True Results To Replace Your Job

10 Steps To REPLACE YOUR JOB On The Internet

In my last post, I explained what Internet continuity programs are and why they’re so profitable.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to build a successful continuity program – or to be more specific, How To Build A CONSISTENT Online Business FAST Using Continuity Programs so that you can REPLACE YOUR JOB!

Step 1 – Overcome Information Overload And Focus On ONE Thing Only

With all the information out there about making money online, I’m 100% sure that you’re suffering from information overload. The first step you need to do is to overcome this illness.

Stop chasing one business opportunity after another. Stop looking for the “next big thing” because there is no “next big thing”. There is only hype attached to the “next big thing”.

Focus your mind and attention on only ONE thing – and that is to build a CONSISTENT Online Business FAST so that you can REPLACE YOUR JOB. Ignore the rest that have nothing to do with this.

Please pay special attention to the word “CONSISTENT” – you want your income to be consistent month in and month out. So what if you can generate $1000 today but fail to make any money tomorrow and the day later.

What you want is CONSISTENT income every month so that you can have a REAL business and peace of mind.

Step 2 – Learn Direct Response Marketing Skills

When soldiers go to war and fight for their country, they equip themselves with weapons and shields. You need to do the same by equipping yourself with Direct Response Marketing skills.

Why?

You are a small entrepreneur with limited budget to spend on your online business, thus you need to make the best use of your money.

You can’t afford to spend (and WASTE) BIG money like all the Fortune 500 companies. Every dollar counts, which is why you MUST learn direct response marketing skills so that you spend your money wisely on things that do WORK!

Step 3 – Learn Technical Skills

A lot of the “make money online” sites and gurus say BOLDLY that you don’t need to have ANY technical skills at all to be able to succeed in your online business.

(worse, they claim that you only need to click a few buttons on your mouse and you’ll make thousands instantly…)

I COMPLETELY DISAGREE!

Don’t cringe first at the thought of learning technical skills…

What I’m saying is that you MUST, at the very least, learn basic technical skills such as:

- how to connect your domain and hosting together so that when people type www.yourdomain.com, they are actually directed to your website

- how to create a BASIC html static web page

- how to set up a WordPress blog from scratch

No, you don’t have to learn programming. You can outsource the programming stuff to professional programmers who know what they’re doing and who can do the job A LOT BETTER and MUCH FASTER than you.

Why don’t you also outsource the three skills I mentioned above as well?

Because if you outsource even the most basic skills such as these three skills, then you’d have to wait for your technical guy to fix it for you if you need to make even the smallest change to your web page. This will take up a lot of time with the back and forth communication. Another reason is of course to cut down your expenses.

Step 4 – Create Your High Quality Freebie

Make sure that you actually create a HIGH QUALITY freebie that you give away to your website visitors in exchange for their email addresses. Don’t simply put together some low quality PLR stuff and use it as your freebie.

This will hurt your image and brand, and once it’s tarnished, it’s VERY DIFFICULT to regain and make people trust you again.

Before you create your freebie, think of it as a paid product that you’re going to sell. This way, your mind will focus on delivering high quality content since it (your mind) thinks that it’s going to be a paid product.

Step 5 – Set Up Your Squeeze Page To Capture Leads

Now that you have your freebie ready, the next step is to set up a squeeze page to capture the names and email addresses of those people who requested your freebie.

The basic HTML skills that you’ve learned earlier (in step 3) will help a lot in creating and setting up a simple squeeze page.

Of course, you should have some nice and professional (but not too fancy) design to your squeeze page and freebie, and you can do that by outsourcing this to graphic designers. This will increase your squeeze page conversion rate.

Step 6 – Create Your Continuity Program

This is the MEAT of what your customers are paying you money for. They pay you money to access your VALUABLE content to solve their problems.

The content of your continuity program, of course, have to be GOOD (as should your FREE content).

When people give their names and email addresses to get your freebie, they should be IMMEDIATELY presented with your continuity program offer.

Why immediately?

Because as mentioned in my previous post, people’s interests change VERY QUICKLY all the time. If you don’t ask for the sale immediately, then they might no longer be interested in your topic a few days later.

And one more tip: you do NOT have to create ALL the content beforehand before you actually roll out your continuity program. In fact, you only need to have the first lesson created and you’re good to go.

Step 7 – Package Your Continuity Program To Make It SELL

With tight competition in almost every market, simply presenting your “naked” continuity program for sale is not going to be good enough.

You need to MASSIVELY PACKAGE your continuity program so that it becomes irresistible and really ENTICING. Package it in such a way so that if people do not take up your continuity offer, they’ll really miss out on a lot of good, cool stuff.

You want to make your prospects think like this in their minds:

Join your continuity program = I can solve my problems

Don’t join your continuity program = My problems remain unsolved and I’ll continute to feel excruciating PAIN

Step 8 – Generate Visitors To Your Squeeze Page

I’m sure you’ve heard and seen this a thousand times before, but without visitors to your website, then everything is useless.

You can have the best continuity program in the world, but if nobody knows the existence of your program, then not a single soul is going to join your program.

This means zero sales and zero profits.

Once you have your freebie, your irresistible continuity program that is MASSIVELY PACKAGED, then you can start driving traffic to your squeeze page.

A small percentage of that traffic will be your customers, and most will just be freebie seekers who won’t join your continuity program. This is perfectly fine, because in EVERY MARKET that you operate and sell information products in, there are only a small percentage of buyers compared to freebie seekers.

Step 9 – Build DEEP Relationships With Your Leads/Subscribers

After visitors opt-in to get your freebie, they are presented with your continuity program offer. Let’s say that the conversion rate for your continuity program is 2%. This means that for every 100 people who see your offer, only 2 join your program and the remaining 98 did not join.

So what happens to these 98 people?

Simply leave them alone?

NO WAY!

What you should do is to build deep, trusting, and beneficial relationships with them via email marketing. Remember that they’ve already given you their email addresses!

Give them cool and valuable content that will help them solve their problems, and give them on a CONSISTENT basis.

Frequency is key here.

The Internet is full of scams and is filled with tons of dishonest people. You want them to receive REPETITIVE exposure from you that will result in a POSITIVE perception of you being a nice, trustworthy person whom they regard as their trusted advisor.

Step 10 – Use KILLER Email Marketing Tactics To SELL Your Continuity Program

In Step 9, you build deep relationships with your subscribers by giving them valuable free content that they can use. In Step 10, you SELL your offer.

Simply giving away free content all the time won’t make you money. SELLING your continuity program will!

Therefore, even though you often give your subscribers free content, be sure to sell to them also. Otherwise ALL your efforts will be gone to waste.

The way to do this is to have a mixture of free content and sales pitch emails. For example, you can use the following tactic:

Email 1: Free content

Email 2: Sales pitch

Email 3: Free content

Email 4: Sales pitch

Etc.

Where Do You Go From Here?

So there you have it, the 10 ESSENTIAL steps to building successful Internet continuity programs. If you do them correctly, you’re bound to REPLACE YOUR JOB on the Internet!

If you REALLY want to learn IN MORE DETAIL where I expand the concepts and show and teach you STEP-BY-STEP How To REPLACE YOUR JOB On The Internet Using A Continuity Program, then my GOLD Coaching is for you.

For a limited period of time, you can test drive my GOLD Coaching for only $1. So be sure to get in while the offer is still available.

Click Here To Get In NOW

Email List Building Is Wrong

… if you build the wrong list!

Almost every Internet marketer who knows what they’re doing is engaging in email list building activities.

As the famous saying goes “The money is in the list”…

(…by the way if you want to learn 2 proven ways to build your list fast, click here)

A Requirement

And no doubt about it, having a list to really make BIG money online is a requirement. You can argue that you make money via Adsense and as such you don’t need to build a list.

Well let me tell you that if you focus your time and effort instead on building your own list, building TRUSTING and MUTUALLY BENEFICAL relationships with this list, and presenting them offers that they’re interested in, you’ll earn SO MUCH MORE than just Adsense alone.

But making big money online, or should I say building a real Internet business, is not just about building ANY kind of list.

This is one of the biggest mistakes I see beginner and intermediate marketers alike make when they build their lists. I’m guilty of this mistake too (yes even to this present date I sometimes get sidetracked as well).

The BIG Mistake

The mistake I’m talking about is focusing on building a FREEBIE list.

What do I mean by that?

A Freebie list is a group of people who do NOT buy your products and services. And by FOCUSING your time and efforts on building this kind of list, you profits will be very INSIGNIFICANT.

You should instead FOCUS on building a BUYER list.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t build a freebie list. You should and must, because in order to build a buyer list, you first need to build a freebie list.

You build a FREEBIE list – you build relationships with this list so that your subscribers know, like, and trust you – you present them with low cost offers to get them to your BUYER list – you offer more value with your higher-priced products and services (backend).

This is where the real money is made – via the buyer list and NOT the freebie list.

Convert Freebie Seekers Into Buyers

Again, my point here is once you have a DECENT lead-generation system in place to pour in leads into your sales funnel on a consistent daily basis, you should think about converting as much of these freebie leads into your buyer list.

Do NOT wait until you have the perfect lead generation system before you convert them. Notice I use the word “DECENT lead-generation system” and not “SUPER lead-generation system” above? By decent, I mean it doesn’t have to be super powerful like generating 50 fresh leads per day. Even 20 or 30 leads per day are good enough (at least for the time being).

If you wait until you have a super powerful lead generation system before you start converting your freebie list into your buyer list, then you’ll be missing out on a lot of profits.

Want me to give you another strong reason why you should convert them as soon as possible?

People’s Interests Change All The Time

Well, people’s interest or “hotness towards a particular topic” change around a lot very quickly. For example, today I might be interested in learning how to play golf. Next week, I’m no longer interested in golf but instead interested in fishing.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Since people’s interest change around a lot quickly, you want to make sure that you convert as much people in your freebie list into your buyer list as soon as you can. Because if you wait around too long, your subscribers may no longer be interested in your subject.

To build your own BUYER list, you need to have your own product. But don’t cringe at the thought of this yet, because creating your own information product can be done in 1 day or less.

How To Create Your Own Product In 1 Day Or Less

You simply interview an expert in your marketplace over Skype and record the interview and you have an audio product ready. If you want to learn more about how to create your own high quality information product in 1 day or less, go take a look at my Instant Product System guide.

Another tip for you: you can make money from your freebie list even before you have your own product and before you build your buyer list. The way to do this is to promote an affiliate product that is closely related to what your topic is about. For example, if you’re building an audience who are golf beginners who want to learn how to play golf well, then offer an affiliate product about learning how to play golf for beginners.

Never, ever wait until you have the perfect, super-duper lead generation system before you convert your freebie list into your buyer list. Because it will never be perfect. No system in the world is perfect.

Now that you understand the importance of a buyer list, go build one today. Leave your comments and thoughts below about email list building, as I’d LOVE to hear them…

Ethical Internet Marketing? Is Free REALLY Free?

More often than not, FREE is not really FREE. Especially when it (the word “FREE”) is used in marketing messages. In the Internet marketing (IM) world, the usage of “FREE” is even more commonplace.

Everyone and his dog is offering FREE ebook, mp3, or video downloads of the best guide or course on how to make money online, on how to lose weight fast, on how to get the perfect lady/man, etc.

But to get the “FREE” downloads, you have to “give up” your name and email address.

So in this case, is FREE really FREE?

Different Opinions About The Word “FREE”

Some people believe that when something is Free for grabs, it should mean just that – Free unconditionally. They don’t have to enter their name and email addresses just to be able to get the Free stuff.

Others (especially marketers), on the other hand, think that getting something for Free BUT with certain terms and conditions, is perfectly fine.

Do you want to know what I think? Honestly?

As you’ve probably already have guessed, being the marketer that I am, I think the same way as other marketers do – Free can be Free only when certain terms and conditions are met. In my case, since I’m running an Internet business, the Free stuff I give away would have to exchanged with the email address of the person requesting the Free stuff.

It’s All About Leverage

As competition gets tougher in every market everywhere, offering something for Free in exchange for an email address is “almost” required. We’ve all spent so much time, effort, and money to bring visitors to our sites, and if we simply let them download the good Free stuff without getting their email addresses, then we’re NOT leveraging our work.

Every time we want to get new visitors, we have to do all the hard and tedious work all over again. Think article marketing, forum marketing, blog commenting, etc.

Spend 40 hours driving traffic = 100 visitors = 1 sale

To get 10 sales, you have to spend 400 boring hours to drive traffic!

But if you collect visitors’ email addresses, then you can LEVERAGE the work that you do today for the future. You have the power to send visitors to any web page you please since you have their email addresses.

This is exactly the reason why every marketer is trying to bribe you with “FREE” ebooks, audios, or videos in exchange for your email.

(…by the way, if you want to know how to build your list fast, I reveal 2 proven ways in this article – and this time it’s REALLY Free without any terms and conditions. I promise! )

But is it ethical to do so? To say that it’s FREE when in fact you have to “pay” for it using your email address?

This is very subjective and there are always two sides to every coin.

Visitors, if given a choice, would almost always prefer getting the Free downloads for Free WITHOUT any buts or ifs.

Marketers (the website owners), always prefer visitors “pay” with their email addresses in order to get the Free downloads.

So Where Do You Draw The Line?

In my opinion (and YES I’m a marketer and I’m PROUD to be one), as long as you DON’T abuse visitors’ email addresses by sending them sales pitch emails every day or sending them emails that are totally unrelated to the Freebie they downloaded in the first place, it’s okay and fine.

What I’m saying is: if your Free download is about how to get the perfect dating partner, then you DO NOT send them emails about making money online, and vice-versa.

Some people (visitors and marketers alike) would argue that you should provide the Free downloads TOTALLY free without any conditions at all, including NOT requesting visitors’ email addresses. They say that if your Freebie is REALLY THAT GREAT, then people would subscribe to your list VOLUNTARILY without you “forcing” them to give up their email addresses just to be able to download your Freebie.

That makes a lot of sense doesn’t it?

If they like your Free report, surely they want to get into your list even without you “begging” for their email addresses.

I’ve tried this method before, but I find that “forcing” visitors’ to leave their email addresses in order to get my Freebie works better for me.

It Is Human Tendency To Forget

I think part of the reason is because all of us are busy. Even when John gets so excited and impressed by our freebie, and he says to himself that he’s going to get into our list to receive further related information, he might not REMEMBER to take the necessary action to subscribe to our list.

John wants to subscribe but he forgets. And with people living busier lives than ever before, people get more forgetful.

By getting John’s email in the first place when he requested for the Free report, even when John forgets a day or two later that he has already downloaded the report, we can send him an email reminding him to consume the report and follow up with him again in the very near future to build good relationships with him.

Good relationships = easier to sell products/services = more $$$

Your Thoughts?

I’d LOVE to hear your thoughts about this. What do you think have to say about ethical Internet marketing? Do you think FREE should really mean TOTALLY FREE without any terms and conditions? Or do you think it’s alright to “force” people to give you their email addresses VOLUNTARILY in order to get your Freebie?

Let me know your thoughts in a comment below…

Ultimate Footer Ad Review (Case Study + $10 Discount…)

Update: I’m no longer recommending Ultimate Footer Ad since we at Get Profits Fast lab have come up with our own version that is much, much more powerful than Ultimate Footer Ad.

I don’t like to toot my own horn, but give Premium List Magnet a risk-free try. This is the most powerful list building WordPress plugin in the market today, hands down.

Ultimate Footer Ad doesn’t even come close…

Loyal readers of this blog most likely would have noticed that I put up a slide up opt-in form on the bottom of this blog a few months ago.

This slide up opt-in form is called Ultimate Footer Ad.

In addition to using Ultimate Footer Ad for this blog, I’ve also been installing it on my other sites. And today I’d like to share my results with you.

Apart from this blog, I’m also running an Internet Marketing blog for my local Indonesian folks in the Indonesian language (be warned thought that you won’t understand a single word there since it’s written in the Indonesian language).

I installed Ultimate Footer Ad on this Indonesian blog on March 17, 2009. Before the existence of this opt-in form (February 15 to March 15, 2009 to be exact), there were 16,469 visits and 1,488 opt-ins according to Google Anayltics. This equates to a conversion rate of 9.04%.

From March 17 to April 17, 2009, 17,788 visits and 2,869 opt-ins were recorded. This means a conversion rate of 16.13%.

By leaving everything the same except the addition of Ultimate Footer Ad, I’ve managed to increase my opt-in conversion rate from 9.04% to 16.13%, which is a 78.43% INCREASE.

If only Ultimate Footer Ad had come out earlier to the market, I’d have grabbed this great script and would’ve have increased my subscribers my 78.43% earlier!

Ultimate Footer Ad Pros

1. Increase Your Conversions (Like In My Case)

Right now, there are not many scripts like this in the market where you literally capture the visitors’ attention by having something “slide up” from below.

It’s too obvious not to notice it, yet not too disturbing and intrusive compared to a pop-up. It gets the job done by increasing the conversion rate, especially if you’re installing this script on a blog where you have a lot of outgoing links that distract visitors. The more links you have on your blog/site, the lower your conversion rate will be.

Did I also mention that Ultimate Footer Ad can also be used to display whatever ad or sales message you want to display to visitors? If you don’t want an opt-in form to slide up, and instead want a sales message or some kind of ads to show up, no problem!

2. Very Affordable

At a retail price of just $47, Ultimate Footer Ad is very affordable. Any serious business owner and marketer who markets on the Internet MUST have this tool to boost their profits.

3. License Is Good For UNLIMITED Domains

You can install Ultimate Footer Ad on as many domains or websites as you like. No more paying additional fee just to install this script on different domains or websites.

Pay ONCE and you can use it infinitely.

4. FREE Lifetime Updates

When you purchase Ultimate Footer Ad, you’re also entitled to receive FREE lifetime updates of the script.

A lot of people do not understand this, but having a script that provides Free lifetime updates is AWESOME!

Why?

Because due to the nature of scripts, there is a high possibility (almost certain) that scripts contain bugs that need to be fixed. In addition, as time passes by and new technologies and methods are found, the script needs to be updated as well in order for it to work effectively.

Just three months into the purchase of the script, it has undergone one update from version 1.0 to version 2.0 (Just  a few days ago, I’ve also updated my 1.0 to the 2.0 version).

5. Several Pre-Made Design Templates

Another thing to note about Ultimate Footer Ad is that it comes with several different design templates ready for you to use in your slide up opt-in form.

However, if you want to have a custom design that matches your website or the offer you’re giving away, then you need to enlist the help of a graphic designer to help you do that.

In my case study above, I used an existing pre-made design template that was included in the package. I’m pretty sure that if I were to custom design my opt-in form to match the offer I’m giving away, my conversion will increase even more.

Ultimate Footer Ad Cons

One of the cons of this script is that some people might find slide up opt-in forms to be disturbing and intrusive, although this is A LOT LESS annoying than pop-ups.

That said, it must be noted that you can’t please every single person out there. As the saying goes “you can’t make everyone happy”.

My advice is to make the MAJORITY of your CUSTOMERS happy.

Do you know that most people who complain all the time are those freebie seekers who will never buy anything from you. Forget about them and instead focus in making the majority of your CUSTOMERS happy.

Conclusion

At $47, Ultimate Footer Ad is VERY affordable.

Actually, it’s a STEAL!

Can you imagine increasing your opt-in conversion rate by 78.43% like I did for just ONE of my sites?

I highly endorse this product as I know the small investment you make will pay itself MANY times over!

However if you currently don’t have a website/blog yet, then please don’t buy it because you’ll simply be wasting your money as you simply can’t put it to good use.

GOOD NEWS

The good news I have in store for you is that you can secure a 21.28% discount by buying Ultimate Footer Ad from my link (but don’t buy it from the link I’ve given you above). This means the regular retail price of $47 is going to come down to $37.

IMPORTANT: To claim your $10 (21.28%) discount, DO NOT BUY from the link I’ve given you above. Instead submit a support ticket and I’ll be sure to give you the discount link. I’m sorry for the extra step, but Graham Cox, the owner of the script, does not want me to publicly advertise this discount link to everybody.

Hence the reason for having to contact me via my support desk to ask for the discount link. Click here now to submit a support ticket and you’ll be on your way to getting yourself a very powerful Ultimate Footer Ad script that will boost your conversions at a discounted price.

Enjoy!

PS. Let me know your comments and feedback in a comment below…

Before You Drive Traffic To Your Site…

In the last article we’ve learned that getting all the traffic in the world is useless if we do not know how to utilize it well. Specifically, if we don’t know how to convert our traffic into money, then our efforts to drive traffic to our sites will simply go down to waste.

In this article, I’m going to assume that you already have your goals laid out – what you want your visitors to do once they‘re on your site. If you still don’t have a clue what your goals are by having visitors to your site, then you need to sit down and take some time to think about it carefully.

This is VERY IMPORTANT!

Once you’ve identified your goals, DO NOT go out there and start implementing all the incredible driving traffic techniques you’ve learned.

Instead PREPARE first.

Since almost all of us are interested in building our lists, let’s say that your goal (when visitors land on your site) is to persuade them to subscribe to your newsletter.

Then in the preparation phase:

- Make sure that your opt-in box is above the fold so that they can spot it easily

- It’s better to use a bigger “subscribe” button to make your opt-in box more “eye-catching”

- Make sure you give them some kind of valuable Freebie (ebook, report, audio, video) and say it to them in their face what benefits they can get from your Freebie.

Simply asking them to join your newsletter will produce meager conversions as they can’t see the immediate benefit of joining your newsletter.

They’ll be thinking to themselves along these lines “Newsletter? So what? What good can it do for me? I’m already subscribed to dozens of other newsletters. How is this different? Nah… I’ll skip it for now.”

- Make sure that you have several autoresponder messages stored in your autoresponder account so that when subscribers opt-in to your list, they are automatically followed-up with valuable content PLUS sales messages to sell your products or affiliate products.

A note about following up with your subscribers:

There are basically 3 kinds of marketers who do things differently when it comes to following up with their subscribers…

The first one is the “I send you sales pitch email every day to squeeze every penny out of you”. I’ve made a post about this some time back. This kind of marketer is ON THE LIMIT, sending you sales pitch email every day (sometimes even 2 emails in a single day). He never bothers to send you valuable content, all he does is sell and sell all the time.

The second type of marketer is the complete opposite of the first one. He almost never sends out sales pitches to his subscribers. All he does is provide valuable content all the time. He is too afraid that if he tries to sell to his subscribers, they’ll unsubscribe from his list.

The third type of marketer is somewhere in the middle. He provides a balance of valuable content and sales pitches. He understands that building a beneficial and trusting relationship with his subscribers is VERY important.

That’s why he only sells or recommends high quality products that he knows will help his subscribers. He will never jeopardize his reputation by selling a crappy product or service just to earn a quick buck for the short term. He is in the business for the long term.

So which marketer are you?

For most people, I’d suggest you go for third type of marketer. Unless you’re a big name “guru”, you won’t survive belonging to the first type of marketer.

People will unsubscribe from your list so fast that you’ll lose your current subscribers faster than you gain new subscribers. Even if they don’t unsubscribe from your list, they’ll never open and read your emails.

The second type of marketer will not bring in any profit for you, since you’re always afraid of selling to your subscribers. What good is building relationship with them if you can’t make money out of them (sorry to blunt but let’s be realistic here from a business perspective).

This Preparation phase is VERY important. Because if you don’t prepare first, you’ll never achieve your desired goals. Even though it takes quite some time and effort to prepare, it’s very worthwhile.

In the example above, you might have to spend a few days to create your valuable Freebie (I suggest that you create your own unique Freebie instead of offering some low quality PLR or MRR stuff).Then you have to spend additional time to create your autoresponder messages.

However, if you do this correctly, your efforts will pay off multiple times!

Now that you have your opt-in box ready, and you have your valuable Freebie ready, and your autoresponder messages are all set up ready to go, you can then drive traffic to your site and watch some of your visitors being converted to subscribers.

The One Tool Every Internet Marketer Can’t Live Without

To succeed in Internet Marketing, you need tools to help you run your Internet business.

Internet marketing is not just about making money online.

It’s about running a profitable business on the Internet that is going to provide you with profits on a consistent basis for the long term.

It’s not a hit and run situation where you only earn money 1 time.

To make lots of money on the Internet, you need to view Internet marketing as a real business, just like you would when you run an offline brick and mortar store.

…and to be successful in running a very profitable Internet business, you need tools.

PERIOD.

You can’t do everything manually. There simply isn’t enough time for you to do everything by yourself.

We only have 24 hours in a day, so we should focus our time and efforts on the more important things and leave the repetitive tasks which can be automated into the hands of technology.

Hey we’re living in the 21st century!

One VERY IMPORTANT aspect of Internet marketing that you can automate is through the use of an autoresponder system.

An autoresponder system basically is a system to follow up with your website visitors so that you can build beneficial and trusting relationships with them, in the hope that they’ll buy your products/services in the future.

In this ever-increasing-competition society that we live in, every marketer and his dog is doing everything they can to sell their products and services.

People are getting tired of being harassed with marketing messages all day long.

Because of this, it is VERY HARD to be able to sell your products/services to prospects on your first encounter with them.

This is especially true if you’re selling your products/services on the Internet.

They don’t know who you are and they see you as someone who’s hiding behind a computer.

With that said, in order to be able to successfully sell your stuff to prospects, you need some kind of mechanism to “capture” their contact info so that you can follow up with them on a consistent basis to build trusting relationships with them.

After they begin to trust you will you be able to sell your stuff to them.

Sure there are exceptions where prospects buy your stuff the first time you offer them, but this is VERY RARE.

If you want to sell effectively and consistently you MUST have an autoresponder system in place to follow up with them.

To get people to sign up for your autoresponder, you need to “bait” them with some kind of valuable freebie such as a free report on your field/niche. If they want to receive this valuable free report, then they need to give you their contact info (usually in the form of email address).

Once they signed up for your autoresponder, you email them every few days to build beneficial and trusting relationships with them.

The best part with this autoresponder thing is that you can compose your messages in one go and then determine when you want these preset messages to be sent out to your prospects and it will do the job of automatically sending out the email messages for you (yes even while you sleep)!

SUPER IMPORTANT: Do Not sell your products/services all the time within these emails. Instead what you want to do is to have a mixture of education/sales messages.

Let me explain…

Let’s say that someone just signed up for your autoresponder to get your free report. Your first message to him should be to congratulate him for requesting your report to affirm him that he’s made the right decision. You want him to feel at ease and assure him that he’s going to get valuable and useful information.

Another message might go out to him automatically from your autoresponder system 3 days later and educate him more about your niche.

Then a few days later your autoresponder system emails him another message revealing even more great content.

You can then set the next message to be a sales message where you do your sales pitch about your product or an affiliate product if you don’t have a product yet (by the way if you don’t have a product yet, you might want to check out my brand new product creation crash course Instant Product System).

The key is to keep a balance between content and sales message. If all you do is send out sales message all day long, then your subscribers (people in your autoresponder system) are going to unsubscribe and you will not be able to follow up with them anymore, ever.

The converse is also true – that is, DO NOT send content messages all day long without doing any selling because if you do then you’re not going to sell your products/services.

After all, the whole purpose of getting them on your autoresponder system (also known as your list) is to follow up with them so they buy your products/services. If you don’t do any selling, you might as well not set up your autoresponder system in the first place.

In my opinion, having a good autoresponder system in place is A MUST to be able to sell effectively on a consistent basis.

The 2 leading autoresponder companies on the market today are Getresponse and Aweber. I’ve been using Getresponse since the start of my Internet business and I highly recommend them. Aweber is known to be awesome as well, although it has a much steeper price when your subscribers go over the 500 limit.

Whichever company you choose, make sure you get an autoresponder system in place for your Internet business!

2 Proven Ways To Build Your List Fast

In any business, be it online or offline, if you want your business to thrive, you need to be able to sell products or services successfully to customers.

There are sellers, and there are buyers. This is what makes the world goes around.

With the ever increasing competition, it is getting harder and harder to successfully sell your products or services to people.

It is said that the average stranger (one who hasn’t heard or come into contact with you before) needs to see your marketing message at least 7 times before he buys from you. I forgot where I got this number from; I just remembered it from the top of my head.

This means that if you are trying to sell a product or service to someone and this person has not heard of you before, then you need to follow up with him at least 7 times before he buys from you.

Of course, this does not apply to every industry.

For example if you own a convenience store located at a local gas station, then someone who is looking to buy a cold drink to quench his thirst does not need to see your marketing message at least 7 times before he actually buys a cold drink from you.

I’m sure you get what I mean and what I’m trying to convey.

My point is this:

If you are currently marketing a product or service that is not a household name like Coke or iPod, then it would be very difficult to successfully sell to people during your first encounter.

This is precisely why you need to grab their contact information so that you can follow up with them in the future to build relationships with them and hopefully be able to successfully sell to them later on.

I’ve talked about this before in this post.

I hope by now you’ve realized the importance of getting your prospects’ contact information. In the online world, this is called building your list.

I’m sure you’ve probably heard of the phrase “the money is in the list” umpteen times. This is partially true and not exactly correct though. But I’m not going to elaborate on this post as that warrants another blog post on a different day.

For now, just remember that building your list is a very, very, very vital and important task if you want to succeed online and earn oodles of money!

Heck! Building my list, at least for me, is a matter of life and death!

So how do you build your list fast then?

Well, if you are a product or owner, the fastest way to build your list is to:

- Joint Venture (JV) with other product owners

- Create an affiliate program

Joint Venture (JV) with other product owners

If you own a product or service, then you can find other product owners who are in the same industry as you but don’t have a product or service like you offer.

What you can do is contact them and ask for a collaboration of some sort. The most common way to do collaboration is to give his subscribers a discount on your product or service and then giving him a certain percentage (usually at least 50% if the product is digital in nature) of the sales made.

For example if you sell a $100 product, you might want to give his subscribers a $30 off so that the price is slashed to $70. And from this $70 you could grant him a 50% commission, resulting in $35 nett profit for him per sale.

One important point you must take note is that you need to always stress the benefit to him. What is he getting? What’s in it for him if he promotes your product?

Most product owners aren’t going to be interested just for the sake of the commission they’ll be getting. I mean, sure, they love money. But it isn’t always about how much money they will make if they promote your product.

Your product has to demonstrate to them first that it delivers value and benefit to their subscribers.

When they finally decide to promote your product to their subscribers, not only will you be getting sales and profits, you will also be getting BUYERS and their contact information.

And you can follow up with them later on to sell your other products or services…

Talk about building your list for free, and getting paid in the process! And it’s not just any list where there are lots of freebie seekers, this is a BUYER list!

A buyer list is 100x more valuable than a freebie list!

Create an affiliate program

Apart from doing JV with other product owners, you can also set up an affiliate program for your product.

If you are selling a digital product, set at least a 50% commission rate for affiliates. The higher the commission rate, the better. This will attract more affiliates to promote your product for you.

Just recently, I opened up an affiliate program for my Beginners Blog Profits product and affiliates get 100% commission for every sale they make.

Why am I granting 100% commission? Won’t I make zero profits?

The answer is Yes and No.

Yes because if an affiliate successfully sells Beginners Blog Profits, I won’t make a single dime. Zero profits!

No because if you project a longer term vision, then you’ll realize that even though I make zero immediate profits, I’m steadily building both my freebie list and buyer list so that I can offer them my other products or services in the future.

Remember to put some kind of opt-in form on your sales page to capture the contact info of visitors, since first-time visitors who reach your sales page are very unlikely to buy from you right then and there.

Give them some kind of valuable freebie (not just any freebie) in exchange for their email address.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, so please share them in a comment below…