Now I’m used to service stations and dealers in New Jersey, where standard operating procedure is to make customers guess where to park, what line to wait i n, and what those stains are on the back of their computer monitor, walls, floor, and, eventually, your credit card. So it was a nice surprise to see how the system works at this dealership .

And it got me to thinking about how what they’re doing right can be applied to Web landing pages.

Lesson #1: Show visitors exactly what to do.

As I drove up to the dealership, there was a sign that told me exactly where to go for service. It pointed to a row of four large, clearly marked parking spaces.

Have you clearly marked on your landing page what you want your visitors to do? Is your sign – up box prominent? Is the “buy” button plainly visible?

Lesson #2: Immediately create a feeling of safety.

When I dropped off the car, I couldn’t help but notice rolls of paper and plastic right next to the service lanes. They were obviously being used to keep customers’ cars clean while they were being worked on.

Does your landing page immediately make the visitor feel safe? Do you have instant credibility boosters? Does your site design communicate “fly by night” or “here to stay”?

Lesson #3: Show why/how you’re better/different.

While I was paying, an employee opened the door behind me marked “Authorized Personnel Only” and ushered in a prospective customer for a tour. I heard him talking about the facility’s cleanliness, its capacity, and how quickly repairs get done.

Does your landing page offer a glimpse into your expertise, process, or some other important differentiator? Or at least a link that says something like “Why buy from us?”

Lesson #4: Leave them wanting more.

After I paid, I went outside to look around for my car. Based on past experience, I expected to find it jammed into some pseudo parking spot. But before I had time to start searching, I saw my little baby driving up right next to me .

I don’t care how “sticky” your website is. At some point, every one of your prospects will have to leave. So what’s your “temporary exit strategy”? How do you leave them wanting more?

Whenever I offer a download or an opt-in, I always take the time to create a thank you page. The reason I do that is to make the prospect’s last contact with my site (for the time being) a positive experience. Leave them happy, and leave them wanting more.

[Ed. Note: Internet marketing expert Howie Jacobson's advice can help you keep your Web visitors happy. But before you can make them happy, you need to attract them to your site. Now, Howie has come up with a comprehensive guide to getting massive traffic to your site in the first place. Discover how you can skyrocket your traffic by 1,200% and make five times the cash with the quickest, easiest, most effective traffic attractor available online.

And be sure to pick up Howie's complimentary AdWords ER Report "Why Most AdWords Campaigns Fail - and How to Make Yours Succeed" at www.AskHowie.com.]

A lot of people are scared and angry. They’ve lost their jobs, their businesses, their insurance, and in some cases their self-worth. They feel victimized by events, by elites, and by entities. So they bob up and down, waiting to be rescued by a government or a friend. They hunker down into a form of abdication of self-responsibility because it feels better to be justified in misery than vulnerable in power.

And the interesting thing about this group of people is how threatened they are by another group.

This second group of people may be suffering just as much in real terms as the first group, but they refuse to see themselves as victims. Instead of giving up and waiting to be rescued, they are scrapping and hustling and retooling. Starting businesses. Taking risks. Flexing muscles they may not have fully understood or claimed before. In crisis, they are making opportunity – and, in the process, taking responsibility for making themselves.

They are discovering something amazing about work: that it really isn’t about the money or the power or the status. In other words, not about the external rewards. Those rewards are nice (actually, they’re awesome when received in the right way) – but the real reward of work, or entrepreneurship, is the flowering of passion. When we take responsibility for our contributions to this universe, we discover that work truly is, in Khalil Gibran’s words, “love made manifest.”

[Ed. Note: Which group are you in? You can take a stand against the recession this instant. Not only can you pursue your passion, you can turn it into a moneymaking venture. Get all the details right here. Hurry - the price goes up $200 this Saturday at 5:00 p.m.

When not contemplating social issues, Howie Jacobson is an expert on Google AdWords and driving traffic to your website. Get his complimentary AdWords ER Report "Why Most AdWords Campaigns Fail - and How to Make Yours Succeed" at www.AskHowie.com.]

What drives them batty is when they complain and nobody cares. And when you make it clear to everyone in your organization that listening to customers is the Number One job of your business, you can turn the inevitable screw-ups into opportunities to build loyal customers and passionate fans.

Luckily for me, I made lots of mistakes when I was starting out. That gave me constant opportunities to provide great “I’m really sorry” customer service and improve my business – the marketing, products, fulfillment, and more – rapidly.

What about your business?

Do the customer service folks on the front lines really feel remorse when your business screws up, or are they just punching the clock? Do your employees feel empowered to admit mistakes, their own and yours? Do your customers feel respected and heard?

If not, you have your marching orders.

[Ed. Note: Howie Jacobson (www.askhowie.com) is an Internet marketing expert specializing in pay-per-click advertising. In fact, he literally wrote the book on the subject: AdWords for Dummies.

Find out how Howie increased his income by five times - by accident - and how his unintentional good fortune can make YOU rich right here.]

“Focus your time on what you’re truly passionate about,” he said. “Successful people are passionate, obsessed. And obsession isn’t motivated by money. It’s deeper than that. Find your obsession. Let it loose. …

“You’ll work at your obsession all the time because you want to. And that kind of persistence, that kind of focus, is worth a lot of money. But don’t make the mistake of chasing the money.”

The interesting thing about this article turned out not to be the article itself, but the comments about it that were posted by CNN readers. It was like people were responding to two completely different articles. Some were wildly favorable… thanking Peter for his inspiring words or saying that his philosophy can be backed up by their own experience. But others were downright hostile.

For example:

“Someone throw this guy off of the roof of Harvard Business School. People are starving to death looking for work and they’re supposed to find their inner child?”

“You are a jerk and should keep your trap shut until you learn a thing or three about hard work.”

“Is the author’s passion in life to write stupid articles? Or does he do this for the money? I’m guessing he wrote this to get a paycheck.”

“I think it’s great when people with high paying jobs and a big savings account tell us not to worry. Bite me, Peter.”

“This is (nearly) the stupidest article I have ever read on a news website. CNN is supposedly a news network, not kumbayah, feel good, ideological BS. Work isn’t necessarily fun, which is why it is called work.”

So what’s going on here? Why does the idea that work can be soul-fulfilling anger so many?

My guess is that Peter’s message will resonate with you and the other folks who read Early to Rise. If only because you’ve seen that it’s possible to make a good living online. Whether you sell industrial equipment or massage services or coaching or travel advice or radio-controlled toys or juggling equipment, you don’t think that entrepreneurship is simply “pie in the sky” talk by delusional ex-hippies or meaningless advice from the wealthy to the impoverished.

We’re entering a new phase in human history. The Internet is part of it. The unsustainability of our assault on our planet is part of it. A stirring of the soul – a wave of recognition that life is more than molecules and atoms – is part of it.

And saying it ain’t so ain’t gonna make it not so.

In my opinion, the CNN readers who decried Peter’s lack of “reality” are the ones with their heads in the sand. They’re looking at the world and saying, “This isn’t how things should be” – rather than looking at what IS and asking themselves, “What’s the opportunity here?”

Those of us who’ve been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug know that we humans can dream a reality into being. And that if we don’t, we’re abdicating our responsibility to stand up to those who seek to minimize and disempower us. Those who want us to be good little consumers and not passionate seekers and boat-rockers.

Of course, entrepreneurs are not the only ones who understand this. But we’re the ones who get to test it out in the world of molecules and atoms. And when we succeed, our advice is sought out by others who want to follow in our footsteps.

My mentor and good friend Perry Marshall writes in defense of entrepreneurs on a regular basis. I confess, sometimes I’ve felt that he goes overboard in seeing “anti-entrepreneur” sentiment almost everywhere. But I’m reconsidering.

It’s important to recognize that the irrational anger is simply misplaced and projected fear. The fear is understandable. So don’t think I’m looking down on those caught in its grip. When I’m afraid, nothing anyone says or does matters. The fear projects its own rules upon reality, and anyone who tells me the monster isn’t real is just trying to get me killed. Hence, my anger. It’s self-preservation.

So what’s the takeaway? Here are a few contenders:

1. If you’re an entrepreneur, realize that no matter what happens to the economy, you’ll be in a better position than almost anyone to land on your feet.

2. If you’re doing well these days, keep your mouth shut. Most people will not celebrate your good fortune.

3. Don’t give advice to anyone who doesn’t ask for it. Heck, who doesn’t beg for it. The only people you’ll be able to influence are those who envy the spirit you bring to your work and life… not those who envy your money.

[Ed. Note: Howie Jacobson is an expert in using Google AdWords to create monster sales for your online business. You can master AdWords from the inside out with Howie's book AdWords for Dummies. Get his complimentary AdWords ER Report "Why Most AdWords Campaigns Fail - and How to Make Yours Succeed" at www.AskHowie.com.

Find out how Howie increased his income five times - by accident... and how his unintentional good fortune can make YOU rich right here.]

But when volume and velocity and quality of traffic increase, lots of things change. Big time.

You can get much pickier about the leads you accept as clients. You can create hurdles to prescreen and prequalify, and to give you the power and authority in the relationship. You can create waiting lists to generate the perception of great demand. You can raise your prices. If you sell products, you can start to source them at a cheaper rate. You can negotiate deals with your suppliers. You can increase your profit margins.

What all this means is that you make more money while expending less of your life energy (time and emotional angst) to get it.

When you understand your prospects, and what keywords they search for, and what they want when they’re searching, and how to engage them in your ads and landing pages – you start a process that can end with you being the biggest player in your market.

[Ed. Note: Howie Jacobson is the expert on Google AdWords and driving traffic to your website. Get his complimentary AdWords ER Report "Why Most AdWords Campaigns Fail - and How to Make Yours Succeed" atwww.AskHowie.com.

Pay-per-click ads are just one of the many elements of a successful online business. For a complete, step-by-step guide to starting and growing your own profitable Internet venture, check out the Internet Money Club: Independent Learner Edition.]

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Ready: Are your visitors ready to take the action you want them to take? Do they have enough information? Enough trust in you? If not, what do you need to add to your site flow to make offers congruent with your visitors’ current state of readiness?

Willing: Do they want to take the action you want them to take? Have you explained the benefits? Have you done the cost-benefit analysis for them? Have you made it clear how you’re different and better than their other options?

Able: Can they take that action on your site? Can they find the right links and buttons? Does everything work? Do pages load quickly enough to keep their attention? Is it easy to navigate your site, or do you need to offer a training course to users?

Then Test: Start with simple curiosity. For example, ask yourself “Where should the BUY button go, here or there?” Then create two versions of the page. Use Google’s website optimizer to run the test. (It’s free – and really easy.)

Send some traffic to each version, and you’ll discover one of two things:

1. One version is clearly superior to the other.

2. There’s not much difference – which means that the element you were testing doesn’t matter very much, or that the differences were too small to affect visitor behavior.

Either way, you’ve learned something. Wash, rinse, and repeat, and soon you’ll have a landing page that contributes mightily to your bottom line.

[Ed. Note: Find out how Internet marketing expert and pay-per-click specialist Howie Jacobson (www.askhowie.com) increased his income by five times - by accident - and how his unintentional good fortune can make YOU rich right here.]

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Let’s talk about some tests you can run having to do with placement. Don’t worry about the copy at the moment. Just where things go on the page.

First thing is to know what your visitors are already doing on your landing page. So throw up some analytics. Google Analytics is quite good – and quite free. (If you have a Google AdWords account, Google Analytics is part of it.)

I like Crazy Egg for visually friendly analytics. I especially like their Confetti feature, which shows me where people are clicking on my page. I can view that info in aggregate, by keyword, by time to click, or by browser. With that info, I can figure out if the links and forms and BUY buttons are in the right place, or if my visitors are bailing before getting to the good stuff.

Once you can see where the problems are, set up tests that aim to overcome them. The first iteration of my home page, for example, featured a giant “Buy the Book” promo near the top right. I wasn’t getting many opt-ins, and since I make about 90 cents royalty per book, it wasn’t the best use of that real estate. It wasn’t even what most people wanted to do on my site, as I found out from Crazy Egg.

Nobody was trying to buy the book. Nobody was signing up for my free first chapter. But everybody wanted free advice from the chat box. So I removed the chat box (if you want advice, now you have to pay for it), removed the book promo, and changed the offer for the opt-in.

As a result, my subscription rate has quadrupled, and I now have over a 10 percent subscribe rate on my home page.

[Ed. Note: Howie Jacobson (www.askhowie.com) is an Internet marketing expert specializing in pay-per-click advertising. In fact, he literally wrote the book on the subject: AdWords for Dummies.

Find out how Howie increased his income by five times - by accident - and how his unintentional good fortune can make YOU rich right here.]

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If you’re wondering why your online business isn’t doing better, put it through this three-part marketing audit.

• Have you found a problem? A problem that matters to people? To enough people?

• Are you selling the solution to that problem? The best solution? A solution that’s different enough from the other options? Can you prove it?

• Are people willing to pay for the problem to go away? Are they able to pay for it? Does your marketing make it clear that the benefit outweighs the cost?

If your site passes this three-part test, Google AdWords will drive qualified prospects to your Problem/Solution/Charge factory. And you’ll make money.

If you aren’t sure, AdWords will help you find out… quickly, efficiently, and inexpensively. You can test your value proposition with your target market. And test variations until you either hit the magic formula… or drop it and find something else.

[Ed. Note: Howie Jacobson is an expert in using Google AdWords to create monster sales for your online business. Get his complimentary AdWords ER Report "Why Most AdWords Campaigns Fail - and How to Make Yours Succeed" at www.AskHowie.com.

Find out how Howie increased his income five times - by accident... and how his unintentional good fortune can make YOU rich right here.]

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That is to say, Google penalizes Web pages that it deems to be near-exact copies of existing Web pages. It won’t let them appear in search results.

You can understand why. If you have a page that ranks highly for a certain keyword, “South Florida real estate,” for example, Google doesn’t want you making nine more copies of it and dominating the entire first page of search results.

So Google rewards the first page it finds with all the search engine mojo it deserves, and slaps subsequent copies with a “Duplicate Content Penalty.”

So how do you avoid this penalty? Here it is, straight from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines:

• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

• Avoid… “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

[Ed. Note: Howie Jacobson is an expert in using Google AdWords to create monster sales for your online business. Get his complimentary AdWords ER Report "Why Most AdWords Campaigns Fail - and How to Make Yours Succeed" at www.AskHowie.com.http://www.askhowie.com
Find out how Howie increased his income five times - by accident - and how his unintentional good fortune can make YOU rich right here. ]

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So when I change – when I grow as a person, lose some fears, embrace new beliefs, etc. – I want to make sure that the website where I sell my services represents my current reality. Not just the details, but the heart of my business. I don’t want to broadcast an outdated message and attract clients who won’t be in sync with me.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself when you change and want your site to reflect that change:

• Is the information on my site still technically accurate?

• Is it missing anything?

• By making this change, am I focusing more on my own needs instead of the needs of my prospects and clients?

• Am I speaking with confidence? Do I deeply believe my own claims?

• Am I teaching a technique that, when applied, supports or raises the standards of my client’s industry?

• Does this Web page sound like me today? If I were writing it now, for the first time, what would be different?

This process has nothing to do with split-testing or a scientific march to higher conversions rates. It’s not a technical fix for a poorly performing site. Instead, it’s an acknowledgment of your personal discovery that your business is a projection of your self.

I’m sure I’m missing some pretty important questions. But I trust that the ones I’ve listed above will move you and your website in the right direction.

[Ed. Note: Howie Jacobson is an expert Internet marketing consultant specializing in Google AdWords and pay-per-click marketing campaigns. In fact, he literally wrote the book on the subject: AdWords for Dummies.

Keeping your website updated is just one small part of running an online business. Find out how to plan marketing campaigns, create products, build your e-mail list, and more with ETR's Internet Money Club Independent Learner Edition.]

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