Online Marketing: Do You Make These Mistakes?

Selling on the Internet seems like it should be easy, right? You just put something up, slap a price tag on it and stick a picture of it next to a Buy Now button. Piece of cake.

If your business has been online for any amount of time, you know its not quite that simple.

To sell any product in any quantity that matters, you have to put some careful consideration into it and use a five-step sales formula. To over-simplify a bit, that formula is:

• 1. Get Attention By Appealing To Basic Psychology
  
• 2. Show A Benefit That Appeals to Emotion
  
• 3. Prove It (repeat steps 2 and 3 as necessary)
  
• 4. Make the Offer 5
• 5. Ask Them To Do What You Want

Steps 2 and 3 are inseparable. Messing them up will almost always kill your sales.

The biggest mistake you can make when showing your benefits and proving them is to assume your prospects are idiots or suckers.

But people will believe anything that’s written. I mean, if its on the Internet it must be true right? (insert shady wink here).

Not likely.

In fact, just because its on the Internet and so many shady marketers have taken advantage of the zero overhead costs that come with starting an Internet based business to sell crap, people are less likely to believe you.

Those shady Internet marketers (usually masquerading under the self-assumed title ) don’t believe in what they re selling. Since they don’t believe in what they’re selling, they are by definition, selling to idiots and suckers. They have to trick their prospects into buying.

They don’t persuade, they scam.

They don’t convince, they con.

If you don’t believe in your product, you shouldn’t be selling it. If you cant scrap up the decency to offer a product that you would use if you were in need, then get out of this business and go work for someone else.

NOW.

Many businesses are tempted to make outrageous and sometimes downright false claims because they feel a need to out do or at least meet the competitions claims. This is a big mistake.

If your competition is making those claims and they’re true, then they have the better product and should be outselling you. If that is the case, your time is better spent improving your product.

But often, those claims are empty promises. If your product works the best at doing one thing, then tell people. In that case, your market is prospects who have been let down by the false claims of your competition.

They were promised the world and received only Antarctica.

Your now selling to people who have been let down by the over-hype of your competition.

To stand out from your competition (and most of the marketing world) you only have two tasks to complete:

1. Tell people what your product can do. 2. Make sure your product does exactly what you said it would.

That’s it. Nothing more. If you can do that, you’ll be ahead of your competition by a few miles. Even better, they’ll try to make bigger, more outrageous claims, pushing you even further ahead.

Sometimes, simpler is better. And the truth always wins.

Top 10 Affiliate Program – Viral Marketing

I found an E-Book that my be the Greatest New Viral Marketing Idea of all time. I bet that it will become one of the Top 10 Affiliate Programs during this year.

This document presents a unique strategy for selling any Internet product. There are some very ingenious twists, which will send your traffic soaring.

What is the cost for this e-book? It is free! Your Name or Email address are not even required or asked for.

This book is well laid out and easy to read. It offers step by step progression through the processes and will be easy for even the beginning affiliate marketer to follow.

The final chapter is really amazing with an idea that is sure to make it one of the top 10 affiliate viral marketing programs.

Don’t miss out on this free offer, the price may change at any time.

Jim Spence – Internet Marketer

Must-Have Tools for High Rolling Affiliates

Tools You Can Use…

What does it take to become a successful Affiliate Marketer? What are the ingredients of an affiliate marketing success story? Is there a shortcut to Affiliate Marketing glory? Although affiliate marketing is talked about as one of the easiest ways to earn money online, it is not as easy as you may have heard. Not even close. The wise affiliate marketer plans every action in advance and executes it with precision. He also maximizes his potential to earn by utilizing the right tools. We have consulted some of the most successful marketers in the business; below are their top three tools necessary for building your own successful affiliate marketing business.

Important Tool #1: Your Own Website.

The most important and indispensable tool is your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.

The most important thing you should consider is that almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People read articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, on the internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a huge step in building a loyal client base.

Important Tool #2: An Opt-In List

Competition is extremely tight on the Internet. You must stay one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click-thru to the products and services you’re promoting. Building an opt-in mailing list is one of the best ways to gather prospects. Offer a free newsletter or a free e-zine. Better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can present free software, access to exclusive services or other freebies.

Important Tool #3: Incentives

These are but three of the many tools that an affiliate marketer can use to maximize earning potential. The possibilities are endless and are limited only by your imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and determination. You can always explore other ideas and adapt other strategies, which you think might help you become a high rolling affiliate marketer.

Affiliate Marketing Basics: Let’s Talk Traffic

When you’re just getting started as an Affiliate Marketer one of the first, and possibly the most important, skill you need to learn involves traffic – specifically what it is and how to get it.

Why?

Here’s why. As an affiliate, your job is to find people who want to buy the products you’re promoting, right? So to do that, you need to write an ad (or hire a copywriter to write it for you), and send people to a Website where they can buy the product.

BUT – there’s a serious problem with this method. Do you see what it is?

Anywhere from 60 to 95% of the people you send to the sales page probably aren’t going to buy the first time.

1. Most people want to be certain that they’re making the right decision, so they usually need to see or hear from you between 5 to 12 times before making a buying decision.

2. If you’re paying for the ad and sending people to the seller’s Website, the ones who don’t buy disappear forever. (And neither you nor the seller will benefit.)

3. Of those who do buy, if you’re only sending them to the sales page, YOU still lose them forever because you have no way of knowing who they are.

Here’s one great solution:

1. Write your ad and send your prospects to a well-written squeeze page – YOUR squeeze page. A squeeze page is a single page Website that has one purpose – to convince prospects to give you their contact information. Squeeze pages need to be simple – no flash, no links, and if you use a graphic or photo, keep it very simple and make sure it relates to the theme and focus of the page. How do you convince prospects to give you their contact information? By giving them information that is useful to them.

2. Offer them an incentive to give you their contact information. (A free report, a free newsletter, an audio or video product – be sure it’s related to your niche or affiliate product.)

3. Then, after they’ve opted in to your autoresponder, send them to your affiliate sales page.

4. Next, follow up on a regular basis – mix good information, free bonuses from time to time and, later, additional products.

Lather, rinse, repeat.
(As soon as you’re making money from your first affiliate product, move on to the next and then the next and the next.)

The best thing about this is that you can set up the majority of this on your autoresponder, so it becomes a “system” and runs “almost” on autopilot. (Runs “almost” on autopilot…There is simply NO SUCH THING as a business that runs 100% on autopilot – don’t believe anyone who tells you differently.)

Any business – any real business – takes work and effort. But by setting this up as a system, your autoresponder does the majority of the work. You’ll only need to do simple updates, making sure that fresh information keeps flowing.

Creating Multiple Streams of Affiliate Marketing Income

Have you ever heard or read the phrase “multiple streams of income” before? Do you know what this phrase means? For many businessmen, creating multiple streams of income online or offline is one way of securing themselves as well as their businesses in the future. They also believe that it can also save them from the so-called famine effect in the business industry. Once you are engaged in affiliate marketing business, it is advisable if you have multiple streams of affiliate marketing income so that if one of those income streams vanished, it will not upset you the way losing your sole stream would. If you depend on just one source of income and this single stream has been downsized or has lain off, you’ll surely find yourself bankrupted and hopeless. Try to ask the most successful online entrepreneurs, and you’ll discover that they have established multiple streams of online income.

There is a businessman that said and attested that the very first step you must take in creating multiple streams of income is to assess or evaluate your resources. Start by assessing yourself first. Jot down your answers to the following questions: What are the talents, abilities, strength and gears that you possess? Are you gifted with excellent and creative writing skills? Can you do well at sales? Are you good in communicating with people? Are you born with an artistic skill or unique ability that other people don’t have? Through this, you can determine the kind of business where can possibly excel.

Next, look around and write down you assets and physical resources such as computer, color printer, scanner, digital camera, cell phone, CD or DVD burner. Write these all down because it can be used as a resource. Consider also your friends and family. Find out what do they possess that you have access to. Remember that no man is an island. You can use the talents, abilities, knowledge and resources of everyone you know.

That’s basically the initial step if you want to create multiple income streams. But if you’re already a webmaster or a site owner, you definitely have an edge. Why don’t you join affiliate marketing business to help you gain extra income out of your own website?

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