You created an e-book, tested various price points, and determined that you can sell it for as much as $100. But wait. Just because you know people will buy it at $100 doesn’t mean that’s the ideal price. You might be better off selling it for a lot less.

This may sound illogical, but it’s true – and it’s based on a direct-marketing principle ("price elasticity") that says you can sell more of a product at a lower price but still wind up with the same amount of profit as if you sold it at a higher price.

Let’s say you tested your e-book at $100 and got 20 customers. That’s a gross of $2,000. And let’s say you also tested your e-book at $50 and got 40 customers (which, according to the principle of price elasticity, is highly likely). You still grossed $2,000 – but the $50 price point is much better for your business.

Although the gross is the same, the lower price brought in twice the number of customers. Remember, the bulk of direct-marketing profits comes from repeat sales to existing customers. So the more customers you can acquire with your e-book, the more profits you can practically guarantee for your business in the future.

The moral here? Test, test, and test again. Try out your products at different price points. Then go with the price that brings in the most customers.

[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, click here to learn more about ETR's Magic Button program.]

You may feel very strongly that your website should look a certain way. But the fact is, it doesn’t matter what you think. It doesn’t matter what your designer thinks, either. And it doesn’t matter what your webmaster thinks. What matters is what your customers think. And the best way to find out what they think of the design of any aspect of your website is to test it.

Google has an excellent, totally underutilized, free tool called Google Website Optimizer. This software allows you to continually test different combinations of your site’s content – both text and images – to determine how small changes might increase the number of people buying from you.

Whether you use this tool or some other method to test your design elements, DO test them. Testing gives you an objective measurement of how your customers think. Once you know what works – and doesn’t work – with them, you can mix and match to improve the performance of your website and online marketing campaigns.

[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant to Agora Inc. in Baltimore . You can meet all your marketing goals - and achieve all your personal, social, financial, and business dreams - with the help of ETR's Total Success Achievement program . Learn more by clicking here.]

Two jewelers have stores next door to each other. At night, Jeweler #1 locks his jewelry in his safe and leaves his list of customers in his office. Jeweler #2 leaves his jewelry out, but locks up his customer list. One night, a burglar breaks into both stores and steals everything in sight. After the insurance payout, only Jeweler #2 is able to rebuild his business.

The moral here? It’s fairly simple to replace material objects. Finding customers is more difficult.

I was reminded of how important a customer list is while listening to NPR the other day. A newsperson reported that along with John Kerry’s endorsement of Barack Obama comes Mr. Kerry’s e-mail list of three million supporters. That’s three million new people Obama can now use for canvassing and fundraising.

Every direct marketer understands how valuable his list of customers and prospects is. But for a new Internet entrepreneur, the job of getting a list started can seem daunting. And the thought of growing that list into the thousands can seem all but impossible.

I’ve found that the best way to start is with pay-per-click (PPC) ads on the major search engines. This allows you to manage every aspect of your marketing campaigns. You can choose the demographics of your audience. You can choose to advertise in particular regions, countries, or worldwide. You can limit the amount of money you spend on your ads. You can decide which messages certain people will see. PPC advertising is a very flexible way to target specific people.

One of your best resources is Google’s own AdWords advertising center. (google.com/adwords/) You will not only find many great tips there, you’ll be able to share and discuss ideas with other advertisers and Google support staff in the AdWords online discussion group.

Read Patrick Coffey’s article "Mastering Google AdWords in 3 Easy Steps" for easy-to-follow directions on creating great PPC ads. And follow that up with Alexis Siemon’s article "Rev Up Your Sales With Google AdWords" for three simple ways to get the most out of your PPC campaigns.

With a good combination of ad and offer, you can easily build a list of a few thousand qualified e-mail prospects within a few short months. In fact, building a list of 10,000+ names in a year is a realistic goal.

Our guest bathroom boasts a herd of 327 zebras of all stripes… though there is room for more. (I introduced you to our zebra collection back in ETR #1800, when we had only 277 of the critters.) Cuddly zebras, ceramic zebras, pencil-eraser zebras, zebra fishing lures, zebra-striped candy, zebra lithographs, fluffy zebra slippers, a zebra joke book, and zebra bath towels. Last month, I found a printed cotton cloth, the size, shape, and colors of a real zebra hide.

Collecting zebras is my wife’s hobby. Every zebra tells a story… and that’s a great place to start an e-mail newsletter.

Why would you want to start an e-newsletter? According to Michael Masterson, an e-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 your profits. It’s also the perfect way to turn an interest or hobby into a money-making venture.

And the good news is that starting an e-newsletter is much easier than you might think. You really need only three things. (Notice that the ability to be a good writer is not one of them.) You need:

• Something to write about
• An audience
• A means of transmitting what you write about to your audience

1. Finding Something to Write About

The best thing about the Internet is not that it has 1.173 billion users, but that it’s full of thousands of people who are interested in the same things you are. (Internet marketers call this pocket of similarly minded people a "niche.") So when you’re looking for a topic for your e-newsletter, think about your own interests, your own hobbies, and your own areas of expertise. This has two benefits: First, you’ll be able to write about the topic with endless enthusiasm. Second, you’ll be able to write articles that are useful, informative, and based on your own real-life experience.

Maybe you have a knack for fixing things around the house. Each one of your newsletters could be about a different home repair.

Or perhaps you’re a keen whitewater rafter. You could write about the best destinations for rafting, plus where rafters can stay, eat, and be entertained in those locations.

Or maybe you, like my wife, are a collector who wants to share how you found each item. Every zebra my wife collected has a story behind it – a story that would be of interest to fellow collectors looking to buy other cute or quirky collectibles.

Like I said, you don’t have to be a stellar writer to write an e-newsletter. You might find that it’s easier to just "talk" your way through each issue by using a rough outline of what you want to say and a tape recorder. Or jot down some questions that would open up an interesting conversation about your topic, and have someone "interview" you – in person or on the phone. ("David, tell us the three best clam chowder restaurants on the Oregon Coast for people on a migratory whale-watching trip.") You can even "interview" yourself.

Transcribe the recording yourself or have it transcribed by a service like CastingWords.com, and use that as the copy for your newsletter. Once you get into the swing of talking into a recorder about a topic you love and are knowledgeable about, you’ll forget you ever had writer’s block.

Another way to come up with content for your e-newsletter is to review things other people have written. You could summarize interesting articles in your own words, publish excerpts (which is legal for review purposes), and comment on them.

Whatever means you use, make sure that your e-newsletter offers your subscribers something useful, interesting, insightful, relevant, or timely. Tell a good story that captivates their attention.

2. Finding an Audience

Remember those 1.173 billion Internet users out there? Among them is your audience. People are out there in cyberspace, excited to read about the topic you want to talk about. But it’s up to you to find them.

Possibly the best way to find readers and build your list of subscribers is to do some search engine marketing.

First, you or your Web designer should create a small webpage – or "landing page" – that explains the benefits of reading your newsletter. Make sure you include a sign-up form that allows you to "capture" the names and e-mail addresses of people who are interested.

Next, you need to set up a pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign with some of the major search engines. This means you buy keywords (on Google or Yahoo) that are related to your topic. Then you create a small ad that offers a free report full of useful, actionable information. (See Patrick Coffey’s article, "Mastering Google AdWords in 3 Easy Steps.") When people search for the keywords you’ve purchased, they’ll have the chance to see your ad. Once they click on your ad, they’ll be routed to the landing page you set up earlier.

There are also plenty of ways to get the word out about your e-newsletter for free. Make sure you’ve got a small ad for it on the back of your business card, on your voicemail message, and at the bottom of your e-mails. Tell other enthusiasts about your e-newsletter and ask them to share it with their friends. Newspapers and television news programs love local stories, so come up with an interesting angle about your newsletter that will capture the public’s attention AND get you some free publicity. (Who knows, you may even find yourself with national media attention!) Learn how to write a press release and try some of the online media distribution channels (such as PR Wire).

If you currently have a brick-and-mortar business, you can start a subscriber list with your current customers. Ask them for their e-mail addresses when they make a purchase, and you’ll have a ready-made list of people who’ll likely be interested in your newsletter.

For even more ways to find readers for your e-newsletter, check out Patrick Coffey’s article, "Top 10 Ways to Build Your Subscriber List."

If you have a small, highly responsive list, you can make a very comfortable living from a small Internet business without incurring a large overhead. I know of newsletter publishers with a few thousand e-mail names on their lists who run online businesses from a spare room in their home that generate profits of hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

3. Getting the Message Out

You’ve got something to write about and a group of people eager to read what you have to say. Now, all you need is a way to connect the two.

Although it’s possible to send out your e-mail newsletter through your regular e-mail program, I don’t recommend it. Many years ago, a Swedish client of mine sent out an investment newsletter with an attached Adobe Acrobat file to 10,000 subscribers every day from his personal computer. At one point, it was taking him until the next afternoon to get all the e-mails out and the bounced e-mails back.

A better way – and the way I’d suggest if you want to get started immediately – is to use one of the e-mail service providers available on the Internet. These include Get Response, AWeber, and 1Shoppingcart, and should set you back less than $30 a month. They provide all the features you’ll need: being able to add subscribers (including letting people add themselves through auto-generated sign-up forms you can put on your website), creating newsletters with pre-designed templates, and tracking who opens your e-mails or clicks on your links (which is useful to measure which readers are more responsive to your offers).

Don’t Just Say Something – Sell Something

You now have all the information you need to start publishing your own e-mail newsletter. But there’s one important thing you must remember: It’s easy to get immersed in writing about a topic you enjoy. But unless you want your newsletter to be nothing but a hobby, you’ll want to find ways to "monetize" it – generate income from it.

You can create your own information products – e-books, special reports, teleseminars, and more – and sell those to your e-newsletter subscribers. This is the easiest and most cost-effective type of product you can sell, because you can create it yourself and deliver it digitally.

But 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, like my wife, you’re a zebra collector, you can sell porcelain figurines.

If you don’t want to make or ship these products yourself, you can find a supplier who offers drop-shipping. (You take the order and payment, and they send the product directly to your customer.) This is a great way to make money online without having to tie yourself up with inventory.

[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant to Agora Publishing in Baltimore. Get more practical techniques for publishing and monetizing your e-mail newsletter this October at ETR's Info Marketing Bootcamp: Making a Fast Fortune on the "Other Side" of the Internet. And learn more money-saving, time-saving, business-building Internet marketing techniques from some of the world's top business-building experts. Sign up today.]

If you have an online business, a highly effective (and free) way to attract your customers’ attention is to supply information – articles about your product, service, or industry – to multiple websites.

One way to get your articles published all over the Internet is to submit them to sites like ArticleCity or EzineArticles. But you can also spread your articles around the Web by taking advantage of Real Simple Syndication or "RSS" feeds. This tool is used frequently to automatically notify Internet users when, for example, their favorite blog has a new entry or the content on a particular website has been updated.

Most website and blogging systems now offer RSS to individual users, as do many e-mail list management programs. But you can go one step further and inform the entire Internet (including sites with similar content to yours) that you’re posting a new article by registering the address of your RSS feed with a service like FeedBurner. These services will freely distribute your content through RSS to many content syndication services on the Internet. Just make sure you include the URL for your website on every article you submit so that people who are interested in the topics you write about can find out more about you and your business.

A major advantage of RSS is that it not only spreads your content throughout the Internet, it allows you to share content in relevant ways. For example, if your article is on trout fishing in Montana, it will tend to be syndicated to similar sites (like MontanaTrout.com or TroutNut.com) or sites where that topic is relevant (like FunOutdoors.com or MontanaLiving.com). But even if you don’t want to use RSS, you can still spread your articles around the Internet. Just contact the editor or webmaster of sites you deem relevant to your subject matter, and ask if you can submit articles to their site or e-zine.

[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant for Agora Inc. in Baltimore.]

My eldest son, Daniel, is caring, intuitive, and sensitive to others’ thoughts and feelings. Daniel seems to know how to make people feel good just by being there, being himself. It’s part of what makes him unique.

In marketing, we call the unique aspect of a product’s (or service’s) personality its Unique Selling Proposition or USP. It’s what makes it stand out from the competition and give consumers a reason to buy it. And the more unique (better differentiated) it is, the more others may want to emulate it.

If you expect that your USP will stay unique for the long haul, you’re sadly mistaken. Because your USP is vulnerable to imitation, you have to be ready to make constant improvements to your product so it will remain special and desirable.

Updating the "U"

Your product’s biggest strength could wind up being its Achilles’ heel. It could lull you into a sense of security and complacency, which could slowly but surely eat away at your product’s uniqueness … and the power of your USP.

In Message #1717, Michael Masterson refers to the gradual disintegration of a product or service’s quality as "incremental degradation."

Incremental degradation can happen because of something you do … or because of something you don’t do … or simply because of market forces that you can’t control. That’s why you always have to innovate – combining top-notch service with new features. Without continual innovation, your product risks losing its USP … and becoming bland, ordinary, and unoriginal.

You could try to maintain the status quo, but the natural tendency of a market is for constant change, growth, and evolution. Aside from that, there is one overriding reason why you must constantly strive to improve your product and make sure your USP stays unique: competition. If you leave things as they are, you can bet your competitors will either "creatively swipe" your ideas (as management guru Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence, puts it) or they will create ideas and products that improve upon what you already offer … and which may be more attractive to customers.

Netflix, for example, developed a unique way of doing business – allowing subscribers to pay a monthly fee to rent unlimited DVDs via its website. But though this business model is protected by two patents, Blockbuster is now doing the same thing. A reminder of how easily "unique" products and services can be adopted by another company.

Fix It Yourself Before Someone Else Does

If you have a great product, service, or business model, now is the time to look at ways to improve your USP … before someone else copies it and you have to. One way to stay ahead of the hungry pack is to target your own weaknesses.

Let’s return to our friends at Netflix.

I love Netflix. Its USP is very appealing: no more trips to the video store … no more late fees … and no cost to return the DVDs. (Return postage is prepaid.) But this business model is not difficult to copy. In addition to Blockbuster, there are more than 10 companies in the United Kingdom alone that offer similar services.

So what could Netflix do now to differentiate itself from the competition?

Well, one problem with the Netflix service is the time it takes to mail the DVDs. You don’t get your next movie until the company receives the one you sent back. But they could ameliorate the time-delay problem by offering a new feature. Subscribers could note on their online accounts that they’ve just mailed back a DVD … and Netflix could immediately send out the next DVD in the queue.

The benefit to a subscriber is obvious: You get your next movie faster. The benefit to Netflix is better stock management, as the subscriber tells them when they can expect a DVD. Netflix also strengthens its USP. The risk to Netflix? The DVD may get lost in the mail or an unscrupulous subscriber could keep it – but the company already has procedures to handle those situations.

The point is, if Netflix can lessen the time delay, they have a chance to leap ahead of other DVD-by-mail services … and regain their "unique" position in the market. For a while.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Here’s another example.

One of the strengths of Amazon.com is its extensive range. This is also one of its greatest weaknesses, because it can overload people with a bewildering array of choices.

My wife and I are currently researching infant car seats. Like all parents, the main feature we’re looking for is safety. But Amazon.com allows me to browse hundreds of seats by many features … except by independent safety rating. Adding such a feature would be enormously helpful.

By studying the core reasons people buy certain products, Amazon.com could improve its search tool – and possibly its sales – by categorizing products according to those core buying reasons. Helping people actually find what they want – one relevant needle in the huge haystack of choice – will significantly strengthen Amazon.com’s USP.

IKEA Got It Right!

Founded in 1943 in a small Swedish town, IKEA now has more than 230 furniture stores in 35 countries … and it continues to grow.

IKEA’s website introduced a cool search feature recently – "Ask Anna" – which is one of the best search engines I’ve ever used in my 13 years on the Internet.

Try it. Visit IKEA.com and type in a search term. I clicked Ask Anna and typed in "baby furniture." I was immediately directed to a page with everything I needed. Simple, quick, and effective. "Office desks." Done. "Bookshelves." Found.

IKEA saw clearly how confusing its vast array of products can be – and this new search feature allows for a nearly painless Web experience. (Now, if only I could put their flat-pack furniture together!)

IKEA has made a very successful business out of providing people and businesses with affordable, well-designed furniture. Helping customers find what they are looking for online is just one way the company has stayed on its toes and out of reach of competitors.

When working to improve, enhance, and innovate your company’s USP, keep the following in mind:

1. Change is good. Whether you drive the change or are at the mercy of change that you didn’t initiate, it must happen for progress to be made. All nature – including the nature of the marketplace – abhors stagnation.

2. The best changes are based on your customer’s needs. So, when brainstorming for ideas, focus on changes that will best serve your customers and fit well with your core business model.

[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant to Agora Publishing in Baltimore.]