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Key #3: Increase Your “Lifetime Value”

The third key to growing your business and making more money is to “increase your ‘lifetime value’ “. In other words, sell more to your existing customers. You’ve worked hard to get the customer, so make the most of it. You don’t want to merely make one sale to your customers, but rather multiple sales.
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Key #2: Increase Your “Lead Conversion”

A second key to business growth is to “increase your ‘lead conversion’ “.
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I have my own checklist (which I’ll share with you in brief format in just a
moment) filled with what I call “Day Specific Activities”.
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This is Part 2 in a Series

Now, I’m not one of those folks who says “here’s a problem, but I don’t
have a solution.” I DO have a solution. And it’s fairly simple… Read the rest of this entry »

This is Part One in a Series about starting an online business.

Introduction:

There’s an old saying that’s been around much longer than the Internet that really does have a wealth of truth to it.

And that saying is simply this:

“Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.” Read the rest of this entry »

SPAM…Everyone is talking about it…And Most Everyone hates it. For those who don”t know what “Spam” is, it is the practice of sending email to thousands or millions of people who have not requested it or have never contacted your company before.

I know you get “spammed”….Everyone does. Personally, I receive around 50 or so a day of these emails selling whatever product or service they have to offer. I delete most of them with barely a glance, yet they keep on coming.

They are usually (Though not all of the time) poorly written and full of extremely hyped messages. One will be for bulk email products. The next might be for search engine submissions (I wonder why they have to bulk for it if they are so good at search engine submissions?).

The list goes on and on. I get ads for dolls, cars, credit cards, merchant accounts, and more. We won”t even talk about the worst stuff which is sent out. One piece after another has to be deleted…and it just keeps coming.

Why So Much Bulk “Spam” Email…

If everyone is deleting it, then why do they keep sending it? It’’s simple. Although the response rates are extremely low, they still do get orders for their product or service.
Their financial cost in sending it is almost nothing, so it is looked upon as a good advertising vehicle. Some sales are better than nothing…Right?

Wrong…In all of the offers about bulk emailing, notice that you never seem to receive the other side of the story. What happens after you send bulk email?

You could lose your local Internet Service Provider, your web sites, your email addresses, and more. Just a few complaints (Which you will get even if you try to hide) and your server will cancel your account.

This doesn”t even cover your reputation or the legal ramifications of sending unsolicited bulk email. Currently, several states have laws on the books or in the works which can fine you $500 or more for each piece of bulk email you send without a prior business relationship.

Bulk email just isn”t worth the ramifications. If you have considered bulk email, don”t do it. There are SO many other more effective ways to market your product or service on the net that it is not necessary to take the risks that go with bulk email.

“What Should You Do?”

I can tell you in one sentence what you should do instead of bulk email… “You should start building Your Own Opt-In Email List TODAY!”

Email Marketing is effective. That is why so many people are using it in the “Spam” arena. It can produce sales constantly in your business!

Anytime I see someone trying to build a business online without developing any type of Opt-In list I know they are shooting themselves in the foot. It is possible to build a business online without a list, but WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO?

Email is free to send out. Even if you have to purchase a listserver or some other type of application to do your email, we are talking about only a couple hundred dollars a year to send out UNLIMITED communications to your prospects and customers. Go to your local post office and ask them if you can send out as much mail as you want whenever you want for one low lump sum. I guarantee you will be laughed at!

Usually when I tell this to people, they give me One of three excuses about why they can”t do it:

1) They don”t know how.

I usually am the least patient with this excuse, because everyone of us had to learn at some point in time what to do. I don”t think anyone jumped on the internet and all of a sudden knew exactly what to do every step of the way. As a matter of fact, I know they haven”t.

There are many resources online to learn how to start your own ezine. Dozens of ezines come out every week talking about the subject…not the least of which is this one you are reading!

Ignorance is no excuse. You can learn How to do your own Opt-In list and you can learn how to profit from it. Don”t let me hear you use that excuse!

2) They can”t come up with that much content.

Maybe, you don”t believe you can come up with that much content, because you aren”t a writer. First of all, I hope you know a lot about whatever subject it is that you deal with in your business. Whatever you are selling…whatever problems you are solving…can be the basis for much of your content.

The second thing you can do is use other people’’s content. Hundreds of ezine publishers will allow you to use their articles in your ezine as long as you leave their contact information attached to the bottom of all of the articles. All you have to do is ask and most of them will give you their articles free to use. I know I will!

3) There are already too many ezines and newsletters out there.

Who said your Opt-In Email List had to be an ezine? When I speak of Opt-In Email, it doesn”t have to just mean ezine, although this is the most popular application.

Being innovative and creative in your online business can often be a major key to your success. Ezines are not the only Opt-In lists which I have seen become extremely popular and profitable. To get your creative juices flowing, I want to give you some other ideas for your own Opt-In list.

Besides ezines, a quick mention of other types of Opt-In lists which I have seen which are very successful are “____ of the Day” lists. The most popular of these that I know of is “Joke of the Day.” There are also “Recipe of the Day,” “Business Tip of the Day,” and more. What idea could you come up with in this area?

What about a daily diary of your business? This is one I have started seeing much more recently online. In these, the publisher writes down something involved in their business everyday that happened. They did this or that…whatever they know will be of interest to their readers. This one not only keeps you in contact, it can also help you develop trust even quicker with your prospects.

What about a Free Online Class? You could develop a 6, 12, 24 lesson class on a certain subject and have them receive the next issue every week, every 2 weeks, or once a month. Then, once they complete that class, you may have advanced classes, etc. You could also put them on an updates list for new information constantly.

How could you use any of these ideas in a new way? Don”t limit yourself.

One admonition I want to leave you with though is to get started TODAY! If you don”t get started in one way or another today in either the development of an idea or in the actual set-up of your idea, you by odds will NEVER do it. Owning your own Opt-In list is so important to the effectiveness of your business online that I have to stress you need to get started today if you want to succeed in your online business.

By Terry Dean

By Chuck McCullough

Chuck McCullough is the owner of http://AffiliateMatch.com offering FREE articles, tips, hints, and real-world advice on how to make money with your website. Visit his site or join his FREE newsletter, The AffiliateMatch Informer by sending a blank email to mailto:newsletter@affiliatematch.com.

Advertising your services or products on the Internet is both extremely effective and extremely competitive. There are several ways to go about attracting traffic to your website; Pay-Per-Click is one of the options you can choose from, along with developing an SEO, or search engine optimization campaign. Both pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. One of the differences is that it takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click campaign versus months for a good SEO campaign.

Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that most search engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer. It requires a bid for a “per-click” basis, which translates to your company paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor to your site. There is the added bonus that when a per-click site sends your website traffic, your site often appears in the results of other prevalent search engines.

As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and disadvantages. If you understand the process and monitor your pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very effective. One of the greatest advantages is that you never have to tweak your web pages to change your position in search engine results, as you must do in a typical SEO campaign. What you do have to do in a pay-per-click campaign is pay a fee.

Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process. You just bid and you”re up and running. It doesn”t demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search engines and keywords, the easier - and more effective - the process will be.

The downside is that pay-per-click is essentially a bidding war. A higher bid than yours will lower your position on search engine results. This means that you will have to raise your bid to regain your position - which can obviously become quite expensive, especially if you are bidding on a popular keyword.

In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective form of marketing for your business, you must do some computing to figure out how much each visitor to your site is worth. You can compute this value by dividing the profit you make on your website over a given period of time by the total number of visitors for that same time period. For example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and there were 2,5000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50 cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.

The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the point at which your business breaks even. The idea, of course, is to show a profit, not to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you are aiming at a figure less than 50 cents per click. Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost considerably more than 50 cents a click. The only way around this is to bid less for these phrases or you will be paying too much for each individual hit.

The key (pun intended) to success is to learn everything you can about search engine keyword research. The good news is there isn”t a limit to the amount of keywords you can add to your bid because additional keywords do not add additional cost. This translates into a lot less hassle for you because there is no need to optimize your site to index a particular set of keywords.

Obviously, some keywords are much more effective than others are, but they will not cost you anything except time to set-up your account in your pay-per-click bid. Of the popular search engines that offer pay-per-click, one called Overture provides an online tool that will give you the data on how often particular keywords are entered into their search engine. They also offer suggestions for keywords after you enter a description of your site.

In pay-per-click, this written description is crucial. You must understand that the object of your description is not to generally attract visitors, but to be as specific as possible so that only those visitors who are likely to buy your service or product go to your site. You must use expert marketing copy to guarantee that your description is both precise and enticing to attract the most ideal candidates to your site. This description is your most powerful tool to insure that your bid is profitable.

Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is that you constantly monitor your bid. It is very important that you bear in mind that the results of the top search engines providing pay-per-click advertising, which are Overture and Adwords Select, usually appear on other popular search engines. Because of this, the competition for top ranking is intense, and very often you will find that the bidding price balloons too high for pay-per-click to yield a profit.

If this happens, it is advisable to withdraw your bid on that particular keyword and try another one. Remember: when you pay too much per click to make a profit, you are in essence losing the bidding war.

Since losing is not acceptable, you must have a plan in place to closely track the effectiveness of your keyword. It is advisable to monitor your keywords on at least a monthly basis.

Not only is careful monitoring important, but the analysis of visitor behavior can produce invaluable knowledge about consumer motivation, habits, and trends. Expert monitoring and consumer analysis is essential to your overall business needs, and will also insure that your pay-per-click campaign is a success.

If you”ve reached the point of exhaustion trying to keep up with answering the mountain of emails that threatens to bury you alive every single day, you”re ready to learn about autoresponders.

The bad news is that people expect prompt replies to their email inquiries. However, unless you can figure out how to work continual twenty-four hour shifts, or hire enough people to constantly monitor incoming emails (while they”re eating up your revenue), you have a problem. The good news is an autoresponder is an inexpensive - or even free - method of quickly responding to emails. What these programs do is automatically respond to incoming emails as soon as they are received.

Emails are essential to your business for many different reasons. Most importantly, these invisible email voices give you their feedback about your website - for free! However, if you spend all your working hours answering these emails, how are you supposed to run your business? The answer is simple: use autoresponders. Autoresponders are programs that automatically respond to your emails without you so much as having to click on your mouse.

There are a number of good reasons why you need an autoresponder besides just answering your email. For example, autoresponders can be used if you need a way to send information about your services or products, price lists, or if there are repeated questions asked across large numbers of emails. Maybe you want to offer your site visitors a special bonus of some kind, such as advice or relevant articles. All of this can be handled by an autoresponder. Additionally, you can advertise your business and then build stable relationships with your customers by using autoresponders.

Autoresponder programs vary from software that runs with your email program to a specialized script that runs on your web hosting company’’s server. This kind of script may use a web page form or simply operate with your email account. This kind of script is programmed to send out a standardized message whenever an email is received. The message is sent to a particular script or email address.

Some autoresponders can do more than simply send out standardized messages. They can send out an unlimited number of follow-up messages sent at predetermined interval of time. For example, you can set your autoresponder to send out a new message every day for as long a period as you desire.

There are numerous companies who offer autoresponders free of charge. Your website hosting company often provides autoresponders as a free service. If this is not the case with your web hosting company, there are numerous companies who offer this service for a small fee, or free of charge, providing you attach an advertisement for their company to your emails.

To personalize your autoresponder messages, you can attach a signature. Signatures in this case are much like business cards. You can include your name, company, all your contact numbers and addresses, and a brief message.

It’’s a good idea to attach a signature to every email that is sent out. This works as a repeated reminder of your business identity every time a customer sees it. The more they look at your signature, the more likely your company will spring to mind when your particular service or product is needed.

You can create a standardized signature that every employee in your business uses, or you can go wild, and let every staff member create their own personal signature. Of course, like everything in life, there are some rules and guidelines to creating a personal signature.

Keep the length of your signature between four to six lines of text, with no more than 70 characters in a single line. Make sure that your email program does not cut off your text! The content should include your name, your company name, your email address, fax number, and any other contact details, such as 800 numbers. Lastly, always include a short personal message about your company. It should be a subtle sell of your services or your products, and possibly your company’’s reliability and longevity.

Another specialized use of autoresponders is to create courses that you can then offer your site visitors for free. You must choose a topic in which you are an expert and that precisely targets your potential customers.

Once you have carefully chosen your subject, divide it into a number of different sub-topics. Then offer your site visitor a free 10 or 15 day course, each day offering a different sub-topic. The first topic should always be a welcome message to your site visitor and an explanation about what is to follow. Your explanation should be enticing, getting the point across that you are offering free, quality information that your target audience will find of great value.

With every lesson, include the number of the lesson, the topic title, information about your company and its services or products. At the end, include a few blurbs about the next lesson to entice the subscriber to continue on.

Make sure each topic is packed with essential and valuable information, and leaves the visitor lusting to know more. Otherwise, you may lose them in the very beginning.

Of course, you have to write up your course before you can offer it. Once you have done this, and gone over the material carefully, employing a professional writer or editor if necessary, you must transfer your text to your autoresponder.

There are a number of free autoresponders you can use. Try http:/www.getresponse.com, or http://www.fastfacts.net. Or go onto Google and you will find a long list of free autoresponder companies. Then sign-up for your chosen autoresponder. Once you do, you will receive instructions as to how to set it up and transfer your text.

Email is an excellent marketing tool; it is inexpensive and it is fast. Use it to advertise your business by choosing your email address carefully. Your website should contain different email addresses for different contact requests. For example, use info@yourdomain.com for information requests, or sales@yourdomain.com for questions about sales. It’’s a good idea to set up one for the owner, such as president@yourdomain.com. This presents your company in a personal, approachable light and insures that direct contact is provided.

Autoresponders are an effective and powerful marketing tool, allowing you to make contact with thousands of potential customers. This is an invaluable asset considering how many potential customers you usually have contact with before you make an actual sale. Essentially, an autoresponser allows you to automate part of your marketing campaign.

An interested visitor who has been strolling through your site has finally come to just what she is looking for and is about to make a purchase. It’’s a sunny afternoon, and her cat, who happens to be sitting on the moss under the visitor’’s large fifty-year-old snow-rose bonsai tree, suddenly jumps down, and the priceless tree topples over.

In the blink of an eye, your visitor exits your site, and your sale is dust - unless you have had the foresight to utilize an autoresponder that has captured her email address. If you have installed an autoresponder, you can then follow-up with her, and in all probability, make the sale when the poor woman has finished repotting her precious bonsai.

Autoresponders are remarkable, versatile programs that do so much more than just automatically answer your email. Here are a few ideas that will help you to creatively and productively use your autoresponder to transform the casual visitor into a profitable customer. Use your autoresponder to:

1. Publish a newsletter. Certain quality autoresponders will manage subscriptions and follow-up with interested prospects. Your newsletter can keep your visitors informed about your services or products, while building your reputation as a credible expert in your particular business.
2. Publish a newsletter only for your affiliates. Inform them of current sales you are running and of promotional material that your affiliates can use themselves to increase their commissions. Include tips, advice, and techniques that your affiliates can use to successfully go out and promote your business.
3. Write reviews. Cover books, software, music, e-books, movies, etc., and put each review in an autoresponder. Review your affiliate programs, using a link to your affiliate’’s page in your autoresponder.
4. Distribute your articles. Writing and distributing targeted articles is a powerful tool to build your business credibility, bring traffic to your site, and increase your sales potential. If your articles contain valuable information, many editors will print what is known as a resource box for you. A resource box contains your bio and a brief description of your service or product. It can also contain your autoresponder address. Let’’s say you”ve written fifty articles. Put them on separate autoresponder accounts and create a master list that contains the titles of each article, the autoresponder address, and a brief abstract. Then promote your master list. Additionally, include your publishing guidelines so your affiliates can add their articles to your list, increasing the number of writers who are represented in your article list.
5. Create mailing lists. Inform subscribers to your articles when you”ve written new ones that they may want to publish in their own newsletter or website.
6. Automate your sales process. Use an ad to insure repeated exposure of your message, which has been proven to effectively increase sales. In your ad, put your autoresponder address where a visitor will be exposed to numerous marketing materials. This multiplies the chances of converting visitors into customers. For example, if you”re selling a particular product, put testimonials about how spectacular it is on your autoresponder, and add a detailed, enticing description of your product.
7. Distribute advertising. Let’’s say you sell advertising on your website or in your newsletter or e-zine. Set your autoresponder to send the information about rates and how to place an ad automatically to all prospects” email addresses. Then have your autoresponder follow-up. It can also send notification of any special deals you are currently offering.
8. Distribute an email course. Each day, have your autoresponder send out another lesson. Just be sure that each lesson has quality content - not a sales pitch. Your content will do the selling for you, and will do it much more effectively. You can include tips centered on a different topic for each lesson, illustrating how your product will benefit the reader. Include the tangible benefits the visitor will reap by purchasing your product. Make sure to include a paragraph or two at the end of each lesson enticing your prospect to consider making a purchase.
9. Automate a reminder about your service or product after a visitor has completed your course. This will increase the possibility of sales from visitors who have taken your course but are dragging their feet about actually making a purchase. You can also use these reminders to promote new products or services, and the products and services of your affiliate programs.
10. Distribute free reports. This gives your visitor an idea of the type of information you can provide and the quality of your product or service. Make sure these reports are not sales letters or you will more than likely lose a potential customer than gain a sale.
11. Create trivia quizzes on your site and place the answers in an autoresponder. Your visitor will then be motivated to request your autoresponder, and you will have a record of the visitors” email addresses who took your quiz. Or create a contest and have any visitors that enter send their responses to your autoresponder. Your autoresponder can be set-up to send them a confirmation of their entry.
12. Offer a trial version of your product. Give your prospects a sample of your ebook, course, software, membership, etc. People who are exposed to a little taste often end up wanting the whole pie. You can also capture their email addresses when you offer them a free trial from your website. Set up your autoresponder to give instructions on how to obtain their free trial, and then make sure to follow-up to try and close the sale.
13. Link to hidden pages on your autoresponder. For example, a hidden page could be your affiliate page that contains graphics, promotional articles, and text links that interested affiliates can make use of. Inform visitors that they may have free access to your affiliate page by simply requesting your autoresponder. You will then gather a list of visitors who may be interested in becoming your affiliates.
14. Use an autoresponder on your order page. Post a request form for visitors to be notified of special offers or discounts in the future. This creates a very effective mailing list that contains the names of people who are already your customers.
15. Put your links page on your autoresponder. It should contain up to fifty links that would be of particular interest to your visitors. Make sure to add your own promotional copy at the top or bottom of this page.

Now that you have proof that autoresponders can be used creatively, see if you can come up with some brilliant ideas of your own!