Rudi Vanhaecke

http://charliepage.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Red-Number-22-Medium-200x300.jpgDriving traffic can be confusing, can’t it? There are so many voices – so many opinions. Everyone seems to be wanting to sell their “latest and greatest” method of driving traffic. Some of these “shiny object” methods are stale by the time they get to market and will simply never work. You know that if you have bought any of the “three click” software hype. I know I did. Hey, I’ll try anything! Other methods that work well are often dismissed as being “yesterday’s news” or just too hard to do. One thing that seems to be missing in the talk about traffic online is the ability to see the big picture. At the end of the day experience tells use that there are only two ways to get traffic. You earn it or you buy it. Simple really. So it’s time for a little common sense and a look at the big picture of getting traffic. Today we look at 22 proven ways to get traffic the old fashioned way … by earning it. This is an overview so I won’t be digging into each method today. But I will do that in future posts. IMPORTANT NOTE: The purpose of this overview is not to say “go forth and do all of this”. No one person can do all of this well at the same time. That would be overwhelming and a big mistake. The key to succeeding with free traffic methods is to choose one you enjoy and master it. Many books and articles have been written about the person who owns a gold mine and digs for years, only to give up only a few feet away from a major find. We don’t want to be that person. We want to be the person who makes a thoughtful choice, makes a firm commitment and finds success by persisting and refining their technique. So with that in mind let’s take a look at three major ways to get traffic by earning it, and the specific techniques that come from those choices. http://charliepage.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/FREE-TRAFFIC-640.png I’ve drawn a little mind map (I’m a visual learner) and am putting it here in case you like mind maps too. It’s not necessary to even look at the image – but if you do I hope you will find it useful. TRAFFIC MOVES IN STREAMS When Bob Allen asked me to help him write Multiple Streams of Internet Income I was honored of course. But it was only when I read the finished work that I realized his true genius. He had summed up many methods of getting traffic and put them into a mental picture anyone could grasp in an instant … a great ocean of prospects flowing into a series of streams (a sales funnel) that created sales automatically. To keep this as simple as possible (I love simple, don’t you?) I’m dividing my 22 proven methods into three themes. Publishing Broadcasting Collaboration Remember the key point… Your goal should not be to do all of these at one time but rather to find the ones you like best and then make that work for you. They can all work if you work them. I will be sharing much more on how to do each method soon. PUBLISH In academia I hear they say “publish or perish”. I say I hear that because I never went to college. But I do know that, online, you need to publish or you risk perishing. Happily, you can be a great publisher without being a great writer. There are many ways to publish information online. We know that there is an almost endless supply of people searching for things, and the thing they are searching for is information. If you become the person who provides the information – be that by writing like I am doing now or by curating or aggregating – you will win. If you doubt that check out the top blogs online. Guys like John Chow now charge $500 to simply review a product on their blog. Is it worth the price? In many cases it is. Here are the most proven ways to publish online in my experience along with a couple of tips below the list about which work best for most people. Remember, this is an overview! :-) I will be providing more about each soon. I’ve done all of these and continue to use most of these methods today. Publish an ezine Have a Squidoo lens Publish a blog Guest posting Viral marketing Article marketing Press Releases Distribution Books Email Reports In my view blogging is the best way to start. A blog is easy to set up and easy to maintain. You can hire it done on sites like eLance or use a service like TypePad. One of my favorite marketers, Seth Godin, has used TypePad for years. So don’t think that using a service will limit you, because it won’t. For many it’s the best way to go. The key here is to find the method that you like. If you like doing something you will keep doing it and it will become profitable the more you do it. Big time bloggers like Chris Brogan or Brian Clark blog for profit now but they started with passion. If you follow your passion the profits will come – they really will. The beautiful thing about the Internet is that there is an audience for almost any topic. Even if you never create a single product of your own you can make money by providing your audience with the information they crave. When you do that consistently you become a trusted advisor, and people will buy what you recommend because they trust you. BROADCAST Broadcasting is the kissing cousin of publishing. Some say it’s the same thing but I still separate the written word from the broadcasted idea. One HUGE key to succeeding with broadcasting is to repurpose your articles into videos, podcasts and more. You never know how people will want to consume your information, so after you have created (or collected) your content repurpose it into another format and gain even more audience! Turning your articles into videos and putting them on YouTube or Vimeo is super easy and fast. Likewise, having video content transcribed and then making that into a great article is easy and fast as well. Another idea – transcribe webinar replays (with permission of course) into a series of articles or a short report. Give the report away and you can build your list faster and make more sales than ever. I use this technique often. It works! Here are the most proven broadcast methods in my view. Video Webinars Teleseminars Podcasting If you are an active marketer now then repurposing and broadcasting the information you already have can help you reach an audience you might never reach otherwise. Some people love video, some hate it, so why not appeal to both by providing both. This is the best way to get marketing leverage that I know — you do the work once and then reach many audiences by taking a tiny bit of time to rework your ideas into new formats. Beautiful! COLLABORATE Another way to get great leverage is to work with others. We all know about joint ventures but there is more, much more, to working with others that doing things like ad swaps. Here are my favorites. Forums Linking Joint Ventures Testimonials Social Media Provide Services Swaps There is little doubt that, when done right, working with others can be both fun and profitable. While everyone seems to want to do a joint venture (I prefer to buy advertising as doing so is much more profitable) getting a JV is hard for most. Be careful about spending too much time trying to land a JV when you could be doing other things that would naturally attract joint venture partners to you. One example – If you have a powerful presence on social media people will want to reach your audience and offer you great sums of money to do so. For that reason and more I believe that social media is the best place to start connecting. Start simple with Facebook and Twitter and move on once you have the routine in place. Just sharing what you are doing is not enough on social media – you need to think about your audience every time you share in my view. ACTION STEPS You might be thinking “pretty good article but what do I do now?” Here are three suggestions to help you take action today. 1. If you publish anything now – articles, videos, audio, anything – spend time today thinking about how you can repurpose that into new content. 2. Follow your bliss. I know it’s easy for me to say that because I’m doing well and can follow my bliss all I want. But if you know me you know that it has not always been that way, and I’m here to tell you that I got here by following my bliss. The article you are reading right now is what I wanted to do today – so I did. 3. Choose one method and master it. I see far too many people who think that article marketing no longer works because they submitting five PLR articles to EzineArticles.com and did not make any money. Obviously, that is not real article marketing but they don’t know it yet because they are simply doing what some “guru” said to do. Once you find the thing that lights your fire it will be time to learn more about that topic. Who is using it well? How is it working for them? How can you emulate their success? What is the #1 free resource about the topic online? What is the #1 paid resource about the topic online? How can you get help if you need help? Learning more and making a game plan will be necessary – no sugar coating it. But these methods can work if you work them. That much I know. Think about this – how long have you been trying to make money online? Now what if you had been able to start with a clear direction, a proven roadmap that would take you from newbie to where you want to be? That would be a gift, and a blessing. Give yourself that gift today. Follow your passion, choose your methods and commit to excellence. Then watch as what you need comes your way while you are working hard at helping others. It’s called the flow, and I know you can get there. It is worth the work it will take to get there because … Being in the flow is a beautiful thing indeed!

At the end of the day we all have the same choices when it comes to traffic - we earn it or we buy it. Smart marketers do both continually by doing things like building their list from the traffic they get from sources like paid advertising. That’s a smart tactic that creates true marketing leverage. It creates leverage because having your own list is perhaps the #1 key to succeeding online. This is why you often hear experienced marketers say they always drive traffic to a squeeze page and not a sales letter. They want to build their list and then send the visitor to the sales letter, knowing that some people will just leave and they might lose a bit of business. But the prospects they gain are much more interested and likely to buy. This is one sure way to increase conversion. But let’s save that for another article! Today let’s take the big picture look at paid traffic, just like we did with free traffic methods. When it comes to paid traffic, I believe there are three “themes” just as there are with free traffic. To refresh your memory of the themes, they are … Publishing Broadcasting Collaboration The major difference between free and paid traffic is that when earning free traffic you are doing the work but with paid traffic you are buying ads on places where others do the work. For example: You might notice that forums are on both lists. For free traffic from forums you need to spend time participating. To get paid traffic from forums you simply buy ads on the the forum itself (most offer advertising) and you can skip all the time it takes to post and participate. It’s still a good idea to participate but with paid advertising it’s not necessary at all. Now let’s look at the big picture of the paid traffic world. First, here’s a little mind map I drew for you about paid traffic. As before, you can ignore this if you are not into graphical thinking or mind maps. http://charliepage.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/PAID-TRAFFIC-6401.png Now on with the show! Rather than grouping them by publishing or broadcasting or collaboration I thought it might be more useful to list them and then share a short insight about each. Affiliates Running your own affiliate program can be a dream come true. It’s no guarantee of success however since affiliates can misrepresent your product and cause you headaches. Believe me, I know. But if you develop a strong army of affiliates and work with them to promote your product for a commission you won’t have to worry about traffic again. Jimmy Brown has famously said that his affiliates send him all the traffic he needs, and I believe him. Email Marketing Email marketing and ezine advertising are similar but a bit different. The difference is that there are companies with very large lists that will sell you solo ads but they don’t publish an actual email newsletter. These companies range from the very large to smaller players, so you need to know who you are buying from and avoid spam complaints. But solo ad sends to these lists can work very well. Reviews Many large sites, often blogs, will sell you a review on their site. The costs and effectiveness varies, and these site owners won’t fib and say a product is great if it’s not in most cases. Getting a paid review amounts to an endorsement in most people’s eyes, so the value here can be huge. Find a top blog or site in your niche and see if they offer a paid review. Forums Many forums sell advertising space on their forum site. This is highly targeted advertising, especially if the forum you choose will let you buy ads on a sub forum. These ads are usually banners but they can take other forms as well. Some forums will even send email for you to their registered members. Banners Not sure why people don’t use banners more often but they should. A well-placed banner can bring in huge results, and the costs are quite low. Banners are often sold on a cost-per-thousand impressions basis so it’s very important to know where the site gets its traffic. If you target correctly, and if your banner creates intense curiosity, you can do very well for a low fee. Webinars There are a few ways to pay and get traffic with webinars. You can host them of course, but that’s hard for most people. Some webinar hosts will actually sells ads that show during the webinar. I know of no clearinghouse for this but there should be one. I predict this will become a big trend. Another way to use webinars is to pay someone to host a webinar for you. This is best done as a joint venture but can work well. Guaranteed Visitors While I’m not a fan of guaranteed visitor programs (the traffic is usually of very low quality) there are situations where some reputable suppliers can send traffic that will help you. I personally believe this is best only for list building. Let them join your list first so you can sell them later and then send them on to the sales page. Ezine Advertising This is one of my favorites, not because I'm member of the Directory of Ezines or because I publish an ezine but because it just works so well. When you match the product you are promoting to the interests of the readers of the ezine very good things happen. It’s vital to pay attention to this prospect matching idea when doing any form of advertising. CPM Simply put, you pay for every 1000 impressions (or times you ad is shown). While some use the term CPM differently, it began as a way to express cost-per-thousand and is still used that way today. CPM advertising can be very profitable and is excellent for list building. Offline So many online marketers overlook offline methods completely. That can be a mistake. The key with using an offline/online mix is to either create curiosity in your offline ad or pre-qualiy a reader or listener and then drive them to a site where they can take the next step. Social Media Social sites like Twitter and Facebook can be fun and profitable both. They can also be hugely time consuming. So why not skip the hard work and just buy ads on the sites? While this is very limited with Twitter as I write this, Facebook and other social sites like Digg do offer on-site ads that work well. Video Not ready to shoot your own video? How about buying ad space on videos about the topic you want to promote? YouTube had offered this for some time and other video networks are getting on board. The key here, as with most advertising, is to create curiosity and interest, not try to close the sale. Networks Ad networks can be huge time savers if you have a larger budget. Many ad networks let you get started for only a few hundred dollars (others start at $10,000 or more) and they can place all sorts of ads for you on all sorts of websites. Highly targeted and you can control costs too. CPA I heard the founder of a large technology company say the other day that Cost Per Action was going to be the only model in the near future. While that might be overstating it, CPA can be a wonderful way to get new clients while controlling costs. For example, if you know a customer is worth $100 to you and your conversion is high you can afford to spend enough to really zero in on your target market. Since you are not paying for tire-kickers you can feel sure your money is well spent. Blogs Many blogs accept advertising right on their site. Blogs often offer banner ads, in-post ads and more. Some blogs will email their list for a fee or, as mentioned above, do paid reviews. Identifying top blogs in your niche and following them makes good sense. Pay Per Click Pay per click has gone through many changes. Affiliate friendly at first, many PPC providers turned on affiliates with a vengeance. Added to this is Google’s habit of canceling accounts without any notice or recourse and you can see why many feel PPC is not an option. But it can be if you do it well. My favorite voice in this world is Perry Marshall. Websites Advertising directly on almost any site you want can be done with Google AdWords. Many people don’t realize they can target a specific site but it can be done. It is often easier to use an ad network for this however. Another option, take a look at a site you want to advertise on and look for an “advertise” link at the bottom of the page. Co-ops Some physical product companies offer what is called co-op advertising. This is where the company rewards you for sales by purchasing advertising for you. While this does not apply to any online products I know of, if you are marketing a physical product online then ask the company about their co-op program. Press Releases Press releases are great if you have something that is actually news-worthly. Unfortunately, press releases are often taught as a good traffic-getting strategy by people who have never used them. They sound good, and are easy to do, but in my view don’t work for most people and should be avoided. Remember this when doing a press release – the people reading your release will mostly be reporters looking for a juicy or otherwise attention grabbing story. So be sure to give them one if you can do that ethically. Re-Marketing Re-marketing works well but most don’t know about it. Here’s how it works. You set up a RM campaign and when someone visits your site (this works best for site owners) a cookie is set. Now when that visitor goes to a website that is within the network of sites your re-marketing company works with your ad is shown to that visitor, in essence reminding them you want them to come back to your site. There you have it – a view from outer space at the big picture of paid advertising. Sorry it’s long but there was a lot to say! In future posts we will dig deeper into each of these methods. Hope you enjoyed it. Please do leave a comment below, I always love to hear your opinions. Be blessed, http://trck.me/217172/banner.jpg

t’s tough out there. Sometimes you get confused. There is too much information. You try something and it doesn’t work. You don’t know what to do next. The questions that come up during DOE consulting have been fascinating. I've created a series of short articles and videos like this one to share the questions and answers that have helped them and I’m hoping that it will help you, too. Let’s get into the first question. The most common question I get is: I need more leads! That’s technically not a question. It’s a statement. And boy, do I hear it a lot. I understand. I’ve been there. I’ve been to the place where I had a pretty website and no one was coming. I didn’t know what was going on. That’s the most common challenge of everyone who wants to make money online whether you want to sell a product and don’t care what the product is, you just want to make money or you have a passion for a particular product. Getting traffic is tough. Let’s take a look in more detail. There are only two ways to get leads. You can buy leads or you can earn leads. This is true about traffic to any website. There’s traffic you can buy and there’s traffic you can earn. Those two sources of traffic are different. Whether you go after one or the other depends upon your situation. It’s completely custom to you. Here’s the question you have to ask yourself right now. Do you have more time than money or more money than time? If you have more time than money, I know how that feels. I was there when I first started as a member of the DOE. If you have more time than money, you can go home at night and crank out two or three hours of promotional effort. You can’t spend $5,000 or $500 right now. You’ll want to focus on these techniques. Let’s go through them one by one. I’m going to give them to you in a nutshell. Let’s look at them one by one. The first is viral marketing. This is creating a piece of information that other people can give away. When they give it away, it does something good for them. Why would other people want to give away a piece of information you’ve created? You’re the creator of the viral marketing piece. They’d want to do it because they have something to gain. They can put their affiliate link in it. It’s a piece of content they don’t have to create. They can use it to build their list. You can make a piece of marketing material like a video, an audio, a book, a report or a series of email messages. Let’s say that you know how to write or you’re persuasive but you don’t have a lot of money for marketing. If you can create a viral marketing piece then it will get out there to everyone. It will contain your contact information and your website. That will help drive traffic to your site. There is article marketing. Here is the essence of article marketing: Write an article that contains useful but incomplete information. I think Jimmy Brown coined that term and I couldn’t agree more. It is useful but incomplete. That’s what the article does. It provides useful information but it doesn’t tell the whole story. That creates curiosity. When people read your article they learn something. They want to know more about that topic. They go to your website. SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s absolutely free. You spend time on your website trying to get it ranked highly in Google. It’s not free if you buy these crazy products that promise you the first page in three minutes. I hope you don’t fall for that. It is free if you take time to research keywords and make sure that the content of your pages are good. The internet is about content. When people search on Google, it’s job is to return relevant websites back to them. If your website is relevant and contains good quality content, Google will reward you and give you more traffic. There are joint ventures. Many people I talk to say, “I can’t do a joint venture. I’m not anyone. I’m not a guru. I’m not a well-known name.” You’d be surprised how many so-called “gurus” do business every day with people who are not well-known names. These people trade services. They write copy. They post articles. They go into forums. They do things like that as part of the joint venture. The joint venture doesn’t have to be “we are two equals who are going to work together.” A joint venture can be “I can do something you need you need done and you can do something, like a promotion, that I need done.” You trade your time for promotion. Teleseminars These are a good way to promote if you have more time than money. There are a lot of free teleseminar services on the internet now. Perhaps you’re an expert at a particular thing whether that’s teaching people how to fly, how to build web pages, how to make video or what to avoid. You can share stories of your successes and failures over time. You help people know what to avoid. Those are all worthy of teleseminars. These teleseminars are durable content that work very well. You can publish your own ezine. This works if you’re knowledgeable about a particular topic or if you’re a person who likes to do research. Publishing an ezine is easy. All it takes is an auto-responder account. People can sign up. You can email it right out. There are many courses on how to publish your own ezine. You can get a free auto responder account online. These things don’t take money. You can participate on forums. This is a great one. Go to the Warrior Forum room. Go to Anthony Blake’s forum room. Go to Michael Green’s HowToCorp.com. You have to participate. The key is to give. Reciprocity will bring that back to you. If you give, you will receive. Participate on these forums. Answer people’s questions if you can. Ask questions that are meaningful. Don’t ask, “How do I earn $4 million next week?” Everyone is doing that. That’s crazy. No one will go from $0 to $4 million in a week or even a month. Participate in the way that you can. You can publish a blog using Blogger. You can provide endorsements. This is a backdoor technique that many people don’t know about. If you purchase products and like them, go to the website. Find the contact form for the person or company and provide them an endorsement. They’ll put your testimonial on their homepage. They will often provide a live link to it. We do that here at the DOE. Social Networking This includes things like Twitter and Facebook. These are free methods that help you get the word out to a lot of people. You can combine these techniques. Let’s say you have a viral marketing piece written or cool articles. You can put them on Twitter and Facebook. Now you have a two-for-one deal. That’s one way. Let’s talk about if you have more money than time. If you have money, you want to promote and you need leads, then you need to buy advertising. That’s the bottom line. It’s very simple. You can buy ezine advertising. There are solo ads, sponsored ads and classified ads. The DOE is the perfect place to do just that. If you want to learn more about how it all works, check out Ezine Advertising Live. You can buy pay-per-click advertising. Google has tremendous tutorials on how to use Google AdWords and do pay-per-click advertising. They teach you a lot about it for free. Banner advertising This is still effective and it should definitely be done. Banners can be tremendously effective if you do it right. There are many sites online that will teach you how to do banner advertising. There is email marketing. I separate that from ezine advertising. You are buying an ad in ezine advertising. In email marketing you’re either renting a mailing list or cooperating with someone who has a mailing list. They will send out your advertisement. They might not publish an ezine. You can run your own affiliate program. It takes a bit of money to get that set up properly. Affiliates can be a powerful source of traffic. They’re out there swimming in different ponds than you’re in. They’re talking with different people. It’s logical that they will contact and meet people, know people and promote to people that you’ll never reach. It’s one of the most powerful ways to promote a product. You can also repackage for success. That means that you can purchase resale rights products and repackage those combining three or four into a super pack about blogging, ezines, banners or video. If you have money, you want to purchase advertising and tools to help you succeed. What about your situation? Have you been trying to make money online for more than three months and you’re frustrated and not making any money? Are you suffering from information overload and not really sure what to do next? This is exactly what my consulting program is all about. I’m giving this consulting time to DOE members in order to help them answer and solve these problems. Don't hesitate, let me help you set up a plan to get you on the path you've been wanting. Let's start today. http://trck.me/215770/banner.jpg

Everybody talks about how wonderful it is to do a “joint venture”. And when a joint venture is done right it can be very profitable indeed. But what is a joint venture? And how can you get one going? Especially if you are a “newbie”? These are good questions, and worth answering. So let’s dig into it. First, a joint venture is an agreement between two parties where both agree to do certain things and they share profits. Simple really. Party A and Party B combine forces to create a win-win situation that, hopefully, creates more results than either of them working alone. Synergy! They both do different work and share revenue based on that work. It’s usually a situation in which people have complementary skills. For example – one person is a copywriter and there other created a piece of software. The writer writes a sales letter and advertising material in exchange for a percentage of first year sales. No fees are paid; they share revenue instead. Sometimes that share is 50-50. Sometimes it’s 80-20. It depends upon the nature of the joint venture that you arrange. So that is what a joint venture IS … an arrangement to share work and revenue (and often, expenses) between two or more people who have complimentary skills or assets. That leads to a logical question, and the source of considerable frustration among new marketers. The question is … What is a joint venture NOT? It’s important to understand what a joint venture is and what a joint venture is not. A joint venture is not, “Send my solo ad to your list and I’ll give you part of my commissions when I get paid.” That is a solo ad, which usually sells for money. Far too many new marketers are told to go to ClickBank, find a hot-selling product and approach a person with a big mailing list and say to them, “Send this ad out for me. When I get paid by ClickBank I’ll give you half of it.” Sadly, that’s not going to work and will only waste your time. Why? Because the person who owns that list could go to ClickBank, get a link of their own and keep all of the profit and commissions. Let’s me share some truths about joint ventures. These are things that others don’t often talk about, even though they are true. I feel you deserve the truth. After all, your time is valuable and wasting it is not an option. 1. Joint Ventures can be hard to find Everyone is trying to create them. The reason that everyone is trying to create them is that they work. The volume of joint venture requests I get personally has tripled in the last 18 months alone. I think it’s partly the economy (people have less money to spend on advertising) and partly that some marketers are teaching very spammy techniques for getting joint ventures. The good news is this – you can find joint ventures if you know where to look and how to ask. Even if you are a newbie. The two best places I know are below. Warrior Forum If you go to the Warrior Forum you will find a section devoted to nothing but joint ventures. You can access that here. My advice is to go there and lurk for a bit and see what good joint ventures look like as they are formed. Fair warning – there is a bit of pitching going on there and a LOT of ad swap requests. But there are great JV opportunities too. Just today I saw folks looking for people who can write, looking for programmers to create WordPress plugins and looking for people with Photoshop expertise for a product creation JV. JV Notify In the spirit of full disclosure I will say that I am a paying member of JV Notify. I like to keep up with what’s happening even though I do very few JVs. The link above is not my affiliate link however. That said, JV Notify is an excellent community of people who have a JV to offer and for people who are seeking joint ventures as well. JV Notify makes it super easy to see what’s coming up soon so you can plan your marketing. This is one of my favorite features of the site. Always wanted to know what big product launch is coming next? This is the site that can do that. Check them out and see what you think. Their basic membership is free and you can become an affiliate and promote the site. HINT: This is the type of site that is very easy to promote. Everyone wants a joint venture. 2. Not all Joint Ventures work Sometimes they work great. Sometimes you work like a dog and make $75. It’s very frustrating. On the way to success, sometimes you have to fail. If you do a joint venture that doesn’t work, don’t give up on the idea. Knowing more about what good joint ventures look like will help you avoid the ones that don’t work. I’ll share a story. I won’t share the person’s name. That would be wrong. Although this turkey deserves being called out, I won’t do that. A few years ago I had a guy approach me. He said, “If you’ll mail for me I’ll mail for you. We’ll both make money and promote our products.” I said, “OK.” I mailed for him several times. We sold a bunch of his product. I did get paid a commission. When the time came for him to mail for me, he flat out refused. He said, “I don’t use your product. I don’t know your product. I only recommend products I use.” He had several excuses and totally violated the gentlemen’s agreement we had made. It got to the point where it was clear that he wasn’t going to mail for me. He failed to live up to his end of the bargain. What I learned from that is to get the expectations clear up front. Put your agreement in an email to your JV partner. Say, “I’ll do this on this date. You’ll do that on that date.” Then you have something to fall back on. 3. It helps (a lot) to bring something unique to the table If you have a skill you can bring to the table you are in a great position for a joint venture. Many marketers simply don’t’ have time to do the things they want to do but are optional in business. Here is a list of only a few skills I know work well in joint venture situations. If you have some of these you are in a great position indeed. Copywriting – articles, sales letters, email messages, etc. Creating graphics Building websites Posting to blogs Submitting articles Uploading videos Creating or editing videos There are less obvious situations that work too. If you have deep knowledge on a topic but no idea how to build or promote a blog or site you can joint venture with someone and share profits. Another – if you have specialized knowledge but don’t want to write (and don’t want to hire a writer) you can JV with a writer who will write your book for a share of the profits. The possibilities really are endless. Here are some more facts about joint ventures that are more encouraging. Many ezine publishers are happy to do joint ventures. They’re not standing on the street corner waving their hand saying, “Come joint venture with me.” But if you have a unique situation you will find they are very open. It makes perfect sense that they would be good candidates for a joint venture. They have mailing lists already. There is no cost to them. It’s all profit. They own the list so can endorse your offer. They can send an email to the list quite easily and as often as they like. If you come to them with the right idea, something unique, profitable and most importantlysomething that matches the theme of their ezine, then they will be very receptive to a joint venture. 4. Joint ventures can be hugely profitable It’s true that sometimes you work like a dog and make $75. Sometimes you work hard and make tens of thousands of dollars. I know because I’ve had both happen to me. It all takes work. Sometimes the work can be very profitable. I don’t want my candid comments above to discourage you from looking for joint ventures. When the fit is right there is nothing more profitable than a win-win joint venture. After you’ve done a few successful ones and you know what to look for, they all become profitable. 5. Joint ventures establish you as a marketer It is worth your time to pursue establishing joint ventures? Yes, for many reasons. And here is one more. Once you do a joint venture you have a track record. You can say to other people, “I did a joint venture with this person. Would you be interested in doing the same thing?” You have a track record. That’s important. We talked above about the Warrior Forum and JV Notify. Those are great if you are in the Internet Marketing space. But what if your thing is health or electronics or houseplants. Here are a few more ways to find the right JV partner. Find someone who has a list in your niche. This can be an ezine publisher or simply a top website or blog who offers updates via email. Super affiliates in your niche often make good JV partners. If you have something of value to offer them they will often mail for you. Product owners are great JV partners, especially if they are busy. Ask if they are doing as much article marketing as they like (for example) and, if not, offer to fill the void. Almost all niches have forums. Visit forums in your niche and look for the people who post most often. They are often great advocates if you have a product to sell. Social media is a great way to find JV partners. Post a message in your social spaces saying you are looking for partners and let people tell you how they see you fitting together. Mailing lists you are on now can be a good place to start as well. If you are receiving email from sellers in your niche consider replying and asking them if they need help or are open to promote other products for a percentage. There are many more ways to find joint ventures than can be listed here. I hope this list gives you some food for thought, and that you see an action item on that list as well. After all, the person who takes action is the person who wins! Finding a JV is a lot like dating. You don’t expect to walk into a crowded room and leave with the person of your dreams, although that can happen. You have to get to know people and develop a relationship. The real keys to finding a win-win joint venture are finding a person with whom you are a good fit and then working out how both of you win. The more people you get to know online, and the more value you can bring to your joint venture, the more likely you are to land your first JV. And win-win JVs are a beautiful thing indeed!

We meet many people in the course of our careers. Some we will get to know casually while others will become close friends and trusted allies. Then there are those I call ‘centers of influence.’ These ‘centers of influence’ people are like the hub of a giant wheel. As you look back, you can see where so very many good things, things like contacts, sales and help just when you needed it most, have come from this one person. Wouldn’t it be great if you could know that a person was to become a ‘center of influence’ in your life *before* it happened? Here’s the good news… you can!! In fact, we will see today that not only is developing such relationships possible, but that such relationships can be developed without greed or manipulation. If developing a ‘center of influence’ relationship sounds good to you, and you want to develop it using win-win methods, today’s article is just for you! Create a ‘Center of Influence’ Let’s begin with a short quiz. One question. No pressure. What is the best type of advertising? When asked this question many people answer “the kind that works!” While no one can disagree with that, I submit that the BEST type of advertising is the one that is most overlooked. I’m talking about word of mouth advertising. While targeted email, banner ads, billboard ads, and even television ads all have their place, nothing compares to the power of word of mouth advertising. Here’s why. When one person tells another person about your product or service, the very fact that they are speaking about you constitutes an endorsement. While people might not trust advertising (in fact, they don’t) they do trust people. If Jane feels strongly enough about what you do to tell Jim, Jim will take notice even if Jane gets the facts wrong. When Jane tells 15 or 20 Jims, she has become a center of influence. This is exactly why no serious marketer can afford to overlook social networking for long. Social networking is the perfect place to begin developing relationships – in fact, it’s all about relationships! Unlike paid advertising or article marketing, social sites like Twitter, Facebook and more encourage dialog, not the usual sales letter monologue. How can we develop a powerful word of mouth advertising campaign in our businesses? By recognizing, developing and rewarding those people who can become a ‘center of influence’ in our lives. It’s done in three steps. Let’s look at each step. 1. Recognition In order to become a true *center* of influence, a person needs to be in regular contact with the type of people who can benefit from what you do. This begs a critical question. Do you know what your ideal prospect looks like? Once you know, do this. List the type of clients that you would like to have more of. List what makes them an ideal client for you (they need what you do, they are open to change, etc.) Find common characteristics. Do these super clients go to the symphony, play golf, visit certain web sites, participate in online forums? As much as you can, be where they are. Get to know them on their turf. Let them see you at events they attend. Volunteer to help their favorite charity. Make yourself visible. Before people will buy and recommend us, they need to get to know and TRUST us. 2. Development This is NOT manipulation, but education. Have you ever had someone you know buy what you sell from a competitor because they just didn’t know YOU sold it? We are not at the top of people’s minds. They have kids, mortgages, college to pay for, as well as work pressures, just like you do. We need to position ourselves at the top of their minds by being in constant contact. We have so many tools at our disposal for this purpose. Here are three to start with. * Send them an email once a month to announce something new in your business. * Phone them to say hello and announce your next big event. Ask them how they are first, and keep notes so you have a point of contact for the next call. * A personal note works very well for developing this type of relationship. Have you written a new article or been in the newspaper? Write a brief note and send it along. Notes take time, which shows that you value this relationship. 3. Reward No, I am NOT talking about only money here. This relationship goes much deeper than that. What I am saying is that, while you are getting to know them better and educating them about what you do, take the time to LISTEN to their needs. When you can meet one of their needs, do it immediately, even if there is no immediate return for you. This person is important to your business. Don’t TELL them, SHOW them how important they are. If this relationship does not include reciprocity, it will degenerate into a ‘what’s in it for me’ situation that will not stand the test of time. Please understand that these relationships must be open and honest in order to work. People like to help other people, especially those they know and trust. Develop that trust relationship with people who are well positioned to help you. You must earn their referrals. When you do, your marketing will become supercharged with what is clearly the best form of advertising … positive word of mouth. And that is a beautiful thing indeed! http://trck.me/213473/banner.jpg

When it comes to making money online there are three elements that everyone MUST have in order to succeed: 1. Something to sell 2. A website that makes the sale 3. People coming to that site and buying Getting items 1 and 2 set up and in place are as easy as pie. In fact, you can have these in place in the next 10 minutes. But it’s that third element, getting real people to come to your site and buy something, that has most people stumped. Getting visitors to your site is called, in Internet terms, getting traffic. And there is no other topic on which so much is written, and so much is wrong. Being a fairly simple minded fellow, I like to keep things simple and easy to understand. In that light, here are some thoughts on understanding, and getting, traffic. FIRST THINGS FIRST… There are basically two types of traffic: What this means is that you are going to have to pay for traffic through either your efforts (free traffic) or your pocketbook (paid traffic). Everybody pays… some with time, others with money. I’m sure by now you know that the “three click” wonders don’t work for anyone … except the people selling them! So there is paid traffic and free traffic. Nothing more. Nothing less. Let’s look at each and see how they work. In this post I’m going to touch on free traffic. In future posts (there are a few parts to this series) I will dig deeper into both free and paid methods, including what’s working now. First, an overview of free traffic methods that actually work, and some to avoid. Free Traffic If ever there was a siren song of the digital age, ‘free traffic’ is it. Can you really get absolutely free traffic to your site? Sure. Can you build a business based on this traffic? Yes. BUT – and there is always a but – you will have to learn how to get it and work hard as well. If that’s okay with you, let’s look at how it works. Here are the main sources of free traffic, along with a word about each… SEARCH ENGINES Often touted as the #1 way to get free traffic, the tactic here is to get your site listed in the venerated ‘top ten’ search results. You can’t trick the search engines, so the best way to do this is to provide content, and lots of it. If your site is helpful to human readers you will do well. If you try and outsmart the search engines to get traffic you will go broke buying the latest and greatest thingy that simply won’t work, or won’t work long. Create a content rich site and the search engines will reward you by displaying that site when people search for the type of information you provide. But the content must be high quality and must be original. No rehashed PLR content for you. That will only get you banned, busted and begging for mercy. FREE ADS Free ads are a mixed blessing. They are free, which is good. They usually don’t work, which is bad. If you can get a free ad in a place where ads are usually sold, like the free ad you get for subscribing to some ezines or classified ad sites that are visited by people, then it might be worth the time. BUT – ad blasters and automated submitters do not work in testing and are to be avoided. ARTICLES Without a doubt, marketing with articles is the #1 free traffic method. You don’t need to be Hemmingway to do this. All you have to do is write a short article – about 500 words works best – that describes a problem people face and also provides ways to solve that problem. HOT TIP: Have you been frustrated in your efforts to get an online business started and making profits? Have you learned from that experience? If so, that makes great article material. See, you really do have something to say! Once your article is written, you can submit it to article directories, ezines, other website owners, and more to get the widest possible distribution. Write and submit an article a week and very soon you will get very interested visitors who are proven to buy. FOOD FOR THOUGHT: How long have you been trying to make money online? What if you had written only one article a week during that time? For many reading this it would mean an inventory of 100 articles or more. And that is a large enough inventory of articles to make many many sales! Put time on your side by writing articles every week, and more often if you can. VIRAL MARKETING Viral marketing basically means creating something of value that others can give away while making sure you benefit from it being given away. The key here is that you both win when the product is given freely. In most cases, the person who gives the book away for you wins by providing good information that they don’t have to write. You win because the product contains links back to your site. A real win-win! The most common form of this is either software or a short e-book or report. Creating a viral marketing e-book is a win-win situation. You win because the links in the product are yours, so you get paid when people click. Readers win because you provide valuable information and they can give the booklet free from their website. PUBLISH AN EZINE Publishing an ezine is highly profitable and easy to do. All you need to do is gather, or write, articles about a specific subject and publish an ezine (like the one you are reading now) on a schedule. That might mean every week, or every month. You can get great articles from all sorts of places, like article directories or ezine directories. Publish an ezine, offer it to everyone in your address book and who visits your site, and watch your traffic grow. PUBLISH A BLOG This is super easy today. If you have a hosting account, the chances are you have blogging software on that account free. If not, you can always use Blogger. The basic idea here is the same as a website … provide great content and the search engines send people. The advantage to a blog is that you can have some interactivity by letting people comment, and you can easily structure your blog for easy reading. Plus you can offer an RSS feed for those who prefer that method of getting content automatically. Set up a blog today, provide great content, and the search engines will send traffic over time. PARTICIPATE ON FORUMS This is an excellent, and free, way to earn while you learn. The idea here is to visit forums that are specific to your site and post questions or make comments. This works well if you understand reciprocity and are wiling to give a bit before you receive. It does not work at all if your forum post is simply an ad in disguise. Once forum members get to know and trust you a bit they will visit the site you list in your signature area. If you visit the forums specific to your topic of interest and get involved, you will get very targeted free traffic on a steady basis. I know of one major marketer who built his reputation using this method more than any others. This works! As you can see, there are many ways to get free traffic to your site. These methods take time that could be spent doing other things. But if you have more time than money at this point in your life, these techniques will work to get traffic to your site. I hope they work for you too. Next, we are going to look at ways to get paid traffic– so stayed tuned! Thanks! http://trck.me/214155/banner.jpg

It seems that every guru (and would-be guru) in the land is talking about traffic. This information usually comes in hype-filled fashion, using terms like "How to get 'laser focused' traffic in massive amounts to your site for so little money it makes you laugh until things fall out of your nose!" Getting good traffic to your site IS a tough needle to thread. You can easily spend hundreds on software that is hard to use, at best. You can also throw money down a rat- hole buying traffic that ends up wanting to have nothing to do with your offer. And trying to keep up with the search engine rule changes can make you go nuts. That's why an entire industry has sprung up to help you get traffic .... for a price. The sad fact is that most of the traffic buying programs you see are a rip-off. I've yet to meet anyone who made so much money buying "massive amounts of traffic" that they couldn't wait to buy more. And that's what happens with great products; people want to buy again and again because they actually help people make money. Let's save how to get traffic for the next article. While plenty is being said about how to get visitors, I wonder if we're losing focus on what to do with visitors once they arrive. Since the great likelihood is that you are getting some traffic now, let's look together at three questions that will help you maximize the value of the traffic you get. As a quick aside I must say that I know several successful business people who are doing very well on only a couple of hundred visitors a day. Don't be tricked into thinking that it takes untold thousands of visitors to make good money. Massive numbers aren't the key. Massive effectiveness is. So how can you make your site massively effective? Ask yourself these three questions. 1. Why would someone come to your site? This question is the foundation for success. The more you know about your audience the more you can tailor your message to them. When your message matches your visitors, when it speaks to their needs and offers them a solution (solutions are the ONLY thing people buy) you will be in a position to make the most money from the least visitors. 2. Why would someone recommend your site to others? Perhaps the most underused marketing technique on the web is the personal recommendation. You see this in ezines all the time, where the publisher recommends a product or service, but how often do you get asked to recommend a web site? The fact is that people who visit your website need what you offer. And they know others who need your solution too. Are you asking them to recommend their friends to your site? If you need a script to do this check out Hot Scripts.com Just search for "tell a friend" http://www.hotscripts.com If you use a shopping cart it should offer this "tell a friend" feature or you can find lots of services on Google. No matter how you do it, be sure to do it soon. If only 1 visitor in 50 refers a person you are ahead of the game. 3. Why would someone return to your site? Once a visitor arrives the real work begins. You need to convince them that you have the right solution at the right price and that now is the right time. If only 5% of first- time visitors buy you will be doing very well. But what about the 95% who don't buy? For them, you need a follow up method. You need to get your message in front of them at least seven times before they will buy. So how do you do that? You bribe them with something free. They get a free report, you get the right to send them more information. A fair exchange if you don't abuse the privilege. This is why autoresponders were invented. You get them to sign up for your ezine. Use a pop-up window. Creating a pop-up is super easy these days. Using a pop-up when people leave your site is smart business because you give them one more chance to get more information. You'll be surprised how many people really want more info and will fill out the form in this pop-up box. No matter how much, or little, traffic you get now you need to maximize that traffic. While it's important to have great copy, ask for the order often and do all the other marketing stuff, answering the three questions above will give you a road map you can follow today to begin converting more visitors into customers. <p>http://trck.me/208639/banner.jpg</p>

Q. How can I get traffic to my website? A. Ah, traffic. No topic is more written about than getting "targeted traffic to your website" The main thing about traffic to remember is this ... the MAIN way that people get to your site is by clicking a link. So the question becomes, where can you place links so that people see them and respond. And the answer to that question is easy. There are only two ways to get traffic. Search engines Advertising Search engines provide free traffic by ranking your website highly in their search engine results. So, when someone types in "find a great daycare in Houston", and your site is optimized for the word daycare, your site is listed in the top 10 results. Advertising is basically the only other way to get traffic. There are many forms of advertising online. Here's a list for your consideration. Ezine Advertising Pay Per Click Advertising Banner Advertising Viral Marketing Marketing with ezine articles Search Engine Marketing Email Marketing Joint Ventures Teleseminars Publish Your Own Ezine Participate on Forums Publish A Blog Run Your Own Affiliate Program Provide Endorsements Provide Endorsements <p>http://trck.me/207417/banner.jpg</p>

What is the one thing that you see in almost every ezine you read? Classified ads. The reason you see so many classified ads in ezines, on web sites and other places is simple. They work. Classified advertising is one of the most cost effective forms of advertising on the Net today. Like most things that seem very simple on the surface, a great deal of work goes in to writing a powerful classified ad. If you want to add power to your classified ads, carefully consider the following four step process. Writing a great ad is hard. This is not “sit down for 5 minutes and punch it out” work. When a professional writer creates a classified ad for a client, it’s not unusual for the writer to produce 15 or even 20 variations in order to get the best possible ad. So grab the beverage of your choice, loosen up those typing fingers and let’s create a money making classified. The three parts of a great classified ad are … The Headline The Body The Call to Action Each one has only ONE purpose. The purpose of the headline is to sell the ad. The purpose of the ad is to set up the call to action. The purpose of the call to action is to sell the click. If you keep this in mind as you write, you will see how easy it becomes to cause readers to take the action you want. The Headline Your headline must grab attention! The headline’s job is to sell the ad. Some people use sensational headlines with no relationship to their offer to grab attention. That approach may work in the short term, but damages your integrity in the long run. Honesty is always the best policy. The last thing you want is disappointment when someone arrives at your website. Keep these ideas in mind when you write your headline. Begin each sentence with an action word Create curiosity Ask a question HOT TIP: If the publication you are placing your ad in doesn’t allow headlines, use the first few words as the headline or indent the ad so it stands out. When writing headlines, always remember that people care about exactly one thing; what’s in it for me? The Body The body of the ad must tell your reader what’s in it for them. What *benefit* will they get by making that click? People don’t want to ‘learn more’ out of idle curiosity. They want to learn more in order to get to the *benefits* you promised them, so don’t be shy about what your offer will do for them. The first step to writing the body is to list all the features of your product or service then, next to them, list the benefits of those features. You must write at least one benefit for each feature, or don’t use that feature. People buy what your product or service will do for *them*, not only what it will do. The Call to Action The call to action is the action you want the reader to take. While it is often as simple as “click here” it’s wise to pay careful attention to this step. What to say here depends on if you are sending them to a web site, an autoresponder or some other way to get more information. If it’s a website, be sure to include urgency. You must lure them away from what they are doing now in order to visit your site. If you are using an autoresponder, tell the reader what to expect. Will they get one email, a five part series, or something else? The more they know, the more likely they will be to click through. What’s Next? One last step and you’re ready to begin making money. Don’t forget to read your ad! Classifieds aren’t supposed to read like a novel. Check that spelling too! Once you have your dollar grabbing, profit pulling classified written, don’t forget the #1 rule in advertising. TEST YOUR AD Test, test and test again to know what works. Testing allows you to spend small money now to make big money later. By following these steps you will begin to create classifieds that work. Once you have an ad that works, use it everywhere you can afford to and you will rake in the profits! a href='http://trck.me/204891/banner.php' target='_blank'>

Want to make more sales the quick and easy way? Then follow this simple formula, and create a sixty second summary page for your readers! The problem is all too common. Two competing factors are true at the same time. 1. Long sales letters produce better results. 2. People don’t have time to read long sales letters. So how can you solve that problem on your website? Easy … create a sixty second summary. After all, everyone has one minute to spare! Here’s how you do it, followed by an example that is working now. First, List The Benefits Of Your Offer The key here is to list benefits, not features. A feature is something your product does, a benefit is something it does for me. Here’s an example. Second, Create A Bulleted List The best way to display these benefits is not by hiding them inside fancy words. After all, just the fact that someone might want to read a 60 second summary page indicates they are in a hurry. So give them just the facts. People like lists. Simply list the benefits you created above in descending order, from the most powerful to the least important. Every one of the benefits you list will have impact to someone, but do remember to start with the strongest benefit you can offer. Here’s the example I promised you. It will open in a new window. http://directoryofezines.com/sixty-second-recap.html Third, Test The Page Now it’s time to read the page. Since these are words that you have written, you will read it faster than another person. I recommend asking a friend to read the page, and timing them. After all, you want to keep your implied “60 second” promise. If the page is too long, either shorten each bullet point or remove some until the page is short and concise. Fourth, Include A Clear Call To Action The objective is to sell to people who are in a hurry. The last thing you want to do here is to give them your short yet powerful list and then force them back to your main page, where the order link might be hard to see. So, always include an order link at the bottom of the list. You can safely restate your main benefit at the bottom of the list, but resist the temptation to say more. What you want here is action … now! IMPORTANT: Send them from this page to your order form. If they read the recap and click the link they want to buy. Do not get in their way – let them buy now! Last, Add A Link To Your Sales Letter Now it’s time to modify your original sales letter and let people know you offer a 60 second summary. I choose to do that at the very top of the sales letter for the sites where I employ this tactic. Using long selling copy is smart, because long copy gives the reader enough time to feel comfortable, and you can tell the whole story. Using short copy is smart, because people online are in a hurry, and many sales letters are simply too long for them. Until now, you had to choose. But now, by using a 60 second summary, you can have it all! And having it all is a beautiful thing indeed!

I have a confession to make … I LOVE words. I love to use them. Love to learn new ones. I especially love to find just the right combination of words that convey exactly what I mean and cause people to respond in ways that are profitable for everyone. And I love using four letter words, too! Many of you know that I’m a Christian, which begs the question – how can you love four letter words? It’s not THAT kind of word I’m talking about! :-) I love four letter words because some of the most powerful words in the English language are four letter words! Now I don’t pretend to be a scholar. Far from it; I never even went to college! But when it comes to using words to communicate and persuade I’ve been around the block a time or two. Makes me glad I lived this long! After over 35 years of choosing my words very carefully I have made a list of my favorite four letter words. I share that list below. Please feel free to leave a comment and share with me your favorite four letter word. And please add they “why” – why is your four letter word your favorite? Please keep all comments PG rated. This is a family friendly site! :-) My favorite four letter word is … HELP Why help? Because I have discovered over the years that I love (another favorite) to help people. I shut down my consulting practice so I could give DOE members my full attention. The result? More members than ever helped! I like that. I created my blog to house all the articles I’ve written and videos I have made so there would be one place you could go and quickly get some helpful information free. While we are not finished yet, it’s coming along and people are getting help. I like that too. Another favorite? Call me a softy but it’s love. Why? Because the love of a good woman changed my life when I was but 19 years old and uplifts me every day. 37 years later and it’s like day 1. Only love can do that. I know the author of love by the way, and He makes my days long, profitable and worth living. Hope you know Him too. Here’s my list. I can’t list them all because it would take so long to read them all. So I’m going to list one per letter and give you my A – Z of four letter words. Enjoy! ABLE – I believe most people are capable of so much but they don’t see themselves as ABLE to get things done. My advice; stop looking at limitations – you are able to get the job done. BUZZ – I am unashamedly in the business of promoting my products and helping members promote theirs. That takes buzz, and I love to generate buzz for members! CORE - I believe anyone can succeed in business if they learn and master a core set of skills. Copywriting, email marketing, advertising – learn these and you will never go hungry again. DUTY – I’m an old fashioned guy who believes we all have a duty to perform to our fellow man. That duty? Love and help! (How square is that?) EDGE – As an online marketer I am always looking for an edge. When you find that edge big things begin to happen quickly. FELT – Selling is about emotion. I often ask customers how they felt when something specific happened. I get weird looks, but I learn. GLAD – The best advice I’ve read in a long time is to “be glad continually”. There is so much to be happy about. HEAR – When others speak we sometimes listen but do we really hear them? Hearing others is a beautiful thing. ICON – There are icons we can learn from. Seth Godin, Bob Proctor, Zig Ziglar … thank you! JOIN – I love joining things that are real and bring value to others. What a rush when things are new and possibilities endless. KNOW – Knowing things matters. Never never stop learning. LIST – I love lists. Love making them. Love checking them off. Love using them to get things done. MUSE – Everyone needs inspiration. Find yours and stay connected. NERD – Love ‘em or hate ‘em, your business ultimately works because of a nerd. Plus, it’s fun to say. ONCE – Weird choice? Here’s why I love “once”. If I can do something successfully once I can do it again and again. This is the basis of all success in business. PRAY - Couldn’t make it through a day without this one! QUIZ – Want to know what customers really want? Quiz them. ROUX – Hey, I’m from Louisiana! SELL – Love to sell. Love to sell things for members and watch as they earn their first money online. That’s fun! TEAM – When you find the right team anything is possible! UNDO – I love it when someone can undo their failure and turn it into success. Damage can be undone. New beginnings are possible! VERB - The most important part of copywriting? Use MORE verbs! WANT – The most important part of selling? Find out what people want, not what they need. X - I will happily admit that I don’t have one for X. Do you? YEAR – When I was 25 they seemed so long. Now they seem much shorter. Decide to make this year YOUR year! ZINE – Ezines changed my life and bring me thousands of visitors a day. For me it’s the ONLY “Z” word that matters! :-) So what’s your favorite four letter word?

Classified ads are everywhere! You see them when you read your favorite ezine. You see them on all the search engines in the form of pay per click ads like Google AdWords. And now you see them all over Facebook when you update your page or visit your friend’s pages. You can find them on blogs and forums too! The reason you see so many classified ads in ezines, on web sites and other places is simple. They work! (And they are cheap too!) :-) But are they working for you? Writing classified ads is actually easy once you know how. And today I’m going to share the formula I use for writing great classified ads so that you too can crank out profit pulling ads anytime you like! Classified advertising is one of the most cost effective forms of advertising on the Internet today. They may seem very simple on the surface but to get a great ad you need to put some thought into how the ad flows. Like many things, what appears simple on the surface is actually carefully orchestrated to make a specific impact. Happily, you can learn to write great classified ads in the next 10 minutes! If you want to add power to your classified ads, consider following my four-step process. First it is important to understand that there are three parts to these tiny little ads. Each part works in harmony with the others to create an overall effect that causes the reader to do what you want them to do … click on your ad and visit the site you are promoting! The three parts of a great classified ad are: 1.The Headline 2.The Body 3.The Call to Action It is very important to understand that each part has one purpose and one purpose only. When you think of ads in this way it becomes easier to create them because you will be using a “building block” approach. Here’s what you need to know. The purpose of the headline is to sell the ad. The purpose of the body copy is to set up the call to action. The purpose of the call to action is to sell the click. I will explain what I mean in further detail below. If you keep this in mind as you write you will see how easy it becomes to cause readers to take the action you want. The Headline The headline’s job is to sell the ad. When I say “sell the ad” what I mean is that the headline convinces the reader that you have something to say – that they should continue reading the rest of the ad. Because of this there is one cardinal rule when writing any ad copy. Your headline must grab attention! Period. End of story. Some people use sensational headlines with no relationship to their offer to grab attention. That approach may work in the short term, but damages your integrity in the long run. Honesty is always the best policy. The last thing you want is disappointment when someone arrives at your website. So my advice is to avoid the temptation to hype up the headline thinking that will help. It will often hurt, not help. Here are a few tips for writing headlines. Begin with an action word Create curiosity Ask a question Make a startling statement Ask for the reader’s opinion There are many ways to craft a winning headline. I hope these help you get going. Last tip: when writing headlines, always remember that people care about exactly one thing; what’s in it for me? The Body Copy The purpose of the body copy is to set up the call to action. What I mean is this – the only reason your ad exists is to get the click to the website you are promoting. But before asking for the click it is very important to give the reader the reason why they should click. This “reason why” usually comes in the form of benefits. This is the “what’s in it for me” I mentioned earlier. The body of the ad must tell your reader what’s in it for them. What benefit will they get by making that click? People don’t want to ‘learn more’ out of idle curiosity. They want to learn more in order to get to the benefits you promised them, so don’t be shy about what your offer will do for them. The first step to writing the body is to list all the features of your product or service then, next to them, list the benefits of those features. You must write at least one benefit for each feature, or don’t use that feature. People buy what your product or service will do for them, not only what it will do. The Call to Action In most cases the action you want the reader to take is clicking the link in your ad. That’s simple enough. But how you ask them to do that can literally mean the difference between the success and failure of your ad! What I like to do is use an action word that includes the main benefit of the product I’m promoting. So if I am promoting a product that helps people save time I might write “Save time today by visiting my site now!” instead of “Click here to save time” Both are good, but the first one is stronger. Why is it stronger? Because the reader wants to save time. He or she does not want to “click here”. They will “click here” to get what they want but why make them interpret what they get for clicking when I can just say it straight out? A subtle but important difference. One reason that this is important is that your ad will be interrupting their current process. No problem there. In fact, most great ads are based on interruption of an existing pattern. Some people like to call this “pattern interruption”. No matter what you call it, the thing to remember is this … You must lure them away from what they are doing now in order to visit your site. Make your call to action simple to understand and not at all tricky or something that has to be interpreted. What’s Next? One last step and you’re ready to begin making money. Don’t forget to read your ad! Classifieds aren’t supposed to read like a novel. Check that spelling too! Once you have your profit pulling classified written, don’t forget the #1 rule in advertising. The #1 rule of advertising — TEST YOUR AD! Test, test and test again to know what works. Testing allows you to spend small money now to make big money later. By following these steps you will begin to create classifieds that work. Once you have an ad that works, use it everywhere you can afford to and you will rake in the profits! And that is a beautiful thing indeed! Thanks for reading.

Here are some that I’ve read recently or heard at workshops: * “Retire with dignity and with a full-time paycheck.” * “The special tablet supermodels use to keep thin!” * “The secret paycheck your neighbor isn’t talking about.” * “How a 21-year-old college student earns over $5,000 a month by helping people fill out a change of service form.” We only get one chance to make a good first impression. Our opening sentence is everything. The truth is: Our prospect has already started making the final decision within seconds of us starting our presentation. We need to learn how to manage this.

Do you know why some websites or blogs bring in buckets of cash while others don’t make a dime? Ever wonder why some ads fizzle while others create a selling frenzy? One BIG reason could be the headline. When selling things on the Internet you have about three seconds to make your point or lose your visitor. Click… BANG… they’re gone forever! If your headlines are under-performing then it IS costing you sales. No doubt about it. You need a great headline. You want a great headline. You’d love to have a great headline. But how do you create a GREAT headline if you’re not a professional copywriter? Here are ten tips that will empower you to write a great headline today. 1. Review the sites of about 15 top marketers before you begin to write. Never take their copy (that would be stealing) but do draw inspiration from their headlines before you begin. For a site that ranks online marketers visit Guru DAQ. I’m not sure how they choose their “winners and losers” but the site is a lot of fun if you like marketing. HOT TIP: The subject line in emails you receive are also examples of great headlines. It’s amazing how simple and effective this technique is when you need a powerful headline. If you want an easy way to create a powerful “swipe file” then subscribe to the email follow up systems of top sellers in your market and scan their emails once a week. It only takes a short time and the super-hot headlines will jump out and grab your attention. Never copy them of course, but do draw inspiration from them. 2. Make your headline short. Five to seven words works very well. You can be more expansive in the sub-headline, once you have your visitors’ attention. HOT TIP: The right question is always one that can be answered by your product. 3. Use a question as your headline. The point of your headline is to get people to stop long enough to consider your site. Asking a question is a great way to do this, if you ask the right question. 4. Use an exclamation point or question mark in your headline. It is important to convey excitement in the headline. But don’t use the silly long exclamation marks like !!!!!!!!!! That generally looks unprofessional. 5. Be clear. Tell the reader exactly how your product will help them. “Here is how I can solve your problem” is the sentiment you want them to feel. 6. Use a “number of steps” formula. If your product will solve a problem in a certain number of steps, say so. People love simple solutions to their problems. 7. Use a “number of ways” formula. Use this instead of a number of steps. If your product offers alternative solutions to a problem then say so right up front. 8. Use an “in under” formula. When time or money is involved, using an “in under” or “for less than” approach works well. One example is “How to succeed online for under $100!” If you can deliver on your promise then make the strongest statement possible. 9. Talk to your specific audience. If your product works better for women than men say so up front. A headline that starts “For women who want …” will attract the women visitors quickly and let them know you understand them. 10. Make them qualify. This is a more advanced headline technique but it works well if you are brave enough to try it. You are basically saying that you are not sure they are qualified to buy this product and they need to see if they do indeed qualify for the wonderful offer you are sharing. Many big-name marketers use this approach, especially when selling higher-end products or courses. Why? It works! Using these ten steps you can create powerful headlines for your website, your emails, your blog, or anywhere else you might need to get people to stop and pay attention. If you do you will make more sales, get more sign-ups and watch as your advertising becomes more and more effective. And effective advertising is a beautiful thing indeed!

Everyone who owns a web site wants it to be "sticky". We want visitors to stay on our site long enough to see what we have to offer ... and hopefully buy something. In this regard, web sites and offline stores have something in common. While we both suffer from our share of "tire kickers" (those who never intended to buy), we know that the longer a person stays in our storethe greater the odds that they will buy something. And much like an offline store, we entice them in every way we can to stay a while. Here are four ways to put more sticky in YOUR site: Use the "three tell" formula. Simply put, tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them your story, and then tell them what you just told them. Great advertising often uses the "three tell" technique by repeating the primary benefit in the headline, body of the ad, and the call to action. Tell them all they need to know up front, and then tease them into reading the rest. This technique is called the inverted pyramid and is often used in the news business. Using this method, you tell your prospect everything they need to know in the first paragraph or two of your sales copy, and then create curiosity to get them to read on. If they read on, the chances are you have them. Pick up any good newspaper and you will see the inverted pyramid at work. Don't hide the good stuff. When visitors have to labor through page after page of information (or hype) to find what they want, they'll leave. Curiosity taken too far creates frustration. Tease them, but don't forget to please them. ENGAGE them in a conversation. The more they ask questions and talk with you, the closer they get to buying... and becoming a REPEAT buyer. That's where the real money is. Experts say it costs between 4 to 10 times MORE to create a new customer than to sell to an existing one. Talk to your visitors as often as you can. Make them feel at home and invite them back. Soon, you will have created a loyal customer. Look at your site as if it were a clothing store in the mall. At the good stores you walk in and are invited to shop around, take your time. They hope you will buy and they accommodate you in every way they can. At the bad stores, Biffy or Jake mumble something about being in the back if you need them. Then they look at you like you're an idiot when you leave without buying. As a buyer, which do you prefer? As a seller, which one best describes your web site? Invite your web shoppers to browse, then to buy. Make it easy for them to stay, and soon success will be on the way.

10 Headline Blueprints That Work Like Crazy If you are interested in driving traffic to your website, or are into list building or affiliatemarketing, then you probably know the importance of a great headline. It’s often been said that the ability to write great headlines is the most important skill in all of copywriting. That might be true. After all, unless you have a great headline your selling message won’t get read. This applies to solo ads, classified ads, sales letters, blog posts, social media marketing … basically anytime you communicate with the public. In the email marketing and solo advertising business we often talk about the “hierarchy” of a great email ad. That’s just a fancy way to say that any email ad, especially a solo ad, must have three key elements in order to be effective. And by effective, I mean profitable. 1.A subject line (or headline) that causes the email to get opened 2.An offer the reader wants 3.A call to action that gets the reader to click now If your ad has those three things you will likely do very well indeed. If you get one of them wrong you risk losing profits. But here’s the problem for most people … how do you write a highly effective headline or email subject line? Most professional copywriters have a swipe file they use. When they see a great headline or subject line they copy it and use it for inspiration. Of course, we never want to use anyone’s copy word-for-word without express permission but we are free to draw inspiration from great marketing. And we should do so. After all, why reinvent the wheel? A second trick of the trade is having a blueprint to follow. By blueprint I mean a simple “fill in the blanks” formula that empowers you to crank out winning headlines and subject lines all day long. So if you’ve ever wanted to write great headlines and subject lines at will, or if you’ve ever been stuck and not known how to get started, the blueprints below will help. NOTE: In the examples and information below I’m going to refer to these blueprints in email marketing terms. The truth is a great headline IS a great email subject line and IS a great article title and IS a great blog post title and IS a great Tweet and so on. It all has the same purpose, to get people to read more and take action. Master these blueprints and you will never again be stuck for inspiration. Heck, you might even find a new career as a headline writer! Blueprint #1 “For _______, This Works Like Crazy” Overview: This is a great results-driven subject line that is certain to get people to open up your email and take a closer look. The idea here is to use the classic combination of something the reader wants with a way to get it. By including “this works like crazy” you are saying “here’s how to get what you want”. All you need to do now is fill in the blanks and include what they want. Your job is to provide the “what they want” part in the provided blank. Examples: For losing weight FAST, this works like crazy… For longer tee shots, this works like crazy… For making money fast, this works like crazy… For saving a marriage, this works like crazy… For avoiding bankruptcy, this works like crazy… Obviously, you want what you are offering to be something that is highly sought after or highly interesting to the reader, and is directly related to what you are going to share in the email itself. This subject line is great for just about any kind of mailing, whether it is a content mailing or a promotional mailing. People open it for one reason and one reason only: it promises to reveal something that produces a result they want to achieve. Blueprint #2 “Why Your ________ Won’t _______” Overview: One of the basic human motivations for response is driven by a fear of failure. This subject line is the exact opposite of the first one we looked at which hinted at producing results – this one hints at NOT producing results. The idea is to talk about what they want and then an appropriate negative statement at the end after the word “won’t”. Examples: Why your diet won’t work Why your business won’t succeed Why your list won’t make you money Why your vacation won’t be fun Why your credit can’t be restored Who could resist opening up to see WHY? Not many of us, I can tell you that. HINT: Substituting the word “can’t” for “won’t” works very well. Feel free to experiment with other synonyms too. If your result is something that we WANT to achieve, then certainly we’d want to read your email to find out what might prevent us from achieving the result. It’s a great time to reveal a mistake or a problem or a hindrance … and then offer your product or service as a solution, which will produce profit for you. Blueprint #3 “The biggest mistake ______________ make” Overview: Once again we are tapping into the fear of failure, a powerful motivator. This subject line that focuses on the negative or adverse result – things your subscriber wants to avoid if he is going to achieve the desirable results he is after. The difference with this subject line and others that offer a sort of warning or caution is the emphasis here is on the word “biggest”. This isn’t just a mistake, it’s the BIGGEST mistake. It’s the number one, most common error that folks make regarding a particular topic and curiosity alone will get people to open up JUST TO SEE WHAT IT IS. Yes, they’ll certainly be concerned about whether or not they are making this particular mistake, but even more than that, they’ll want to know WHAT this particular mistake is. What IS the “biggest” mistake? Examples: The biggest mistake husbands make The biggest mistake first-time parents make The biggest mistake dieters make The biggest mistake car buyers make The biggest mistake dog owners make HINT: Adding the words “and how to avoid it” or “how you can avoid it” works very well with these headlines. Obviously, the biggest mistake would be a matter of your opinion, so it’s open to your own objective perspective, which makes this one an easy subject line to work into your mix. And, it definitely is effective. Blueprint #4 “The Fastest Way To ______________” Overview: Now it’s time to talk about the other super-motivator, promise of gain. Here we focus on being “fast”. We all want results – and, let’s face it – we all want them as quickly as possible. We live in a fast food world that promises instant results and that’s what we want. So, the key here is that word “fastest”. This isn’t just a way to success with a particular topic; it’s the FASTEST way to success with a particular topic. Additionally, I’ve found that if you can plug in SPECIFIC results it makes this one so much more effective. Examples: The fastest way to make $500 online The fastest way to lose 5 pounds The fastest way to play guitar chords The fastest way to speed read 75 pages The fastest way to cut insurance costs by 25% Notice in my examples that I didn’t make outlandish claims, I made reasonable claims. It wasn’t the “fastest way to make a million dollars online,” but rather “the fastest way to make $500 online”. Not “100 pounds”, but “5 pounds”. Not “play guitar”, but “play guitar chords”. There are two reasons for this: 1. If a person believes they can actually do what you mention in the subject line, they are more likely to open up and take a look, and 2. Readers will subconsciously think they can INCREASE the results by DUPLICATING what you share inside. In other words, if you mention the “fastest way to lose 5 pounds” I automatically think, “If he lost 5 I’ll bet I can lose 10! ”. It’s human nature to think you can do better than the next person. That may or may not be the case, but that’s what many people think, and it compels them to take a look because your claim is BELIEVABLE and ACHIEVABLE. Blueprint #5 “Get Your ________ Questions Answered” Overview: This is a great information gathering subject line to use when you want to survey any mailing list, be it your own or if you buy solo ad space. Surveying and taking polls works, and works well, and this approach helps it work even better. The more you know about people who might become customers – what they WANT to know from you, what they are most likely to buy – the easier it is to provide them with quality content they can use and the easier it is to make offers that they will say “Yes” to. So, this is a great subject line togather information with, by allowing your subscribers to submit their most wanted question to you. Examples: Get your blogging questions answered Get your weight lifting questions answered Get your insomnia questions answered Get your digital photography questions answered Get your pet training questions answered HINT: You can change this headline to read “answers to your _____ questions” and it will work just as well. LIST BUILDING TIP: You can promise to answer the top 5 for free in a report or training call or give a free copy of your completed product to all those who submit a question (and join YOUR list) or whatever you choose as far as the offer inside. Blueprint #6 “Something Every _____ Needs To Know” Overview: Once again we have the “curiosity” factor in play. What is it that I need to know? The word “need” is very powerful and compelling. It gives the impression that something is a necessity, that it is required. Testing has shown that putting a special emphasis on “first-timers”, “beginners” or “newbies” will increase the results of this headline or subject line. Because they are inexperienced, they are more likely to not only recognize they do have needs because of their lack of knowledge, but also will be eager to learn those things that you feel are necessary or required for success. Examples: Something every new mother needs to know Something every college freshman needs to know Something every first-time car buyer needs to know Something new affiliate marketers need to know Something every bride-to-be needs to know Why do you think the Dummies® books have sold so successfully? Newcomers to the subject want to know what they need to know. And that’s why they’ll open this email up and take a look inside. Blueprint #7 “Here’s A Shortcut For __________” Overview: When I say “shortcut” what comes to your mind? Think about it for just a second. You likely envision something that is “faster”, something that is “easier”, something that gives an “advantage”, something that “reduces expenses or effort” – all of which are highly desirable. We all want to take the shortcuts in life – the easiest, fastest, most advantageous path to our destination. Which explains why this subject line continues to be among my most opened in my email marketing. It doesn’t matter if it’s rose gardening or entertaining inlaws or boosting metabolism or racing radio-controlled cars, we all want a shortcut. Examples: Here’s a shortcut for getting a great job Here’s a shortcut for creating an ebook Here’s a shortcut for boosting your memory Here’s a shortcut for mastering Forex Here’s a shortcut for learning to play piano Tip: Let me also give you just a quick tip here for really producing profit with this particular subject line. When you can tie in some kind of product, software or service that fully or semi-automates the shortcut, then you’ve got a very good chance of getting the sale. Just a quick, very generic example: You might share that a shortcut to success with customer support is to have a text file with your most asked questions and responses to those questions so when a new customer asks a question all you have to do is copy and paste your response instead of retyping out a response. That’s a shortcut. Now, you could also PROMOTE an autoresponder service that would actually automate the process of getting those answers to the customer, you could promote a package of template responses to the most asked questions or promote a customer-service help desk software or even a third-party company that provides customer service. The point is this: If you can provide readers with a quality shortcut, but then also promote a product, software program or service that automates that shortcut, you’re much more likely to get a sale. Blueprint #8 “Here Is Your ________ Checklist” Overview: One of the things that most human beings want – at least the human beings that I know – is a set of instructions that we can follow to make sure we do things correctly. That’s why offering a free checklist as your subject line is yet another great way to increase your open rate and get subscribers delving deeper into the mailings you send out. Examples: Here is your interview checklist Here is your “Baby’s First Year” checklist Here is your wedding checklist Here is your headline writing checklist Here is your travel checklist I personally have seen greater results by ENTITLING the checklist. Not just “Here is your interview checklist” but “Here is your ‘Acing Any Interview’ checklist”. Not just “Here’s your wedding checklist” but “Here is your ‘The Perfect Wedding’ checklist”. A good name adds more desirability to the checklist. Obviously, in your email you’ll want to provide the checklist. And your checklist is a PERFECT spot to make recommendations. Refer readers to your product or affiliate products for more information on every entry in the checklist. A classic example is the “Setting Up An Internet Business” checklist where some of the steps would include “buying a domain name”, “finding a web host”, “creating a blog” etc. For most of those steps, you could provide a brief overview of them and then point them to resources to do the very things you instruct them to do … most of which make you money. If there is one email subject line and corresponding email message that EVERY LIST OWNER should have in their sequences somewhere, this is it. It’s the surest way of making money with a list that I know of. Provide a checklist with useful steps and useful overviews and then point them to profit-generating resources. Blueprint #9 “A Great _______ Resource I Just Found” Overview: This is a great subject line to use in promoting an affiliate link, especially if there is some kind of free information or discount involved at the affiliate site. SUPER IMPORTANT: If the product or program you are promoting in your affiliate marketing offers free information you will do better by promoting the free information than by promoting the product or program directly. Examples: A great discount travel resource I just found A great free traffic resource I just found A great genealogy resource I just found A great anti-aging resource I just found A great home improvement resource I just found There is an element of newness and freshness here with the “I just found” reference at the end of the subject line, which brings a sense of urgency – we desire to be the first to know, the first to use. Again, just another solid way to get folks to open your emails. Blueprint #10 “This Ruins Most ____________” Overview: This subject line is one of the strongest in the group. It works again with the fear of loss super-motivator. It goes beyond sharing a mistake or even the biggest mistake to the point of revealing something that can have a devastating effect on the reader if they fall victim to it. Again, we’re talking about both awareness of a potentially destructive pitfall, with a provided solution, only this time the language is stronger in that it could “ruin” the results for the person on the other end of the line. HINT: Don’t overuse this one and don’t use it for things that readers might consider “minor”. There are products we promote that can have a dramatic impact on a person’s life – this type of headline or subject line is best used for those types of products in my view. Examples: This ruins most dieters This ruins most newlyweds This ruins most marketing plans This ruins most affiliates This ruins most childhood dreams In this email, you’d want to reveal the most disastrous, destructive stumbling block that the subscriber might face, along with a solution for avoiding it. HINT: Provide the solution in your content in a brief, overview form so you do actually give them useful information, and then lead the subscriber to an offer to thoroughly explain the solution which allows you to make a sale. There you have it – 10 ways to write headlines or subject lines that practically demand attention and create real results. Now here’s your action step – take the headlines you are using now and compare them with these. Can you modify what you are using now to fit these blueprints? If not, take the blueprints above and apply them to every product you promote online. Then begin testing these headlines in the ads you place, articles you write and more. These blueprints work – I hope you enjoyed them and profit from them as I have.

Q. How can I learn to write great ads? A. Writing ads is easier than most people think. The secret is to break the ad down into three parts, and make each part the best possible. HINT: Keep a file of the great ads you see. The ads you respond to are a good place to start. While it would be wrong to use these ads without permission, there is nothing wrong with using them for inspiration or as a model to follow. Ads have three components. 1.The headline. An 'ad for the ad', the headline draws the reader in. 2.The body. This is where you make the case for why someone should respond. 3.The call to action. Often overlooked, or minimized with a "click here" this is where you tell the reader what to do next, and remind them why taking action is good for them.

It's better to send twelve monthly newsletters to a prospect (less than $10) than sending one expensive video through the mail. With 12 separate mailings, you have 12 chances of reaching the prospect when the time is right for him or her to join. Besides, your personal newsletter doesn't look like the typical sales letter or sales brochure. Instead, your newsletter reports on what you, your company, and your group are doing. Here is the secret. Your prospect will read your newsletter. Why? Because it is almost like peeking into what is really happening with you and your business. Your newsletter is reporting -- not selling. What could you put into your personal newsletter? A special offer insert for non-members. Pictures of the new car your best distributor won. What's new with your business and products. Testimonials and success stories. Product tips. Recognition to your distributors who achieved certain levels. Business-building tips. Corporate announcements. Calendar of events. Conference calls. Your newsletter works both locally and long distance. Everyone wants to know what's really happening on the inside of your business. If you mail your prospects often enough, they'll bond with you, trust you, or at least succumb to your "Chinese Water Torture" frequent-contact campaign.

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You can write great selling copy! As a copywriter by profession, I may be accused of being a little nuts for saying that (some copywriters love to think only they can write) but it's true. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't want your copywriting business, because I do. What I want more, however, is to empower you to strengthen your current copy without spending a dime. Spend no money. Make more money. Sound good? My goal is simple. That goal is to pull back the curtain and show you how a professional copywriter creates the copy that causes people to reach for their wallet or purse. Copy you would normally have to pay for, only now you can do it yourself. Let me begin by saying how very much I hate hype. Hate it. Loathe it. Don't want to read it and will not write it. The pure fact of the matter is that it does not take hype to sell products. It does take capturing a person's attention, then their imagination, long enough to help them see the desire they have for your product. Do you see this? They have the desire now, or they wouldn't go to your site. They didn't just wander by. They chose your site because something interested them. Your job now is to enhance that sense of desire and persuade them to take action NOW. Enhancing their desire to benefit from what you offer. That's the name of the game. Don't confuse desire with being convinced. Desire creates sales, being convinced doesn't. I'm convinced the Golden Gate Bridge is a fine bridge, but I don't want to own it. On the other hand, there's this very cool laptop I want so bad I can taste it. I need a laptop like a hole in the head, but I want it. You see, a person doesn't have to need your product to buy it. They just have to want it. Very few people really need a Palm Pilot, or a laptop, or heated leather seats or an expensive ink pen when the one the dry cleaner gives away still writes, but they buy these things (and more) every day. Why shouldn't they buy them from you? With that in mind, consider the following five key points to writing copy that gets results ... no matter what product, service or opportunity you offer. The five points are: 1. Sell with emotion, support with logic. 2. Be honest. 3. Be brief, but not too brief. 4. Ask for the order early ... and often. 5. Emulate, don't imitate. The first point is so important, so foundational, that I'm devoting this entire article to understanding how this will work in your real world. If you get this first step right you will see results even if you bobble the other four. Without this one, the other four will have to work overtime to get people to reach for the Visa. Pay careful attention because this is where 99% of ineffective copy fails to do it's job. 1. Left Brain -- Right Brain People generally buy things in a very predictable way. They make a decision to buy based on emotion and defend or justify that decision with logic. Rarely do people (even engineers!) buy in the reverse order. Memorize this: People buy based on emotion, and defend or justify that purchase with logic. That idea is the reason that people buy. Period. Let's take a closer look. Here is a quick example from what is perhaps the best example of buying on emotion and defending it with logic known to mankind ... the world of new car sales. Example #1 You go to the dealership one fine weekend just to "see what your trade-in is worth". These sharks are not going to sell you anything. You are there for facts, just the facts. Not even shopping. Just getting information. You were in the neighborhood anyway. Then it happens. The smell of a new interior. The purr of the engine. (You didn't really realize how loud your old car is inside.) Then there's the shine of the new paint job. Red. You always wanted red. You deserve red. You want red! You can almost feel the pride swell inside you as you imagine driving down your street for the first time, your neighbors drooling with envy. "Bonnie must be doing well." they say. "She's always seemed smart." You can see the look on your friends faces as you drive home for Christmas in your new RED car. By golly, you ARE going to have red. You wanted red in high school and got the old family junker. Remember the embarrassment? You wanted red in college but your idiot boyfriend talked you into black. Black! After you dumped him you couldn't stand to even drive the thing. It's red you want. It's red you've always wanted. And you've waited long enough. You drive home in your new red car. It smells good. It sounds good. It looks good. You feel great! When tightwad Fred asks how much you paid, you tell him that the old junker you traded in needed an engine overhaul and it just wasn't a good investment to repair the poor thing. You were smart to buy now. In fact, you got the much better end of the deal. My friend, you just bought on emotion and defended the purchase with logic. What else does this happen with? As you read this list, ask yourself how many times you've bought more than you needed in one of these areas just because it "felt right". Suits Dresses Homes Jewelry Stereo Equipment Computers Software Let's face it, we are a community of people who love to compare. We compare how fast our cars go from zero to sixty, how big the diamond is we gave our girl (or she gave us!) how many square feet we have (never mind there are two empty bedrooms). The list goes on and on. Advertisers know this about us. When you are the advertiser, you must know it too. How can you apply this to your real world? Three simple steps. Step 1 - Get a legal pad now and write down the five top things that make people want your product. Focus on how they will feel, how others will perceive them, and how they will feel about themselves. Remember, a feature is what something does. A benefit is what it does for me. People want benefits. People buy benefits. People will interrupt what they are doing now to buy benefits. Step 2 - Look at your selling copy now, whether it's a web page, autoresponders, radio ad copy, classifieds ... doesn't matter. Look at that copy and see if the five emotional pressure points you wrote down are in that copy. Does the copy move you? Does it compel you to action? Does it tell you, in very clear terms, what's in it for you? If you can't be objective, solicit a friend to take a look. Step 3 - Change portions of your copy to add some punch. I'm not talking about a major rewrite, just change some key areas to appeal to a person's emotions. Help them imagine life with your product. The time they will save. The money they will save. How good they will look to their peers. How great it will feel to finally (insert benefit here). Better yet, give them hints about what they can do with that time and money. Here's a very short sample. ---------Begin sample------------ Our clients often save over $100 a month when they switch to our widget. Imagine how good it will feel when YOU begin to save $100 or more a month, just by choosing our super- widget! That's over $1200 a year! What will you do with your $1200? * Pay off bills? * Take a vacation? * Pay for your child's college tuition? * Finally have some "mad" money just for you? The choice is yours. Do what thousands of others have done. Click here now to start saving today. --------End sample---------------- Notice in the example above how the "need to" and "want to" motivations alternate? We "should" pay off bills and pay for college. We "want" to take a vacation and spend money like a madman on a weekend pass just because it feels so very good. By including both "want to" and "need to", this copy appeals to the broadest possible audience. No matter what else your copy does, make sure it appeals to a person's emotions. Remember, people do what they want to do, not what they have to do. If you have a hard time finding the emotional points of your product, service or opportunity, remember that people are moved by the promise of gain or the fear of loss. Using those two super-motivators, it won't be long before your copy will be charged with the emotional electricity that creates orders and causes people to take action now.

I often talk about reverse marketing as a great way to build your business. Here is an example of reverse marketing. Hopefully it will get you to think about how you can use this technique to get more qualified, pre-sold prospects into your business. Not a lot of people wake up one morning and say: "I think I want to buy an organ today." So if you're an organ salesman, how can you build a successful business? One organ salesman lived in a retirement community in Florida. Organ sales were terrible. No one wanted to spend thousands of dollars on an organ, especially since they didn't even know how to play an organ. To stimulate interest in organs, the organ salesman gave free or low-cost organ lessons to senior citizens. The individual and group lessons became a social event for them. They brought their friends and the organ students multiplied. After buying their first organ, the students also had a fun activity at home. It helped pass the time between their favorite television shows. Soon they would watch television from their organ bench and play the organ during the commercials. Practice makes better. And now the organ students wanted a better organ at home and upgraded to a more powerful organ. Of course the profits were greater on the larger organs. The organ salesman eventually retired -- rich. See the moral of the story? The organ salesman saw his business as creating a community of organ enthusiasts rather than just selling organs. What type of community can you build that will help you build your business? Here are some ideas: •A community of people striving to become debt-free. •A community of people worried about their cholesterol. •A community of people who hate commuting and want to work closer to home. •A community of people who believe in losing weight and staying fit. •A community of people who want to reduce their taxes. •A community of people who want extra money for an exotic group vacation. every year (they may like to cruise together.) Marketing is not hard -- and it makes prospecting, recruiting, and selling easy.

The Internet is a powerful selling tool. Never before has it been easier to start a business, be able to reach out to literally millions of potential customers and make your business succeed. The Internet also offers us new tools to succeed. Email makes communications instant whether across the street or across the globe Websites act as virtual storefronts, allowing us to stay open 24/7 Newsletters like this one inform, educate and even give us an occasional smile Some tools, like the Directory of Ezines, are very advanced indeed, allowing you to find your perfect market in only minutes. Yet time has taught us that there is much more to success than simply having a web site or using these tools. Time has taught us that the fundamentals of selling haven't changed, even if the tools are state of the art. While these new tools may change the WAY people buy, it hasn't really changed WHY people buy. Here are three factors that will help you approach people in a way that persuades them to buy from YOU. People aren't ON the Internet. They ARE the Internet. The same rules that apply at a Gap store should apply to your store. Is your site courteous and inviting? Does your site say in clear terms that you know your stuff and that people will get smart answers? Give yourself a checkup today. People buy online just like they buy offline. If they are buying an impulse item, they'll click thru and spend a buck. If it's a bigger ticket item, they'll shop around. Which are you selling? Is the look of your site appropriate to what you are selling? I don't want to buy designer chewing gum and I won't bank at a site that looks like it should be selling gum. Would you? I want to buy the stuff I usually buy, but I don't want to leave home to do it. Are YOU meeting my need? People buy what they need, when they need it and can afford it. The key is to give people information that connects with what they need. The good news is that people need the same things they have always needed. Which of us doesn't long for more time, more money, better relationships with family and friends? The more your message is aligned with these needs, the better you will do. The world is a big place and it doesn't turn on a dime. People will still buy cars just before vacation time and do most of their Christmas shopping about 10 minutes before midnight on Christmas Eve. Don't buck the trend. Understand and USE people's existing buying habits to your advantage, and kick your online efforts into high gear.

Communication is a funny business. When you speak with others, are you sure they hear what you are really saying? While we may choose our words carefully, sometimes the message just doesn't get through. Our body language, tone, facial expressions make up what we call true communication. Let's look closer at four simple steps that will help those we work with understand us better. I submit that we, the sender of the message, must take responsibility for clear communication. We are in the place of choice. We choose the words, the medium, often even the timing of our communication. When I take responsibility for communicating clearly, I relieve you of the burden of interpretation. Some say that communication is a two way street. Sometimes it can feel like a superhighway. Often it takes great care to make sure you don't get run over on the road of life. Take co-workers for example. Have you ever looked at the work you've assigned to an employee or co-worker and been frustrated that the time they spent (and you paid for) was wasted on something you didn't want at all? To avoid this frustration, let's become proactive when we assign tasks, beginning with these four simple steps. Before you lay out a task for a co-worker, lay it out for yourself. Write out the steps you want them to follow in an email or a memo, being sure that the explanation of each step is clear and in language they will understand. I.e.: don't talk sales speak to your accounting person. Meet with them and give them a copy of the steps you have laid out. Having something in writing to refer back to as they work can save hours later - hours it would take to correct any misunderstandings. Repeat and verify the steps in an email or memo after you meet with them. Few things are more sure that having matters is writing. Last, ask them to repeat back to you what they are supposed to do. Do this carefully and casually as a part of the conversation. Don't make them feel ignorant. Say something like, "How do you see this working? I want to be sure that we are on the same page." No matter how you choose to do it, take responsibility that what you said is what they heard. The more WE take this responsibility, the less confusion and fewer mistakes will ensue.

Texas and Oklahoma are bitter college football rivals. There's no middle ground. One day a Texas football fan was driving through Oklahoma on his way to another state. (Texas football fans never drive to Oklahoma, they only drive through Oklahoma to get somewhere else.) The Texas football fan stops at an Oklahoma gas station to refuel. A little girl walks by and suddenly is attacked by a vicious pit bull. The dog tears her dress and grabs her arm. The Texas football fan sees the screaming little girl and runs to her rescue. He grabs the pit bull and struggles valiantly. The dog tears into his flesh. Blood streams from his arm and leg. Finally, in a desperate move, the Texas football fan gets the upper hand and kills the pit bull. A reporter for the Oklahoma Times Newspaper watches the drama unfold. After the pit bull is dead he approaches the Texas football fan and says: "Wow! What a hero! This will make great headlines in tomorrow's paper. Let me take your picture and ask a few questions." The Texas football fan wipes the blood off his arm and leg and has his picture taken. "We'll put a great headline and story under your picture in tomorrow's paper," says the reporter. "Maybe, the headline could read, Hero Saves Little Girl. By the way, where are you from?" "From Texas," says the hero. The reporter thought for a moment and replied, "Well, since you're from Texas I guess we could change the headline to read: Man Rescues Child. I can kind of overlook that you're from Texas, but tell me, you at least root for the Oklahoma football team, don't you?" The Texan replied, "No. To tell you the truth, I am a avid Texas football fan." The reporter left to write up the story. The Texan decided to stay around for a day so he could read his headline and story in the next morning's paper. The next morning, the Texas football fan picks up the Oklahoma Times Newspaper and on the front page was the headline: Man Kills Family Pet! It's a matter of perspective. Not everyone looks at opportunities and events the same way. While you may think you are offering a tremendous opportunity to a prospect, the prospect may see the presentation as a thinly veiled attempt to take his money. Empathy: Identification with and understanding of another's feelings, situation, and motives. Would you like to increase your closing percentage? Use empathy. Would you like to increase your group's motivation? Use empathy. Would you like to understand why people respond the way they do? Use empathy. Great network marketing leaders don't sell, they understand. When giving a presentation, they try to present the opportunity from the prospect's point of view. If the prospect has experienced a bad situation with high-pressure salesmen, the leader gives advice and options. If the prospect is worried about his daily living expenses, the leader emphasizes the possibility of immediate part-time income. If the prospect is afraid of what his friends will say, the leader shows how the prospect can market to strangers. To understand how effective empathy can be, imagine if a salesman used empathy to understand your point of view. Let's say you were a prospect for a network marketing opportunity. You sincerely want a part-time income, but also want quality time with your family. Compare the following two presentations: Presentation #1 "You'll just love this network marketing opportunity. You get to go to rallies, trainings, opportunity meetings, conventions, and presentations in prospects' homes and our weekly idea session. I've been in this opportunity for over a year now and I can't think of anything else. I'm doing this business 24 hours a day. You'll love it too. It will become a obsession." Presentation #2 "You'll just love this network marketing opportunity. It only takes a few hours of quality time per week. We have many successful leaders who set aside six hours a week for presentations and group building. This leaves them plenty of time to enjoy their family, friends and other activities. network marketing is great because you can set your own hours." Since your goal was part-time income and quality time, which presentation would appeal to you? It's easy to see that Presentation #2 had empathy while Presentation #1 only showed self-interest. Empathy works for recruiting presentations, but it works even better when trying to develop network marketing leaders. Let's say you want to develop Mary into your next superstar leader. Why not find out a little about Mary's background? Is she conservative or liberal? Does she want to earn big money fast, or is she willing to build long-term? Does she want an aggressive upline sponsor and an aggressive promotional campaign? What's happening with her personal life? Is her job fulfilling or boring? In other words, find out what Mary really wants and help her achieve it. When the upline leader and the potential leader operate on the same frequency with the same goals and strategy, magic happens. That's why some network marketing leaders can develop leaders and inspire loyalty while other network marketing leaders never seem to get anyone beyond a dependent distributor level. It's just like the Oklahoma Times Newspaper reporter. He saw things completely different. Succeed in network marketing by seeing things through other people's eyes. Why I retired at the age of 51

I'm on a similar platform to advertize, Womvegas, do you know?