Most people’s websites are B-O-R-I-N-G! I’m talking zzzzzzzzz city! That’s no way to distinguish yourself in a competitive market. If you want people to remember your site and keep coming back to it again and again, it has to project a unique personality.

Two of my favorite examples: Demotivation.com and Despair.com. These sites are entertaining, against the grain – and loaded with personality.

For instance, Despair.com sells some of my favorite prints. And they are hilarious! For example, a print of the Great Pyramids has a caption that reads: "Achievement: You can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor."

Check out the site yourself for more. When you do, you’ll immediately notice that the same irreverent attitude runs through the whole thing – even to the way the buttons are labeled on the navigation bar. There’s a button for "spin," where you can view and sign up for audio and video podcasts. And instead of "customer service," there’s a button for "disservice."

Your website’s personality has to be plugged into every nook and cranny – and extend to your communications with customers and prospects. Here’s an excerpt from the way Despair.com does it with their order confirmation:

I love it!

Now you might be thinking that you’d repel some customers with this type of treatment. You’re right. And that’s a good thing. You don’t want to be plain vanilla. Go ahead and polarize your prospects/customers to either love you or hate you. There’s no money to be made in the middle. Look at Howard Stern. Some people absolutely love him and pay Sirius radio a monthly subscription fee just to listen to their "god." And a lot of other people tune in to hear what Howard says… just so they can hate him more.

But okay. Maybe this isn’t your style. Here’s another example of what I’m talking about.

CaliforniaTortilla.com is a local Mexican eatery that’s been expanding like crazy. They used to have two locations back when I included them in my "Million Dollar E-mails" e-book in 2001. Now they’ve blossomed into 20+ locations – in no small part, I think, to the fun personality of the restaurant and its website.

Take a look at this from their "About Us" page:

California Tortilla does a good job of bribing you to join their "prestigious" mailing list by offering a FREE taco. If you go to the site, notice the wording for "groovy" promotions and "secret" discounts. And see how their personality shines through in this excerpt from their newsletter:

Pam, who is one of the owners, makes the California Tortilla newsletter personal as well as extremely entertaining. You can tell this is not your typical restaurant or faceless mega-corporation.

On my own sites and in my communications with customers/subscribers, I try hard to keep my personality at the forefront. I talk about my son Zak and my wife Missy and other personal things. Plus, anytime I go on a really great trip, I post some pictures or a video of the experience. (Check out InternetLifestyle.com/blog/ for a recap of where I’ve been lately.)

When customers/subscribers watch my videos or read my blog, they get a sense of who I am (a bit goofy, a bit adventurous). And that makes them feel like they "know" me even if we’ve never met.

If you have trouble coming up with "personality" for your website, here are some tips:

1. Be yourself – and don’t be afraid to give people details of your life.
2. Don’t try to hide the real you behind a plastic veneer of professionalism.
3. Ask yourself how you can demonstrate that you’re the opposite of a big, faceless corporate bureaucracy.

People want to do business with REAL people. So show them you are real, and more sales will be headed your way.

[Ed. Note: Yanik Silver, an expert on creating money-making websites, reveals one of the most profitable "hidden" Internet income opportunities around in the Secrets of Easy Internet Money series. And make sure you check out his new book, Moonlighting on the Internet: 5 World-Class Experts Reveal Proven Ways to Make an Extra Paycheck Online Each Month.]

I’m going to share with you a business-building technique that is extremely powerful, yet almost totally overlooked (or used improperly).

It’s simply… saying "thank you" to your customers.

You might be thinking, "Saying thank you to our customers for their business is not any big secret. What are you trying to pull here?"

Just hold onto your horses, and I think you’ll see how wonderful this can be.

You might be sending out some kind of a thank-you note to your customers – maybe with a special "gift" offer attached to it. But unless you have a strategic use for the sales those notes generate, it’s usually not worth it to send them out. Remember, you want to elicit direct actions from your customers. The stuff that results in dollars being directly deposited into your account.

That said, let me show you what I’m talking about.

A few years ago, I completed a series of teleseminars. The people who listened to this "Web Copy Secrets Mastery" series live each paid $397 to be on the calls. I thought that would make them good prospects for some of our other higher-end Internet marketing training programs.

Now, as you know from reading ETR, a customer is a better prospect for another similar product right after they make a purchase than if you wait weeks or months to contact them. Which means that the sooner you contact a customer to thank them (and offer them something else), the better.

So when the Web Copy Secrets sessions were over, I sent the 65 people who had initially signed up a simple postcard. When I say simple, I mean it. I did it with a service called "Amazing Mail" (amazingmail.com) that sends out color postcards for you. It costs about a buck each. (Of course, that’s higher than what it would cost to have postcards printed up locally and mail them yourself. But with this service, you can do it with just the click of a mouse. And you can do only one postcard, if that’s all you want.)

It was very cool. It took me about 10 minutes to get the 65 postcards out. I just picked one of their pre-done designs – one with a colorful ocean scene that said "Thanks" across the top. And then, on the back, I wrote this:

"Thanks so much for being part of the recently completed ‘Web Copy Secrets Mastery’ course. I really hope you got a lot out of it. In fact, I learned a lot just by moderating and interviewing all of our wonderful guests!

"Now, as a special thank you, I want to give you a discount on a terrific new product we’ve recently released, called ‘Yanik Silver’s Internet Marketing Secrets Exposed.’ It’s a 3-volume video set from my presentation at the sold-out, $4,995/per person ‘Internet Marketing Lab’ in Washington, DC.

"Here’s the special link for your $50 savings: XXXXXXXXXX

"Best, Yanik"

Could it be any easier?

I don’t think so. It cost me $65 to send out my 65 thank-you postcards. And I wound up making three sales for $750. Figuring in my cost to fulfill the product (the video set), I made about $625. That’s more than a 1,000 percent return on my money. Not bad for something that took me 10 minutes.

Ready to try your own thank-you postcard to make more sales? Here’s a little template any business can use…

"Thanks so much for {your recent purchase of ­­­­_____, taking part in _____, having your gutters cleaned, etc.}. I really hope you _____. {Say something about the benefit your product/service provides.}

"Now, as a special thank you, I want to give you a discount on a terrific new product/service we’ve recently released, ­­­­_____. {Give the name of the product/service, and add just a sentence or two about it.}

"Here’s how you can get your $XX savings: {Give instructions on how the customer can get the deal – by going to a website address, calling a specific number, etc. What action do they need to take?}"

Thank-you notes like this work well for several fundamental reasons.

First, they make your customers feel appreciated. By thanking them, you’re showing that you really do care about their business.

Second, thank-you notes that include a discount or other deal trigger a feeling of obligation in your customer. By giving them something (that’s for real), they want to reciprocate by buying something.

Finally, they work because of a solid direct-marketing principle: "A buyer is a buyer is a buyer."

Here are the five easy steps you can take to use thank-you notes to build your business:

1. Right now, gather up the names of your best customers – those who just bought something from you. They are excellent prospects for another one of your products/services.
2. Create a simple spreadsheet file with their names and addresses.
3. Come up with a preferential deal you can offer them.
4. Go to amazingmail.com and sign up for an account.
5. Send these customers a simple postcard using the template above.

Since January marks the start of a profitable new year for your business, let’s work on your marketing calendar for the next 12 months. You see, nearly any event / holiday / celebration / milestone is an excuse for a promotion. And if you’re not taking advantage of that, you’re missing the boat.

Here are just a few ideas:

February: Valentine’s Day

• "Give yourself the ____ you’ll love"
• "We love you and want to do something special for you"

March: St. Patrick’s Day

• "Make your friends green with envy with ____"
• "Your lucky day"

April: April Fools’ Day

• "These discounts are so low, my accountant thought this was an April Fools’ Day joke"

April: Tax Day

• "I need your help to pay for my taxes" (Don’t laugh. This was a promotion my friend, Jeff Walker, used very successfully!)

May: Mother’s Day

• "Mother always said you should ____"

June: Father’s Day

• "As Dad used to say, ____"

June: Graduation

• "Graduate to a new ____"

July: 4th of July

• "Watch fireworks explode when you ____"
• "Celebrate your independence from ____"

August: Dog Days of Summer

• "Beat the heat with ____"

September: Labor Day

• "Give yourself a break with ____"

October: Halloween

• "Treat yourself to ____" (Halloween is a HUGE holiday – one of the best for running a promotion.)

November: Election Day

• "Elect a new ____"

November: Thanksgiving

• "Thank you to our best customers"

December: Winter Holidays

• "Happy holidays – winter sale"
• "Ho ho ho – Can’t beat the fat man, so we’re having a sale"

January: New Year

• "New Year – New You/New Start"
• "Get rid of last year’s inventory"

But even better is to create unexpected "anytime" promotions. As Dan Kennedy says, the number one sin in marketing is being boring. And online, it’s harder than ever to break through the clutter. One way to grab attention is to make up an "event" and really make it fun for your customers/prospects.

I’m talking about the "Any-Reason-Is-a-Good-Reason-for-a-Sale" sale.

This is the perfect way to pump up sales when things are slow, when you’ve hit a milestone in your business, or just because you need to get rid of inventory. There are tons of ways of doing this. A couple off the top of my head:

• "Scratch & Dent" sale…
• "Fire/Flood" sale…
• "Need to pay my taxes" sale…
• "Birthday or Anniversary" sale…
• "My server crashed" sale…
• "It’s raining out" sale… (I’m serious. A local taco place sends out an e-mail anytime it rains – since their foot traffic goes down – offering free chips and queso. Smart!)
• "Boss is away" sale…

And on and on…

You can also use this approach to sell personal items in classified ads or through the Internet.

For example, when my wife and I bought a new house, some items were slightly damaged in the move. I put out a simple "Scratch & Dent" sale e-mail explaining the situation to my subscribers, and we sold everything in just a few days. Then, last year, I tried something a little different: the "Save Yanik’s Marriage Sale." The premise was that Missy, my wife, was really annoyed at me because our basement was overloaded with boxes. (Truthfully, she WAS mad – and made a big stink about it – but I embellished the story a bit.) It was another big success.

I’ve also done well with "personal milestone" sales for my business. I just did one when my first child, Zak, was born. That promotion nearly tripled my expectations. (It made $4.60+ for every visitor to my website.) More important, customers connected with me as a real person. You should have seen the dozens and dozens of "Congratulations!" notes. It was really cool.

There are a few big points I want to make sure you get from all this:

#1: Make your marketing fun.

Make people wonder, "What is this guy/gal going to be up to next?" Fact is, most of your prospects and customers probably lead fairly normal and mundane lives. If you can give them something to get excited about or allow them to live a little bit through what you do – you’ll have "hooked" them.

#2: Don’t let your theme or "fun" idea take away from the sales message.

This is critical! Big advertisers do this all the time, and waste their money. They try to use humor or something clever in their advertising… but ignore salesmanship. The fun or theme aspect of your promotion cannot stand on its own without well-written marketing copy. Bottom line: Don’t confuse being cute or clever with selling. There is a big, BIG difference.

#3: "Reason why" copy works perfectly for most of the events or themes you’ll create.

Most people will accept just about any excuse – even one as weak as a Presidents’ Day sale – for a special deal. However, if you combine the theme of your sale with real, meaningful "reason why" copy, you’ll make more sales… even if the reason is a bit contrived. Telling people the reason why you are doing something is one of the most powerful influencers of human behavior.

I hope this gives you some ammo to start thinking up your own promotions for the coming year and breaking out of the "ho-hum" mold of other marketers.

[Ed. Note: Yanik Silver , an expert on creating money-making websites, reveals one of the most profitable "hidden" Internet income opportunities around in the Secrets of Easy Internet Money series. And make sure you check out his new book, Moonlighting on the Internet: 5 World-Class Experts Reveal Proven Ways to Make an Extra Paycheck Online Each Month.]