Perks of the Trade Volume 1 Issue 4 July 7, 2004 =========================================================== Contents =========================================================== Quote Of The Month--Dale Carnegie Editorial--Glenn Beach Feature Article--"Making Your Homepage Copy Sticky"--Glenn Beach Advertisements Additional Article--"How Your Customers Surf the Web"--Glenn Beach Humor Veriuni Product Updates New Veriuni Products Guest Article--"The Secrets of The Shriekers"--Adam Senour Internet Marketing News Tips Q & A General & Unsubscribe Info =========================================================== Quote of the Month =========================================================== You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. - Dale Carnegie =========================================================== Editorial =========================================================== Summer at last! The delay of this issue has been due to waiting with bated breath for the anticipated changes from SFI on July 1st. You can read about that in the product section... Then came the computer glitches. I'll spare you the details, just know that yes, they happen to all of us. Right now I'm forced to use a mouse that is incompatible with my computer, or Internet Explorer, or something...it crashes IE every 20 minutes or so. So I turn the lemons into lemonade. I'm learning to save, save, save... This month I'm focusing on what I can't seem to get my mind off of, which is how to turn visitors into customers. We'll be looking at how the internet has changed customers and competition. We'll look at how to write good website copy (a bit of a continuation from last month's newsletter), but here's a hint: It's all about the customer, the competition, and fusion marketing. Now if wondering what I'm talking about doesn't get you out of the swimming pool and back in front of your computer ...nothing will. We can only hope. Summertime tends to be a slack time in the business world, unless you're selling pool supplies. A great time to read and learn though, so enjoy. And I AM interested in you, so if you'd like to submit your favorite article, I'd be pleased to consider publishing it here. Glenn =========================================================== Feature Article: "Making Your Homepage Copy Sticky" by Glenn Beach =========================================================== Yes indeed, that's all you've got, 30 seconds to make your website visitors decide to stick around...The internet has changed how we think about the customer, the product and the competition. I'm going to take you on a journey through these new ideas and show you what has changed and how you now can approach your marketing. You have to put yourself in the customer's shoes and talk directly to her about how she benefits from your products. She wants product information and lots of it, but in due time. No more hard sell focused on the product. And the word competition is useful only to identify the people we need to observe and emulate, but no longer are we out to destroy them, we're out to partner with them. Confused? Good! That means there's learning on the way! We're going to concentrate on your homepage, because you don't have long to capture your customer's interest. She has 3 main questions and you have thirty seconds at most to lure her to continue reading, clicking and finally clicking for the sale. First you need to do your homework. You need to know who your customer is in terms of demographics, needs, desires, and dreams. Now think about how she behaves on the internet. If she's like me, she has a huge list of things she has done and would like to do. Today she may be paying bills, looking for a new bank, planning a vacation, researching cold remedies, looking for recipes, researching books to take out of the library, reading the news and looking for a home business she can do in her spare time. All in one day. How much of her time is she willing to give you to convince her you're worth reading...worth bookmarking...that your opportunity or your product is The One for her? Not much...30 seconds... Now you need to identify your competition. Where may your imaginary customer already be buying the products you offer? Where else may she be considering a home business opportunity? Why is she looking or buying there? What does she like about that site? What do you or your product have to offer that is missing there? By now you're starting to identify your advantage, your edge, that relates to what this customer needs and wants. Staying focused on your customer, turn your edge into a sentence or sentences starting with "You", directed at how the customer will feel or be. We've already dealt with the customer's first question, "So what? What's in it for me?" Now the second and third: "Why should I trust you or take a risk on your product?" and, "What do I do next?" So, with your customer (not YOU, not the PRODUCT) in your mind's eye, you have 30 seconds to grab her interest or her curiosity enough to make her want to read more, click and get more info, or click and buy. Remember that old song that went something like this?: "If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life, Better make a pretty woman your wife. Or for my personal point of view, Get an ugly girl to marry you." Then if I remember correctly, the singer goes on to explain the circumstances that made him an expert ;) in this area. What's in it for the listener? All the right buttons were pushed: happiness forever, marriage, advice from an expert, and curiosity about the rest of the song. Maybe he could have thrown in some financial security and a home, but pretty much all the bases were covered. So hit your customer with what pretty much everyone wants: happiness, security, health, family, freedom...whatever fits. But don't just talk about happiness and security, talk about feeling happy and secure. It may seem like semantics, but it's really a huge difference. You've nailed your customer's needs and emotions, so now just write copy that flows from needs and dreams to information to the click that will sell or sign her up. If you lead her to a product information page, lead her to the final click. If it's testimonials, or all about you, lead her to the click. When she's ready to leave, ask her to complete a survey, sign up for a newsletter, sign a guestbook, and offer her a free ebook as a way of thanks for stopping by. And if this ebook was written by your competition, now you're starting to see how "drown the opponent" has been replaced by what some call "fusion marketing": in essence, partnerships for a win-win situation. His ebook gets out there, with his branded links inside; you benefit from his expertise and reputation and the ability to give your visitors a quality gift. This relationship continues with reciprocal linking, contests with prizes, testimonials, co-authoring ebooks or co-writing a course or seminar, and any number of other collaborative possibilities, only limited by your imagination. And, as you can see, you don't have to be a novelist; we're talking about writing for 30 seconds of reading for starters, then a bit more. Welcome to the New Paradigms of Marketing, compliments of the Internet. About the Author: Glenn Beach is a poet, writer and home business entrepreneur in Nova Scotia, Canada. Free newsletter, more articles, and business start-up info at: http://www.work-at-home-business-opportunity-canada.com =========================================================== Classified Ads =========================================================== Free! Subscribe now to the "Timely Time Management Tips" newsletter. Free tips sent to you to help you get more done in less time, with less stress. Send your email now to: mailto:timemanagement-subscribe@topica.com ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------- ******************************************************* Over 1,000+ PAGES of the Hottest, Proven Profitable Internet Business Secrets Broken Down Into An EASY-TO-DUPLICATE System. Corey Rudl is the owner of four highly successful online businesses that attract more than 6 million visitors and generate over $5.2 million each year. He is also the author of the #1 best-selling Internet Marketing course online. To check out his site that's jam-packed with THE EXACT INFORMATION YOU NEED to start, build, and grow your very own, profitable Internet business, I highly recommend visiting: http://www.work-at-home-business-opportunity- canada.com/endorsements.html This guy really knows what he's talking about! ******************************************************* =========================================================== Additional Article: How Your Customers Surf the Web =========================================================== I recently wrote up a list of all the things I have ever done, or currently do, on the internet. WOW. I will spare you, it's huge. I can sit down in a comfortable chair, turn on my computer, and pretty soon I'm flitting from site to site, on a mission until something flashy catches my eye, or an article looks interesting, or a game download looks like fun, or a forum has some usable information... Pretty soon hours have gone by, and have I accomplished my original task?...maybe...but it's been fun and enlightening and danggg I forgot to bookmark that site...where was that...and off I go again, thanks to Go To and Google. So that is what you are up against when someone visits your site. First of all, how she find you? Via a reciprocal link? Search engine? Your byline at the end of an article you wrote? These are the things you have to work on to get her there in the first place. It's been reworked over and over how to write "sticky" website text, that makes your visitors "stick around". I'm going to just mention a few of the things you shouldn't do, based on my own surfing habits. Include links that take the visitor OFF your site at your own risk. In other words, you'd better have a really good reason to do so. Such as with SFI, sending them to your Veriuni Store, that's branded with your affiliate ID and leads them to either purchase from you or sign up as your sponsored affiliate. But if a link takes me off to Amazon.com for example, I'm history. Soon I'm looking at someone's list of recommended books, then I remember that I've been meaning to look for a good deal on a Dell laptop, then it's a gift for my mom, and I've totally forgotten the page that sent me here. The only possible exception that I can think of is a link on my site to a product that complements my own, maybe makes my own more functional or complete. If I'm canvassing for new affiliate prospects, I might want to offer a web design tool or an autoresponder. If I'm selling chairs, I might want to offer cushions or pillows. Just be very focused on what you want your client to do (the click to buy your product or sign up for your opportunity) and make sure every other link supports that. The GOOD place for affiliate links such as in the Amazon.com example, are in a pop-under window. The visitor has already done all she's going to do, left your site, voila the window with one last try at selling something is uncovered. Send her off to a relevant site after a relevant product, you still might make a sale. What else not to do? Don't pressure your visitors. Don't hard sell them. That's one of the reasons why surfers don't click on Google Ads or website banners as much as good linking text. The text appears directly in context with what they have chose to read because it is interesting. The ads and banners are associated with selling, which has associations with coercion. If anything, today's surfer expects courtesy, variety, information, more value for less money, and the freedom to make her own choices in her own time. It's your job to make her like, trust and value her relationship with you and to give her what she expects and MORE. About the Author: Glenn Beach is a poet, writer and home business entrepreneur in Nova Scotia, Canada. Free newsletter, more articles, and business start-up info at: http://www.work-at-home-business-opportunity-canada.com =========================================================== Humor =========================================================== As you are aware, ships have long been characterized as being female, (e.g. "steady as she goes" or "she's listing to starboard" or "she is a beautiful vessel". Recently, a group of computer scientists (all males) got together and announced that computers should also be referred to as females. Their reasons for this are as follows: 1. No one but the Creator understands their internal logic. 2. The native language that they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else. 3. The message "Bad command, or file name" is about as informative as "if you don't know why I am mad at you, then I am certainly not going to tell you". 4. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval. 5. As soon as you make a committment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it. However. another group of computer scientists (all female) think that computers should be referred to as if they were males. Their reasons follow: 1. They have lots of data, but they are clueless. 2. They are supposed to help you solve the problems, but half the time they are the problem. 3. As soon as you commit to one you realize that, if you had waited a little longer, you could have obtained a better model. 4. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on. 5. One power surge knocks them out for the whole night! =========================================================== Veriuni Product Updates =========================================================== All the new products and such are for affiliates this month. The Smart Start Training course has been revamped, and the Next Steps Training takes up where Smart Start leaves off. Way to go SFI! It's free so technically it's not a product, but thought I'd mention it here. The free training is definitely one good reason to give SFI a try! =========================================================== New Veriuni Products =========================================================== SFI has added some powerful marketing tools to its brand new Wholesale Program. Affiliates can buy wholesale from the Affiliate Store and then use the Wholesale Guide Overview and Power Retailer Tutorial to learn how to make the program work for them. Building a solid profitable business just keeps getting easier. =========================================================== Guest Article: The Secrets of The Shriekers by: Adam Senour =========================================================== I am constantly bombarded with all sorts of advertisements, single-page sites, and sites offering very little real content but some wonderful new "product" or "service" for sale that purports to make its customers wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. For the purposes of this article, let's refer to Amazing Formula ( http://www.amazingformula.com) as an example of such a site. (Note: I have never purchased this product and can make no claim, verification or guarantee one way or the other as to its effectiveness. The sole purpose of my mentioning this site is as a study of the ad copy within.) There isn't very much in terms of "content"; the marketing of the "bribes" is confined to a single page, with a hyperlink to "testimonials" which may or may not be legitimate. Yet, this site has been around in some form for nearly four years, according to The Internet Wayback Machine (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.amazingformula.com) , with the same basic "content" and no significant updates. Why? Because it works. What makes this website and others like it profitable, even without a significant content update in 4 years? The sales copy. The sales copy of this page uses simple, but effective techniques to trigger the user into buying the product, in this case a CD-ROM indicating how to sell anything to anyone at any time. Let's look at some of these techniques now. That's right, I, Adam Senour, am going to give away millions of dollars' worth of secrets to you and I'm going to do it WITHOUT CHARGING YOU A SINGLE RED CENT!!! No e-books to download, No expensive CD-ROMs to purchase, No courses to subscribe to, NOTHING! You too will be a website copy writing genius, able to sell your goods and services at will! 1. Short paragraphs. Users traditionally don't wish to read long blocks of text. They like information concise, simple, and to the point. 2. "You" words/second-person perspective. This is arguably the most misunderstood and underrated aspect of copy writing. When reading sales copy, users are looking not for general information on the product. They want the answer to one simple question: "What's in it for me?" Using words such as "you", "your", and "yourself", while being generic in nature, go a long way toward establishing a website rapport with your customers. 3. Bold, Underline, Italics. Highlighting important phrases with bold, underline, and italics allows your customer to quickly scan and decipher the nature of your copy and the key elements of it. Bold, underline, and italics can be used in conjunction with colour to further distinguish vital elements of your marketing message. However, it is strongly advised that you use bold, underline, and italics sparingly in order to ensure that only your most important points are receiving the full attention of your customers. Use bold, italics, and underline sparingly. 4. The colour coding of important words, and the selection of those colours. "Cool" colours such as Blues and greens are traditionally used to relax the user and put him/her in a positive mood conducive to sales; and "hot" colours such as reds, yellows and oranges are meant to incite the user into making a purchasing decision. 5. Headings and subheadings. Headings and subheadings should be used to break up long blocks of text into shorter and easier-to-read sections. In the case of the Amazing Formula website, graphic headings are used to break up the content; however, for search engine reasons, you may wish to consider text-based headings to split up your content into sections. 6. Bullet lists. These lists can be numbered, as this one is, or they can be unordered, as the Amazing Formula ones are. There doesn’t seem to be much difference in either event, as long as the copy for each bullet remains concise and to the point as in point 2; although the unordered list bullets can be stylized with graphics, as the Amazing Formula website has done. 7. A call to action. What do you want your customer to do? Where would you like them to go next? Give your customer at least one clear and understandable path to follow to make the appropriate action. In the case of the Amazing Formula site, there are not one, but 2 "Click to order via our secure server!" buttons as well as an order hyperlink in the menu on the top of the page. The garden path, albeit a very short one in this case, is clearly laid out for the customer to follow. These are the seven secrets of The Shriekers. Implementing them on your website should lead to a significant increase in sales and profits. About The Author Adam Senour is the owner of ADAM Web Design, a leading web design and development company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Visit http://www.adamwebdesign.ca for more information on ADAM Web Design products and services. =========================================================== Internet Marketing News =========================================================== Brits Scared of e-Commerce 7 Jul 2004 The Register: Brits fear online shopping In explaining why they don't use the net to purchase goods, about two out of five people in the U.K. admitted to an "irrational fear" of the Internet, according to a Visa- sponsored study. A third said they simply didn't know how to buy things online. Half of those who hadn't shopped online said they had held off because they were worried about giving a website their credit card number. =========================================================== Massachusetts Files First State CAN-SPAM Suit July 07, 2004 By: Brian Morrissey Senior Editor DMNews.com The Massachusetts attorney general filed the first state lawsuit under the CAN-SPAM Act last week, accusing a Florida man of sending thousands of fraudulent e-mails marketing cut-rate mortgages. William Carson of Weston, FL, sent thousands of unsolicited commercial e-mails without a working unsubscribe option or notice that they were ads, according to the complaint filed in Suffolk (MA) Superior Court. The attorney general's office also alleges that the messages used fake sender addresses to evade spam filters. Massachusetts took action against Carson, operator of DC Enterprises, for sending the messages to state residents and purporting to operate in Newton, MA. The attorney general's office said DC Enterprises has no office at the address listed. A court hearing is set for July 21 at which the attorney general plans to request a temporary restraining order preventing Carson from sending commercial e-mail that violates state and federal laws. Under CAN-SPAM, Carson could be fined $250 per message, up to $2 million. MX Logic, a spam-filtering company, said just 1 percent of unsolicited commercial e-mail it monitored in May complied with CAN-SPAM requirements. =========================================================== Tips =========================================================== Use multiple-keyword phrases for search engine optimization. Becuase the ordinary Internet visitor thinks in terms of "phrases" rather than a single words, you should try to optimize each page for a multiple-keyword phrase rather than a single-word phrase. Use an Autoresponder It´s not a well known fact that 80% of people who search for a product or service on the net, will purchase that product or service within one year. In addition to that, 85% of those people will not purchase it from the person who first informed them about it. Ahhh, the irony of life. Now mix in that most internet users won´t act until they receive the fifth to eighth e-mail from a company, soliciting their service or product, and you can create a very intricate marketing plan for any product or service; via autoresponders. =========================================================== Q & A =========================================================== Thanks to "Web Hosting Reviews" ( http://www.actressactor.com/web-site-hosting/hosting- questions.htm) for this one: Q: What is "bandwidth" and how much do I need? A: Bandwidth is simply the amount of files transferred from your website on your hosts servers to the browser of the visitor. Let me give you a real world example. This webpage (The one you are reading right now) is approximately 25K (Kilobytes). There are 1,000 kilobytes in a megabyte or "mb". So 40 people can visit this page before 1mb of "bandwidth" is used. Now lets do the real interesting math. Lets say your host allows 2gb of bandwidth per month how many users would that be? Well 2gb = 2,000mb! We already know that we have 40 visitors per megabyte so we can simply multiply 2,000 x 40 = 80,000! Wow that is a lot of people visiting the site each month! But that is just for one page! If the average user visits 5 pages on your site and they are all approximately this size (as is the case with this site) then you would have enough bandwidth for 16,000 visitors or about 530 visitors per day. =========================================================== General & Unsubscribe Info =========================================================== Perks of the Trade © Copyright 2004 Glenn Beach, except where indicated otherwise. All rights reserved worldwide. Reprint only with permission from copyright holder(s). All trademarks are property of their respective owners. All contents provided as is. No express or implied income claims made herein. Your business success is dependent on many factors, including your own abilities. Advertisers are solely responsible for ad content. To contact us with feedback, questions or praise, email mailto:begle@work-at-home-business-opportunity-canada.com To subscribe, please email with "subscribe" in the subject mailto:begle@work-at-home-business-opportunity-canada.com To unsubscribe, please email with "unsubscribe" in the subject mailto:begle@work-at-home-business-opportunity-canada.com Please feel free to share this newsletter in its entirety including the link to our website: http://www.work-at-home-business-opportunity-canada.com Back issues available upon request. I bet you can guess the email address... =========================================================== Sincerely, Glenn Beach SFI Marketing Perks of the Trade is an opt-in ezine available by subscription only. We neither use nor endorse the use of spam. Thank you!