Massive Sales through an affiliate program.

Massive Sales through an affiliate program.

Having hundreds of commission only salesmen can boost your sales immensely. An affiliate program is a fantastic solution for all businesses with a web site.

If you haven’t got your own affiliate program set up already this is going to blow your mind. And if you have an affiliate program I can guarantee that this will be a real eye opener. The majority of affiliate program owners have it set up in a way that is completely wrong.

Encourage People To Sign Up
Here’s where most people go wrong. They set up an affiliate program and have a links that says “click here to sign up” and then that’s it. You need to sell your affiliate program. Have a mini sales letter that explains the benefit of people signing up. Tell them their commissions and how they can earn a living without ever having to create a product or have a web site just by promoting your products.

Provide Affiliates With Marketing Materials
Here’s another big one. Site owners get people to sign up their affiliate program and then just leave them to it. It’s like they’re saying “thanks for signing up, now go and make me some cash”. That’s ridiculous. You need to do all the hard work for your affiliates if you want to start earning the big bucks.

Here’s the thing. You could write an article and submit it to article directories all over the Internet and do very well for yourself. However if you just had one hundred affiliates blasting that article all over the net you’ve just multiplied your marketing power by one hundred. This is the key to making massive mounts online.

If you can’t write articles etc yourself hire someone to do so from www.elance.com but do provide your affiliates with marketing materials or your just setting yourself up for having a very mediocre Internet business

Another great method you can use with this is have a weekly competition. Each week your affiliate who earns the most gets an extra one hundred dollars or whatever you can afford. Mention the winner in a weekly newsletter and say things like “who thinks they can overtake Joe Bloggs as being my top affiliate? Come on guys I know I’ve got some great marketers signed up as my affiliates prove it and I’ll mention you in next weeks newsletter”.

This is great. Psychologically you are motivating your affiliates to promote your products like crazy to get recognition as being your “top gun”. Often ego trips are just as motivating as money.

Motivate Your Affiliates And Explode Your Profits
I’ve been taking about what you need to do in order to earn a serious living online through having your own affiliate program. Done properly this could earn you more money than you could ever have dreamed of. The methods in this article outline what you need to do to in order to overcome the three barriers of starting an affiliate program.

You need to:

Persuade people to sign up

Make it easy for them to market

Motivate them to market fast and market hard.

Do this and you’ll be able to create a hugely successful affiliate program and you’ll sell a truckload of your products without any real hard work or any costs.

Finding Niche Markets

Finding Niche Markets

I want to walk you through the different ways that you can find niche markets online.

A niche is a small specialised section of an interest where you will find passionate devotees of that tiny niche. They are always hungry for more info on their particular subject.

Think first of a subject (niche) that interests you, then look up the various resources I am about to give you.

The first amazing resource is http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com it won’t cost you a penny to sign up to yet is an absolute boon for your quest to find niche markets

Go to the above site and start typing in niche markets that interest you. If you had an interest in dogs you’d type in “dogs”. Then all you need to do is make a list of all of the sub niches within the general niche market of dogs. These are all potential niches for you to exploit.

Another site amazon.com may surprise you but the bookselling giant amazon.com are an amazing resource for finding niche markets you’d never have thought about entering. Go the web site and in the search bar select “books”. Then type in a niche you’d like to create a product around. For example type in “gardening”. Go through the results and start jotting down all of the niche markets that jump out at you.

When many people hear this technique they immediately think “wait a sec how can I compete with Amazon?”. You won’t be of course you’ll be catering for a different market. When people buy from Amazon they have to wait days for a book to arrive. As ebook publishers we can offer instant gratification as our customers get our info products straight away as a download.

Another great thing about downloadable info products is bizarrely they are seen to have a higher perceived value. You might be able to charge fifteen dollars for a book selling it via Amazon. However if you sell a downloadable info product you can charge up to fifty dollars. Crazy but true.

www.dummies.com is another fantastic research tool for the niche ebook publisher. You can find a ton of niche topics across all of the “…For Dummies” books. The Dummies company has made creating niche products an art form in its own right. Search through their titles in general niches that interest you and jot down potential ebook topics.

www.goarticles.com

Article directories are, in my eyes, the best way to find subjects to create ebooks around. The directory Go Articles is just one of many in which you can go to the site, type in a niche subject in the search bar and get literally thousands and thousands of ebook ideas.

The key here when visiting these sites is to just make a huge list of potential topics, and then when you’re done go to http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ and type in your topics.

The secret now is to check on the level of interest in your chosen niches. If there are people searching for information on the subject (at least five thousand a month) you’ve just found an ebook topic that could turn into a very lucrative home based business.
We’re not aiming to become a millionaire here. We want to build a network of mini sites that each makes about 1K a month. Being able to come up with an endless amount of niche product ideas is the key here. More info can be found in my weekly free newsletter.

A freebie or should you charge?

A freebie or should you charge?

Try not to “condition your list to expect freebies?” In other words, how can you help people, give stuff away when you desire, and still get paid well for what you do?

I know that I operate a free weekly newsletter, its purpose being to improve the lot of those wanting an online business they can run from home, and I do give free videos from time to time. But at the end of the day none of them expect free meals for all of their life.

First off, as mentioned before change your attitude if need be. Be confident. Treat your business like a business and not a hobby. Know that you are helping people and that they are grateful. Know that you should get paid for the help. Know that you in fact deserve to be compensated for what you do.

Next, feel free to give away freebies on your site, but make them relevant. Don’t give away 47 ebooks just to get someone to give you their email address. Sell someone on signing up to your free newsletter just as you would pitch them if your newsletter was a paid newsletter. Include free reports or ebooks as a bonus if you’d like.

Here’s the key: word this sales letter in such a way that people realize you are doing them a favor by giving away something valuable. Let them know that this freebie is a sample of your other work…it’s a way for them to try you out totally risk free.

Think about those free samples of food you get in supermarkets. First off, the people offering these samples are offering them to a targeted market. For example, if you see a woman offering free samples of pizza, you likely won’t see her sitting in the toilet paper aisle. Nope, she will be in the grocery section of the story – and likely she will be standing right next to the case that holds the pizza.

Second, you’ll notice that this free sample isn’t a “take as much as you want” type of sample. This isn’t the store giving you a free lunch as a thank you for shopping in their store. Indeed, in our example we have a woman there encouraging you to take a sample (just one, maybe two) – and she’s also prepared to tell you how to buy if you want more.

When you walk up to claim your free sample of this pizza, you are beginning this experience with an expectation. You know that you are sampling the food as a serious buyer who might just buy the pizza if you like it. In fact, you actually expect the person offering the samples to ask you to buy the pizza – even though you know that you are not obligated to buy, you are still sampling under the non-spoken agreement that if you do like the sample you will buy an entire pizza.

Do you get upset at her if she doesn’t give you an entire regular size piece or the entire pizza for free? Of course not. You are grateful for the sample she gave you, and if the pizza fits into your grocery budget you’re more than happy to buy one to take home.

This is exactly how it should work when you start a newsletter and offer freebies in exchange for email addresses. You are the one offering a “taste” for potential buyers. And yes, after they’ve consumed their sample, you tell them how to buy… just like the woman in the supermarket who suggests you buy the pizza.

If these potential buyers come to you with an expectation that you are offering a free sample, they won’t be upset or surprised when you ask for the sale. In fact, they’ll EXPECT you to ask for the sale. And better yet, when they know they are getting a highly valued freebie under the unspoken agreement that they’re a serious buyer, they WILL buy if they like your sample. For example, if they like your free report they’ll buy the related ebook.

Again let me stress this – make your freebies relevant to what you’re selling. Don’t give away tons of only partially related freebies just to get an email address. Make the freebies relevant, make them samples of what you’re actually selling, and yes…SELL people on exchanging their email address for one solid free report and your free newsletter.

After all, if you can’t sell someone on signing up for your newsletter without also giving away tons of bribes, then you’ll have a hard time convincing anyone to take out their credit card to purchase a related paid product.

If you do not already subscribe to my free newsletter J then why not give it a try. Check out my view of the balances and apply them to your business.

Visualizing Your Customer’s Success

Visualizing Your Customer’s Success

The point of this blog is to show you how to put your customer’s wants and needs first, and in doing so you will get what you want.

You see, sometimes it’s easy for a marketer to “slip” and fall back into an egocentric viewpoint. You start thinking about what you want instead of what the customer’s wants.

Sure what you want is to work from home on an online business in a niche you love and enjoy. But do your customers see it this way?

For example, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people send me newsletters practically begging me to buy something because they need to make their mortgage payment. The buyer doesn’t care about your mortgage payment. The buyer only cares about his or her wants and needs. The buyer only cares about solutions to HIS problems, not your problems.

As such, no matter what’s going on in your life and no matter how desperately you need the money, you must still put your customer’s first. Forget about your own problems and focus on providing solutions for your customer’s problems, and soon enough you will find that you get what you want too.

The easiest way to do this is to frequently practice visualizing your customers’ success.

I’ll explain this in more detail in a moment, but first I wanted to clarify something. You can use this technique purely as a straightforward business tool where you learn to get into your customer’s heads so that you can better serve them. Or if you are someone who enjoys spiritual and universal theories, you can use this technique alongside any affirmations or other positive thinking that you do.

For example, I had a friend who used this technique when he sold advertising for a magazine. He’d sit back and consciously visualize his customer’s success as a result of them placing an ad in his magazine. Then what generally happened is that the client called him to place an ad…he never even had to “chase” the customer!

Coincidence? Perhaps. It all depends on what you believe with regards to putting your intentions out there to the Universe. Regardless of what you believe, it certainly can’t hurt!

Now let’s look at visualizing your customer’s success…

You’ll want to put yourself in your customer’s shoes when you first start developing your product. For example, let’s suppose you have a weight loss product aimed at women who’re trying to lose the extra weight they’re still carrying from having a baby.

Now if you’re a woman and you’ve been pregnant, it’s likely easier for you to get inside your customer’s head. If you’re a man or you’re a woman who’s never been pregnant, then the next best thing you can do is imagine a close friend of yours who has been pregnant.

Sit back, relax, and clear your mind. It’s important to clear your mind, because you want your thoughts to flow freely (doing these exercises often result in breakthroughs – great additions to your products, a new marketing angle, etc). Breathe deeply to induce relaxation.

When you’re relaxed and calm, close your eyes and imagine your potential customer. Feel her pain, her happiness…be her. Feel her joy at having the baby…but also feel her frustration at being unable to lose the weight. She feels “fat.” She feels like her husband isn’t attracted to her any more. She feels unsexy, unglamorous. She feels like a mother rather than an alluring woman. Instead of seeing a bombshell when she looks in the mirror, she sees a fat woman with stretch marks on her belly and breasts, and baby spit-up on her shoulder.

Now imagine her holding your book. Her eyes light up as she reads the table of contents. What is exciting her? What is it about her book that makes her want to buy it?

Now fast forward a few months and imagine the results of her using your product. She’s slimmer. She has more energy. She’s getting plenty of compliments from others about how great she looks for having just recently given birth. She feels sexy again. She’s turning heads (including her husband’s). She feels great.

An aside: at this point I typically like to take out a pen or paper (or hop on the computer) and start dumping all these ideas down on paper. Just start writing anything that pops into your head, and don’t censor anything. Imagine yourself as this customer and write from HER point of view. As you do this brain dump, use the word “I” (but it’s not actually YOU, it’s the customer).

For example, as you use this written exercise to get into your head, perhaps a line or two will look like this, “I got disgusted today when I saw the belly rolls and even my back fat in the mirror today. None of my clothes fit. John gave me a funny look today and I wondered if he noticed that I’m not losing the baby fat…”


Remember, don’t censor anything. Keep writing as long as you can, but at least three to five pages. Write as if you ARE the customer. Talk about how you feel. Talk about what you want and need. Then pretend you’ve already used the product, lost the weight, and write a testimonial about how well the product worked.

End result? You’ve got into your customer’s head to tap into her desires. Now you have a better idea of what to put in your book since you know what the end result should be for your customers.

Another good step to take before you even create the product is to write the sales letter. Why should you write the sales letter before you even create the product?

For starters, it keeps you thinking about the customer and helps clarify for you what benefits you want your customers to receive when they use your product. For example, if you realize that your customers don’t just want to lose weight but they also want more energy, then you’ll want to be sure to address this in your product (e.g., by having a section in the book about which foods provide both short term and long term energy).

Second, a sales letter should be crisp and exciting. If you start crafting your sales letter AFTER you’ve just written a 200 page book, your sales letter will likely be dull and flat. What a yawner. No one buys a product from a letter that bores them to tears. If the marketer can’t get excited about the product, the potential customer won’t either.

If instead you write a draft of the sales letter first, you’re excited about the product and your enthusiasm will spill over into the letter. People who read the letter will be able to sense your energy and passion. In turn they’ll get excited too – and they’ll want to buy!

And finally, writing the sales letter first helps you stay inside your customer’s head. Remember, you are writing the book for a very specific audience. If you stay inside the customer’s head even as you write the book, you will have a better product on your hands…and this means fewer refunds and more repeat customers!

Making the Sale: Do You Hate Bothering People?

Making the Sale: Do You Hate Bothering People?

We’ve talked about things like working from home, online businesses, creating a product people want, attracting joint venture partners, and crafting a sales letter based on your potential customer’s deeper desires. Now if you’re getting your marketing plan in order, it’s also likely that you’ve started a newsletter or are at least considering starting one.

As with all topics we’ve discussed so far, this is yet another place where you need to keep your reader’s needs and wants in mind. However, that doesn’t mean that you put their wants so far ahead of your own that you discount your wants.

Here’s what I mean: in theory, many of your customers likely want as much information as possible for as little money. Makes sense, especially with online businesses. Even people who aren’t particularly thrifty enjoy getting free stuff. Even people who buy very expensive items enjoy getting freebies.

From a Universal perspective (and an online business perspective for that matter), you also likely know that you need to give to receive. So you give away ebooks, reports, audios, interviews, newsletter content and more. Yes you do get an email address in exchange for these freebies, but you are also looking to develop a relationship with these people so that they trust you and eventually become your customer.

Here’s the problem: some people go overboard with the freebies to such a degree that their list soon fills up with tire-kickers (freebie seekers) who will never buy. The online marketer makes matters worse by loading on even more freebies and focusing on “free stuff.” Then when the marketer pitches a paid product, all he hears are crickets chirping.

What happened? If this marketer gave –just look at all those freebies! – why didn’t he then “receive” when he pitched a product?

In other words – why does it seem like some people can give away the store and STILL make a killing when it comes time to pitch a paid product, while others give away a few freebies and then seem to acquire a list straight out of Freebie Seekers Hell?

Perhaps the underlying problem is the online marketer’s subconscious attitude. It oozes into everything he does. Maybe it feels like he’s “bothering” people or being too pushy when he asks for a sale. So instead of asking for sales, he gives away freebies in hopes of getting into the good graces of his list members.

Instead of the list members seeing these freebies as chances to sample his product before they buy, they become conditioned to receive free stuff from this marketer …and when he asks for the sale they are downright appalled.

“How DARE he ask me to buy something! I thought we had an understanding that I’d bleed him dry of freebies and then move on to the next host!”

Perhaps the marketer expected this. Indeed, perhaps the marketer was so afraid of offending people by “pitching” a paid product that his delivery was weak. Instead of confidently closing a sale, he hesitantly tells people about a paid product and then practically apologizes about the fact that it’s a paid product and not a freebie.

If he feels like he’s bothering people and he already has the expectation that people won’t buy from him, why SHOULD people buy from him?

They probably won’t. Indeed, this fictional marketer’s list is likely populated with people who can’t or won’t buy, simply because his weak delivery ATTRACTED those sorts of people.

If you’re running a hobby site that’s fine. But if you’re running a business to make money you have a problem.

If you’ve ever had this problem or you’ve felt like you are bothering people by asking for the sale, let me ask you this: the last time you went to a shoe store and the sales clerk helped you find your size, how did you feel towards that clerk?

When you went to McDonalds to order a cheeseburger and the clerk asked you if you wanted fries with that, how did you feel about the clerk?

Chances are in both cases you felt that the clerk was being helpful (and indeed they WERE being helpful). Did you feel “bothered?” Probably not. You wanted something and the clerk helped you get what you want.

The same is true with you and your customers. Stop worrying about bothering people, and start viewing yourself as helping people. When you shift your attitude, your potential customers will become customers because their attitudes will shift as well. Those who want everything for free will go elsewhere, and you will be left with people who appreciate the freebies that you DO give away, but at the same time they’ll happily buy the products that you recommend to them. They’ll view you as a trusted friend – someone who helps them.

The beauty of this is that you are STILL putting your customer’s needs and wants ahead of your own. That’s because you are still giving away suitable freebies – but now you are giving them away as samples rather than as “bribes” for someone to stay on your list. And yes you are putting your customers’ wants and needs ahead of your own when you go out and review products for them without bias. If you like it and recommend it, then yes, it’s ok to receive compensation (a commission) for the work you do.

Even the most holy people and those with the purest of intentions get compensated for the work they do, so why not you? Do your local ministers get paid? You bet they do. Teachers? Of course. Doctors? Yep, and they’re paid well, too.

The reason I’m telling you this is because if you condition your online list to only expect freebies (and remember, it’s all in your attitude), there will be people who will complain the first time you pitch a paid product. Just remember that no matter what the crybabies say to you, you DO deserve to get paid for what you do.

Monetize Your Traffic to get the Most Out Of It

How To Monetize Your Traffic So You Get The Most Out Of It


Establishing your own online Internet business site is not like what it used to be. There are thousands of competition that is all too willing to get a bigger share of the pie. Every scheme and method you can find to augment your sales would be very beneficial.

We have got to admit to ourselves, whilst working from home is great most of us are into it for the money. We are not going to waste our time and effort just for the fun of sitting at home. Many sites would not wait until hell freezes over just to see their profits. While there are some who takes things lightly there are always those who would rather see profit any given day.

It is common knowledge that without traffic we have no business. Like any business, without any customers you don’t get sales. Traffic represents all the people that get a chance to see what you have to offer. The more people who see your products the more people there would be to buy them.

Nobody puts up an E-commerce site that doesn’t expect profit. We have a start-up capital that needs to be regained. With a consistent traffic, we at least have a fighting chance to achieve that probability. Monetizing your traffic would optimize your chances of making the best out of it.

Making Money out of your Traffic

The best and most proven method of making a profit out of your traffic is using advertising. The Internet generates hundreds of thousands upon hundred of thousands of traffic everyday. Most of them are searching for something. While some are just looking for information there is also a good percentage that is looking for something that they need.

The Internet has proven to be a very reliable source in finding what was deemed to be a very unreachable product. The Internet has made the world a smaller place; you can advertise a product from the depths of Istanbul and still find a buyer from the center of Philadelphia.

Generating traffic is not an easy task. You have to contend with a great number of sites to generate a good number of traffic flows. But if done successfully this could open up a Pandora’s Box of possibilities. One of the benefits is monetizing your traffic flow.

So, to get to the core of it the more traffic you generate the more likely you are considered as a desirable, desirable, in a sense that a good traffic flowing site is easily convertible to profit. Basically traffic equals profit. Advertising is the name of the game; with the good advertising scheme you can use your traffic flow to your advantage.

When you have good traffic you have a good number of potential customers, customers that are willing to pour money into your coffers. Other than that these are also traffic that can be redirected to sponsored links that are willing to pay you for a sizeable portion of the traffic that you have generated.

This scheme is called “pay-per-click”. With every click a visitor of your site makes on an advertised link you will be paid. The more traffic you generate and the more clicks that happen would spell to more profits.

Affiliate Programs

Another method of monetizing your traffic is affiliate programs. You can link up with other tried and tested sites and online companies and monetize your traffic by having a percentage of sales generated by traffic coming from your site.

The basic idea is, traffic generated from your site will go to another site that can offer a product that you do not carry. Many programs can keep track and make records of transactions that was made possible because of site linkage.

When customers that were led by your site to their site make purchases you get a percentage of that sale. Affiliate programs would give you the benefit of monetizing your traffic without the actual need of carrying or promoting a certain product.
There are so many ways and methods to monetize your traffic. All it takes is a bit of hard work and the desire to successfully launch a profit-earning site. The Internet is a veritable source of information, many tips and guides are offered everywhere in how to monetize your traffic and make your site a good profit earner.

Turning One eBook into Twenty Info Products or More

Turning One eBook into Twenty Info Products or More

If you have read my earlier articles, Finding Niche Markets and The quick and easy way to produce ebooks then this very short article will greatly interest you.

I’m now going to show you how to create twenty info products or more using a special method that is vastly underused but hugely profitable.

It’s all about dominating niche markets and this is one way you can do that. What you do is create a generic ebook for your niche then create multiple versions of the product aimed at areas of the niche For example if you created a product aimed at dogs the generic product would be aimed at all dogs, but the sub products could be aimed at poodles, labradors, bulldogs and so on. All you’d need to do is change the title and the introduction so it was aimed at a specific dog breed and you’ve got a unique product that can be marketed to a highly targeted niche.

Does that make sense? Let me give you another example. If you were to create a product on the subject of how to be a great teacher you could create a generic book, and then with a few changes aim separate books at people teaching maths, people teaching science, people teaching history and so on. The key here is to create a product that will benefit everyone in a niche, and then create ultra specific versions.

From this you then set up mini sites with specific long tailed keywords, more on this in later articles in my newsletter.