Aweber added a new form generator that will make your subscription forms look ultra-professional without having to do any fancy coding yourself.  The web form generator now has templates to give your form that professional edge.

Check out the video below to see what I mean:

Pretty cool, huh?

But here’s how it helps EVERYONE who uses email marketing and autoresponders, no matter what service they use…

It forces other autorsponder services to upgrade to offer subscription form templates too if they want to compete for our consumer dollars.

Wait and see… It won’t be long before just about every autoresponder service on the planet offers subscription form templates too.  As a matter of fact, they’ll probably make it one of their major benefits on their sales pages and include screen captures of their templates so that they can prove that they have the “best” templates.

That’s okay… Any way you slice it, these are functionalities that benefit us all.

Isn’t competition great?

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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.

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As discussed recently, properly setting expectations for subscribers before they sign up and immediately after they do so helps you deliver the kind of better experience that leads to more responsive, more deliverable email marketing campaigns.

But that subscriber experience doesn’t occur in just a single moment. And expectations can change over time.

How do you make sure the expectations you worked so hard to set in your opt-in form and on your thank you page don’t fade after subscribers have been on your list for a while?

Read More

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According to the author of The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet Version 2009, the Latest Edition is everything you’d Expect From A Beginner’s Guide To Starting An Online Business with over 1,250 pages of detailed, moneymaking strategies and techniques have been carefully laid out in bite-sized, easy to grab-and-apply sections, making it dead-easy to determine what you need, apply it to your business, and move onto the NEXT step.

The “Insider Secrets” system claims to carefully guide you through all the critical steps:

1. Helping you decide what you should sell…
2. Easily get a sales website live…
3. Attract your first visitor…
4. Accept your first credit card payment!
5. Ramp up sales & traffic quickly!
6. Automate your business to be “hands free”

Course Examples

Here is a small sample of what you will find within The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet Course…

• How to use powerful automated research tools to quickly multiply your hobbies and interests into HUNDREDS of potential business ideas!
• The simple “measuring stick” that will instantly tell you if your product idea has REAL income potential… before you spend a penny developing it!
• The SEVEN best ways to make money from a website — add each one to your website like building blocks and watch your income explode!
• How to get paid BIG commissions by recommending other people’s products on your website!
• How you can quickly become a “Super Affiliate” and earn a full-time, six-figure income — without EVER selling a product of your own!
• Plugging NEW Revenue Streams into Your Website to Incrementally Build Your Online Income by $1,500 to $8,000+ Per Month!
• Secrets for Squeezing WAY MORE Sales and Profits Out Of Your Existing Traffic, Subscribers, Products, and Website!

Additional Benefits Reported

Here are some additional benefits reported in The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet course:

• Students receive real time updates with the latest online marketing strategies.
• Streaming videos for ease of student learning.
• Downloadable content for iPod, iPhone or other mobile device.
• The Master Blueprint for Launching and Expanding Your Internet Business is shipped Free to students.
• Foolproof goal-setting DVD and workbook provided to all students.
• A Private 30-Minute Phone Consultation With a Personal eBiz Trainers.

Product Details

Company Information: The Internet Marketing Center has a 12 year long track record of Over-Delivering on their products and providing good customer value.

Product Spefications: Complete guide to starting and growing an internet business in an electronic, web accessible format plust five business building bonuses valued at $443.

Price: $197 after 30 day trial at $2.95

Return Policy: “DOUBLE Your Profits In 1 Year… Or We’ll Pay You $200 Just For Trying!… in addition to a 100% refund of your purchase price.”

Actual Customer Feedback

“The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet Version 2009 is a must have course for anyone serious about having their own Internet business. If you want to make money online, I highly recommend that you get access to this tremendous online business building course now.”

Shelley Lowery, web-source.net

“There are precious few courses that I can recommend without reservation. Insider Secrets is one of them…highly recommended.”

Kevin Tenzo, warriorforum.com

“I give Insider Secrets VERSION 2009 a perfect 10 out of 10 without hesitation. The Internet Marketing Center continues to be the leader in helping people go from nothing to big money online.”

Valeriu, internetmarketingprofitscenter.com

“We’ve used this course as our blueprint to grow the business to $500,000 per year!”

David Gray, mortgagewatchdog.com.au

“Using all that valuable information, I built my first website which now brings in $300,000 per year in sales, on average!”

Larissa Carrus, airbrushing-made-easy.com

“I can honestly say that I have never had so much fun learning anything in my life!”

Darren Salkeld, down-feather-bedding.com

““Insider Secrets” is the first investment anyone should make in their Internet businesses. It will shave off years of trial and error time, and will also save you a lot of money in the long run, by preventing you from making the kinds of mistakes Corey and Derek made as Internet marketing pioneers. I can’t emphasize that enough. Learn from this system and you’ll be so much further ahead.”

Shawn LeBrun, shawnlebrunfitness.com

“The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet has been a great tool for me. It is a very comprehensive course. I would recommend this course to anyone who wants to start an online business!”

Taylor Knight, yourparrotplace.com

The way the positive review stack up, you can’t go wrong… especially with that return policy!

Read more reviews of The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet Version 2009.

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Here are eight public domain use ideas to get you thinking:

1. Use public domain to increase your organic search engine traffic.

As I said in the idea above, you can cut up public domain content into separate articles and distribute them, but you can also slice it up to create articles for your own website. Make these articles keyword rich and submit them to search engines to gain a high search engine ranking for your keywords. The number one reason people go online is for information research. By setting up keyword and content rich webpages, the search engines will rank you higher and more of those targeted visitors will find you.

2. Use public domain products to upsell your own products.

Upselling is a really powerful strategy for increasing your revenues, if you have additional products to offer. Public domain can give you the opportunity to offer an ‘upgrade’ to your customers. Simply use a public domain product as it is or modify it slightly and you have a product to use in your upsell.

3. Create a digital information product.

This is probably the easiest and most often used method for taking advantage of public domain. You can easily compile the material as is (or with a few slight edits) and turn it into an ebook. Then you can sell the ebook, give it away to subscribers, offer it as a backend, etc.

4. Use public domain as a bonus to your own products.

Just like we talked about using it to upsell your products, you can also use it to create really great bonuses for your products. People love bonuses. Sometimes people will buy a product just for the bonus if it’s something that they view as unique.

5. Use public domain on your website as content and partner with Google AdSense to generate revenue.

Use the material you gather from public domain to create an information rich website. Then place Google AdSense ads within the site. Every time someone clicks on the AdSense ads, you earn a percentage of that advertising revenue. If done right this can add up very quickly.

6. Create a physical information product.

Just as you can create a digital information product out of public domain material, you can also create a physically delivered product and ship it to customers. The real advantage to creating a physical product is that it may work better for your niche audience (especially if they aren’t very sophisticated) and physically delivered products can generally command a higher price.

Some options for a physical product could be to read public domain material into a a microphone and then record that onto a CD, divide the material into sections and turn that into a home study course, or simply repackage the information into a booklet.

7. Create articles or mini courses out of the public domain content.

People and online businesses are starving for great content. You can literally slice up the material you get into smaller articles and distribute them online to gain traffic to your website. This is called article marketing, and it’s a great way to gain targeted visitors to your site, especially when the content actually comes from public domain works.

8. Create s product based on a public domain work.

Some people call these types of products derivative works. All it really means that you use the public domain material as the basis to create something completely different like a video, software, Cd, etc.

There are tons and tons of other ways that you can utilize this freely available material and make money with it. Hopefully this will give you some idea of the possibilities and give you a good jumping off spot for using public domain in your own online business.

Want to know more about public domain?  Get your Free Copy of 10 Days to Smokin’ Traffic Now!

Click the link to learn more about
Public Domain Riches

Or learn more about the
Public Domain Treasure Hunter’s Kit

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I read an article this morning that talks about a brick and mortar company that required it’s salespeople to acquire at least 25% of customers’ email addresses so that they could conduct email marketing.

When the salespeople couldn’t live up to the quotas, they began submitting made up email addresses… and you can guess what happened then.

Their email system was shut down for sending email to bogus addresses and now they can’t conduct any email marketing at all – even to the legitimate addresses.

The company should have seen that one coming long before they instituted their quota!

Well that article got me thinking about my own inbox and I realized that I seem to be getting a lot more junk email than I used to.  Now I’m getting two or three emails per day from companies that I’ve dealt with for years and used to only get a couple of messages per week from.  And it’s not only that, the email that they’re sending is pure advertising rather than information and other stuff I can use.

It’s gotten so bad that I’ve had to subscribe from several lists that I used to really enjoy.

Just because the economy is down doesn’t mean that businesses, both online and offline, should forget to use sound email marketing practices.

In fact, I say that sound email marketing is more important now than ever.

Rule #1 of email marketing: Send subscribers stuff that they’re interested in.  No one likes a constant barrage of sales material.

I realize that some companies are on the edge of collapse and I empathize, but that means that they need to work twice as hard at making every piece of their marketing plan count. Desperately sending out tons of spam and junk email will only serve to hurt them further and contribute to their demise.

And I think that goes for smaller home businesses as well.

… But that’s just my opinion.  What do you think?

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A few days ago I was lurking on a popular marketing forum where someone asked for autoresponder tips and what they should include in that first autoresponder message after someone signs up for a report.  Apparently, this person already had the rest of the messages pre-written through PLR or some other means and they just didn’t know what to write in that first email.

Surprisingly, one particular person answered the call for help by posting a very long sales letter type email template where they repeatedly asked to be whitelisted, were told that they would be receiving many more messages about a particular product, and where they were given a very detailed pitch for their product.

This template was just dripping with pushy salesmenship.

But the guy who posted it claimed that it worked very well for him… go figure!  What do I know?

Anyway, the post prompted me to create a post of my own where I outline how I usually go about the whole autoresponder/free report thing…  As you might imagine, I go about things a little differently.

Autoresponder Tip #1

I like to keep my email short and sweet.  Generally speaking, I keep my email messages as short as possible. I rarely read one of those long email messages and I figure most other people don’t either.

If you want to know the truth… I usually just click on the links if it looks interesting.

Since that’s the way I look at email as a reader, I approach it in a similar fashion as an email sender.  I write a quick sentence or two along with a link to the rest of the article, online report, etc.

The actual giveaway is where I try to build rapport with my reader… not in the email.

If my teaser sentences in the email are strong, then they’ll click on the link and be interested in what’s being offered. After all, the click through is what I’m after.

Autoresponder Tip #2

Forget about pitching in the email.  If you want to build a long-term relationship with your subscriber, you want to soft-sell or pre-sell them… don’t go in for the kill in the very first message!

That’s one sure way to get them to unsubscribe immediately!

Think of it like this…  You meet someone new at the gym one day and strike up a conversation with them because they look interesting.  Within the first five minutes that new “friend” tries to tell you about the really great product they have to sell and tries to get you to buy one.  How quickly do you think you would run out the door to get away from them???

If it were me, I might even check the parking lot to make sure my new “friend” wasn’t there before I went in for my next workout!

Remember I said in Autoresponder Tip #1 that I’m after the click?  Well, I also want to build a long term relationship with my subscribers… not just get a quick sale.

Autoresponder Tip #3

In the original forum post that prompted this article, the poster was planning on sending out the initial email with the free report and then one message every 15-30 days.

That’s not the way I do it.  I think you have to keep in frequent contact with your new “friends,” otherwise known as subscribers, in order to build a lasting relationship with them.

The first couple of weeks in this new relationship are the most important.

Generally, I send out autoresponder messages for at least the first few days after an initial signup, depending on the niche and the freebie offered. The general idea might look something like this:

Day 1: Here’s your report
Day 2: Did you get your report? If not, here’s the link again.
Day 3: Do you have any questions about the report?
Day 6: You’ve had time to read the report, what do you think?
Day 8: Offer some supplementary information (free) related to report like an article. (Of course there is a product pitch hidden in this supplement)

From there, I dwindle my email messages down to at least once per week… two or three times per week if I can find enough stuff to send out.

So that’s how I think an email campaign should be set up for a free report.  I know there are lots of other opinions out there on how it should be done, but that’s my take.

How do you set up your autoresponders?

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My purpose was to determine if I’m send out my email messages at the best times for each of my niches. To figure this out, I decided to start by taking a look at my website logs to see what time of day the most people actually visited my website from day to day.

As I started pouring over the statistics for each of my niches, I noticed an interesting and surprising trend…

The highest percentage of visitors to ALL my websites comes at the 1600 hour!

What really surprised me was that the 1600 hour (4:00 in the afternoon) was most popular in both business and non-business niches.

What does this mean?

Initially I was thinking that a 1600 high point made sense because a lot of people are winding down for the day at 4:00 in the afternoon before they head home for the day.  It’s a good time to catch up on email, do a little free surfing, etc.

But then it dawned on me that I’ve got website visitors coming in from all over the world and different time zones.

I even get visitors from Russia and Iran!

They obviously wouldn’t all be winding down their days at 1600 EST.

So that caused me to take a look at what countries my visitors are coming from… and not surprisingly the vast majority of my visitors in all my niches come from the US and Canada (followed closely by UK and Australia) which operate in my time zones.

Bingo!

Now I know the perfect time to send my email messages to my visitors in order to get the maximum click through rate!  It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure it out, just a little statistic sleuthing.

But here’s the really surprising part…

The magic hour for all my niches is 1600.

I don’t really get that because I have websites for stay at home moms, hobby enthusiasts, online business owners, parents, home schoolers, brick and mortar business owners, entrepreneurs, etc., yet the magic hour is still 1600 for all my niches!

What’s even more weird is that when I compare the statistics for different niches, they are nearly identical… usually within a few percentage points of each other.  In other words when I compare the times when people hit my site across different niches, they are nearly identical.

Take a look at the two graphs below taken from two completely different niches.

I’m not sure I understand why, but I can definitely make use of the information.

So, I’m curious… Are you finding that your website has the same magic hour as mine?

Is this just a quirk in my business or does everyone in the English-speaking market have the same magic hour for their websites?

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You probably never really thought about all the pre-selling tools that are available to today’s online entrepreneur, but technology makes it possible to connect with your potential customers in tons of new ways!

I’ve written about what pre-selling is before, so I won’t go into the details again.  Here’s a short definition to make sure we’re all on the same sheet of music:

In the online world, pre-selling is the art of warming up your visitors, building trust, and putting them in the frame of mind that they want to do business with you.

If you need a more in depth explaination, check out the article, “What is Pre-Selling?”

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s start talking about the actual tools you can use to pre-sell your visitors and turn them into customers.

Of course you already know that basic written content is one of the best pre-sellers.  In fact, you probably already write and distribute articles, load your website up with relevant content, and send your content out in a newsletter.  That’s kind of the “standard internet marketing” that everyone does.

So let’s think out of the box a bit and take a look at some of the pre-selling tools that you may not be fully utilizing…

Pre-Selling Tools

1.  Blogs

Well-done blogs go beyond the basic website and take pre-selling a little more seriously.  Generally speaking, blogs show a little more of the personality of the owner than websites do because they’re less formal, more spontaneous, and friendlier.

When you visit some blogs, you feel like you’ve entered the inner sanctum of the writer… this can be a great pre-seller when it’s done correctly!  A great blog that welcomes visitors with a smile can go a long way toward turning visitors into customers.

2. Reviews

It surprises me how few people take advantage of the great pre-selling power of writing reviews.  Keep in mind that I’m not talking about the kind of candy-coated reviews that claim every product is excellent and worth buying or the bogus reviews pre-written by merchants for affiliates.

I’m talking about buying a product and writing a genuine review of what you liked and didn’t like about the product.  Believe it or not, I often sell more of a product when I write a less than stellar review!

People appreciate and reward honesty.

3.  Commenting

I kind of lumped this one all together to mean several different things so this article wouldn’t be soooo long.

Any time you leave a comment on someone’s blog, on a forum, in a message board, at YouTube, etc., you are pre-selling youreself.  It pays to make your comments useful and timely because visitors will often follow the links in those comments to learn more about you.

It’s kind of like pre-selling them on YOU, inviting them to your little part of the world (your website), and then using other pre-selling tools at your disposal to pre-sell them on products that you promote.

4.  Newsletters and Ezines

Newsletters and ezines are a really great pre-selling tool because they give you the opportunity to build rapport with potential customers over the long term.  This long-term relationship with your subscribers allows you to pre-sell them on a wide variety of products and services over the lifetime of the relationship.

5.  Freebies

There are soooo many freebies that you can put together to pre-sell whatever you want to recommend to your visitors.  You can create ebooks, audios, videos, reports, ecourses, or just about any other freebie that you can think of.  Each free product that you create helps to establish a relationship with potential customers and increases your pre-selling potential.

6.  Podcasts

Podcasts are a great way to instantly build rapport with potential customers and establish an immediate relationship.  There’s just something about hearing another human voice, no matter what they’re saying, that establishes an immediate connection.  All you need to do to use this great pre-selling tool is to provide great information.

Just remember, it’s not a radio commercial!

7.  Videos

Just like podcasts, videos are also a great pre-selling tool.  Not only can visitors hear your voice as you’re helping them solve a problem (that ultimately leads to a product available for purchase), but they can also see either you or your visual props in the video to help solidify the message in their minds.

In addition, well-done videos go a long way toward promoting you as a professional who is credible… all worthy goals when you’re pre-selling!

8.  Social Networks

This is probably the most important pre-selling tool in your toolbox because of the very nature of a social network.  Pre-selling and social networks fit together like hand and glove.

In a social network like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, or Twitter you’re building a social relationship with others online… the very definition of pre-selling.  In other words, you become friends with others through these social networks, pre-sell them your products, and your “friends” buy the products that you’re pre-selling because you have an established relationship with them.

And that’s my short list of the best pre-selling tools available to online entrepreneurs.  If you aren’t taking advantage of these options, you really owe it to yourself to start taking a look at how you can integrate some of these pre-selling opportunities into your business… especially social networks.

If I’ve missed a really great pre-selling tool here, I hope you’ll let me know!

I can virtually guarantee your pre-selling success
with this one tool… read more.

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This month we discuss how to show your visitors a little love to increase your subscription rate, when to take the drastic step of firing your customers, and how to create a profit funnel for your business.

To become a subscriber and read this latest edition, simply subscribe using the form to your right or click here.

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