Our sales were hurting. Every one of our distributors was selling three to five times more of our competitor’s cheaper, inferior air ionizers than ours.
It seemed that consumers decided at the shelf that all ionizers are pretty much the same. So why should they spend 67 percent more on ours? (more…)
Only the faint tick of the grandfather clock broke the silence as I waited for him to acknowledge my presence. He’d summoned me to his office to discuss the great idea I’d outlined in a memo only last week. So new in the company, yet already meeting with the Managing Director! (more…)
What do you do if your prospect knows nothing about you, as is often the case? How can you sway or “nudge” their thinking about your business, products, or services?
You do it by including plenty of testimonials in your marketing materials.
Testimonials overcome a prospect’s skepticism (”Who the heck are you? And why should I listen to you anyway?”) by helping them connect emotionally to other people who’ve used and liked your products. Reading those true-life stories makes prospects more receptive to what you have to say. And sell. (more…)
My wife strode across the yard from the chicken coop, clutching our sharpest kitchen knife. A rivulet of red ran down her forearm. Her hands were stained crimson, and a solitary feather stuck to her palm.
“Hi, Honey!” she chirped. “I was just seeing whether the new chicks liked strawberries.”
Assumptions, I am reminded, are the mother of all screw-ups. And some of the worst assumptions are made by website designers who make it hard for people to find what they are looking for.
The assumptions we make are all about our perceptions and how our brains interpret them. The human brain needs very little information in order to synthesize the bits and pieces in any scenario and immediately form a whole picture.
In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell calls this ability of ours “thin slicing.” Apparently, we developed it thousands of years ago. When our distant ancestors hunted and gathered and danger approached, they needed to make the decision — in a split-second — whether to fight or flee.
At heart — more correctly, “at brain” — we are still hunters on a trail. But instead of food, we are searching for information.
One of the most daunting things about starting your own Internet business is the idea of creating regular, unique content for your website. You can raise your eyebrows and sigh. It’s okay. But you are going to need this fresh content if you want to get anywhere with search engines. Plus, your site visitors will expect you to continue to provide them with relevant and useful information … if you expect them to keep coming back.
Call it writer’s block or just plain old brain freeze, but finding topics to write about isn’t always easy. There is one type of article, though, that can pull you out of this creative quagmire. It will keep your readers happy and help boost your search engine traffic at the same time.
I’m talking about the “how to” article.
“How do I figure out what to tell them how to do?” you may ask.
Your customers can be your best guide on this. They are probably already asking you questions like “How do I use this TIG welder?” “How can I bake a vegan birthday cake?” Or “How can I cook ribs on my new BBQ?”
Simply listen to their questions and address them in your “how to” articles.
Here’s what you do:
Setting up an e-newsletter or blog starts with a subject you love, a simple website, and some useful content. But unless you want your newsletter to be nothing but a hobby, you’ll want to find ways to generate income from it.
You can create your own information products – e-books, special reports, teleseminars, and more – and sell them to your e-newsletter subscribers. This is the easiest and most cost-effective type of product to sell, because you can deliver it digitally.
You can also sell practically anything else that might appeal to your subscribers. If you are a yoga expert, you can sell yoga equipment. If you’re a gourmet chef, you can sell homemade biscotti. If you’re a prize-winning gardener, you can sell seeds from your blue-ribbon tomatoes.
If you don’t want to produce or ship these products yourself, there are two ways to make money online without having to tie yourself up with inventory. You can find a supplier who offers drop-shipping. (You take the order and payment, and they send the product directly to the customer.) Or you can become an affiliate to a company in your niche that sells products your subscribers would be interested in.
So look at your newsletter and niche. What products would appeal to that market? Brainstorm some ideas, test them, and then roll out with the winners. That’s the quickest way to e-newsletter profits.
[Ed. Note: David Cross - Senior Internet Consultant to Agora Inc. - and a handful of other Internet marketing experts have just revealed a powerful "blueprint" that's responsible for generating $275 million a year in Internet revenues. Right now, you can not only get your hands on this blueprint to creating lasting wealth... you can get expert, step-by-step instruction in how to make it work for YOU. Learn more here. WARNING - this offer ends forever tonight at 5:00 pm Eastern. So make sure you snap up your copy of this incredible wealth blueprint - and possibly get your hands on a $2,000 bonus - right now.]
An e-mail newsletter is one of the best ways to make almost any business at least twice as valuable, to generate substantial cash flow, and to double or triple profits. It’s also the perfect way to turn an interest or hobby into a moneymaking venture.
And starting one is much easier than you might think. You really need only three things (and the ability to be a good writer is not one of them):
1. Something to Write About
The Internet is full of thousands of people who are interested in the same things you are. So when you’re looking for a topic for (more…)
When you shop online, you have to be able to see the product before you can make the decision to buy. Because images take up space and slow downloads, most websites provide small thumbnail images. When you click on the thumbnail, a large image pops up. At least, it should…
I find that on about half of the websites I visit, the “larger” image is the same size as the thumbnail. This makes it impossible to tell what the product really looks like.
If you have a website where you feature product images, listen up! On the preview image, make sure the “small to large” function works correctly – and make sure that you do, in fact, provide a larger image.
A good thumbnail size is around 100-150 pixels, and a good higher resolution size is 400-600 pixels.
[Ed. Note: What are your biggest website usability pet peeves? Let us know right here.]
Comment on this article
You receive an invoice from your website or software developer. You query a charge you didn’t know about. The developer tells you it relates to a new feature they developed… one that you asked for.
“I did?!”
I’ve seen this happen many times. The problem stems from discussions along the way – when you casually say, “It would be nice to have… ” or wonder aloud, “Would it be possible to… ?”
In one case, when the developer presented his design for a shopping cart on the company website, the CEO looked at it, nodded, and remarked, “Wouldn’t it be good if we could somehow add money-off coupons so we could tie in our printed advertising with the website?” Everyone at the meeting agreed that, vague as the idea was, it would, indeed, “be good.”
They forgot about it, but the developer didn’t. And they were surprised when he came back with a new design – and a bill for the $7,500 it took to implement the coupon feature.
When you are in brainstorming or “blue-sky-creative-anything-goes” mode, many developers will interpret the “Can we do this?” ideas that are thrown out as “I require you to do this.” I’ve seen it increase project costs by tens of thousands of dollars.
To prevent what project managers refer to as “scope creep” (because it stretches out the scope of the project), tell the developer at the outset that any changes to the original contract must be documented in writing and okayed by everyone involved. That includes associated costs, as well as any effect the additional work will have on the project’s timeframe.
Putting every requested change in black and white, clearly stating cost and time implications, helps everyone stick to their budgets and deadlines… and prevents future shock.
[Ed. Note: Did you ever cost your company - or yourself - money because you didn't get the details of a job in writing? Let us know right here.]
I swerved for the third fallen tree on the road as torrential rain pelted the car windows. It was starting to look like a war zone as floodwater and rocks spewed out onto the road from the hillside that was rapidly becoming a series of slurried landslides. The first major storm of 2009 tore up the landscape and brought most rivers in the Pacific Northwest to flood stage. But I had to make the journey, and I was too far now to turn back.
Onward I pressed, and finally I was out of the woods. Ten miles of clear, open road lay ahead, and soon I was almost at my destination. Just a half-mile to go and… “ROAD CLOSED: HIGH WATER.” I had to double-back and make a 25-mile detour.
How many times has the lane you’ve been driving in come to a screeching halt when a sign suddenly appears that says “Right Lane Must Turn Right.” Why don’t these signs appear early enough for drivers to take action proactively, rather than having to slam on their brakes at the last minute?
This same basic problem exists on many websites, and it could be hurting your online sales. Fortunately, there’s something you can – and should – do about it.
Why This Problem Hurts Your Internet Sales
I’m sure this has happened to you…
You enter your credit card number to place your order. Then – AFTER you’ve entered your number – you get an error page that tells you “Credit Card Number must be entered in format xxxx-xxxx-xxxxx-xxxx.” Or that your phone number should be in a certain format. Or that your password needs a minimum of eight characters including numbers and must start with an uppercase letter.
All you want to do is spend money. But this website is preventing you from doing so.
If your website or shopping cart requires customers to enter information – such as an e-mail address, phone number, credit card number, etc. – a certain way, here are 8 steps you need to follow.
1. Try to limit the restrictions you place on people. They are customers, not computer programmers! It’s better to accept what the customer enters and leave the reformatting to your programmers.
2. Remember that it will be hard for some people (customers with dyslexia, for example), to enter data into your website. Make it simple for everyone to place their orders by listing your phone number on the website so they can just call you.
3. Place the request for information “in a certain format” at the point where people enter that data – underneath the field asking for the phone number, for example.
4. If you don’t wish to “clutter” your website with such instructions, have your programmer create a JavaScript or similar code that allows customers to input the data, but then warns them immediately that a certain format is required. This is less than ideal, but a good compromise.
5. It’s often possible to program your site to allow customers to enter their data any way they wish – and then have the program automatically remove dashes, dots, or superfluous characters and reformat the data into the required format.
6. If a customer is selecting a username, make it easy for them to determine whether that username has already been taken. Yahoo, MSN, and Gmail do a good job of this. There’s nothing more frustrating than having to submit a form three or four times while trying to come up with an available username.
7. If you don’t allow orders from certain countries, state that upfront on your website. Better still, use a software package that can identify the country a visitor is accessing your website from, and can lead them to a special page informing them that you do not currently service their location. (Such programs are made by MaxMind and IP2Location.)
I’ve personally experienced the frustration of browsing a site and shopping for half an hour, only to find out that the company didn’t deliver to the country I was in at the time.
8. When developing your website, allow plenty of time for testing with real customers. (Software developers and your staff do not constitute real customers.) The only way you’ll know, for example, how most of your customers will prefer to enter their credit card numbers – with dashes between digits, with slashes, or with no spacing at all – is to run tests. Invite a select few of your customers to test such things for you. As a gift for their help, do what my friends who run an aromatherapy business did: Give them the products they order during the test for free.
The most important function of your website is to allow your customers to place their orders and receive the products or services they’re interested in. So make it as easy and hassle-free as possible.
You know how frustrating it is when you have to make a U-turn or take a detour when you could have been given fair warning beforehand. Don’t make your customers jump through unnecessary hoops to complete their purchases.
[Ed. Note: Making your website appealing and easy to use doesn't have to be hard. You can get expert advice, as well as useful suggestions for how to start an e-newsletter, write sales copy, create products, and more as a member of ETR's Internet Money Club. Get all the details on a step-by-step guide to creating your own Internet business right here.]
Your website sales and sign ups can improve dramatically just by implementing David Cross’s simple usability technique.
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“How is the job hunting going?” I asked my friend Jane.
“Well, nobody EVER hires during the holidays, so there’s no point in looking. Actually, I’m kind of hoping I can get my unemployment benefits extended.”
If my dad had heard that, he would have had a fit. He strongly believed that having a job was a moral obligation. “Nobody has a ‘right to work,’” he often said to my brother, my sister, and me, “and nobody owes you a job. So get out there and sell yourself!” (And this was a pretty surprising attitude considering the tough working-class area in Northern England he came from, where the right to work was woven into the fabric of society.)
Throughout their lives, my parents felt that it was entirely up to them to make their own way in the world – even when that world seemed to be crumbling down around them.
I remember the year my dad had a devastating stroke that left him seriously incapacitated. My mum’s part-time, seasonal hotel cleaning job had finished for the year, and times were tough. But I also remember my parents’ sense of optimism and their determination to succeed, no matter what. The tougher things seemed to get, the more my parents “went out there” and doubled their efforts to find work.
My mum posted handwritten cards offering her cleaning services in the local newspaper office and in “7-11″ type corner shops in our neighborhood. She took an evening job working in a cafe.
My dad started on his dual road to recovery and employment by advising on building and plumbing jobs. He also helped out at his doctor’s surgery, local churches, and businesses – and wasn’t shy about making sure people knew he had 40-plus years of experience as a plumber and builder.
Somehow, together, they made ends meet.
How This Can Help You and Your Business
In tough economic times – like right now – you may have fewer new customers or your existing customers may be more cautious about spending. Worse, you may feel that there’s nothing you can do.
As unfair as it may seem, you’re on your own. Nobody is going to give you a bailout, nobody owes you a thing, and you have no right to anything except that which you create.
That sounds tough but it’s actually quite liberating – because you have full control over the direction you take with your business. What you decide to do is entirely up to you.
So my suggestion is to follow my dad’s advice and make this one of your New Year’s resolutions: “Get out there and sell yourself!” Use every means and every channel at your disposal to market your business and create new sales opportunities.
Here are 10 things you can do – starting today…
1. If you are marketing only online, start using offline channels. That includes sending postcards, printed letters, flyers, newsletters, and catalogs by regular “snail mail.”
2. If you don’t have an Internet presence, it’s time to get one. You can start by placing an ad on Google – so when people search for keywords related to your product or service, your ad will be displayed.
3. Start thinking of “online” and “offline” as two different yet complementary marketing channels. Realize that both should be part of your overall marketing strategy. We know from experience that marketing through multiple channels is the most effective way to build a business.
For example, you could send a postcard or letter informing prospects to watch for a special e-mail you will send on a specific date. Or you could send an e-mail telling them to watch for a special letter you will mail to them in the next week. This kind of multi-channel approach is what Michael Masterson and MaryEllen Tribby outline in their groundbreaking book Changing the Channel. If you haven’t yet read it, order it today.
4. Pick up the phone. It’s easy to sit behind a computer and fire off e-mails. But in an ever-more-disconnected world, people appreciate personal touches. Call your best customers to thank them. Check to make sure that they are getting the most out of their product or subscription, and take that opportunity to inform them about other products or services on offer.
5. Upsell. The moment someone places an order… that’s when they are most likely to make another purchase. You can take advantage of this by offering items related to what they just bought.
For example, offer a notebook to everyone who buys a pen from you, a multi-vitamin to everyone who buys an herbal supplement from you, an e-book to everyone who subscribes to your investment service. (You get the idea.) Doing this can greatly increase your average sale or transaction value.
6. Start e-mail marketing. Create a free report with useful information that will attract potential customers. For example, if you sell bathroom fixtures, offer a free report about planning a bathroom renovation or how to give a bathroom a Victorian look. Anything to give you a reason to start a new sales dialog with people.
Then place an ad for this free report on your website. You can use an autoreply service – such as aweber.com or getresponse.com - to send out the report automatically.
7. Buy remnant advertising space. If you want to increase your marketing activities without increasing your advertising spending, you need to start buying remnant space. Most newspapers and magazines have unsold space that they have to sell before they can go to print. You can get a 20 percent, 50 percent, even a 95 percent discount on this “last-minute” space and save yourself a fortune.
8. Turn every transaction into a marketing opportunity. When the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) started allowing companies to advertise on the plastic bins at airport security checkpoints, they turned what had been purely a transactional activity (sending people through the screener) into a marketing opportunity.
How could you do that in your business? Could you print product info on your invoices – or include a flyer about a special offer in the envelope?
9. Test your prices. When sales are slow, business owners often think that offering discounts is the best strategy. But it may not be. The only way to know for sure is to test the price of your wares. You may even find that by bundling products and services together – and throwing in a few free reports – you could end up selling the entire package for more than you got by selling those items individually.
10. Offer free workshops and classes. There’s nothing quite like meeting customers and prospects in person. It helps you forge strong relationships and increase your chances of future sales. One way to do this is to offer free workshops and classes. Going back to one of my earlier examples… if you sell bathroom fixtures, you could have free tiling workshops or classes on how to do simple plumbing repairs. And you would not only provide attendees with practical information, you would also give advice and refer to the products and services you sell.
The New Year is full of opportunity. What you do with that opportunity is up to you. There’s never been a better time to test and try new ideas and new angles – never a better time to “Get out there and sell yourself!”
My best wishes for a Happy New Year to you and your loved ones.
[Ed. Note: For a step-by-step blueprint to starting your own business - from setting up a website to creating products to writing sales copy and more - sign up for ETR's Internet Money Club. You'll have weekly contact with ETR's team of marketing and business-building experts - including David Cross, MaryEllen Tribby, and Brian Edmondson. And if you don't have a fully functioning business by the end of 2009, ETR will build one for you. Space is limited for this exclusive club. See if there are any openings available for the "Class" of 2009 right here.]
For almost a month, “Alma” went back and forth with her Web developer on which illustration to use on her company website’s homepage. Should it be the lavender flowers? The bluebell-carpeted scene of springtime in the woods? Or would the photo of the healthy-looking young yoga instructor best convey what the site was about?
Everyone in Alma’s company had a different opinion. And changing one illustration on the homepage meant other graphics on the site needed to be changed to reflect the “core” image of the business.
It’s a situation that replays itself every day in website agencies and Web development companies around the world.
Now there’s no doubt that good graphic design can make or break a marketing campaign. A well-chosen, well-placed image can double, triple, or quadruple response rates. However, the design of your website is a whole different animal. Taking a close look at some recent research may offer a startling insight into what I’m talking about…
Nielsen Norman Group recently ran a battery of website usability studies using eye-tracking technology. In the studies, people were asked to perform a variety of tasks on different websites, such as “open an account” at an online bank or “find a local pizza restaurant” or “buy a black suit with a blue tie.” While they were engaged in these tasks, hidden infrared cameras monitored their eye movements to see what they looked at and where their gaze was fixed. From the data, the researchers drew “heat maps” that showed which parts of each Web page were looked at the most. Areas colored red indicated where the study participants spent the greatest amount of time. Yellow and blue indicated fewer eye fixations. And gray areas were those that didn’t attract any fixations.
In every case, statistically significant patterns emerged.
Here are three results that you should be aware of in order to make your website stronger and more appealing to your visitors:
• Banners and ads are ignored. People almost never pay attention to anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it actually is one. This is true of banners anywhere within a Web page.
• Images are ignored. Images receive similar scant attention fixations, with the exception of faces and “cleavage and other ‘private’ body parts.”
• Text is universally “interesting.” What all the study participants fixated on was plain text or written content.
Why Your Website “Design” Shouldn’t Be Your Top Concern
Your website design does matter… but probably less than you think. And a lot less than your website designer thinks (or would like to bill you for).
Think of your website as a dinner plate and your articles and other content as the dinner. Sure, you want an overall presentation that is attractive. But the food is the most important part of the meal. The plate itself should not be garish or bland. It should complement the meal and showcase it in the best light possible.
Almost all the websites and e-mail promotions that took Agora Inc., the parent company of Early to Rise, to its first $100 million in online sales were about as un-designed as you could imagine. They were mainly all text and headlines. In fact, Agora’s websites looked – and still look – very similar to the longer direct-mail sales letters you receive in the mail. According to many Web designers, these sites shouldn’t work any more than a bumblebee should be able to fly (because it breaks every rule of aerodynamics). But fly it does.
It is important for all Web designers to know where people look when they visit a Web page. Most people are looking for information, facts, or advice. And they want a website that gets that job done. If they are engrossed in a story or buried deep in content, they don’t want distractions and they don’t want to look away.
Plus, if your most important content is “hiding” in a banner or graphic, you could be missing plenty of opportunities to convert site visitors to paying customers.
Recognize the power of words. If you are considering placing a photo or other graphic on your site, ask yourself whether, instead, there is a way to express what you’re trying to communicate with words. Research and experience bears out that this will probably produce a better result.
What Does Matter?
Most website critiques focus on the look and feel of the site, its visual design and layout. But what matters primarily for most websites and to most people is text.
For this, there are a number of guidelines you can adopt:
• Make it easy to skim-read your Web pages. Online, people skim-read and scan for information. So break up your Web content with logical headings and subheadings. Use bullet points to break up paragraphs, and use bold type to make important words stand out.
Try skim-reading your Web pages yourself – or, better still, have a customer do it for you. See if they have any trouble understanding the page and moving onto the next step (signing up for your e-mail newsletter or purchasing something).
• Think “elevator pitch.” An “elevator pitch” explains what you do, what your product or service does, and, especially, what it does for the customer. And it does so in the time it takes to move between two floors in an elevator.
The first two paragraphs on any Web page should state the most important information in an easy-to-grasp way. If a site visitor reads those two paragraphs, there’s a better chance that they’ll continue reading the rest of the page.
• Begin with useful information. Beginning page titles, headings, subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words will help your site visitors as they skim-read. People generally notice the first words of any block of text more than the later words. Make it simple for people to find what they need.
Creating content-rich rather than image-heavy websites is still unfashionable. Many designers still treat the Web more like printed advertising media and focus on graphical embellishments – which often end up being largely ignored. Even seasoned Web designers forget the power of words.
Above all else, make sure your website has useful, easy-to-skim information. Work with your graphic and Web designers to ensure that your design supports the content rather than overwhelms it. You’ll better serve your website visitors… and have a better chance of converting them into e-letter subscribers or paying customers.
[Ed. Note: When it comes to your website, content is king. Search engines love it - and your site visitors will too. For more targeted advice from Agora Senior Internet Consultant David Cross, come meet him at ETR's 2008 Info Marketing Bootcamp. David and 11 other Internet marketing experts will be revealing specific methods you can use to make $1.2 million in 2009. Reserve your spot today.]
“In your article about getting rid of excess spam, you stated that Google’s e-mail service has excellent spam filtering. I disagree with that. I use Google’s Gmail. I receive between 200 and 500 spam messages per day, and several arrive in my inbox. I am very careful what I click into, and certainly never spam, yet I get an irritating amount of Gmail spam.
“Do you know how I might be able to diminish this annoying spam? I am sure that many other ETR readers will gratefully appreciate your help with this problem. Thanks 200 to 500 times.”
Judy H.
Orlando, FL
Dear Judy,
200 to 500 spams a day with “several” in the inbox is not bad compared to the impact of not having ANY spam filtering.
Spam filtering is about striking a balance. It’s better to receive all the e-mail you should receive with the occasional spam arriving in your inbox than to have your e-mails filtered to such an aggressive extent that messages from clients and family are tagged erroneously as “spam.”
Gmail’s spam filtering uses heuristic algorithms to help identify spam. It “learns” what to consider spam when you mark e-mails as “spam”… or when you mark legitimate e-mails tagged as spam as “not spam.”
Because Gmail filters spam based on how you tag your e-mails, you should not mark as “spam” e-mail from senders you DO wish to receive e-mail from. And instead of simply deleting spam from your inbox, check the box next to the e-mail and click the “Report Spam” button at the top of your inbox.
It helps if you receive a large volume of legitimate e-mail. This gives the spam filter a good-sized sample to work with and compare to the spam you’re receiving. If you receive only a handful of legitimate e-mails a day, plus up to 500 spams a day, it will take a long time for any filtering system to build up enough data to accurately separate the wheat from the chaff.
No spam filtering system will ever be 100 percent accurate. In my Gmail account, I receive about the same amount of spam each day as you do. Only 10 to 15 spam messages make it into my inbox each week. And one legitimate e-mail a week (like my sister’s holiday photos) gets erroneously marked as spam. That’s about 3,000 e-mails a week with less than 15 that should have been tagged as spam that weren’t and 1 that was tagged as spam that shouldn’t have been. That’s a 99.995 percent rate of accuracy.
I can live with that!
To summarize:
1. Add the e-mail addresses of legitimate senders to your Gmail address book.
2. Create a filter in Gmail to mark e-mail from legitimate senders as “Never mark as spam.”
3. Check your spam folder and make sure you mark mail in there that was from legitimate senders as “Not Spam.”
4. Mark spam in your inbox as spam.
5. Try to receive more e-mail from a wider range of legitimate senders… if only for a while.
If you’ve published your e-mail address in any discussion forum, website, newsgroup, etc., it may be necessary to change your e-mail address. However, the steps I’ve outlined above should help.
[Ed. Note: Spam is irritating. But it's a problem you can solve. Fortunately, many of life's little inconveniences have easy - though often unknown - solutions. Sidestepping a speeding ticket... getting out of jury duty... rehabbing poor credit. Learn how to do it all - and more - right here.
Have a question for an ETR expert? Send it to AskETR@ETRFeedback.com. Include your full name, your hometown and state, and the ETR team may answer you in an upcoming issue.]
“I get tons of unsolicited e-mail, often the same message from many (20-25) people. Most of these are sex-related, with NO unsubscribe link. There are also lots of other e-mails that are not similar, but mostly sex-related (although there are a few about real estate, vitamins, software, and anything else you can think of). I get between 200 and 400 a day, which makes it difficult to conduct my business. It also makes it easy to overlook a legit e-mail that needs attention.
“I killed that e-mail address for over a year. When I reinstated it, it was only about a month before the junk e-mail began again. What do you recommend?”
Ginger L.
Dear Ginger,
This is a common problem for small businesses, usually triggered when you post your e-mail address on your website. That makes your e-mail address easy pickings for spammers’ harvesting programs. Here are three ways you can nip the spam problem in the bud:
1. Some website hosts allow you to do spam filtering. For instance, I note you host your website with Dreamhost. You can switch on spam filtering within your control panel.
2. You may also wish to disable your domain’s “catchall” e-mail address. The “catchall” address allows spammers to e-mail anyaddress@yourdomain.com, and it will go through. Use only e-mail addresses you actually need, and specify their use – such as yourname@yourdomain.com, info@yourdomain.com, sales@yourdomain.com, etc. You can disallow any others by refusing mail to those addresses. Tech support at your website-hosting company will advise you how.
3. Keep your website hosting with Dreamhost, but consider moving the e-mail portion of your business to an external e-mail provider – say, Google’s hosted e-mail program. This is free, gives you 6GB of space per e-mail account, and has excellent spam filtering that should all but negate the problems you are experiencing. You can use your existing domain name and e-mail addresses, and Dreamhost recently made it very easy to make the switch. (It’s within your control panel under “e-mail settings.”)
And for everyone – small-business owner or not – “whitelist” or add to your address book any senders from whom you DO wish to receive e-mail (such as ETR), so their e-mail is not erroneously labeled as “spam.” If you aren’t familiar with whitelisting, check out ETR’s “whitelist us” page. You’ll find instructions there on how to ensure you get e-mails from people you know and trust.
- David Cross
[Ed. Note: Spam is irritating. But it's a problem you can solve. Fortunately, many of life's little inconveniences have easy - though often unknown - solutions. Sidestepping a speeding ticket... getting out of jury duty... rehabbing poor credit. Learn how to do it all - and more - right here.
Got a question? Send it to AskETR@ETRFeedback.com. Include your full name, your hometown and state, and the ETR team may answer you in an upcoming issue.]
“If you can find bread, buy it!” My friend’s advice seemed almost comical as we sipped tea and enjoyed scones, strawberry jam, and cream on a fine spring day in 1990 in Bristol, England.
But he’d already been where I was headed: an earthquake relief effort in Leninakan (now Kumayry), Armenia. And he was right. Amidst the devastation, when I did manage to find a loaf of bread in a rundown store, I bought it without hesitation. It was the fourth shop I’d tried. It was the last loaf on the shelf, the bag was split, and some of the pieces had spilled out. But it was the only bread available, so I scooped up the pieces and paid for it.
Back home in England some months later, my first visit to the local supermarket to buy some staples was a bewildering experience. An entire aisle was crammed with bread, cakes, confections, and pastries, not to mention people squeezing and inspecting the packaging to check freshness, sell-by date, ingredients, and prices.
“Does anyone really need so many choices,” I thought, “when all you want is a loaf of bread?”
And that brings us to the paradox of choice.
More Choice, Fewer Sales
You probably want to offer your customers as many choices as possible. But too many choices can be overwhelming, confusing, or just plain off-putting. And overwhelmed, confused, or off-put customers may spend their money elsewhere.
In an oft-cited study from Columbia University, a display of jams and preserves was set up at a gourmet food shop. On Day 1 of the test, the researchers displayed six flavors. On Day 2, they displayed 30. The display of 30 flavors attracted more attention than the smaller display. But – and here’s the shocker – shoppers were only one-tenth as likely to make a purchase when faced with the 30 choices.
The results of this study support other studies and examples I’ve come across in business and my personal life. When faced with too many options, people become paralyzed by “analysis paralysis.”
Just recently, for instance, while shopping online for digital picture frames, the Philips website was so confusing it stopped me dead in my tracks. I shifted over to Kodak’s to find and buy what I was looking for. (That’s a $250 sale that Philips lost.)
Think back to the last time you went car shopping – wading glassy-eyed through model after model and feature after feature. A decision that could have been made in minutes probably took weeks.
And consider the plight of a first-timer perusing the Starbucks menu and trying to make a decision. (Milk, alone, comes four ways – regular, low-fat, no-fat, and soy.) I’m guessing most of them give up and say, “Er, um – just give me a plain coffee.”
Choice. Way too much choice.
Barry Schwarz’s book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less offers up more examples and demonstrates further how too much choice can be a bad thing.
Let’s say you have an online business. You want to give your site visitors enough information about what you’re selling to make it possible for them to make a decision, but you do not want to give them so much that their eyes “glaze over” and they leave without buying. So how much is enough?
Here are three suggestions that have worked well for my clients.
• Offer only one version of your product – which means you’re giving people two choices: Take it or leave it.
• Give them three options. That gives you three ways to target your prospects. More than that might be confusing.
• Offer only one product, but give your prospects an upsell or add-on option. (”Buying the pen? How about a nice leather-bound notebook for only $10 extra?”)
If you must offer multiple products or options, at least make it easy for your customers to comparison shop. The Honda website, for example, allows you to compare the features of their vehicles against those of other Honda models… and even against similar vehicles from other companies.
You could also allow your customers to narrow down the number of products displayed by having them select characteristics that are important to them (color, size, price, etc.). AT&T does an excellent job of this in the wireless-phones section of its website. When I selected PDA + International, my choices were reduced only to products that suited my needs.
More Important Than Choice
Regardless of how many options you offer people for what to buy, it is imperative to give them only one clear choice on how to take the next step and make the purchase. Confusing or overwhelming a customer at this point will translate into fewer sales for your business.
Not sure how to present that step? My recommendation is to do a series of simple A/B split tests, where you match two possibilities against each other. Or you can use multivariate testing to see how different combinations of elements impact response. In a shopping cart checkout process, for example, this could include placement of text, images, buttons, security logos, padlocks, and confidence items like guarantees and company contact details. Over time, the multivariate test will indicate which combination of elements will likely give you the best conversion rate – the highest number of people performing the specific action you want them to take: buying your product.
It may sound strange… but offering your customers fewer choices can result in more sales. It is true that you must provide enough information for “fact-finder” types. But even fact finders, once they’ve made up their minds, want an unfettered decision and action process.
[Ed. Note: Too much choice is a turn-off. So give your customers one to three great options - and that's it. For more advice on how to make your website more customer-friendly, come to ETR's 2008 Info Marketing Bootcamp. David Cross and 11 other experts at making money have agreed to reveal exactly how attendees can make at least $100,000 in 2009. Learn more about the marketing masters and business-building experts who'll be spilling their guts right here.]
The first day, our new restaurant was jam-packed. People queued up to sample the food, and we immediately made a profit. We had an incredible chef, and the waiters were efficient and always full of alacrity. The restaurant thrived that whole summer, and our reputation spread across town.
That is, until the summer holidays ended and we had to go back to school.
It was 1975 and, at the age of 10, The Blue Whale Cafe was my first attempt at running my own business. My sister and I cadged food from our mum, and paid for our other (minimal) expenses from our piggy banks.
The menu was simple. Mum happily made cheese sandwiches (regular or toasted) and cups of tea for our customers (neighbors who stopped by on the way to do their daily shopping). Our tables were fabricated from apple and orange crates commandeered from local stores, and our chairs were sequestered from our dining room. Since most of the food and labor was free, it’s not surprising that we were a financial success.
I believe that even if a child doesn’t grow up to become a full-fledged “entrepreneur,” the skills they develop by practicing entrepreneurship at an early age are invaluable in life. Running a business teaches self-sufficiency, creativity, persistence, and collaboration. It builds confidence and teaches you how to work through failures until you reach success.
So when my three sons – ages 10 to 13 – recently decided to start their own business, I encouraged them from the beginning… and was happy to help them along the way.
Here’s how it happened…
Though my boys visit me and my wife frequently here in the U.S., they live in Europe. With the U.S. dollar being so weak lately, their trips to the States have been incredibly cheap. And the things they’re passionate about – including musical instruments, Yugio cards, and skateboard gear – are three to four times cheaper here.
Needless to say, their friends in Europe started asking my sons to bring back some of these goodies for them. My sons were happy to do it – but I have to confess to planting the seed of profit in their minds. “Rather than just bringing back a few things for your friends,” I said, “why not see if you can help finance your own ‘habits’ by buying stuff in the U.S. and selling it abroad?”
They agreed with my logic, and wanted to start with skateboarding gear.
We did a little research and found that a skateboard that sells for $80 in stores in Europe can be as little as $30 in the U.S. Even adding import duty to that would bring their actual cost to no more than $38. We decided that they’d sell their wares for $60.
We discussed the importance of making a profit in business. And we laid out a plan for handling their income. They agreed that they would save most of the money they made… perhaps invest a little in producing a brochure that they could hand out at school.
We also talked about what would happen if their venture really started to grow. For one thing, it would make it possible for them to go directly to skateboard manufacturers and negotiate better prices for their merchandise. But, at some point, it would also mean that they would have to pay taxes on their profits.
“Taxes?!” was their unanimous cry. And though there was no immediate need to worry about it, we decided it would a good idea for them to get into the mindset of running a real business and at least understand how taxes affect profitability.
My sons spread the word at school about great gear at great prices, and drew up a list of who wanted what. They took a deposit with each order that would cover their costs even if the purchaser didn’t go through with the deal.
What they now have is a low-risk venture with relatively good profit potential. They started small – with no capital outlay – selling something they know a lot about. They also have a somewhat captive marketing audience at school and in their friends. If the business grows, their challenge will be to bring more and more items into the country – and, if the demand exceeds the number of trips they can make, to see if they can still make a profit if they have to pay shipping costs.
Fostering Entrepreneurship in Children
Whether it’s a “restaurant” fabricated from fruit crates, a perfume made from flower petals and water (one of my sister’s early ventures), a lemonade stand, or my sons’ skateboard importing business, I’ve learned a few things over the years about the benefits of fostering an entrepreneurial “can-do” spirit in children.
1. Share Your Enthusiasm to Make a Business Out of Things Your Children Already Love. It’s easier to go with the flow than to push water uphill. I could have spent months trying to persuade my kids to start their own restaurant… but that just wasn’t their passion. They were interested in skateboarding. So a business based on that was a great foundation upon which to grow a new business idea.
2. Plant Seeds and Let Them Grow. Kids are smart and can work a lot out for themselves. But they may need you to suggest a few “What if?” questions that allow them to see wider possibilities than the one they saw initially.
3. Help Your Children Prepare for Potential Challenges. I asked my boys questions that would prepare them for dealing with order cancellations, import duties, and taxes.
4. Ask Questions – but Let Them Work Out the Answers. This is the kids’ project. You want them to feel a sense of achievement as a result of their entrepreneurial venture – not that you did the whole thing for them. You can help out where necessary. But remember, children are incredibly resourceful. They can figure out things for themselves… with a little nudge here and there from you. Let them know that you are always available to help them, but stand back and give them a chance to do as much as possible themselves. Yes, they will make mistakes – but, though disappointing, mistakes are some of the best teachers.
5. Involve Both Parents. This is important whether you are together or separated. Your spouse (or ex) can offer ideas, insights, and experience that your children can benefit from.
6. Recognize the Difference Between Ideas and Actions. This is a big concept for anyone – adults and children alike. You can come up with “great” ideas for projects or businesses. But until you put them into action, nothing happens. By getting a few projects going yourself, you can give your children the courage to try their own.
7. Persistence Pays. The twin of action is persistence – staying the course. And encouraging your children to dip their toes into entrepreneurship teaches them how to handle “failure” and not give up. In any undertaking, there will be unexpected setbacks. And entrepreneurship is the perfect way for your kids to learn how to cope with those setbacks and think their way through creative solutions.
8. Clear the Path. Your kids are never too young to learn about the Ready, Fire, Aim approach to achieve success in any endeavor. Too much planning and over-thinking is the enemy of action. Teach your children to get a project started – and then build upon what they discover.
9. Don’t Make Money Goal #1. Not every project has to make a profit in order to have value. So don’t discourage your kids if they aren’t interested in making a buck. If, for example, your daughter wants to put on a free piano recital in your backyard and have attendees donate money to orphans in Africa, that is a wonderful goal. The point is to help your children become strong and happy, not to impose your own vision upon them. Because if your kids enjoy what they’re doing, they’ll be much more likely to achieve success.
The greatest gift my parents ever gave me was this single piece of career advice: “We don’t care what you do as long as you’re happy.” This has inspired some interesting choices along the way. But I can honestly look back and say that although some of the choices I’ve made have been plain hard work, I’ve never had a dull, boring, or unhappy job in my life. And my sister and brother say the same thing.
For me, the main benefit in the time I’ve spent teaching my kids about entrepreneurship has been the fun we’ve had learning new things together. That, and discovering more about what my kids are passionate about. At the same time, I know I’ve been helping them learn some major life skills.
[Ed. Note: If David's young sons can start a business, you can too. And don't worry if your parents aren't available to help you get it off the ground. ETR's team of experts are here for you. They've put together a comprehensive program that can take you from a simple idea, passion, or hobby to a fully functioning online business in just a few days. Get the details here.
And for more wealth-building lessons you can share with your kids, pick up a copy of Michael Masterson's best-seller Automatic Wealth for Grads… and Anyone Else Just Starting Out.]
You’re probably familiar with the idea of using an automated e-mail response to inform people that you’re away on vacation.
The autoresponders used by both Alex Mandossian and MaryEllen Tribby (1) explain that all their incoming e-mails will be automatically deleted while they are gone, and (2) tell the sender to re-send the e-mail after a certain date. Others use autoresponders to direct people to alternate contacts. For instance, a CEO on vacation might direct all urgent e-mails to her vice president.
Automated messages like these can be very useful – to you and the people who email you.
But that’s not all you can do. If you have time – and know in advance that you’ll be out – there’s a quick extra step you can take…
For about a month before you go, append a short statement to your outgoing e-mail signature saying that you’ll be going away from [date] to [date]. If practical, add a request for people to contact you in advance of your vacation should they need anything from you.
I always do this before I leave for vacation or for a conference, and it’s been a big help.
[Ed. Note: It's surprising how some of the simplest actions - like adding a note about your upcoming vacation to outgoing e-mails - can have a big effect on your business. Get more advice from Senior Internet Consultant David Cross and the ETR team on which changes you need to implement to make your Internet business grow. Check out the details now.]
Which group of fonts is better for online marketing efforts: Times, Palatino, and Bembo? Or Verdana, Helvetica, and Arial? Typeface lovers will immediately know the difference. The first three are serif fonts; the second three are sans-serif fonts.
Why should you care? Because the type of font you use could affect the success of your online business.
A serif is the small embellishment on the ends of the up-strokes (ascenders) or down-strokes (descenders) of some fonts. The serif gives the typeface a more "elegant" look and feel.
Whether you choose to use serif or sans-serif fonts seems like a super-small detail. But it’s one that every marketer should be aware of. Because if you make the wrong choice, you could be prohibiting your customers from reading your online content or sales promotions. And if they can’t read your copy, there’s a good chance they won’t buy anything from you.
The general rule about fonts is as follows: For printed content, blocks of text using serif fonts are generally more legible. On a computer (or television) screen, sans-serif fonts are generally more legible.
Various usability studies have shown that people generally perform on-screen tasks more expediently and retain more information when reading sans-serif fonts. In Britain, sans-serif fonts are used almost exclusively as the default fonts on screen, precisely because they are more legible.
Here’s another reason why serif fonts may be less legible on screen than sans-serif fonts. To correctly display the nuances of serif fonts requires a resolution higher than most computer monitors can deliver. Most computer monitors operate between 72 and 96 dots per inch (dpi). At the font size of most on-screen content, there are not enough dots on your PC monitor to render the serifs accurately without making them look bitty or pixilated.
Finally, a caveat. Rules are there to be tested and broken. One of the advantages of doing business online is the ease with which you can test assumptions. So why not run a multivariate or A/B split test – one with a serif font and one with a sans-serif font – and see which pulls a better response?
[Ed. Note: There's a lot you may not know about starting and building an Internet business. David Cross - Senior Internet Consultant for Agora Inc. - and a team of marketing and business-building experts have gathered together all the core information you need in one place, organized in simple steps, ready to be put into action. Here's how to go from a standing start to a thriving business online.]
I’d lost $8,000 and neither the sending nor the receiving bank knew where it was. Lost in the banking ether between Florida and Edinburgh. "It’s up to the sending bank, we haven’t received it," said the receiving bank. "We’ve sent it. It’s up to the receiving bank," said the sending bank.
"Where on earth is my money!" I said.
Why the problem? All the numbers I’d been given were correct – SWIFT accounts, addresses, everything. So the lost money was a result of some idiosyncrasy on the part of the banks.
And so, for six whole weeks, my money floated around. I received it… eventually… and even got a "consideration" from one of the banks whose New York transmitting branch had sat with the money until we tracked it down. But finding it took a lot of haranguing on my part. ($8,000 is peanuts in the world of international finance.)
This experience taught me a lesson. Now, whenever I send any money from my bank to anywhere – whether to set up a monthly transfer to pay the gas bill or get funds to my kids in Europe – I send a dollar first as a test. If the dollar arrives, I send the full amount.
For the past eight years (since my $8,000 "incident"), I’ve done my "dollar test." Three times, the dollar either didn’t arrive or arrived after some delay. In each case, a call to customer service of the relevant company resolved the "why" and further transactions with them proved trouble free.
Could a dollar save your day?
Time and multitasking. Potentially a ball and chain to every entrepreneur. Just how many plates can you spin on sticks before they start to topple or you start to perform at less than your peak mental and physical level? Yet many entrepreneurs find delegating or outsourcing tasks difficult. We think nobody can do it as well as we can ourselves. And so more plates get balanced onto more sticks.
I normally work 10- or 12-hour days, starting at 5.30 a.m. Last year, I flew the fewest miles I’ve flown in the past 15 years… only 59,112. My wife is a busy veterinarian with a successful practice. And we have four – soon to be five – children, and a small farm begun with the dream of self-sufficiency. Life is never dull or boring.
With such a schedule, staying healthy is vital – and a big part of that is eating properly. But I realized last year that I was letting my healthy diet slip. One reason was that I had less time to cook (which I love doing). Instead, I was eating out more frequently. Not only is eating out more expensive, it’s nowhere near as good or as good for you as home-cooked food.
A friend mentioned that he’d hired a personal chef – at a rate of $75 an hour. He gets about five meals for $250 plus ingredients. I was intrigued by the idea. But before trying it myself, I wanted to make sure it made sense for our family.
So I sat down one Saturday afternoon and did some calculations. For me to prepare our family’s healthy meals, I figured it takes…
Shopping time: 20 minutes / day
Drive time: 15 minutes / day
Prep and cook: 60 minutes / day
Cleanup: 15 minutes / day
It all added up to over 12 hours a week. Even if my billing time was worth just $50 an hour, I was, in effect, spending $620 to prepare our meals! That’s 12 hours a week that I could be working… or spending time with my kids and wife. And more than $600 a week that I could be putting toward other things.
I was convinced that hiring a personal chef would be a smart decision – in terms of my time and money and my family’s health.
Privacy is important to us, so I knew I did not want to have a chef come into our home to do the cooking. I also knew the kind of food I wanted. Of all the places I’ve been and in all the diverse cultures where I’ve enjoyed food, from elaborate feasts to simple fare, Indian vegetarian is the cuisine that stands out for me. I not only love it, it makes me feel healthy when I eat it.
I had in mind exactly the person I was looking for. A maestro who knew this cuisine inside-out. Someone at least as enthusiastic about food and cooking as I am. Someone nearby who would do the cooking in his own space and be flexible about working with me to devise the menus.
I crafted a short ad.
Taking advantage of some of what I’ve learned over the years from friends who are copywriting greats – people like Michael Masterson, John Forde, Bob Bly, and Charlie Byrne – I made sure my ad was Urgent, Useful, Unique, and Ultra-specific (the "four U’s" of effective ad copy). I was quite pleased with it. But when my wife read it, she shook her head. "We’ll never find anyone like that," she said. "It’s way too specific." And with that compliment, I posted my ad on CraigsList.
Two weeks later, the first response came in. I gave it a 5 out of 10, sent a thank you to the applicant, and kept looking.
It took a full month before the 11-out-of-10 arrived. This man had worked for some years as an Indian vegetarian chef – including a stint at an ashram in India. His impressive resume noted a few well-known celebrity names, and his menus had me practically drooling.
I had him cook a sample meal that I picked up from his home. And the food was divine. Within minutes after we finished it, I called him to see if we could agree on an arrangement that would work for us both.
Here’s what we came up with: About every two weeks, we’d pick up a selection of food that we would label and freeze. And because we wanted him to be completely happy, I didn’t even try to negotiate his hourly rate. We agreed to pay what he asked, plus pay for provisions.
Since then, we’ve been spending a fraction of what we used to spend on food. We now eat out as a treat rather than a necessity, and our "personal chef’s" meals work out to less than $5 a meal… about a tenth of what my friend pays his personal chef.
If you want to outsource some aspect of your business or personal responsibilities, you can put the same principles to work. Here’s what I learned:
First and most important, remember that your time is valuable.
Trying to do everything yourself is the "curse of the entrepreneur"! Knowing when you need to delegate or outsource so you can do what you are truly best at is important if you’re going to grow your business… and grow yourself. Bob Bly has often said he never goes to the post office. If it takes him half an hour, that’s $100 out the door for him. Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, is another big proponent of getting rid of any task you can. Hire an assistant to do it for $10 while you make far more.
Call the shots.
You can negotiate a better deal when you are the one calling the shots – when people are, in essence, bidding for your business. By creating a job and posting an ad stating what I required, I was in a stronger position than if I had answered an ad from someone who provided the service I needed.
This applies to every job you need done in your business and your personal life. Gardener, masseuse, printer, Web developer, search engine specialist, copywriter, handyperson, painter, children’s entertainer, and so on.
Be specific about what you’re looking for.
If I’d advertised for a "cook," I’d have had to sift through a myriad of wannabes. I would have probably had to eat my way through pounds of bland or inedible mush to find one chef I actually liked.
So take the time to determine exactly what you need, and be specific in your ad. In fact, be ULTRA-specific.
Create a win-win situation.
MaryEllen Tribby and Michael Masterson have both said it before – any deal you make should be a great deal for all parties.
What our chef wanted meshed well with our needs. Still, we wanted him to be as happy working for us as we expected to be with his services. So we made sure we had an arrangement that benefited both sides. It was a collaborative effort from the beginning, rather than "top down" instruction – and, as a result of that, we’ve never had any problems.
Run a test.
As I know from the many software projects I’ve been in charge of, a test can help prevent costly mistakes and keep you from winding up with software that doesn’t fit the bill. So before we agreed on a regular schedule, I asked our chef to prepare his "best" menu for us as a test. And I left the decision of what to make entirely up to him. I figured if he couldn’t deliver top-notch food when he was completely in charge of it, there was little chance he could do so when I was the one calling the shots.
[Ed. Note: Outsourcing your cooking, your website design, your product fulfillment, or anything else that isn't worth your time is a great way to be more productive. Internet marketing expert David Cross will be sharing more of these practical tips and suggestions at ETR's 5 Days in July conference. Learn how to start - and enjoy the fruits of - your own Internet business right here.]
"Someone has copied our entire website!" Charles told me. "And," he huffed, "their site ranks better than ours in Google!"
The website in question was an exact copy of Charles’ website. The imitator had published Charles’ content, mistakes and all, at an almost identical domain name. The only difference was the contact details.
Now and then, I hear about blatant rip-offs like this. And I believe Charles was rightly upset. So I helped him set things straight.
Keep in mind that there is nothing you can do to stop anyone from copying your website or other digital content. However, there are a number of things you can do to prevent them from actually publishing what they plagiarized. In some cases, you can even close them down.
I’ve been on both sides of the online copyright issue. When I ran a large Web-hosting company, I sometimes had to fight for clients’ rights against companies or individuals who copied their content. I also had to advise clients who were concerned about stepping over the line themselves. So I’ve come up with a process for fixing the problem.
Let me state straightaway that I am not an attorney. So if you require specific legal advice regarding your particular situation, you should contact a professional. Of course, attorneys cost money – a minimum of $2,500, in my experience, to handle an online plagiarism dispute.
And there is another reason for not bringing in an attorney right away: It immediately puts the other party on the defensive. The more resistant they are, the longer it will take to come to an agreement. You are seeking a result through shared cooperation here, not a fight. The procedure I had Charles follow took him an hour or so, and everything was resolved within one week.
Before I tell you how Charles and I solved his problem, you need to know what type of copying is acceptable – and what isn’t.
A Little Background on the Law
A copyright protects all sorts of creative works. According to Nolo.com, poetry, movies, software, sculptures, songs, video games, photographs, plays, sheet music, and even notes scribbled on the back of an envelope qualify. But the work must be original. "So long as the author toils without copying from someone else, the results are protected by copyright," says Nolo. The work must also be "the result of at least some creative effort." Nolo cites a telephone directory – which is just an alphabetical listing of names and phone numbers – as an example of "non-creative" work.
Another thing to remember is that you can’t copyright ideas. According to Nolo, "Copyright shelters only fixed, original, creative expression, not the ideas or facts upon which the expression is based." This is important, because it’s entirely possible for two writers to write about the same idea at the same time – even if they’ve never met. My editor, Suzanne Richardson, told me that she often sees this firsthand when two (or more) ETR writers send her articles on exactly the same topic. So don’t get up in arms if another website has ideas similar to ideas on your site. Any Internet marketing company, for example, is going to have articles on its website about Google AdWords and affiliate marketing. That’s just the nature of the industry.
There’s a lot more to copyright law than this. (For details, check your local library.)
But the main point I want to make here is that if you publish original content on your website, it’s protected by copyright. You don’t even need to say "copyright 2008" – although adding this to your site can remind copy "borrowers" that they have to give you credit.
That credit is important. Anyone who wants to republish your content needs to have your permission. Some websites – including Early to Rise.com – freely give permission to others to republish their articles. In order to do so, they must simply include a little attribution.(See ETR’s instructions for republishing their content right here.) You might do the same. That way, no matter where readers find your content, they know it’s from you.
But what if your copyright-protected content is published without your permission? In that case, you can take action. Matt Turner, Agora’s chief legal counsel, points out: "If you think someone has copied your work unfairly, the burden will be on you (the burden of proof is always on the plaintiff, i.e, the party bringing the lawsuit) to show that the defendant’s writings are, in the words of the courts, ’substantially similar to yours.’"
But you may not need to take your case to court. Here’s how I helped Charles get rid of his copycat…
What to Do First
The first step I took was to check who owned the domain name and see where it was hosted. You can do a "whois" lookup on any domain name to find details about the person who registered it – including their e-mail address. Many companies offering domain registrations – such as GoDaddy.com – allow you to do this type of search. Or you can use a service such as Whois.sc.
In Charles’ case, the domain name in question was registered to someone in India who was using a U.S.-based domain registration company.
To find out where the domain was being hosted, I turned to the "What’s that site running" tool at Netcraft.com. I discovered that the network address for the domain in question was owned by a U.S.-based hosting company.
Now we knew who owned the domain name, where it was registered, and where it was hosted.
Once again, I am not an attorney. But in my experience, simply sending a polite but firm letter or e-mail to the person listed on the domain registration will motivate them to change their errant ways. State the problem and ask that they remove your copyrighted content from their website immediately. Saying "please" and "thank you" is important. You don’t wish to ruffle feathers until you are sure the person’s intention was malicious or nefarious.
So that’s what we did in the case of Charles’ copycat. He sent a firm but polite e-mail to the person listed on the domain registration.
If at First You Don’t Succeed…
After four days, there was no response to the e-mail. So I had Charles move on to the next steps.
1. Contact the Web-hosting company. Most Web-hosting companies have an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), and copyright violation almost always breaches that policy. They will also have a specific procedure that you must follow if one of their clients is hosting content that is in violation of copyright. This is easy to do, though it can be tedious.
2. Contact the domain registrar. The same thing applies to domain registrars. Most have policies preventing the use of domain names for illegal activities. Copyright theft certainly falls within that category.
If all you want to do is put an end to the other person’s illegal online activities – if, for instance, you don’t mind if they use the domain name for other, legal purposes – you can skip this step. But if the domain name in question is very similar to yours (as it was in Charles’ case), and it is being used to violate your copyright, you would contact the domain registrar and follow their procedure.
Let’s say someone registered the URL "Early2Rise.com" and started to copy all of ETR’s content and ideas. ETR could claim that the domain was registered only to engage in illegal activities. As proof, they would cite the high degree of similarity to the ETR domain name, the theft of copyright-protected content, etc.
3. Contact the legal departments of search engines where the site violating your content is being indexed or featured. Each of the large search engines has a procedure you can follow for copyright theft.
4. Contact the copycat site’s credit card processor. In Charles’ case, the copycat site was advertising his content, products, and services, and using PayPal to accept payments for orders – orders they couldn’t fill. Charles contacted PayPal’s legal and fraud department.
The result of taking the above four actions was quick and severe. Within one week, PayPal prevented the offending site from being able to accept payments. The Web-hosting company canceled their Web-hosting account. Google removed the site’s content and links from its search engine. And because the domain registrar now considered the site’s domain name to be "disputed," it could not be used until the registrant could prove that it was only to be used for legal, legitimate purposes. (Highly unlikely.)
Creating an online business is a lot of fun – but, as with any business, there are potential problems you need to be aware of. By taking advantage of lessons learned by people who’ve already "been there, done that," you can avoid most of the pitfalls… and end up with a successful company that you will be proud to own.
[Ed. Note: There's no need to worry about whether someone's copying your content if you haven't got a website. Of course, not having your own website and Internet business means you are missing out on one of the most enjoyable and lucrative ventures around. It's super-easy to get an online business up and running. You can do it in 5 days. Learn how here.]
For as long as I can remember, there’s been a fundamental problem with running pretty much any business. Finally, we’ve figured out the solution.
In the old days, it was known as the "traveling salesman problem." You see, a salesman needs to visit a number of geographically disparate cities. The problem – known in mathematics as a problem of combinatorial optimization – is how to visit all of the locations in the least amount of time.
The same problem applies to baking a cake. How do you combine flour, eggs, sugar, and butter in the right combination to make a light, moist, delicious cake?
But this problem extends beyond traveling salespeople and cake baking. Every businessperson faces the same challenge every day. Namely, how do you combine the resources you have at your disposal to produce the best outcome?
The traveling salesman problem may still have mathematicians scratching their heads. But there’s now a solution – which I’ll get to in a minute – for similar problems facing online businesses.
Let’s use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising as an example. How do you combine headline and content and offer at an optimal cost to convert the highest number of qualified prospects into paying customers or newsletter subscribers?
A problem like this can seem nearly impossible to solve. There are so many elements to consider that you can quickly come up with thousands of possible combinations. And that makes it unlikely that you’ll be able to calculate the single combination of elements that will produce the best result.
So you take a chance, pick one of the possible permutations, and say, "We’ll do it this way." Let’s face it – you have to do that, or it would take forever to make a decision and get on with your business.
But "this way" may not be the best way. A different combination of elements could produce a better result. The only way to find out is to test a new combination. And then another one… and another one.
Baking a Better Cake
What you need is a way to test a number of possible combinations simultaneously. If you could test several different combinations of offer, headline, and content for your PPC ad, you could come to a pretty definite conclusion that one is truly better than the others.
Now, this is actually possible. It’s known as "multivariate testing." And it can be used for any aspect of online business where there is a measurable goal.
We’ve started to use this approach at Early to Rise and other Agora businesses, and have seen remarkable results. Specifically, we’ve used multivariate testing to improve a number of our landing pages for PPC campaigns. (The landing page is the page a person arrives at after clicking on a PPC ad.) To our surprise, we were able to improve many of our existing campaigns by at least 24 percent.
On one landing page where people sign up for an e-mail newsletter, for example, we increased sign-ups by 57 percent by testing different combinations of headlines, copy, and the sign-up form.
On a shopping cart checkout page, we found that only 2.9 percent of people who started the checkout actually completed it. This was costing millions of dollars in lost sales annually. We tested various content, the placement of security seals, etc., and the result was a 375 percent increase in the number of people completing the checkout process.
And a client of mine who offers a free report on living and buying property in Ecuador increased the number of people signing up for it by 29 percent. He did so simply by testing the placement of elements on his sign-up page. He’s now bringing in about 3,000 additional e-mail names a year… without spending any extra money.
How to Get Started
A number of companies offer software that can help you develop multivariate tests. These include Google, Verster, and Sitespect. You can also find "behavioral targeting" systems, such as Omniture’s "Touch Clarity," that adapt site content based on site visitor actions.
At ETR, we chose Google’s Website Optimizer tool. It’s quick and simple to use, it integrates well with our existing websites, and it does the math for you to show what is working and what isn’t. Plus, it’s free. You can also find a good online support group for it, and a number of tutorials and learning resources.
If you’re unfamiliar with testing, or need a brush up, I recommend that you read some of the classic direct-marketing books. Ogilvy on Advertising will give you a good understanding of why and how to approach testing, and what to test. Other classics include Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins (available free online), and Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene M. Schwarz.
One of the first things you might want to test is your PPC landing pages. For instance, you could test two variations of a headline. Or you could test the content of a page by breaking a paragraph into benefit-driven bullet points.
Google’s tool guides you through the process, and calculates all the numbers. Depending on the amount of traffic your landing page gets, you get an indication of what is working within a few days. For example, you might start to see that a certain headline on your PPC ad is starting to get more orders… or that including a certain price in the ad gets more people to click through to your landing page.
Over time, a more accurate picture begins to emerge of which combination of individual elements produces the best overall result.
Of course, you could do the statistical analysis yourself to see how the variations you’re testing are performing. But it would mean a huge expenditure of time and energy. Since you have a business to run, using Google or some other multivariate testing software is a much better option.
A Winning Combination
In the multivariate tests I’ve conducted, the "worst" improvement I’ve ever seen was 24 percent. And I know of reputable marketers who’ve had improvements approaching 400 percent.
What kind of results can you expect? I believe you can reasonably expect an improvement of between 20 percent and 60 percent on any campaign you are running today.
I first started doing business online 20 years ago. In my experience, multivariate testing is the most powerful tool that has emerged since then for Internet marketers. I encourage you to yoke this approach to your online business without delay.
[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant for Agora Inc. You can start your very own Internet business - from the ground up - at ETR's 5 Days in July Internet Business Building Conference. David and ETR's team of Internet experts will teach you how to use multivariate testing and dozens of other techniques that can help your brand-new business grow.
Breaking News: The 5 Days in July conference is now TOTALLY SOLD OUT. However, we MAY be able to squeeze in a few additional spaces. Check the website to find out if any remain.]
Our 180-pound English mastiff and our sons can make short work of most furniture. For instance, a poorly made sofa will buckle and crack very quickly with the dog’s weight on it. And dining room chairs that don’t have strong joints will split if my sons lean them back on two legs. That’s why I’ve learned to keep an eye out for weaknesses when I’m shopping for new furniture. And it turns out that most furniture stores do most of the work for me in revealing the weaknesses inherent in what they sell.
A lot of in-store display models not only look disheveled but also have parts that are loose, unstuck, or "wonky." And this isn’t at just one store. I’ve found broken, wobbly, uneven model furniture at IKEA, Home Depot, Best Buy, Fred Meyer, and Babies "R" Us.
This is great for me. If something has failed or broken on the display piece, I can be pretty certain the version I buy will have the same problems after a while in my home. So if I see an obvious fault in the model, I do not buy.
It’s no surprise that my marketer’s sensibility abhors this brazen show of weakness. The store is, after all, trying to get me to buy a piece of furniture. And the worst way to accomplish that goal is to display something that’s broken, shoddy, or wonky. Listen – I’m all for "showing your warts" and being transparent about how you are working to improve your business. But showing your customers faulty products is not the way to do it.
If you run an Internet business, you may feel pretty safe. "No faulty products to display here," you may think.
But even online businesses run this risk.
You see, my eye for flaws extends beyond floor models in stores. I can usually spot the weaknesses in software within moments. In fact, one of my primary jobs is to test new and updated software – Web-based, server-installed, and desktop- or PC-based – to make sure it works properly. And I am amazed at the amount of software – and especially the "demos" or "working examples" located on a company’s own servers – that are down or broken or fail within seconds of using them.
Studies by experts such as Dr. Jakob Nielsen have shown that when software or websites "break," many users blame themselves. "It must be something I did," customers think. And then they give up on the task in hand, which, if it is spending money on your site, isn’t good for you.
Programmers and software developers have a habit of saying it is the user’s fault. For instance, a programmer for one of my clients insisted that the security warnings on a "secure" shopping cart that customers had been complaining about for months were their fault. All they needed to do, he said, was "right mouse click, select properties, and view the secure certificate to show it was really encrypted."
Erm, hello?! Customers want to spend money, not worry about things like this.
So if you or your programmers are claiming that some problem is the customer’s fault, remind yourself: It’s not. If your users are giving up and leaving because your site or software isn’t working… it’s your fault.
That’s why you have to test everything on your site – and not only with your Web developers and programmers. Test with "normal people" to see what happens.
First, ask yourself what could be done to make it easier for your visitors to use your website, forum, shopping cart, etc. Have you made any assumptions about the way things "work"? Are the servers that host your website available and usable by customers 100 percent of the time?
Second, go through your website with an eye to making it more usable. Here are some techniques you can try:
Don’t develop behind closed doors.
If you put marketers and programmers together without considering what is good for your customers, you are going to open the door for problems down the line. If your customers are primarily older or rural, for example, you have to consider that they are probably on a slower Internet connection. So don’t include lots of whiz-bang features like heavy graphics or video on your website. At best, your users will avoid them. At worst, they’ll be irritated and leave your site for good.
Have your customers pre-test your website.
As soon as you release a new website or add software to it, your customers are testing it… live. Instead, ask a group of customers to test your website while it is in development. Ask some to place an order for a specific product, and ask some to order and then select an "upsell" or additional item. Have others test your contact form.
Ask for – and reward them for – specific, honest feedback. Then incorporate their suggestions.
Ask customer service for input.
For honest feedback on what your customers really think of your website, ask your customer service folks. They’ll probably have a list of suggestions, complaints, and frustrations that your customers have shared with them.
Monitor uptime and responsiveness.
You need to know when your website is "down" or unresponsive… and you need to know quickly. Use a service such as websitepulse.com to monitor it and give you updates. This can show you not only how the website appears "live," but also whether people can place orders at any given time.
If you don’t know with certainty through objective, third-party measures that your website is available and useable, you cannot be sure that the person about to place that $500 order will be able to do it. The websitepulse.com system is quite comprehensive, and even allows you to simulate shopping cart transactions that mimic what your customers may be experiencing at any point.
Follow Jeff Bezos’s lead.
I recall an interview from around 1999 with Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com. He said he checks Amazon on weekends and looks for 10 things they’re doing right and 10 things they need to change. Looking at your own website with fresh eyes and trying to make incremental improvements will reap rewards over time.
[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant for Agora Inc. There's a lot you may not know about building an Internet business. David has the answers - and he'll be sharing them with an exclusive group of business builders at ETR's 5 Days in July conference. Registration for the conference opens at noon today. Get the details here.]
The horse had escaped. And she was chasing the baby goats around the field. And the dogs just ate the bucket of chicken eggs. And I was trying to change a diaper. Then, when I got out into our pasture, I discovered that the water in the sheep’s trough had frozen overnight, and they were bleating and looking forlornly at the ice.
Ten minutes later, everything had calmed down. Crises averted, I returned to my computer and what I had been working on. Just before all hell broke loose, I’d succeeded at the seemingly impossible task of finding a string of connecting flights between the U.S. and three European countries for a business trip I am making this summer.
I was at the "click to book" point.
[click]…
"We are sorry but your session has timed-out due to inactivity."
"Inactivity! What the…?"
Twenty minutes later, I finally managed to get the entire trip booked. That frustrating little incident got me thinking about how websites so often let down their visitors – and what more you can, and should, be doing for your own customers.
Life happens – and it often gets in the way. But how many websites actually take that fact into consideration? For instance, why don’t website forms with a time restriction offer the user the ability to save what they’ve already entered if they’re unexpectedly called away before they’re done?
Or how about another bugbear of mine: Only after you’ve completed a website’s form does it tell you that your phone number should be formatted in a certain way or that your password "must contain a minimum of eight letters and numbers, one of which must be a capital letter." Or that you must not enter your credit card number with any spaces. Er… um… but mine HAS a space in it.
Take a look at your own website right now. Look at it through your customers’ eyes. And see if any of these little gremlins are lurking – places where you or your programmer made an assumption about what your customers should already know. And then vanquish those hidden problems forever.
[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant for Agora Inc. There's a lot you may not know about building an Internet business. David has the answers - and he'll be sharing them with an exclusive group of business builders at ETR's 5 Days in July conference. If you have the slightest interest in creating a fully functioning Internet business in one week, sign up for our hotlist right here.]
One of the great sales directors with whom I worked many years ago gave me a simple tip: "If you buy a client a cup of coffee, never, ever, ever ask for a receipt."
You see, asking for a receipt means you are going to claim the charge as a business expense. What’s the big deal? Well, it gives the subtle impression that, even after all the thousands of dollars the client has spent with you or your company, you do not value the relationship enough to buy him a cup of coffee.
Yes, it’s a small thing. But little things can add up to a boatload of good – or bad – feeling. If you don’t ask for a receipt when you treat your client to a drink or dinner, you give the impression that you care about him on a personal level.
Don’t worry. You can still write it off as a business expense. In most cases, you’ll get a receipt without asking. If you don’t, you’ll have a credit card statement you can use to prove the expense.
The point is, forget about yourself. Your clients are important. If you’re not willing to spend a few bucks to buy them a cup of coffee from time to time, how much do you value those relationships?
[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant for Agora Inc. There's a lot you may not know about building an Internet business. David has the answers - and he'll be sharing them with an exclusive group of business builders at ETR's 5 Days in July conference. If you have the slightest interest in creating a fully functioning Internet business in one week, sign up for our hotlist right here.]
In World War II, the Allied forces ran an intense campaign to prevent people from discussing critical things like movement of troops, ships, cargo, etc. The campaign was highlighted by posters with the headline "Loose Talk Costs Lives," alongside pictures of the enemy sinking ships (because "somebody blabbed").
Loose talk in business may not be a life and death situation, but it, too, can be costly. I was reminded of this last week when a friend shared his idea for a business. It was a good idea, so I suggested he register the domain name. He didn’t do it.
Two days later, he told me he’d discussed the idea with a friend and potential business partner while having dinner at a restaurant. And he called again today. His domain name had been registered the day after that meeting with his friend. And it had been registered by a complete stranger!
I had a similar experience some years back. I was discussing a business idea with a friend during lunch at a restaurant. We’d brainstormed domain names. The next day, I discovered our best domain name had been registered… by a complete stranger.
My friend’s business idea is still a good one, but he’ll have to come up with a new domain name… one that will probably not be as marketable as the original one.
The lessons – learned from painful, personal experience:
If your domain name is already taken, you have two courses of action:
Still the main thing to remember is, and remains, "Loose Talk Costs!"
[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant to Agora Inc. in Baltimore. If you're interested in profiting from all the benefits of starting an online business, learn more about ETR's Magic Button program here.]
My friend Brian forwarded me an article espousing the benefits of "double opt-in" versus "single opt-in" for people signing up for e-mail newsletters. Single opt-in requires them to sign up. Double opt-in adds an extra step. Your subscriber must sign up. Then she must click a link in an e-mail you send her before you send her what she requested.
The article suggested that double opt-in is a better method because it cuts back on the people who "forget" they signed up for your e-letter… and then report you as spam. I think the article missed the point. Spam is about perception. Period. For one thing, only a miniscule fraction of people signing up to receive e-mail ever complain of "spam." For another, people who double opt-in still complain of spam if you look like spam. There is a small advantage with Internet service providers if your e-list is wholly double opt-in. But in my experience, the negatives of double opt-in outweigh the advantages in the long term.
In my tests with different lists – some with hundreds of subscribers, others with hundreds of thousands of subscribers – and sign-up methods over the years, doing double opt-in suppresses overall sign-up response. You end up with fewer names on your e-list. In some cases, I’ve seen double opt-in suppress response by as much as 34 percent.
You see, most people don’t expect to confirm that they’ve already signed up for something. Let’s say you have a double opt-in for your e-newsletter. One hundred people sign up on your website. And you send all of them your double opt-in e-mail, which they must click on in order to get your e-newsletter. Twenty to 34 of the people who signed up for your e-newsletter won’t click on the additional confirmation link. Bam! You’re out those subscribers. See why I’m such a big fan of the single opt-in?
If you’re still not convinced, test the middle ground. Start half of your new subscribers immediately, and place a small note at the top of each e-mail asking them to confirm their subscription. Leave the link there until they confirm their subscription, and then remove the "conditional" link. This gives you the benefit of double opt-in without losing people along the way simply because they failed to confirm a link at the start.
[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant to Agora Inc. in Baltimore. You can profit from all the benefits of starting an online business with ETR's Magic Button program. Get the details here.]
Spammers have made life tougher for Internet marketers. Anytime you send an e-mail to a subscriber to your e-newsletter, you have to navigate a maze of spam filters and wary readers. The last thing you want is for someone to complain that you are spamming them. Fortunately, most subscribers do not become spam complainers if you correctly manage your relationship with them.
Here are three ways to protect yourself:
1. Send your e-newsletter only to people who have asked for it.
There are lots of ways to get people’s e-mail addresses these days. But it benefits you to send e-mails only to those who have specifically signed up to receive them. If you don’t, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. People who haven’t signed up to receive your e-newsletter (or other information) probably have no interest in what you have to offer. So all you’ll get out of the deal is a bunch of spam complaints.
2. Let subscribers to your e-newsletter know what they’ll be getting.
On ETR’s homepage, for instance, you’ll see a brief description of what the newsletter is all about. Next to that is a sign-up box, above which is clearly stated, "Sign up for our free newsletter."
3. Establish the tone of your relationship early on.
As soon as a subscriber signs up for your e-newsletter, send them a welcome e-mail. Then start sending them a series of introductory e-mails to let them know what to expect. ETR’s introductory series includes articles that cover some of ETR’s core philosophies.
In addition to these techniques, always include (and honor) a simple "unsubscribe" link in every communication you send. This will allow people to remove their names from your e-list if they do not wish to hear from you again. (This is a legal requirement, so don’t skip it.)
Following these suggestions will go a long way toward preventing spam complaints from your subscribers… and having a long, happy relationship with them.
[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant to Agora Inc. in Baltimore. You can profit from all the benefits of starting an online business with ETR's Magic Button program. Get the details here.]
David Howell Evans is not known for being a technically accomplished guitarist – although few people really care. He developed a trademark sound that contributed to the success of the band in which he plays – a band that has sold over 170 million albums worldwide. Rolling Stone magazine proclaimed him #24 on their list of The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.
The Edge – as Evans is better known – is the guitarist for U2, one of the greatest rock bands ever. Did he wait until he was a virtuoso on the guitar before joining U2? Nope.
The Clash – a pioneer of punk music – didn’t care a lick about being "great" either. When they started, only two of the band’s four members could even play an instrument. Despite that, The Clash produced one of the top-selling albums of all time ("London Calling") and wound up as #30 on Rolling Stone’s list of The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. And they went on to kick-start thousands of other bands… including U2.
The world is packed with thousands of successful people who leapt right in. People who became great because they were willing to take a risk.
Still, I often hear of people who say the reason they have not started their business is that they’re not good enough. They feel they need to wait to acquire more information, deeper knowledge, or more specific skills.
The simple fact is that you can get much better at doing almost anything by doing that thing. Another important thing to note is that you never really know – until you get out there and do it – whether or not you’re good.
Until you actually start your business, it’s all theory. You don’t know how well your idea will succeed until you put it into practice. But the last thing you want to do is wait around until you’re sure. For one thing, you run the risk that your idea will become obsolete. By waiting, you allow the quick and the brave to one-up you in the marketplace. Plus, no matter how long you tinker or research, you STILL won’t know if your idea is good until you put it out there.
Start marketing your widget today, and you’ll know in a few weeks or months whether it’s a big success or a stinker. Keep planning for decades, and you could find out it’s a flop… after having wasted too many years of your life banking on its success. Michael Masterson calls this approach "accelerated failure." Pick up his best-selling book Ready, Fire, Aim and learn more about it.
This advice holds true for practically any business I can think of. Internet marketing is no different.
We’ve been urging you to get a little Internet side business started for some time in ETR. If you’ve been waiting to do it, here are four things you can do immediately to jump right in:
1. Launch a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ad Campaign
Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines allow you to display your ads by bidding on keywords relevant to your business. When someone clicks on one of your ads, you pay a pre-set fee of a few cents. You can set a daily budget of a few dollars so you can ease into PPC advertising and perfect your technique before upping your budget.
Agora Inc. brought in hundreds of thousands of new customers last year alone through effective PPC campaigns.
Learn more about setting up a PPC account by reading Patrick Coffey ’s article, "Mastering Google AdWords in 3 Easy Steps."
2. Start Collecting E-Mail Addresses
A huge factor in the success of many online businesses is e-mail marketing. Establishing regular, relevant, and timely contact with your customers and prospects is a proven way to generate more sales and to turn prospects into customers. Offering a free report, useful advice, or information that you deliver by e-mail will help you do it.
For more details about collecting names online, take a look at Patrick’s article "How to Build Your E-Mail Subscriber List Quickly and Easily."
3. Start an E-Mail Newsletter
Start to regularly send out useful information to the people on your e-mail list. Don’t know what to write? Not to worry. Write about what you know. If you have a music store, send out tips and advice for playing or caring for instruments. Garden store? Timely, seasonal, local advice on what to plant and when and how to tend a garden. Try to remember some of the meetings or phone calls you’ve had with your customers and recount them. Voila! You’ve started an e-mail newsletter. Spice up the articles with some relevant product or service information – and don’t be afraid to ask for an order!
For more about how to create an e-newsletter, read my article "The 3 Basics You Need to Start an E-Mail Newsletter."
4. Start a Blog
One thing that takes longer to master with an online business is search engine marketing. That is, creating content and copy that is both attractive to search engines and readable by humans (your customers and prospects). With a blog, you can quickly amass a plethora of information that will attract search engines… and customers. As with an e-newsletter, just write about what you know and offer advice and tips that will be useful to your readers.
Starting something new is both exciting and scary. But sometimes the fear of getting started can stop you right in your tracks. If you don’t start, you can’t fail. But then again, you cannot succeed either. There is no better time than right now to get up there, plug in your guitar (or laptop!) and start strumming away. Do not wait until you are great. Start small. Start now.
[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant to Agora Inc. in Baltimore. People from all over the country have already experienced the power of managing their destinies through motivation, determination, and goal setting. Discover the secrets that have made them successful. Click here now to learn more.]