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Newsletter 1

This guy REALLY CAN show you how to
start an Internet business in less than
24 hours -- and see profits by next weekend!

Review: "The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet -- Version 2004" by Corey Rudl

If you've been searching for information about how to sell products or services online, then you've probably come across Corey Rudl's name at least a few times. And, if you're like me, you've probably wondered what the story is behind his best-selling marketing course.

Well, here's the truth: This course is the real deal.

Listen, I'll be the first to admit that I was hesitant when I first decided to buy "The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet -- Version 2004." But when it arrived on my doorstep (only 3 days later!), I was literally blown away by what I had received.

The first thing I noticed about the course was that I could barely lift it up -- the package must have weighed ten pounds! Now, I know that this sounds like an overwhelming amount of information, but one of my favorite things about the course -- which you'll discover right away -- is that it is laid out in a easy "step-by-step" format.

For example, Step 1 is all about deciding what you want to sell and planning out your business. Already know what you want to sell? Skip to Step 2, which will teach you how to design and build your site. The whole course is set up this way, so you can quickly find the exact information you're looking for.

If this stuff sounds a little basic, don't worry! The course also walks you through the more advanced topics -- things like e-mail marketing, search engines, locating virtually unknown sources of dirt-cheap traffic, how to get 1000s of new visitors to your site for free, and so on.

And the best part is that you don't need to be some kind of computer whiz to understand and use the strategies that are taught in the course! You'll be amazed at how easy it actually is to do things like set up autoresponders, accept credit cards on your site, and build your own opt-in e-mail program.

The course also comes with two CD-ROMs that are literally packed with all kinds of great resources. These CDs contain everything from "fill-in-the-blank" e-mail and newsletter templates, to revealing audio interviews, as well as Corey's "Personal Rolodex," which is a list of 167 web sites, tools, software, and resources -- mostly FREE or "almost-free" -- which have saved me TONS of time and money already.

But what impresses me most about this course is just how complete it is. I've purchased other Internet marketing books and resources before, and they all seem to focus on just ONE thing. For example, they'll tell you how to build a great-looking site, but won't tell you how to get anyone to visit it! Or they'll tell you that you need to start collecting e-mail addresses from your visitors -- and then they don't tell you HOW to do it!

The "Insider Secrets -- Version 2004" course is almost like an encyclopedia of Internet marketing, since it explains in tremendous detail absolutely everything you need to know about how to start, run, and grow a profitable online business. I give this product my absolute highest recommendation.

Click here to find out more.


Newsletter 2
===============================================

           Marketing Tips Newsletter   
           August 30, 2004 -- Issue 98

================================================

Hi ,

This issue includes...

 1) "Turn Your Site into a Visitor Magnet and Attract    
    Swarms of Qualified Traffic with Our Top 10 FREE    
    Traffic Generation Tactics!"

 2) "FREE Upgrade to our Premium Edition!"    
 
 3) "Free Content for Your Web Site or E-zine"

 4) "Visit Our Newsletter Archives"

 5) "Tell Us What You Think!"

For those of you who prefer the HTML version of our
newsletter, you can still read it in this format at:

http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue98


================  FEATURE EDITORIAL  =======================

"Turn Your Site into a Visitor Magnet and Attract Swarms of
Qualified Traffic with Our Top 10 FREE Traffic Generation
Tactics!"

============================================================

No matter how cool your site is or how fabulous your product
is, you're not going to generate enough sales to make your
business viable unless you get traffic! You have to get the
word out about your site and give people a reason to visit
it, or else you'll go the way of the dodo.

The good news is, there are lots of ways to effectively
advertise your site online and drive tons of "qualified"
traffic to your site -- free.

("Qualified" traffic consists of people who belong to your
target niche market and are most likely to buy the products
or services you offer -- THESE are the people you want coming
to your site!)

As more and more people turn to the Internet as their first
shopping choice, enterprising entrepreneurs are coming up
with increasingly ingenious ways to attract visitors to
their sites.

In this issue, you'll discover how YOU can use these tactics
to turn your site into one of the "main attractions" for your
niche market -- without spending a dime!

Let the "Top 10" countdown begin!

-----------------------------------------------------------

TRAFFIC GENERATION TACTIC #10:

Use viral marketing strategies to "infect" people with the
desire to learn more about your product!

-----------------------------------------------------------

These days, viral marketing messages are spreading through
the Web like wildfire. Viral marketing is any type of
advertising that is "self-perpetuating," compelling people
to share it with others so that it spreads through a
community like a virus -- but a good one!

Hotmail.com is a textbook example of viral marketing on the
Internet. Hotmail was one of the first free e-mail services
on the Web. In its first one and a half years, Hotmail
managed to sign up an incredible 12 million subscribers!

How did it accomplish this? Simple: At the end of every
e-mail, Hotmail included the following message:

Get your private, free e-mail at http://www.hotmail.com

This encouraged everyone who received an e-mail to sign up
for the free service themselves.

Large companies use viral marketing messages to perpetuate
awareness of their brand, often by creating humorous videos
or animation clips that people send to their friends for a
laugh.

Some smaller companies have also used this strategy
successfully.

An example is "Homestar Runner," a small business that's
created a set of cartoon characters and animated shorts that
circulate around the Web, encouraging people to visit the main
site and buy the company's merchandise. You can check out
Homestar Runner at: http://www.homestarrunner.com

If you like to play around with video or animation, you might
think about adopting this strategy to generate interest in
your own product.

Just keep in mind that it can be very difficult to determine
the exact return on investment for viral marketing campaigns,
since it's impossible to keep track of where the ad goes.

This type of viral marketing is good for generating interest
in your site and products, but it doesn't always translate
into immediate sales.

To see more examples of viral marketing, check out the
following sites (warning: part of the popularity of some
viral ads is their "cheeky" or risque nature. Some viral ads
contain material that viewers may find offensive):

 - ViralBank -- http://www.viralbank.com
   Go here to discover "the web's most entertaining e-mails"!
   This site features images, video, games, microsites, and
   text e-mails that have spread virally through the Internet.

 - ViralMeister -- http://www.viralmeister.com
   This site features a list of news items concerning the
   latest viral ad campaigns as well as a sampling of popular
   viral ads circulating the Web. Visitors are invited to submit
   "funny or cool videos, images, jokes or anecdotes" to be
   featured on the site.

 - Lycos Viral Chart -- http://viral.lycos.co.uk/
   Offers a top 10 list of "cheeky" viral e-mails, as well
   as viral campaigns listed under other headings, such as
   "New Releases" and "Celebrities." Visitors are invited to
   submit viral ads for review and vote on the best campaigns.

----------------------------------------------------------------

TRAFFIC GENERATION TACTIC #9:

Use online business networking communities to hook up with
other entrepreneurs for link swaps and joint marketing ventures

----------------------------------------------------------------

Business networking communities are springing up all over
the Web. They're similar to dating or social networking
sites, but are used by entrepreneurs to find other
businesspeople with whom they can establish mutually
beneficial business relationships.

Sites like these can offer great opportunities for
entrepreneurs to set up joint marketing ventures with
like-minded businesses, or simply to find link-swap partners
who can help drive more traffic to their sites.

(We'll be looking at link swapping in greater detail later
on, in case you're not familiar with this effective traffic
generation tactic).

Business networking communities can also help generate
traffic by allowing their members to create personal profile
pages with links to their main business sites. These links
can improve a site's ranking with the major search engines.

If you decide to join a networking community, be sure to
partner with people whose business is complementary to your
own. Their site has to attract visitors who are likely to
become your customers as well.

For example, it probably won't do you any good to have your
all-vegetarian tofu burgers featured on a Cattle Rancher's
Association site!

Here are some business networking communities you may want
to check out:

 - Ryze -- http://www.ryze.com

 - LinkedIn -- https://www.linkedin.com

 - AlwaysOn -- http://www.alwayson-network.com/

 - Spoke -- http://center.spoke.com/public/login/splash.action

-------------------------------------------------------------

TRAFFIC GENERATION TACTIC #8:

Become a recognized "name" in your niche market by
participating in newsgroups, discussion forums, or blogging
networks

-------------------------------------------------------------

A great way to establish an online identity and develop
relationships with your potential customer base is by taking
part in newsgroups and discussion forums or starting up a
blog related to your niche market.

These tools can really help you communicate directly with
your niche market and discover what their wants and needs are.

For example, if you sell special mountain biking shoes,
spend some time hanging out in mountain biking forums --
that's where your target market's going to be!

Or you could start your own blog in which you describe your
latest mountain biking adventures -- complete with attention-
grabbing photos, of course!

You could even combine the two tactics and generate interest
in your blog by mentioning it in forums and newsgroups.

However, most newsgroups, blog networks, and discussion
forums do NOT allow people to blatantly advertise in them!

If you want to generate traffic through these sites, the
best way to do it is to offer friendly, useful advice to
people who express a need for something, and then include a
subtle link to your business site at the end of all your
messages.

If people like what you say, they may decide to visit your
site and check out your products or services.

Taking part in newsgroups, forums and blogs can be very
time-consuming, but can still be a great way to establish a
name for yourself in your niche market.

-----------------------------------------------------

TRAFFIC GENERATION TACTIC #7:

Get your visitors to tell their friends about you!

-----------------------------------------------------

A good way to drive visitors to your site is to ask your
existing customer base to do it for you!

There are lots of sites that offer free "tell-a-friend"
buttons you can place directly on your site, in order to
encourage your visitors to send e-mails to their friends
telling them about your site.

If your site offers a free opt-in newsletter, contest, quiz,
or "tip of the day" -- in other words, any information that
people will want to share because it's fun, valuable, or
exciting -- include a "send to a friend" button in that
feature as well.

It's a great way to get the word out about your site to as
many people as possible -- and there is nothing more powerful
than a personal recommendation from a friend or colleague.

Here are a couple of sites that offer free "tell-a-friend"
tools:

 - http://www.1-hit.com

 - http://www.refdev.com/free_scripts/Perl/Recommendation/


---------------------------------------------------------------

TRAFFIC GENERATION TACTIC #6:
 
Encourage people to "get busy" with your site with interactive
traffic generators

---------------------------------------------------------------

One of the best ways to get traffic to your site is to offer
valuable content that's updated on a regular basis, so that
your visitors are prompted to pay frequent return visits to
see what new information you have available.

Provide content that's relevant to your industry, such as
articles, product reviews, or "how-to" advice columns --
anything you think your visitors will find useful or
entertaining.

As you develop your collection of written content, consider
placing it in a searchable archive so that your visitors can
access past articles and product reviews.

This will encourage people to think of your site not only as
a place where they can buy things, but also as a valuable
source of information.

You should also consider offering other free resources to
attract your target audience. Remember, the most powerful
word in a marketer's arsenal is "free"! The more useful
tools and resources you offer your visitors, the more
they'll appreciate your site.

Offer fun or helpful interactive tools that relate to the
purpose of your site. For example:

 - If you sell recipe books or kitchenware, include a
   measurement converter that easily allows people to
   convert imperial measurements to metric and vice versa.
   
 - If you sell clothing, include a size converter that shows
   how the clothing sizes compare to measurement systems
   used in different countries. (For example, a woman's
   size 10 in the U.S. is equal to a size 12 in the UK and
   a size 40 elsewhere in Europe!)

 - If you sell scuba gear or sailing goods, link to current
   tide and weather information.

 - If you sell books on philosophy or self-improvement,
   include IQ tests or quizzes that determine personality
   types.

 - If you sell education products, include interactive math
   or grammar games and other fun learning tools.

This strategy tends to be better for getting repeat traffic
than for attracting new visitors, but if you include a
"tell-a-friend" button with your interactive traffic
generator, you may prompt visitors to share the news about
your site with others -- and get them to drive new traffic
to your site for you!

---------------------------------------------------------------

TRAFFIC GENERATION TACTIC #5:

Increase your site's exposure by swapping links with other
sites

---------------------------------------------------------------

If you want your site to be seen by as many potential
customers as possible, try to get it mentioned on sites
they're likely to visit. You want to find sites that are
related to yours, but not competing with it.

For example, if you sell ski goggles, try to get your
product mentioned on alpine tourism sites, sites that sell
skis, boots and poles, and sites that sell winter clothing
-- but not on other sites that sell ski goggles!

A great way to get your site mentioned on other sites is to
contact those sites directly and offer to "link swap" with
them. Tell them you'll put a link to their site on your site
if they'll do the same for you.

Not only will this generate a lot of increased exposure for
your site -- it can also boost your ranking with the search
engines.

Search the Web for sites that cater to your niche market --
AND that get a lot of traffic! If you own a souvenir shop,
for example, see if you can get your site listed on local
hotel and restaurant sites, as well as other travel and
hospitality sites tourists are likely to visit.

------------------------------------------------------------

TRAFFIC GENERATION TACTIC #4:

Get the message out about your site by giving away free
content

-------------------------------------------------------------

One of the best ways to make sure your site gets mentioned
on other sites is to offer them valuable free content.

Many online business owners are happy to get quality
information to put on their site or in their opt-in
newsletters so offer them some of the regularly updated
content you've posted on your own site (as suggested in
Traffic Generation Tactic #6).

By providing other site owners with free articles, product
reviews, or advice columns, you'll be doing them a favor --
as well as increasing the exposure of your own site!

Try to get your content published on popular web sites or in
newsletters that have huge mailing lists.

Before you offer your content, do a little research to
discover how much traffic the site gets, and how many people
subscribe to the site's opt-in newsletter.

Try to find out which sites are the "hot spots" in your
niche market -- THAT'S where you want your articles to be
published!

IMPORTANT NOTE: Remember, this tactic will ONLY work if you
include your contact info and a link to your site at the end
of every article!

That'll make it easy for people to visit your site and learn
more about the products or services you sell -- so make sure
that every site or e-zine that publishes your content
includes this contact info and link.

-------------------------------------------------------------

TRAFFIC GENERATION TACTIC #3:

Be one of the first sites people see listed when they search
your keywords in the free search engines

-------------------------------------------------------------

The free search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN are
still one of the most effective ways to get the word out
about your site. There are lots of different techniques you
can use to ensure you get a good ranking with the free
search engines. For example, you can...
 
 - Submit your site to the free search engines and online
   directories

 - Optimize your web site so that it's easily indexed by
   search engine spiders

 - Pay close attention to your keyword inclusion and placement

 - Create content-rich "information pages" to direct traffic
   to your site

... And these are just a few tactics that will help you
improve your search engine ranking!

You can spend the time needed to do all this work yourself,
or you can use software that will do the job for you, such as
WebPosition Gold:

http://www.marketingtips.com/webposition.html

To explore search engine optimization strategies in more
detail, check out Issue 96 of the "Marketing Tips"
newsletter:

http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue96/page1.html

------------------------------------------------------------

TRAFFIC GENERATION TACTIC #2:

Use e-mail promotions to present your visitors with offers
they CAN'T refuse!

------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, it's true: E-mail promotions are one of the top two
ways to attract qualified traffic to your site. If you have
list of customer or subscriber e-mail addresses, then you're
set!

People who have visited your site and signed up for your
newsletter (or a contest or survey) are far more likely to
buy than someone who has never heard of your site before.
It's essential that you stay in touch with these people!

Encourage visitors to frequently return to your site by
e-mailing them attractive promotional offers, such as
e-coupons or discounts on new products you're offering...
notification of a sale or a contest you're running... even
free services or products you've decided to give away to a
limited number of people!

You can manage your mailing list and automate your e-mail
promotions using software like Mailloop:

http://www.marketingtips.com/mailloop/

To learn more about how to build a substantial list of
opt-in e-mail addresses, start by checking out Issue 49
of the "Marketing Tips" newsletter:

http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue49/page1.html

For more advanced strategies, you'll want to read "The
Insider Secrets to E-mail Marketing":

http://www.marketingtips.com/emailsecrets/

And now, the time has come for...

---------------------------------------------------------

TRAFFIC GENERATION TACTIC #1 (drum roll please...):

Build an army of affiliates to drive TONS of traffic to
your site for you!

---------------------------------------------------------

Without a doubt, an affiliate program is the BEST way to
increase your site's exposure! You can get your affiliates
to drive qualified traffic to your site using ALL the
free techniques we've mentioned so far, as well as other
effective paid advertising techniques.

You can literally get your affiliates to do ALL your
marketing for you!

In fact, one of our most successful clients doesn't spend
ANY time optimizing his site for the free search engines --
he lets his affiliates do it for him! '

Many of them go to great lengths to make sure their sites are
highly ranked --  and because they all link to his site, they
boost his search engine ranking as well!

And the best thing about affiliate programs is that you
don't pay your affiliates a dime for all the work they do
unless they help you make a sale!

It really is a win-win proposition: The more sales your
affiliates help you make, the more money they earn as well.

For more on growing your own affiliate program, check out
"The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the
Internet," which is filled with lots of in-depth information
on how to start up and make the most of your own affiliate
program:

http://www.marketingtips.com/tipsltr.html

-------------------

Final thoughts

-------------------

In order to maximize your site's exposure, it's best to use
a combination of the tactics listed above.

For example, if you're sending out an e-mail promotion, you
may want to include a "tell-a-friend" option in the e-mail
so that the people on your mailing list will send the
promotion to others.

If you have an affiliate program, ask your affiliates to post
your articles and product reviews on their sites in order to
help you build a reputation for yourself as an industry expert.

Remember: When it comes to online marketing, there are three
words you need to keep in mind: LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!

Your site has to be mentioned often in places where your
niche market hangs out if you want your site to be seen by
as many potential customers as possible.

If you think you could be doing more to boost your site's
traffic numbers (and really, who couldn't?), start putting
these Top 10 Traffic Generation Tactics to work for you
today -- then sit back and enjoy all that free traffic
coming your way!

Have fun!

=================================================

2) "FREE Upgrade to Our Premium Edition!"
 
=================================================
 
Get this newsletter delivered directly to your desktop FREE
with the premium "Messenger Edition" of the Marketing Tips
Newsletter.
 
And, for a limited time, everyone who takes advantage of this
free upgrade will receive access to an exclusive 61-minute
audio interview I (Corey) recently did in Australia, where I
revealed my *newest* Internet profit secrets, including:
 
   - Simple tricks for driving 1,000s of qualified buyers to
     your web site!
    
   - How to build a HUGE opt-in list -- even with NO traffic!
  
   - Eye-opening secrets for starting an Internet business --
     in less than 48 hours!

...and much more!
 
For your free subscription upgrade and to access the audio
interview, simply visit:  
 
http://news.marketingtips.com


=================================================

3) "Free Content for Your Web Site or E-zine"

=================================================

Need some fresh, free content for your web site or e-zine?

You now have permission to reprint these "Marketing Tips"
articles on your web site or in your e-zine. To request
permission to reprint any of our articles, simply visit:

http://www.marketingtips.com/freecontent


=================================================

4) "Visit Our Newsletter Archives"

=================================================

Our newsletter archives contain every article, including
every marketing tip, trick, and technique, that we have
revealed to our subscribers since July of 1998.

Now obviously, our more recent articles contain our latest,
most recently tested, most cutting-edge marketing
strategies. However, this wealth of Internet marketing
knowledge and expertise is still highly recommended reading!

All the concepts, "big picture" techniques, and step-by-step
instructions you'll find make reading these back issues a
simple, but extremely powerful way to give yourself an
education in starting, growing, and exploding your very own,
highly profitable online business!

Check out all our back issues at

http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter


=================================================

5) "Tell Us What You Think!"

=================================================

We would love to hear what you think of this issue of the
"Marketing Tips" Newsletter. And of course, if you have any
suggestions for upcoming issues that you'd like to share
with us, please send those, too!

Just e-mail the editor at:

newslettersuggestions@marketingtips.com


=================================================

Copyright 1996-2004 by The Internet Marketing Center.
All rights reserved.

=================================================

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Corey Rudl is the owner of four highly successful online businesses that attract more than 1.8 million visitors per month and generate over $6.6 million each year. He is also the author of the #1 best-selling Internet Marketing course online.

To check out his site that's JAM-PACKED WITH THE EXACT INFORMATION YOU NEED to start, build, and grow your very own profitable Internet business, I highly recommend visiting http://www.marketingtips.com/tipsltr.html

This guy really knows what he's talking about!

 


Newsletter 3
==============================================================
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==============================================================
.
. 1) Article 1: The New Power Of Advertising.
.
. 2) Article 2: Maintaining Your Attack.
.
. 3) Article 3: 10 Web Site Design And Writing No-No\'s.
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. 4) Insider advertising tools. Must have\'s to make it online.
.
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Article 1: The New Power Of Advertising
=========== Written By: Jay Conrad Levinson

A website is an island. Advertising is a bridge to that island. Large and small businesses online are discovering that truth in a hurry - or else. Advertising is not what it used to be. The internet has changed its purpose and its strength. Rather than making advertising in the traditional media weaker, the net has made it stronger. That's why all guerrillas must be aware of the new power of advertising.

The first thing to know, and this should come as good news, is that advertising longer has to make the sale.

Not very long ago, advertising's main goal was to make the sale, though there are many other goals. But that has changed dramatically with the growth of dotcom companies all over the internet. Today, the goal of much advertising is not to make the sale but to direct people to websites.

That does not diminish the power of advertising. Instead, it increases it. With many, if not most, guerrilla-run companies establishing webturf, advertising's newest function is to motivate people to visit a website where they can get far more information than can be delivered by standard media advertising.

Advertising has become the first step in a permission marketing campaign. It invites dialogue and interactivity with prospects and customers by directing people to websites, by offering nocost brochures, by generating the kind of action that leads to permission to receive marketing messages. Once people grant that permission, which they do at a website or by simply calling to request a brochure - printed or electronic --- that's when serious guerrilla marketing attempts to close the sale.

That means the prime obli*gation of advertising is to motivate an easy-to-take-action. This should come as good news because it places less of an onus on advertising than ever before. Motivating the action of getting person to go to your website is a whole lot simpler than motivating a person to part with his or her hard-earned money and risk spending it the wrong way.

Not only is it easier to motivate action, but that action is becoming even easier as being online is endemic. Over 100 million people are online, though America Online's chief, Steve Case, pegs the number as being closer to 200 million.

It's not always a whole lot of fun to visit your store or order from your toll-free number, but it is fairly enjoyable to go over to a website and take a gander at what is being offered and how you can benefit.

There is a risk when somebody responds to advertising with an order. There is no risk at all if they look at your website. Advertising seems to grease the skids to the sale. It takes far less time to learn about you online than to cruise around a mall or drive to a location further away than their computer.

That means advertising can be short, concise, to the point. It no longer has to curry the favor of prospects with long copy, involved graphics or detailed explanations. The internet can do that for you, allowing you to save on advertising costs. Advertising your website works in all the media - from TV to radio, from magazines to newspaper, from direct mail to billboards. It doesn't take a lot of time or verbiage to get them to spend a few moments checking how your website can improve their lives.

As all guerrillas know, the name of the game in marketing is creating relationships. It's tough to accomplish this with an ad. It's pretty easy with a website, which initiates dialogue by inviting it, by making it as easy as clicking a mouse.

Advertising has always been a method designed to change human behavior by getting people to purchase your product or service. The internet has changed that. Advertising merely has to deflect human behavior, to divert curiosity from an ad or commercial to a website.

There is little question that the online fire burns brightly. There is no question that advertising fuels the online flame.

During the telecast of Super Bowl played in l999, I was in shock to see four commercials for dotcom companies. Today, I am even more in shock when I watch a sporting event telecast that does not have a whole gaggle of dotcom commercials.

The big and the small players online are learning from hard experience that they are invisible when they are online. Sure, their site might come up from a search engine or a link from a cooperating company, but the majority of people get their information offline - and that's where guerrillas marketing their sites. Offline and regularly.

It's true that standard media advertising is interruption marketing, interrupting people in their perusing of the newspaper or magazine, in their viewing of a TV show or listening to the radio. Interruption marketing is crucial, however, as the first step in gaining permission from people to receive your marketing materials. And it is equally crucial in luring them to your website.

The top five products that internet users actually prefer to buy online differ from men to women. The top five to men are computer software, computer hardware, books and music. The top five to women are computer software, greeting cards, music, books and computer hardware.

Many so-called experts believe that the growth of the internet signals the demise of advertising. This particular expert believes just the opposite. Advertising can loom as important as ever, as necessary as ever, and more mandatory for a proper marketing mix than at any time in history.

The more the internet grows, the more important the role of advertising and the greater its power. Advertisers must no longer have to move a person from total apathy to purchase readiness with their advertising. All they have to do is move a person from total apathy to mild curiosity. From that point, moving that person to purchase readiness is the job of the website.

(Jay Conrad Levinson\'s newest book is Mastering Guerrilla Marketing: 100 Profit-Producing Insights You Can Take to The Bank. His toll-free number is 1-800-748-6444; his website is at www.gmarketing.com. To learn of his two two-day workshop in Marin County, California on May 19-20, send an email to gmintl@aol.com or call 415-381-8361. Sign up before your competitors do!)


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Article 2: Maintaining Your Attack
=========== Written by: by Charles Rubin

The launch goes well, but the weeks go by. Distractions happen. Your participation drops, and results diminish. Results diminish and you get discouraged. Eventually, you\'re not checking your e-mail regularly, and not posting to discussion groups anymore at all. And when that happens, your online presence evaporates.
It\'s a sad and too-familiar sequence of events for online marketers. The excitement that followed the launch of your online marketing attack and its early success is hard to maintain. But what\'s the alternative? With thousands of people vying for attention on the Net, you have to keep up your marketing efforts or risk losing that presence and visibility you worked so hard to create.

...some ideas for maintaining your attack.

Avoid distractions by scheduling.
It\'s easy to become distracted by off-line events. People call, customers stop by, paperwork needs to be done and errands need running. Your online attack can get shoved to the back burner--or off the stove completely--if you think you\'ll simply work it in sometime during your day. Schedule a specific time every day for your online marketing activities. Mark off half an hour on your daily calendar for reading your e-mail, reading and posting discussion group messages, and maintaining other aspects of your attack. (Try first thing in the morning; that works for me.) Make a schedule you can live with and stick to it.

Keep up with online news.
Your marketing attack needs new ideas flowing into it to keep it fresh and vital. As you read discussion group messages or explore the Web, be on the lookout for new sources of information that can give you new ideas. For example, someone may mention a book or article that could stimulate new ideas for you, or a Web site may have a department or feature that sparks an idea about how you could enhance your own Web site. When you come across references like this, them out right away to see if they\'re potentially useful. It only takes a minute or two. If the resource looks useful, set a bookmark for it or note the address somewhere and then study it in more detail when you have more time. (I use the very end of the day for follow-up checks like this.) Surfing the Web and pursuing new resources you hear about are the best ways to get new electronic marketing ideas, and thereby maintain your enthusiasm for your own attack.

Read all about it.
Unless you spend a few hours a day online, you\'ll probably overlook at least some of the most interesting trends and developments each month. Read Internet World, Wired, NetGuide, or another monthly cyberspace magazine to make sure you cover anything you might otherwise have missed. Along with trends and interesting Net resources, these monthlies usually cover some aspect of online marketing in regular feature articles.

Your online marketing attack represents a significant sum, an sum whose value grows over time. Do everything you can to maintain it in peak condition.


Just Do It.

. . . Is It.

You Can Do It.

You\'re in Good Hands with...

Reach Out and Touch Someone.

Oh, I Wish I Were an . . . Weiner

When You Care Enough To Send the Very Best.

Be All That You Can Be.

Why can we remember these phrases years and years after the marketing campaign ended? It\'s because these messages were repeated to us in delicious ways over and over again. Delicious means accompanied with vivid, beautiful images, lovely music, and great dramatic, memorable themes.
Let\'s look back at some famous slogans with respect to the needs of different psychological groups. Try to figure out your own best-customer psychological group before you develop your own slogan.

For very basic physical needs: Soup is Good Food. and Only ... Gives You a Total-Body Workout.

For safety, an ego prospect needs: Air Bags Are Standard. and When You Can\'t Sleep.

For belonging, a pleaser client needs: When Was the Last Time You and Your Husband Met for Lunch? and ... Brings the Computer Age Home.

For self-esteem, an authority customer needs: Isn\'t It Time You Owned a ... and For People who Know the Difference.

Appealing to mature self-actualization principled needs: Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life. and Be All that You Can Be.

Selecting a slogan represents a lot of work; however, once selected it should almost ne\'ver be changed. Remember you\'ll always be in Good Hands with what\'s-his-name.

====================================================================
Article 3: 10 Web Site Design And Writing No-No,s
=========== Written By Todd Schlomer

Note: You are welcome to republish this article as long as the resource box is included at the end.

1. Don\'t load your web site with a lot of high tech clutter. Your visitors may miss your whole s*ales message.

2. Don\'t use unnecessary words or phrases on your site. You only have so much time to get your visitor\'s attention and interest; make ever word count.

3. Don\'t make the mistake that everyone will totally understand your web site message. Use descriptive words and examples to get your point across.

4. Don\'t write your strongest point or benefit only once. You should repeat it at least 3 times because some people may miss it.

5. Don\'t push all your words together on your web site. People like to skim; use plenty of headings and sub headings.

6. Don\'t use site content your target audience isn\'t interested in. If people are coming to your site to find info about fishing don\'t include soccer content.

7. Don\'t use 50 different content formats all over your web site. Use the same fonts, text sizes, text colors, etc.

8. Don\'t use words your web site visitors might not understand. People are not going to stop and look in a dictionary, they will just go to another site.

9. Don\'t let selling words and phrases go unnoticed. Highlight important words and phrases with color, bolding, italics, underlining, etc.

10. Don\'t forget to use words that create emotion. All people have emotions, people will have more interest when they are emotionally attached.
--------------------
Free Business Articles for your E-Zine and/or Website!
For more details visit: http://www.homebusinesscollective.com

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4) Insider advertising tools. Must have\'s to make it online.
===========

There are 3 major things one needs to use for online advertising...
Start using them today and get some results immediately.

a) Webstars AutoHits Hits Exchange, fr*ee to use:
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b) And the new AutoTraffic Software.
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b) A no cost autotraffic software:
http://www.crazybrowser.com/download.htm

Thanks!
-Maryanne Myers/Owner

====================================================================
Webstars Ezine Ad Info located here:
http://www.dollarsoup.com/starzine.html
© 1999-2004 WebStars2000 DBA
WebStars2000 domains  WebStars2000 .com
====================================================================
5) Re-moval Instructions Below:

Warning: Reckless Spa\'mcop.net reports can/will result in a suit
on behalf of all websites involved if you cause damages and
defamation, so follow the re-moval instructions below.
------------------------------
Your ezine subscriber ID is: 7986
Please tell me this number if you need to be re-moved and put Re-move Ezine in the subject line. Email maryannemyers@yahoo.com to be removed.
Newsletter 4

10 Quick Traffic Building Tips For Any Web Site

By Terry Dean

The question most often asked on the Internet is, "How do I get more traffic to my site?"

You would think that an answer for this question would be extremely simple, but it really isn't. It isn't that it is so hard to get traffic to web sites. The problem is that there are so many different avenues of traffic generation you can choose from for any site.

In this short report, we are going to cover 10 different low or no cost ways you can get traffic to any web site. This isn't even an extensive list. I could easily name off 5 - 10 more ways you could be getting traffic to your site, but I don't want to overwhelm you with too many options.

The reason that most people don't get traffic is that they "Try" something, and then they give up. The key to any marketing is testing and then improving. If a method doesn't work for you on your first try, second try, or even your twelfth try, it doesn't matter. Keep going anyway.

Read everything you can about that subject and keep trying different things. If you have chosen to use classified ads for your products and services, try different ezines. Use AOL classifieds. Try Yahoo's classifieds. Create new headlines for your ads. Create new sales letters to follow-up.

Classified ads can work if you figure out how to work them for your product or service.

The same aspects are true of many different types of Internet advertising. They work, but only if you are willing to keep on going even if you fail a dozen times trying. You keep learning and you keep testing.

So, without further ado, here are your ten killer Internet Traffic Building Techniques:

1. Search Engine Submissions

Almost everyone starts right here. They know that search engines bring 84% of the traffic to most web sites, so they know they have to submit to them.

To achieve the top rankings in the search engines will take some serious work. You have millions of competitors, but you have an advantage. You are willing to learn and do what it takes to get to the top.

To achieve the top traffic building positions, you will need to study everything you can on search engine positioning and meta tags. Then, you will have to test. Use a tool such as Web Position to check your rankings, examine your competitors who are beating you, and then edit your pages.

If you are willing to keep going through this process and learning each step along the rise of your rankings, you too could soon be generating 100s of hits daily from top search engine positions.

2. Classifieds in Ezines

The biggest bang for your marketing buck will come from ezine advertising. For $10 - $50 per classified ad, you can reach thousands of potential customers in your targeted market.

With thousands of different ezines available, you can expand into hundreds of them once you find a classified ad and follow-up system that works for your product or service.

By testing your little classified ads and expanding into more and more ezines every week, you could quickly start reaching millions of people weekly and earning an income to match.

3. AOL Classifieds

AOL currently has over 15 million members. If I could only place one classified ad for any web site or product, it would probably be here. For $12.50, you can have your ad placed in view of people on a service where the ads are actually read.

I know several people earn a couple of hundred dollars weekly by placing little classified ads just using AOL's system. The key on AOL is to create a killer headline for your ad so it stands out above the hundreds of other ads in every category.

4. Yahoo Classifieds

There are very few free classified ad sites that actually work. Yahoo is one of the shining lights that stands out above the crowd of mediocre free ad sites. Yahoo has more traffic than any other Internet site and it definitely shows when you place your ads here.

On Yahoo, you are allowed to place 10 ads at a time, so do so. A little key to creating effective ads here is to delete your ads every few days and replace them. Then, you will be able to keep your ads towards the top of the list and receive more free readers.

5. Trade Links

If you develop a strong content oriented site you can persuade thousands of other webmasters to link to you or to trade links with you. There are even a few consultants online who have developed linking campaigns and have achieved a million hits a month or more for their customers within 90 days by linking with the right sites.

You can do this yourself. The key is to develop content people want to link to and then get out there and make the contacts by visiting people's sites, sending out personalized emails to webmasters you have visited, and networking in discussion groups.

6. Participate in Leveraged Banner Exchanges

Regular banner exchanges don't work that well. Although they can produce a few extra hits a month for your site, they never seem to give you the kind of traffic building leverage you need to grow to hundreds of thousands of hits a month.

A new wave of banner exchanges is growing though at unprecedented rates. What they do that separates them apart is that they will give you a 5% to 20% credit of banner impressions of anyone's site that you refer. If you refer a site which gets a million hits a month, you would get 200,000 free impressions a month extra.

7. Start Your Own Mailing List

If you want to make money online, start your own mailing list. It is the best way to keep contact with your prospects and your customers. It is also the best way to build the credibility you need to make sales to your targeted market.

A little less talked about advantage to having your own mailing list is that you can use it to trade ads with other ezines out there. If you trade ads with 10 other ezines out there, you could easily be saving yourself $100 - $500 in advertising expense every week!

8. Banner Ads on Individual Sites

When people think of banner ads they almost always think of the major search engines or major sites online. Well, I have been advertising lately with banners, and I can tell you something.

Making money using banner ads on these high traffic high cost sites is extremely difficult and risky.

These sites will charge you $20 per 1,000 impressions to general audiences and $50 per 1,000 impressions to targeted markets.

By seeking out individual sites who get high traffic (50,000 hits to 1,000,000 hits a month), you can actually get rates of $1 - $10 per 1,000 impressions of your banner ads. By finding 10 - 20 of these sites, you can quickly build yourself an overwhelming river of traffic to your site for a much lower cost than the major search engines.

9. Advertise on Goto.com

Goto has come up with a great advertising plan for businesses. You can actually go to http://www.goto.com and bid on traffic for your site. You pick keywords for your site and then place a bid of whatever price you are willing to pay for traffic from that keyword...generally you would bid .01 to .10 per keyword.

Then, Goto will only charge you for the actual hits you receive from them. If you bid one penny for the keyword and you receive 10 hits from it today, you only owe 10 cents for the day. This low cost traffic building method cannot be beat anywhere.

The key to making it work for you is to come up with hundreds of possible keywords for your site and then bid low amounts such as a few cents on each. Then, check your stats continually and find out what kind of traffic you are getting.

10. Free Stuff

The KING of traffic is free stuff. If you want to get real traffic to your site, provide the kind of free content and services that your market is hunting desperately for.

Provide free articles to other web sites. Provide free downloads. Give away free CGI programs. Provide hundreds of links to needed tools. Provide links to downloadable software. Give your visitors what they want and they will keep coming back and referring their friends.


Terry Dean's Brand New Fr-e eBook, "10 Quick and Easy Ways to Increase Profits to ANY Web Site Overnight!" Reveals More Time Tested Proven Internet Marketing Secrets Than 99% of the Paid Products Available...Showing You Step-By-Step How to Increase Your Traffic, Drop Your Expenses, and Drive Your Profits Through the Roof:
Newsletter 5

Interview with Corey Rudl:
The Secrets of an Internet Millionaire

Discover the secrets of an Internet millionaire in this exclusive interview with online marketing guru Corey Rudl. Corey is the author of the #1 best-selling course, "The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet" and is probably one of the most recognized names in Internet marketing today.

In the following interview, Corey reveals how he grew his business from a one-man show in his parents' basement to four online businesses that attract over 1.8 million visitors per month and generated over $7.6 MILLION in online sales last year. Corey reveals exactly how he did it, and details precisely what entrepreneurs need to be doing TODAY to be successful online.

Hi Corey, and thanks so much for agreeing to do this interview. Maybe the best way for us to begin is for you to tell us a bit about yourself and your company, The Internet Marketing Center.

Sure. Well, first off, I am the President and CEO of The Internet Marketing Center, which you can find online at www.marketingtips.com. We specialize in showing people how they can drive tons of targeted traffic to their web sites and how to turn that traffic into sales and profits. We provide all the information you need to learn how to market your business online, in the form of home-study courses, books, video and audio tapes, and more.

What really sets us apart from all the other marketing courses, though, is that we give you the concepts AND the software tools you need to promote and automate your business on the Internet. And we do all of this based on our own real-world tests and experience, not just theory. In other words, we do it and prove it BEFORE we teach it. This is how we are able to guarantee your results.

Actually, that brings up a good question: Why, exactly, is your "Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet" course so successful? Aren’t you leading this market space?

Yes, we are by far the leaders in educating our Small Office/Home Office audience in how to make money on the Internet.

The reason the course is so successful is because we practice what we preach. We generated about $7.6 million in business last year, all online. And that's not to mention the tens of millions of dollars we have helped our clients generate. We have over 70,000 affiliates and we get over 1.8 million unique visitors to our sites every month, all on a shoestring budget and all from scratch. So we are actually using all the methods that we teach.

Would you hire a poor stock broker? Of course not. If he cannot make himself rich, how's he going to help you? Would you hire a personal trainer that is not in good shape? No way! If they can’t do it themselves, how can you be sure that what they are teaching you is not garbage?

People know our reputation and they know that the stuff we teach in the course actually works. We walk people through every single step they need to follow to be successful marketing their business on the Internet -- even if they don't have an online business yet.

We also have a few big Fortune 500 corporate clients. They're attracted to us because most of them are so caught up in red tape that they don’t get to see the guerilla marketing tactics used to generate immediate revenues like small businesses do. We're just now starting to see the big corporations picking up some of the things we were recommending two years ago!

So the key to your success is practicing what you preach?

Exactly. Another big reason we're so successful is that we take all the risk. Our guarantee is simple -- if you don’t make money from what you've learned in the course, then you pay nothing. You can return it anytime for a full refund for any reason. Even if you decide you don't like the paper it's printed on, we'll give you all of your money back. And you know what? We get nearly zilch returns -- and that speaks for itself.

Don’t take my word for it, check out the testimonials at our site. We publish only one percent of the testimonials we receive, but you can see that it's not people saying “Oh, it was great,” but people saying they “Made an extra $70,000 already this year," or “Traffic increased by 400% in 30 days.” That's what counts -- results. That is the scoreboard at the end of the day.

And we really do cover everything in the course you could ever imagine. We teach you everything from A to Z; everything from starting up from scratch with nothing to how to drive traffic to your site, right down to setting up your site to convert visitors to more sales.

You'll learn how to maximize your exposure on the search engines, how to automate your entire business, how to build pop-up boxes, and hundreds of other things. We even give you templates and ideas to copy from us to ensure that nothing will go wrong!

That reminds me of a funny story... A couple of years back, I thought of trying to get my course on the reading list for an Internet Marketing program being offered by a top university. I had some meetings with a few of their senior marketing professors, hoping to get "Insider Secrets" into the hands of all their Internet Marketing students.

They finally came back to me and said, basically, "Thanks, but no thanks." Now, I was shocked! Why wouldn't they want their students to have the #1 Internet Marketing course as part of their education? I wouldn't let the professor leave my office until she told me.

It turns out they were actually scared that if their students read my course and found out that it cost less than two hundred dollars, they would feel ripped off by the school, which was basically charging them thousands of dollars for the same information!

That's quite a story! It just goes to show that "traditional" education isn't always the best way to get the BEST information.

Corey, could you tell us a little bit about your own history and background? How did you get started marketing online?

Well, I won't go too far back as I don’t want to bore you, but my first online venture was way back in 1994. I had written a book called "Car Secrets Revealed" and had been trying to market it offline. After wasting a lot of money on magazine and print ads, I took a friend's advice and decided to try selling it over the Internet. Those magazine ads had eaten up most of my cash, but I did manage to scrape together enough to get my first web site up and running.

I did everything myself -- built the site in HTML 1.0, learned how to use FTP programs, figured out how to build a banner, and things like that. Those were the days when Netscape 1.0 had just come out and there was no such thing as secure real-time online ordering. It was all so new and exciting!

I was glued to my computer 24 hours a day testing all kinds of wild and crazy marketing ideas to see which ones worked. And I can tell you that 95 out of 100 ideas failed, but the ones that did work, worked like crazy! Within 18 months I had the #1 best-selling car book online... and it's been #1 ever since!

When people started seeing that my counter had logged over 1,000,000 visitors at CarSecrets.com, they started asking how I was marketing it. They wanted to know how such a simple and basic site was generating so much traffic, and if I could teach them how to do it. Before too long I realized that I wasn't able to teach people everything I knew during a one-week consulting contract.

So I decided to "brain dump" everything I knew into a course, which I called "The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet." It taught just about everything I knew with real-life examples of exactly what I had tested, what worked, and what didn't. That was what set my course apart from every other Internet marketing course out there -- that I had actually tested and proven my techniques. Other courses were just teaching fluff and theory.

By promoting the course with the exact same techniques I was teaching, it became the #1 best-selling Internet marketing course online within three months. Since then, it has been through four new versions -- it needs to be updated regularly as the Internet changes so fast! But through all this time, it continues to be the #1 best-selling Internet marketing course online.

Because we're so far out in front of the curve as to what's working and what isn't, we have also been able to develop some of the world’s leading Internet promotional and automation software. Basically, we developed software that we needed for our own business. We made sure it was the best and then made it available to our clients. This has helped us become one of the world’s leading Internet marketing companies helping small to medium businesses drive traffic and make more sales.

So, what specific suggestions do you have for someone interested in getting started marketing on the Web?

Wow! That's a huge question and, to be blunt, there's no way I could answer it in just a few minutes. In fact, that's why I wrote a 1,000-page course in the first place... There are literally hundreds of tips and suggestions for building a successful presence online. There is just so much to know if you want to do it right the first time. However, there is one tip that is more important than any other...

Get educated. Don’t think you can put up a web site and have traffic appear from out of nowhere. It does not work that way. Spend the time to educate yourself about how everything works. Research your market or idea and learn how to identify a niche market on the Internet. Create or market products that solve other people’s problems.

Another thing to look at is your competition. How big are they? What are they doing right and wrong?

Learn from people who practice what they preach -- find people that you KNOW are successful on the Internet and model yourself after them. Don’t try to re-invent the wheel and don't listen to people who cannot prove that they have done what you are trying to do.

There are so many "wannabes" out there who write books on web site promotion but don't even have a successful Internet business themselves. Find someone who you know is successful and use them as a mentor -- that's what I did. I had mentors, too.

Why do you feel that so many people who attempt to create an income on the Internet fail to do so?

Whoa, another loaded question! There are so many reasons, but here are the main ones. Bear with me, this will be a long answer:

Deciding on a product before finding a market is a big one. This is probably the most common mistake. If you are asking “What is a good product to sell online?” you are making this mistake right now! You need to decide on a market first.

The Internet makes it very easy to find people interested in a specific category like gardening, hunting, aeronautics, accountants, or any other interest group. Just about any group is easy to locate and target online through web sites, newsgroups, e-mail discussion lists, e-zines (electronic magazines), etc.

You have to make sure you have a captive audience, then find out what they are having a common problem with. If you can come up with a product or service to solve that problem, you have a guaranteed successful business. It's really that easy -- that's how all my businesses were built.

You don’t even really have to “sell” it, because you already know they want it before you launch your web site. And since you already know exactly where your customers are, it's easy to target them. I mean, it’s a no-brainer once you think about it.

Now, let’s turn that situation around for a second. Say scientists had found a cure for the common cold. You'd become a millionaire selling it online, right? Well, not necessarily! How do you find people that are sick online? You would have to market to the general Internet community to try and find the 1 out of 10,000 people that are sick that day. It would cost a ton of money to market to 10,000 people just to find one qualified buyer!

And to make matters worse, if you are selling this over the Internet, by the time you ship them the pill through the mail, they'd probably be over their cold! So by choosing the product instead of the market, you can actually fail no matter how great your product is.

Your course has a lot of information about generating traffic. Is that a big hurdle for online businesses?

Many people think they can build a web site, submit it to the search engines, and the buyers will come. The logic is that there are hundreds of millions of people online surfing around and that some of them are bound to stumble onto your product. Wrong! Search engine ranking is more competitive than ever.

Yes, there are secret ways to get high rankings in the search engines and we spend more than 40 pages in our course showing you how to do it. It is probably one of the most complex marketing techniques out there. There are lots of different options for grabbing high rankings. You can do it all yourself, or you can buy really good positioning software, or even hire specialized companies to do it for you.

The course even recommends which positioning software you should be using, as there is a lot of junk out there! The same with Search Engine Optimization companies -- most have no idea what they're doing. So my course shows you how to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

The real key is to know what your potential buyers do online. Are they searching online for a specific term? Are they visiting specific web sites all the time? Are they subscribed to topic-specific e-mail lists or e-zines? In other words, you need to know where your target market is “hanging out” online. If you can find where your potential buyers are, this is where you should spend your marketing and advertising money.

That is why I said before, spend your time getting educated, learning everything, and researching your market and product or service. Spend your time and money driving them to your site and then show them how your product solves a problem they have. Marketing is everything online! You could have the best product in the world selling for half of your competitor's price, but if you cannot get the word out, you don't stand a chance.

What are some of the big psychological obstacles for online entrepreneurs?

Number one in that department is definitely procrastination. I cannot tell you how many people I've met who have really great ideas and plans, but so few of them actually do what they say they are going to do. So turn off the TV, stop using your new baby as an excuse, stop going for drinks after work with friends, and take the time to get serious about your business! You will have plenty of time for all the rest when the big income starts rolling in.

Let's be honest here... We're all good at justifying excuses to ourselves. I've even done it a few times myself! But there really is no excuse for not following your dream. You're only hurting yourself.

The second biggest psychological obstacle is fear of failure. Never fear failure. Heck, we fail every day. The key is to fail small. In fact, your ticket to success is failing regularly! Every time you fail, you're eliminating bad ideas and getting closer to the things that work.

If you aren't failing, you are not learning. We test new ideas, new prices, new marketing strategies, new looks, new products every month! Most of them fail, and we expect that. And we don't call it failure, we call it testing.

We are just looking for the five winners out of every 100 small failures we have, because what we learn from the winners we apply to everything we have. Here's a perfect example: We don’t even send out an e-mail to our opt-in list without testing at least four versions of the e-mail to see which one performs the best -- that is how much you have to test. Some pull in 200% better results than others with small changes, so it's definitely worth it.

Speaking of results, what kind of results should people expect when they are just starting out?

Don't get discouraged if you don't see immediate results. This is another huge psychological barrier faced by many new entrepreneurs. Some people expect their business to be successful immediately and their dreams to come true overnight. It usually doesn't happen that way.

An Internet business is like any other business -- it takes work. The only difference on the Internet is that you can automate a lot of repetitive chores... and you can test and roll things out WAY faster than an offline business could.

Things generally start slow -- that is to be expected. But when it snowballs, it snowballs VERY fast! And you really have to be prepared, because the Internet moves at seven times the speed of offline business. If you do things right, you can easily grow 700% faster than any offline business just due to the speed of business on the Internet.

Think of it this way: if you had just 30 people a day sign up for a newsletter, that adds up to over 10,000 subscribers in a year. This means that your company now has a database of 10,000 highly targeted leads to market your products to. If you were to purchase a list of 10,000 targeted leads (who have never even heard of you before and may not be receptive to your product), it could easily cost you up to $5 per lead.

So just by attracting 30 new people a day, you've created an asset that is worth around $50,000. Sometimes, even if it seems like things are moving slowly, you're actually building something great! I hope that makes sense.

If you could tell someone just one thing about how to be a success in marketing on the Web, what would it be?

That’s easy! Learn how to drive targeted traffic to your site inexpensively and the rest will all come. Once you've got the traffic, you can change the design of your site, you can test different prices, and you can even change products if your product isn't selling well. Without traffic, nothing you do will make your online business a success.

Now, don't get me wrong! You still have to sell a real product to real people for real money. You can't just build a site, promote it, and try to think of a way to make money after the traffic comes. That was what killed all of the so-called "dot-bombs" a couple of years ago.

So simply attracting lots of general traffic isn't necessarily a good thing?

General traffic is fine, but traffic targeted to your specific niche market is much, MUCH better. In my experience, finding a niche and selling to it is the single easiest route to profitability online. If you are trying to sell books or CDs online, forget it -- Amazon.com will crush you. Those markets are gone.

However, if you target your market to a specific interest -- say gardening, hunting, cars, or whatever -- it's easy to find people online with an interest in those things. All you have to do is find what that market wants and give it to them. I have a lot of clients that make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year who just started their businesses a short time ago and almost all of them make their money by having specific products that go over well in a very targeted niche market.

Check out a newsletter I have called www.SecretsToTheirSuccess.com -- your readers have got to check this site out. It is cool because it shows how people that were in low-paying or dead-end jobs are now making it huge online now, working their own hours and making profits they couldn't even dream of before. We interview two new people every month that are making between $30,000 and $2 million in profit online each year.

Check out the site and you'll see what I mean. You can learn so much by reading about how they started their businesses from scratch not too long ago and made them successful by targeting a specific niche market. For example, one interviewee makes over $1,500 a day selling a plan to bald guys on how to regrow their hair. And another guy sells tools to make wire jewelry and makes $40,000 a month!

These products would be a flop if you sold them at a local storefront because the market in a local area is way too small to support them. But on the Internet, you have access to a global market that can support extremely obscure products and ideas… and be very profitable!

Corey, I wanted to ask you about search engines. How important are they to the marketing beginner?

When you are starting out on the Internet, search engines are a very cost-effective way to drive traffic to your site. But as your business grows, a good advertising campaign, joint venture, or affiliate program will outperform your search engine rankings every time -- guaranteed.

To start with, you have to make sure that people are actually looking for your product or service online. I hate to see people starting out on the Web who automatically put all of their time and resources into search engine submission when, in reality, their target market isn’t even looking for what they have to offer in the search engines.

If you want to find out if the search engines will be worth the effort, there are a few great services online that I show you in my course that will actually tell you approximately how many visitors you will get if you have a top ranking under your keywords in the major search engines.

I tell people to type five of their top keywords into one of these keyword popularity services, and if your keywords are not getting more than at least 1,000 searches every single month, it is probably not worth your time.

Also, you should never make the mistake of relying on just the search engines to drive traffic to your site. Although they can be an extremely valuable source of traffic, they are constantly changing their rules. If you get into a situation where you rely solely on a couple of good rankings in the search engines for all of your traffic, and then one day the search engines drop your ranking, you could be out of business literally overnight. Believe me, I've seen it happen more than a few times.

Make sure you have multiple sources of traffic to your web site so that if you lose one, you are not out of business!

Pay-per-click search engines seem to be a great place to test market products on the 'Net. What should people know about using a pay-per-click strategy for their site or product?

The pay-per-click search engines can be a great way to get traffic to your web site but, once again, only if your target market is actually looking for you in the search engines. They're great for testing your offer, testing your site, testing your price, even testing your product to see if it will work.

Success through the pay-per-click search engines is all about basic math. If the traffic they drive to your web site makes you more money than it costs to buy those clicks, then they are a great investment. Unfortunately, many beginners pay way too much for keywords, never actually calculate how much they can afford to spend, and end up losing lots of money.

I should also mention that you can't expect to enter a couple of your top keywords into the pay-per-click search engines and start making money -- that is very rare. To be successful, you need a list of at least 100 to 500 keywords and phrases. You can really make pay-per-click search engines pay off by bidding on lots of less popular keywords that are actually more targeted than general search terms.

For example, do a search for "gift basket" on the most popular pay-per-click search engine and you'll see that to get that top listing, you'd need to pay $2.76 per click. That's just too much. Instead, bid on lots of less popular terms like "discount gift basket" at $0.36 per click or "Valentine gift basket" at $0.61 per click.

What is the most important thing someone needs to do when starting out with a marketing project?

Test, test, and then test again. Never stop testing everything. You want to test your advertising, styles, colors, etc. Test your offer, test your price, test different types of advertising. The key is to test small. If it works, apply it to everything you know.

Start small and test. It is pointless to spend all your cash on a huge ad campaign when you have not proven that your web site can sell a product. And you must be able to track what is going on with your web site. I'm shocked by how many people don’t know their "visitors-to-sales ratio" -- how many visitors you get daily compared to how many sales. If you don’t know this, how can you try different things to see what improves your sales?

Can you give an example of this?

Sure. Let's say that your site gets an average of 500 visitors a day and you sell an average of five products a day. Your "visitors-to-sales ratio" would be 100 to 1. (In other words, for every 100 visitors, you can expect to make one sale.)

Now that you know this, you can start testing different things. Let's say that you decide to test a new headline and find that you now sell one product for every 50 visitors to your site. You've just doubled the profit potential for your site! And you never would have known unless you had taken the time to track the activity at your site. I teach this in much more depth in my "Insider Secrets" course.

Listen to this: Back in the early days of marketing my "Car Secrets Revealed" book online, I decided to try out a couple of new slogans. I had a hunch that the one we had been using wasn't targeting the right people. Anyway, after a couple of days of testing, I discovered something that literally changed my life.

I had been marketing the book to car owners, assuming that most people who owned a car would be interested in the book. Well, one of the slogans was targeted towards people who were thinking of purchasing a new car, not to people who already owned one. I just about hit the floor when I saw the results from the test on that slogan! Our sales had literally increased 400% overnight!

If I hadn't always been testing things, even back in the early days, I would never have realized this. That's the power of testing. It has allowed me to build an incredibly successful business.

Based on your experience, testing probably thousands of different strategies, what are the two most powerful ways to market your business on the Internet?

The answer is very simple... affiliate programs and opt-in e-mail marketing.

First off, affiliate programs are the single most cost-effective, least risky way to do business on the 'Net. Affiliate programs are like having an army of joint venture partners out there working for you twenty-four hours a day.

With an affiliate program, it's easy to recruit hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people to promote your product, and you do not pay them a penny unless they make you money! I started one of the very first affiliate programs on the Internet, even before Amazon.com, and I currently have over 70,000 affiliates, so I'm speaking from experience here.

For those who don’t know what an affiliate program is, this is how it works: Basically, you get other sites that share your target audience to link to you. Those links are tracked by special software so that if anyone clicks through the link and buys your product, you give a commission to the referring site.

The great thing about affiliate programs is that they are pure profit machines. Because you only pay your affiliates when they send you a visitor who actually buys something, it's literally impossible to lose money! Even if they drive 10,000 visitors to your site, you don't pay them a dime unless someone buys.

That sounds great. But managing a large affiliate program is a huge job, isn't it?

The best part is that if you are using the right tools you can completely automate the entire process. You can be running a multi-million dollar company with only a few staff in the office. We have over 70,000 affiliates promoting our products on the Internet and it literally only takes us a couple of hours every month to manage our program using our AssocTRAC software. At the end of the month we hit a couple of keys, it prints out the commission checks, and we mail them to the affiliates.

There are no overhead costs, no employees, and no hassles. You only pay your affiliates when they bring you business, and the software does all the work for you. And the whole thing only costs about $45 a month to run! This would be absolutely impossible offline, but the speed and scope of the Internet allows us to do it at almost no cost.

When we built the second generation of AssocTRAC software, we compiled over five years of first-hand experience so that our customers could apply this powerful strategy to their business without having to spend the hundreds of thousands of dollars and months of time it took us to develop it.

I could talk about affiliate programs all day, as it is a huge topic, but since we only have a limited amount of time, I'm going to recommend that if you are interested in learning more about how affiliate programs work and how you can start one of your own, visit our AssocTRAC web site.

Could you tell us a little about the second strategy you mentioned: opt-in e-mail marketing?

The second marketing strategy that every e-business definitely needs to employ if they want to be successful is opt-in e-mail marketing. And to get started building an opt-in e-mail list you NEED to be collecting e-mail addresses at your site. I can't stress this one enough. If you aren't doing this, you need to start right now!

Here's how it works: You need to offer every single visitor to your site a reason to leave you their e-mail address. It can be for a free newsletter, a free report, a demo version of your software, a contest... Any reason you can think of to get people to leave you their e-mail address.

If someone visits your web site and actually takes the time to subscribe to your newsletter by giving you their name and e-mail address, this obviously means that they are interested in what you have to offer. Congratulations! You have just captured an incredibly hot sales lead!

By simply following up with these people and e-mailing them quality information and facts, you will instantly build your credibility by developing the rapport that is needed to close sales.

The bottom line is this: Most people are simply not comfortable shelling out money the first time they visit your web site. Unfortunately, the Internet is a big place, so the chances of them finding you again once they leave your site are pretty slim. By capturing their name and e-mail address, you can guarantee that they will not forget about you.

What are some things that people should keep in mind when sending e-mail promotions?

First and foremost: The names and e-mail addresses you collect on your web site should be treated like gold and never abused. If you constantly e-mail these people with blatant advertisements and plugs for your products and never actually send them any valuable information, you will ruin any chance you have to sell to them in the future.

Also, opt-in e-mail is impossible to manage unless you have the right tools and information. In my "Insider Secrets" course I have almost 200 pages of cutting-edge information on this topic alone that will show you how to build an extremely responsive opt-in list very quickly and then show you how to follow up and sell to these targeted customers again and again and again.

We use a powerful e-mail automation tool called Mailloop that automates all of our e-mail promotions. I personally started using this software over 6 years ago and it quickly became such an indispensable part of my business that I actually bought the rights to it from the developer so that my customers could benefit from all of its powerful features.

This software is so cool… It is like having your own personal e-mail secretary -- but it does not take any breaks, does not talk back, does not ask for vacation, and did I mention that it works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?

It handles almost all of your e-mail: It subscribes and unsubscribes people automatically from your opt-in lists, it merges your orders into your customer database, it automatically sends out your promotions, it automatically responds to your customers' commonly asked questions, and much more.

It just leaves you with the e-mail that you need to handle personally -- it takes care of the rest. We use it every day to automate our business and stay in contact with our clients; it is solely responsible for generating over $100,000 a month in new business for us. You can check it out at www.marketingtips.com/mailloop.

Rapid growth and expansion can be a “good” problem for businesses. How can you handle your company's growth?

You automate. That is the beauty of the Internet. It is the first environment where you can truly automate your entire business. You can even run it from anywhere in the world -- as long as you have a laptop and a phone line, you are in business.

I'll never forget the day I was on a beach in Hawaii, drinking a Corona, when I decided to log on to the 'Net for a few minutes and check my sales. I discovered that I had made over $37,000 that day! This could only happen in today's online age!

When you are first starting out, keep it simple so that you can get up and running fast, but also realize that you'll need to automate soon after you start. We use software to automate most of the daily tasks like processing orders, managing e-mail, and such. Not only are the cost savings huge (one piece of software can literally replace at least one or two employees!), but the real benefit is that you don’t get caught up working IN your business instead of ON your business.

If you don’t automate soon, you will find that the mundane work will become overwhelming and you will be filling orders and reading e-mail all day long instead of growing your business. Be careful, because this is a real trap for so many people.

We teach a ton of ways to easily automate your business without a lot of work. We've tried a lot of things, and we show you what works and what doesn't -- and where to spend your time and money for the biggest growth and the biggest profits.

Unfortunately, we don’t really have time to go into this today during this short interview. But remember that you need to automate so that your business can run automatically whether you are there or not. It sounds complicated -- and it was 3 years ago -- but now there are inexpensive software programs and simple techniques that allow anyone to do it easily. I go through a lot of this in the course as it is a fundamental key to success. You need to automate before you can really grow.

Just as an example, my CarSecrets.com site practically runs itself. It automatically takes and fulfils orders, deposits the money in my bank account, takes care of most of the e-mail by autoresponding to customers, automatically promotes its affiliate program, and so on.

It generates hundreds of thousands of dollars in yearly revenue, yet I have an employee who spends less than 10 minutes a day running it. I have not looked at the site myself in over two years and it still generates a ton of money. That is the kind of business you want.

How do you stay up-to-date on an industry that is constantly changing?

We have a team of people who are cranked up on coffee at their desks, testing new ideas every day; we have to be ahead of the curve. We have to update our information and products constantly because the Internet changes so quickly.

The key to really exploiting marketing techniques is that you have to be using them before they become popular, because once people know about them, your audience becomes saturated, and they are not as effective anymore.

Pop-ups are a perfect example. We were using pop-ups way back before anyone else -- they were EXTREMELY profitable back then. As soon as people found out how great they worked, everyone started using them. Of course, as soon as every site had them, their effectiveness fell off quickly. I should say that pop-ups are still a great tool, but they are 50% less effective than they used to be.

Our job is to find the hot marketing techniques before everyone else picks up on them -- and let our customers know so they can use them and profit.

So, where do you see the Internet taking us in the future? How much additional business will be conducted on the 'Net and how important will the Internet be to the business ventures that our kids will be involved with?

Here's a fact: The Internet is becoming part of our lives more and more each day. Just about everyone uses e-mail now. If you want to know the weather, you check the 'Net. You check the 'Net for movie listings in your city, you use it to pay bills, you can use it to educate yourself on just about any subject.

Today there are university classes being held online for people around the world who cannot get to a classroom. There are pay-per-view movies that can be delivered to your computer in DVD quality anytime you want through a broadband connection. I mean, it might not be too long before we all say goodbye to the video store!

Nowadays, your sales force can access order and inventory data from their wireless handheld computers while at a customer’s location. Your fridge can automatically order your milk from the local grocery store for delivery when you are low. (I've actually seen this -- it weighs the area where the milk goes in your fridge and determines when to order more.)

The dot-com days are over, but the Internet has just begun! It will become more powerful and more useful as time goes on. It offers an entirely new level of communication and convenience, which gives home businesses the ability to compete with large corporations, not to mention the ability to run a business from anywhere in the world with next to no overhead or risk.

I personally know janitors and waiters who are making $100,000 a year now with their Internet businesses, working only a few hours a day! If they can do it, you can too -- no excuses!

Any last words?

The only thing stopping you from making more money is YOU! You may read this interview and say, “Wow, that sounds great!” But unless you actually do something and take action -- at least get your feet wet -- you will stay at the income level you are at today. Do you think my first site looked great and worked perfectly? Of course not!

If you're thinking about starting a small business, just do it! Get your feet wet, make some mistakes -- once you've started, you'll never look back! And you don’t have to be a computer geek to figure it all out, you just need common sense and the determination to get it done.

And take the time to educate yourself. Heck, if nothing else, sign up for a copy of our free newsletter at our site. Of course we save the best stuff for our course, but we still reveal tons of killer tips in the free newsletter. We distribute it every two weeks or so. Just go to www.marketingtips.com and enter your first name and e-mail address to receive it.

About The Author:

Corey Rudl gets over 1.8 million visitors to his web sites monthly, did more than 7.6 million dollars in online sales last year (yes, that is $7,600,000), and personally makes hundreds of thousands of dollars from his online businesses... all from his one small office.

So listen to what he has to say, as he knows what he is talking about when it comes to starting and promoting a business on the Internet. Visit his site at The Internet Marketing Center®, where he reveals all his unconventional tips, tricks and techniques with examples so you can learn the fastest and most efficient ways to make money on the Internet.

Newsletter 6
Costly Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid

 

 

 

 

 

Costly Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid

by Elizabeth H. Cottrell, IAHBE Staff Writer

Here at IAHBE, we believe in “accentuating the positive,” but sometimes it’s important to know what NOT to do, especially when it comes to spending your hard-earned marketing/promotion dollar. Many small business start-ups fail because of poor use of capital. So informing yourself about the pitfalls to avoid is vital if you want to be one of the survivors!

Examples of bad advertising are all around you. Pay attention to ads from other companies and notice the ones you like and the ones you don’t like. Most savvy marketers have a “swipe file” where they keep ads, newsletters, and marketing ideas from others to use as models for their own business.

The following list of 10 Marketing Mistakes is subjective and the order is not significant. Other authors will have their own list, so take the time to peruse our resources below and take advantage of the wealth of marketing information on the Internet.

MISTAKE #1: Forgetting to present a professional image

“You only have one chance to make a good first impression.” This may be a cliché, but it’s the truth. Potential customers will make a decision whether to call you or buy from you based on the most trivial details. If your written materials (business cards, flyers, brochures, printed ads) are sloppy and homespun, readers may assume that your services or products are equally substandard. If your personal appearance is not clean and neat when you go out of your house, some will jump to negative conclusions about the quality of your business. If your young children answer your business telephone or if callers are distracted by “family noises” in the background when they call, your image may be tarnished.

At the risk of getting too basic, please don’t forget to provide complete contact information on every promotional item that you produce. An ad, pencil, mug or T-shirt imprinted with your business name without a phone number is not maximizing the money you spent. If you have a Website, its URL should always be used. If you have a slogan, use it consistently so that prospects will begin to associate it with your business. Create a consistent and professional image, and it will become a foundation for business growth.

MISTAKE #2: Focusing on yourself or your company instead of on your prospect or customer

This is probably the most common--and most preventable--marketing mistake that businesses make. In their ads, they talk about themselves, their product, their service, their length of time in business, yet they fail to address what their product or service can do for their customers. Can you save your prospect money? Can you solve a problem they have? Can you make their life easier or their own business more profitable? That’s what a potential customer really wants to know: “What can you do for me?” Never forget this.

MISTAKE #3: Emphasizing the wrong elements in your ads or promotional literature

What stands out in your ad when a reader is perusing the newspaper or scanning a Website? Far too often, it’s your company name or your fancy logo. The rule of thumb for a written ad is to grab the reader’s attention first--with a compelling headline and a supporting sub-headline--then provide details elsewhere in the ad or provide an easy way for them to get more free information.

Example:

ARE YOU PAYING HIGH ENERGY BILLS AND STILL FEELING COLD IN YOUR HOME?

Our Acme woodstove will keep you comfortable for pennies a day!

Writing good ad copy is a complex topic about which entire books have been written. If you feel this is an area of your business that needs improving, make it a point to learn more about it from Internet experts or your local business library.

MISTAKE #4: Cutting your marketing budget during slow times

It’s such a temptation--when your sales are down and so many of your expenses are beyond your control, you think the only place to cut corners is in your marketing budget. Yet this would be cutting off the very best means for bringing new customers into your business, and without a continuous flow of new customers, your business will eventually shrivel up and blow away.

Keep your marketing campaign steady and consistent. When cash flow is tight, consider moving to less expensive--and perhaps less traditional--marketing venues, but never cut off your marketing all together. If a dairy farmer started reducing the amount of feed he gave his cows, he would soon start seeing a reduction in milk production and a deterioration of his business. Don’t let temporary cash flow shortages put you into a downward business spiral.

MISTAKE #5: Not giving prospects a compelling reason to take action

Even if you have gotten your prospects’ attention and convinced them that your product or service can provide a solution for them, you must motivate them to take action immediately--before their attention is diverted to something else.

This can be done by offering such incentives as discounts, rewards/bonuses, or “limited time” offers. You’ve probably seen television shopping ads that do this beautifully: “Order today and we’ll also send you an additional…or two for the price of one...or free shipping, etc.” Give your prospects a compelling reason to act now, and you’ll greatly increase the chance that they will do so.

MISTAKE #6: Neglecting current customers

Keeping your current customers satisfied so they will give you repeat business is much less expensive than getting new customers, yet so many business owners neglect this powerful fact. These simple activities can help:

· Stay in touch with your customers through mail, newsletters, or phone calls.

· Follow up after you’ve made a sale to see if they are satisfied.

· Return phone calls promptly.

· Correct problems immediately.

· Ask for testimonials and keep a file for future use in your marketing literature (See Mistake #7 below). One testimonial from a popular or influential member of your community can be more effective than many other ads combined.

Negative comments from dissatisfied customers can severely hurt you, so keep your customers happy!

MISTAKE #7: Not using testimonials in your marketing literature

Building credibility is one of your main tasks as a business owner, but this can be tough when you’re new and have no positive track record. Using testimonials in your marketing materials can be an extremely effective way of gaining a prospect’s confidence.

Whenever you get positive feedback from a customer, ask if you may quote them. As mentioned in #6 above, keep a file of these and use them in your next ad, flyer, or brochure. Failure to do this is wasting a free and powerful marketing tool.

MISTAKE #8: Not offering a guarantee

The fear of being dissatisfied or taken advantage of is frequently the underlying reason why prospects do not buy, yet many small business owners fear offering a guarantee because they believe it will encourage more returns.

Marketing research has shown that the increased sales from offering a guarantee will more than offset any increase in percentage of returns. Anything that converts prospects to customers more easily is to your advantage, and a customer who knows he can return something he doesn’t like is much more likely to make a purchase in the first place.

MISTAKE #9: Not testing your market and tracking your results

Far too many business owners believe that their product or service will be snatched up by thousands of customers without having done the market research to support this belief. They spend thousands of dollars promoting something, only to find that the market is not what they thought or that a modification would have greatly improved the product’s marketability.

Use the Internet to look for published information on products/services like yours. Get free feedback from chat rooms. Take surveys (your local business school may have students who will design and conduct a survey for you as a project for a very reasonable fee). Put together a focus group composed of prospects from your target market.

Virtually ALL effective marketers track their ads and marketing methods so they know which ones pull and which ones don’t. You can easily spend thousands of dollars on promotions that aren’t producing results, but if you don’t know which ones they are, you’ve wasted money. Ad results can be measured by using a code of some sort. Direct mail results can be measured by using response cards or coupons. As in market testing, surveys and focus groups can also be used to provide marketing feedback. Think about how you can track your results when you plan a marketing strategy.

MISTAKE #10: Not diversifying your marketing methods

Plan your marketing budget so that it covers as broad a range of marketing methods as you can afford. When you use only one or two methods, you could be severely limiting your exposure to the maximum number of potential customers. Direct mail, print, radio, and Internet ads are important, and sometimes TV and magazine ads can be effective if they are carefully targeted and professionally done.

Don’t forget less obvious ways of promoting your business:

· Get involved with community organizations and charities.

· Network at chamber of commerce gatherings or business associations.

· Offer yourself as a speaker or presenter--find out if there is a speaker’s bureau in your area.

· Offer low-cost or free seminars.

· Throw a party to celebrate your opening, your business anniversary, or a national holiday.

· Insert small flyers in every bill you pay.

· Sponsor local teams.

· Participate in local discount cards.

· Partner with other small businesses to put on an event or sponsor an activity.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

You have undoubtedly noticed that many of these marketing mistakes are related to one another. Almost all result from a basic failure by the business owner to put herself in the place of the potential customer. The Golden Rule applies in business as well as in personal life: treat others the way you like to be treated. If you make a regular effort to think about how you’d feel about your business or your marketing methods if you were a prospect, you’ll often be able to correct your own marketing mistakes.

SOURCES for this report

Imbriale, Robert, “The 10 Most Costly Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them,” Home Business Magazine Online: http://www.homebusinessmag.com/tarticle.html?aID=236&mID=&cID=0&sID=0

Gordon, Kim T., “Steer Clear: Your marketing materials sell your company image to the world.”

Business Start-Ups magazine - January 1999: http://www.Entrepreneur.com/article/0,4621,229778,00.html

Moran, Gwen, “To Err Is Dangerous: 8 marketing mistakes you can't afford to make,” Entrepreneur magazine, October, 1999: http://www.entrepreneur.com/Your_Business/YB_SegArticle/0,4621,231005,00.html

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER READING

General Marketing Resources

Business Planning Resources

http://www.bplans.com/rs/

Learn how to write your business plan. Look at free sample business plans and business plan software to help you achieve your goals. Use this site’s “Resource Web Site Directory” (there are several marketing topic categories in the list) found on the home page. Under “Business Planning Resources” on the left of the home page, you’ll find links to “Marketing Plan Software” and “Marketing Plan Resources.”

Checklist for Going into Business

http://www.small-business.co.il/starting.htm

The "Checklist for Going into Business" is a guide to help you prepare a comprehensive business plan and determine if your idea is feasible, to identify questions and problems you will face in converting your idea into reality, and to prepare for starting your business. Scroll down for information on marketing and market analysis.

Enterepreneur.com’s business information directory

http://www.entrepreneur.com/

Click the “Marketing” tab to find valuable resources and tools for developing your own marketing plan. From the home page, you can sign up for a free Sales and Marketing e-mail newsletter.

Marketing Tools

Educational and Software Products

http://www.jmbmarketing.com/product.htm

JMB Marketing currently offers several marketing and educational products, including books and software. All products are guaranteed to help you market your business better, or your money back. No questions asked.

Marketing Plan Software and Sample Marketing Plans

http://www.mplans.com/

Learn how to write your own marketing plan. Look at free sample marketing plans and find free expert resources and marketing plan software to help you achieve your goals.

Power Marketing Tips! – Free Newsletter

http://www.jmbmarketing.com/newsletter.htm

Are you truly ready to generate all of the business you can handle? This FREE marketing newsletter will teach you powerful techniques to grow your business and get more leverage out of your marketing investment.

Marketing Advice/Experts

BPlans.com’s Ask the Experts
http://www.bplans.com/qa/

For more than a year now, this site’s board of experts has been taking questions about business plans, entrepreneuring, and related topics. They now have more than a thousand questions and answers, all about the topics you see in the links on this page: business plans, entrepreneuring, marketing plans, and planning software.

Dr. Jeffrey Lant’s Business Success Website

http://www.jeffreylant.com/

One of the most well-known marketers. Sure Fire Business Success Catalog offers business books, money-making reports, home business opportunities, low-cost Internet and business conference details. You’ll also find traffic-generating tools, home-business resources, free e-zines, money-making software, and more.

Tracking Your Ads

Wogoman, Jury, “Tracking - the wow, the why, and the now what?”

http://www.ground-z.org/articles/tracking.html

Gordon, Kim T., “Track Records,” Business Start-Ups magazine, September, 1998:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/Your_Business/YB_SegArticle/0,4621,268490,00.html

Writing Ad Copy

Killer Copy Writing

http://www.smithfam.com/news/1copy-writing.html

This page offers links to a wealth of free articles on writing “killer ad copy.”

Excellent words and phrases for ad writing

http://www.gormanindustries.com/DealerInfo/Ad%20Writing.htm

These words and phrases can ad punch and stimulate action on the part of the reader.

Ten Steps to Writing Successful Ad Copy

http://www.startupinternetmarketing.com/ezines/10steps.html

The author of this article, Tim North, is also the author of "BETTER WRITING SKILLS"—an easy-to- understand, jargon-free, downloadable book that can give you a competitive edge. http://www.betterwritingskills.com.

 

Newsletter 7
Six Secret Psychological Triggers To Make

                  Six Secret Psychological Triggers To Make

           Prospects Want To Buy What You're Selling

 

                            by Elizabeth H. Cottrell, IAHBE Staff Editor

  

Did you ever wonder why some business owners seem to be able to pull in all the

business they want, while others——perhaps you——can’t seem to get any

momentum? More often than not, it is because the successful ones have learned from

marketing experts what works and what doesn’t work in their marketing and

promotional materials. Some marketing secrets seem to be secrets simply because

they’re not widely known or understood. Only from trial and error and ad

tracking--combined with research on natural psychological predispositions——do

marketing experts know what really triggers a sale.

 

In his excellent e-book, "Triggers" (http://www.psychologicaltriggers.com/), Joe

Sugarman explains that 95% of the reasons someone buys involves a subconscious

decision. The purpose of his book "is to show you what goes on during the sales

process that triggers a sale and how the subconscious mind responds to various

aspects of an offer." You owe it to yourself to learn this too.

 

Don’2’t confuse the use of psychological triggers with mind control. The latter implies

mind manipulation in an unwelcome or even evil sense. What this report deals with is

simply using proven techniques to break down natural defense barriers that can get in

the way of a purchase or sale.

 

Some readers may pass up this report because they think they don’’t like selling and

that if they offer a quality product or service, the rest will take care of itself. A few of

you will get by this way, but if you want massively increased sales numbers, you need

to learn the tricks of the trade. Don’t forget that all of us have been selling something

every day for most of our lives. As teenagers, we tried to sell our parents on the idea

of letting us do what we wanted to do. We attempt to sell our children on accepting

things we think are best for them. Even if you’re not selling an idea, product, or

service you are selling yourself--to your friends, your family, and your contacts.

Learning more effective sales techniques can help ANYONE.

 

Sugarman’s e-book covers thirty different triggers that he has used, tested, and found

effective in his phenomenally successful sales career. This report will discuss a few

key triggers--from him and other marketers--and encourage readers to use the

resources below to learn more about other triggers and improved sales and marketing

techniques. You will find some of the resources in your closest Small Business

Development Center (SBDC) library. For the SBDC nearest you, visit

www.sba.gov/sbdc/.

 

1. Build your credibility and establish your authority.

 

We all have respect for a knowledgeable authority and are more likely to trust a

statement from someone whom we perceive as knowing what they’’re talking about.

You must try to establish this kind of authority in every ad you place, even after you

feel like your name is known. This is even more vital for small businesses than for

large ones. Take some time to come up with something that you can say proudly and

truthfully:

The U.S.A.’s (the state’s, the county’s, the city’s) oldest (or first or most reliable)

supplier of …….

The area’s only (or first or most reliable) source for quality ……

Winner of the _____ award for ____

Voted #1 for __________

When you feel you need outside help to establish authority or credibility, testimonials

can make a huge difference. We all know that a marketing letter or ad is enhanced by

the use of testimonials—2—this shifts the burden of proof from the owner to those

who have given praise for the product or service. An interesting, and less known,

psychological factor that takes place when you ask people to write a testimonial is

that they actually increase their own belief and trust in the product and service more

than if they hadn’t been asked to write it. Those who give testimonials for your

product or service become an army of free promoters and repeat buyers for your

business!

  

2. Give your prospect some "reason-why" information.

 

If you make a terrific offer, or have a sizzling sale price, you’’ll have more success if

you provide the reasons why you’re doing it. Otherwise, the prospect may be

skeptical of your motives and suspect that there’s something wrong with you or your

product or service.

We got a terrific bulk price on our widgets and we’re passing the savings on to

you……

We don’’t want to pay too much inventory tax, so last year’s models have got to

go……

We’re moving and need to reduce our stock……

We picked up some widgets at a terrific price when ABC company was going out of

business……

Once you’ve given your prospect a good reason why you’re offering this special,

you make him feel lucky to be "in the know" and therefore more motivated to take

advantage of your special offer. Marketing guru, Yanik Silver, sums it up: "I know this

probably goes against every grain of business sense, but I promise if you give people

a good, believable reason why, they'll respond with open wallets."

 

3. Anticipate objections and resolve them immediately.

 

Think about how you make your own purchasing decisions: you consider all the pros

and cons of the particular product or service, and you decide whether it’s worth

what you would have to spend to get it. If you can’t resolve a negative feature in your

mind, you’re likely to decide not to purchase it. The top-notch sales person will

anticipate these objections and resolve them up front. This is especially important

when you’re creating ad copy, because unlike in-person demonstrations or

conversations, you won’t be there when the prospect reads your ad or letter to

resolve any objections they might think of.

Suppose you are selling something that has to be assembled. This would create an

objection for some prospects, but if you mention, up front, that the instructions are

clear and easy to follow--and that it only takes 10 minutes or that you offer free

assembly--you will have clearly raised and resolved the objection before the prospect

makes a decision.

Be careful, though. As you’4’re making yourself a list of possible objections your

prospect might have, use common sense. If you bring up something that really isn’t a

concern to most people, you’ve just raised a red flag unnecessarily. At the least,

you’ve wasted time and ad space to resolve an objection that the prospects didn’t

even have in their minds. So think it through carefully, raise the objection yourself

(directly or by implication) and then resolve it.

Resolving objections is especially important if there’s an obvious flaw or difficulty

with what you’re selling. By bringing this up right at the beginning of a discussion with

the prospect, you can quickly move on to other benefits and you establish your

credibility quickly. It is not only disarming, but it diminishes the negative impact of the

issue and shows that you are honest rather than deceptive.

This may be the ugliest widget you’ve ever seen, but you can’2’t believe how well it

does such and such for you until you’ve tried it.

The only drawback to this house might be the apples that fall in your yard from the

neighbor’s tree and have to be cleaned up. But the apple pies we make from them

are delicious!

Effective sales people are always problem solvers.

 

4. Recognize the power of emotion in any purchase decision

 

According to Joe Sugarman, there are three critical elements to keep in mind when

you consider emotion in advertising:

 

  1. Every word has an emotion associated with it and tells a story.

 

2. Every good sales presentation is an emotional outpouring of words, feelings, and

impressions.

 

  1. You sell on emotion, but you justify a purchase with logic.

 

Words have enormous emotional impact, but too often, we fail to take advantage of

this fact. For instance, the word "invest" is often more appealing and less threatening

than the word "buy." A "cottage" sounds more appealing than a "little house." "Free"

tends to trigger a good response more quickly than "Give-Away." "Pre-owned" may

appeal to some more than "used." You can spend a great deal of time studying the

power of words, and there are excellent resources below if you choose to do that.

The purpose of this report is simply to make you more aware of the words you use.

 

When you believe in your product and can convey this positive emotion in your

marketing materials, you will get a much stronger response than someone who just

lists facts and features without conveying anything else. Try to paint a picture or tell a

story so that the prospect can actually visualize using your product and having it make

a difference in her life. If your prospects can imagine feeling younger, healthier, more

attractive from using your product--or can clearly see that it will give them more time

with their family or make their life easier in some way--then they will become involved

and you will have triggered an emotional response in those prospects and greatly

increased the likelihood of a sale.

 

To understand the third element--"You sell on emotion, but you justify a purchase

with logic"--all you have to do is think about the last time you bought something on

impulse and then had to come home and explain it to a spouse or parent. You would

probably buy a Jaguar because of the beauty, excitement, and prestige of owning it,

but you would be more likely to talk about technical features, safety, and other logical

things when explaining it to your friends and family. People do, indeed, buy on

emotion and justify their purchase on logic. Use this knowledge when you’2’re

crafting your marketing plan.

 

5. Focus on benefits instead of features.

 

"The secret, which you and just about everyone else in business has heard of but may

not have acted on, is to focus your marketing message on Benefits rather than

Features, says Joel Sussman, president of Optimal Marketing Communications. We

tend to let pride in our product dictate our ad copy to convey features--the color, the

dimensions, the speed, the efficiency, etc. What we fail to grasp is that these details

mean nothing to a prospect unless he can clearly see and understand what benefit he

will get from purchasing the product. Think about what problems your product or

service solves for the prospect or what benefits (time saving, fun producing, health or

beauty enhancing, etc.) it will produce; then incorporate this into your marketing

materials. Try your hardest to identify your prospect’s "hot buttons." As discussed in

#4 above, this kind of message will get the prospect more emotionally involved in

identifying with the product and greatly increase the likelihood that they will want and

buy it.

 

6. Scratch the trial period and go for a total satisfaction guarantee.

 

Risk aversion is considered by many to be the number one reason for a prospect

deciding NOT to buy a product or service. If you can eliminate this, you will go a long

way towards tipping the scales in favor of a purchase.

 

Consumers have become accustomed to some sort of guarantee or trial period which

gives them a window of opportunity to return the product if they are not satisfied.

Even so, there is often still a lingering hesitation because they don’t want to be in a

position of having to explain why they’re asking for their money back. Joe

Sugarman’s answer to this is to make a much stronger pledge by offering what he

calls the "satisfaction conviction." Make your guarantee so good, so powerful, and so

simple that the consumer will feel that he has absolutely no risk whatsoever. It should

be so convincing that the prospect will say to himself, "They must really have a good

product or else they couldn’t possibly make that kind of offer without losing their

shirts." This kind of guarantee might read something like this:

 If you’re unhappy with this product at any time, for any reason, just return it any time

you want and we’ll refund your money--no questions asked!

 

 Some consultants, especially those who specialize in cost containment and efficiency

improvement, are using this psychology in their pricing structure--they are paid based

on a percentage of the overall savings that they can achieve for their client. If the client

benefits, they are paid. If the client doesn’t benefit, they’re not paid or are paid less.

With this kind of offer, you’ve transcended the trial period, the limited warranty, and

the simple guarantee. If you can close your sales presentation with something that

goes above and beyond what the prospect expects, you’ll be amazed at how much

more successful you will be.

 There’’s much more to learn

There are other psychological triggers that we’ll cover in a later report, but if you

work to incorporate the ones above into your marketing plan, you’re sure to see

positive results.

                 

SOURCES

Joyner, Mark. "How to Control the Mind of Your Prospects -- And Influence Them

to Buy What You're Selling." 2001: www.psychologicaltriggers.com/.

 

LeDuc, Bob. "Three Buying Motivators You Can Use to Increase Your Sales." 2001:

www.hittpansophism.com/articles/2001/09/index23.html

Silver, Yanik. "How A Hidden Psychological ‘‘Trigger’’ Makes Prospects Practically

Line Up And Beg To Do Business With You." Home Business Magazine Online.

2000: www.homebusinessmag.com/tarticle.html?aID=229&mID=3&cID=0&sID=0.

 

Sugarman, Joseph. Triggers. 2001. E-book available by instant download for $27

U.S. from: www.psychologicaltriggers.com/

Sussman, Joel. "Three Resolutions to Make Your New Year More Profitable." 3R

Marketing Website. 2002:

http://www.r-market-daily.com/articles/

Three_Resolutions_to_Make_Your_New_Ye

ar_More_Profitable.html .

RESOURCES

Advice/Coaching/Experts

Build Sales Conversations Fast

www.only90minutes.com/faces/default.htm

How to Read the Mind of Your Prospects——and Influence Them To Buy What

You're Selling. This is an online seminar for $59 U.S.

Garfinkel, David

www.davidgarfinkel.com/david.html

 

David Garfinkel is President of Overnight Marketing in San Francisco. The firm

specializes in Results-Driven Direct Marketing for Entrepreneurial Businesses, helping

them get more sales back from the advertising they do. As a marketing consultant and

master copywriter, David has worked with businesses in 81 different industries. He's

an established teacher of business writing skills with a long list of successful clients in

the corporate, entrepreneurial, and professional services arena. David's

Money-Making Copywriting Course is the only such course endorsed and

recommended by the National Mail Order Association.

 

Hogan, Kevin

www.kevinhogan.net/index.htm#Biog

 

Kevin Hogan, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including his newest, "Selling Yourself

to Others," "The Psychology of Persuasion," "Talk Your Way to the Top," "Life By

Design," and "Through the Open Door." He is an internationally recognized expert in

selling strategies, body language, and influential communication. He is a regular media

guest and internationally known speaker and workshop leader. He has been featured

on the BBC, as well as in "Success!," "Selling Power," "The New York Post,"

"Mademoiselle," "Wprost" newsmagazine of Poland, and dozens of other publications

and television shows. His mastery in the fields of non-verbal communication and

influence make him one of the most knowledgeable, exciting, and effective presenters

in the United States.

Managing a Small Business, Boosting Profits--Think Success

www.businesstown.com/managing/secrets-success.asp

Success Is All In Your Mind! Thinking success goes a long way toward being a

success! If you picture yourself as someone who is ultimately going to succeed, then

success is going to come a lot easier. This article gives you guidelines.

Start a Traffic Virus - Viral Marketing Strategies

www.show-me-how.com/Website-promotion/traffic-virus.html

 

Unlike a computer virus that will destroy your software and damage your business, a

traffic virus isn't harmful at all...except to your competition. This article covers viral

marketing strategies.

Books/Tapes/Information Sources

Cialdini, Robert B., Ph.D. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Quill. 1993.

DigitalToolz.com

www.digitaltoolz.com

 If you are running a Website or online business that isn't doing as well as it could, then

this site has all the Internet marketing software, books and resources you need to

transform your business. The site is divided into 13 different specialized areas of

Internet marketing, each containing tools to succeed online.

Free Articles from Overnight Marketing

 www.davidgarfinkel.com/articles.html

 Four "hands-on" articles on how you can make your direct marketing more effective.

Free Downloadable E-Books

digitaltoolz.com/pages/Internet-marketing-E-books.htm

A selection of free e-books covering all aspects of online marketing & promotion.

Free Weekly E-zine

www.kevinhogan.net/index.htm#Biog

Coffee with Kevin Hogan. Personal growth, persuasion, sales and marketing, business

psychology and relationships. Start your week off right!

Free Weekly Marketing Tips

www.killertactics.com/

 Sign up for this free service, delivered to your e-mailbox weekly. While you’’re at this

site, you can read about 1001 Killer Internet Marketing Tactics by Mark Joyner.

Ordering information online ($97 U.S. for book and bonuses).

Hittpansophism.com: Free How-to Business Articles and Educational Resources

www.hittpansophism.com/index.shtml

 This Website is an education resource for business owners, executives, and

self-employed individuals worldwide.

Kevin Hogan Catalogue Of Products

 www.kevinhogan.net/catalog.htm#pop

 A complete catalogue of products: Books, CDs, Audios, & Videos on the Science of

Influence and the Psychology of Persuasion.

Hopkins, Tom. "How to Master the Art of Selling." Warner Books. Reissue edition:

1994.

This book is often called a "must-read" for sales professionals. Practical and technique

oriented, the book is helpful to both beginners and experienced salespeople.

Marketing-magic.biz

www.marketing-magic.biz/index.shtml

 The aim of this Website is simple: to give you marketing and selling techniques, tips,

feature articles, personal advice and useful links to build your business and boost your

profits - whether you are working online or offline.

Nicholas, Ted. "Magic Words That Make You Rich"

www.magicwordsthatmakeyourich.com/

 This downloadable e-book costs $27 U.S. "You are 17 words or less away from a

fortune! I'll reveal all the 'magic' words you'll ever need in my new book. Picture

yourself earning several hundred thousand dollars a year. Work a few hours a week

from the comfort of home, at a leisurely pace."

Ogilvy, David. "Confessions of an Advertising Man," Atheneum. Second edition:

1989.

This has long been considered a classic in the advertising and sales industry.

Technology/Software/Office Supplies/Services

Internet Marketing Software & Resources: Free Scripts

 digitaltoolz.com/pages/Internet-marketing-Scripts.htm

 Scripts are great marketing tools for enhancing your Website. This Website offers a

selection of the best sites for both server side and client side scripts for you to

download.

Promote-Ivator

 www.Promote-Ivator.com/

 This is a system, which--for $6 a year--delivers reminders, tips, encouragement,

camaraderie, expert advice, and goal setting to your In-box. Repetition creates good

habits, and this site has been called "the single best habit-forming tool on the Internet."

Vitale, Joe. "Hypnotic Writing"

 www.hypnoticwriting.com/

 And get them to buy, agree, follow, click--anything you want. This online course sells

for $27 U.S. and includes at least one extra bonus.

©© Elizabeth H. Cottrell. All rights reserved worldwide.

 Article by Elizabeth H. Cottrell, IAHBE staff editor. Elizabeth is a home-based

entrepreneur, freelance technical writer, and owner of Riverwood Technologies,

a desktop publishing company in Maurertown, Virginia.

 

 


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