September 21 02 SBC Home Business Newsletter

September 21, 2002

Table of Contents

Featured Resource - HP LEARNING CENTER

Staff Article - CAN AFFILIATE SITES BE "STICKY?"
Guest Article - THE TOP 10 REASONS WHY YOUR INTERNET MARKETING IS FAILING...AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT
Parting Comments

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Featured Resource

HP LEARNING CENTER

Want to learn a new programming language? Or maybe how to use PhotoShop more effectively? Perhaps you just need to sharpen your Excel skils? The HP Learning Center is just the resource you need. You will find an excellent variety of free online classes that are changed monthly so your possible selections will always be fresh.

http://www.hplearningcenter.com/

Staff Article

CAN AFFILIATE SITES BE "STICKY?"
by: Cary Christian

For many of you, your site is an affiliate site. Others among you have your own site but use it to advertise your affiliate programs. Some of you sell your own products in addition to affiliate programs.

You work hard to get people to visit your site. Regardless of which type of site you use, it costs you time, money or both to get people to it. Knowing that most people need to hear or read your message about seven times before they will buy, do you ever think about how to get these people to come back?

Repeat visitors are well on the way to becoming customers. If you build your repeat traffic, your sales conversion rates will improve dramatically.

Typically, people will attempt to make their site "sticky" to get people to come back. How do you make a site "sticky?" You can offer lots of free content that people will come back to read, or games that people come back to play. You can offer free downloads that change every week so that people will come back at least once every week to see what the freebie is. You can also make your site a resource that people refer to when they have questions about the subject matter you are involved in.

Anything you can place on your site to make people want to return makes it "sticky." Hopefully, in the process of referring back to your site some of your visitors will also become customers. At least you have given yourself a chance to convert them.

If you don't have your own site and instead rely on the sites provided to you by your affiliate programs, you don't have any of these options. So what do you do?

First of all, you need to get your own site. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you're serious about making money online, you need your own site. It gives you credibility and a way to set yourself apart from the masses who are promoting the same programs.

It's not expensive to have your own site these days and you don't have to be a programmer to create one. If you don't have one and are ready to make the plunge, check out SiteBuildIt at http://buildit.sitesell.com/peaksbc.html You'll get everything you need including submissions to all the major search engines.

Start out with a "mini site" to promote your favorite affiliate program. Offer your visitors a reason to join with you or buy products from you rather than the thousands of other affiliates you compete with.

Think about it. As a visitor, are you going to be more impressed with the affiliate whose advertising directs you to the same old tired site every other affiliate uses or the affiliate who has taken the time to take you to their own site and offer you more?

As you progress, you may choose to go in one of two ways: a series of mini sites or a content site.

With a series of mini sites, you basically create a new site for every affiliate program or product you want to sell. Each site becomes a sales page and contains nothing but copy to push the product the site is dedicated to.

In this situation you are not all that interested in getting visitors to return. They will either buy, bookmark to come back later or leave to never return again. If they bookmark, they are doing so because your site has almost convinced them to buy but they want to think about it a little more. Some will return and buy but probably not all that many. This type of site is designed to sell first time or not at all.

If you use mini sites in this manner, you do not want to try to make the mini site sticky. I know that goes against the grain of this article topic, but there is good reason. This type of site works best when it is totally focused on one product and one product only, with no distractions whatsoever. If you clutter up a mini site with content, you will dilute its effectiveness.

A content site is just the opposite. You will offer several different products and programs among the content you have created. This allows you to get your products in front of people multiple times so you don't have to concentrate on making the sale immediately.

There is also a way to get multiple exposures when using mini sites. The idea is to pre-qualify your visitors before they visit your site so they are already more receptive to your pitch. You would do this by using an autoresponder.

Get yourself a series of messages related to your products. These could be an email course of some kind, product information, tips on using the types of products you sell, or anything else that would be interesting to your target market.

Then, instead of advertising your site directly, advertise your site in the autoresponder messages. This gives you multiple shots at the sale and helps your visitors get to know you and your products better.

There is also one other option that makes a great deal of sense: create both! Build yourself a content site and make it sticky, then create mini sites for each of your major products. This gives you the best of both worlds.

Copyright (c) 2002

Guest Article

THE TOP 10 REASONS WHY YOUR INTERNET MARKETING IS FAILING...AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT

By Terry Dean

For a change of pace this week, we are doing our top 10 list of reasons why your internet marketing campaign is failing and what you can do about it...

10) You haven't done anything yet!

This is the best place to start in a list like this...A lot of people have slapped a website together and just put it up on a free server without ever doing any type of promotion for it. You have to promote your website.

Even if you don't have any money, you can still place Free Classifieds & Links, submit to search engines, and participate in chat rooms, forums, and newsgroups. There are so many free ways of advertising online, it is shameful that the average website only gets 100 hits a year!

9) You don't accept credit cards!

If you want to do business in the 90's, you have to accept credit cards. If you aren't currently accepting credit cards, many of your customers will look at your business and see it as a very small time operation.

It used to be difficult to get a merchant account if you were a new business or had anything less than "A+" credit. Now, with new merchant account providers out there, anyone is able to get a merchant account, so you have NO excuse for not accepting credit cards. Check out http://www.bizpromo.com/ for more information on accepting credit cards today!

8) You don't have secure ordering pages!

Someone comes to your website, they are excited by your products, they are ready to order...AND then you make them send an order in by mail! You must be kidding... there is no worse way to lose the sale than this.

If you don't currently have secure ordering forms on your website, you can go to http://www.gta-tech.com for FREE secure ordering forms. This is a resource you shouldn't skip over because I know many people who are paying $10 - $20 monthly for secure ordering sites and they are Free from this company.

7) You don't have your own domain name!

WHAT? You haven't ordered your own domain yet...Well, get busy. This should honestly be one of your very first expenses. Having your own domain name gives your business it's own identity instead of just being a /member/ of a free web host.

Plus, if you ever desire to changes hosts, your domain comes with you. If you change hosts from a free server, your name and traffic stay behind. You are essentially starting over in your online business. For low cost monthly domain hosting, check out Virtualis at http://www.virtualisys.com/vr/tdean2/

6) You have a confusing website!

Way too many webmasters have too many products online, too many pictures, and too many links. The longer I am online, the more I learn that simplicity is the key. We often try to make it way too difficult for ourselves and our prospects.

You will be better off if you try to focus only on one or two products on your website and then use your other products for backends of the main products.

5) You don't give people any reason to come back to your website!

Is your website just one big sales presentation or do you include free information in it as well. Have you considered using Free Classifieds, Free Postcards, or other Traffic Building tools as free items on your site?

You can pretty much guarantee that if all you have is a sales presentation, your website will not make it very far. You have to give people a reason to come back...because most of the time your sales will not be made on people's first visit to your site.

4) You don't follow-up on your prospects!

The fortune in marketing is in the follow-up. If you don't follow-up on your prospects, you could be missing out on the majority of your sales. Do you even try to get the email address of your visitors?

A new type of autoresponder which automatically does your follow-up for you is now available and could be the answer to follow-up to many of us who are too lazy to consistently do our own follow-up emails.

3) You don't have your own ezine!

If you don't have your own online newsletter, you are missing dozens of marketing opportunities. Many people are too scared to start their own ezine because they don't know how to write. That is not an excuse. There are dozens of writers in any type of market online who will be willing to give you good quality articles for your ezine for free.

If you need some in the internet marketing/copywriting arena, check out http://www.bizpromo.com/free which lists some of my most requested articles which you can publish for free in your own newsletter.

Check out http://www.listbot.com for resources in starting your own mailing list for free online...

2) You don't have your own lead product!

Being an affiliate or a reseller of other people's products can be a great opportunity...but I would not recommend it for your primary product if possible. You need to develop your own products. Then, use affiliate programs as secondary products or backend products.

If you own your own product, you can make the maximum profit from every sale. You can set up dealer networks. You can determine the prices. You are in charge.

The easiest product to create is an information product. What do you enjoy doing? What are good at? What would you like to spend even more time studying? Start working on a simple information product in that area. You can be the prime-source for a product or service.

1) You aren't constantly seeking out new internet marketing training information!

Everyone of the successful people who are marketing online are what I call "information gluttons!" They spend hours reading everything they can get their hands on about Internet marketing.

---------------------------------

Terry Dean, a 5 year veteran of Internet marketing, will Take You By The Hand and Show You Exact Results of All the Internet Marketing Techniques he tests and Uses Every Single Month" Click here to Find Out More:

http://www.peakconsultinginc.com/nbt.htm

Parting Comments

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