eBusiness, News, Articles and Reviews

Just think for a moment about the last time you bought a major item in a store. Did you consider several options first? Did you visit a variety of stores to check prices? Did you chat with a sales assistant to get some questions clarified?

If you are like most people who buy a major item, you will have done all three. But where, exactly, did you buy your big purchase? Was it the cheapest store? Perhaps. Was it the biggest store? Perhaps. Was it the store with the best reputation? Perhaps. What is almost certain - because research shows us this is true - you are most likely to have bought the item from the store where you liked the sales assistant the most. Why do you buy from WalMart? You like the people there. Why do you go to Maceys? You like the way you are treated there. Selling is a people thing.

The truth is we buy from people we like. The same is true on the Internet. Your web site will be judged on what kind of person you are and whether or not you are likeable. If you are, you stand a chance of increasing your sales.

So how do you get people to like you online, when you can’t be with them, face to face, unlike in a retail store?

The first step is to build reputation. You need to get known. If people start perceiving you to be an “expert” in your field, they will start to trust you and will begin to like you. So how do you get known?

You need to have your name spread widely around the Internet, so that people get to know you and what you represent. This means writing articles, including private label content, as well as contributing to forums, chat rooms and so on. The more you contribute, the more people will see you as the expert.

Once you are established and your name is associated with your particular field, you will find it much easier to sell things on your web site. That’s because people will associate your “expertise” with your web site and what you are selling. Suddenly they are buying from someone they “know” rather than from an unknown sales guy.

In other words you will gain the same advantage as a physical store. You will have created the opportunity to be liked. By getting a name for yourself and becoming a visible “expert” you will become likeable and will therefore be able to sell more online.

More and more people are realizing that the Internet offers great potential to set up a healthy business for pennies on the dollar. This is good news for internet marketers - but it also means that they need to lift their game.

Why? Because the would-be “netpreneur” has access to way more training than ever before. It’s possible to get up to speed very quickly on what is needed to get started online. This, in turn, means that people quickly recognize what offers true value and what does not. They see so many sales letters that they become, to a certain degree, immune to the typical hype. They’re willing to spend - but they want value for money. They want to be treated like intelligent and discerning adults.

So here’s a message to all ‘gurus’ (and aspiring gurus) who are keen to get their share of the dollars waiting to be sent flying their way via cyberspace.

1) What does it take to make people want to buy “you” rather than some other internet marketer?

2) What might make people want to unsubscribe from your list?

3) And what pushes them into asking for a refund?

What Makes People Want to Buy?

- They buy if they can see that a product will give them new knowledge and understanding.

- They buy if the purchase will speed up business growth.

- They buy if a product will automate a task that eats into their time. (People quickly learn to spend their time on marketing and product creation, rather than repetitive tasks.)

Tip: Once newbies have been exposed to a few sales pages, it’s not long before they learn to look beyond the sales hype. They study a sales letter carefully to work out what the product will “really” offer them. (Do they need this? Or will it duplicate something else they own?)

They also learn to look for value for money. Some higher-priced products are worth every cent. Some cheaper products add very little to what they already know.

(Note: Savvy internet marketers already realize that if they put together online interviews offering truly valuable information, they are far more likely to attract and keep new customers. A quick example: Jane Smith listens to a one-hour audio interview on search engine optimization and traffic. She finds out some really useful information she has not so far heard anywhere else. She decides that this guy knows what he’s talking about and shells out a couple of hundred dollars for his products.)

What Makes People Want to Unsubscribe from a List?

- Getting four identical emails trying to sell them the same product, because the sender hasn’t figured out how to move them from one list to another after they buy.

- Getting a ‘canned’ email sounding full of excitement about a new product or service - which turns out to be a duplicate of the email they get from six other marketers who are affiliates for the same product.

- Getting email from a product creator about anything under the sun because you bought XXX product from them. If your customers sign up for a newsletter, they expect mailings.

What Makes People Want to Ask for a Refund?

In the past, buyers tended to shrug and write off a bad purchase. But increasingly, people are prepared to stand up for their rights. If they feel they have not received value for money, they will ask for a refund.

So what makes them decide to ask for their money back?

- Software that doesn’t work as it is supposed to.

- Physical products (CDs, DVDs) that don’t work on their systems.

- An e-book that is full of content easily found in an hour’s net-surfing.

- An e-book that has skimped on content or that has been poorly written.

- An e-book that not only skimps on content but is full of links to up-sells to get the ‘really valuable’ information, or is full of affiliate links.

The last case, an e-book full of affiliate links or links to an up-sell…is something you should be giving away free as part of your viral marketing campaign. Charge for it and you risk your reputation for being a source of quality information.

Other things that bite into your customer’s valuable time.

- MP3’s that are streamed from a website rather than being downloadable.

- e-books that are in “.exe” format only, so the customer can’t print them out in one ‘hit’ (and can’t access them on a Mac computer).

Give your clients anything that they can listen to or read away from the computer. Most of them spend enough hours a day at the keyboard already. They’d rather load an audio interview into their MP3 players and listen while they go for a walk or relax in the sun. They’d prefer to print out an e-book and read it or mark it up while sitting in an easy chair.

Please, please don’t tether them to the computer!

And finally, about those “name squeeze” pages. People are very quickly getting tired of having to give up their email addresses just to get to a sales page. Do you want them to buy or not? These days, unless there’s a huge buzz around the Net and they want to see what it’s all about, prospective customers are just as likely to click the ‘back’ button on their browser, or close the window and leave.

After all, there’s always another internet marketer waiting to sell them a product. Probably one very similar to yours. Marketers who respect their client’s time and intelligence are the ones who will get their loyalty - and their cash.

Keen users of Private Label Rights content are delighted to see more and more PLR sites appearing. The proliferation of such sites has, however, given rise to a new problem - the overall quality of the articles users pay for. Good (and reliable) writers are snapped up fast and given ongoing work. Regrettably, some PLR site owners seem to be only concerned with getting a batch of articles uploaded no matter what the quality.

Competition, as we all know, is a GOOD thing. Quite a number of PLR users are now making a practice of signing up to check out the quality of what’s on offer in a new site. If they like it, they stay. If they don’t - they vote with their feet, or more appropriately, with the ‘cancel this subscription’ option at PayPal.)

=== Your Rights as a PLR Site Subscriber ===

Don’t feel that you have to accept the articles you get no matter what the quality. You are entitled to get articles and/or ebooks that have been proofread and edited to correct grammar and spelling. It is the responsibility of the PLR site owner to check that the articles are of an acceptable standard (or to hire someone to do this for them).

PLR users expect to have to tweak and change an article to create unique website content. They should not, however, have to edit every article. We all expect an error to creep in here and there - but an entire batch of articles written by someone whose language is quite obviously NOT English is not acceptable. Nobody wants to have to copy-edit every one of 20 articles before turning them into an e-book!

=== What You Can Do If You Are Not Satisfied With the Quality of PLR Content ===

The first and most obvious option is to cancel your subscription. However, you would be doing everyone a favor if you took the time to contact the site owner to explain why you are not happy. Copy and paste a few examples from the articles to demonstrate the errors.

In the past, PLR site owners have sent back batches of articles to be corrected and/or rewritten when they are not satisfied with the job. In extreme cases, they cut their losses and just hire a new writer. Any PLR site owner who wants to build a profitable and well-regarded business will be interested in working with you on this - they don’t want to lose customers!

If you can’t get any satisfaction, move on. Sample the content of several sites. Ask for recommendations from friends or other publishers before you sign up. (Look for more than one satisfied customer - never forget that some reviews are there solely to get you to sign up via the reviewer’s affiliate link.)

=== Find a Site to Satisfy Your Personal Needs ===

Different sites offer different things. Some sites offer articles and completed e-books, sales letters, and well-produced graphics. Others provide only articles and a few bonus products.

If you are a competent graphic designer and know your way around programs like Photoshop, graphics may not be important to you. (Indeed, you may prefer to create your own graphics so your site looks different to everyone else’s.) Some sites offer ‘extras’ like web hosting and autoresponders, plus ready-made AdSense sites. If you are just starting out, you may like these all-in-one solutions.

Check out the following:

- What you get for your monthly subscription - articles, e-books, e-courses, AdSense sites, graphics and sales letters.
- The quality of the articles that are immediately available - general style, grammar, and spelling.
- Is the content original (not copied from some other source)?
- The regularity with which content is posted. (Check out the forum, if there’s one available. Are there constant complaints or queries about when this month’s content will be available?)
- The range of topics covered. You will find that some sites specialize in one subject area, while others cover a broad range of topics. Are you using enough of the monthly content to make it worth your while? There’s not much point in being able to access 200 articles a month if you can use only five of them.

It’s common for PLR users to belong to more than one site. An example: $200 a month spread between four to six sites comes to only $2,400 a year - which is an excellent business investment compared to the cost of hiring your own writer. Well-written, carefully-edited PLR articles are usually well worth the monthly fee. Take the time to assess the content of any PLR site - and stay with the ones that believe in quality control.

Promoting your online business does not have to be a difficult task…Just follow some simple steps and your exposure will increase in no time.

Often however there is a belief that promoting your online business will be a costly exercise especially when you’re first starting out but many pomotional ways have a nominal cost, let’s consider the top five ways.

Firstly, before you even consider using one of these strategies, there are two things you must first do.

1) Write a formal marketing plan. When writing your marketing plan, consider the who, what, when, and how you will do your selling and get your brand in front of your customer. Then decide which of the following strategies you will implement in that plan and explain how you plan to carry out those strategies.

2) The other thing you need to consider is search engine optimization. The sooner you get started with optimizing your site, the faster it will get ranked. Until some of your pages are ranked in the search engines, your traffic will remain minimal.

The Top 5 Ways to Promote Your Online Business.

1. Find Your Niche. Imagine trying to sell your product or service to the entire world. Consider the marketing budgets of companies like Coca-Cola and McDonalds, these are companies that are trying to appeal to everyone. Selling your product or service to a small but focused group of people will allow you the luxury of advertising to a smaller but more interested group of people. Since they are more interested, a higher percentage of the group will buy but you will have spent less money pursuing the smaller group. Once you are successful selling to one niche, if your product or service is appealing to another niche, you can create another website and repeat your success using the same strategies you used on the first website.

2. Link Exchanges. Exchanging links with other websites that have complimentary products or services will not only give you direct traffic from the link but it will also help you with your pursuit to get ranked in the search engines. At the time of this writing, Google is the most widely used search engine, and it’s widely known that they consider the number of links pointing to your website as part of the determination where to rank your website.

3. Write Articles. Writing articles with information that is interesting and useful for your niche market will help you gain traffic to your site. When writing an article, include a resource box at the end of the article that includes information about the author (that’s you) and a link to your website. Then distribute the article to article directories for other website owners to use on their site or in their newsletters and ezines. This does two things, you gain traffic when someone sees your article on another website and clicks your link and you get a link that points back to your site for the search engines to use to rank your site higher.

4. Using a Signature Line in Online Forums. This is a strategy that could be quite time consuming so don’t let it take up huge amounts of your time, however it is quite effective in drawing traffic to your website. Join forums and messageboards that are useful to your niche market and then become part of the community. When you make a post, be sure it’s useful and relevant to the information that is being discussed, then at the bottom of your post, sign-off with your name and little blurb about your company with a link to your website. These are often referred to as “sig lines”. Be sure to read the forum’s guidelines to be sure you’re using the proper etiquette in the forum and to be sure signature lines are allowed. If they are not allowed, do not use this strategy in that forum as it could cause you to be banned from that forum.

5. Start A Newsletter. Having a newsletter is one of the best ways to market to your customers and potential customers. You will need to have a service that will host your list and allow you to send your newsletter. Then you put a sign-up box on your website and your visitors will sign-up. Periodically, you decide how often, you send those who have signed up an email with information that is relevant to your niche. This information could be general info or it could be specifically about your product. To get your visitors to sign-up you can offer a special report, e-course, ebook or anything that would entice them to give you their email address.

It’s not rocket science, just simple practical steps but each and every one will contribute in assisting you to gain some recognition online…get started today and start gaining the rewards as soon as tomorrow.