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Free Advice from Marketing Experts
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Check the news and events page regularly for the latest info and maketing tips from online marketing pros.
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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.
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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
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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...
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TRAFFIC GENERATION TACTIC #1 (drum roll please...):
Build an army of affiliates to drive TONS of traffic to your site for you!
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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.
=================================================
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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! |
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Newsletter 3 |
============================================================== . WEBSTARS2000 EZINE . ======================================= . Where you advertise on the Web - Be one of the Stars . This is a Option Ezine with 17700 subscribers . <<< Ezine Issue Sept - 03 2004 >>> . In circulation since December 1999 . For Ad Info, please email me at maryannemyers@yahoo.com ============================================================== . . 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. . . 4) Insider advertising tools. Must have\'s to make it online. . . 5) Re-Moval, ezine advertising and domain info. . ============================================================== : Top sponsor : ===============
Get Your Immediate Access to these 99.00 EBay Seller Training Videos for Only $19, it is Gigantic ! We are offering a promotional special for the opp,ortunity to purchase the 11-video set entitled \'eBay Sellers Training course. http://www.dollarsoup.com/webstars2k.html
=============================================================== 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!)
==================================================================== 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
==================================================================== 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: http://www.dollarsoup.com/autohits.html
b) And the new AutoTraffic Software. http://www.dollarsoup.com/autohits2.html
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.
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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:
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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? Arent 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 cant 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 dont
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 dont 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.
Dont
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 dont 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 worlds 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 worlds
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. Dont 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 peoples 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. Dont 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 dont 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, its a no-brainer once
you think about it.
Now, lets 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 dont 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?
Thats 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 isnt
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 dont
know their "visitors-to-sales ratio" -- how many visitors
you get daily compared to how many sales. If you dont 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 dont 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
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