4 Toughest Competitors in Internet Information Marketing
Archives: Daily Issues
Issue #2647
- WEALTHY: When you shouldn’t ask for a low price on a property (Julie Broad)
- HEALTHY: How much soreness is okay after a workout? (Jon Benson)
- WISE: John Kerry on competition
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- How to combat your online competition (Bob Bly)
- Determine your values to increase success (Brian Tracy)
- It’s Good to Know… the forms fiction can take
- Add “countermand” to your vocabulary
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It’s Not Just About Price When Creating Great Real Estate Deals
By Julie Broad
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“The competition’s tough, and it requires us to be tougher – tough-minded, never hard hearted.”
John Kerry
Your 4 Toughest Competitors in Internet Information Marketing
By Bob Bly
There’s a lot of money being made in marketing information products online today. But there’s also a lot of competition – as I’m sure you’ve noticed.
You can’t just sit there and pray that your customers never find out about your competitors. Thanks to Google, they can find their offers in seconds. Your best strategy is to identify who and what you’re competing against – and fill a gap in the market that they’re missing.
Here are the four types of competitors you face as an info marketer… and one good strategy for combating each:
Competitor Category #1: Companies that give away information on your topic absolutely free
There are countless companies out there giving away free information on their sites.
These folks are not in the business of selling information products. They typically sell a physical product or a service… and give away free content to build their e-list.
It can be challenging to compete in a niche where a lot of good free content is published by companies that treat it as a marketing strategy. After all, why should your customers pay you for your content when they can get it – or something close to it – for free elsewhere?
One strategy to use against this type of competition is to establish yourself as a guru in your niche.
Consumers want authoritative information from experts, and are willing to pay a premium to get it. For instance, anyone can compile information on conservative issues and politics. But only Rush Limbaugh can publish and sell The Limbaugh Letter.
Competitor Category #2: Bookstores
I’ve lost track of the number of times I have reviewed some publisher’s expensive information product, only to find that it contains less information than a 250-page paperback I can buy at Barnes & Noble for 15 bucks.
One competitive strategy to use against bookstores is micro-niching – publishing in a highly specialized niche that trade-book publishers won’t touch.
Example: I can go to Barnes & Noble today and find several highly useful – and quite inexpensive – books on social networking. But if I publish a title like “Building Your Dental Practice With Social Networks,” that is too narrow a niche for bookstore sales.
Competitor Category #3: People who sell low-priced info products on your topic
During the 1990s recession, a major newspaper ran an article about two entrepreneurs selling reports on marketing in a recession. One was me, and the other one was a famous marketer.
The paper told readers how to buy my report but not the famous marketer’s. Reason: Mine cost $7, and his cost $1,000.
From one press release, I sold over 3,000 of those booklets.
How could that marketer have hoped to compete with my bargain rate? One way would have been to offer more in-depth content.
In information products, there is a content hierarchy – from weakest to strongest – that goes like this:
Level A. Telling readers what to do (e.g., in a booklet on making money as a landlord, informing the reader that they must make every tenant sign a written lease)
Level B. Telling readers how to do it (e.g., providing a checklist of the nine points every lease should cover)
Level C. Doing it for them (e.g., actually including sample leases)
Low-priced info products mostly cover Level A and, to a lesser degree, Level B. The more your high-priced info products give the readers of Level B and Level C, the greater the price you can command.
Competitor Category #4: People who charge as much as – or more than – you for seemingly equivalent info products
If your pricing is similar to that of your competitors, two of the strategies I mentioned above – establishing yourself as an industry guru and micro-niching – can differentiate you from the crowd. If your price is lower than most of your competitors, play the price card.
In your marketing copy, talk about how the other guys charge an outrageous fortune for big, elaborate packages that the buyer won’t have time to absorb and probably will never even look at. Then show how your product saves time because it is tightly written (no fluff) as well as inexpensive.
One other idea for handling competition: Befriend them instead of going to war with them. This strategy is called “coopetition.” It recognizes that two businesses can be competitors and joint venture partners simultaneously.
Reach out to your competitors via phone or e-mail. Offer to do joint venture deals and affiliate promotions with them.
Maybe they have a high-priced product that is the perfect back-end to one of your front-end products. Instead of spending a lot of time and money to duplicate what they have done, sell their product to your customers on the back end for a nice affiliate commission on every sale you make.
[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 70 books. To subscribe to his free e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and claim your free gift worth $116, click here now
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Working Toward What You Believe In
By Brian Tracy
When you are working progressively, step-by-step, toward something that is important to you, you generate within yourself a continuous feeling of success and achievement.
And it begins with determining what it is you believe in and stand for – your values.
Successful people are successful because they are very clear about their values. Unsuccessful people are fuzzy or unsure. Complete failures have no real values at all.
Clarifying your values is the beginning exercise in building self-confidence, self-esteem, and character. When you take the time to think through your fundamental values, and then commit to living your life consistent with them, you feel a surge of mental strength and well-being. You feel more capable. You feel more centered in the universe and more competent to accomplish the goals you set for yourself.
Here are two things you can do immediately to put this idea into action.
1. Decide for yourself what makes you truly happy, and organize your life around it.
2. Identify your values – what it is you stand for and believe in. Commit to living in a way that’s consistent with these innermost convictions… and you’ll never make another mistake.
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Is Feeling Sore Good?
By Jon Benson
Some people feel like they did not get a good workout unless they’re sore the next day. Some carry this to an extreme: They get so sore they can barely move.
In all honesty, I’ve had great workouts where I literally could not walk up a flight of stairs afterward. Had to sleep in the car once.
Is this necessary for muscle growth?
No. Soreness is an indicator that you have done damage to the muscle fibers. That’s okay – in fact, it’s the purpose of weight training. But excessive sorenessmeans you’ve done too much damage. That kind of damage can take too long to repair – and that gets you out of your workout rhythm.
The ideal soreness is felt 1-2 days after a workout, where you are a bit tender but not in pain. The longer you train, the less of this soreness you may feel… and that, too, is okay.
The real indicator of a good workout is what you do in the NEXT workout. Do you
progress? Do you feel stronger? Do you get a good pump in your muscles?
If so, you’re on the right track – sore or not.
[Ed. Note: Jon Benson is a 3-time bestselling fitness author. He offers a free 7-day Fat Loss Course and complimentary e-book, "The Radical Fat Loss Blueprint," on his website. Get it here .
For easy-to-follow exercises you can do at home - plus dozens of strategies for getting fit and living longer - sign up for ETR's natural health newsletter ]
It’s Good to Know: The Forms Fiction Can Take
A classic story has several key elements, including character, conflict, and resolution. But you can put these elements together in a surprising number of ways. While the specifications aren’t hard and fast, here are seven of the forms that fiction can take:
• Flash Fiction (sometimes called Microfiction) – a work with all the elements of a story that takes place in 750 words or less (as defined by James Thomas in Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories )Consider this example by Ernest Hemingway, just six words long: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
• Nanofiction – a story with at least one character and a discernible plot that is exactly 55 words long
• Short Short Story – a story that’s under 2,500 words
• Traditional Short Story – a story that’s under 7,500 words
• Novelette – a story that’s between 7,501 and 17,500 words
• Novella – a story that’s between 17,501 and 40,000 words
• Novel – a story that’s at least 40,001 words long
(Source: TheValve.org)
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Word to the Wise: Countermand
To “countermand” (KOWN-tur-mand) – from the Latin – is to give an order contrary to one that was previously given.
Example (as used by Dumas Malone and quoted in The Long Affair by Conor Cruise O’Brien ): “Her aunt and uncle kept hoping her father would countermand his orders since his promises to her seemed to be without effect.”
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