Welcome to Arvada’s Answers on this Podcast Wednesday!

Starting this week, my plan is to produce a weekly online business and marketing podcast. The idea is to provide you with quick marketing tips, news that affects online business, and a little food for thought to get you thinking about how to turn your website into a money-making machine.  I’ve posted my notes from the podcast below in case you’d like some to follow along.

Now let’s get started!

Really Bad Domain Names

I came across a list of really bad website domains and thought I’d share a few of the least raunching ones.

• chooses pain.com

A tourism site for Spain: choose spain.com

• children slaughter.com

Children’s charity: childrens laughter.com

• dollar sex change.com

Currency trading site: dollars exchange.com

• expert sex change.com

Computer advice site: experts exchange.com

• got a hoe.com

Lake Tahoe tourism: go tahoe.com

• the rapist finder.com

California therapists directory: therapist finder.com

• molestation nursery.com

Plant nursery: mole station nursery.com

I guess that just proves that you really need to think about those domains before you buy them!

Amazon Standing Up Against Taxes

Apparently North Carolina is trying to pump up their tax revenue and they’ve decided to require out-of-state digital retailers who sell within North Carolina’s borders to be subject to state sales tax. As a result of this new sales tax, Amazon.com severed their relationship with all their associates in North Carolina.

A friend of mine sent me an email he received from Amazon that went out to their North Carolina affiliates. Here’s what it says:

“We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation’s effective date…

In the event that North Carolina repeals this tax collection scheme, we would certainly be happy to re-open our Associates program to North Carolina residents.”

I say good for Amazon. Taxing people for online purchases is going to hurt us all as both consumers and online businesses. I hope all the “big boys” of online retail do the same thing and force state goverments to leave online purchases alone.

Arvada’s Answers

Here’s a question that I recently received from a blog subscriber:

“Arvada, can you explain the difference between upselling, cross-selling, and backend selling? Are they all really just the same thing or are they completely completely different? I’m confused.”

Based on a lot of the email and questions that I get, I think a lot of people are confused and don’t understand the difference between upsell, cross-sell, and a backend sale, so here’s a quick and dirty explanation of each term.

The upsell works like this:

After a visitor makes a purchase, but before they’ve actually paid for it, you attempt to upgrade them to a more expensive or more profitable product.

McDonald’s is a perfect example of the upsell when they ask you if you’d like to “super-size” your order. Most people go for the upsell, that’s why a lot of businesses use it.

A cross-sell works like this:

After a visitor makes their purchase, but before they’ve actually paid, you attempt to sell them a complimentary product. Think of the whole, “Would you like fries with that?” thing and you’ll understand the cross sell. Fast food strikes again!

Lastly, there’s the back-end sale.

Back-end sales are when you follow up with your customers at a later time and offer them additional products. In this case, it could be a complementary or related product to something they’ve already purchased from you. For example, if you sold a software program you might want to sell special DVD’s that provide unusual or additional ways to use the software.

When it comes to backend sales, you can also offer products that you believe customers would be interested in, even if they aren’t directly related to the original purchase.

Using any and all of these marketing tactics will improve your income if you learn how to set up your campaigns effectively. You can even use affiliate products to supplement your own offerings.

Comic Relief

I thought I’d end this edition of Arvada’s Answers on Podcast Wednesday with an audio clip that I thought was really funny — although it’s got a little bit of basic schoolboy humor in it.

My nine year old son absolutely loved it!

It’s a spoof advertisement for National Bean Month. I bet you can figure out where we’re going here.

Just imagine how many customers you could gain if you could figure out a way to get their attention. This ad would certainly do it!

[You'll have to listen to the podcast above to hear the clip]

And that’s it for Arvada’s Answers on Podcast Wednesday. I hope you enjoyed it and that you’ll take the time to post a comment and let me know what you think of this new podcast format.

I’ll see you next week!

Post from: Arvada Yates at iMarketingWatch.com

If you'd like to get more answers to your online business and internet marketing questions, subscribe to Answers eMagazine now!

Domains, Taxes, Upselling and Farts

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Increase your sales — That’s the one sure way to increase your overall income and many online businesses struggle with the whole idea of increasing sales. That’s why I’ve put together a quick and dirty list of some top notch strategies to increase your sales.

1. Nail Your Niche

I’m sure that you already know what a niche is and that it’s important in your business, so I won’t belabor the point here. Design your web site to be a targeted resource center for your niche market. You’ll gain repeat visitors that are interested in that topic and increase your sales overall.

2. Fabricate REAL Freebies

Freebies are a great way to give people a taste of what you have to offer, gain traffic, and increase subscribers, but it must truly be free to work.  Otherwise it destroys your credibility and will actually reduce the number of sales you get.

Worse still is when people offer freebies that are total garbage full of affiliate links.  Make your offer genuine and you’ll improve your bottom line.

3.  Lasso Leads

Websites prove to be excellent lead generation tools and you’re missing a lot of sales if you aren’t working to capture leads for your business.  Appropriately marketing your products and services to your permission based leads can increase your sales tremendously.

4.  Track Your Traffic

Visitor analysis and complete website tracking is extremely important for any online venture.  It’s the only way to track what’s working and what isn’t for your business.

5.  Elevate Emotions

When creating sales pages and promotional materials for your products and services, be sure to engage the reader’s emotions.  Triggering your reader’s emotions will always increase your sales.

6.  Design For Dollars

When it comes to generating revenue with a website, you’ve got to design your site to make money.  It should be compatible with all the popular browsers, engage your target audience, and lead visitors by the hand to make a purchase.  Your website design should have one goal and one goal only — make the sale.

7.  Pen A Plan

Sit down and write a plan for how your website will generate revenue and gain targeted traffic.  It doesn’t have to be anything formal, but a marketing plan is a must to increase your sales.  You must plan to profit.

There are tons of other strategies that will help you increase your sales, but this basic list is a great place to get started.

Post from: Arvada Yates at iMarketingWatch.com

If you'd like to get more answers to your online business and internet marketing questions, subscribe to Answers eMagazine now!

Top Notch Strategies To Increase Your Sales

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If you’re already selling anything online, this article is going to show you how to add extra revenue you didn’t even know you had “hiding” in your site without getting any more visitors.

Overlooked Way #1 – An Upsell:

If you’ve been in marketing for any time, you’ve probably heard of “upsells” or “bumps.” Car dealers are excellent at using this technique. Once you have agreed to buy a car you then go into the finance office. This finance guy is really another place where they try to extract as much money as possible from you; dealer financing, extended warranties, rust coating, a low-jack security system, etc. These additions will normally add as much, or more, profit to the dealer as the original sale.

These are upsells or cross-sells.

Another great example is if you’ve ever called a late night infomercial you will be given an upsell. They will offer you a special deal on the third bottle of super grime cleaner if you buy 2 bottles. These upsells usually end up bringing more profit than the original item people intended to purchase.

Why not do the same online?

This little “magic trick” can instantly increase your profits 20-66% even without getting any additional business or website visitors. It works great because your prospect is all hot and heavy and ready to buy. They’ve got their credit card in their hand and they’ve already made the commitment. (If you read Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” you’ll see commitment and consistency is a key psychological trigger.)

There are a couple ways I’ve successfully used upsells on my sites:

First you can use an “intermediary” page. Once prospects click on the order buttons they’re taken to a new page (and not the order form). This page tells people about a special offer that is for today only and that they can get a ‘deluxe’ or ‘gold’ version of the package for X dollars more. You can make the upsell a big dollar amount or a small insignificant little ‘bump’. I do this on Instant Sales Letters and my numbers have been quite good using this technique – as high as 68% some days. So think about my additional profit margins just by inserting this one extra page. Awesome!

Another way of doing this is by “recommending” a product. Anytime you buy something from Amazon – that’s exactly what they do. Up comes a page that “Customers who bought __ also bought__” and then they have a slew of products.

Next, you can also have the upsell right on the Order page. I’ve even used something as simple as putting a check box on my order form on Instant Internet Profits. It could be that simple. On this we get a 25% upsell rate. Take a look at what appears at the bottom after the customer has already filled out their info to buy the course. You have to play fair and let people get the original price and package you offered but there’s no reason you shouldn’t add a complimentary upsell immediately. The upsell is one of the easiest (and most profitable) techniques you can start implementing tomorrow. This is like the “would you like fries” strategy. Unless you’re offering “fries” you’re missing out on tons and tons of profit. You simply need to come up with a couple more compelling bonuses, packages or up-sells that people will get for the upgrade.

Overlooked Way #2 – Thank You Pages:

After upsells, I’d say ‘thank you’ pages are one of the most overlooked profit hot-spots. Once again, there are several ways I’ve used this technique.

First of all, anytime somebody buys a product from you online – they are taken to some kind of thank you page. Most people will simply put “Thank you for your order” and that’s it. They leave the customer with their credit card in their hands to go off to some other website and give them money. Why not give people a special deal on the thank you page or at least give them links to your other products or other people’s products that you make an affiliate commission on?

Now if it’s a digital product – then they need to get their download but you can also put some recommended resources right on the download page. At the bottom of the digital download page for Public Domain Riches we have a recommendation for the new Public Domain Gold Mine(tm) package.

Those aren’t the only thank you pages. Many people totally forget about the ‘thank you’ pages that come up after someone signs up for your list. Now where you want to send them will depend on where they are in the sales process – but you can have a list of recommended resources that comes up AFTER people subscribe to your email list.

Why not?

If that’s the last action you were expecting – you should look for ways to profit from this.

Overlooked Way #3 – Thank You Emails/Confirmations:

Don’t forget the initial email confirmation you send back to your customers. Last technique we talked about making offers on the thank you page but your ‘thank you’ email is one of the most read emails. In addition to the ‘typical’ stuff you should include like customer service information, who will bill their credit card, etc why not add a simple P.S. to the bottom of the email like I do offering additional resources (or even a special deal just for customers).

I guarantee just putting these 3 easy overlooked ways to work on your site will help squeeze out even more profits for you & without adding a single visitor. Give it a try.

(c) Surefire Marketing, Inc.

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Yanik Silver is recognized as the leading expert on creating automatic, moneymaking websites…and he still doesn’t know how to put up a website.

He is the author, co-author or creator of several best-selling online marketing books and tools, including his newest resource – http://imarketingwatch.com/ap/ultimatecopywritingworkshop.php
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Post from: Arvada Yates at iMarketingWatch.com

If you'd like to get more answers to your online business and internet marketing questions, subscribe to Answers eMagazine now!

Make More Money: 3 Overlooked Profit Opportunities on Your Site

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I know it’s a bit late, but after two days of no internet access due to storms and power outages I’ve finally been able to post the September edition of Answers eMagazine.

In this month’s issue we’ve discussed sales letters and I’ve given you some tips on how you can increase your conversion rate, we’ve continued our discussion of giveaway events by talking about how to build profit into them, and we’ve explored how you can choose the right subscriber incentive for your market.

In addition, we’ve got an article about the branding power of article marketing and I’ve put together a step-by-step tutorial on how to upsell while using Clickbank.

Subscribers can get their copy anytime in the subscriber area, as well as download all back issues of Answers eMagazine.

If you’re not a subscriber, but you’d like to become one, you can sign up to get your own copy of Answers at:

http://imarketingwatch.com/answers/

Post from: Arvada Yates at iMarketingWatch.com

If you'd like to get more answers to your online business and internet marketing questions, subscribe to Answers eMagazine now!

Answers For September

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I have to admit, I was really looking forward to Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince – due out in November 2008… That was until I heard the astounding news that the Warner Brothers Studio was pushing it back until July 2009.

I call this astounding news because the only reason that I’ve heard sited for bumping it back was so that the studio could make more money.

In other words, they made a killing on The Dark Knight and so they didn’t need a big blockbuster this fall to end out the year… so why not push it back so that they can seed their profits for next year? In addition, the kids are out of school and movies are more accessible to them, and they’ve also got the DVD/Christmas season release to consider.

HUGE mistake.

Let me tell you why I think the studio has really messed up on this one…

What Are They Saying To Loyal Fans?

Look, the Harry Potter franchise is a business… first and foremost. Believe me, I totally get that, so I understand that it may be better for the studio to release the movie in July… provided that was their original game plan. It makes sense from a business stand point.

Hind sight is 20/20, so they may even wish that they had planned for a Summer 2009 release.

However, if you have children, you know that Harry Potter isn’t a franchise or a business to the millions of loyal fans of the series. It’s a story that people all over the world, across every age group, deeply identify with.

Harry has become an icon.

Movie studios shouldn’t mess with icons. Studios also shouldn’t tell fans that they’re trying to dig a little deeper into their pockets while handing them a huge disappointment with a bump in the release.

Beyond the fact that I think it’s morally wrong, it’s also really stupid from a PR perspective. After all, the movie has already been completed and is ready for release… they’ve even started running trailers and getting sneak peaks in several magazines.

Fans know it’s all about the money… and I think they’ll remember when it comes time to buy some of the movie paraphernalia (at least I know this parent will!).

Here’s a couple of quotes I’ve read from fans:

“I have to wonder if this isn’t just some big ploy on Warner Bros. part to create a big controversy to draw even more attention to the movie. They make this big announcement that they’re moving the release date to next summer, we all freak out, the press publishes tons of articles on the topic, pressuring Warner Bros. to move the release date back to November, we all rejoice because we “won” and we all see the movie five times instead of once or not at all, like we’re threatening here. I mean, the movie’s finished. Perhaps this is just a big marketing/publicity experiment. With the same end for WB, of course: to make MORE MONEY.”

That was a possibility that I hadn’t thought of . Here’s another telling quote:

“This is absolutely disgusting. You have done this, not so kids can enjoy it during the holiday or so that it doesn’t clash with your other titles or make the audience sick of the sameness. You have done this so you can get a DVD release for Christmas 2009 because you left it too late for this year – you make me absolutely sick – you cannot expect your public (paying public and paying heavily I may add) to be messed around like this. This is really bang out of order. I will watch, of course I will because I am a potter fan but I will seriously think about funding your empire by watching any other WB movies or buying any of your future merchandise. You really do suck – big time. I hope it all backfires on you and someone steals it from you and plays it on the net or something – you deserve it for disappointing fans who have anticipated this release for a very long time. Boo warner Bros – Boo boo boo – you should be ashamed”

Of course I could go on and on with quotes from angry Harry Potter fans… there are thousands of people reacting on blogs and forums everywhere…

Frankly, WB would have been better off to create some kind of controversy or the need for additional scene filming that would delay the film release. Fans wouldn’t have liked it, but it would have been a much easier pill to swallow… especially since studios pull that kind of bunk all the time.

But they didn’t do that… they alienated their customers by telling them the truth. It’s all about money.

When you’ve worked so hard to build a fan base and create deeply felt rapport with your customers, why would you jeopardize all that with such a move?

If Warner Brothers moved the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as purely a business decision, then they should fire the guy who made that decision… it’s very bad business.

Post from: Arvada Yates at iMarketingWatch.com

If you'd like to get more answers to your online business and internet marketing questions, subscribe to Answers eMagazine now!

Where Harry Potter Really Messed Up

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Today I purchased an affiliate marketing product that I planned to review and I came across an extremely irritating online marketing practice that I’ve seen all too often.  It’s the multiple part thank you page.  Here’s how it works:

1.  You purchase the product, often through Clickbank, and are sent to the thank you page.

2.  The thank you page asks you for your name and email address so they can send you “product updates.” 

What that really means is that they are capturing your email information so that they can send you offers for backend products.  This is a perfectly legitimate marketing practice that I use myself.  As a matter of fact, I recently wrote an article about backend marketing here.

3.  Now you are sent to a secondary thank you page.  This is usually where you actually get your download information.  However, in the multiple part thank you page, you are instead sent to another pitch page for another product.

Frankly, this is where I start to get a little irritated… but I still get it.  The marketer is trying to upsell you on additional products that tie in with the original product you just purchased.  I personally think this upsell should occur at the point of sale, rather than after, but that’s okay… different strokes for different folks. 

So, let’s say that I’ve declined this secondary offer.  I would expect to finally be sent to the download page… right?  Wrong!

4.  In this case, I was sent to another pitch page where I was offered half the products of the previous page for half the price.

Again… no thank you.  Just give me my order already!

5.  Now it’s really getting a bit ridiculous… I get sent to another email form where I have to subscribe to another update list to actually get to the download page.  I don’t seem to have much choice here, so I put my email information in and move to the next page.

6.  FINALLY!  I get to the download page for the product that I ordered.  As I move down the page, downloading ebooks and bonuses, I get to a section of the download page that looks like an unadvertised bonus.  Great… I like bonuses!

As I click on the bonuses, each one opens up to a new window where I’m asked to subscribe to someone else’s subscriber list to get the “bonus.”  Okay, I get this too… cross-promotions, joint ventures, etc.  But there were so many on this download page that they out-numbered the bonuses that I paid for and they looked completely unrelated to the product that I purchased.

It doesn’t help that I’m completely irritated with this whole thing at this point either!

What’s wrong with Multiple Part Thank You Pages?

As you might have guessed, I absolutely hated this whole process.  To me, as a customer, it felt like I was totally being taken advantage of,  it made me question the product itself and whether it was a legitimate product or not (I haven’t gotten into it yet), and it created a situation where I doubt I will ever purchase another product from this person.

In addition, as a fellow marketer I wonder if this multiple page thank you creates problems for the people selling the product.  In my own business I sometimes get customers who have difficulty with downloads, miss the download page entirely, etc.  With a multiple page thank you system like this, there are lots of opportunities to lose the customer.

There’s nothing wrong with implementing some of the marketing tactics used here, but you really shouldn’t try to implement each and every possible marketing strategy at once.  You should try to strike a balance when it comes to maximizing your profits.  If you lose your customer early in the process by trying to hard sell them on a bunch of backends and cross promotions right away, you will lose them completely… and may even lose the initial sale in a refund. 

I prefer the method where you go slow and steady, build trust and rapport, and sell multiple products to customers over several months (or even years!).

What do you think?  I this an effective thank you page strategy or is it too agressive?

Post from: Arvada Yates at iMarketingWatch.com

If you'd like to get more answers to your online business and internet marketing questions, subscribe to Answers eMagazine now!

Thank You Page Turn-Offs

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Hopefully today’s post will get you thinking about what you can do to actually boost your profit from each and every one of your customers.  After all, you’ve spent considerable time and money working to acquire your customers through your lead generation and marketing efforts, but what’s the lifetime value of each one of your customers?

If you’re like most online business owners, you probably never really thought about it… but it’s an important question you should ask yourself.

Why?  Because if you only sell to each one of your customers one time, then you are leaving a lot of money on the table and greatly lowering the lifetime value of each one of your customers.  Let me explain the whole concept of lifetime value by putting some real numbers on it.

Let’s say that you use pay-per-click search engines to generate traffic to one of your products and that you spend $20 on clicks to generate one sale of a $49 product.  That means that you make a profit of only $19 with that campaign.  If you don’t have a backend campaign in place to maximize your profits, then the lifetime value of each customer is only $19.

Not bad, but let’s look at a different scenario…

Let’s say that you’ve acquired your customer above, but instead you have an extensive backend marketing campaign in place.  You sell the original $49 product first at a profit of $19, then you keep in touch with them over time and make another sale of $97 with a $60 profit, then sell them a $297 product with a $260 profit, then cross sell them on a a few affiliate products that create an affiliate commission of $362.

That means that you’ve made $1,001 from the same customer that you only spent $20 to acquire!

That’s the power of backend marketing!

Imagine how much you can make by continuing to offer new products or companion products on the backend. You’ll make thousands more without the extra cost of acquiring the customer.

Some businesses even offer initial products to their customers that lose them money because they know that they can more than make it up on the backend. They know that the money is in the backend sale.

So, think about it… Are you leaving money on the table?

Post from: Arvada Yates at iMarketingWatch.com

If you'd like to get more answers to your online business and internet marketing questions, subscribe to Answers eMagazine now!

Are You Leaving Money On The Table?

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