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  • How To Use The Perfect Title For Your Infoproduct

    If you’re reading this, you’re probably interested in selling digital products on the web.
    And, not just a few digital products, but a lot of them.

    What can you sell?

    1. eBooks
    2. Reports
    3. Manuals
    4. Audio products
    5. Video products
    6. Images/graphics
    7. Public domain works
    8. Website Scripts
    9. Software
    9. Services, such as web design and web hosting
    10. And much, much more…

    One question people have is “Is the marketing of digital goods any different than the marketing of physical goods?”

    Here’s the truth. The professional methods of marketing never change. It’s the mechanics of marketing, the medium of the message that can change:

    • Instead of billboards, it’s banner or text ads
    • Letters sent through the post are now emailed
    • Web sites replace brochures and full-color catalogues
    • Live chat with customer service representatives enhance or even replace 800 numbers,
    • etc.
    • Eugene (Gene) M. Schwartz, the copywriter that helped Marty Edelson launch the hugely successful publishing company, Boardroom Reports, said marketing is like playing the stock market or being an atomic scientist.

      Marketing, speculation and science are all alike–they all deal with immense natural forces, thousands of times more powerful than the people who use them.

      In science, the forces are the fundamental energies of the universe. In speculation, the forces are the billion-dollar tides and currents of the market place.

      In marketing, the forces are the hopes, fears and desires of millions upon millions of men and women, all over the world. The men who use these forces did not create them; they can’t turn them or shut them down; neither can they diminish them or add to them in any way. All they can do is harness them!

      So what works? How can you and I harness this immense power?

      Here’s Gene’s answer:

      Innovation: Continuous, repeated innovation

      A steady stream of new ideas–fresh new solutions to new problems. Created above all not by the impossible route of memory – but by analysis. And what is analysis? As Gene says, “It’s a series of measuring rods, checkpoints, benchmarks and signposts that show you where a particular force is going, and enable you to get there first”.

      So how do we innovate or be creative in the process of selling digital goods?

      Digital goods, just like other types of products, do not sell themselves. It takes people with skill and knowledge to sell them. That’s why most professional copywriters are more prosperous than your typical “writer”.

      The US Department of Labor reports that writers (as an occupation) earn an average of $7,500 per year. Most writers are not able to earn a living from writing alone. But, here’s where most get it wrong.

      Even famous published authors will find it difficult to make a living with a single book.

      The first question an author is asked upon signing a contract for a first book is, “What else do you have?”

      The publisher knows that ‘one book’ authors will never be able to sell enough copies of their first book to make any real money for them or the author. It takes several books, within the same genre, to build the author’s presence in the marketplace.

      In other words, it takes constant innovation of new products and ideas.
      You should ask yourself, “What else do can I do?”.

      “What else can I do” should be your mantra as a developer/entrepreneur of digital products online.

      There are some writers who hit it big with a single book, but that’s very unusual and so rare that it’s impossible to find more than a few examples.

      From a marketers point of view, the only job of that first book you write is to get your readers to buy your second book, and the only job of the second book is to keep the reader hooked enough on your writing to buy your third book, and on and on & because that’s where the money is – in other words, constant innovation.

      The question then is, “How do I, as an digital goods marketer, stand apart from the rest or innovate?”

      In order to determine if your innovations will be accepted into the marketplace online you have to ask yourself how you products will be perceived in the marketplace.

      In other words, what are “… the forces are the hopes, fears and desires of millions upon millions of men and women, all over the world” …and how will your prospect perceive your product?

      For example, what would be your customers first reaction to hearing about your new product?

      “Don’t need to know- no time – not interested enough to care“; (customer response: “I’ll pass”)

      “Nice to know – looks interesting, but… “; (customer response: “ho hum”, *insert yawn here*)

      “This looks great – just what I’ve been looking for!” (customer response: “Where do I pay?”)

      When I’m looking for information, these are things I consider.

      If you want people to buy or download your digital product you have to answer the critical question your target audience is asking,

      “Do I really need this info? Is it exactly what I’m looking for?”

      …their response will fall into category 1, 2 or 3 mentioned above.

      If it’s in category 1 or 2, chances are you need to re-think your e-book’s title or the headline and/or ad for your digital product. You need to determine the products “appeal”, its’ primary benefit to the reader and make that clear to your reader.

      This is where Gene Schwartz’s idea of marketing as ‘innovation and analysis’ is so important.

      If you’re selling a report or ebook or even a software program online you may need to test several titles in subtle ways to your target audience before you find one that works well.

      How To Find the Perfect Title (That Will Sell) For Your Infoproduct

      One way to do that is by writing an article about your upcoming book (what it’s about, etc.) and put the proposed titles as a link to your article.

      Put the title on your home page. Rotate and change the title once a week and try several different titles. See which one gets the most click-throughs to your article by using a counter on your page with the article or by ‘coding’ the link.

      For example:

      One title for your article might be:

      “How To Kick Your Competitors Butt and Generate 1,000% More Sales On Your Website Now”

      Your link to your article link would look like this:

      http://www.yoursite.com/article1.html?kick_butt

      When someone clicks on the link it registers a ‘hit’ in your server logs.

      The REAL URL for the article is everything before the “?”- your ‘code’ is “kick_butt”.

      Everything after the question mark “?” will not affect the visitor clicking on the link to get to your article. Count the number of hits you get for each title. Just be sure to change the code to correspond with your titles every time you make a change!

      Then you write another article with a different headline to test, but on the same topic.

      Now, on your ‘article’ page on your website you’ll have 5-8 articles with different headlines to test and different article content. Announce the article to your email list and you can even setup a PPC campaign to send targeted traffic to your article page (just don’t pay too much J.

      Use this technique to determine which headline interests your readers more (you’ll get more clicks on that headline) THEN develop your products from that test using the headline in the article as the title for your book!

      If one performs better than all the others, then you have a successful title. And as we all know, a good title sells books.

      If you want something more sophisticated than what’s available for checking page stats through your we host, there are a dozen ‘trackers’ available online for your web pages.

      The one I use is called Web Analiser Pro available from http://web-script.com. It allows you to track unlimited pages and unlimited domains and has great reporting features. In fact it’s the only script I could buy that allows you to track unlimited domains. This is not a service, but a script you load on your web server so instead of paying a monthly fee you pay once and the script is yours.

      In other words, this method of selecting titles for your information products is Gene Schwartz’s idea used in a practical application. He said that innovation is a “… series of measuring rods, checkpoints, benchmarks and signposts that show you where a particular force is going, and enable you to get there first”.

      By having several titles of articles of a similar nature on your site, and sending traffic to this page, the force of the market (your visitors) will make the choice for your title for you… it’s a signpost showing you where the market is going. The winning title is the one the majority of them click on, and the market is never wrong.

      Use that force and power to your advantage.

  • Quick Easy Money-Making Online Business Ideas

    I know I love finding new places I can get business ideas from. Here’s one…

    Go to:

    http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/

    Select any of the areas there, pick out all the images that you think are interesting (most of the images are in the public domain but check the dates to make sure)

    I quickly found an area in the LOC that could be hot sellers:

    Town maps from the 1800’s: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/pmmapSubjects10.html

    Use the town’s name and the keywords in your listings! Or if you’re creative, make your own graphics and sayings.

    Then set up an account with CafePress.com (it’s free) and create your own line of t-shirts, coffee mugs, posters, stickers and more.

    List them on Ebay and I guarantee you’ll make money if your design is creative enough…

    The thing I like about CafePress is that you can order the item you’ve sold through your own account and have it ‘drop shipped’ to your customer without ever touching the product!

    That’s right. You’re own products drop shipped for you!

    TIP: Just make sure you send it as a “gift” in the ordering process or your customer will see how much you paid for the item because CafePress will include a receipt (invoice) with the item when it ships unless you state it is a ‘gift’. In the “gift message” just write something like “thank you for your purchase!” and that’s all your customer will see – no prices or invoice.

  • How To Get Traffic From Clickbank

    Here’s a big traffic secret…

    If you didn’t know it already, Clickbank is one of the premier marketplaces for digital products on the Internet.

    You have probably bought a product or two from Clickbank. But what you may not know is that the Clickbank marketplace gets tons of traffic.

    All you have to do is get a product in the Clickbank marketplace to start getting traffic.

    Of course, your rank in the marketplace will determine how much traffic you get. Another determining factor is how many products you have in the Clickbank marketplace.

    But, this is a source of traffic as well as sales and it could be huge.

    Take a look at the Alexa ranking for Clickbank’s marketplace:

    Clickbank Alexa Ranking

    It’s ranked the #2494 out of millions of websites! It is one of the most visited websites on the Internet.

    If you already have a product and are not selling it in the marketplace, you should be.

    If you haven’t developed a product yet, think about it and do one specifically designed to rank high in the Clickbank market.

  • Survey Results About What Internet Marketing Newbies Need the Most

    This post contains the information related to the 345 responses to a survey in which internet marketing newbies were asked, “What do you need most to bring your online business to the next level?”

    Upon reviewing the majority of the responses, the major barriers and obstacles to your success can be overcome with the proper training and a few tools.

    An excellent post in a forum said the difference between a successful person and a failure is the way they looked at problems they were facing:

    The failure says to themselves, “It can’t be done!”
    The successful person says, “How can we solve this problem?”

    In other words, if you don’t at least TRY to solve the problem you’re facing, you’re already defeated.

    Successful people will work on trying to find a solution to a problem until they have found one – or they have found a solution that they can live with, even if it’s not perfect.

    The barriers and obstacles mentioned by most people fit neatly into about 4 categories.

    Here they are in order of the most responses*:

    1. They need ‘basic’ technical skills. (41%).
    The majority of the responses fell into this category.

    Many internet marketers assume that if someone was interested in Internet marketing they would have learned the basics of HTML or FTP, etc. before getting involved.

    That does not seem to be the case. Many people would like to make money online but are clueless when it comes to basic technical skills. This is a huge barrier to their success.

    Examples people mentioned they needed help mastering:
    · How to upload a page to a hosting server by FTP.
    · How to change the html ‘code’ in a page template.
    · How to include links in their pages.
    · How to include a sign-up code link in their pages.
    · How to protect and mask ‘affiliate links’.

    So we are talking very basic stuff here that I think many Internet marketers assume their customers already know- but don’t.

    There are some really excellent tutorials online to help people learn these basic skills… and if you were one of the people that said you needed help in this area please, please look around for qualified training. Most of it is free, some is not.

    So the help you need is available. However, some people even lack the skills necessary to find the resources online that will help them master these skills!

    Maybe the first thing you need to focus on, and if you’re an experienced Internet marketer, develop this tool) is to find a good ’search tutorial’ to learn how to find information on the web!

    If you’re one of the people who need to master these basic “HTML” skills here’s the one resource you need:
    http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp

    This is an excellent but basic introduction to HTML. You need to know this stuff if you’re long on time and short on cash.

    If you have some money you don’t need to know this stuff just hire someone from one of the following sites to do it for you:
    http://www.elance.com
    http://www.rentacoder.com
    http://www.scriptlance.com

    I think it’s still a good idea to know some basic stuff because you don’t want to hire someone to do minor changes to your sites for you when they are so easy to do yourself. Plus you’ll be in a better position to evaluate the quality of someone else’s work.

    2. Information overload …(25%)

    Many people complained that they are bombarded with information, books, products, ads etc… each one claiming to be the info they need to make millions online. They are CONFUSED.

    No one’s product I have seen clears up confusion about what it takes to make it online better than mine.

    New Internet marketing products are coming out at an incredible rate and since everyone in the Internet marketing ‘industry’ knows how to get a product created quick and easy using Elance, Scriptlance.com, etc there are more new products being promoted every week.

    The Internet marketing niche is huge and there’s still lots of money to be made in it and I have not changed my mind. But the market is changing… newbies and those who have been buying Internet marketing ebooks, course and manuals want to know that what they are buying has lots and lots of value and the product is different than the other products being promoted and how it’s different.

    Educate your customer better, give them value and they will come back to you. You do not have to be an ‘guru’ to make money in this niche.

    But you do need to deliver a lot of value for the cost.

    3. How to get traffic cheap or free. (25%)

    If there was a source for perfectly targeted traffic that was also free or cheap… guess what?
    It wouldn’t be free or cheap anymore.

    If there are NO barriers to highly targeted traffic, everyone would be using it. The really targeted and best source of traffic on the net is not free or cheap.

    You’ve heard the saying, “You get what you pay for.” That was never more true when it comes to traffic.

    So what’s the best source of traffic for your website?

    Your own list is #1.

    Here’s a tip… when you go to Alexa.com and type in a website address watch for the ’spikes’ in the traffic graphic shown for the site. The ’spikes’ are when the owner of the site sent an email with a link to one of his pages on his site so that his subscribers would visit his page. These ‘visits’ are all counted in the Alexa ranking.

    These spikes also occur when JV partners send traffic to a site during a special promotion. Most of the traffic you see on a site comes from email marketing. Very little of it comes through SEO (search engine marketing) – except for those sites that get 1st page ranking in their chosen keywords, very little traffic comes from natural search engine ranking.

    Don’t have a list? Then you need to build one ASAP. Your job online is to build your list.

    Advertising online has one job: Getting people to opt-in to your LIST.

    Your best source of traffic comes from links you’ve put into your email messages to your list! The second best source of traffic is targeted advertising through PPC or offline ads or direct mail.

    4. No product or service… (6%)

    Finally, many people stated that they did not have a product to sell and needed help putting one together. Since it’s relatively simple to put a product together, I think the responses had more to do with creating the ‘right’ product, positioning and the actual product creation process than simply not knowing ‘how’ to do it.

    Even though product creation is ’simple’ it is not easy and it involves a lot of work. Any type of product that can make it easier to create your own info-products and software will have a ready acceptance in the marketplace.

    The barriers most people run into is when they try to ‘think’ of a product to sell which is the exact opposite thing they should be doing.

    If you are the one having this problem you should be monitoring discussion boards, newsletters and opinion sites to determine what problems exist in niche markets and then create a product that solves that problem.

    Let the market decides what it wants.

    That’s it. Those are the most often cited barriers to making money online. I hope this has been helpful.

  • A Great Salesman Once Sold Refrigerators to Eskimo’s…No, really!

    I’ve heard the saying before that a good salesman can sell refrigerators to Eskimos, but I didn’t think it was based on a true story. Somebody actually did sell refrigerators to Eskimos. That ’somebody’ was Red Mottley…back in the 1940’s after WW-2.

    He was a super salesman of his day…along with the “Sell The Sizzle, Not The Steak”, marketing master, Ben Sweetland.

    Red wanted to take a semi-truck full of Refrigerators to Alaska to sell to the Eskimos.

    The manufacturer told him he was crazy… “Everything freezes in Alaska!”…

    Red replied…”Exactly’…that’s why I’ll sell them all fast” …which he did…it is one of the greatest success stories in sales history.

    Red Mottley introduced Refrigeration to Alaska.

    It just goes to show that a great salesman can sell a product that others will swear people will never buy.

  • Free Localized Redirection Detects Geographic Location

    GeoDirection is a free service that dynamically redirects internet surfers based on their geographic location.

    This JavaScript redirection tool is ideal for internet users that wish to redirect browsers based on the visitor’s City, Region or Country, using Geobytes’ IP Address map technology. Plus, it can also be used via the provided Geobytes’ JavaScript Variables to insert localized geographic content into a web page or JavaScript. Note: You don’t have to install any software on your web server.

    http://www.geobytes.com/GeoDirection.htm

    This can be used for:

    • Local search directories
    • language translations
    • compensate for cultural differences
    • and much more…
  • Learn from a Real Infoproduct Master

    This guy is a master at information product creation and has been around a long time. The man I’m referring to is Bill Myers.

    Bill Myers is an expert infoproduct developer and his membership site is a bargain at only $9.95 per month.

    In addition to being an info-product developer, Bill is a software developer, author, newsletter publisher, video producer and more…

    Check out his site at:

    http://www.bmyers.com/

  • How to Find Out What Is Selling On Ebay

    Find Out What’s Selling on eBay – Fast

    I’ve mentioned this before, and it’s worth repeating:

    “If you want to make money (online or offline) you have to know what people want to buy…”

    Most people do NOT succeed on the Internet because they are selling things no one wants. If you want to be successful sell ONLY things that people really, really want to BUY.

    Sounds easy doesn’t it?

    “Sell ONLY things that people WANT to buy!”

    This is THE SECRET of ALL BUSINESS SUCCESS!!

    Is it easy?

    It is… you only have to find out what they want and GIVE IT TO THEM!

    Nothing beats hard research.

    In direct marketing, you can always find out what’s selling by referring to the SRDS Direct Marketing lists. They will provide you with the number of buyers, the ave. ticket (sale) price and more.

    It’s an amazing resource for finding out what people are actually buying…!

    If you want to sell something on ebay you have to know what the supply and demand is for thousands of items… finally you can!

    Check out this, under-used, but extremely valuable resource for discovering what’s selling on ebay right now and what the hot selling items are:

    http://pulse.ebay.com/

    The report I’m about to tell you about is from 2007 but it is still useful since it gives you an ide aof what types of items were hot back then. You can use this as a starting point for your research and determine if these same items are still hot sellers. According to Ebay this report will help you discover … ” which categories and products are on fire—where bid to item ratios are high and demand is outpacing supply!”…

    http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf

  • Add Free Search Capabilities To Your Website, CD or DVD Project Easily

    Here’s a cool tool for you information product creations:

    Zoom is a software package that adds custom searching facilities to your website, CD, or DVD. It provides fast and powerful full-text searching by indexing your website by allowing you to configure and index your site, from the convenience of your computer (Windows only).

    * Easy to use and install, up and running in minutes
    * No advertising
    * No scripting knowledge or editing required
    * No complicated database set-up
    * No external web service required
    * Highly configurable
    * Runs on almost all web servers and hosting plans
    * PHP, ASP, JavaScript, and CGI support in one package

    For small sites, it’s free at:

    http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/

  • How to Build Your Mailing List Fast

    Here’s a very valuable tool.

    If you doing any kind of offline marketing (direct mail, postcards, telemarketing, etc) and you want to put together a targted list – and you want to do it fast – you should look at this tool.

    According to the site:

    “ListGrabber is a data-entry tool that captures all contacts from any list or web site and enters them into Contact Managers like ACT!, GoldMine, Outlook…It intelligently extracts all contact fields including name, address, phone and email and builds a contact record in your Contact Manager. ListGrabber has been tested and tuned to work with all popular online web directories, yellow pages, membership directories, lead listings and hundreds of other prospect lists. It has been tuned over a 5-year period and offers the most accurate lead generation service that exists. The technology is so advanced, it has received an US patent!”

    Take a look here:

    http://www.egrabber.com/listgrabberstandard/index.html