True Results To Replace Your Job

Satisfy (The Majority Of) Your Customers

When it comes to selling products and services, both online and offline, there are bound to be unsatisfied customers. This is true no matter how good a job we’ve done to service them.

The fact is: we simply can’t make everyone happy. That is simply not possible. Everyone has different standards and expectations. What impresses customer A may not impress customer B.

When a customer’s expectations are not met, they are unsatisfied. When that happens, 3 things occur:

1. They won’t buy our products or services again in the future

The key to making big money is to sell other related products that increase in price and value. In the Internet marketing field, this is commonly known as “back end” products.

If customers are ONLY buying your product/service one-time, then there’s not going to be a lot of money being made. In some cases, you may even lose money by selling ONLY your low-cost front-end product.

2. They will bad-mouth our name to other people

Worse than number 1 above, these unsatisfied customers tell EVERYBODY about our perceivably (at least in their eyes) “poor” product or service. Our supposedly “bad name” spreads like wildfire.

This is especially enhanced with today’s web 2.0 where consumers interact a lot, thanks to the help of social networking and bookmarking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Stumble Upon, Digg, etc. People can interact and communicate freely and easily with one another.

Unfortunately, we human beings behave like herds of sheep.

One bad-mouth leads to another, and people follow other people in joining the bad-mouthing bandwagon, even though they have not purchased the product/service in question yet and hence do not know about its quality.

This is, of course, VERY BAD for our business.

3. They will ask for their money back (also known as refund), if at all possible

When selling physical products, asking for a refund also means that you have to return the purchased goods to the seller/manufacturer. Services-type of goods is harder (or sometimes impossible) to return.

In the online information business, asking for a refund is VERY easy. The customer still gets to keep the product after the refund because in most cases, information products are delivered digitally. This means that customers can consume the digital product, and then ask for their money back, and the product is still in their PCs.

So what do you do if you do indeed sell digital products? Do you actually need to refund the customer’s money if he so requested?

The answer is, of course, YES!

Having sold thousands of copies of my own information products for the past 15 months, there are VERY few refund requests that I’ve gotten. I forgot the exact number (I have to dig through my files to find an exact number), but I’m pretty sure it’s less than 10.

Had I not put up the “money back guarantee” sign on my sales page, I’m VERY sure that there would be a lot less people buying my products.

What I’m saying is: the benefits that “money back guarantee” bring far outweighs its disadvantages.

You might be thinking “That’s great Welly, but what happens if a freebie seeker takes advantage of this? They can buy my digital products, and then ask for a refund. Won’t I be losing money?”

To which I’d answer: That is inevitable. In every market, you’ll find this kind of people. It’s not a matter of IF they’ll rip you off; it’s a matter of WHEN.

My advice is to FOCUS on your good, paying customers instead of worrying for the very small number of freebie seekers who refund your products.

One tip you can use is to record who refunds what, so that if a serial refunder keeps refunding your products time and time again, you can ban them from ever purchasing from you again.

Instead of exerting our efforts and time on a few bad eggs, we might as well focus on our good, paying customers and make them happy so that they want to buy from us again and again.

Conclusion

To summarize, it is a heavy price to pay if we let our customers down (not meeting their expectations). That said, it is also NOT possible to please EVERY SINGLE customer and make them happy.

The key is to cater for the majority of our customers and find out what they want, and strive very hard to please and make them happy, so that they become our lifelong customers. If they’re happy and satisfied with our products/services, there’s also a high chance that they’ll refer their friends to us.

What do you have to say about satisfying your customers? Please let me know 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…

What Graphics Can Do To Your Business

I’ve always believed in investing in high quality graphics when it comes to selling products or services, both online and offline. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words and having high quality graphics will “WOW” your prospects at the first point of contact, thereby leave a lasting, great impression.

Let’s take a look at the offline business. Product manufacturers couldn’t simply just sell their products and services without some form of accompanying graphics. They could, but it just wouldn’t convert that well.

Can you imagine going to the local grocery store and buying a bottle of milk that simply has an ugly “Fresh MILK” label on it without any kind of graphic ornaments on it? Would you buy this bottle of milk or would you buy the bottle beside it that is professionally packaged with its colorful and attractive graphic elements?

High Quality Graphics In Action

The automotive industry, food industry, telecommunications industry, and all other industries – they all have great quality graphics attached to their products. It makes perfect sense actually.

These huge companies with huge budget set aside a certain amount of money for graphic design purposes to “beautify” (so to speak) their products and services so that they attract more buyers.

You might argue that big name manufacturers don’t need to have those fancy-looking graphics because their brands are already famous and people will buy regardless of how ugly the graphics are. That may be true in certain cases; but the FACT is, there is not a single product and service out there by a big company that actually use poorly designed graphics – at least not that I know of.

Automotive industry – take a look at the high quality brochures car manufacturers have.

Food industry – those food pictures attached to the packaging of the product that are so “REAL” and juicy that make our mouth salivates uncontrollably.

I could go on and on…  but you get my point.

The power of these high quality graphics and the impact they have on your business is even more obvious when it comes to selling products and services on the Internet.

As we all know, anyone can sell on the Internet. And we also know that everyone is “hiding” behind a computer when they’re selling online.

Please note that the term “hiding” is not meant to discredit people selling online (Hey I sell products and services online too).

Think about when a prospect comes across your product/service when shopping online. Think about their thoughts and emotions just when they’re about to decide if they want to buy from you or not.

Since they don’t know who you are and they have no previous experience buying from you, they’re definitely afraid of being cheated of their money.

Scams are becoming more and more commonplace nowadays. Thus they have every right to be wary, especially when shopping online, since like I’ve said above everyone is literally “hiding” behind a computer.

The Disadvantage Of Running An Online Business

A lot of online marketers talk about how great it is to run an Internet business where you can profit almost 100% when selling digital goods. Very few of them, though, talk about the disadvantages of running an online business.

Everything else being equal, it is harder to convince a person to place their trust on you when it comes to buying online than offline since when buying online, they can’t see the real person behind that website and they perceive it would be harder for them to settle any dispute should there be any in the future. They perceive that the website owner can simply “run away” and not respond to emails, etc.

Another important point to note – unless you or your Internet business are already well-established and people have had a positive buying experience from you before, then convincing them to trust you when it comes to buying online is also going to be harder.

How To Lower The Barrier

For us Internet marketers, one very good way to alleviate this problem so that people trust us more and want to buy from us online is through the use of high quality graphics to demonstrate our products and services.

Why is this effective?

Because with high quality graphics on our products and services:

- You increase your credibility

- You are perceived as being serious in your business (a professional) as you wouldn’t have taken the trouble to have those high quality graphics designed if you weren’t serious about your business. People want to buy from professionals.

The above two points lower your prospects’ resistance to buy from you, which means higher conversions.

In short if you have any kind of product or service that you want to sell, especially if you want to sell online, then you really need to attach high quality, attention-grabbing, professional graphics to your products and services.

New Minisite Design Service For Internet Marketers

I bet you didn’t see this coming, but in conjunction with this, I want to make an announcement. Me and my partner, Adi Djohari, have just started a minisite and eCover design service specifically catered towards Internet marketers who sell their products and services online.

Our minisite design service is called WOW Minisites, and we’ll custom-design your minisite and eCover based on what YOU want (NOT what we want). Since we’re also Internet marketers who’re heavily involved in the IM niche, we really do know what YOU want from an Internet marketer’s perspective.

In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t design the minisites and eCover design. Adi along with our team do the design.

You may be wondering why I don’t take part in designing minisites?

Well it’s because I don’t know a thing about graphic design. Seriously. I’d be a lot of better off focusing on my strengths, which is marketing on the Internet.

If you’re currently about to release your product or service, do seriously consider getting a professional minisite design done.

If you’re currently already selling a product or service but you don’t have great quality graphics to accompany it, also consider getting a professional minisite designed for you.

You don’t have to use my professional minisite design service if you don’t want to (though I highly recommend it because I’m sure you’ll be VERY satisfied with our top-notch quality design at a price much less than what other minisite design services are charging).

Whatever you decide, just get a professional minisite designed for your product or service okay?

In summing up, high quality, professional graphics that accompany your product or service will increase your credibility and lower your prospects’ resistance to buy, thereby increasing your conversion rate and and bring you more profits.

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.

Get Traffic Now? All That Traffic Is Useless…

I’ve noticed a lot of people, or more specifically Internet marketers, talk a lot about things like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as if it is THE MOST important thing in the world. I know they want to get traffic now, but is it just a matter of traffic all the time?

Read on…

Now if you don’t know what SEO is, SEO is simply the process of optimizing your website so that it ranks on the first page of Google or any other search engines for a particular set of keywords.

So let’s say that you have a website about selling anti-virus software. Essentially, what you want to achieve by doing SEO work is to get your website showing up on the first page of Google when someone types in “buy anti-virus software” (without quotes) in Google.

You might think that this is a fantastic way to get visitors to your site.

And it is. No contest about that.

Getting visitors when they have voluntarily typed in a keyword phrase related to our website is of course good news for us as website owners, since they are seeking what we have to offer.

They’re already interested in the subject of “anti virus software” and they’re looking to buy it with their wallet in their hands. That means you don’t have to educate them about the importance of having an anti-virus software and why they should buy one.

The education part is already done for you there.

How do you know?

Because of the fact that they typed in the phrase “buy anti virus software”. Notice the word “buy” there? They won’t want to buy it if they weren’t sure of what “anti virus software” is all about, wouldn’t they?

While you may have achieved number 1 ranking for this keyword phrase, what good is number 1 ranking if you can’t convert your visitors?

There is simply no point in having a huge influx of visitors if you can’t make them do what you want them to do.

In other words, you have to know and be VERY sure what your goals are. What do you want these visitors to do once they’re on your site?

Do you want them to click on your Adsense ads? Or do you want them to click on your affiliate link which leads to a leading anti-virus software company? Or maybe you want them to subscribe your anti virus newsletter that delivers tips and the latest updates related to combating computer virus?

Whatever your goals/objectives are, you need to define them first before you do all the hard SEO work (or any traffic generation work) that is going to bring all that Google traffic to your site. Otherwise all that traffic will go down to waste as you don’t even know what your goals are.

Make sense?

Now at the start of this article I mentioned that a lot of marketers are so “addicted” to SEO as if it is the most important thing/skill in the world (I may be a little exaggerating here… but I’m sure you get my point).

But achieving that all important 1^st position in Google for your targeted keywords really won’t do you any good if you don’t know how to utilize your traffic well.

You have to start thinking about the bigger picture like this: “Okay once visitors land on my site, what do I want them to do? What is my ultimate goal?”

Take this blog for instance. At the time of this writing, this blog is ranked number 1 for the keywords “Internet business make money online”, which also happens to be one of the keywords I’m targeting.

When visitors come to my blog, my goal right then and there is to convert them to subscribers.

I have 3 mechanisms in place to do this:

1. There is an obvious opt-in box to the top right of this blog (on the sidebar) enhanced by a glaring red rectangle surrounding the submit button to make it stand out.

2. A slide-up opt-in box (aff) appears from the bottom of the blog. If you’re a returning visitor, you’ll see this in action for every 3^rd revisit. (By the way, this slide-up box has increased the subscription rate of one of my sites by 78.43%).

3. There is the “What would Seth Godin do WordPress plugin” which displays a message box to new visitors and ask them to get my FREE report “How To Earn Your First 100 Dollars Online” (which also pulls them into my list). Visitors returning to this blog after the 5^th time would not see this.

But is this my really, really ultimate goal?

Of course not! What good is there to have subscribers if you can’t convert them into… errr….well… money?

But at least my goal when new visitors reach my blog is to ask them to enter their name and email address so that I can follow up with them on a consistent basis to build beneficial and trusting relationships, as well as to sell them products and services related to Internet marketing or Internet business.

Since I know that most people will not buy my products when they’ve just landed on my site because they don’t who I am, my realistic goal is just to have them subscribe to my newsletter, and then sell to them later on.

So in essence, when a new guy lands on my blog and he subscribes to my newsletter, I have achieved my goal (at least at that level).

The ultimate goal is to sell related products and services to my subscribers, be it my own products or affiliate products which I believe will help them.

The end result?

I make Moolah (Money) of course

Now that I’ve made clear that you need to set what your goals and objectives are for your site before you go out there and get traffic now, the next thing you need to do is to PREPARE before you go out there and try to drive visitors to your site.

After all, simply by knowing your goals is not enough, you need to PREPARE on how to achieve your goals.

And we will take a look at the preparation phase in part 2 of this article, so stay tuned…

I sincerely invite you to give my GOLD Coaching a RISK-FREE 14-day trial.

(you get to receive $488 REAL value of Internet marketing gifts for FREE too…)

4 Steps To Effective Forum Marketing

In my last post, I discussed the importance of finding what people want first before actually going out there and creating your products and services.

And a great way to accomplish this is by visiting forums and see what the people there are saying (or complaining).

In this post, let’s take a look at some of the tricks on how to do effective forum marketing to market our products and services.

Before we begin, it’s important to take note that you’re not going to blatantly sell your products and services. If you do that, then disaster is going to fall upon you as you’ll be banned on the first day in the forums!

How do you market your products and services then?

Well, here’s a step-by-step system on how to do effective forum marketing:

Step 1:

Read the forum rules first before you do anything else, especially the rules concerning your forum signature.

You don’t have to spend ages reading the rules. Just scan them quickly and make sure you understand the expected code of conduct in the forum.

Step 2:

Create your forum signature.

Here are some tips on creating a powerful signature so that you get as many clicks as possible:

- Make sure that the signature invokes some kind of benefits

A signature that looks like this:

Click here to see my acne site

is a very poor signature that does not contain any kind of benefits.

On the other hand, a signature that looks like this:

Get your free report on how you can cure your acne in 3 simple steps

is much more powerful that is going to attract more clicks.

This may or may not seem obvious to you, but A LOT of people outside the IM niche do not know this very important concept.

- Make sure that the signature invokes some kind of curiosity

In addition to creating a benefit-filled signature, it’s also advisable to add some kind of curiosity ingredients to your signature.

For instance, our previous signature:

Get your free report on how you can cure your acne in 3 simple steps

could be better written like this:

Get the forbidden ‘cure your acne in 3 simple steps’ free report other acne experts don’t want you to know

- Capitalize the first letter of every word (if allowed by the forum)

Your original signature that looks like this:

Get the forbidden ‘cure your acne in 3 simple steps’ free report other acne experts don’t want you to know

would now look like this:

Get The Forbidden ‘Cure Your Acne In 3 Simple Steps’ Free Report Other Acne Experts Don’t Want You To Know

Why do you have to do this?

Because it stands out more so that more people notice your signature.

- Bold your signature (if allowed by the forum)

For the same simple reason as before, this will make your signature stands out more.

Step 3:

Now that you’ve created your forum signature, it’s time to start posting.

Remember that you’re in someone else’s house, so DO NOT blatantly try to sell your products and services.

The first post that you want to make is to open a new thread and introduce yourself to the other forum members. You can say things like where you’re from and your purpose in joining the forum.

Of course DO NOT say that your purpose is to sell your products and services. You could say that you are a former acne sufferer and you’re interested in all things related to acne.

It’s important that you do this so that others can at least know who you are and your background. This will serve well later on when you try to build a community in this forum.

Step 4:

After you’ve introduced yourself to the forum, it’s time to explore some of the forum threads and see if you can find some threads that you can contribute to.

Again, always remember not to sell blatantly.

The key is to join the discussion by providing great information and value that others will find useful. Contribute your expertise and try to help as many people as you possibly can.

One cool trick you can use is to contribute to threads that are still on the first page of the forum AND when you post your reply, your reply is still on the first page of that thread.

Confused?

Let me illustrate with screenshots…

This is what I mean when I say on the first page of the forum:

This is what I mean when I say when you post your reply, your reply is still on the first page of that thread:

The above screenshot shows 5 threads. If you were to reply to these threads, then your reply is going to show up on the first page of that thread, with the exception of the last thread (as can seen above that if you post your reply, it is going to show up on the 3^rd page).

Please note that I’m not saying that you shouldn’t post to threads that are more than 1 page long. I’m simply saying the chance that someone comes across your post (and your signature) is higher if you post to threads that is only 1 page long.

In order to make your forum marketing campaign a success, you must actively participate in the discussion. Consistency in helping others and providing value to them is key to effective forum marketing.

Once you’ve successfully build beneficial and trusting relationships with the people in the forum, selling to them becomes much easier.

A reminder for the last time: You’re in someone else’s house, so DO NOT spam!

If you like what I’ve shared with you above, chances are you’re going to like my GOLD Coaching where I show and teach you STEP BY STEP how to REPLACE YOUR JOB FAST.

(…it only costs $1 to join, so hurry while this offer is still available)

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, so please drop your comments below…

1 Simple Reason Why Nobody Wants To Buy Your Product

When it comes to the subject of creating products or services, many marketers make the huge mistake of creating the product or service before doing some due diligence first.

By due diligence I mean doing research to determine if the products or services they offer have some kind of demand or not.

This scenario – where marketers create products and services before gauging if there is any demand at all for their products – is most likely because they are simply too excited to get their feet off the ground and to get the ball rolling…

…not forgetting to mention also that most of these people are beginners who have just started to learn how to market online.

After all, every successful Internet marketer out there always advocates taking massive action!

If all they do is simply learning without taking any action, they’ll get screamed at. Now that they have taken the courageous first step to actually get the ball rolling, nobody wants to buy their products/services.

So these action-takers can’t totally be blamed can they?

Whilst the aspirations and desires to make a profit marketing products and services is great, one needs to take into account the demand for the kind of products or services being created.

It is simply useless to be creating a perfect, fantastic, super duper powerful product when nobody wants to use it.

So the first step you need to do when it comes to creating products or services to market (both online and offline) is to first determine if there is any demand for that product/service.

If there is no demand or if the demand is very, very little then you should not develop the product/service.

If there is substantial demand, then you can get started on getting your product or service created.

One effective way I’ve discovered over the past few years to gauge the demand for your product or service is to find out what problems people want to have solved. This means that these people not only have problems, but they want these problems to be solved.

The more desperate these problems the better for you as a product or service owner.

Why?

Because people will be more ready to shell out their money to fix desperate problems. For example, let’s say I’m about to go on a first date next week and I have these huge ugly pimples on my face. In this kind of dire situation, I’d happily shell out my hard earned money to get fast solutions so that I can have a neat and clean pimple-free face.

Now, one way to see what problems people are having is by visiting forums. After all, forums are places where people with the same interests (and problems) hang around!

Let’s take the above example where I’m in the VERY dire situation to get pimples cleared fast.

Go to Google and type “acne forum”. Look through the sites returned by Google.

As a rule of thumb, look through forums that have the following criteria:

1. Alexa Rank

Alexa rank is simply a measure of how much traffic a site is getting. It is not the most accurate thing in the world, but it gives us a picture of how well a particular site is doing in terms of traffic relative to other sites.

If you haven’t installed the Alexa toolbar on your Firefox browser yet, then my advice is to do it now. The toolbar is Free and it’s a great tool to add to your Internet marketing arsenal.

Go to Alexa

Click the “Get Sparky” button and follow the simple steps to install your Alexa toolbar.

When looking for forums, strive to find those with Alexa rank less than 1 million. The less the Alexa rank the better.

At the time of this writing, Yahoo has an Alexa rank of 1, Google 2, and YouTube 3. This means that Yahoo is the most visited site on the planet, Google the second most visited site, and YouTube the third most visited site.

2. How Many Members Are Registered At The Forum

The more registered members the better, because you can gain more insights to the different problems faced by these members.

This way, you can read through the posts to find potential big problems that your product could cater to meet the needs of these people who are desperately seeking solutions.

Strive to find at least 5000 registered members. The more registered members the better.

3. How Many Page Views Are There?

When you land on a forum homepage, typically it will have sub-forums. In our acne forum example, you could have sub-forums on different sub-topics.

For example, using Google I found this acne forum, which is further categorized into sub-forums:

You can see that there are sub-forums on “acne treatments”, “adult acne”, “acne scars”, etc.

Go into one of the sub-forums:

You can see that one of the posts has a VERY high page views (4,524) as seen above. This would be a great thread (post) to browse through to find potential problems these “acne people” are having.

Generally speaking, the more page views the better.

4. How Many Replies Are There?

The more replies to a specific thread (post) the better for you when doing research to discover problems faced by these people.

Why?

Because more replies mean that the topic being discussed is more popular than other topics.

When time is limited, strive to read those threads with more replies first. If time permits, then you can, of course, browse through other threads as well.

In this article, you’ve learned how to discover potential problems people have using the power of forum research. Once you have a rough idea about their problems, you can even post a thread in the forum asking if they would be interested in such and such a product or service, which of course is the product or service you will be offering to them in the near future.

In the next article, I’ll be covering how to market your product or service to these people, which is called effective forum marketing.

Stay tuned…

Be Specific Please…

Which do you think sounds better and more convincing?

“Lose 20 pounds in 10 days”

Or

“Lose a lot of weight in a short period of time”?

If you are like most people, of course the first statement sounds better and more convincing.

Why?

Well, it’s because the first statement uses specifics. Losing 20 pounds in 10 days is much more specific than simply saying “lose a lot of weight in a short period of time”.

In fact, the latter statement sounds very vague. How much is a lot of weight? What is considered a short period of time?

For someone, losing 20 pounds is a lot whereas to another person it may be very little.

For John, a short period of time is less than a week while Peter thinks that one day is a “short period of time”.

Do you see where I’m going with this? And do you know why practicing specifics are much better than not using specifics (of course this depends on the situation, but in the example above, it’s certainly a lot better to use specifics)?

It’s because when you are specific, it adds more credibility. The more specific you get, the more detailed the information will be. People trust you more when you are more specific.

Think about it for a second.

If you were an overweight person looking for ways to reduce your weight, and you were presented with the above two offers, which one would you buy trust more and eventually buy from?

Of course the first one, which is “Lose 20 pounds in 10 days”!

Generally speaking a person who is lying will find it more difficult to practice specifics, compared to someone who is practicing specifics based on true events that happened.

Don’t you agree?

So how can this benefit your business?

When constructing offers, be it sales letters or squeeze pages, it would be a lot better if you use specifics as opposed to simply providing general information which anyone can just come up on the top of their heads.

For sales letter, I’m pretty sure that if you were to add some specific information (especially numbers) to your marketing message, you can increase your sales percentage.

For squeeze page, the same principle applies. The more specific you get, the more credible it will be, and provided everything else stays the same, I’ll bet that your opt-in rate will increase.

When you are setting goals or targets, be specific as well. (By the way, the beginning of the year (which is now) is always a popular time to set new goals and targets for the year ahead). When your goals are specific, it will be easier to achieve.

For example, if your goal is to achieve a net profit of $5000/month from your business, it is going to be easier to achieve than if your goal is to simply “earn more money”.

Do you see the difference?

When you set a specific goal, your mind can visualize easier and hence work toward that goal much more efficiently. If you merely set a goal to “earn more money”, your brain will be confused as to what exactly constitutes “more money”.

Does earning $10 more per month constitutes as earning more money? It certainly is in English terms!

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…

Crazy Guru Promo Emails

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.

Before you can engage in email marketing though, you need to have your squeeze page created and set up so that it’s ready to collect leads and subscribers.

If I showed you a way on how you can do exactly that in 2 minutes FLAT, would you be interested?

See the proof here

Also, if you want STEP-BY-STEP guidance on how you can REPLACE YOUR JOB FAST with an Internet business, check out my GOLD Coaching where you’ll receive DIGESTIBLE, WEEKLY training lessons so that you don’t get overwhelmed with too much information at one go.

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