Internet Sales Made Easy – IM Tutorials

"Find Profitable Niches with Niche Navigator"

Internet marketing is a fickle business but you will invariably make things harder for yourself if you don’t adopt ethical internet marketing techniques. In order to sell a product well, it is very important to use powerful selling words to really convey each and every benefit that your product has, so as to convince the customer that your product is the answer they are searching for. It is not uncommon to see words like “unbelievable” and “phenomenal”, or something along those lines when creating a really good salesletter.

However, there are some marketers who intentionally use hyped-up descriptions to sell their products. These marketers mislead customers into thinking that their product offers benefits that do not actually exist in reality. At this point, it would be appropriate to quote a story that really happened:-

One evening, an internet marketer in a friends’ MSN Messenger list messaged him and asked if he would check out his newest salesletter for his product, an ebook on earning revenue with contextual advertisement. He logged on to this chaps website and was drawn right into his sales copy! The reason was the salesletter dived right into addressing his desires and promised that “everything he have ever wanted” can be obtained just by purchasing the said ebook and following the information that was contained inside. The salesletter also made it seem that the author owns fleets of Mercedez Benz cars, luxurious mansions and private yachts.

The problem was he knew this particular marketer personally. He was actually a 17 year old high school graduate at that time and was looking for a few quick bucks by selling a little ebook he compiled with information collected from various sources on the Internet. My friends’ built-in emergency alarm immediately kicked in and he started to imagine how many naive newbies can be fooled with this deceptive sales copy.

The sad but very real fact is that there are many scammers and con-artists online, waiting to rip off your hard-earned money. Hence, remember that the usual advice for consumers will always apply online:- use your common sense. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true.

Remember, when you intend to purchase something from the Internet, do a basic check-up on the merchant website. First and foremost, if you have even the slightest question on any of the features or benefits of the product that the sales copy mentions, email the merchant about it and observe the attitude with which he/she replies. Customer support reveals a lot about the integrity of a business.

Finally, I have given out this piece of advice many times but here it is again, if you can’t even find a support email address on their website, or if you send an inquiry and get no response, click the “Back” button and run away from the site as fast as you can!

I recently bought a product that was recommended to me by a marketer that I trusted, only to find that the product didn’t work and the support emails I sent were ignored. I was left out in the cold with a faulty product and no support from the seller.

The ironic part is that I ignored my own advice and did not check that the vendor would actually respond to my support requests before purchasing the product. I took the word of an associate and got ripped off. Now they can both whistle, as I have no time for either the vendor or the associate who recommended him.

A final word:- Paypal will not help you in this situation. Because the product was actually delivered as requested, Paypal does not care that it doesn’t work. Their only grounds for complaint and subsequent refund are if the product was not delivered, not as described or the wrong product was sent. The full story on this issue is HERE.

"Find Profitable Niches with Niche Navigator"

Preselling is the work you must start doing before you release and sell your product; that’s why it’s called pre-selling. It’s the work you do to convince your to-be-customers that your product has great benefit and only a fool will pass your offer without purchasing — all this without actually “selling” the mentioned product.

Preselling can be seen as selling yourself to the customer before you sell your product. When you sell yourself to the customer, you are making your customers think “okay, this guy is not one of those greedy marketers. He’s actually here to help me out.” so that they will let their guard down and listen to your sales pitch.

Preselling is also the art of building up anticipation. If a friend told you his chronic headache has been solved overnight by “some new medicine” but did not mention what it really was, would that leave you wondering what the medicine really is? More so if you’re having a chronic headache yourself! That’s why by mentioning a benefit which would get your prospects’ ears perked up again and again but not really revealing what the solution is, you will get your prospects dying to hear what you have to say next as you reveal slightly more about the solution each time. When you finally uncover the whole thing, your prospects will be crawling all over your website looking for the buy button!

However, preselling is not just about unveiling your product bit by bit. In fact, that was only one of the various ways one can presell. For example, you might run a weekly newsletter on acne problems and coincidentally you have just written this great ebook called “10 Ways to Solve Acne Woes Once and For All”. In your newsletter, you can presell by including a snippet or two from your ebook and mentioning it as a viable solution to acne problems. If people get good advice from your newsletter, they will perceive you as an expert on acne problems and naturally will be curious to find out the ways you can teach them to solve their problems.

At the end of the day, it all boils down to giving value to people before you ask people to buy something from you. If you can help people to solve their problems, they will, more often than not, be very willing to buy products from you.

"Find Profitable Niches with Niche Navigator"

Despite what the ad copy on most MLM sales pages tells you, Internet marketing is NOT easy. While everyone has their own learning curve, it generally takes a tremendous amount of solid planning and hard work to realize a profit with Internet marketing.

A big problem in this business is a lack of honesty. I’m not talking about scam artists or crooks here. I’m talking about the inability of individuals to be honest with themselves and realistic about what they want to achieve.

You may be an affiliate marketer who wants to build big in opportunity systems that are owned by other people. Or, perhaps you are someone who wants to sell your own products and services.

There is good money to be made with either path. Personally, I believe the intelligent use of both affiliate programs and products that you own is the best approach to making money in the net marketing niche.

But before you continue with this train of thought, I’d like you to take just a couple of minutes to consider why you are here in the first place. And don’t say “to make money”.

There are lots of ways to make money. But for some reason, you have chosen this field over countless other options. Look deep down and find the real reason you are here.

It’s funny how so many people get stumped by this very simple exercise. Don’t make a mountain out of an ant hill; just be honest with yourself about what brought you here.

I’ll give you my reasons, just so you can see how the thought process works for this.

I’m here because I don’t have what it takes to be an underpaid employee for the next 40 years of my life. I lack the fortitude required to work my butt off for less than what I’m worth, and then retire to a sub-quality lifestyle.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m slightly smarter than the average milk cow, and I’m not afraid of hard work. I just can’t get into the right frame of mind for doing all the work and letting someone else take most of the money.

For many years I felt guilty about my disposition, and struggled to bring my attitude in line with the blue collar status quo. Maybe I just had a chip on my shoulder, and needed to get in touch with a greater sense of responsibility.

Then one day, while working as a delivery driver for a local produce vendor, I had an epiphany. My partner and I were in the process of unloading, by hand, a $3,200 order consisting of numerous 25 pound boxes. It occurred to me about midway through the 2,000 pounds of fruit I was humping down the delivery ramp that my boss was at home smoking cigarettes and watching cable television.

I had been with this company for a while, and I had a good idea of the profit margins involved with this type of order. In the three hours it took me to fill the order, drive to the location, and unload the goods, I made less than $30. My employer, on the other hand, put just over $1,400 of profit into the coffers.

To be clear, I’m not saying there is anything morally astray about this. In fact, my former employer is a wonderful human being and a successful business owner.

I’m just not the kind of guy who can shake this stream of logic once it starts bouncing around inside my skull. The fact is profits are much better than wages no matter how you try to rationalize the equation.

When I shared these thoughts with my route partner, he shrugged and told me it was “just a job” and that I was “thinking too much”. This came as no surprise, and in fact was the same response my grumblings had been getting from fellow employees for years.

I’m not cut out for the nine-to-five grind, because I feel strongly about working for my prosperity and not toiling away to build someone else’s salary. I also don’t care for the idea of planning my day entirely around an agenda that fails to serve my best interests. My time is just that… MINE.

Plus I enjoy the idea of helping others for the benefit of both parties. Add to this the fact that I love the challenge of trying to attract people to my offers, when there are thousands of other propositions to choose from, and network marketing on the world-wide-web becomes a perfect fit for me.

So there it is in a nutshell. That’s why I’m here.

Ok it’s your turn. This may seem trivial to you, but I promise the exercise I’m suggesting is one of the most important things you can do for yourself.

"Find Profitable Niches with Niche Navigator"

There is no exact formula for internet marketing success, but there are some general guidelines that virtually all successful people follow.

1: Doing something every day

Let’s start off our list with the one thing that will positively make or break an internet marketer – keeping your butt in the chair! It is so easy to keep working hard day after day when the results are flowing, but often in this industry, they take time to show up. It is not hard to get discouraged and take weeks off, but that will destroy your business and any chances you had for success.

You do not need to kill yourself every day, but just do a little bit. Lay one brick of your wall and in a few years you will have your own mini Great Wall of China.

2: Setting the right goals

As the old adage goes: failing to plan is planning to fail. You must, must, must set the right goals. What constitutes a “right” goal? Anything that:

1. is reasonable for you to achieve in the near future
2. is focused in the right direction, something that will lead to even greater things
3. is something you desire and is worth your effort to achieve. Follow those steps and set your goals

3: Doing in-depth research

There is a time and place for gut feelings, but this business is very logical. Of course you need to do what your are interested in doing, and you need to have fun. But it is also important to do research on any new idea or technique that you have in mind.

9 times out of 10 you will fail if you just “see what happens.” Chances are, someone else has already done it and written about the results. You will save yourself a great deal of effort (and heartache) if you simply research any new thing you plan on doing, whether this is a new site idea, a new niche, a marketing technique, etc. Research before acting.

4: Networking with others

There are thousands of VERY skilled internet marketers that have much more experience than the both of us combined, and make far more money than us, too.

Why not find these people and ride their coattails? Go to forums or blogs and start interacting with others. At worst you find like-minded people that will encourage you, at best you will find an awesome mentor that can show you exactly what you need to learn.

5: Outsourcing

If you have been in this business for any length of time, you know that it is impossible to do everything yourself. The world is now far too specialized and there is simply not enough time to learn and keep up with it all yourself.

Find a pro. In fact, always have a team of pros just one email or IM away. A web designer, xhtml coder, php developer, content writer, and whatever else you might need. Build a good team and keep them happy, because they will keep you happy (and sane).

6: Building upon success

Many times in this business we get bored with success. Then, what happens is you start looking for new avenues to conquer. Don’t do this. Instead, if you have one success repeat that again and again. Use your momentum to propel you even farther.

Take one victory and turn it into 10 victories. Maybe you built one successful content site, now do the same thing 10 more times. Or if you have a successful local site, expand nationally. This is how you build an empire that is incredibly valuable.

7: Keeping Focus!

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, keep your focus!

There seems to be a virus that infects internet marketers. As soon as we get knee-deep into one awesome idea, something shiny in the distance catches our attention. We are then tempted to give up all our progress and start chasing this new object. Or worse, we think we can do both at once, but that just ends up in failure on all levels.

When you make a decision to start something new, refuse any other ideas, no matter how awesome they seem. Create a folder with good ideas for later, but for now you are committed.

Following the above tips will not guarantee you everlasting success online, but breaking them will most certainly lead to failure. Begin to implement these ideas and you will be preparing the way for internet marketing success!

"Find Profitable Niches with Niche Navigator"

How to Conduct Research and Uncover Profitable Online Niches.

Unless you already have a great idea on the table, chances are you will need to spend some time looking into what types of products and services you can successfully market. In order to accomplish this, you will need to conduct some investigation into what is already being offered in the way of Internet marketing campaigns, and where you might be able to slip in and fill a niche somewhere in that great big business picture. This investigation is commonly referred to as Market Research.

Here are some tips on where to research niche markets that might be desirable to you, as well as how to find places to launch your marketing efforts.

If you are starting fresh and looking for your first idea for an effective marketing campaign, the best place to begin is with yourself.

What do you like? What types of products are important in maintaining your standard of living? What types of services or goods would make life a lot easier for you, if you had access to them? How much are you willing to pay for these goods or services?

Spending some time searching your own wants and needs may yield some interesting concepts for niches that you can investigate online, and see just how much attention is given to those sorts of products.

Another method is to simply sit down with a piece of paper and make a list of ten subjects that some to mind without going into any really deep thought processes. The list will probably be somewhat random, although thinking of one subject may immediately draw your mind to a related subject.

Don’t fight the flow or spend any time second-guessing the subjects that come to mind. Write them down and don’t waste time thinking they are silly or inappropriate. There will be plenty of time to evaluate the subjects later on.

As a third source of inspiration, go out with friends, but take along a small note-book. As different subjects come up in conversation and catch your ear, make a quick note. One or two word phrases should do the trick nicely. The idea here is to get some ideas for markets to explore, based on what types of issues come to mind among people you know.

While none of these methods are particularly scientific, they can yield some interesting topics to research. Don’t reject any of the ideas out of hand, until you spend some time online and see where the subjects lead you.

Concepts that may seem completely off the wall or worth absolutely nothing may turn out to be gold mines. If research indicates that the subject is a dead end, then at least you have eliminated one possibility and saved yourself the trouble of pursuing that option at a future date. On the other hand, you may be surprised with what you find.

Using these lists of words or subjects that you have compiled, head for the Internet and start doing some digging around. The first thing you want to ascertain is how much interest there is associated with that particular word or phrase. One of the easiest ways to get a handle on this sort of thing is to use word tracking search engines online. There are several well-known ones that are very easy to use.

All you basically do is type in your word or phrase and let the program search the entire web for results. What will happen is that the system will return a list that contains not only incidences of the word or phrase that you entered, but also expanded phrases that include that same word or phrase. You also get an idea of how many sites around the Internet contain text with that word.

This can be a great way to qualify the subjects and see if there is a large amount of interest in a given subject and related topics or information. A lot of hits means that you may want to look further into that subject as a possible foundation for a marketing campaign that is related to that word or phrase.

For example, if one of the subjects that came up on your lists happened to be “dog,” and you find that the word returns close to a million hits on its own, then you may have found a broad subject to explore. Looking down the list, you may find that “dog house” and “dog training” returned a sizable number of hits, as did “dog treats.” With just a little digging, you have uncovered three potential services or products to target.

Moving one step further, you can explore each of these marketing subjects a little deeper by clicking on the word or phrase and canvasing the actual returns. Here, you may begin to see a pattern among the hits that bubble to the surface of the search engines.

This can help you to further refine your idea of what to market. For example, if you notice there are a lot of these that have to do with making a particular product at home, you may begin to think in terms of marketing home assembly kits related to that subject. Perhaps the home assembly requires the use of certain tools.

You may be able to set up a marketing campaign to sell those tools at a competitive price. Perhaps you happen to have some expertise with building those sorts of home projects. Put your knowledge to work, create some easy to follow plans, and market them to do-it-yourself types.

Keep in mind that if you see a phrase with relatively few hits, that does not automatically eliminate it from the running. For example, if you notice that the return for “dog houses online” only yielded two hundred hits, take a moment and look at the actual title tags. You may find that people are looking to buy kits for doghouses online, and that becomes the focus of your new marketing campaign.

One important thing to keep in mind is that you need to try this technique on multiple word tracking programs, since the search criteria used by each system may be a little different. For example, some programs will return an average number of hits per day, while others will focus on the average hits per month. Also, the Internet is an ever growing monster. If you are not quite sure about the potential of a marketing idea, but do not feel comfortable abandoning it completely, move it back down your list – for future reference. A year or two down the road, the results may be very different.

One thing to avoid is trying to repeat the same old tired process that is already being used by hundreds of thousands of other Internet entrepreneurs. Just as with brick and mortar businesses, competition can be fierce on the Internet. What you want is to look for a market that still has some potential to grow, so you are not constantly engaged in exchanging a limited bank of customers with a thousand other marketers.

Choosing to zero in on topics that appear to have some widespread interest on the Internet, but don’t seem to have much in the way of marketing sites that actually address those topics specifically, is a very good bet when it comes to establishing yourself in a niche market.

Of course, there are all sorts of E-books and software programs that are supposedly geared toward finding profitable niche markets. While some of them do contain a few good ideas, the fact is that free resources on the Internet can often yield the same ideas, and sometimes approaches that are just as good, if not better.

Before you spend any money on any type of products, check around various web sites for free ideas on finding niche markets, as well as visiting the free word tracking web sites. Chances are you will find plenty of information that will keep you busy for quite some time, and will likely provide you with at least a half dozen solid leads on potential niche markets to launch your marketing efforts.

Conclusion.

Keep in mind that there is no such thing as an idea that is too crazy to look into. You may find that going with something that is completely off the wall will lead to some interesting concepts of where you can fill a need and encounter a relatively small amount of competition at first.

Let your mind go wild, then use online resources to qualify those wild ideas. In a short time, you may be well on your way to launching your first successful Internet marketing campaign.