What is Google AdSense?

What is Google AdSense?

by: Jakob Jelling

In the mid 1990’s websites used to earn income by receiving money from advertisers by publishing or allowing companies to deploy a banner ad campaign on your website. Usually these banners would be brilliantly designed to catch the eye of the consumer along with a short message. The website in turn would receive a tiny profit from a clickthrough, which was when a customer actually clicked on the banner and went into the website and purchased the product. This was considered trafficdriven income. It was the industry standard until Google came along.

Google has since revolutionized the clickthrough market by using an innovative approach to advertising, Google AdSense. The beauty behind getting involved with Google now more than any other search engine is due to Google’s straightforward approach to a banner/contentfree home page. You would sign up your website for affiliation with Google and upon approval your site would be given special code to place the targeted ads on your website. Basically saving Google the space and inconvenience of having to deal with banner ads.

You still may be wondering what Google AdSense actually does. AdSense is a program in which you get paid for targeting your readers to another websites product or service.

A click through is measured when someone actually clicks on the hyperlink. Many web sites now have Google AdSense ads employed. Google AdSense uses Google Adwords content and services in a display box that you place strategically on your website. Google Adword customers pay Google a determined amount of money which will be paid to the website from Google. Since the popularity of Google has risen to such prominence, AdSense affiliates can make a nice amount of money should they be able to deploy the Google AdSense box properly on their website.

Other sites like Earthlink and Ask.com also employ the same technologies through click through methodologies. The more people that visit popular sites and see your name or hyperlink associated with a product the better chance your site will be seen. Remember, you will be paid a small amount per click for some websites and much more for others. What determines the amount is how much the Adwords advertiser places on each click.

Advertisers can pay as little as .50 per click in upwards of $5 (even more). Often campaigns are budgeted for a period of time. The amount budgeted will be rationed over a period of days, the less days involved or the higher price per click the higher the ranking. The more traffic you receive will increase the possibility of a sale and a click through fee in your account.

In short, Google’s idea to market itself from the inside out has changed the way websites are doing business. Starting as an AdSense affiliate is a practical approach to making money using one of the hottest tools on the Internet today.

About The Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

This article was posted on August 23, 2004

by Jakob Jelling

Creative Ideas To Profit With Autoresponders

Creative Ideas To Profit With Autoresponders

by: Zamri Nanyan

An interested visitor who has been strolling through your site has finally come to just what she is looking for and is about to make a purchase. Itกs a sunny afternoon, and her cat, who happens to be sitting on the moss under the visitorกs large fiftyyearold snowrose bonsai tree, suddenly jumps down, and the priceless tree topples over.

In the blink of an eye, your visitor exits your site, and your sale is dust unless you have had the foresight to utilize an autoresponder that has captured her email address. If you have installed an autoresponder, you can then followup with her, and in all probability, make the sale when the poor woman has finished repotting her precious bonsai.

Autoresponders are remarkable, versatile programs that do so much more than just automatically answer your email. Here are a few ideas that will help you to creatively and productively use your autoresponder to transform the casual visitor into a profitable customer. Use your autoresponder to:

1. Publish a newsletter. Certain quality autoresponders will manage subscriptions and followup with interested prospects. Your newsletter can keep your visitors informed about your services or products, while building your reputation as a credible expert in your particular business.

2. Publish a newsletter only for your affiliates. Inform them of current sales you are running and of promotional material that your affiliates can use themselves to increase their commissions. Include tips, advice, and techniques that your affiliates can use to successfully go out and promote your business.

3. Write reviews. Cover books, software, music, ebooks, movies, etc., and put each review in an autoresponder. Review your affiliate programs, using a link to your affiliateกs page in your autoresponder.

4. Distribute your articles. Writing and distributing targeted articles is a powerful tool to build your business credibility, bring traffic to your site, and increase your sales potential. If your articles contain valuable information, many editors will print what is known as a resource box for you. A resource box contains your bio and a brief description of your service or product. It can also contain your autoresponder address. Letกs say youกve written fifty articles. Put them on separate autoresponder accounts and create a master list that contains the titles of each article, the autoresponder address, and a brief abstract. Then promote your master list. Additionally, include your publishing guidelines so your affiliates can add their articles to your list, increasing the number of writers who are represented in your article list.

5. Create mailing lists. Inform subscribers to your articles when youกve written new ones that they may want to publish in their own newsletter or website.

6. Automate your sales process. Use an ad to insure repeated exposure of your message, which has been proven to effectively increase sales. In your ad, put your autoresponder address where a visitor will be exposed to numerous marketing materials. This multiplies the chances of converting visitors into customers. For example, if you’re selling a particular product, put testimonials about how spectacular it is on your autoresponder, and add a detailed, enticing description of your product.

7. Distribute advertising. Letกs say you sell advertising on your website or in your newsletter or ezine. Set your autoresponder to send the information about rates and how to place an ad automatically to all prospectsก email addresses. Then have your autoresponder followup. It can also send notification of any special deals you are currently offering.

8. Distribute an email course. Each day, have your autoresponder send out another lesson. Just be sure that each lesson has quality content not a sales pitch. Your content will do the selling for you, and will do it much more effectively. You can include tips centered on a different topic for each lesson, illustrating how your product will benefit the reader. Include the tangible benefits the visitor will reap by purchasing your product. Make sure to include a paragraph or two at the end of each lesson enticing your prospect to consider making a purchase.

9. Automate a reminder about your service or product after a visitor has completed your course. This will increase the possibility of sales from visitors who have taken your course but are dragging their feet about actually making a purchase. You can also use these reminders to promote new products or services, and the products and services of your affiliate programs.

10. Distribute free reports. This gives your visitor an idea of the type of information you can provide and the quality of your product or service. Make sure these reports are not sales letters or you will more than likely lose a potential customer than gain a sale.

11. Create trivia quizzes on your site and place the answers in an autoresponder. Your visitor will then be motivated to request your autoresponder, and you will have a record of the visitorsก email addresses who took your quiz. Or create a contest and have any visitors that enter send their responses to your autoresponder. Your autoresponder can be setup to send them a confirmation of their entry.

12. Offer a trial version of your product. Give your prospects a sample of your ebook, course, software, membership, etc. People who are exposed to a little taste often end up wanting the whole pie. You can also capture their email addresses when you offer them a free trial from your website. Set up your autoresponder to give instructions on how to obtain their free trial, and then make sure to followup to try and close the sale.

13. Link to hidden pages on your autoresponder. For example, a hidden page could be your affiliate page that contains graphics, promotional articles, and text links that interested affiliates can make use of. Inform visitors that they may have free access to your affiliate page by simply requesting your autoresponder. You will then gather a list of visitors who may be interested in becoming your affiliates.

14. Use an autoresponder on your order page. Post a request form for visitors to be notified of special offers or discounts in the future. This creates a very effective mailing list that contains the names of people who are already your customers.

15. Put your links page on your autoresponder. It should contain up to fifty links that would be of particular interest to your visitors. Make sure to add your own promotional copy at the top or bottom of this page.

Now that you have proof that autoresponders can be used creatively, see if you can come up with some brilliant ideas of your own!

About The Author

Zamri Nanyan models a lowcost, highprofit concept to build successful internet businesses, as mentioned at www.LowCostHighProfit.com. He now owns and operates several moneymaking websites from the comfort of his own home. Read more about Zamri Nanyan at www.ZamriNanyan.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 17

by Zamri Nanyan

Testimonials Can Increase Your Web Traffic

Testimonials Can Increase Your Web Traffic

by: Elizabeth McGee

Weกve all seen and read product testimonials. They’re a very valuable tool for merchant sales and can often tip the scales in determining a customerกs decision to buy. But testimonials offer another superb benefit. Itกs the benefit to you and your marketing strategy.

When Iกm on a site offering a product or service I like to click on customer testimonials because they are generally short and easy to read. People typically point out exactly what they like about a product and how they used it to their benefit. Testimonials come from real users, they’re not some ad written by the company.

Now, letกs take the testimonial concept and think about it as a marketing strategy for you and your business.

Website testimonials describe how buyers feel about the products they have purchased and used. If you, as a buyer, offer your testimonial with your name and website address this now becomes a very valuable marketing tool for you. It will expose you and your business to everyone looking at that merchantกs website. If the merchant site happens to be a wellknown site offering a high demand product, this could mean huge exposure for you.

Note that many merchant sites will display your website address but will not put an actual link to it. While itกs ideal to have a link to your site itกs not always necessary. I often investigate sites of testimonial givers whether there is a link attached or not. As long as your website address is displayed, that is good enough.

Testimonials can also double as a great linking strategy as well. If your testimonial includes your link and is displayed on the front page of four or five high ranking merchant sites this can increase your link popularity tremendously. By doing this you have also just eliminated the concern of linking to competitor sites and youกve avoided the hassle of reciprocal linking.

Testimonials don’t only need to be addressed to merchants you buy from. You should also send your testimonials to ezines or free online services that you use. Send them in the form of complimentary notes. Compliment their products or services and describe how you find them useful. Websites interested in boosting sales will often use them and you are much more likely to get printed if you are delivering a compliment.

About The Author

Elizabeth McGee has spent 20 years in the service and support industry. She has moved her expertise to the world wide web helping businesses find trusted tools, enhance customer service, build confidence and increase sales. You can contact Elizabeth at [email protected] or visit her website at http://www.promarketingonline.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on October 20, 2004

by Elizabeth McGee

What Internet Marketers Can Learn From Obvious Ada

What Internet Marketers Can Learn From Obvious Adams

by: Jo Han Mok

A very long time ago, 1916 to be exact, The Saturday Evening Post began publishing a column about a young man named ขObvious Adamsข. Adams was a fictional caricature of a wouldbe advertising man who was so simple, and so guileless, in his thinking that he was brilliant in spite of himself.

The column gained popularity in business circles for its plain wisdom and straightforward advice. The Adams narrative wasn’t merely a ขgood storyข, it was a source of actionable information. Each installment found young Adams facing a new marketing challenge bestowed upon him by his employer. His knack for finding the solutions which hid in plain site earned him his namesake.

The story of Adams was finally published in book form by Robert Updegraff and used as a primer for new advertising executives. Although the text is somewhat quaint, it is a quick, pleasant read and I highly recommend locating a copy for your library.

So, what can you learn from Mr. ขObvious Adamsข? A lot! We will examine and discuss a few choice excerpts from the work, and reveal their application to your every day marketing challenges.

The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Oil

ขI want to get into the advertising business and I want to work for you, and I thought the obvious thing to do was to come and tell you so.ข

What is the lesson here? If you want something: ask! Likewise, if you want results, take immediate action.

Let me ask you this: how many opportunities have you let slip past simply because you were afraid to go direct to the source of profit? For example, how long have you had a super joint venture idea sitting on the backburner because you’re afraid to contact potential partners?

In the quoted material, Adams is addressing a fictional advertising big wig named James B.Oswald. Adams had promptly awoken in the morning to pay a visit to the man and ask him for a job. Do you find that a bit gutsy? After all, he’s a no name kid. Oswald runs a huge, profitable corporation.

Similarly, do you ever say to yourself: ขWho do I think I am? These big internet marketing gurus won’t give me the time of dayข? Well, guess what? They’re human just like you are. They got where they are by asking for what they wanted and needed and by taking action.

When you have a desire and a plan of action, don’t sit around hemming and hawing about it or doubting yourself. Follow Adams’ lead and shut out all other thoughts except the most logical. You want X, do Y. You need to make contacts, go make the contacts.

You can’t know what the possibilities are until you reach for them, and you can’t get what you want unless you ask for it.

Live and Breathe Your Market

ขAdams proceeded to study up on the subject of peaches. He though, studied, dreamed and ate peaches, fresh, canned, and pickled. He sent for government bulletins. He spent his evenings studying canning.ข

Do you really want to be more competitive? Would you like to know the absolute best price point for your products? Would you like write absolutely killer copy that pulls in sales and outperforms your current control? If you do, then you need to live and breathe in your market.

This is an obvious business principle that often gets overlooked by new home business owners. You jump into a niche and maybe you have some experience – maybe it’s one of your hobbies – but do you really know the industry? Do you know which trade publications to read? Do you know what the current wholesale price is for your product, or what the demand is for your information?

It is very difficult to sell something you don’t know much about. Pick a subject you aren’t familiar with, invent an imaginary product and try writing copy for it. Not very easy, is it?

Now, pick something you do know a lot about, and try to write out everything you know. You’ve probably got a sizeable list, but I ‘ll wager that you’ve left off more than you realize.

Adams went to great lengths to read up on peaches. Peaches! What more can be said about a peach than its piece of fruit, grows on trees and tastes good? Well, as Adams revealed, there’s a lot more to be said.

Don’t ever assume that you know all there is to know about your market, your customers or your product. There is always another feature or benefit hidden somewhere in the fine print, in those daytoday facts that we are so used to we become immune from them.

Are You ‘Selling’ Enough?

ขWe have been doing wonderful cake advertising, but we have overlooked the very things you have pointed out in your plan. We have been doing too much advertising and not enough selling.ข

Read that last sentence again. It reveals a very important distinction. Advertising and selling are not mirror images of each other.

In fact, the best way to discern the difference between the two is in the following definition: Advertising focuses on features and facts. Selling focuses on benefits.

AD

We offer the very best in leather jackets. Our spring sale features 50% discounts and free shipping!

Sales Pitch

The soft, supple skin of our topofthe line bomber jacket will make everyone envious of you! The woollined interior will keep you warm in the winter so you can brave the harshest elements. The zip out feature lets you use the jacket in cool weather, too – so you won’t be too hot or too cold but you’ll still look stylish!

An advertisement says: ขHere is our product. Here’s what it can do. Here’s how much it costs.ข On the other hand, a powerful piece of sales copy says: ขYou’ll feel 10 years younger and rekindle your love with our product: Here, touch it, feel it, test it, have a sample of it.ข

An advertising campaign creates brand awareness and creates general interest. A sales campaign captures that interest and converts it into desire.

So, if your conversion rates aren’t what you’d like them to be, the first thing to do is check your copy. Does your sales letter read like one big advertisement? You’re spending money on traffic, but what are the customers seeing once they arrive at your site? Are they being sold effectively?

There is always a reason for the customer’s decision not to buy, and failure to execute good salesmanship is one of them. It doesn’t matter how good your product is or what it costs. It doesn’t matter if you’re giving away millions of dollar worth of value for pennies on the dollar. If the customer can’t see the benefits of owning the product himself, he won’t buy.

The Path of Least Resistance: Common Sense

ขIt’s that everlasting obviousness in Adams that I banked on. He doesn’t get carried away from the facts; he just looks them squarely in the face and then proceeds to analyze, and that is half the battle.

Indeed, many of the answers to your most pressing marketing challenges are hidden within common sense. The problem is that many people just don’t enjoy thinking. They’re lazy and thought takes up too much energy. Imagine how much expense you could save yourself if only you were to put in the hard work of an honest analysis of your business – and that means sitting down and analyzing:

Your overhead

Your prices

Your copy

Your traffic stats and logs

Customer feedback

Keyword performance

Email campaign data on open rates and conversions

The answers you find can sometimes be as simple as having a server crash or a nonworking order link, or as tricky as a design element on your page which looks fine to you but confuses prospects and drives them away.

You should test and track every element of your sales chain. This means you need to pay attention to your traffic sources, to the copy on the links from those sources, to the landing page which gives visitors their first impression, to the follow up material you send. Each element plays an important role in finetuning the prospect’s mind and opening it up for your ultimate pitch.

Any weak link in the chain can cost you sales. Imagine one day that you send out an offer to your list without first double checking that the link works? Then, you have to send out a second message to apologize and provide the correct link. The odds are good that a significant percentage of your list won’t bother opening the second email. If you’d reached them the first time, though, there would be money in your pocket.

Some of the other ‘gotchas’ that can ruin a campaign: click fraud on the pay per click engines, product theft, missed customer support emails and wasted money on underperforming keywords and other forms of advertising.

There’s no real excuse for being lazy on these things! Yes, you can try to cut corners, but you’ll pay for it at some point. It’s like a brick and mortar merchant leaving the doors unlocked at night. You’re practically guaranteed to experience a wipe out sooner or later.

In Conclusion

There’s an old classic from the same era as ขObvious Adamsข called How to Live on 24 Hours a Day. The wisdom one can glean from Adams’ straightforward and common sense approach to business could be called How to Market on 24 Hours a Day. Too often we overcomplicate things when the simple answer is staring us right in the face. Learn to step back and execute a ‘horsesense’ analysis of the facts at hand. The time you save, and the profits you keep, will be immeasurable.

Copyright 2005 Jo Han Mok

About The Author

Jo Han Mok is a frequent guest and featured speaker at Internet Marketing bootcamps and conferences on subjects such as copywriting and Joint Venture Marketing. Discover his hardcore sixfigure pulling secrets of กsalesmanship in printก at: http://www.MasterWordsmith.com.

This article was posted on January 23, 2005

by Jo Han Mok

How to Build a 1,000Page Content Site in Mere Sec

How to Build a 1,000Page Content Site in Mere Seconds!

by: Rosalind Gardner

Building an affiliate web site that sells between 5 and 20 products is relatively quick and easy to accomplish.

An experienced webmaster can put a site like http://101Date.com, which has only 11 services, together in a day. Someone else might spend a week signing up for the programs, designing a template, and adding product information and affiliate links.

Spending a week or even a month on a site that delivers big rewards over the years is a relatively minor investment.

But how much time and effort is invested by affiliates who sell items like magazines, garden products, posters, tshirts or lingerie? Or, how difficult would it be to place links to music CDกs, or movie DVDกs on your site? Merchants in those categories typically carry hundreds or even thousands of items.

Sure, a MoJoSounds.com affiliate might want to promote only adventure movies, but his state of mind might be a ?horrorก by the time heกs input more than 500 descriptions, links and graphics!

If the same affiliate planned to let his visitors know about the latest and greatest discounts by listing prices, would he ever get any sleep?

Sure he would!

By using the MoJoSounds.com product datafeed, that affiliate could build a 500+ item site in less than an hour. He could even build a 10,000 item site in less than an hour!

So whatกs a product datafeed?

A product datafeed is a spreadsheet or text file which typically lists product names along with their categories and subcategories, descriptions, coded affiliate links, product graphic image URLกs, prices and even applicable keywords.

Affiliates can manipulate datafeeds in various ways to display content on their sites.

Those with programming knowledge may insert the feed into databases on their servers.

Other affiliates prefer to use dynamic website templates that some merchants offer. These templates are completely customizable and the resulting site automatically updates itself.

One company that offers a dynamic website template is ShareaSale merchant, Nature Hillกs Nursery. Shawn at Nature Hills sent me a zipped package containing their template files, and I discovered that setting up a dynamic template on my site was incredibly easy to do!

Using my HTML editor, Homesite 5.0, I simply added my affiliate I.D. to the config.pl file, and uploaded the files to the /NatureHills/ directory that I created at Rosalinds.com. The site then looked and worked exactly like it does at the URL below, but with my affiliate ID coded into the links for all 1295 products!

Nature Hillsก Template

http://www.naturehillsaffiliates.com/templatesite/index.php

After making a few design changes to the template, this is how it looks now at:

Rosalindกs Nature Hillกs site

http://rosalinds.com/NatureHills/

Unfortunately, dynamic templates generally work only on servers running PHP and MYSQL. However, affiliates whose hosts do not run PHP and MYSQL can still profit from product datafeeds by building static pages on their computer using Richard Gaskinกs WebMerge.

Here is a site that I built using a 593product datafeed from Candy Crate (another ShareaSale merchant), Webmerge, and the same template that I used for the Nature Hills site:

Rosalindกs Candy Crate Site

http://rosalinds.com/CandyCrate/

Iกm terrible at reading instructions, so Webmerge posed a bit of a challenge for me to use at first. However, after reading the tutorials, asking Richard a few questions, and spending some time on the Datafeeds forum at ABestWeb.com, the software was easy to figure out.

Now, with a site standard template and Webmerge files, I can build a 10, 20 or 30,000 product site in mere seconds with the push of a button.

An alternative to ?Webmergeกis Mark Hendricksก and Frank Sousaกs ?Secret Money Generatorก software. ?Secret Money Generatorก makes product datafeeds even easier to manipulate. SMG allows you to build thousands of content rich, search engine friendly, static web pages which come complete with graphics and order links with your affiliate IDs embedded in them all in just a few seconds!

So, to save time and make more sales, be on the lookout for merchants with product datafeeds. My daddy always said, ?Work smarter, not harderก, and affiliate marketing doesn’t get much smarter or easier than this.

© Copyright Rosalind Gardner, All Rights Reserved.

About The Author

Article by Rosalind Gardner, author of the bestselling กSuper Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other Peopleกs Stuff Onlineก. To learn how you too can suceed in Internet and affiliate marketing, go to: http://NetProfitsToday.com.

This article was posted on March 30

by Rosalind Gardner

Fast Forwarding your Business with Instant Messagi

Fast Forwarding your Business with Instant Messaging

by: Lee Traupel

Instant Messaging is rapidly becoming accepted in the business community as a viable communications tool and process itกs faster than email, free on the client side, even a novice user can easily grasp the interface in just a few minutes and it enables remote workers and business partners to ‘talkก and share files and information effortlessly using the inplace infrastructure of the internet. Its mushrooming in popularity too according to IDC, corporate and general business users will jump from 5.5M in 2001 to close to 200M by 2004.

What are some of the pitfalls and concerns you need to have when assessing and integrating Instant Messaging (กIMก another biz acronym) with your business processes? Be aware you are sending clear text messages over the public Internet so all IM technology is inherently insecure. Privacy issues can also be raised these messages are typically archived via the IM servers of the company whose services you are using and can be made public at a later date. Anyone with a network scanner may have access to and be reading your messages and if your are downloading files, you need to ensure your antivirus software is setup to scan these files when you open them.

One of the biggest pitfalls of the technology and process is that it adds another communications layer to your busy day but you can offset this by selecting or filtering who you communicate with at any point by using the IM interface to block all or selected individuals from กseeingก you when you are online.

Finally, like all things in todayกs computer industry (or many) each of the Instant Messaging vendors are trying to build applications which don’t integrate with the other (no surprise here arrogance has not faded away in the business community!). So, you need to assess the installed base of the market leaders and make a decision on which companyกs product you want to utilized my recommendation would be to review Microsoftกs or AOL/Time Warnerกs products their installed bases are in the 200 million users plus when combined (these numbers include consumer and business usage) and they both work well and have user interfaces that are intuitive.

There is one alternative company that is solving the กIM Tower of Babelก issues and claims to integrate well with all proprietary apps by utilizing XML technology, Jabber, Inc., www.jabber.com So, if interoptability is important to you then I would recommend assessing their products.

Most of the IM providers including Microsoft are integrating voice communications with their IM clients you may be able to bypass your local telephone carrier at some point using this technology, but don’t bet on it anytime soon all of those lobbyists here in the states need to keep generating fees on behalf of their telecom clients in Washington D.C. We use Microsoftกs IM product and we have upon occasion utilized the voice and video features (you must of course have a multimedia setup for your PC and camera) and they do work. Although the video quality is a little jerky and the voice is akin to the old Citizens Band (กCBก) radio your Internet connection impacts the quality of both.

Whose technology do you choose? There are some clear market leaders in the Instant Messaging marketing including Microsoft (no surprise here)http://messenger.microsoft.com But, like most Microsoft technology/tools you pay a price for the software/services, albeit a small one. You have to register with Microsoftกs NET Passport www.microsoft.com/myservices/passport service which is designed to be a universal login this only takes a few minutes but be forewarned they also try to get you to setup a Hot Mail account, but you can work around this.

The other dominant IM product is AOLกs ICQ product http://web.icq.com it has similar functionality as Microsoftกs application. The original technology was developed by a great Israeli company, Mirabellis, Inc., subsequently acquired by AOL. My chief complaint with this product is the irritating banner ads that AOL keeps pushing at you when you are utilizing their product. But, itกs a small price to pay for a free product on the client side.

Yahoo also has an IM product (กYahoo Messengerก) but I am not convinced this will stay as a core part of their business, as they appear to be still trying to figure out what they are going to become in the post ก.com gold rush eraก market; i.e. Portal, Directory, Media giant, software/services company, etc. And, theyกve certainly jettisoned parts of their business the last 1218 months and I would wager theyกve had discussions about getting out of the IM business.

Finally, IM is also quickly moving into other markets and devices including PDAs and Pagers if you’re a real geek and you can’t stand to be out of touch while your in the shower and you have a water proof device you can ping away. But, I think we all need some down time for friends and family, but wanted to make sure I covered all possible bases with this column until next time!

About The Author

Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development and marketing experience he is the founder of Intelective Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com, a resultsdriven marketing services company providing proprietary services to clients encompassing startups to public companies. [email protected]

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 25, 2002

by Lee Traupel

Market Research Means Money

Market Research Means Money

by: Jason Carr

I recently made a critical mistake in my progression towards business success: I forgot about market research. I had decided that I was going to make some money with an online store. I thought to myself, where should I start? What can I sell? After a bit of brainstorming, I picked a few things that I thought might be good to sell online. I then proceeded to start looking for suppliers. This may seem like a reasonable course of action, but it is not. It is missing a key component of any business plan.

A basic assumption for the purpose of this article is that there is competition involved with any business. Even if you make your own, unique product, similar products will compete against yours. However, the existence of competition is not necessarily bad. The fact that online retailers are selling items similar or identical to your own means that there is demand for your product. Competition is only bad for you, as a retailer, when the market is becoming saturated (or is already at that point).

Check the electronics market for a good example of this principle. Electronics go for rockbottom prices online because there are so many different stores that sell them. The difference in prices between stores usually comes down to the cost of shipping. The competition in this area is extreme. If retailers cut their prices any lower they won’t make enough to survive.

The first person who had the idea to sell VCRs online probably made a killing. Nowadays, nobody makes anything more than a buck or two per unit. For a homebased business, that’s not good enough. Today’s electronics dealers depend on volume, and very good supply sources, in order to make their money. Generally speaking, small retailers cannot sell at those prices and turn a profit.

In order to be successful it is essential that you know what you’re up against, and that means market research.

If you are selecting your products, then you need to know which stores already sell those products. You also need to know how many stores there are, how much they are charging and, if you can find out, how well they are doing. Could you sell for less (if only a little)? What are other ways you could differentiate your store from the rest?

If you already have your product, then you need to know where and how your competitors are advertising. Are they concentrated in one location? Are there good places that they have overlooked? How much is it going to cost to compete with them for prime ad space?

So, you may ask, where do I begin? The answer is Overture. Owned by Yahoo, Overture is one of the largest and most reliable payperclick advertising services. Their program can be an extremely effective, but that is something for another day.

What you need for research requires no signup and belongs to no program. There are two web tools in the Overture Advertiser Center that can be amazingly useful. The first is the Search Term Suggestion Tool. This tool allows you to look up a keyword, like ขdigital cameraข, and find out how many people searched for that term last month. Not only that, but the tool will suggest a list of related terms, like ขdigital camera reviewข, for your consideration.

The number of searches per term comes from Overture’s partners like Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, CNN, etc. This is critical information because it tells you whether or not people are looking for your product online and, at the same time, shows you how they are searching for it. This indicates a certain demand for your product.

You may be able to judge the size of the demand, to a certain degree, by the number of searches for your terms. For example (numbers taken at time of writing and may not reflect current rates):

Digital Camera – 1,337,422 (high interest)

Used Car – 890,346

Mountain Bike – 133,553

Blender – 26,648

Bubble Gum Machine – 1,502

Chapstick Raspberry Vanilla – 25 (very low interest)

Keep in mind that users searching for ‘digital camera’ are not necessarily shopping for one. They may just want information such as reviews or feature lists. It is also good to remember that if people are searching on Yahoo and MSN, as in the case of digital cameras, then you can safely assume that even more people are searching for the same things on Google.

The second tool Overture provides is the View Bids Tool. This tool allows you to take the keywords that you found with the term suggestion tool and see how many ads there are for each term and how high the bids are (in order to be listed on top of your competition you must place a higher bid for the term you want). This tool can help you judge your competition.

For example, at the time of this writing there are 131 ads associated with the term digital camera. The top bid is 79 cents per click. Bubble gum machine has 13 ads with a top bid of 49 cents. Chapstick Raspberry Vanilla, not surprisingly, has no bids on the term which means that the top spot could be purchased for the minimum price of 10 cents per click.

After you have your information from Overture, Google is your likely next step. To my knowledge, Google does not provide any analysis tools to the general public, though information is available to registered advertisers. Despite this limitation, it is easy to find your competition on Google. Simply enter your search term and check the right side of the results screen. The first page should show the top advertisers. Checking subsequent pages will reveal the entire list of advertisers for that term.

Tip: Sometimes advertisers may be targeting your term, but not selling your product. Read through the ads and visit the sites to get a more accurate idea of your direct competitors.

The natural results (the normal, nonad results) of your search are important as well. Check those to see the top ranked sites in your market. Those sites are probably there because they employ search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Users are much more likely to click on the natural results than they are the ads. The stores at the top of the list are likely to be well established and may represent some solid competition.

Visit your competitor’s web sites and see what they are selling. Check for site quality, organization, ease of use and amount of products sold. Perhaps they sell your product, but it is lost in a vast sea of other related merchandise. That means better chances for your niche store. Maybe their site is ugly or hard to navigate. These are points at which you could gain an advantage over your rivals. Checking other sites will also give you ideas about how to run your own store.

The third step in this process is to check out Yahoo! Shopping. Yahoo! hosts what is known as an online mall. That is, retailers setup stores with Yahoo!’s services and are then included in Yahoo! Shopping’s listings. This can be a good way to get fast traffic. For market research, it means easy access to competitor sites. On the Yahoo! Shopping main page, do a search for your product (Braun blenders for example). The results will show sponsored ads and normal listings. The sponsored ads come from Overture, so you should already be familiar with those.

The normal listings come from a combination of Yahoo! Product Submit results and Yahoo!’s webcrawler search database. What is important in this list is actually displayed just below the top sponsor listings and just above the normal listings. There should be two numbers: the number of products found and the number of stores they were found in. For ‘Braun blenders’ there were 989 matches from 76 stores (at time of writing). Those numbers give you an indication of how many stores you’re up against.

Note: If there are too many matches, the number of stores will not be displayed (ex. ‘sony dvd player’ yields 3,660 matches). Of course, numbers that high shout, ขbig competition,ข even without store numbers.

Here again you have the opportunity to scope out competing stores. The thorough researcher would get their names and site locations. This may seem time consuming, and it is, but it will help with future research.

Our final recommendation is to visit eBay. Once there, find the eBay Stores area (located in the Specialty Sites box on the homepage at time of writing). Enter your search term to see how many eBay stores are selling your product. ‘Braun blenders’ shows ten items in eBay stores (not bad compared to Yahoo!). In addition, the search may show regular listings below the store results. These results should give you some idea of the popularity of your product as well as the feasibility of selling it on eBay.

Quick Recap:

Overture (free analysis tools)

Google (ads and natural results)

Yahoo! Shopping (number of stores)

eBay Stores (same deal)

Remember, some competition is good because it shows that there is an interest in your product. Too much competition is bad because it means low profitability. The spot where you can make good money is somewhere in between (most likely on the low end of the competition scale). Unfortunately, I know of no exact way to calculate your chances of success. For those who can afford it, hiring a market research professional might help considerably with that calculation. In any case, a solid business plan built on thorough market research will certainly boost your chances significantly.

About The Author

Jason Carr is a small business owner, dedicated student of ecommerce strategy, and producer of BeginBiz, an online resource for those looking to start an internet business.

[email protected]

This article was posted on September 15, 2004

by Jason Carr

5 Power Tips To Double Your Sales

5 Power Tips To Double Your Sales

by: Michael Southon

กHow Can I Double My Sales?ก that must be the silent prayer of thousands of webmasters.

There are two ways to do it: you can either double your traffic or you can double your conversion rate.

Letกs say you have a conversion rate of 2% (1 sale for every 50 visitors) and you get 100 visitors a day you’re getting 2 sales a day. You could get 4 sales a day by increasing your traffic to 200 visitors a day.

But you can get the same result with your existing traffic by doubling your conversion rate (2 sales for every 50 visitors).

Here are 5 ways to double your conversion rate:

(1) Direct Response: Make sure your website is a กDirect Response Websiteก. A DRW is a site where the only options are to Buy, Bookmark, or Leave. The more options you give your visitor, the less likely they are to buy.

(2) Free EBooks: Include Free EBooks as bonus gifts with your product. This can easily double your sales especially if the Free EBooks are genuinely useful. Here are some places you can find Free EBooks:

http://www.freeebooks.net/

http://www.ebookdirectory.com/

http://www.ebooksnbytes.com/download.html

(3) Testimonials: Make sure you have plenty of testimonials on your website. Preferably, they should be from customers who have achieved results from your product (e.g. more traffic, more sales, saved time etc).

(4) Follow Up: Youกve probably heard this over and over again but itกs worth repeating people have to see you your message about 7 times before they buy. The biggest mistake you can make is to try and sell your product on the first contact alone.

It just doesn’t work, and the statistics bear this out: the 1st contact produces 2% of sales, the 5th to 12th contact produce 80% of sales.

So in your ezine ads and at your website, offer something free in exchange for an email address. And then follow up with sequential (or followup) autoresponders.

Here are some sites that offer free followup autoresponders:

http://www.autoresponders.net

http://www.informationbyemail.com

http://www.getresponse.com/orderfree.html

http://www.rapidreply.net/free_features.htm

(5) Backend Sales: Itกs no secret that successful businesses make up to 80% of their sales from previous customers. Why? Because people who have bought from you before are much more likely to buy from you again (they know you, they trust you, they were happy with your product).

The hard work in marketing is getting a customer. Once you have a customer, theyกll buy from you over and over again.

Contact your previous customers and let them know about another product that compliments the product or service they bought from you. Experts reckon that the value of กa lifetime customerก lasts about 3 years make use if it.

If you follow these 5 tips, you may well find that you can double your online sales with the traffic you already have.

Wishing you every success!

(c) 2001 by Michael Southon

About The Author

Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3 years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this simple technique to get massive free publicity and dramatically increase traffic and sales. Click here to find out more: http://www.ezinewriter.com

This article was posted on August 30, 2002

by Michael Southon

กInternet Marketing Simplified! 2 Pillars For Achi

กInternet Marketing Simplified! 2 Pillars For Achieving Massive Resultsก

by: Jeff Smith

Are you confused by the flood of information on how to improve your internet marketing results?

Mastering the search engines, payperclick advertising, affiliate marketing, website design, writing articles, and on it goes.

Doesn’t it seem more and more complicated to focus in on what really works and what doesn’t?

After working to build many businesses from the ground up over the last 10 years, itกs more clear than ever that there are 2 main principles that will largely dictate your success in any business. All of the other techniques build on these first two principles.

Think of these two main principles as the cement pillars that hold up a bridge without them, no matter how well you construct the bridge, it will still fall down.

Focus your energies, time and resources around meeting these two key principles you will immediately see a big difference in your results.

PRINCIPLE #1

You must have a well positioned product, fulfilling a hot desire within a clearly identifiable and accessible target market.

Letกs break this down.

Making a profit in business is really quite a simple concept, you have to earn more revenue than your cost. Revenue minus cost is your profit.

So where does that cost come from?

The two big sources of costs are: costs associated with creating or finding your product to sell and cost of reaching your market to sell your product

It only makes sense then that identifying a hot desire within a market you know how to reach will mean much lower costs for your businss. Ultimately, this means more profit for you.

Have you ever run against the wind? Tried to swim upstream in a river? Walk one way in a crowd when everyone else was walking the other way?

Itกs a very tough lesson to learn.

Iกve been brought it to consult with companies that have burned through millions of dollars before learning this lesson.

You cannot FORCE a lowdemand product on a market no matter how much money you spend on marketing.

You cannot hope to reach enough buyers in the entire marketplace even with a very highdemand product in one segment.

In fact, Iกve seen situations where unknown entrepreneurs enter a market, quickly identify a hot desire, address it with a less than perfect product and in a very short time have created wealth 100X higher than anyone else in that market.

An old mentor of mine used to tell me all the time, กfocus on the low lying fruit thereกs far more than enough to go aroundก

PRINCIPLE #2

You must reach your market with a clear, empathetic message that instantly catches your readers attention, interest, desire and moves them to see your product as THE answer to their deepest desires.

If you were reading closely, youกll recognize Principle #2 as the same principles that underly great copywriting.

How do you become a great copywriter and master Principle #2?

1. Research, research and research. I make sure I have a pulse on my target marketกs desires, needs, emotional triggers. Focus in on WHY they want a solution to a particular problem. Research takes many forms…

speak with them

survey them

read what they read

talk to others who do business with your market

test using articles and special reports to guage the response

do what they do

By doing this you should have content for 2030 (at least) different benefits for your product.

Then….

2. Polish your benefit statements. This is where you can use books of action verbs, swap files (samples of great ads, letters and webpages), the services of a copywriter. This is the technical aspect of copywriting which can be learned by reading other great material.

Far too many people go right to #2, as a result their benefit statements seem bland, miss the mark or seem the same as everyone else.

Next time you get distracted by the latest and greatest tip, technique or strategy know that focusing on these 2 fundamental principles: Indemand product ideas and effective copywriting, will make the most difference to your pocketbook in both today and in the future.

About The Author

Discover how to create your own bestselling eBooks, Special reports or books to sell online …AND keep 100% of the profits. Limited time complimentary access to 7Part Minicourse will get you started quickly and easily. Visit: http://www.highertrustmarketing.com/

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 17, 2004

by Jeff Smith

Introduction to Marketing for 1st time business ow

Introduction to Marketing for 1st time business owners

by: Ben Botes

Marketing is determining which orders you would like to win. Selling is getting out there and winning orders once you have decided which orders you would like to win. Marketing is a continuous process of creativity, research, testing, analysis, development and implementation. We must stay close to our customers. We must satisfy our customersก needs and anticipate their wants. We love our customers and we always do that little bit extra for which we do not get paid.

Specialize and be excited in what you do

There is a strong relationship between high selfesteem and peak performance. The more you love doing something, the greater will be your success. All successful businesses specialize in their areas of excellence. Many unsuccessful people drift into areas where they do not have the excitement, enthusiasm, energy, knowledge, etc., to establish competitive advantage and find their market segment.

A few questions for you to answer at this point are:

Which product or service would you like to produce and sell?

In which area of human activity would you like to improve the lives of other people?

To which area of human improvement can you bring excitement and enthusiasm?

What is your area of excellence?

What is your core business?

For which product or service are you prepared to be a product champion? What would you love to do to improve the lives of others for 16 hours each day, even if you received no financial reward?

What is it that makes you feel valuable and worthwhile?

Differentiate for a competitive advantage

Perhaps the biggest question in any business is: why should anybody buy this product or service … from me? This is in fact two questions. The first question is: why should anybody buy this product or service?

What is the benefit?

What is the improvement in the life of the customer?

How is the customerกs life enriched by acquisition of the product or service?

If you cannot answer this question, then you do not know why a customer should buy your product or service. Remember the law of cause and effect. There is a reason for everything. There has to be a reason why your customer buys the product or service.

Segmentation or the creation of a market niche

If people buy from you because you are such a lovely person, then your market niche may well be your circle of friends and friends of your friends. If you own the village grocery store, then your customers are probably restricted to those living within a fiveminute walk or twominute drive, i.e. the local community. If yours is the best or cheapest product on the market, then this opens up huge opportunities. Who is your customer? Who buys this product or service? Identify your market segment. Describe your customer age, sex, income, occupation, education, other interests, area where he or she lives, type of family, other products he or she buys, etc. Where exactly is your customer? Identify the geographical concentration, understanding that 80 per cent of your customers will be within 20 per cent of your catchment area. How is your product normally distributed? How would you expect your customer to buy your product or service? To which customers does your competitive advantage make a big difference? Is there a small segment of the market which you could dominate?

Answer these question when considering your market niche:

Who are your customers?

Where are your customers?

Who cares that you are the best?

Who cares that you are the cheapest?

Who cares that you are the local dealer?

Who cares that you are such a nice person?

The answers to these questions establish your market segmentation, or your market niche, i.e. a small segment of the market which you can dominate.

Concentrating your efforts

With a view to succeeding in business, we have to concentrate all our resources, hitting our market segment with our competitive advantage in our area of excellence. We have to concentrate our creativity, our marketing, our sales skills, leadership skills, finance, time, energy, excitement, enthusiasm, advertising and promotional efforts, production facilities, etc., all of these resources being concentrated in enriching the lives of our customers at a profit.

Is the benefit we offer worth more to the customer than the price the customer is expected to pay?

Can we provide the benefit at a cost which is lower than the customer is willing and able to pay?

Can we provide the benefit at a profit?

These are four of the most important steps to consider as a business owner. For more in formation on marketing for first time business owners, please go to http://www.my1stbusiness.com.

Copyright Ben Botes and My1stBusiness.com – 2003 – 2005

About The Author

Ben is an entrepreneur, business owner, scholar, author and leadership coach, and one of the UKกs new leading thinkers on entrepreneurial leadership. He is a leading Coach with business incubators, enterprise hubs and high tech startups throughout the UK, Europe and his native South Africa. Ben holds Master degrees in Psychology and Business Administration as well as various qualifications in coaching and mentoring. Email Ben at [email protected].

This article was posted on February 17

by Ben Botes

How To Fail… Faster Then a Speeding Bullet!

How To Fail… Faster Then a Speeding Bullet!

by: Troy Pentico

Hello, I am getting married. Want to pay me $798 dollars to come? Yes, this is the theme in the latest marketing campaign from the infamous Corey Rudl. Now before I give you the wrong idea here it really doesn’t cost $798 dollars to attend. In reality it will cost you only $97 dollars and Corey has promised to give everyone that attends a $97 dollar credit towards any of his products. So really Corey is only going to make $97 dollars per person that attends his wedding. Pretty Good Deal, huh?

The $798 dollars is for the one day finally. What someone could actually learn in a seminar environment in one day that is worth $798 dollars is beyond me. But, I am sure even some of you have bought into it. If you are thinking about it but, have not committed to it, I would consider spending the money on some oneonone time with a consultant if you feel you must pay someone to learn about your business.

This really is not what this article is about though. It surely made me think about writing this but, would make for a pretty bland article unless I was promoting Coreyกs Wedding wouldn’t it? No, you see Corey is in the Internet Marketing Information business which in my opinion is getting way out of hand lately. And that is the basis of this article.

So I give you กHow To Fail… Faster Then a Speeding Bullet!ก

As all of you know one of my favorite past times and really the whole กNicheก of my online business is testing new marketing tools, and resources and then sharing those reviews with my subscribers and customers.

Through all of the years of doing this I have gained some serious in site on what makes the online entrepreneur tick. Most of the กinitial successesก these marketer have, as well as most of the failures are attributed to many different things.

This list of reasons people fail is enormous but here are the five most common and how to avoid them:

#5 Bad Guidance

Through out life people are used to being taught how to do things. Their parents teach them how to tie their shoes, and talk. In school they learn how to read, write, and perform arithmetic. In college or trade school they learn how to perform the tasks they are going to use at their job for the rest of their lives.

Then one day they decide to start a business on the Internet. Most of the time that is exactly what happens. They decide to start กA BUSINESSก. Not just any business mind you. But, กA BUSINESSก. These would be entrepreneurs want to make money that all the SPAM mail promises can be had on the Internet. But, there are now a few road blocks. They don’t have a product sell. They don’t have a web site to promote. They don’t have any friends that are successful making money on the Internet to help them. So in pure haste they go to the nearest search engine and type in กHow to Make Moneyก or something a long them lines.

A lot of them won’t be to picky when it comes to choosing. They jump onboard every free to join program out there. Some are กsmarterก. They know that if every body is selling this or that product it must be the one people want and therefore they need to sell it to. Luckily for them they will inevitably end up on the mailing list of a very successful online marketer who will provide them with all the guidance they need.

Generally this will consist of them telling their prospect that to succeed they need to buy and follow the strategies in a particular book they wrote. Once they spend their money and read the hype in the book they find out to make money with these strategies they will need to utilize a particular software program, or service that luckily for them is provided by the same person that sold them the book! And then thankfully that same marketer is throwing a seminar that you can pay an arm and a leg to attend so that you can actually figure out these strategies that so far you haven’t had any luck with. All the while nobody is working on your business because you are to busy reading, learning new software programs, and attending seminars to build your own business.

Avoidance Strategy:

When looking for guidance find a professional with a telephone that they answer when you call. If at all possible find someone near your location that you can work with face to face. Demand a free consultation to see if this person truly knows what they are talking about. Demand a money back guarantee. If this Guru is flashing sales copy that you can make Millions selling this or that surely they can guarantee that you will be profitable with your business following their strategies in X amount of time.

Do not buy any products at all dealing with Internet Marketing until you know what your business is going to be. Don’t spend hundreds of dollars trying to figure this out. You will find your own Niche without the help of a $137 dollar digital book.

#4 Playing the FREE Game

Why should I pay to advertise on Google when I can join that FREE Safelist and mail my ads to millions? Why should I for advertising on ClickBank when I can join CBClicks for FREE? Why should I pay for ads on Google when I can use this free click exchange program to generate traffic?

There are an endless amount of free programs on the Internet that promise to make you successful. This game started years ago with a service called a Free For All Links Page. Here is how they all work and why you can get them for FREE. When you signup for a FREE service you will need to provide some information to the provider. This can range from just your Name and Email to a more extensive survey that includes questions about your monthly income level, your physical mailing address, your phone number, etc. A small price to pay for using these services for FREE right?

WRONG!

If you didn’t catch on yet these services can guarantee you what ever they want. But, the truth is they rarely work because they were not designed to! These services are for the provider to obtain your contact information and your permission to contact you with advertising anytime they want. Many times your contact information is sold via a leads service. In the end you find out that you wasted your time joining the program and all you gained out of the FREE deal was in inbox full of junk!

Avoidance Strategy:

Do not utilize FREE Traffic or Lead Generation Strategies with very few exceptions (like submitting your URL to Google for FREE for example). Find a service that is pay to play by a known provider of successful strategies. Like Google Adwords for example. Use the service that you can afford to and when you can afford to utilize another move into it. Don’t make any exceptions to this no matter what anybody tells you!

#3 No Focus

This one is closely related to all of the other causes for failure. The normal scenario goes something like this. You are selling a book you wrote about cross stitching. You have made a few sales and things are going nicely for you as your business is starting to grow. Someone that you respect sends you an email. It says, กHey my Google PR just shot through the roof because I am using X productก. You quickly move into action and purchase the product. You follow the directions and spend hours, sometimes days applying the strategy.

When you are finished you decide to stop by one of your favorite marketing forums and find everyone talking about this out standing new book by X marketer where he reveals all his top secret marketing strategies. You move into action and purchase the book. You spend days reading it and then weeks applying the strategies.

This is a never ending chain for some people. They never spend one day completely devoted to working on their business because, they are to busy being distracted by the next big thing.

Well I got news for your folks. There is always going to be a next big thing. Some things do not change and will provide you with much more success.

Avoidance Strategy:

FOCUS your time on YOUR Business. The Top of you Todo list should always be Provide Outstanding Customer Service, Market Your Product Continuously, Build Strong Relationships with your customers, Improve the Content of Your Web site, etc.

Don’t start another business if the current one is not successful! Why put yourself through the mental challenges of failing at two businesses? When you have made one business successful you will have the know how and the resources to successfully expand it to include another.

If you do this you will laugh as you watch your competitors chase their Internet Marketing Dreams in Circles.

#2 No Creativity

You decide for your business that you are going to market X product as part of their affiliate program. This one has to be the easiest business to start in the world! They provide a web site template, prewritten ads, banners, articles, and graphics! All I have to do is use these items and I will make Millions!

WRONG!

Having no creativity is a killer. Especially, in the affiliate sales world. Think about it if everyone of the affiliates in X program are using the exact same sales materials for every aspect of their marketing program who do you think a prospect is going to buy from?

If you answered กI have no ideaก, you are correct. And a lot of the times the prospective customer has no idea either. If you don’t successfully close the deal on the first visit from this customer you are probably not going to. Your prospect wakes up the next morning and decides to buy the product. They forgot to book mark your site so they type the name of the product into a search engine and come to a page that looks exactly like yours and they buy.

The scenarios for not having creativity are endless. They go from something simple like using canned sales materials from an affiliate program to creating a software product that is exactly the same as 12 others on the market.

If you do not put some creativity into your business. You will fail.

Avoidance Strategy:

Only join and market an affiliate program if you have purchased the product and used it yourself? Why? Because, if you don’t you will have no choice but, to used the canned sales materials. You cannot extend any creativity into it and write your own sales copy, give a testimonial to your prospects or anything of that sort because, you will have no idea on what you are talking about.

Always, write your own sales copy, advertisements, web pages, etc. Even if you only change a few graphics, and include a few of your own paragraphs into a canned version you are way above the heap. When modifying web pages include testimonials (if you don’t have any when you sell some ask the customer for one). Always include your contact information including a phone number that you answer. Always change the headline. If the headline is just to good to change then change the sub headline. Do what ever you can to make your sales materials unique.

When creating your own product research the hell out of it. Don’t create something that can be had elsewhere. And definitely don’t create something that people can pick up at the local WalMart. If you can’t come up with your won idea hold a survey with your ezine or mailing list subscribers asking them what they wish they had to improve any aspect of their life or business.

Apply creativity throughout your business from product creation, to sales, to good customer service at all time.

#1 No Determination

What am I doing wrong? I have created a unique product. I have an awesome sales page. I am getting tons of hits from my Overture PPC Campaign. But, nobody is buying! The heck with this.

I have a ton of ads inserted for my Google Campaign but nobody is clicking on them. The heck with this.

I just can’t get people to buy my product. I guess I will just give it away.

I see this all of the time. People try everything that they can to make their business work but, nothing seems too. They give up and never really tried. Folks, the Internet is not a get rich quick environment no matter what you may think. Yes, it is easier to target your customer base and actually make contact with them. But, it is no different then selling off line. If you don’t provide a compelling reason to buy then no one will. And just because you think it is compelling and all your marketing friends said the same thing does not mean it is going to work.

The failure rate of online business due to No Determination is astronomical. People actually believe that whatever they do is going to work and when it doesn’t they give up without a fight.

Avoidance Strategy:

Expect failure and LEARN from it. Write the underlying cause for each failure down and refer to it when ever you can so you don’t make the same mistake twice. Research and analyze your marketing methods. Write at least two versions of a sales page for a particular product and run a splittest on it. Always ask your current customers why they bought a particular product. Make them be specific. Apply copy cat strategies with your products. If it worked once it might work again. Just don’t go word for word. Ask for help from an Internet Marketer that you respect by offering them a cut on sales. If you can’t make it sell maybe they can provide you with a way it can. Above all DON’t GIVE UP, DON’t GIVE UP, and DON’t GIVE UP.

If you are the average everyday Internet Marketer you probably found at least one failure strategy that you are following right now. This does not mean your business will fail. If just means you got a head start in start in that direction.

Keep in mind that I could not possibly list all the scenarios, or avoidance strategies for each of these as it would have created a volume of information and this article is already long as it is.

You must learn to identify failure strategies and cut them off before they have an adverse effect on your business. I have provided you with a good start it is up to you from here on out.

So I challenge you from here on out to remain determined, be creative, stay focused, avoid free things with big promises, and seek out and find good guidance if you need it.

Copyright © 2004, Troy Pentico

About The Author

Troy Pentico is the Editor of the FFAMall Gazette eZine and has been a successful Internet Marketer since late 1997. Are you tired of reading Internet Marketing Tips eZines packed with advertising and marketing fluff? Subscribe Today and learn the Truth! http://gazette.ffamall.com

This article was posted on August 14, 2004

by Troy Pentico

Ten Awesome Ways To Incease Your Sales In Holidays

Ten Awesome Ways To Incease Your Sales In Holidays

by: Radhika Venkata

Everybody thinks that the businesses will slow down a bit in holiday seasons. Ofcourse everybody thinks that people don’t want to start new ventures in holidays too.

But that is not true. People do spend money… a lot in holidays. On gift items, special discount goods, coupons etc.

The only thing is to know how to do business in the holiday season using this attitude.

Here are 10 tips to maintain or maximize your sales in Holidays:

1. Put a paragraph on your webpage that related to the particular holiday. Like chrismas greetings for Chrismas, Happy mothers day greetings for Motherกs day etc.

Then put a picture of your product under it with a discount price for that particular day.

Advertise about this discount product on your home page from a month before the actual selling day.

2. Send discount coupons to your old customers and subscribers and tell them the offer lasts for one or two days.

3. If you use pay per click engines, change your ads a little bit to give the essence of holiday season.

If your ad is like

กGarden tools for gardenersก

Change this to

กGarden tools for Gardeners.Price reduced to half for the first fifty people. Limited for Thanks giving.ก

OK…OK…You get the idea. Right?

4. Install some greeting card cgi scripts on your site. Use them at holiday seasons. So with every greeting card your website link goes to other people. This is very cheap and affordable advertising.

5. Tell your affiliates that they will receive more commission on their sales through their affiliate links in this holiday season.

6. Always submit two or three pages of your website to search engines with holiday discount prices. So if anybody search in the search engines about discount products, your pages will show up.

7. Offer free shipping and handling to your customers.

8. Put a special pop up window that closes with in a particular time. So you can encourage your visitors to buy the product at discount price or with special bonuses through the link in that pop up.

9. Use your Autoresponder to offer special courses or tutorials for holiday seasons. Send the links to your discount products, samples of your product as a special holiday delivery. Encourage them to buy with a holiday discount.

10. Holidays means parties, get togethers and massive sales. You can do offline advertising about your product and website by keeping banners or free brochures at the reception tables, sales centers etc.

About The Author

Radhika Venkata Subscribe to กEbookBiz Magazineก which is completely focused on ebook business and Internet Marketing. Receive FREE Ebooks with Resale rights every month!

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This article was posted on November 14, 2003

by Radhika Venkata