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!

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“How do you make an ebook from your own PC?”

I figured a video was worth a thousand words… so I created the video below to show you how it works step-by-step:

The Steps…

In the video I assumed that you would want to create an ebook that was in PDF format… which I highly recommend. PDF files can be read on any kind of computer, the reader is free and usually already installed on most computers, and it’s a format that most people are used to using.

Here are the steps that I lay out in the video for those who don’t want to actually watch it:

1. Create your ebook in Microsoft Word.
2. Print your document to Cute PDF Writer.  This is the program I use and I love it.
3. Open up Cute PDF and add your links and other enhancements.
4. Save your changes to the PDF file.
5. Open you ebook up in Adobe Reader and make sure it looks the way you want it to.
6. If you want to make changes, go back to Cute PDF and make the changes.
7. Get your ebook out there!

The whole process is surprisingly quick and easy.

If you have a program that you think is better than Cute PDF, please let me know.  I’m always interested in new and better products that make my life easier!

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That’s simply not true.

Often the surest strategy for creating a high revenue product is to take a look at other successful products in your industry.

Think about it… successful products have already passed the market research phase of development, they have an audience that’s buying them, and they are already well-known in the industry or niche.

I know what you’re thinking. Obviously, you can’t just go out and copy someone else’s product, slap your name on it, go out and sell it. That would be completely wrong, not to mention illegal, and you wouldn’t make any money on it anyway because everyone in your niche or industry would see you as a copycat. You don’t want that.

But here’s what you can do: Model your new product on that successful product and publish your new product in a completely new format.

For example, let’s say that your competitor has an ebook that’s selling like hotcakes. You could easily create a video series, audio course, home study course, or physical product based on that topic. After all, you already know there’s a market for the information your competitor provides, so there’s no reason why you can’t create a competing product in a different format and get your piece of the pie.

If you really want to be competitive, buy your competitor’s product and find out where their product is weak or lacks information. Then when you start the product creation process you can be sure to add the information that your competition’s product lacks. This will make your product even more competitive.

You can also apply this same product creation idea to one of your own products!

Simply take a look at your own successful products and reformat them in different media to create your own new profitable products!

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