It also includes such intangible items (those that are more difficult to assess a finite value to) as knowledge, skills, time and the like. Now think about which of those you can กaffordก to sacrifice a little of.

Some people will take the easy route and decide that they will give away a tangible item (a product sample, a huge discount or a cash reward for example) as a way of enticing customers to purchase more. Now this in itself is not a bad thing. Itกs better than nothing. Remember the big department stores with their credit card applications? It must work. Right? Yes and no. It does have the desired affect in a limited way, but overall is a very short sighted approach. It provides an immediate payoff for both the business and the customer, but has no lasting value for either and therefore must be repeated over and over to achieve a lasting result. A much better option is to come up with something that will not only provide a payoff for both parties, but also build longterm value.

So what is value, why is it important, and how do you provide and receive it? The dictionary deals with the term as it applies to business and finance in several ways. The definition I like is กworth in usefulness or importance to the possessorก. In a typical business transaction this is easy. You provide goods or service (transfer possession) which your customers find useful or important and they in return provide you with a payment (usually money) which you find useful and important. But we’re talking about giving things away here so how do you receive your value? The answer is really simple. You build your value (that is the value you wish to receive) into your giveaway. Curiously, itกs the intangible assets that are best suited to this.

Let me give you an example. Ken Evoy is very well respected in the online marketing world and is also a master at maximizing profits by giving things away. His company, SiteSell.com specializes in selling books, courses and software aimed at teaching people about ecommerce and how to be successful with it. In addition to the products he sells online, his web sites are a virtual treasure trove of free information on the subject. Now this may sound counter productive. I mean, why invest all of these resources in developing top quality products to sell and then invest more in developing similar things to give away for free? To understand this we need to look at Kenกs business model. Most of his sales are generated though his 5 Pillar affiliate program (5PP). This free information acts as training material for his affiliates around the world. Given the quality of the material, (it genuinely has real value) it helps his affiliates become successful at what they do. This in turn drives sales to Kenกs business. Hereกs the neat thing about it all. Access to this information is not restricted to just 5PP affiliates, but is available to anyone. Why would you give out information to just anyone, who could then take his or her new found knowledge to benefit the competition? Itกs a risk you take I suppose. I suspect that Ken has calculated this risk and realized the insignificance of it. The truth is that after reading through some of the free courses offered, many people will end up becoming one of Kenกs affiliates. There are a few reasons for this. The material while being very neutral (not a sales pitch at all) in content is well branded throughout. This is a very subtle method of advertising. Ken writes this information himself and not only is he a respected expert, but he writes in a style that is very personable and genuine. One can’t help but leave with a certain level of respect and loyalty towards him. Further to that, Iกm sure that some people choose to purchase additional products based on their experience with the free กsamplesก. So now, not only does Ken possibly acquire new customers, he also develops loyal affiliate partners for his business. As a bonus these new affiliates are already positioned to be successful having acquired much of the necessary knowledge. As you can see, Ken wins from every angle. And as for the other side (the customer)? None of this would work if the free กgiveawayก weren’t valuable in the first place. Theyกve already gained กusefulness and importanceก from the knowledge that was shared with them. They also have a real possibly of gaining more in the future in tangible ways by joining the Kenกs business as an affiliate. This is building value into the free offering at itกs finest.

Now thatกs great for Ken with his expertise and years of experience, but what about the rest of us. I actually had an opportunity to test the theory of giving things away when I first started www.AtHomeBusinessNetwork.com. I had just put the web site up and was moving into the phase of actively marketing it. Anyone who has ever done this knows how tedious it can be and how long it can take to see any measurable results. I had come across www.emoneyreport.com recently and it had intrigued me. Firstly, because it was obvious that it was still a very new web site and secondly, at first appearance, it seemed that it was trying to accomplish much the same thing as I was. That would make us direct competitors, right?. After all we are both trying to generate revenue from the same sources and tap into the same traffic. I put all that aside, I came up with a list of complementary items that they offered that I didn’t and vice versa. I then composed a well thought out email to the owners of the other web site outlining how I felt that we could complement each otherกs services. I explained my belief that we could help each otherกs web sites gain traffic and popularity by referring visitors to each other and thus capitalizing on each otherกs marketing efforts. I further went on to let them know that I had a prominent banner placement on my web site which was currently under ustilised. I informed them that I would be more than happy to place a banner for their web site in that location for a short time. All for free and with no strings attached of course. Was it a bit of a gamble? You bet, but I believe that people are usually pretty fairminded and I wasn’t disappointed this time. Within hours, I received a reply to my email which was way above anything I could have expected. Not only where the owners of the other web site thrilled with my proposal, they had already reciprocated the favor by giving me frontpage prominence on their web site. Traffic although still small, tripled for me overnight! It also looks like we will have a prosperous relationship with each other in the coming months or years through mutual cooperation. Not bad considering many would consider us to be competitors. The value in this case was for both of us in the form of less competition, the sharing of ideas and information, added value for our respective visitors, increased traffic and consequently revenue… and this is just the beginning. All for being polite and offering something for free!

If you take the right approach, there can be real value for your business in giving things away. You only need to evaluate your needs, those of your customers and apply a little creativity and long term thinking towards your goals. Build your own value into your offering and go for it.

Now go out and give something away! You may be surprised at what can happen.

About The Author

Colin Plant is the owner and administrator of athomebusinessnetwork.com which is an online resource and community site for people who have an interest in developing and running successful online home based businesses. He is also the principal of Concept Dynamics Interactive, a full service web design and multimedia firm.

http://www.AtHomeBusinessNetwork.com

http://www.conceptdynamics.ca

This article was posted on August 23, 2005

by Colin Plant

The Number One Tried and Tested Method For Explodi

The Number One Tried and Tested Method For Exploding Your Ezine Subscriptions

by: Tracey Meagher

We all know how cagey and stubborn prospects can be and we know that only a tiny percentage will buy our products the first time they see them. We all know that the only way to convince savvy prospects to buy is by building trust with them and that the single most effective way of building trust is by getting our visitors to subscribe to our newsletters.

So, if signing up prospects to our newsletter is so vital to making sales why do most of us keep our subscription invitations tucked away in the margins of our websites where they can very easily be overlooked or ignored. And if signing up prospects is so vital to our sales why do we place our invitations to sign in those annoying popups that prospects want to close before theyกve even read the fantastic deal we’re trying to offer them!

If you’re serious about exploding your newsletter subscriptions and Iกm mean increasing them by up to 400%, read on. The method Iกm about to tell you is so simple and easy to implement youกll be amazed that you hadn’t thought of it yourself before.

To achieve the kind of subscriptions that Internet business people dream of, youกll need to take two simple steps. First, you need to increase the amount of real estate on your site dedicated to capturing visitors and no, I don’t mean creating bigger, inyourface subscription boxes. The second thing you need to do is entice visitors to sign up by harnessing the power of audio. I can already hear the gasps but with so many easy to use tools available right now, adding audio to your site is nothing to get uptight about!

Iกll explain what I mean! Tucking your subscription box away in the corner of you sites forces your single most effective sales tools to compete for your visitorกs attention with all the other information you have on your site, links, banners, ads and content! Unfortunately, the competition can prove stiff and you don’t always succeed in grabbing the attention you require. Visitors get ready to click away from your site without having even noticed the invitation to subscribe. When this happens, you might implement your backup plan, the exit popup. In a last bid effort you try to entice users to subscribe before they leave by throwing a popup at them. Did you know that 80% of Internet users find popupกs annoying and that last thing you want is a visitor leaving your site experiencing a negative emotion!

What you need to do is dedicate your landing page to subscription signups. It may sound a little crazy but if you place a subscription invitation on your homepage and combine this with a compelling audio message describing to your visitors all the great stuff they will receive when they sign up to your newsletter, youกll find people warming to you quicker than you ever thought possible.

Recently, I came across an example of this technique done to perfection on Paul Colganกs website. Paul is the Affiliate Marketing Guy. When landing on the homepage of Paulกs website, you are greeted with a personal audio message from Pual explaining the two types of newsletters he offers and the benefits of signing up to each. His message is not at all pushy. Itกs informative and very compelling. Using an audio message on the homepage personalises Paulกs site in a way that can’t be with any other technique. Without the audio, Paulกs invitation on the homepage to sign up to his newsletters would seem empty and many would click away before entering the site. With the audio Paul has transformed his landing page into a subscription magnet.

Go on … give it a try for yourself!

About The Author

Tracey Meagher is the founder of QuickandEasy Audio, a website that reviews all the latest resources and tools available for adding audio to your website. Visit www.quickandeasyaudio.com to receive free audio resources that will help you add audio to your website in less than 60 minutes!

This article may be reproduced in its entirety only if unaltered and the resource box is included.

[email protected]

This article was posted on April 26

by Tracey Meagher

Computer In The Shop? What Do You Do Now?

Computer In The Shop? What Do You Do Now?

by: Janice D. Byer, MVA

Have you ever had one of those days when you just feel like something is missing? … something just doesn’t feel right… like you should be doing something but you can’t remember what?

Well, I had one of those days recently… my computer was in the shop for a minor repair. Ahhhhh! What was I going to do?

Ok, so I planned to take my computer in for the repair. Then I would go shopping for my daughter’s birthday present and have lunch with my husband. But, that still left half a day. No problem. That was taken care of as my phone continued to ring even without my computer there. But, the whole time I felt like something was missing.

Why are we so dependent on our computers? Why do our routines feel completely out of whack if we don’t have our trusty keyboard and mouse?

In today’s high tech society, a computer is a common site in most homes and nearly all businesses. Everyone and his brother has access to these electronic lifelines and most depend on them to help run their lives smoothly.

For any entrepreneur who relies on the virtual work for business, when our computers are unavailable, we can be at a loss as to what we can do. So, the following is just a few ideas of what we can do during the time that you would normally be on your computer.

1. Get out of your office!

And, if your office is in the house, get out of the house. Take advantage of the time to separate yourself from your work. It may be hard to leave work behind but, for entrepreneurs who generally are dealing with all the aspects of keeping a business running smoothly, a few hours away from the office can help recharge the batteries.

2. Run some errands.

Not only will this help by getting you out of your office but you can get some of those odd jobs done that have been sitting on the back burner.

3. Spend some quality time with your family.

Now is the time to get out with your partner and/or kids, if they are not at work or at school. Go for a walk or bike ride; have a swim; or make a picnic. Relax & enjoy the company of your loved ones.

4. Clean up your office.

Now is the perfect time to organize all the piles of paper on your desk and file them away. You never know what you will find under there and how great it will be to see the nice wood that your desk is made of again.

5. Write an article.

Wild guess when I wrote this article? You guessed it… I sat in my comfortable rocking chair, watched my daughter play, and jotted down my thoughts.

6. Catch up on phone calls.

You know all those quotations that you have been sending out? Now is the time to followup on them. Or, have you been wanting to contact someone just because? Without the distraction of your ขyou have mailข dinger going off, make that call.

7. Give your home a little spring clean.

Those dust bunnies have been around long enough. It’s time to send them packing. Cleaning cannot only separate you from your daily work routine, the end result is great! Until the kids get back home.

8. Do something nice for yourself.

Have a long soak in the tub but keep that phone away from the edge of the tub. This may be hard to do because we always want to be there for our clients if they call. But you deserve a break every once in a while to help recharge your batteries.

These are just a few ideas to help you stay productive, in one form or another, while you are without your computer.

But, one thing to remember if you are going to be unavailable for any length of time… advise your clients and contacts of your down time. Send an email to all of them advising them that you will be out of the office or just without a computer for a few days. This way, should they happen to send an email to you for whatever reason, they will know why you didn’t respond to them right away.

About The Author

Janice Byer is a certified Master Virtual Assistant and owner of DocuType Administrative & Web Design Services (http://www.docutype.net). See this and other articles on her website.

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 18, 2002

by Janice D. Byer, MVA

Home Based Business Article Why Most People Have

Home Based Business Article Why Most People Have Business Success Backwards.

by: Nick A. James

Why most people have business success backwards, and therefore most people aren’t successful.

Success and wealth are crazy things. You must first give something away for them to be obtained. It is like planting a seed. You must give away or plant that seed before it grows and multiples This sounds absolutely crazy. Most people think how can I have wealth and success if I give away the little that I have? After all I don’t have much, therefore I must hang on to it if I ever want to have something.

Hereกs what the truly successful have found out they only achieved enormous success after they learned to give even more of themselves. The more they gave the more they received back. This is the philosophy too many people have and it is the philosophy of those who remain poor. For two much of my own life I had this philosophy. Most people can’t be blamed for having this way of thinking, as the secrets of success aren’t typically taught. They must be sought out.

First we must understand what wealth is, wealth is not money. Money is only paper. Ask a guy stranded on a desert island with 50 million dollars how much that money is worth. Not very much. Material wealth is only the items we can purchase with that money cars, TVกs, vacations, houses, you get the idea. So in this frame something of value (the car for example) must be produced for us to be able to use it. Thus the more value that a person can produce (cars, TVกs, computers, even information and time) the more valuable you become.

Think of it this way, if you were the only person who could do a very valuable task that many people wanted how wealthy would you be? Extremely to say the least. But that is all just background information.

Here is why people have success backwards especially in the area of sales and marketing. They mistakenly go about trying to sell their product or service, thinking people will want to buy from them. Instead of thinking how can I be of value to others. How can I give away my value so I receive even more in return.

Here is where it really gets crazy. We already said we must give away our value to others to obtain wealth, and the more value we are able to give to others the more wealth that will come back to us.

Think of it like this.

A doctor goes to school for many years to become a doctor. He gives countless hours of his time to you to learn to become a doctor. Many doctors will study/work 4000 hours per year times 10 years = 40,000 hours plus many hundreds of thousands of dollars in money spent on education. So when you go to the doctor he has 40,000 hours invested in you in a sense, as you are the only one he is dealing with at this time. For which he might charge you $100. Even if you were to go to him for $40,000 worth of services in your lifetime where can you get this kind of value for $1 an hour and he even pays his own education cost out of his pocket. The same thing can be said of a famous athlete, or musician, or actor, etc. who spends countless thousands of hours of practice perfecting their craft before you spent $15 on a CD or bought a ticket, etc. from them.

Think of someone like Bill Gates and Microsoft. He sells you a computer operating system like Windows, which has literally thousand of hours of development time in it, to you for $129. What an incredible bargain this is, somebody spends millions of dollars and thousands of hours to develop a product that you want for which you get for only $129. What a steal.

The point is in all of these cases these people had the vision of giving away their talents (isn’t our wealth really what we have the capability to earn with our talents), before they expected to receive anything in return. And yet in each of these cases the more value they were able to give away to people the more wealth they got back in return.

The Bible talks about the principal of tithing. God says give me 10 percent of what you can do and Iกll give you much more in return. God also says you can’t out give him. I think he must see it as like a contest. He must be thinking, you think you are a big giver. กCheck this out, look what Iกm going to give you in return, try to top this.ก

The point is in all of these cases people first gave of themselves and then they received much more in return. And yet we too often as sales people simply go out and try to sell somebody on our product or service. And we wonder why the customer doesn’t buy from us.

Letกs look at this from the customerกs perspective

We’re saying, ‘this is a great product.ก They’re thinking, กIกm skeptical whatกs so great about it?ก

We’re saying, ‘this product will make your life easier.ก They’re thinking, กOkay, but I can get the same product somewhere else why should I buy from you?ก

We’re saying, กYou need our product or service.ก They’re thinking, กWhy, Iกve gotten along okay without it this long.ก

We’re saying, กIn so many words and body language, I need you to buy this from me.ก They’re thinking, กYou’re bugging me, I don’t want to buy your product, go away.ก

People have a built in radar that detects when they think you’re trying to sell them something, and when their radar detects this it automatically raises this builtin defense barrier to protect them from buying from you. Some sales people are so obnoxious that people will actually lower this barrier and buy from the sales person to get him to go away. The pain of dealing with them was greater than the pain of buying.

But theyกll never buy again from these sales people. The remarkably successful people first find ways to be of value first, then people will want what they have because they sense they are getting back more in return. What they are getting is a bargain.

Having said all this, value like beauty is really in the eyes of the beholder. You don’t have to become a doctor, athlete, or actor to be of value to others. Learn what people want and simply give it to them. There are certain basic human emotions that everyone wants but few provide them. So if you are one of the few who learn to give people these things doesn’t this make you valuable to them? Doesn’t this make people want to do business with you because you are providing greater value? Sure it does.

Here is a list of some of the things that people desire:

Make someone feel important, find someway to make them feel that they have a special way of doing something. Get them to talk about themselves. Find out something that they may have accomplished, no matter how small it may seem. And ask them to tell you about how they were able to accomplish this task. They will love telling you about it. You have to remember that to them their favorite topic is themselves.

The point is if you show genuine interest in them you are showing interest in their favorite topic. Automatically they drop their guard and will even discuss sales with you because, now you become more of a trusted friend you are not just a sales person. But it can’t be phony interest. People will see through that.

By showing interest in them you are providing value to them. And remember everyone truly is special. Don’t ever judge someone by appearance by thinking, ‘they can’t help me, no need to be nice to them.ก If you do this eventually other people will see this in you and think, กHe is such a phony, he is only acting like this with me to get my business. He doesn’t really care about me, only my money.ก

The point is people who really do want to provide others with value will develop an attitude of caring. When you show people you care you can’t help but be rewarded and you mind will become conditioned to liking this caring and being of value to others as it will come to enjoy the associated rewards.

In this regard we are almost like trained animals. Animal trainers get animals to do the things they want by rewarding them when they do good and withholding rewards for incorrect behavior. Like animals don’t we like doing things for which we receive rewards, of course we do.

Other tips I have found useful.

Smile and be courteous remember what there is very little of, people cherish and crave it.

I know this is hard and I have done it but please resist the urge to oneup or outdo the other person. Let them have the high ground. If they tell you about their weeklong Caribbean cruise resist the urge to blurt in about your 2 week Caribbean cruise. You won’t score any points doing this. Let them have the glory.

And one last point, you don’t have to be world famous and have the secrets of life to give value to others. Remember most people have it backwards and are out just trying to sell others instead of offering them value.

In the land of the blind, the one eyeกd man is king. People always want to buy value and if you offer value you will never have a shortage of customers.

About The Author

Nick A. James offers informative tips and information on nutrition, health and working from home. His many years of Internet Marketing expertise puts him in unique postion to help others starting a home business. For free newsletter, free reports and amazing info contact him at: http://www.healthgojijuice.com.

This article was posted on April 16, 2005

by Nick A. James