I’ve had a Facebook profile for s a while, I’ve talked about it before, was just to say I had one really. to be in the the in-crowd? Who knows.

I will admit I don’t send a ton of time surfing the site, but it saddens me to see what’s going on. From what I see so much of it seems to be all all-out advertising spam fest. So many of the walls I see on people profiles is one ad after another, they don’t even try to hide it.

I even deleted a “friend” today (think he added me originally) because I saw he was spamming walls with ads. Many would say I am doing it wrong, but I do not want a list of friends just to say have all these friends. I am not going to help contribute to the decline of a social network by being “friends” with some one who does.

It doesn’t help when others are letting it happen. Do few realize there is a delete link on each wall entry?

Does no one see a similarity coming here? Maybe a place called MySpace?

Then again, maybe I’m jumping the gun. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a, I told You So, moment in the near future. Not that I want it to, but it seems as though it’s already in the works.

  convert this post to pdf

Some folks just don’t seem to get it.

I see it everyday. Just the other day, some one wanted to know what niche was the best for blogs. Another wanted the best ways to get traffic. Both are valid questions, no doubt.

Sadly, as soon as I talked about creating high quality content first and foremost, know what the response was? Not a peep, not a word.

Why is it so few people understand that content should always come first. Sure you might get away with junk in the short term, but sooner or later it’s going to cost you. How? No love from the Search Engines, trust me on this one, I know from experience. The painful experience of watching my traffic and sales go down the drain.

More…

My content was not terrible, nor was it junk and I sure did not use some site scrapper to “steal” content to build my empire. Yes I do consider it stealing when the sole purpose is to only use it to make money or gain traffic. You know what I’m talking about. No matter, those sites don’t last for long.

I see so many people struggle getting traffic to their web properties and providing little, real content. Look at most high traffic web sites and you’ll notice one important fact, they provide valuable or interesting content. Something folks want to read, laugh about, learn or raise their voice. If marketers spent as much time on content as they do about traffic, things could be so different.

If the shoe fits..:)

  convert this post to pdf

How to Close More Online Sales Through the Magic of Questions
by Brian Tracy - 24 Techniques for Closing the Sale

No one can deny that sales closing techniques are absolutely
vital in face-to-face selling. But often, people ask me if they
can apply my powerful closing techniques to online marketing. My
answer is an unequivocal, “Yes!”

Of course, there are some closing techniques that are more
applicable to the Web than others — but I’ll show you magical
closing secrets that can dramatically increase your web sales,
and rapidly increase your online income. This works best on
direct response websites - i.e., those that focus on getting an
immediate response in the form of an order or lead.

Before we get started, I must emphasize that much of the sale is
made in the presentation. The close is largely determined by how
well you’ve presented the product to the prospect. Your
objective, then, is to take the prospect smoothly past the point
of closing, making it easy for him or her to come to a buying
decision. You can accomplish this with the strategic use of
questions.

The All-Important Opening Question

When you’re selling online, you don’t have the benefit of
interacting with your prospect the way you would in face-to-face
selling. Therefore, the first thing you say in your web copy has
to be something that breaks preoccupation, grabs attention, and
points to the result or benefit of the your product.

At any given moment, your prospect’s mind is preoccupied with
dozens of things. Therefore, a well-crafted question will cause
the prospect’s thinking to be directed to what you have to say.

Your opening question must be aimed at something that is
relevant and important, and at something that your prospect
needs or wants. What do sales managers, for instance, sit around
and think about all day long? Increasing sales! Therefore, if
your target market consists of sales managers, here’s an example
of a question you can use as a headline or as the first part of
your copy: “How would you like to see a method that would enable
you to increase your sales by 20% to 30% over the next 12
months?”

When you ask such a question, the first thing that pops into the
mind of the prospect should be, “What is it?” - whereupon you’ve
captured his or her attention, and you can then begin to
articulate how your product or service can solve the need posed
by the question.

Plan your opening question carefully. If your opening question
fails to break your prospect’s preoccupation and grab his
attention, he will click away before giving you the opportunity
to present your product or service.

Questions That Keep Them Involved

Questions are equally vital during the presentation, i.e., in
the body of your web copy, for clearly explaining how your
product or service solves your prospect’s problem in an easy,
fast, or cost-effective way. Therefore, install questions
within your sales copy that capture attention. Keep your
prospect involved, and keep his mind from wandering off in a
different direction by using intriguing questions that grab his
lapels and jerk him toward you. For the length of time that it
takes a prospect to answer a question in his mind, you have his
total attention. The prospect is drawn more and more into the
sales process as your questioning proceeds. If your questions
are logical, orderly and sequential, you can lead the prospect
forward toward the inevitable conclusion to purchase your
product or service.

Tip: Never say something if you can ask it instead! Think of how
you can phrase your key selling points as questions. The person
who asks questions has control!

Closing Questions that Presume the Sale

Just as questions are important at the beginning and the body of
your web copy, they are even more vital at the end in gaining a
commitment to action.

The key to asking a closing question is confident expectation.
You must skillfully craft your question to convey that you
confidently expect the prospect to say, “Yes” or to agree to the
sale.

For example, you can pose the following question in your web
copy: “When would you like to start using HERE> to multiply your profits?” In other words, you don’t ask
if they want to buy your product, but when. This way, you’re
asking for the sale expectantly, and the more confidently you
expect to sell, the more likely it is that you will sell.

Tip: In crafting your closing question, include the benefit that
your prospect will get from your product.

When you ask a compelling closing question, you diffuse the
tension that normally creeps up on your prospect at the “moment
of truth.” A prospect’s tension leads to the hesitance that
kills so many sales - both online and offline.

To be truly persuasive in the selling process, learn to use
questions judiciously throughout your web copy. Instead of
trying to overwhelm your prospects with reasons and rationales
for doing what you want them to do, ask strategic questions
instead. When you take the time to plan the wording of your
questions, your prospect will become more interested in your
product — and consequently, you will make more sales.

Brian Tracy is a million-dollar master of peak sales performance
and personal success strategies. As the world-renowned creator
of 300 video and audio learning programs, and the best-selling
author of 16 books, his ideas and approaches are used by most of
the big money makers and the superstars of selling. In his
RealVideo course, “24 Techniques for Closing the Sale,” Brian
shows you powerful tactics that can double or triple your sales
closing rate — and teach you how to sell 50% to 100% of all
prospects that you come in contact with — all in just 63
minutes.

  convert this post to pdf

What do People Want Online? It’s not what you think it is.
by Jay Conrad Levinson - Marketing on Steroids

What people want online is a question guerrillas ask themselves
a lot. Whether it’s for fun or work or something else,
understanding a consumer’s motives once he or she logs on is a
necessity. But the experts don’t seem to agree on what people
want.

Some folks see the web as a vast, new field for advertising
messages, assuming that while people may want to do something
else, if we can entice them with flash, we can sort of trick them
into paying attention to our products and services.

Guess what. That’s not gonna happen.

Other folks seem to subscribe to the notion that people online
are looking for entertainment on the Internet, and therefore they
construct messages aimed at persuading while playing. And,
in other cases, the time-honored direct-response model wins out:
Grab people when you can, get ‘em to take an action, and then
market, market, market. The answer may be that the consumer has
and wants a lot more control than we give him/her credit for.

Today, webmeisters are in control. Sort of. In a perfect
cyberworld, people will be in control. Sort of.

Two recent studies shed light upon this dilemma. One was
conducted by Zatso. The other was conducted by the Pew Research
Center. Zatso and Pew. (Those guys didn’t spend much time
reading “how-to-name-your-company” books, I guess.) Still, both
of their studies illuminated the answer as to what people want
to do online.

The answer, as most answers, is very utilitarian: People want to
accomplish something online. They’re not aimless surfers hoping
to discover a cybertreasure. Instead, the average Net user turns
out to be a goal-oriented person interested in finding
information and communicating with others — in doing something
he or she set out to do.

Look at the Zatso study. “A View of the 21st Century News
Consumer” looked at people’s news reading habits on the web. It
revealed that reading and getting news was the most popular
online activity after email. The guerrilla thinks, “That means
email is number one. How might I capitalize on that?”

One out of three respondents reported that they read news online
every day, with their interests expanding geographically –
local news was of the most interest, U.S. news the least.

Personalization was seen as a benefit, too. Seventy-five percent
of respondents said that they wanted news on demand and nearly
two out of three wanted personalized news. The subjects surveyed
liked the idea that they, not some media outlet, controlled the
news they saw. They feel they’re better equipped to select what
they want to see than a professional editor. Again, control
seems to be the issue. Again, guerrillas think of ways to market
by putting the prospect in control.

The Pew Research Center study revealed that regular net users
were more connected with their friends and family than those who
didn’t use the Internet on a regular basis.

Almost two-thirds of the 3,500 respondents said they felt that
email brought them closer to family and friends — significant
when combined with the fact that 91% of them used email on a
regular basis. That’s 91%. It took VCRs 25 years to achieve such
market penetration.

What did people in this study seem to be doing online when they
weren’t doing email? Half were going online regularly to
purchase products and services, and nearly 75 percent were going
online to search for information about their hobbies or
purchases they were planning to make. Sixty-four percent of
respondents visited travel sites, and 62 percent visited
weather-related sites. Over half did educational research, and
54 percent were hunting for data about health and medicine.

A surprising 47 percent regularly visited government web sites,
and 38 percent researched job opportunities. Instant messaging
was used by 45 percent of these users, and a third of them
played games online. Even with all the hype in the media, only
12 percent said they traded stocks online.

What does this mean to e-marketers? It means that if you’re
constructing a site for goal-oriented consumers, you’d better
make sure you can help facilitate their seeking. Rather than
focus on entertainment, flash, and useless splash screens, the
most effective sites are those that help people get the
information they want when they need it. Straightforward data,
information that invites comparison, and straight talk are going
to win the day.

A client buddy of mine showed me his website which heralds his
retail location and attempts to sell nothing online. He said it
has been the biggest moneymaker in the history of his
35-year-old company. Then he apologized for its lack of glitter
and special effects. He asked how his site could be so
successful even though it lacked anything to add razzmatazz and
dipsydazzle.

Now, you know the answer.

======================

Jay Conrad Levinson is probably the most respected marketer in
the world. He is the inventor of “Guerrilla Marketing” and is
responsible for some of the most outrageous marketing campaigns
in history — including the “Marlboro Man” — the most
successful ad campaign in history. In his latest book, “Put
Your Internet Marketing on Steroids” Jay reveals how you can
use marketing steroids legally to make your business insanely
profitable with Marketing on Steroids.

  convert this post to pdf

I have to confess, I’ve been signing up for some give away events and getting so free reports, probably spending more time on it than I should. Although it is a learning experience, getting idea’s and seeing what others are doing. How they are marketing or drawing in the customers.

After reading a need e-mail this past week, I got to thinking today… I do that sometimes..:)

I tried to think of a time when any marketer has asked me for feedback, and frankly I couldn’t think of too many times. There was one guy who said he’d get back to me in a few days to get feedback on a product i had purchased from him. Never heard a word.

I also thought about the many times I have unsubscribed from a mailing list, ya there are a few that are not worth getting mail from. I thought hard about how many of these marketers asked me why I was unsubscribing. A rough guess was maybe 10%. I don’t know about you, but that’s kinda sad. I know many people use Aweber as a auto responder and I also know they have a feature that you can ask for feedback when some one unsubscribed from your list. Now maybe I’m not getting it, but why doesn’t everyone use that feature?

How do you know what your doing wrong, if you don’t ask? Maybe some people just don’t want to know or admit, their “stuff” might not be up to par?

On the other hand, how do you know when your doing good, if you don’t ask?

Who would be best to give you feedback on your product or service?

You should know by now, your likely not the best judge of your marketing. Feedback could be the difference between a comfortable income and a Guru income.

  convert this post to pdf

Although, I’ve know this one for some time, a guy that goes by the name of the Conversion Doctor brought it all back.

He’s done some amazing testing. Testing many of the littile “tweaks”, most folks don’t even stop to think about. Small things that can make a big difference.

His latest test talks about the color and style of links, hyperlinks. His results show with statisical data, the best pulling or most clicked links are blue and underlined, the same type of link you see above for his blog post.

For a while I was trying to make my sites look more “in”, I was digging into CSS and changing my links to look cool and artistic. I changed the color and took out the underline, I was on my way. To be honest, I set it up so long ago, I really was’nt paying attention, but my sites looked so good. Good does’nt pay the bills.

It took Google dumping me once again, not completely, but still losing a good chunk of traffic, to get me looking at improving my numbers. I run a few directories which of course list sites other than my own. I did get smart and place my links at the top of each category, but then it hit me. I did’nt need my links to look cool, I needed them to pop, stand out above the rest. It did’nt take me long to figure out what I was doing to my own click though rates. It was amazing the difference when I changed my style sheet, the links stood out bold and beautiful. I don’t have the stats as proof, but I can tell you I made just as many sales with the lower traffic volume. Even better when my sites start climbing back up the serps. A few thousand too many links to track.

If you stop to think about it, it only makes sense. When surfers see a blue underlined link, they know it’s a hyperlink, they have been conditioned.

Still don’t believe me? Visit the Conversion Doctor, he’s got the proof and the numbers.

  convert this post to pdf