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If you have been running an Internet business for some time now, or if you are marketing your products and services online, you are probably aware of the significant role of email marketing.

I firmly believe that email marketing can make or break your business.

How is that so?

Well, it’s very simple actually.

You see, if you keep sending promo emails after promo emails to your subscribers without giving them any real, valuable content that can benefit them, you are bound to break your business.

There are quite a number of well-known Internet marketers who do that, but I won’t name names here.

How do I know?

Because of the simple fact that I’ve been in their lists for quite some time now - and all the emails they sent are 100% ALWAYS promo emails persuading me to buy the “next big thing”.

Luckily I have specifically created a Gmail account for the sole purpose of receiving these “junk” emails so that I can glance at them when I some time to spare.

And you know what I think as a subscriber when I receive their emails?

Inside my mind I keep wondering how these guys operate?

I mean, here they are sending me promo emails after promo emails saying their “buddies” and “good friends” have just stumbled upon some unbelievable hidden “secrets” since the discovery of slice bread and that these “secrets” are the only thing we need to buy.

Then a few days later we receive another email from the same guy saying the same thing, except this time the product or service they recommend is different.

I thought that the last product they recommend is the last thing we need to buy?

Hmm…

I figured that the way they operate is simply hammering their email lists cross-promoting each other’s products.

For example, let’s say this network consists of 5 Internet marketing “gurus”.

Guru 1 would promote Guru 2’s products today.

A few days later, Guru 2 would promote Guru 3’s products.

Then a few days later, Guru 3 would promote Guru 4’s products.

So they cycle typically looks like this:

Guru 1 => Guru 2 => Guru 3 => Guru 4 => Guru 5 => Guru 1

Please note that this may not be necessarily true. It is just my own personal opinion.

Having explained how email marketing can break your business, now I’m going to share with you how email marketing can make your business.

In order to successfully sell your products and services to your subscribers, you first need to build beneficial and trusting relationships with them first.

Today, your subscribers have a lot of choices when it comes to buying products and services related to your industry.

The biggest and most important question (for you as a product/service owner) is: Why should they buy from you?

What makes you unique compared to your competitors?

Sure, price maybe a very important factor. But you can’t just use “low price” as the basis of your unique selling point.

Look at the automotive industry.

Why are people willing to spend twice or triple the money to buy a BMW when they can have a Honda for half or one-third of the price?

Competing on price alone will not get you far, you need some kind of Unique Selling Proposition so that you can thrive and destroy your competition.

One such unique selling point that you can offer to your subscribers or potential customers could be the beneficial and trusting relationships you have with them.

Remember that a lot of marketers and business owners still don’t understand the importance of building meaningful relationships with their subscribers or potential customers.

The majority of them are simply interested in making a quick sale or two out of you and then they move on to find the next victim customer.

That is why I said email marketing, when done correctly, can take your business to a whole new level you never thought possible. The important thing to remember is that your subscribers and potential clients are humans just like you, and if you are able to make them trust and believe in you, then selling to them becomes much easier.

I’d love to hear to hear your thoughts and opinions about this subject. You can leave them at a comment below…

Popularity: 19% [?]

There are many ways to do affiliate promotions for a particular product that you want to promote.

The most common ways that affiliates promote these affiliate products are through:

1. Direct linking using PPC

This means that you put up some pay per click (PPC) campaigns such as Google Adwords and when a visitor clicks on your ad, he is taken directly to the sales page of the product.

When he buys the product, you get a commission.

2. Direct linking using some other kinds of promotions

This method is similar to direct linking using PPC; the only difference is that instead of promoting the affiliate products via PPC, you promote them using other resources such as putting up classifieds, or participating in discussion forums using your direct affiliate link as your signature.

3. Setting up a landing page

This tactic involves setting up a mini site on your own hosting and domain, with the primary objective being to capture the contact info of your visitors.

When a visitor reaches your landing page, he is presented with an offer for a freebie in exchange for his name and email address.

The freebie can be in the form of a Free report, Free e-course delivered to his email daily, or Free ebook.

(A quick tip: people tend to devalue your freebie when you say or write the word “e-book”. It would be a lot better to use the term “whitepaper” or “report” as these terms tend to project a higher perceived value in your visitor’s mind).

When a visitor takes you up on your freebie offer, you would have successfully generated a new lead into your database (which simply means that you have just added a new person into your list).

You would then direct this person who has just filled in his contact info into the sales page of the product you are promoting.

This method of doing affiliate promotions is much better and smarter than the 2 ways mentioned above.

Why?

Because you can always follow up with your prospects again in the future to offer him similar products.

The above 3 ways are very common techniques practiced by the majority of affiliates out there.

There is, however, another under-utilized way to do affiliate promotions. And the best thing is that using this method of doing affiliate promotions is very subtle.

What this means is that people will not notice that you are actually trying to sell them something. Instead, they’ll think that you are some great person just trying to deliver content and value!

Want to know what this great affiliate promotion method is?

Well, it’s called affiliate marketing through interviews

If you have been online for quite some time now, you should have already known about this technique.

4. Affiliate marketing through interviews

This is a technique that is relatively under-utilized (at least up till now). To bring this concept home, let me just illustrate an example.

Let’s say you are an affiliate promoting a home study course about “how to lose weight fast”.

What you want to do is to contact the owner of this product and arrange to interview him.

The interview could take place over Skype with a Free add-on call recorder that has the ability to record your conversations. Skype to Skype call is also Free. So you don’t really have any additional expense to conduct this interview.

In this interview you would drill him with the most common problems obese people face and how to overcome these problems.

You want to make sure that this interview gives great content and tips and provide real VALUE to your subscribers. However, you also want to make sure that this interview does not give everything away. This is very important!

The purpose of this is to get your prospects “warmed up and hot”, but the only way to get a complete solution to the problems they are facing is to buy the home study course through your affiliate link.

The way to do this is to register a new domain which directs to your affiliate link.

For example, let’s say that your affiliate link is www.HowToLoseWeightFast.com/id?=yourname

You’d want to register a new domain that is somewhat related. For instance you could go with: www.LoseWeightQuicklyNow.com

Do you see where I’m going with this?

If you promote using your direct affiliate link (www.HowToLoseWeightFast.com/id?=yourname), people will either:

1. Know that you are trying to sell them something (for the small minority who knows about affiliate marketing) and they would be more reluctant to buy.

OR

2. They will only remember the domain name and skip the “/id?=yourname” part when they type the url into their browsers => which means that you are not getting credit should there be any transactions.

By registering a new domain that redirects to your affiliate link, most of the people will not be aware that you are trying to promote the home study course as an affiliate.

Why won’t they be aware of this fact?

Because there are a lot (and I really mean a lot) of people outside the Internet Marketing world who still don’t have a clue what affiliate marketing is!

These people will think that you are a great person who gives incredible value to your subscribers and they would be more than happy to hear from you again.

You hit two birds with one stone:

1. You successfully promote the affiliate product with commissions going into your account, and your subscribers don’t even know about this!

2. You build great and trusting relationships with your subscribers.

Enjoy!

Popularity: 24% [?]

There are a lot of reasons why people buy products and services. Generally these reasons can be classified into 2 types of reasons.

The first reason is that they buy because they “must have” the product or service in question.

For example, we as human beings need to eat in order to survive. We must buy food, and there is no other way around this.

Another example is that in order to go from one place to another (to work for instance), you need to buy gasoline to fill up your vehicle or pay for transportation service. Either way you buy something - you buy gasoline or you buy the service that the transportation company offers.

The second reason why people buy products and services is that they “want” the product or service in question, even though it is not a must.

A good example of this would be buying the latest mobile phone when you already own one, simply for the sake of “wanting but not needing” it.

Another example would be buying the latest fancy car when you already have a decent car.

In short, you don’t need these products in order to survive, but you buy them anyway because you want them without actually needing them.

You may be wondering why I’m explaining to you these 2 different reasons.

Well, because they have something to do with a very important concept that I call Direct Response Selling and Long Term Selling.

Direct Response Selling simply means that you expect to sell your products and services to someone who doesn’t know you (a stranger) on your first encounter with him. For example, if you are an insurance agent, you expect to successfully sell an insurance policy to a completely new prospect right then and there on your first encounter with that prospect.

Long Term Selling, on the other hand, means exactly the opposite - you understand that in order to successfully sell your products and services, you need to build good relationships first. Using the insurance agent example again, you realize it’s okay if you don’t close the sale now, because you understand that the sale will come later when you have successfully built good and trusting relationships with the prospect.

Now, if you were selling products and services based on the first reason - which is people buy because they “need” instead of “want”, then you don’t really have to care about the Direct Response Selling and Long Term Selling concept.

But if you sell products and services based on the second reason - which is people buy because they “want” instead of “need”, then you really have to pay very careful attention to the importance of the Direct Response Selling and Long Term Selling concept.

I used to be a Direct Response Selling (DRS) type of guy, but for a few years now I have become a Long Term Selling person (LTS).

When I was a DRS person, I’d expect to close the sale on my first encounter with the prospect. I figured since I’ve already spend my time and energy doing sales pitches to the prospect, I’d surely have to close him right then and there. If not, I’d simply be wasting my precious time.

Since becoming a LTS person, my mindset was completely the opposite and not surprisingly, my sales increased significantly.

This is powerful stuff if you know and understand the concept. Now, I strongly advocate Long Term Selling over Direct Response Selling.

Why?

Before I explain the reason why, do you know that it takes more than 1 time for a stranger (someone who doesn’t know you and your product) to be exposed to your product before he actually buys it?

I forgot where I got this from, but I remembered reading somewhere that it takes 7 exposures to you and your product before someone actually buys it.

Having said that, this is exactly why you must try to capture the contact info of ALL your site’s visitors, so that you can follow up with them later to sell your products and services, or to sell affiliate products and services.

Remember you need at least 7 exposures to the same person before he buys what you are offering.

Even if you are not selling anything to your visitors, you should also be capturing their contact info so that you can invite them to visit your blog again when you have new content.

This will make your blog more crowded and interactive with comments from your visitors, which in turn will boost your blog’s advertising income (since the more crowded your blog is, the more expensive advertising space will be).

By the way, if you want to learn how to earn real money with the power of blogs, you can take a look at my Beginners Blog Profits.

If you are wondering how to capture the contact info of your site’s visitors, the answer is you need an autoresponder system.

You don’t have to be a programmer to put the autoresponder system in place, although you need a very basic understanding of HTML.

The autoresponder system I have been using for the past 2 years (and still is using now) is GetResponse. I’ve been very satisfied with their service and I highly recommend them if you are looking for a great autoresponder system.

Take a look at the top right of this page where it says “Free Internet Marketing Scoop” and you’ll see this autoresponder system in place.

Whenever visitors land on my blog, the first thing I want them to see is this form (also called opt-in box) so that they can then enter their names and email addresses.

When you are trying to capture visitors’ contact info, I advise that you put the opt-in box above-the-fold. Above-the-fold simply means that when your site is loading, visitors do not have to scroll down to see your opt-in box.

This will definitely increase the number of people who opt-in.

To wrap things up, I highly advise you go the Long Term Selling way instead of the Direct Response Selling way for the reasons mentioned above.

Popularity: 33% [?]

…

Melissa Tyran!

Though only a few people participated in the contest, I really appreciate everyone who has participated.

In the end, there can only be 1 winner, and I chose Melissa because she gives more than just a simple reason as to why she wants to Beginners Blog Profits.

She gave stronger reasons - that failure is not an option and she wants to provide better life for her family.

So Congrats Melissa and thanks everyone who has participated.

To Melissa - I’ve emailed you the details on how to claim your prize.

P/S: Beginners Blog Profits is out in a few days time, and I’m really excited about it…

Popularity: 33% [?]

Want a cool prize?

Great, see below for more details because I’m looking for 1 (one) lucky winner…

Early next week I’ll releasing a brand new product called Beginners Blog Profits. This product is excellent for beginners who are still struggling to make any money online.

Beginners Blog Profits, as you might have already guessed, is about making money online through blogging.

If you take away the teachings from this product, you won’t become a millionaire overnight. You will, however, learn some valuable lessons and proven strategies and tactics on how to earn real money through blogging.

So please note that this is not a get-rich-quick scheme and you need to put in real work and effort in order to make money.

When I first got started in Internet Marketing, it was back in June 2006. It wasn’t until January 2008 that I become a full-time Internet Marketer.

It took me a long time (1.5 years) to finally be able to see the big picture of running an Internet business.

While Beginners Blog Profits is not about making tens or hundreds of thousands monthly, it does however show and teach beginners how to start making REAL money from scratch through blogging.

Having said that, do you want a copy of Beginners Blog Profits for FREE?

If the answer is yes then you simply need to tell me why you want Beginners Blog Profits AND what you will do with it, in a comment below…

This contest will run from Wednesday October 22 - Sunday October 26, 2008.

You can post as many entries as you like, and anyone can participate. I’ll pick 1 (one) lucky winner to receive Beginners Blog Profits for FREE at the end of the contest.

So post your entries now and good luck!

Popularity: 44% [?]

If you’ve been marketing online for some time now, you should have already known that the there aren’t really any “big secrets” to online profits.

The “big secrets” (as the “gurus” called it) basically comes down to 2 very important metrics:

- Traffic

- Conversion

If your site receives a lot of visitors but none of them buy your products or services, then you are not making any money.

Conversely, you can have the world’s best converting site, but without traffic, you won’t make a single sale.

Hence, these two elements work hand-in-hand together.

Traffic + Conversion = Profits

That is why it is very important that before driving massive traffic to your site, make sure that your conversion rate is good. But then again, without any traffic at all, you can’t gauge how good or bad your conversion is.

The solution is to drive decent amount traffic to your site and see what the conversion rate is.

For example if you drive 100 visitors to your site and you make 1 sale, then your conversion rate is 1/100 = 1%.

You could probably do better than 1%. Of course, it depends on the sources of traffic as well, as different sources produce different conversion rates.

Not all traffic is created equal.

For example, affiliate traffic tends to produce better conversion rates than traffic from social bookmarking sites, while joint-venture traffic usually produces better conversion rates than affiliate traffic.

Once you’ve calculated your conversion rate based on a decent amount of traffic, for example 200 - 300 visitors, you should always try to improve on it before driving any more traffic to your site.

Why?

Because advertising costs are increasing every single day. Since you’ve worked so hard (in terms of money, effort, and time) in getting that visitor, you should make sure that you have a great converting site so that he or she becomes a buyer.

Even if he doesn’t buy your product or service right then and there, you should have some kind of freebie to bribe him in exchange for his email address, so that you can follow up with him to generate sales later on.

An excellent yet free tracking program that can track visitors on your site is Google Analytics. I’ve also done an article some time ago that’s titled 5 Reasons Why You Need To Track Your Visitors. Be sure to read that article to get a better understanding why it’s important to track your visitors.

Once you’ve managed to obtain a great conversion rate, be sure to note down the changes you’ve made to your site, so that you can refer back later on and see which specific element you changed that has a major impact on the conversion rate.

Who knows you might be able to duplicate this change on your other site to boost its conversion rate as well, even though different markets and different sites may react differently.

But hey, this is testing and tracking, and nothing is perfect. That is why it’s called “testing and tracking”!

Once you’re satisfied with your conversion rate, it’s time to drive traffic like mad to your site and make oodles of money!

And you know what, since you’ve taken down notes which elements on your site you changed that resulted in a boost in your conversion rates, you could probably slap up a mini-report and sell it for a low price or use it as a freebie to bait more people into your list.

Popularity: 52% [?]

If you have been doing any kind of marketing on the Internet, be it in the sports niche, weight loss niche, games niche, or any niche out there, you should be familiar with the promotion strategies and tactics product owners undertake to promote their products and services.

Things like pay per click (PPC), joint ventures (JV), setting up affiliate programs, advertising, social networking and bookmarking tactics come to mind when talking about promotions.

These tactics are known as Active Promotions, and *almost* everyone does them.

Product owners use these methods.

So do affiliate marketers when they promote affiliate products.

There is, however, another promotion method that can help increase your sales revenue but that is heavily underused by product owners and affiliate marketers.

This method is known as Passive Promotions.

So what exactly is passive promotion?

To illustrate this, let me give you an example.

Suppose a guy named Alex reached your sales page that sells a $20 ebook that teaches him how to lose weight significantly. Interested by your offer, he bought your ebook.

Upon completing the purchase (after paying), he is immediately brought to a page where you upsell him on an audio course that consists of 5 professionally recorded interview sessions with 5 weight loss experts.

These 5 interview sessions are in the form of 5 audio CDs, and he (Alex) can buy it with a huge discount since he is already a customer who has already bought an ebook from you.

Alex gladly took up the 5 audio CDs offer.

Since Alex is now your customer, you placed him in an autoresponder series.

Two weeks later, your autoresponder system follows up with him, this time making him an offer to a home study video course that teaches him how to have the perfect body anyone dreams of.

Again, he took up the offer.

Do you see where I’m going?

This is called passive promotions.

Without actually doing any kind of active promotions like PPC, JV, and setting up affiliate programs for the last two products (5 audio CDs and video home study course), you have managed to sell those products to Alex.

You were able to do this by doing passive promotions.

To put it simply, passive promotions mean that you do not directly promote products and services through regular ways such as those mentioned above, but instead you promote them by making offers on places such as the customer thank you page, free opt-in thank you page, autoresponder email series, etc.

Heck, you can even offer them on your competitors’ sites.

How exactly do you that?

Well, first of all, locate people within your niche (market) who are already selling some kinds of products or services.

This method would work better if these people are affiliates selling other people’s products, but nonetheless, it would also work even if these people are product owners.

Contact them and offer them to sell one of your products at a discount on their thank you page or in their autoresponder email series for their customers.

Now, I know some of you might be thinking: “Yeah that would work if they were affiliates. But if they were product owners, why would they want to create additional competition for themselves?”

My answer to that is: “Well, you are asking them to sell your product once someone has already bought from them, so it’s not like this person will buy your product and then decides not to buy their product (because he or she has already bought from them in the first place).”

To make this work even better, here are 2 tips you can use:

1. Look for people who are selling only 1 product

You may not notice this, but there are a lot (and I really do mean a lot!) of people who sell only 1 product in a given niche.

I’m not kidding!

If you don’t believe me, keep your eyes open and start paying attention starting from now on. Subscribe to their list and see for yourself. Most of time, they only have 1 product to offer.

By targeting these people, they would be more than happy to offer your product to their customers, since if they hadn’t collaborated with you, they would not have earned any additional income.

2. Look for people who are selling products that are in different price range as your products

It’s easier to persuade people to sell your products to their customers if your products are in different price range than their products.

It can either be cheaper or more expensive, and both would work well.

After their customers have already paid for their products, they can either offer an upsell for your more expensive product or a downsell for your less expensive product.

If your product is in the same price range as their products, chances are the customers will view your products and their products as similar (even though this may not be the case). When this happens, conversion rates for your products will drop.

So which method are you currently using more to sell products and services? I’m betting Active Promotions eh?

Start doing some Passive Promotions today as well!

Popularity: 60% [?]

If you have been doing affiliate marketing for some time, it’s good news for you because today I’m going to share a cool little trick that you can use to boost your affiliate promotions.

If you have no idea what affiliate marketing is, then to put it simply - affiliate marketing is the activities you undertake to promote products and services of someone or some companies in exchange for their commissions.

So you promote products and services => people buy => you earn commissions.

If you want a more detailed explanation of what affiliate marketing is, go download my FREE Report “Your First 100 Dollars Online” and consume it!

Now let’s get back to the topic at hand.

The normal cycle of affiliate marketing usually goes like this:

1. You choose the market/niche

2. You set up sites that sell your affiliate products

3. You drive traffic to your sites

4. Visitors come to your sites, and a certain small percentage of them will buy your affiliate products, meaning you earn money

Today I’m going to talk about number 3, which is driving traffic to your sites.

And when we are talking about driving traffic to sites, what comes in mind first?

Probably techniques such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay Per Click), forum marketing, article marketing, social bookmarking, etc. right?

For now let’s just focus on SEO and PPC and put aside all the other techniques all right?

Now when we talk about SEO what people usually do is this:

They go all out to optimize their sites for a few keyword phrases using awesome SEO techniques they have just learned.

And when it comes to PPC advertising campaigns, the following scenario is not uncommon:

They bid on a few keyword phrases on Google Adwords in the hope that their sites are shown on the first page of Google. (Just a little quick note to beginners - if you have no idea what Google Adwords is, again, go download my FREE Report “Your First 100 Dollars Online” and read it.

If you are promoting products or services that are in very high competitive niches/markets, then you will have a hard time trying to do well in your SEO and PPC efforts if you do exactly what everyone else out there is doing - that is, targeting or bidding keywords that are related to the niche in question.

What exactly what do I mean by that?

Suppose you are an affiliate trying to promote products in the weight loss or fat loss niche. I’m using the this niche as an example because it is a very competitive niche.

Now let’s choose a weight loss product to promote. I’d go to Clickbank, and after some time searching I found a great product to promote, which is called “Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle“.

Now if you were the “usual” affiliates like everybody else out there, then you’d surely go after keywords such as “weight loss”, “fat loss”, “lose your weight”, “lose your fat”, etc. for your SEO and PPC efforts.

Am I correct in saying this?

The trick is to NOT target those keywords that are related to the niche in question, but to target the product name in your SEO or PPC efforts.

Why?

Because by targeting the product name instead of the typical keywords related to the niche:

1. The competition is usually much lower (unless the product name is already very, very, very popular such as iPod, Playstation, Nintendo Wii, etc.), which means it will be easier for your SEO or PPC efforts.

If you go to Google and type in the keywords “fat loss” (in quotes), there are 5.470.000 competing web pages:

If you type in the product name “burn the fat feed the muscle” (in quotes), Google tells us that there are 322.000 competing web pages:

2. Traffic that comes to your site will be much more targeted and qualified, because these people voluntarily typed in the product name in Google and searched for it.

This means that he has probably been exposed to the marketing messages or promotions of this product before, and he is searching in Google by the product name to find out more about the product, and the reason he is finding out more about the product is mostly because he is interested in buying the product!

Contrast this when you target typical keywords related to the niche in question, for example “fat loss”.
People typing in “fat loss” do not necessarily mean that they are ready to buy. In fact, more often than not, they just want to get free information about fat loss.

Now there is one last thing that you need to make sure to make this trick effective - and that is to check whether people searching for the product name you are targeting.

If nobody is searching for the product name, why bother trying to rank for that keyword phrase?

Go to Google Adwords Keyword Tool (it’s Free):

Type in the product name, in this case “burn the fat feed the muscle” (without quotes).

Click “Get keyword ideas”

Select “Exact” from the drop-down list under “Match Type” and you will see the screen below:

It tells us that the keyword phrase “burn the fat feed the muscle” is searched in Google approximately an average of 5.400 times per month in the US.

That is 180 times per day. And this is only for the keyword phrase “burn the fat feed the muscle”, which is the product name.

You can be more creative by targeting other combinations of keyword phrases which have the product name in them. Looking at the above screen, you could probably also target “burn the fat feed the muscle ebook” or “burn the fat feed the muscle pdf”, etc.

And let’s not forget the above numbers are only for people searching in the US. You can also do some research for people searching in other countries?

How do you do that?

Well, if go back to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool you will see the following screen:

Click “edit”.

Just select the country that you want to do research on, type in the keywords, and click “get keyword ideas” and you’ll have a new research!

If you are hitting a bottleneck where you can’t seem to rank well for your targeted keywords in your SEO or PPC efforts, try out this “target the product name” trick now.

Not today or tomorrow, but now.

Remember, procrastination destroys your business!

Popularity: 95% [?]

If you are like most people out there, then you probably agree with me if I say that you like to receive better than you like to give.

Confused?

Let me explain a little.

If you were to choose between:

A. Taking/receiving something good

Or

B. Giving away something good

I seriously believe that you would choose A over B anytime.

Am I right?

You see, by nature we humans are selfish creatures. That is why almost everyone wants to take rather than to give.

I seriously believe that in today’s world if you want to thrive and move forward in your Internet business, you need to give, give, and give first before you can receive.

If you are just like every marketer or business owner out there who just want to sell, sell, and sell, it is very hard for you to make good impressions in your customers’ or would-be-customers’ eyes.

Well, actually you can still thrive and do very well in your business even if you sell, sell, and sell all the time, provided that:

1. You already have an established brand that people know, or

2. Your products and services are so unique and great that all your competitors can’t compare (let alone compete) with you.

However, if you or your business does not belong to the two categories stated above, yet the only thing you do is sell, sell, and sell, then you seriously need to consider doing things differently starting from now.

You need to create VALUE first for other people before they are willing to buy from you.

You need to start giving and stop selling (or taking)!

I’m not implying that you don’t have to sell. At the end of the day, we are still marketers and we need to sell to be able to make profits.

I’m simply saying that if you want to acquire new customers, you need to give first before you can receive. You need to create value for them first before they will buy from you (unless of course one of the two reasons above applies to you).

So how exactly do you create value?

Well, you can give them some kind of freebie that is related to the niche/field you are in. Do make sure that this freebie can benefit them in one way or another; otherwise your freebie will simply go down the drain.

For example, if you are talking about doing business online, you can always give them a free report, e-course, ebook, audio, or video tutorial. The point is to give them something useful that can benefit them.

If they feel that your freebie has benefited them, they will be more receptive to you and your products. If you continue to provide more value for them, they will slowly but surely trust you.

When you are at this stage, it will be a lot easier to sell your products and services to them.

Having said what I’ve said above, I want to point out that there are a lot of sites out there who simply sell and sell. There is, of course, nothing wrong with having sites who want to sell you something.

Yes, these sites may produce a few sales every day if their sales copy, traffic, and follow up “hard-sell” email messages are great.

But, I seriously believe that if you can build relationships and provide value first without the “hard-sell, pushy” email sales pitches, then you’ll be able to sell much more effectively.

Think about if for a moment.

The last time you went to the mall and some “pushy” salesman tries to hard-sell you on something, do you feel comfortable? Would you buy from him then and in the future?

Of course not!

Nobody wants to buy from a “pushy” salesman.

The whole article today focuses on why you should give and create value first before you can expect to receive anything, because it is very hard nowadays to just be able to make sales on your first encounter with your visitors. You must build beneficial relationships with your visitors first so that they trust you.

Believe me, trust is a very, very effective and vital component in successful selling.

This is also the reason why I highly recommend you build your own lists for your business. Put in some kind of opt-in form and ask for their email addresses in exchange for a freebie that they will get.

You have put in a lot of hard work to bring visitors to your site; don’t just let them go like that. If you don’t get their contact info, you lose them forever! There are millions of sites out there, what makes you think they will remember your site?

Always try to get their contact info so that you can follow up with them and give them more Free benefits such as tips and tricks related to your field. The point is to build good relationships with them on a consistent basis.

When beneficial relationships are built, trust will be formed. At the end of the day, selling your products and services to them become much easier.

Popularity: 77% [?]

By now, you should have already realized the importance of having your own website.

There are lots of different ways to create websites. You can create them manually like the good old-fashioned static html sites, or use some kind of CMS (content management system) like Joomla or Wordpress.

In this post, I’m going to share with you why you need to have your own website in the form of a blog.

There are 6 reasons why I highly recommend you create your website using a blog platform:

1. Blogs are easy and fast to create

I mean it when I say this.

Blogs are really easy to create. You don’t even have to know HTML or PHP and you can create a blog in a matter of seconds.

I’m not exaggerating. You really can create your own blog super fast and not know a thing about coding or programming (although if you know a little HTML it would really help if you want to edit the layout or theme).

2. You can update your blog easily

With blogs, you can update the content of your blog easily.

You simply need to type what you want to write and then click the “publish” button, and your updated content will appear on your blog instantly.

No more opening up your FTP program just to update the content on your blog.

3. Blogs are easy to maintain

You control your blog from 1 admin control panel.

This control panel is intuitive, so you can guess easily what the different options and buttons are for.

And the best thing is, everything can be done by simply pointing and clicking your mouse. No technical skills required, although it will certainly help.

4. Search engines love blogs

Whenever you make a new blog post, your blog pings the different search engines letting them know that there are fresh content on your blog.

Search engines, especially Google, love fresh content.

If your site is currently only a HTML site, try adding a blog into your site. As Jonathan Leger pointed out, adding a blog to your site can boost your site’s ranking in Google.

5. You can communicate with visitors

With blogs, you have the ability to communicate with your visitors via the blog comments feature. This is Web 2.0!

You make a blog post, your visitors read it, and if they have any questions or feedback they can use the blog comments feature to convey their messages.

In this way, you get to build relationships with your visitors since you can communicate back and forth with them.

After you have successfully built great relationships with your visitors so that they trust you, it will be a lot easier to sell them products and services.

This means more profit for you.

6. Placebo effect

When you regularly update your blog with fresh and beneficial content, people are going to assume that you know what you are talking about since your blog seems (at least in their eyes) to be up-to-date with the latest developments and news related to your field.

When your blog starts to become crowded with people leaving comments on it, your visitors are also going to assume that your blog is popular and they will associate this popularity with authority.

What I mean is that they will see you as an authority in your field.

When you are regarded as the authority in your field, people are going to buy from you!

Popularity: 88% [?]