• how often you mail your list
• what format you use (html, text)
• whether your email is long or short
• how much content versus promotion you do

Share on Facebook

Chances are your next qustion then is …where can I learn internet marketing basics quickly so that I can make the most of my time and effort? 

Having gone through the process and continually growing an Enterprise of online businesses, here's the techniques we can share with you that helped us learn the basics  and continue that learning more than 10-years later:

1.Study successful online businesses carefully - not just WHAT they were doing but WHY it was working.  I looked at what their web pages looked like, what they were selling, how they interacted with their market, how they got their traffic, how they monetized their traffic, and so on….you can learn a great deal JUST by doing this

2. I did buy products…by and large they were helpful.  As long as I learned one new tip, technique, concept or strategy from each one I was happy. Back in 2000 I studied people who were successfully launching their own ebook and information publishing businesses – today that business is just one of our top models for making money online.  In fact his was such an important part of our early success we put together InfoMarketer'sZone as a one-stop. low-cost but extremely practical resource for jump starting internet marketing – thousands of people have thanked us for paving the way for their online business success. 

3. Taking Action.  No fear…just jump in and expect that not everything will work, but be darn sure to recognize what does and what doesn't work so you don't repeat mistakes and don't ignore what does work

4. Network & Learn - anywhere I could…by email, phone, at seminars (now you have even more places via social networking) with my mentors…learning everything I could from them. 

5. Scale What Works…Once I figured out something that worked, I outsourced so that it would scale bigger fast and so I could continue to learn new techniques and strategies that would add additional streams of traffic or income

That's it…it will start off slower than you may like, but as long as you are making forward progress (finding out what doesn't work or does work for you), then you are miles ahead of where you are today.

Share on Facebook

When you start out online it is tempting to build your business using 3rd party social networking, blogging or content directory sites like…

• Google Blogger
• Wordpress.com (NOT wordpress.org which allows you to use the WP platform on your own domain)
• Squidoo
• Hubpages
• Facebook Fan Pages
• Twitter Profile
• Tumblr
• Ustream

Don't get me wrong, these platforms have their place in online marketing, should not be ignored, but here is what they ARE NOT!

These platforms are NOT designed to make money specifically by hosting your business websites (commercial websites) and in fact, make more money based on pure content so there is absolutely no motivation for them to support your commercial efforts online. 

On the other hand, webhosting companies like HostGator (as our preferred example), make their money via website hosting…most of which are commercial sites or sites that are dependent on operating commercial activity to sustain their web hosting account. 

It should come as no surprise then when we advise strongly NOT to ever build your web business based on 3rd party platforms other than high quality web hosts. 

HOW TO STRUCTURE YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS:

1. If you are serious at all about business online, host your content with those who's specialty it is to keep YOU in business…in other words, quality hosting providers.  You control your own pages, content and scripts/tools, etc…

2. Start with the fundamentals of building traffic by generating content hosting articles and blog content on your own domains with reliable web hosts…having great content is what people want so you will attract traffic and it will be meaningful to your visitors which means they will come back, trust and buy things from you

3. Once you have your base site and content program in place along with pages that are strongly converting your visitors into customers – look at additional methods to attract traffic and leads.  Operating our own affiliate program and actively pursuing/supporting affiliates is still one of the best ways to pull in traffic (if you have your own products), guest blogging can be extremely powerful, posting on relevant forums with a strong call to action in the resource box, etc…

4. After doing all of this, you can then branch out onto 3rd party platforms and strategically bring traffic in from those platforms – of course here you want to pick the platforms that are most aligned to your market.  If you are a musician, then Myspace is still good, business or politics – then Twitter may work for you, etc… These platforms though should be used with the expectation that the TOS will change and that they may disappear tomorrow (in terms of how we use them today).  So they are purely ways to bring in additional traffic, build relationshps over and above what your own websites are already setup to do. 

Don't make the mistake of thinking that hosting your website on Google Blogger or Squidoo, etc…means they will look out for your best interest…thsi type of thinking has caused many online marketers to lose tens of thousands of dollars in business overnight…you've been warned!

Share on Facebook

The answer is you DAMNED WELL BETTER!  

In fact, you should be going out of your way to get your market to ASK you more questions – even though on the face of it, that may seem rather suicidal when you barely have enough time to run your business as it is. 

But remember, questions are the way your market get to know you, trust you and help share your passion and mission with the world. 

Not only should you send them an email response, you may consider other ways to make SURE they know how good you really are for them…making it so they MUST come back to you and buy from you in the future. 

I've even jumped on Skype or on the phone with them, produced a quick tutorial video for them or, on occasion, made a tweak to their site or software for them. 

Your subscribers and visitors are the FOUNDATION of your business - especially in today's day and age of social networking.

I've had people on my list that still communicate regularly after 10-years!

I had someone send me an unsubscribe a couple of weeks back apologizing that they were leaving my list because they have moved on to another job and have sold their online business (for a nice profit I may add!). 

They felt as though they were somehow letting me down by leaving my list…go figure!

Here are some business reasons why you want to respond to 100% of your subscriber, non-customer questions:

• Reciprocity - once you have given them your valuable time and knowledge, they will feel compelled to reciprocate (this can mean buying something or simply being a champion for you)
• Trust and Credibility – I can't tell you how many times I've had a customer buy minutes after receiving a response to their question, they were (sometimes without knowing it) testing to see if our business was trustworthy and credible
• Re-use content.  Here's a little secret I have rarely told anyone outside of my InfoMarketer'sZone members – most of our new products are put together by simply answering user questions…we compile those questions and answers in different ways, but after a month or two of responding to subscribers, we have the foundation for a new proudct that we can sell to tens of thousands of others…pretty cool!
• Word-of-Mouth.  The entire basis of marketing is changing from invisible push to highly visible pull…rather than blasting an ad from a virtually invisible company, your customers now buy based on visibility and word-of-mouth.  Who do you suppose will be the champions that will give you the word-of-mouth boost you need to have to lead in this new internet marketing world? 
• You learn with each question your market asks.  The old addage that until you can teach someone else to do what you know, your information is useless really is true.  By making sure you help your subscribers and emailers, you are refining your products, messaging and positioning at the same time.  The result is MUCH higher profits in your pocket. 

Aside from the business reasons to answer your non-customer emails, I am a huge believer in being passionate and being fulfilled by the products and services you market.

By helping every person that comes your way, you feed that passion and motivation to do even more – the return shows on your monthly order reports. 

Finally,all of this is not to say you can't promote paid products and services – we certainly do that as well.

In the process of answering questions or providing help to our subscribers, we use the following test…

If a paid tool or service is likely to help a prospect realize at least 3X more revenue than the cost of that product or service is to them, then it makes sense to share that with them…even urging them to adopt the recommended resource. 

So yes, make sure you spend time answering 100% of your market's questions…you will get payback many times larger than the time/effort you put in down the road.

Share on Facebook

Your pre-launch list doesn't have to be huge, just a few hundred people will do.

When you have this list, they can be powerful because…

• You can get some early reviewers and testimonials that will improve your sales at launch
• You can survey, poll or get feedback from your pre-launch list on what improvements you may make to either your product or intended positioning
• You have a group of champions that know you and are much more likely to buy what you have
• You can use your list as a beta-group of customers for additional products or services you come out with

Overall, your launches will become much more successful once you have your initial list.

So the question is, how can you create and market your paid product at the same time as you develop an bonus or incentive for your opt-in subscribers to join your list?

Each market we enter, we do 4 critical things:

1. We start a blog to attract traffic and begin building a relationship with our market
2. We develop an entry-level product that ranges from $27-$97
3. We put together (or at least plan for) a higher-end product such as a $1000+ coaching program, seminar, home study course, membership site, etc…
4. We create a valuable giveaway to begin building our list relevant to the products we will be selling

Here are 3 ways we have created incentives for our list that have been simple as well as highly effective in both building a responsive list as well as converting the pre-launch list to customers when we launch our new infoproduct:

• Offer a chapter, summary or tips list pulled from your core product in exchange for opt-in
• Have someone (it can be anyone really that can talk on a phone) ask you some pre-defined questions and record it using a free conference calling service giving us an mp3 we can then giveaway.  I especially like this one because it takes less than 1-hour, gives you a high perceived value audio incentive to give away and lines up perfectly with your full product
• Offer a 5-7 part e-course that walks your prospect through some of your top steps, tips or systems as well as giving them some case studies or proof that your information will make a difference.   We have several of these, the benefit being that you hit people multiple times over a 2-3 week time period and as such, get more conversions. 

You could also mix these up and do all 3 – start with giving away the audio interview, give them a sample chapter and then follow-up with a 7-part e-course to extend your communication with your marketplace.

Use these tips to build your pre-launch and post-launch lists and make your online marketing more profitable.

Share on Facebook

Building a list and sending out email means NOTIHNG if people don't open your emails and read what you have to say

Posting daily to your blog will get you zero in results if people don't read what you have written

Sales letters will not convert visitors into buyers without a strong headline.

So, what's the secret to writing titles that people will open, that captures their attention?

WRITING TITLES THAT PAY-OFF

So many people have trouble writing headlines because the biggest "secret" is knowing the emotional head-space of your market and very few people really know this.

If you ever went and paid a copywriter 30K for a website you would find that

a) They spend the vast majority of their time pushing YOU to know your market, your customer's headspace, the dreams/frustrations of your client and to find a hook in how your product uniquely gets them to where they want to be.  It is actually a very intense process – so a good portion of what a copywriter does is FORCES you to have the discipline to think like a marketer…if you can master this on your own you are more than halfway to becoming a great headline, ad and sales letter writer

b) They have studied and tested hundreds/thousands of copy pieces so based on experience they know what works and what doesn't in given markets. 

So that said, the two most important things you need to do to write better headlines is

• Learn to buckle down, develop a concept of your target customer and think about what emotions lead them want what you have to offer and
• That you study the best ads, headlines as well as split-test your own to find out what works and why

1. Develop Your Customer Profile

To begin with, you must be able to develop a profile of your target customer – so for example, your planned ebook will target new mothers with babies, now ask yourself these questions:

1. Who is my customer?  In this case, our customer would be an 18-40 year old, first-time mother with a newly born baby less than 5-years old
2. What is the #1 frustration:  Here we could have a couple of options – 1) They want to look physically like they did before they had their child or 2) They want to feel as good about themselves emotionally as they did before they had their child
3. What is the #1 desire they have?  Linked to the frustration above, it would be either 1) To lose 10lbs of "baby fat" they put on during pregnancy or 2) To be able to manage stress and continue a social life outside of the home now that they have their new child
4. Why haven't they found a solution:  This is particular to your market segment, but perhaps they couldn't find specific information for them, or what they found was too hard or did not work…you MUST understand why they are still struggling to find answers
5. What can you promise them that would make them happy?  You could commit to helping them reduce 10lbs in 30-days even with a busy, stay-at-home Mom schedule or you could give them stress management techniques that are specifically designed for new Mom's 

As you see, the customer profile gives you incredible insight and POWER to tap into the emotional state of our prospect so you can impant your headline as if you knew EXACTLY what they were looking for

2.  Finding The Best Headlines and Testing

There are dozens of top books on copywriting, but really you can look in a few places to really see what is working now:

• Top selling books on Amazon (excluding celebrity-based books that sell on the name of the author) will give you insight into top headlines
• Finding the top articles in article directories like Ezine Articles will tell you which titles are of most interest
• Looking at top blog posts – same thing, this will teach you which headlines get the most attention
• Study magazine headlines as they have been vetted, professionally written and tested

Finally, learn by writing your own content and watching the response.  Write articles, blog posts, ads, each day and you will soon see from your web statistics which titles are resonating with your market. 

We have amassed a ton of knowledge just by producing daily content – blog posts, articles, running ads, etc…then looking at the top 10% that get opens and conversions – now we know what works.  

To quickly master the key aspects of internet marketing and build your full-time income stream online be sure to access the training we provide over at InfoMarketer'sZone - you will be amazed at how quickly you can turn our experiences into profit for you.

Share on Facebook

First, a reminder – to make money online with your online business you need to master 3 main objectives:

1. You must have targeted traffic that reach your site right at the point they are ready to buy

2. You MUST have a product that is in-demand aligned to meeting the desire causing the targeted traffic to want to buy

3. Your landing page/sales page must persuade your visitor that you have what they want and drives them to take action

It's not good enough to master 1 or 2 of these, your success with online marketing truly depends on their being NO weak link. 

Certainly the 6-week InfoProduct Profits Training program over at InfoMarketer'sZone is designed to help you master each one of these steps and that's why people get results. 

Now, let's drill into #1 above a little deeper, because that is where I see many people making terrible mistakes. 

If you have any experience marketing online I'm sure you will agree that we have ALL fallen for the traffic is money trap.  Much like being BUSY doesn't mean you are being effective, attracting traffic doesn't mean you are making money does it?

When we started out we generated content until our fingers bled, signed up affiliate partners to the point we figured there was nobody else out there and paid for tons of traffic that dropped by, waved at us and moved on…without making the BIG money we knew was possible. 

Since then, I've also come across many people that generate between 100 right up past 10,000 unique visitors a day to their websites and are totally frustrated because their online marketing is not resulting in sales. 

So what's missing?

How about:

• Commercial intent
• Urgency
• Desperation
• Closure

Think about it…when you hit the net, some of the time you are curious.  You search to see if you can find some recipes online, perhaps you visit a site and sign up to their recipe list, but you are not in a buying mood, have no intention to buy and likely cannot be convinced by the best of websites.  You may have searched for "chicken recipe" or something similar. 

However, there may be a day when you ARE more desparate to get better in the kitchen, to impress your boss, family or special someone with your cooking prowess.  So, you hit the internet and search for "Southern Cooking Recipes" or "BBQ Recipe Book" or even "French Cooking DVD". 

Do you see the difference?

So our objective as internet marketers is to get really good at matching commercial intent with both our traffic building strategies as well as our landing pages and messages. 

Here are 3 tips to keep in mind that will dramatically improve your online business sales:

1. Learn to seek out commercial intent "trigger" keywords and phrases – you can find these in magazine ads, in discussion forums (by watching passionate discussions take place and noticing the language that is used), by focusing on top selling infoproducts listed on Amazon, Clickbank and other digital infoproduct directories. 
2. Focus on low-hanging fruit first…ALWAYS target keywords where your market is searching for information (YOUR KEYWORD + book, ebook, dvd, course, workshop, seminar, training, magazine, manual, guidebook, etc…) These may sound obvious but I guarantee you that 99% of infoproduct marketers out there are NTO targeting these keywords today
3. When operating your own affiliate program, target partners who most closely match the type of information and market you are targeting…it does you no good to have hundreds of partners if they don't quite align with your market or message – everyone ends up disappointed

Use these techniques and watch your sales soar – let me know when you use them…leave us a comment.

Share on Facebook

It doesn't matter if you get 10 visitors to your website each day or 1000, if they are not buying, you aren't making online sales and profit ramains elusive. 

That's the trick with internet marketing, you need to have a great idea that sells, go get the traffic and make sure they find you AND THEN when they do find you make sure they buy what you have to offer.  Miss any one of these steps and you will see dismal results.

Of course, as we share inside InfoMarketer'sZone, there are specific, simple steps you can take to make sure your infoproduct idea and topic are highly aligned with demand so that you can be confident that people want what you have to offer. 

Further, making sure the right people find you is a largely a keyword targeting and affiliate targeting exercise, which can both be learned and improved.

So, what can we do about improving your online sales results?

Here are two ways to improve your conversions…

1. Drive your prospects to a high value freebie to get them on your list and then come up with a highly effective email marketing campaign. This is NOT trivial – it took us years to modify and improve our email marketing sequences to the point where they were more effective. It has to do with how you communicate, what information you share and how you offer them proof that your products work to help them achieve their ultimate desire.  However, marketing to subscribers who already are familiar with you and your business, have grown to like and trust you is much more effective than marketing to a first time web visitor. Typically we see 3X the conversion from our email list than from frist time vistitors to our website. 

2. Be crystal clear about the value your product offers to your prospect. When they land on your sales page there should be a well architected sales message (written or video) that grabs their attention, walks them through the emotional ups and downs of the pain or pleasure you are selling to and then offer them a unique value toward achieving their desire that is perceived as extremely high value.

We have found the following structure to work very well in terms of websites that sell:

• Killer Headline with the strongest benefit of your product in the headline and sub-head
• A first paragraph or two that connects with your audience showing them you know their pain…and in doing so, also re-creates that pain fresh in their mind
• Further connecting with your reader by explaining WHY they have not yet been able to find a solution to their challenge
• Hit them with benefits of your own products – specifically tell them how THEY will benefit from your information
• Ovecome obvious objections
• Include testimonials and proof
• Have an offer that 0ver-delivers in terms of value
• Finsish with a powerful statement on what will happen if they don't take action NOW!

To get to this point you may need to go back and drill into the conversations your market is having online, hire copywriting help and split test different pages or email sequences to constantly improve them.

It really is as simple as that…build a list and convert them, get better at presenting your message to your market.  Practice these two principles and watch your online sales improve.

Share on Facebook

Let me be very clear up-front though, I am not against seeking out coaching or buying a training program,  I have invested in training very strategically over the years and more often than not, benefited tremendously from it. 

START WITH WHAT IS WORKING

I've always learned most by watching what is working at a given point in time — in other words, watching what the top people are doing online and why.

This approach will never let you down.  There are so many trainers and courses out there that are NOT based on real success or results…the way to sift through the ones that don't work or do not apply to your online business is to become a student of learning what works…

When I first started out in 2000 I learned by watching Corey Rudl, Yanik and Marlon come out with their own products – along with my background in developing training programs, the lightbulb went off, there was (and still is) huge opportunity for cost effectively creating and distributing infoproducts (in the past printing and recording costs were prohibilitive).  So that's what I did…I went ahead and did the same thing after finding a gap in the market.  I then invested in some consulting to help refine my first infoproduct…exactly what I needed at the time. 

Then, I watched in the early 2000's as email marketing came into its own – list building, relationship management, copywriting became more important as competition heated up, etc…  Again, I started by modeling some of the most effective email campaigns and sought out training where necessary. 

Late 2000's it was all about SEO – learning how to get your online business in front of your market – content, SEO, blogging, video, etc…  I learned the basics about SEO, went and got my hands dirty and learned a TON more from one course and a whole lotta figuring it out by doing!

Now, I'm learning the latest by watching infoproduct business models turn into larger training and franchised opportunities, traffic generation and online marketing becomes more social and ways of finding opportunities evolve as well.   So yes, I'm following mult-million social networking experts that have PROVEN to me they know what they are doing by building businesses online largely through social networking. 

Yes, I've bought courses, had some coaching, etc…but I've always organized that around what I saw happening rather than just jumping into a program here or there.

My advice…become a student of watching, digging and learning what is actually happening online, base your plans around that and seek out training to fill in gaps along the way.

Share on Facebook

Why not? 

We know the systems work.

We teach and support every client so that they WILL succeed with their goals.

The system includes tools, video training and even ongoing support – seemingly, everything you need to turn yourself into the next Million dollar information product publisher on the internet.

But that doesn't happen in every case and we see why…so here are 3 Tips that high earning information product publishers put into action – and that YOU can use to make sure you follow in their footsteps fast.

1. They match a commercially viable desire to be, have, do something pleasurable (or avoid something painful) with a personal PASSION!  Look back in history at the greatest earners…

From Rockefeller who was passionate about operational and business efficiency and philanthropy (giving 10% of his earnings from the very biggining with much more later) to Bill Gates who saw a PC in everyone's home knowing the impact on communication and on our lives should this reality occur – your quest to build a wealth creation internet business must rest on an underlying passion for your customer, your product and/or your business. 

2. Thinking BIG! Wealth creators think well beyond where others think. 

Here's an example, the normal way of thinking when you start your information product marketing business is to write an ebook and put up a website so you can sell a couple of thousand dollars worth of your $27 ebook. 

Thinking BIG would mean you would start with a clear, unshakable vision of what your business will ultimately end up to be…even if it takes longer than you expect.  So – instead of a $27 ebook you would be thinking of a Multi-Million training company that is taking the principles you use to help someone achieve something (or avoid pain) in their life where you have a multitude of products and services that you spin out…some of which are 100% yours, some of which are joint ventures and others that you completely license out keeping a percentage of the profits while someone else builds your wealth passively. 

3. Network and collaborate.  In today's day and age collaboration is more important (and easier) than ever.  An affiliate relationship here, a joint venture there, a virtual assistant contract, a co-marketing agreement, and so on… 

If you spend your valuable time thinking BIG and fulfilling your passion, it is equally important that you work in a constant state of "purposeful collaboration".    I say PURPOSEFUL because networking for the sake of networking, and collaborating with just anyone for any purpose is not productive and can be quite distracting.  Instead, if you have a clear purpose and clear BIG idea, you can then attract those who you can bring along with you on your journey to wealth and expand your internet business. 

Wealth comes to those who think BIG, act with PASSION and seek to share their wealth through purposeful collaboration…are you up to the task?

Mix these 3 critical info product money-making actions with a highly effective support, training and resource system and you have all the makings of building your own information product marketing empire.

Share on Facebook