It doesn’t matter whether your business is online or off; having your own list of customers or prospective customers means that you can get them to visit your website, blog, or store on command. This ability to summon traffic on command can keep your income steady through good times with Google and the not-so-good times…

In This Exclusive Mom’s Talk Biz Guide, You’ll Discover:

• Why you should build a list. It is common to hear everyone talking about building a list is the “thing” to do, but if you don’t understand the reasons, you won’t be as motivated to do so.
• Make A One-Time Customer Into A Lifetime Customer. The difference between the customers who buy from you one time and those who buy from you multiple times is oftentimes the amount of  communication they receive after their initial transaction.
• Use List Building To Grow Your Income. With a list you can get people to look at special offers and new products whenever you’d like. Simply sending out an email to your list can pull in cash on demand.
• List Building Do’s and Don’ts. You will learn some of the most common list building mistakes that are made and how correcting these can mean the difference between a solid, unbreakable relationship with your list and having a list full of people who simply delete your e-mails and unsubscribe.
• Relationship Building Secrets. You know it’s important to build a relationship with your list but it isn’t always easy. You’ll learn tips that will help you gain the trust of your readers and most people only buy from those they trust.

Those are just a few. You’ll learn many more tips in this 55 page eBook on mailing list strategies.

Follow these proven traffic tips so that you can start seeing traffic to your website. Once you put these tips into action, you’ll see an increase in traffic, which, over time will continue to grow…

In This Exclusive Mom’s Talk Biz Guide, You’ll Discover:

• Article marketing. It’s one of  the easiest but best ways to bring traffic to your website. You will learn tips on the basics of article marketing.
• Getting Traffic Through Pay Per Click. Pay per click isn’t free. You will pay for the visitors to your site through the pay per click service.
• Web 2.0 Websites. These are simply sites that rely on user generated content (Facebook, MySpace, etc). You will learn how to use these sites to generate traffic.
• Forum Marketing. Also known as message boards. This is a great way to generate traffic to your site from people in your niche.
• Directory Submission. Submitting your website to directories is a great way to generate traffic. These directories have visitors who love to find websites they are interested in by just browsing through the directory.

And that’s just a few of the things you will learn in this Mom’s Talk Biz guide!

In This Exclusive Mom’s Talk Biz Guide, You’ll Discover:

• All writers struggle with writer’s block – but we’ve got ideas to help you past it.
• How to incorporate Hot Topics into your information products. (And what those Hot Topics are!)
• How to generate fresh ideas for your ebook through research.
• The importance of organizing and outlining your content.
• Keys to staying motivated all the way through til the end.
• How to seek out guest content and use joint ventures for greater success.

If you have an online business and you crave a new way to generate income – launching your own information based product is a great way to do it – and my program will take you through the steps, from idea to sales page in just six weeks!

Learn How To Hold A Live Teleseminar/Webinar Event AND Create A Great Information Product At The Same Time.

If you want to brand yourself as an expert and develop a coaching practice – creating your own unique product is an excellent first step!

In 42 Power Packed Days You Will:

• Create & release Articles
• Create & release a Special Report
• Create & release a Press Release
• Set up a ‘Name Squeeze/Burning Question’ Page
• Create an Autoresponder Sequence
• Plan & Hold a Live $1 Seminar Event
• Create Bonus Resources
• Create a short Sales Letter
• Bundle your Recording, Transcripts & Extras into a Product

You can learn more about this product by visiting 42 Day Launch Incubator.

Sell Your Own or Wholesale Products

If you manufacture your own product, you can sell it online. Or you can save yourself manufacturing costs and hassle by purchasing ready-made products at wholesale prices. Just take into consideration the extra work and storage space involved with carrying a product line. You can always purchase dropshipped wholesale products (the wholesaler ships only when you make a sale), but that usually carries a low profit margin.

The other suggestions in this article don’t carry the require of inventory and extra workload…

Direct Sales Products

Direct sales companies offer great support and a proven product in many cases which makes starting your business with them a nice idea. That being said, remember to check with any company you are considering joining with to be sure they allow sales online. If so, set up your own website and start selling. You must be willing to promote your website in order for the online side of sales to work, however so learning the ins and outs of marketing online, just as with any other type of business, is important.

Information Products

Also known as info products, these include ebooks, audio or video recordings, guides, reports, etc. that teach someone how to do something or explain something in detail.  Most times, info products are sold in a form that allows the buyer to immediately receive their purchase by means of downloading them from your website. You can also sell info products in the form of physical products such as CDs, hard cover books, manuals, etc. that can be shipped to the buyer. It’s easy to make an info product business 100 percent online by offering everything in a downloadable format.

Affiliate Sales

Do you have a blog or informational website already? If so, have you considered selling other people’s products on your site? Many business owners have affiliate programs that allow other you to refer their products or services to others. In return they will pay you a commission when someone uses your referral and makes a purchase.  This carries the benefit of not having to fulfill orders or having to offer customer service. You just focus on promoting.

Just search for the type of product you want to sell + “affiliate program” on a search engine – you’ll see plenty of options.

Services

Whether it is administrative services, bookkeeping, web design, copywriting, or some other service you perform, the chances that you can sell it online is a good one. By creating a professional website that explains your services and marketing it to your potential clients, you’ll be one step ahead of others who are looking to offer their talents online as well.

Need to Build Your Website?

Looking for an even easier option to build your web pages? Take the comprehensive website builder for a 10-day test trial. You can choose from over 1200 templates and your account includes all kinds of interactive features including: message board, shopping cart, mailing list, coupons and more.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty darned difficult until you have determined who your target market is and what they want and need from you. So, how do you find out what type of person readily buys your products or services? Keep reading for tips to aid in growing your online business by getting to know your target customer.

Talk to Your Current Customers

The first thing you can do, if you already have paying customers, is find out what they really are all about. Determine what they want and need from you. There are many ways to do this. A few of which include:

• Creating surveys and asking for their thoughts and opinions on your product or service after they make a purchase.
• Another way is to utilize your mailing list and ask them what they would like to see more of from you in an email.

You Can Still Research Even if You Don’t Have Any Customers…YET.

So, what happens if you haven’t sold your first product yet or you want to additional exploration? A great way to determine who your target customer is to make a list of your product or service’s benefits. Find out what your product or service does for a person. Some examples of this include saving them time, getting them in shape, etc. (i.e. helping them fix a particular problem or fulfill a burning desire) and more. Figure out what you can do for your future customers to make their lives easier, better, longer, etc.

When your list is complete, evaluate it. Let’s say for instance you sold beauty products that reduced wrinkles and made your customer look younger. Your target market would probably be women in their 40s or older. By listing even more benefits you can go even more specific with your market and really zone in on the perfect customer for your beauty products. You might even realize you can have more than one target market and that’s ok, especially since you are doing business online. This makes advertising and creating more than one site for each of your markets easy and inexpensive.

Finding Out What’s Already Out There

You can also conduct keyword and/or market research. There are many ways to do this including keyword research, reading magazines, reading reviews and visiting forums, social networking sites and other discussion groups. Browse around and see what it is people are looking for by visiting other websites. Even your competitors can give you great insight.

No matter how you come up with your target market, remember to take the time to put yourself in your potential customer’s shoes. Whether you’re just starting out with a new product or are making changes to your existing service, don’t be afraid to talk to people out there to find out just exactly who the target market for your online business really is.

Need to Build Your Website?

Looking for an even easier option to build your web pages? Take the comprehensive website builder for a 10-day test trial. You can choose from over 1200 templates and your account includes all kinds of interactive features including: message board, shopping cart, mailing list, coupons and more.

Question 1: How much commission should I offer in my affiliate program?

How much you offer will depend on the amount you can afford, taking into consideration the lifetime value of a customer, what your competition is doing and how attractive you can make your offer.

As a general statement, information products usually have a higher commission rate – often between 25-50% with the higher end being more common. Consumer products with smaller profit margins can be as low as 5%, but don’t often go above 20%.

But what you charge should be based on your own unique business. Here are some more things to help you come to a decision:

Sometimes it’s okay to pay a bit more for a first-time customer who will buy from you over and over again.

Always see what your competition is offering, but you don’t have to get into a commission war. Just make you can make your program very attractive through good conversion rates, unique and useful promotional tools and other attractive features.

Question 2: What kind of affiliate tools should I provide to my affiliates?

The simplest answer is: Give them what they want.

Talk to your affiliates and see what they need to serve their unique audience needs, and where possible, provide it to them.

For hard-hitting promotions, you can craft email copy, conduct live teleseminars with content and sales pitch, special reports, etc.

For the content-starved webmaster (and there are plenty out there), give them things like articles, free ebooks and other informational content.

The important thing is to listen to your affiliates and watch which tools convert best.

Question 3: Can I have an affiliate program with a service-based business?

Sure you can. If you have a profit margin or a lifetime customer value that allows you to pay commissions, certainly.

If you have services available that are at a set price, it’s easy to automate everything and run your program, just like a product-based one.

If you charge by the hour or have to give project estimates, it’s a little tougher to automate completely.

Here are a few options:

- Have a script that can track who referred your potential client to you. Ex. Affiliate recommends your service through a tracking link. Potential client clicks the link, checks out your website and fills out a form for more information. Your system tells you who referred the client and if they purchase your services, you can give the affiliate a commission.

- You could do it as a pay-per-lead opportunity where the affiliate is paid a smaller fee for every person that fills out the form for more information. This would be easy to automate in most affiliate systems that can handle pay-per-lead transactions.

- Don’t want to go with a full-blown affiliate program? You can institute a client referral program where you simply allow your clients to recommend your service, in return for credit for services. When a new client comes to you, you ask where they heard about you and you add a credit to your referring client’s account

An affiliate force is an incredibly powerful thing and when you consider you don’t have to pay affiliates anything until they produce results for you, it’s one of the best deals going in Internet marketing today. Plan your program well and you’ll soon have your own active force of affiliates bringing you new customers every day.

For more answers to your questions about starting and running your own profitable affiliate program that your affiliates will love, claim your copy of Alice Seba’s step-by-step Affiliate Manager Sweetie course.

You need to speak directly to your target audience and give them the information they are looking for.

Writing for the Web Requires a Different Approach

Internet surfers are continuously looking for information and a solution to their problems. If they’re going to buy anything from you, you need to establish yourself as a credible and informative resource, who also happens to have a terrific product. Speak directly to the needs and desires of your visitor and you will have a captivated audience.

A Few Tips:

1. Talk to your customer – Avoid focusing on yourself. You are irrelevant. Tell your customer how she will benefit from using your product. Use the word “you” and you can be certain you are speaking directly to your customer.

2. Understand your target customer – Understand what motivates your customer and write from their perspective. Don’t try to appeal to everyone. You’ll get better results when you can speak directly the pains and problems your potential customer has than trying generic copy to sell to a wide variety of people.

3. Get attention – You can do this with a good headline and sub-headlines. That way, people will know instantly if you have what they are looking for. Forget cute and clever headlines…give your visitors the straight goods.

4. Keep it simple – Use short sentences and simple words. Your visitors eyes tire easily. Be kind to them! Break up your paragraphs and create plenty of white space.

5. Be casual – The web not the place for a formal essay. Write as you speak and be friendly with your visitor. Do double-check your spelling and follow most grammar rules, but keep the tone light, especially when your target is a more casual group.

6. Set yourself apart from the competition – What makes your product unique?

7. Prove it! – Add testimonials, sales statistics and anything else that proves your claims.

8. Create a sense of urgency – If people don’t sense urgency, they aren’t likely to click on your link. Limited time offers are perfect or showing your potential customer can no longer wait to solve her problem, can be effective. Make sure your potential customers feel the need to click on your link now.

Recommended for Further Study:

For more help with your copywriting and creating a website that people will stick around to read and buy from, check out Alice Seba’s Copywriting Sweetie. It comes complete with software and training to help you sell more of your product to customers who will buy from you over and over again.

Or do you?

You may have heard people say that testimonials don’t work or that when they see a website they never read the testimonials. I believe that’s true – on websites that don’t use testimonials effectively. If you see a site that says:

“I love it.” -  Jan

“This is the best ever”

“This is going to be a great product.” -  Jim Bob, Florida

….then yeah, I’d skip over that too. To be effective, a testimonial needs to include concrete detail and be believable. Let’s discuss these two items:

Concrete Detail

The problem with the testimonials above is that they don’t really say anything. It simply says they liked the product. And in the third, case it sounds like Jim Bob hasn’t even tried the product…he just thinks it’s going to be good. That’s not effective at all.

Testimonials should include information about how your customer used the product and the results she achieved. When you ask for feedback on your product, ask your customer specific questions, so you can formulate a well-written testimonial from the information you gather.

Here’s some example questions – and these may not apply to all products, but it gives you an idea of what I’m talking about:

1.      How long have you been using the product?

2.      How has XXXX improved since starting to use the product?

3.      How do you use the product (ex. at work, to relieve pain, etc)?

4.      How much time do you invest in using the product on a weekly basis?

5.      What is the most helpful/useful part of the product?

6.      What would you say to someone who is interested in buying the product.

7.      What other information would you like to share with us?

You can ask whatever questions you’d like, but ask specific questions, so you can get specific details.

Believability

The problem with the 3 example testimonials I gave earlier is that they aren’t believable. Who’s Jan? Who’s Jim Bob? Are they real people or a figment of someone’s imagination? The second one didn’t even have a name. You need to add as much information about your customer as possible in order to make your testimonials believable. If you think your customers won’t offer this information…you’ll probably be surprised and won’t know until you ask. 10 mediocre testimonials are not nearly as effective as 3 great ones. So, if fewer people say yes to offering their personal information, that’s just fine.

Here’s some information you should try to collect. You don’t have to have every item for every testimonial, but try to get as much as possible.

1. Full name (first and last)
2. Location (city/state, etc)
3. Photo
4. Proof – If there is a way to show the proof of results, get it. For example, for a weight loss product, you can have before and after pictures. For an child’s educational product, you can have scanned report cards. For a money-making product, you can show screenshots of bank accounts (with personal info removed), etc.

What to Do Next

Start by asking your customers for feedback on the product. Present them with a small questionnaire and offer them a small free gift (a special report, coupon or something else your customers would like) to complete it. You can be upfront and tell them that by submitting the questionnaire that they agree that you can publish their comments on your website, but be clear that you are looking for ALL honest feedback about the product…not simply glowing reviews. Make sure it is clear that you are not offering a bribe in return for the good feedback.

It’s up to you on whether you want to collect the personal information (full name, location, photos and proof) along with the questionnaire. If you collect it immediately, it will save you time from going back and asking for it later. If you decide to collect it later, make sure your customer provides an email address or some other contact information, so you can be in touch.

Then, when you’re ready – publish the chosen testimonials on your website and watch the results.

Recommended for Further Study:

For more help with your copywriting and creating a website that people will stick around to read and buy from, check out Alice Seba’s Copywriting Sweetie. It comes complete with software and training to help you sell more of your product to customers who will buy from you over and over again.

Still, you don’t want to make sure that your website is presentable and will motivate people to buy your product, sign up for your mailing list or whatever you want them to do

Here’s some quick pointers:

1. Do you have attention-getting headlines?

If your website says, “Welcome to MySite.com” – go back and find something that will immediately grab your visitors attention and make them want to stay and read more.

2. Avoid distractions and excessive navigation.

When a visitor hits your website, you want them to follow certain actions. If you give too many choices with a ton of links, they’ll end up going elsewhere on your site or just leave altogether. When people are presented with too many choices, they often make no choice at all. That’s not good for your website.

3. Make sure you have a call to action.

Each page of your website should direct your visitor on what to do next. Whether it’s to buy a product or join your mailing list…make sure they know what to do next.

4. Study copywriting.

It will be one of your most powerful sales tools. You can’t interact with all of your website visitors personally, so your website needs to do the selling for you. Look at other websites and see which sites really grab you and hold your attention. Use these ideas as a starting point.

Perfection isn’t really required before getting started, but be ready to make improvements as you go along.

Recommended for Further Study:

For more help with your copywriting and creating a website that people will stick around to read and buy from, check out Alice Seba’s Copywriting Sweetie. It comes complete with software and training to help you sell more of your product to customers who will buy from you over and over again.