Business, economic development - the unofficial Chamber of Commerce

Once upon a time there was a little fish named Minnow who lived in a very large sea called Internet.

Minnow had a pretty good life swimming around but he had to always be on the lookout for those who wanted to have him for their dinner. He didn’t think being eaten at his early age was a great idea.

Also, sometimes Minnow got hungry and because he hadn’t explored the entire Internet he didn’t always know where to find food.

Then 1 day, Minnow saw a large school of fish who looked very much like him. At first Minnow was hesitant about approaching them because some of them were pretty big. But he got up his courage and decided to investigate.

Much to Minnow’s surprise, these fish welcomed him and offered to let him join their school. They offered to show him where food was found since the larger fish had explored the entire Internet and knew where it was. They also said that he would be safer since they took turns watching for those who would eat them.

Minnow immediately joined the school and started feeling more relaxed. He had others to watch over him and provide food until he was larger and better able to take care of himself.

Minnow had discovered and used the 1 thing all small fish in the Internet need to survive. He used leverage.

Leverage is not just a term used in the financial world. It’s also a term used in the world of Internet marketing and it means:

Use the efforts of others to grow your business.

When you first start out you are much like Minnow - you and your business are very small and your site is just 1 in the millions of sites on the internet.

To survive and grow you must learn to use the power of leveraging. You must use ways to get others help you promote your business.

Here are 3 of the most popular forms of leveraging:

1. Viral Marketing - offering gifts that can be shared with others and promotes your business

2. Joint Ventures - a partnership that benefits of all partners

3. Affiliate Programs - paying commissions so others will promote and sell

In our story, Minnow was very small and didn’t have the resources to offer anything in return for what he gained. But your small business isn’t like Minnow because you do have things to offer.

There are gifts that can be branded - free or at minimal cost - and you can use them to do viral marketing.

There are free joint ventures possibilities like the “12 Days of Christmas” and “Everyone Will Win” (available until April, 2006) where you can increase the size of your mailing list by giving a free gift - a gift you may have even branded.

You may even have a product or a resale product and the resources to set up an affiliate program.

Minnow was fortunate because he was able to use the power of leveraging without offering anything in return. However, in the real world you must offer something because nothing is really free.

In the real world, leveraging means making tradeoffs. You offer a gift, you offer to promote something, you offer part of your profits, etc. You do this to increase your visibility and make your business known to more than just the handful of people you can reach on your own.

The internet is very large and small minnows can get lost unless they leverage their assets. Learn to survive and grow. Use the power of leveraging and let others help you grow your business.

To Your Success,

Susan Carroll

Susan has been helping people with their online marketing for more than 3 years. You’re invited to join her membership site at:
http://www.friendswhocare.us/join.htm

You may re-publish the article in its entirety, with the resource information at the bottom left intact.

6 Secrets to Stellar Sales Presentations

Every sale is won or lost in the presentation. Regardless of product, industry, or market every sale has the same basic components: A prospect who wants a product, a product, and a sales person who will or will not help that customer buy. These 6 secrets will help you make presentations that build your customers understanding and excitement to a point where they will buy from you right now. The operative word in right now selling is VALUE if a customer sees the value of your product they are sold if they do not they won’t buy. This 6-step process will give you the secrets to building value in a way that your customers react to over and over again.

1. Make a “Big Fat Claim”

Every Presentation needs a “Big Fat Claim” (B.F.C.) when you start your presentation you should have an obvious value for your clients that makes them say “well how do you do that”. Your B.F.C. should hint at a solution to a real problem your customers have. Then the rest of the presentation backs up the claim.

When Glasstree.com sells, websites in the retail space the Big Fat Claim is “Never Pay for Website Updates Again!” It focuses on the core benefit of the service and tells the client exactly what they can expect to get.

2. Tell ‘em How It’s Done

Directly after presenting the big fat claim you have to back it up with a quick one or two sentence explanation of how you do what you claim. This will build your credibility and allows the customer to say: “oh that makes sense” or “I never would have thought of that”. This step of the presentation is to introduce the idea that makes the “Big Fat Claim” possible and actually takes it from a sensational idea to a reality. This step is the difference between hype and a solid sales presentation.

Our “How it’s Done” is “We have built a dynamic platform that, allows you to update the website for yourself eliminating the need to pay a web designer to make simple changes to your site.” Here you go from the benefit to the customer to the feature that makes it possible.

3. Present Your Credentials

This is the point where you shift gears, give a little background information on your company, and tell the 30-second story of how you got to where you are now. Tell people why you decided to sell what you sell. What were the motivating factors for you?

I tell people “I was in the industry for years, but when I saw this product I realized that there was no way I could compete with it as an individual so I got in contact with the creators and worked out a deal that allows me to share it with you.”

This little bit of personal information helps build trust and rapport

4. Ask Leading Questions

Directly after telling your story you need to initiate a conversation that intertwines your product and the clients vision. Before you present list the top 10 benefits of your product then creating questions that dove tail into those benefits.

As an example: Ask the question “do you mail brochures or other information to out of town clients that request it?”

(Prospect Answers)

“With a well built website you could direct people to your site while they are on the phone and show them the product information immediately while it’s high on their priority list.”

By leading with the question, you can make your benefit oriented point in a way that connects directly to the clients situation.

5. Close it on the Spot

Always end a sales call with a movement to the next phase of your selling process. At the very least, you need to get the prospect to commit to your next meeting and decide what will happen at that meeting. The ideal situation is you do the paperwork and set an appointment to pick up detailed information you need to complete the process.

For a great close, first refer to your Big Fat Claim and ask if the client what they are going to do with the key benefit, then ask for the order.

Example: Mr. prospect what do you plan to do with the money you will save on web site updates.

Prospect answers:

that sounds like a good idea. Our next step is to set up your account; I’ll need your signature on this agreement, and a check for $428.

A simple trial close -close like this allows your customer to tell you if they have an unanswered question about your product or give you the go ahead without a lot of pressure.

6. Rehash What They Get

Right before leaving the table take a moment to review what did the client just pay you for, What are they supposed to do next, and what extra service might help them move forward.

Example: We are going to build you a 10 page website with (recite page names) and we’re going to design it in blue and orange and use the logo you provide via e-mail. You’ll send that e-mail to me at myname@email.com then it will take us about 10 days to complete your website design. While we’re setting up your account, would you like to purchase a copy of our internet promotion manual so that you have a running start on promoting your new site?

Follow this six-step checklist and you will give stronger presentations that close more deals for you and give a higher value to your services. Go one-step at a time from moderate interest to a value your customer can’t ignore. So to review the steps:

1. Make A Big Fat Claim

2. Tell ‘Em How it’s Done

3. Present Your Credentials

4. Ask Leading Questions

5. Close It On The Spot

6. Rehash What They Get

Commit to these six steps in every presentation and you will see a dramatic increase in the number of yeses you get.

About The Author

Carl recruits, trains, and Coaches Resellers in Glasstree, Inc.’s unique private label reseller program where anyone can build their own business selling updateable websites to small businesses and individuals. Get your free guide to running your own private labeled website business at www.glasstree.com/resellers.asp

Author - J.E. Johnson
(c) 2004. All rights reserved.
www.SponsorDirectory.com
==================================================

The Internet is the world’s greatest market place. Hundreds of thousands of companies are selling their products and services online with each desperately trying to stand out from the masses. With millions of web pages on the Internet today it has become increasingly hard to be noticed amongst those masses. In order to sell any product a company will usually employ several marketing systems. One of these marketing systems is the affiliate program.

We’ve all come to know and love (or hate) them. Colorful banners, annoying pop-ups, pop-ins, pop-unders, unwanted email (Spam) and even messages on our instant messenger service (Spim) are all used to attract the attention of the crowd to a particular product or service. A lot of these advertisements will create an excess of ‘useless’ traffic (i.e. people that just go to the advertised site to see what all the hustle and bustle is about). As a result this method of advertising is often considered unreliable and inefficient and has to be used in large quantities to be successful. Enter the affiliate program.

Affiliate programs are essentially used to have someone other then the product owner promote and sell the product. This is done on the basis of commissions offered to website owners who are willing to advertise the product on their website. The affiliate program owner offers a fee to the affiliate whenever someone buys from the affiliate program owner’s website via a link placed on the website of the affiliate. This leaves advertising for the product almost completely up to the affiliate who only receives a fee if a product is actually sold.

Affiliate programs can generate large networks of affiliated sites that can drastically increase the sales of a particular service or product. Affiliate program referral fees can be anything from a few cents per click to hundreds of dollars for a registration or a product sale.

Affiliate programs have the nice addition that they are incredibly easy to set up often only needing a few minutes per month of maintenance for potentially high returns. As an affiliate all we have to do is place the link of the affiliate program on our website or find some other means to link to the affiliate owner’s website and money will start coming in all on its own.

As opposed to endless banners, popups, pop-unders, pop-ins and Spam mail affiliate programs often manage to be a more direct method of advertising. Only interested parties will generally click on affiliate links converting many of the casual surfers to actually interested buyers.

Today the affiliate program is one of the most popular tools for Internet marketing purposes.

About the author:

J. E. Johnson is the owner/operator of
www.SponsorDirectory.coma highly respected affiliate
program directory and internet marketing website.

For more informational articles and a listing of thousands
of affiliate programs please visit
http://www.SponsorDirectory.com

Bridging the Sales Experience Gap - Part II

In part one of ‘Bridging the Sales Experience Gap’ we discussed the Approach Strategy framework which describes four distinct styles of selling, dictated by complexity and value. Since beginning to use the frameworks to explain how experienced sales people make decisions about sales situations, we have developed to a total of nineteen framework diagrams. You can view the list at www.salessense.co.uk/adaptive_frameworks.htm.

The ‘Meeting Tactics’ framework

When you are face to face with a prospective customer, if you always use the same style or method of communication, you are unlikely to be successful every time. Adapting for the person, their circumstances, and their attitude towards you is an essential part of achieving consistent success.

In part one of this series, we began with this question sent in by an overseas subscriber - “How do you teach young sales reps how to READ the client, how to understand their personality and only provide the information when the client is OPEN to receiving it?” A framework that depicts the sales challenge and illustrates the options, offers an answer.

Searching out and articulating customer benefits is a natural thing to do in selling. If you can pile enough value on your side of the equation, a favourable decision becomes inevitable, or so it would seem. Unfortunately this approach doesn’t always work. Rationality is in the eye of the beholder.

If you really want something, you will be eager for any information that helps you justify the acquisition of what you want. If you would like to own a Mercedes and feel you can’t afford one, you will lap up any scrap of an idea that suggests you can realise your dream.

On the other hand, or on another day, you may be feeling differently. Perhaps you have just had to settle a flurry of bills, or have just sat through a budget cutting meeting. Your mind will be focussed on other priorities or worse, on reducing spending. Any number of circumstances can enhance the sceptic in you. When this is the case, you may deny the validity of evidence and use your creativity to block any pressure to act or spend.

SalesSense Meeting Tactics Framework Diagram

www.salessense.co.uk/adaptive_tactics_diagram.asp

The diagram illustrates the importance of assessing a buyer’s attitude, before deciding how to manage the meeting. Knowledge of the buyer’s circumstances helps experienced sales people anticipate the level of welcome or scepticism they will face when meeting the buyer. Ability to assess rapport and read non verbal signals enables sales people to check their standing with a buyer.

Forward selling a highly sceptical buyer

This is unlikely to be effective. Sceptics will be suspicious of your questions and guarded in their response. They will assume that you are exaggerating, miss representing, or even lying about the product or solution you are proposing. As a result you will provoke a debate about the validity of the information you discuss or present. Using traditional sales principles, you will be speaking about advantages and benefits using the most positive terms you feel justifiable. This just makes the situation worse. The buyer uses his or her intelligence and creativity to prove that you are wrong. People who adopt an opposing position are rarely won over by a debate or argument - which is what the engagement often becomes when traditional sales techniques are dashed on a barricade of scepticism.

Reverse selling a sceptical buyer

Suppose you are sceptical about the value of buying a Mercedes however, you do need to buy some form of transport. How would you react if the Mercedes sales person said you should look at something more practical? You might be offended. If the message had been expressed in a disarming way, then you would probably want to know why the sales person thought that you shouldn’t buy a Mercedes. Reverse selling means doing the opposite of what the buyer expects a sales person to do. Done well, reverse selling will entice the most sceptical buyer to begin selling themselves.

Reverse selling an eager buyer

Suppose you really, really want a Mercedes. How quickly would you get irritated with a sales person who seemed to be trying to put you off? Sometimes sales people try to withhold pricing information until they have established need and value. When people try this on me, I tend to get irritated quickly. This may be a personal thing however, when I want to buy something, I want to do my due diligence, my way. I expect sales people to help me buy the way I want to buy. Those who insist on following their own agenda quickly get to do so without my presence.

Forward selling an eager buyer

Such situations should take place as an entirely natural collaboration between buyer and seller. It should be straight forward for the sales person to discover how the buyer makes good decisions. Once understood, the seller can align his or her efforts with the buyer’s purpose and preferences. You would think it should be easy! Sometimes the challenge is to avoid getting in the way.

The ‘Meeting Tactic’s’ Adaptive Sales Framework diagram helps sales people recognise the need for careful observation and flexibility of response, when meeting potential buyers. Learning and practising different styles vastly expands opportunities to help buyers get the right results.

Frameworks like this provide the tools to overcome the greatest challenge to success, a lack of forethought, planning, and preparation. Henry Ford put it better, “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.”

Questions and comments to Clive Miller
E-mail: clive@salessense.co.uk
Web: www.salessense.co.uk
Tel: +44 118 933 1357

About the Author

Achieving sales targets has been the focus of Clive’s working life for twenty-five years. During his time in the field, he has sold a wide range of products, solutions, and services in the IT industry for Intel, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Silicon Graphics. He is the author of most SalesSense training material and writes about selling for magazines and newsletters.

http://www.salessense.co.uk/clivemiller.asp

Contests are a great way to boost your traffic and
helps with recommendations and repeat visits. I use several
in my regular marketing for Associatesearch.com

One way I incorporate contests into boosting traffic is
by a referral program I have. If you notice I have a small
form on just about every page of my site that allows
visitors to recommend their friends to our site. The program
sends out an email describing the site and a thank you to
the referrer. The program also sends me an email with both
the referrers and referrals email addresses. The program
then writes both email addresses to a text database. At the
end of each month I take all the email addresses from the
referral database and draw one out to win whatever it is I
happen to be offering, many times it’s advertising slots.

The great part about the referral contest is that the only
way to be eligible for the prize is to refer someone.
As a greater incentive I offer one entry to both the refer
and referral. The response is always good and the amount of
personal referrals and word of mouth advertising I receive
far outweigh the cost of whatever it is I am offering.

You can also incorporate a similar system into newsletter
sign ups. All referrers can be entitled to an entry for
every new subscriber and so.

Tracking can be as simple as writing down a persons email
address or going all out and installing a custom tracking
system. I use a mixture of both. Use your imagination and
see what you can come up with.

A random contest run through your newsletter subscriber
base will greatly improve word of mouth advertising
for you. People love to win things and winning by surprise
is a double bang! Just think of the referrals you will get
if you pulled a winner out of the blue with no notice!

I hope this gave you a few ideas, feel free to email me
any time.

About the Author

David Seitz - CEO Virtual Imagination Inc.
Published by: Virtual Imagination Inc.
Brought to you by The Helping Hand Internet Marketing
Newsletter. http://www.helpinghand-newsletter.com grab your
free subscription now: mailto:subscribe@associatesearch.com

If you are active on the web promoting your products, affiliate programs or services, you probably sense where I’m going with the title of my article. We all put a lot of effort into our internet business. We all have the same hopes and dreams about where our internet business will go. Unfortunately we are all depended on too many variables that have to be just right at the right time.

What is he talking about you might ask. Let’s take a simple example. Listening to self declared gurus of internet marketing they all tell you the same thing. “You have to build your list”, by that they mean your email list.

After following this advice and spending hundreds of dollars in opt-in email leads and maintaining a list of over 5000 subscribers I was pretty convinced that success is just around the corner.

This is as far away from the truth as human possible. I’m running a newsletter delivered daily and I send additional sales letters to pitch some of my affiliate products. I track every email with ad tracking and click through analysis.

Guess what? Nothing! Sending daily emails and sometimes an additional sales letter would trigger something, at least a wave of cancellations, don’t you agree? Well, my conclusion of this mess is that over 90% of the emails never passed the SPAM filters.

This is devastating. As you know most people sing up for newsletters through their free email accounts. The few who use their regular email address unsubscribe within a few days.

Don’t get me wrong, newsletters are great and if done right they can help you to promote your business. I believe the key is that your newsletter needs to be unique and very narrow focused on a niche target.

Going back to the email leads issue. Buying email leads from email harvesters it is a waste of money. Even if they are double or triple opt-in leads. Promoting a copied newsletter is a waste of money. Why bother to promote something that is already promoted hundreds of times?

If you are targeting the people who are looking to make money online, your target audience is pretty narrow and they probably have already subscriptions to one or another form of marketing newsletter.

I’m actually shifting my focus completely and put a newsletter together to help people to get started with real estate investments, especially Florida real estate. As you can see this is a very narrow target audience. If I get a couple of hundred subscribers I will be happy. If you’re interested send an email to mailto:pdobler@suncoastrenttoown.com I will let you know when the newsletter will be available.

The bottom line of my story is, don’t advertise to the advertiser. You just waste your time and money. That’s the main reason why people getting frustrated with their internet business and simply quit. This is like car dealers advertise solely to other car dealers. What do you think will happen?

I know what you are thinking. What happened to him? Didn’t he tell us in his article “Where’s the Traffic?” that email lists are the cure to non-visited websites? Yes, that’s true. I still believe that autoresponders are good business practice to communicate with your customers. I just didn’t see the value of buying email leads. Yes, I changed my opinion, which is plain human nature and happens to all of us.

I hope this made you think a little bit and if you can turn your business into the profitable margins based on my little advice please let me know. I’m eager to hear if somebody actually is listening to what I have to say.

Peter Dobler is a 20+ year veteran in the IT business. He is an active Real Estate Investor and a successful Internet business owner.
Learn more about the concept of residual income at http://www.fl-home-biz.com or send a blank email to mailto:pdobler@getresponse.com

Read any Internet marketing article, forum or tutorial these days and you will find that the one thing all the experts agree on is that you need to have lots of good quality content on your web site. It sounds like good advice doesn’t it? But what precisely does it mean?

Simply put, content is all the text copy and graphics on your web site. Good content can be defined as information that your visitors will find helpful and that is relevant to their needs. Good content will also enable search engines to crawl and index your web site under the key phrases that your customers are searching on. After all, there’s no point in having a brilliantly written sales message within your web site content if your potential customers never find it!

Good content will mean different things to different businesses and exactly what constitutes “good content” depends largely on the goal of your web site and the products or services you offer.

Web site content can be loosely divided into the following page types:

Core Web Site Pages

These are the mainstay pages of your web site. These are the pages that explain who you are and detail the products, services and information that is available through your web site. The best place to start with “good content” is making sure these pages are as complete as possible and answer all of a user’s potential questions.

Typical pages that visitors expect to find on every web site are:

About Us

Products and/or Services

Contact Us

If you aren’t experienced in writing sales copy, it is worth considering hiring a professional copywriter to write (or rewrite!) the text for your web site pages. A well-written page tailors the style and voice of your message to appeal to your particular customer type. It can make the difference between just getting web site visitors and getting visitors that convert into paying customers.

For more information on writing content for your web site download our guide “Writing Text That Sells”. To read an excerpt click here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_3.html

Make your web site’s core pages your first priority before looking at adding other content. Ensure that they are clean, concise and easy-to-read, complete and informative. Ask yourself the questions that your customers may ask, do these pages answer these questions, or at least clearly lead to additional complementary pages that contain the answers to these questions?

Complementary Pages

Complementary pages are the pages that enhance and expand on your core site pages. These are the “additional information” pages that are your opportunity to really set yourself apart from your competitors and help you make a sale.

For product sites, you could include independent product reviews, printer-friendly product specification pages, product comparison tables, customer feedback and recommendations and help pages that go exceed customer expectations.

For service sites, these pages might detail your expertise, experience and qualifications, your proven track record, existing customer testimonials, common myths and misconceptions about the services you offer, or do-it-yourself tips for situations where a professional is not needed.

Complementary pages can also offer additional information about industry recognition, associated bodies you belong to and awards you may have won. They can include mission statements or even statements of your commitment to customer service, lowest price guarantees, etc. These pages aren’t critical to the operation of your web site, but their content can help differentiate your site from others in the field and establish credibility with your visitors. The object is to give them reasons to choose to do business with you rather than your competitors.

Writing Content for Search Engines

It is well known that if you optimise your web sites content well, the lion’s share of your visitors will come via the search engines. We also know that key phrases and links to your site are the two things that affect your ranking in the search engines. Your key phrases tell the search engines what you do, and the inbound links tell them how important you are. This combination is what determines your relevance. And relevance is what the search engines are after.

There’s a lot of information available about how to incorporate keyword phrases into your HTML and Meta tags, and how to establish inbound links to your web site. Both topics are covered in depth in our guide “Start at the Beginning” (click here for an excerpt:

http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html). But that’s only half the battle.

Search engines do look at your tags, html coding and links, but they also look very closely at your text content. If the key phrases you have used in your tags and links aren’t used in your text copy, your site won’t be indexed for those key phrases and your customers won’t find your web site listed under the key phrases they are using.

But writing key phrase rich content without compromising readability and flow isn’t easy. Readability is paramount to attracting and retaining visitors and after all, it’s the visitors that buy your product or service, not search engines.
By following these simple guidelines, you’ll be able to overhaul the content of your web site and ensure that it’s pleasing to both the search engines and your visitors.

1. Divide and categorise.

Once you have decided which pages constitute your core pages and which are complementary, further divide your complementary page into categories. For example, divide your products into types (i.e.: digital cameras) then subdivide them into smaller groups (Konica, Fuji, etc). This way, you’ll be able to incorporate very specific keyword phrases into your text content, thereby capturing a very targeted market. If you’re working on an existing web site, re-title each page with its key point, offering, or benefit using your key phrases.

For further information on the best way to select targeted key phrases, download our guide “Start at the Beginning”. Click here to read an excerpt: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html

2. Use Key Phrases rather than Keywords

There’s far too much competition to waste time trying to optimise for single keywords and they are rarely, if ever, really indicative of what your web site is about. Research has also shown that Internet users are becoming more search-savvy and are searching using more and more specific key phrases. They’re learning that by being more specific, they find what they’re looking for much faster and don’t have to wade through oceans of irrelevant results to find it.

Although using key phrases rather than single words may mean that you get fewer visitors, these visitors will be looking for exactly what you are offering and are therefore more likely to convert into customers.

3. Pick the most relevant Key Phrases

Don’t try to include every key phrase on every page. Focus on one or two key phrases on each page and make sure that they are relevant to the product, service or information content that is being offered there. Try to include the full key phrase in the copy using the words in the correct order but don’t over use each phrase and don’t let them detract from the overall readability or flow of the text.

4. Use Key Phrase text in Links

If you use your key phrases in text links to relevant pages within your web site, when the search engines look at your site, they’ll see that the pages are related. So on product page A, include a text link to product page B. For example, on a page displaying Fuji Digital Cameras, you may add a link at the bottom of the page that says, “You may also be interested in Konica Digital Cameras”. If you link this text to a page entitled “Konica Digital Cameras” the search engines will see this as a “vote” from page A for page B’s content about Konica Digital Cameras.

5. Use Key Phrases In Headings

Search engines, as well as customers, rely on headings to scan your web sites information. Headings are given quite a lot of weight by search engines when categorising your web site, so although it sounds obvious, make sure your headings are in text rather than graphic format and try to include your primary key phrases in them. If possible, also break up your content using subheadings through out your page. This will not only improve the readability of the page, because it will help customers scan your information, but will also provide some secondary key phrase opportunities.

Just remember not to overdo it. It’s not easy to find the balance between content written for search engines and content written for customers, but if you take the time to implement the steps above, having well written content on your web site will pay huge dividends over time.

For a complete guide to marketing on the Internet, including:
The General Principles of Internet Marketing
Start at the Beginning
Writing Text that Sells
Building Online Relationships
Maximising Your Pay Per Click Campaign
Measuring Success
Why not purchase the whole series of downloadable guides for the discounted price of £64.95. Click here for more information: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/promo_ebooks.html

Justine Curtis
Enable UK
Internet Marketing Information and Resources
Make your web site work harder!
Web: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk
Email: info@enable-uk.co.uk

Publishing Guidelines: Permission is granted to publish this
article electronically or in print as long as the bylines at
the end are included. If you use this, notification would be
appreciated. Thanks!

ClickBank Questions
by Stephan Miller

It would seem that Clickbank would provide more for their customers. Obviously, when it comes to internet marketing and affiliate programs, you could put it in your top 10 links. No other database of affiliate programs offers such a possibility for profit on either the affiliate side or the product creation site. And you can’t beat the fact that the commissions from over 10,000 products get consolidated into one check. But there are still a few lingering questions that may get you thinking.

What is up with the site? I mean, a site shouldn’t be overly complex. In fact, complexity can be a turn off. Then again, I have found more complex site templates from free sites. And its not just that. How many of you Clickbank affiliates have found news about Clickbank or FAQ’s about Clickbank on a forum, clicked the link and the FAQ is on the Clickbank domain. But, if you go to the Clickbank homepage, there is no link to the page you just visited.

I don’t know about you, but if I were running a business, I would make sure that customers and vendors could get all of the information possible and not have to find out news through third party sources.
But, on the other hand, I can’t complain. The checks do come in. I have never had to search for a customer service link on the site, because there has been no reason to. You make sales and you get a check. It’s that simple and I have never found anyone who says otherwise.

Then you’ve got to wonder about the search feature. There is none. But why? For one reason, if Clickbank itself had a search feature, any internet user who is familiar with Clickbank clicking on an affiliate’s hoplink could recognize this. They could then go to Clickbank and buy the product under their own affiliate ID at up to 75% off, which wouldn’t matter much to Clickbank or the product seller, at least in the beginning. They still collect their cash.

But eventually, the product seller would notice a drop in sales. Affiliates would become less than satisfied with the results of all their hard work and stop working as hard to make sales that weren’t coming in anyway. Therefore, there would be less advertising of the product in total. You can’t underestimate the value of an affiliate army who are rewarded accordingly.

There are plenty of third party products available that will essentially build a search engine on a Clickbank affiliate’s site for them.

Even without this, there are some out there who know what a Clickbank Hoplink looks like and just where to put their own Clickbank ID in order to make a commission for themselves.

Should the affiliates themselves be responsible for protecting their sales. I don’t think so. Of course there are products that can help you protect your links, but shouldn’t the responsibility rest on the product developer. Our heroes, the third-party software developers, come to the rescue again by providing software to do this for you, but only a few of the product developers selling through Clickbank rely on these products. This leaves a lot of affiliate out in the cold, relying on link cloaking to protect their sales.

I love when I sign up for an affiliate program and click the link assigned to me to test it out and I am delivered to the main page of the site. There is no “?hop=” behind the URL, just “www.mysite.com.” This lets me know that my only job is to get the word out on the product and not become an expert on encryption just to make a sale. Just to let you developers know out there, it is also great not to create a link for affiliates from any page designed for sales. You’ve just defeated any work we as affiliates or you as a responsible marketer have done to save our commissions. Send the link after the sales if you want to but don’t treat your affiliates like dirt by telling their lead that they can get a 50% discount by signing up for your affiliate program.

Another reason for product developers to check out link cloaking software: link popularity. If you use the conventional hoplink, Clickbank gets a link back to their site. If the affiliate has to encrypt the link himself, no one gets the link credit. If you buy one of these scripts, your affiliates will advertise a link that points to your site. Just something to think about.

Then there is sales notices. There are none. There used to be a time when Clickbank would send you an e-mail each and every time you made a sale. Spam? Only if you consider a check from the IRS junk mail. Personally, Clickbank could fill my inbox to the limits with notices like this. But this service is no longer there.

I don’t want to even start with Clickbank’s sales reports functions. Lets just say that they could be improved, a lot.

This is even another area where third party vendors lend a helping hand. You can create affiliate sales reports, profit reports, send e-mails to your customers, and even graph sales trends with such software. Some are scripts that you run on your site. These will send out a thank you e-mail, add the customer to your database and even activate an autoreponder to send out e-mails to your customers in the future. Others allow to have multiple products, multiple sites, and only one Clickbank account.

So what am I trying to say? Just that with the money you would think Clickbank is making, it seems that they could create a more elaborate, user-friendly site. Despite this, you can’t beat Clickbank for high commissions and consolidated payments. In fact, some of the holes in the Clickbank system has allowed some innovative software developers to step in and provide very useful tools. Those who use Clickbank to sell their products should take notice and guarantee an effective affiliate sales force by at least checking these solutions out. In turn, they will be rewarded with more sales and affiliates who trust them.

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Visit http://www.clickbankebook.com
for more details on the resources
presented in this article
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About the Author

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Stephan Miller is an ebay seller, freelance programmer,
writer, and webmaster at
http://www.profit-ware.com
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It is amazing how many people have no idea the level of workload that it takes to succeed at internet marketing. They really don’t know what they got themselves into. You first of all must know what you want, before you will be able to find a way to obtain it. If you don’t think that you have the drive and willingness to succeed, you might want to save yourself some trouble and not get into Internet marketing.

Do you have the dedication and determination that it takes to succeed in Internet marketing?

The great Winston Churchill once said, “If you find yourself walking through hell, just keep going”.

In business and in life, the people that break through the struggles win and those who quit and don’t keep persevering fail. Staying power in Internet marketing is about putting the pedal to the medal and not letting up despite the obstacles.

You will run into all sorts of obstacles and things that will discourage you from continuing on with your business. It is so easy to get discouraged. For example, you get started in an opportunity that promises that you will make tons of money, but you can’t seem to make a dollar. Another example is, you purchase advertising and you don’t generate one sale. This can be extremely frustrating. You begin to think that you are the only one on the entire Internet that isn’t making money.

Remember, the websites don’t usually give you reality. They are trying to get you to purchase a product or service and they will give you every testimony of people’s success, but they don’t usually reveal all the failures.

You have to persevere if you want to succeed.

Another thing that people fail to consider is that because it is their own business and not someone else’s they must work much harder to keep it going. A lot of business opportunity programs on the net claim that you can work several hours a week and strike it rich. This is simply a way to get you to part from your cash. The reality is that there is a serious time commitment in order to succeed in internet marketing.

Success can’t be bought. You have to work at it. You may discover that one of your ideas is a failure. If you quit at this point you lose. If you pick up and learn from your mistakes you win. Keep plugging away. Learn from people that have been in the trenches for a while. This is a rapidly moving industry that waits for no one. God bless you.

Jeff Flow is a prolific internet marketing writer. Jeff recommends “Google Money Pro” Learn how to make $120,000 per month without even owning a website or a product. Google Money Pro

I am both a consumer and a marketer. I buy frequently online because I hate to shop. Before the advent of the Internet, I bought everything I own through printed catalogs and customer service telephone lines. Ordering online is easier and faster, assuming good site navigation and minimal credit card snags.

I market two books, an e-zine, various free reports, and some affiliate products. Over the past 12 to 18 months, since my first website launched and I dipped a toe into the murky waters of e-commerce, I have encountered the experience of a lifetime.

I have been suckered, lied to, and exploited. I have also met some wonderful, friendly people who gave me value for my money, a wealth of support, and a helping hand. I have received some heart-warming expressions of gratitude for ideas I have introduced and articles I have written. I have been moved by the plight of some readers who dwell in difficult circumstances far from the sunlit uplands where the marketing gurus reside.

I wrote this report after thinking about what I, as a typical Internet customer, really want. I hope that it strikes a chord with you also and that much of what I demand overlaps with your own needs.

I attempted to boil down everything into one or two axioms of online customer service, some rules and structure that would bridge the gap between passive and active, giving and receiving, and buying and selling. This is what I found:

1. Honesty.

Nothing negative can connect to an honest message. We may or may not be interested but we will always deal respectfully with honest and forthright material. We have nothing but admiration for those willing to express an important opinion, no matter who may take offense. Conversely, we are sickened by lies, twisted information, and misleading communications. When a plea for disaster donations involves the purchase of something to make a few extra bucks for a sales guru, we recoil in revulsion. When we are promised the universe and delivered an asteroid, we shrink in spirit and goodwill and all of us are diminished.

Life is too short and our time too precious to waste it on the snake oil salesmen who will eventually choke on the toxicity of their own wares.

2. Creativity and Novelty.

There are those who constantly create, ideas and products streaming from that black pearl of evolution, the human brain. There are those who destroy what they fear, what they cannot understand, what they cannot have, and what they can never appreciate. And then there is the vast majority between the two extremes, those who consume, badly or responsibly, what others have created.

We need a regular flow of creators to expand our lives and hold back the darkness. We need intelligent consumers to spread the creations of the few throughout the world. The best idea or product is meaningless if no one is aware of it. We need to identify where we fit in - perhaps as a creator in one field, occasionally a destroyer in another, and a consumer most of the time.

Problems arise when we get mixed up in our real role. If I don’t create something, then it is not mine. I may market it, sell it, publicize it, but I can’t legitimately take credit for its appearance. That is the basis for copyright laws and legal patents. From music to written material to software and products, the Net has struggled with the concept of ownership and its frequent infringement. The online world is so vast and virtually limitless that we are in desperate need for every genuine creator we can find. We need to nurture their genius rather than co-opting and diluting it through misleading intrusion into the works of others.

3. Respect.

If we truly respect each other, the proverbial con job has no place to rear its ugly little head. There is room for everyone because we all whistle a different tune and choose different road to reach disparate destinations.

Within a framework of mutual respect, we no longer encounter winners and losers. We overcome obstacles, solve problems, and forge new answers by working with each other rather than at cross purposes.

Life is a tremendous game. When we play it in such a manner that all can win, we have beaten the game at last.

Dr. Bola, a clinical psychologist, sometime marketer, and
consistent consumer is offering complimentary copies of her
book “Seven Super Simple Tips: I Am Your Customer” from which
this article is taken. Feel free to download at:
http://www.dietwithanattitude.com/SuperSimpleTipsCustomer.html