Mastering e commerce

Building The Perfect Sales Funnel
What is E-Commerce. Earn millions through various methods and quit your full time Job.

Contents
What Is A Sales Funnel?................................................................................................................................3
What is Internet Commerce..........................................................................................................................4
What Can I Sell..............................................................................................................................................5
ClickBank.......................................................................................................................................................6
Drop Shipping................................................................................................................................................7
Affiliate Marketing........................................................................................................................................8
The Link Between Products, Key Words and Prospects................................................................................9
The Front and Back of Sales Funnels ..........................................................................................................10
Sales Funnel Success...................................................................................................................................11
Sales Funnel Planning .................................................................................................................................12
Putting Your Theory to Practice..................................................................................................................13
Content Marketing......................................................................................................................................15
Article Marketing ........................................................................................................................................16
Google's Adwords Program ........................................................................................................................17
Marketing Offline........................................................................................................................................18
Blogs............................................................................................................................................................19
Social Media................................................................................................................................................20
Auto Responders.........................................................................................................................................21
The Joint Venture........................................................................................................................................22
Measuring Success......................................................................................................................................23
Top Sales Funnel Products..........................................................................................................................25

What Is A Sales Funnel?
We make use of the metaphor of a sales funnel (wide at the very top, narrow at the end)
to monitor the sales process.
Towards the top of this funnel you've got 'unqualified prospects' - the people who you
believe may need your service or product, but to whom you've never spoken. At the end
of this funnel, many delivery and sales steps after, you've got those who've received the
service or product and have also purchased it.
The metaphor of a funnel can be utilized because prospects drop out of different stages
of an extended sales process.
Using the sales funnel, and by calculating the amount of leads at every point of the
procedure, you are able to predict the amount of prospects who'll, over time, become
clients.
A lot more than this, by taking a look at how these amounts change with time, you are
able to spot issues in the sales pipeline and just take corrective action early.
For instance, in the event that you spot that not many mailings were actioned during a
month, you may be expecting that, in a couple of months time, sales may dry out. The
following month, you can ensure that more mailings than usual are sent.
Utilization of the Sales Funnel shows obstacles and dead time, or if they're an
insufficient quantity of leads at any point. This knowledge enables you to decide where
sales agents should focus their attention and efforts to help keep sales at the required
level and, also, to satisfy targets.
The funnel may also explain where improvements have to be implemented in the sales
procedure. These might be as straight-forward as introducing extra sales coaching or
making certain sales reps put adequate emphasis on each step of the process.
The very first stage in establishing sales funnel reporting would be to brainstorm the
sales process together with your sales and marketing people to make certain that it is
correct and comprehensive.
Out of this, find out the main sequential parts of the sales procedure and, from these,
generate status codes. Then, label your leads using these codes (this is easier when
you've got a sales contact management system). Finally, work-out the amount of
prospects of every status and calculate the change from the last month.
As you develop an image of a sales funnel from every month, you can begin to
comprehend where you are able to enhance your sales process. Obviously, a product is
required before you can start to sell anything though, and this is what we are going to
discuss in the following chapters.

What is Internet Commerce
The idea of internet commerce is about going online to complete business better and
faster. It is all about giving clients controlled use of your pc systems and allowing them
to serve themselves. It's about making your organization commit to a significant on-line
effort and integrating your website with the essence of your business. Should you do
this, you will notice results!
The web is a feasible alternative to all of the conventional ways of conducting business.
Can't meet in person? Send an e-mail with a photograph attached. When it's time for
the customer to purchase the merchandise, make use of a secured server for charge
card and, sometimes even, digital cash payments! The opportunities and situations
through which internet business can be done are limitless.
In the wonderful world of internet commerce, the area where you conduct business are
Websites. Most businesses exist already offline. Adding an internet site represents a
way to improve their business. For Online start-ups, the website may be the only place
they conduct business.
To do business, additionally, you need a method to accept orders and action payment.
In a store, clients simply discover the products and services they need, enter a queue at
the till and pay the shop clerk. In internet commerce, orders need to be placed and
items shipped. Orders are often handled through interactive, internet-based forms.
Clients in a store pay by cash, check or credit / debit cards. Online clients can't pay by
check or cash, only through electronic means. Internet commerce transactions have to
occur through secure electronic connections and special merchant portals for
processing payment.
Delivery fulfilment, in the wonderful world of internet commerce, is harder than in
conventional stores, requiring shipping and transportation much like catalogue and mail
order companies.
In both regular commerce and internet commerce, you need to locate a method to
attract clients to you. This is epitomized by your online marketing strategy.
On the internet, one simple way to do this is via Google Adwords, where you research
keywords related to your site that attract significant numbers of monthly searches.
Google will then rank your site higher in their listings when a user enters that keyword
into a search and you pay Google a certain amount for every click you receive.
You can also market your site by writing articles related to it and posting these (with a
link back to your site in your bio) on well-known article directory sites like
EzineArticles.com. These sites are free and usually rank well in the search engines.

What Can I Sell
Everyone who sets up an internet business has to address the question: What should I
sell? And just about everyone appears to incur 2 classic errors at first:
They sell what everybody else is trying to sell: electronics, designer clothing and DVD's.
What they find is a marketplace already saturated with these products and the suppliers
usually don't work in small quantities. To create any profit at all, they'd need to buy huge
quantities.
They sell what they know and love. Regrettably, unless there's a significant demand for
what they know and love, they will be stuck with lots of product they are able to
appreciate but can not move.
The following 'hotspots' could keep you connected with what individuals are buying,
what things are up-and-coming and what things are declining in popularity. If your
opinions all originate from a couple of places, you are limiting your-self so expand your
thinking. You may consider taking a look at one of these simple hotspots for inspiration:
Newspapers. You will get a concept of what's on the minds of consumers simply by
reading the life-style section, the business pages or taking a look at the adverts the big
stores are putting out.
Consumer Publications. You will find countless magazines based around specialised
products and services, specific hobbies and special interest markets. They have been a
good resource for building niche products.
Shopping Arcades / Bricks-and-mortar stores. Communicate with the salespeople,
discover what is being sold. You may also source your suppliers off the boxes. Obtain
the wholesaler's name, ring them and get the name of their local distributor in your town.
Trend-spotting sites, such as Influxinsights.com, Trendhunter.com and
Trendwatching.com.
The entertainment industry, films and television fuel product trends. Knowing what's
being released in the movie industry, you can begin sourcing related products and
services prior to the trend beginning.
Imdb.com maintains a list of movies that are going to be released in the coming year.
So, if you are aware now that particular movies are going to be released, you can begin
stocking up on related products prior to them becoming expensive, like Superman,
Batman, Star Wars and Curious George.
It's wise to own a notebook for product sourcing, be it a hand-held note book or a PDA,
to record your thoughts when they come to you. Ninety percent of the ideas you don't jot

down can get lost. When you are visiting these hot-spots for ideas, if you notice
hundreds of ideas for products to market, you will not have the ability to recall all of
those. You need to write them down in your product sourcing notebook, then return to
them and begin researching.
ClickBank
ClickBank is utilized by over 10, 000 web companies and 100, 000 affiliates to provide
their services and products immediately on the internet, with Ebooks and computer
software the primary purchases.
Anybody can join ClickBank being an affiliate - it's free. Whenever you look for a product
that you intend to promote, either at a vendor's web site or by searching through the
ClickBank Marketplace, you'll be given a particular link that you simply use to send
clients to the merchandise page.
The very first thing you must do is to register for a ClickBank account. This is to ensure
that ClickBank can send you payments. Payment is sent every 14 days.
Now you will be ready to promote ClickBank products and services and earn
commission. The market listings are displayed by popularity, to help you easily note
which would be the items most in-demand.
Against each entry is a link to create a hoplink which gives you the amount of
commission you'll obtain upon selling that item and your affiliate link.
You need to target products and services with an acceptable rate of commission, no
less than 25%, to ensure your time and efforts are worthwhile.
Affiliates can easily add the ClickBank services or products to their sites or their adverts
and earn commission (as much as 75%) on the sales. They are able to also earn money
as a reseller by referring other affiliates and vendors to ClickBank.
Vendors may utilize Clickbank to take care of the complete ordering procedure and to
manage their affiliate schemes. Clickbank will pay sales commission, automatically, to
every affiliate who connects a paying client to the seller. Clickbank charges the client,
pays the vendor, and pays the affiliate.
Among the explanations why Clickbank is loved is due to its' robust marketplace (a
large number of affiliates can easily see and promote your product). To be a merchant,
you'd be having to pay a one-time fee of $49. 95. Probably, that's all you'll ever pay.
The draw-back, however, is that Clickbank will take a commission from every one of
your sales, which will be around 10% (at this time). Also, tempting affiliates is quite

difficult with a minimum of a 50% commission required to even have them interested.
Clickbank is one of the many digital product sites on the web. Other similar websites
include: CupidPlc.com, Addynamo.com, Cj.com, Shareasale.com, Linkshare.com,
Associateprograms.com, Affiliatescout.com, Paydotcom.com, Tradedoubler.com and
Affiliatewindow.com.
To sum up, Clickbank is a good network, with an easy and simple to access system,
easy registration process and good support. While there are some things that can be
improved, over all Clickbank is a really usable network ideal for people first starting out
in internet marketing.
Drop Shipping
Today, drop shipping is really as popular as it ever was. The primary ingredients for an
effective drop-shipping business are: a great, reliable drop-shipping company, a sales
funnel (mainly e-bay) and, the most crucial ingredient, the client.
Without drop-shipping, you are able to be an e-bay member and create a good income
on-line, but with a drop-shipping company, you have even more products available.
Having a great drop-shipper is excellent, since there is no inventory needed by you
because all sales and delivery are looked after by the drop-shipper.
Do not alter the tech specs of any products supplied by the drop shipping company, but
be sure you put an alternative description to the merchandise in order to give it a
distinctive feel from what other sellers are utilizing.
Any photo's of products you have already been provided with for sale, should also be
produced to appear dissimilar to the rest of the sellers on e-bay who might be utilizing
the same drop-shipper as you. This could probably incorporate an ad-rotator.
Make certain, before you begin to market any items on e-bay, that you always check the
costs of the other sellers on-line, as well as the buying price of the retailers where you
live.
Whenever you now get sales for the products, all you have to do would be to pay the
drop-shipper his or her price for the merchandise and keep the difference between your
drop-shipper's price and that which you charged the client as your profit.
Once you have become proficient with trying to sell drop-shipping items on e-bay, you'll
then have the ability to start and sell things on a bigger scale. This really is ok, however,
you must keep in mind that you'll have to pay e-bay for the privilege of allowing you to
sell and display your products and services on the site.

You need to ensure that deliveries from the drop shipper are on time and that the
products reach your clients in an acceptable state, otherwise the reputation you have
on-line might suffer, making sales in the future difficult.
There are several guides available on Clickbank about Drop Shipping that are worth
checking out. These include: 'The Drop Ship Guide', which takes you through the basics
of setting up your own drop shipping business step-by-step; and 'Drop Shipping 4
Idiots', which is a comprehensive course covering all aspects of the industry, including
insider product sourcing secrets and dozens of high traffic places where you can list and
sell your products for free.
Being a truly successful seller is what you are targeting so, with a great drop-shipper
and e-bay working together, you have everything you require to flourish because this is
a winning combination for a sales-force.
Affiliate Marketing
You may have heard that affiliate marketing is among the easiest ways to generate an
income on the internet. Listed here are the steps to carrying it out your-self:
Select a specialized niche
By this, we mean a particular group of individuals that you're targeting. This group will
have an interest in a specific product or information that one can sell to them. Types of
these items include: cameras, Kindle, ebooks about love, editing computer software and
so on.
In selecting a niche, you have to be as specific as you are able to be. You shouldn't be
too broad since the competition will, undoubtedly, be very fierce. Be very particular and
become a big fish in a small pond.
Put up your site or weblog
Before you do any-thing, you'll first want a weblog or, even better, an internet site. Do
not worry if you know nothing about web development, because creating a web-site isn't
(any longer) as hard as you believe it is. A total newbie is now able to easily create a
web-site. You must have an internet site so you can have an online shop where you are
able to sell your affiliate products and services.
All you need to do here is obtain a domain name. In selecting a domain name, it is best
to work with a phrase that relates to your niche. In online marketing, this is known as
key words. You are able to research rich key words on Google Adwords.
Rich key words describe phrases which have a large amount of monthly searches but

just a few sites using them. These should be your target. When you found have a great
one, you are able to go and obtain that domain from any domain store like Go-Daddy.
After having a domain name, you have to host your website somewhere (we suggest
you try Hostgator). After that, you can use Wordpress to style your website.
Join affiliate marketing websites
After establishing your website, you are able to join affiliate marketing websites like
ClickBank, Amazon, Commission Junction, Linkshare, and so on. Just search for the
products, be they physical or digital, that you desire to sell. Get those products and
place them on your website.
Sell affiliate products on your site
The great thing about internet marketing is that you are able to just grab products from
affiliate sites, free of charge, then sell them on your websites. Just make your reviews,
tutorials, (or whatever) on your site to advertise those products. Then, once a visitor
comes and buys the products you are promoting, you'll make some commission.
So that's how simple affiliate marketing is. The thing you need here, however, is effort
and patience. It won't cause you to get rich quickly but, if you really put some effort into
it, you will profit over the long run.
The Link Between Products, Key Words and
Prospects
Finding success in e-commerce can be boiled right down to one theme: Identify the
prospect's requirements and supply an answer for them. It is that easy. You need to
print that statement out and fix it across your monitor. In the event that you stray out of
this theme, you'll have issues earning money.
Key-word research may be the key to pinpointing the prospect's requirements. When
doing the keyword study, you need to identify the phrases they're using to find answers
to their needs. Most people appreciate this concept, but neglect to advance the
procedure.
Lots of folks have said they don't wish to pursue rankings under some key words
because they don't feature such products or services. Should you have ever said this as
well, you are ruining things for yourself.
Remember, we're pinpointing the requirements of prospects. If we don't have services

or products oriented to an easily identified need then we determine, through key word
research, what we should do! We must get these products and services, or decide on a
method to acquire the service!
Assume we now have a website trying to sell hiking and backpacking gear. We now
have backpacks, guide books, tents etc. When conducting our key word research, we
discover our prospects will also be searching for hiking journals by which they are able
to describe their hikes. As we do not stock hiking journals, you want to omit those key
words, correct? NO!
You want to look for a type of writing journal for hiking and add them to the catalogue of
products and services. Rather than looking upon this keyword discovery as an
irrelevance, you should see it as a chance to expand your product line and create a new
revenue stream.
We value our prospects, which means providing them with answers to all their needs. In
so doing, they'll return to our site over and over once they require more hiking gear.
One of the hardest concepts for web-masters to understand is the truth that you
shouldn't design your website predicated on your opinion of your industry. Your
prospects should design it. By this, I am talking about the value of using key-word
research to determine all of the products and / or services you will offer.
Often, a bit of simple keyword research can throw up some unique angles relating to
your business that you would never have thought of yourself. Recognize and utilize this
to your advantage to better fulfil market demand.
Discover what your prospects are looking for and ignore anything else. Follow this
advice and your website will transform into a cash machine.
The Front and Back of Sales Funnels
The sales funnel is really a methodical marketing procedure where you systematically
qualify your prospects in to clients and, additionally, refine them in to hyper-responsive
clients. Your client base gets smaller as your bottom line increases as you provide more
expensive products to your hyper-responsive clients.
The front-end may be the most dynamic facet of your sales funnel and the part that
needs continuous experimentation. You will find, literally, endless front-end methods,
restricted purely by your imagination and resources.
The focus at your front end would be to attract and qualify people who possess an
inclination to buy your items further down the sales funnel.

Generally, the qualification happens whenever a person opts-in to get something from
you. It's this opt in stage that turns your every day web surfer right into a lead, given that
they've just carried out an action indicating that they, at the very least, possess some
desire to have what you've got.
There are all types of front end marketing tools: becoming a member of a contact
newsletter, subscribing to a weblog via RSS or email notifications, opting-in together
with your name and email to down-load a complimentary report, registering for a totally
free on-line service or ticking a box to get more information in regards to a product /
topic when subscribing to something (co-registration).
The front end involves attracting attention and enticing people in to the sales funnel.
But, generally, it's in the back end where, in fact, the profits are created.
Your back end consists of your more expensive items. Essentially, we're referring to
meeting exactly the same demand (inside a niche), just with alternative media. This may
include information distributed via audio, visually, live or privately.
The particular distinction between your front end and the back end is about the kind of
customer and the cost paid.
In the back end, all of your clients have travelled through the front end, tried your
complimentary materials, bought a basic level service or product and also have
experienced substantial value from what you've offered. So much so, that they're
wanting to purchase again from you.
It's common that only a tiny percent, say 1-2%, of the entire people entering your front
end will end up in the back end. That's ok, because that small group are spending a lot
of money. While front end products and services may cost under $100, back end
products are often priced in the hundreds or thousands.
The back end is the main profit source for business since it is stable and predictable
and this is the major reason for establishing a back end to begin with.
Sales Funnel Success
Sales funnels are, basically, just a blueprint for your lead to sale procedure. You can
start with, say, one thousand leads (i.e. site visitors). One hundred of these leads may
click on the sales page url for your product, fifty could click on the 'Order Now' button
and be taken to the shopping cart and 10 might actually finish the sales process and
purchase the product. If your funnel begins with 1000 prospects and finishes with 10
sales, then that is a 1% conversion ratio.
In reality, though, the sales funnels for most online businesses are actually very

complex.
This due to all the different kinds of website traffic that visit websites, the various kinds
of behaviour that need to be assessed, the buy and connection outcomes and the
number of varied ways a visitor may become a buyer.
To produce a more streamlined sales funnel, you firstly have to identify each and every
way people can enter the funnel, see where they've originated from, what their agenda
is and where they're at in the purchase cycle.
Then, you need to identify every activity that somebody can undertake on the website:
read some content, read more content, contribute to a newsletter, view a social
networking profile, buy something, or exit the website.
Finally, you ought to identify the measures to place on every activity: the time on the
page, the entry path, the exit path, etc.
Then, you analyse this info and come up with all of the different pathways a visitor may
take during your funnel. The key is to not change your website yet.
When a funnel is designed and the systems have been put in place, start compiling
reports at each stage to comprehend how your funnel operates in reality.
Try out this in your weblog. Once you've collated enough information to begin making
decisions, I guarantee you will see obvious points of failure in your process and they're
likely to appear in two main areas:
1) A webpage that does an excellent job at encouraging a different behaviour (i.e.
instead of keeping somebody in the sales funnel).
2) A webpage that, basically, does not move a person to another part of the funnel.
Initially, you'll probably feel as if there's a lot to get through, so you'll have to prioritize
the changes you wish to make. Concentrate on the areas which are costing you the
largest quantity of sales (which might be at the end of the funnel).
With effort, focus and time you can see huge improvements in the performance of your
site and never have to attract one new visitor. Sounds good doesn't it?
Sales Funnel Planning
A sales funnel can only flourish in an industry where there's a demand for the product
you offer. If you're yet to locate your market niche, you should concentrate on choosing
one.

When you are happy you've got a profitable niche, you can start work on crafting your
sales funnel.
Your primary focus is definitely meeting the requirements of the customer. Across the
funnel, you do that with more and more specifically tailored products and services. Your
capability to charge high ticket prices and maximize profit rests on developing quality
back-end products and services.
Initially, a need may appear quite broad, however, when you dig deeper you may find
that it's actually an extremely specific facet of the overall problem that many people
face. Having an in-depth knowledge of the most popular issues your visitors face when
trying to meet an over-all need, allows you to know what products and services to offer.
After you have a summary of the most typical issues in your market, you could start to
plan how better to deal with them. Think about delivering solutions utilizing varied
media, like: downloadable video or audio, text, telephone or face-to-face conferences,
private tuition or workshops.
A typical practice in the front end of a sales funnel for an internet business, is to pay
attention to digital goods. You create the merchandise once and, assuming it remains
current, it's set-and-forget.
As you move down the funnel, you are able to still utilize digital items to fulfil your super-
responsive clients, but maybe with more bespoke content (a much more specialised
problem), or by providing your innovative methods or supplying a bigger package of
content all together.
Broadly speaking, as clients move towards the back-end, particularly if you operate an
information publishing business predicated on your expertise, they'll be prepared to
receive more personalized attention. The back-end is usually where private coaching or
small workshops work nicely. You are able to gather an extremely small number of your
general customer base, who are ready to pay well and work with you in a far more
personalised format.
To begin building your sales funnel, you'll need to look beyond that first sale and see the
picture as a whole. The procedure is flexible and takes effort and testing. A great sales
funnel will tap all of the correct triggers (empathy, social proof) in the folks who have the
requirement for your product. With that degree of clarity, you'll be able to produce a
perception that you provide the best answer for them and can charge a high ticket price.
Putting Your Theory to Practice
As you will have gathered by now, the sales funnel is the key to success on the internet.

We know the theory that it is a stage-by-stage procedure for attracting the attention of
prospects and converting them into clients. So, in this chapter, we will look at the actual
steps required for its' practical implementation.
Marketing
You need to use marketing strategies such as: PPC Adverts (Google, Twitter,
Facebook, Youtube), Banners, Blogging and Forum Posts. Draw in your traffic using
those tactics and send it all to your individual capture page.
Your individual capture page
Your Sales Funnel should be set-up to capture the prospect's information. A capture
page has an opt-in form for the prospect to input their private information. These details
get automatically used in your email Auto-responder. When somebody entered your
sales funnel to be a prospect, they literally decided to receive some kind of
communication from you. This is permission marketing whenever your prospects
provide you with the permission to make contact with them with further materials.
Your Email Auto-responder
You will find various kinds of auto-responders. Typically, the most popular are AWeber
and Getresponse. I take advantage of AWeber. It's among the most significant
marketing tools. Utilizing an auto-responder enables you to construct a list of potential
buyers and begin creating a relationship together.
Follow-up and Develop a Relationship
Develop a relationship through giving. Hand out your knowledge, your expertise and
guide them. You are able to do that by email and on the phone. Keep your prospect
interested and updated with new information. Use Twitter, Facebook and You-tube
videos and direct them onto your site. Befriend them!
Your Main Business
When you have formed a solid relationship with your leads, you are able to direct them
to your main business. Since it was often said before: 'People join people'.
They join you due to your individual personality: they trust you, they like you, since you
bring value to them by providing them with the information they require.
There's always a possibility that a prospect won't join most of your business. Reasons
can differ: they are, maybe, not ready yet; or maybe they have signed up to another
company and wish to stick to it.
Regardless of any of this, you need to communicate with your prospects through emails

so they will be able to join you over time. Should they not sign up to your main
opportunity, you still could be profiting once they join your affiliate programs.
All of the first 4 steps above would be the front end of the funnel and your main income
opportunity would be at the back-end. That's where the actual profit is!
So, in the event that you don't have a Sales Funnel in place yet, don't delay and obtain
one NOW!
Content Marketing
With the advent of Google's Panda and Penguin update, the present rules about article
promotion have changed and really should be labelled underneath the heading of
content marketing.
Prior to the Google's 'Panda' Update, lots of article writers afforded only a passing
thought to their content quality. Writing on the net became an exercise to find out who
could out-think the various SE's (search engines) by publishing a minimal quantity of
info and obtain the best traffic amounts.
The phrase: 'content marketing', has been associated more with the dissemination of
information to clients and wasn't usually related to directly promoting an item.
The concept was that, to earn money writing, this content must give clients valuable
information. Clients would then feel a sense of loyalty and continue to steadily buy from
the vendor who was offering the good content in the shape of brochures, handouts, and
web site content.
The philosophy is that, by educating the general public with, for example, educational
material, the marketing company will be named a business expert and the brand would
be much more likely to be purchased.
Content marketing isn't (any longer) limited by the corporate, big brand, name writers.
The various SE's are making article writers produce informative, quality material.
What's quality content? If you ask 5 people that, you'll get 5 differing answers. Rather
than getting opinions, let's observe how Google defines quality content.
Google's Official Weblog defines quality content websites as sites with unique content
and information, such as: research, in-depth reports and thoughtful analysis.
But wait! That isn't all. They also say that grammar, relevancy and originality (or
uniqueness) play essential parts in the pursuit of top quality content.

Relevancy in key words, relevancy of titles to content, relevancy of content to your
audience all plays a part.
Even though writing for the net is extremely forgiving (for the reason that anybody can
publish just about any-thing), Google has adopted correct grammar as part of its' goal to
greatly help folks have a much better search experience.
Finally, to create money writing, you have to think about the originality and uniqueness
of the content. Articles must be well researched and supply helpful information.
On their official weblog, Google lists twenty-two questions that may provide you with
guidance on the Google mind-set. The questions vary from: 'Would you be comfortable
giving your charge card information for this site?', to: 'How much quality control is
actioned on the content?'.
These questions, therefore, move from enquiring about trust to enquiring about
grammar. The goal posts have, therefore, moved. Article writers wishing to become
successful as marketers need to dedicate more focus to their content marketing.
Article Marketing
Working on the web is a really desirable career for people all over the world. Article
promotion is a way that you are able to make (nearly) every business opportunity you
participate in flourish into a self-sustained, profitable venture. In this chapter, we'll cover
the best recommendations of the trade for implementing article promotion so you can
get your name out there.
The impact of your articles can be boosted by telling stories or anecdotes together
because readers love a narrative. Once they read your article, they'll pay more attention
if they're engrossed in a story. Obviously, writing a great story is really a specialized
skill. It requires more effort than several other types of content creation. The added
popularity of narrative articles, though, may make it worth your time and effort.
By specializing your article to a select field or certain niche, you'll not only hone your
articles to be most helpful but, additionally, you'll attract many more viewers from that
field. Furthermore, there is less competition in the more specialised article marketing
niches.
Your natural inclination might be to provide a fictionalized account of a service or
product in your article promotion campaign. However, you must always remain truthful.
If you're marketing something that you can't find any positive thing to express about,
you definitely should be marketing another thing. Don't attempt to portray an item as
wonderful if it's not, at the very least, good already.

Driving individuals to a particular site or product isn't the only means by which article
promotion will pay off for you personally. A great deal of websites available (who will
accept your write-ups) will, in actuality, pay you per view or per click. To help you find
lots of methods to keep your earnings stream alive through the articles you write, this
may become very lucrative.
For connecting better together with your readers within an article promotion program,
focus your article on solving an issue for them. This can give your article a general
purpose and theme, and it'll be one which readers' appreciate. Not just will a problem-
solving article boost your rapport with readers, it'll gently nudge them towards buying
your services or products.
Simply because working on-line is something you actually want to do, that does not
mean that you'll be proficient at it. A terrific way to ensure your success would be to
follow the advice given above whenever you make an effort to build your advertising
campaign. Stay with the easy stuff to begin with, and you'll be able to branch out to
bigger things.
Google's Adwords Program
Google AdWords is text-based system employed to promote various sites. This
innovative service allows individuals to create their very own adverts, select key words
to complement the intended audience's niche and determine the price of advertising.
Advertisers take advantage of this great service simply because they pay only
whenever a viewer clicks on the ad.
It has helped many businesses make their on-line presence felt using its unique
features and is dependant on the actual Google search engine results. It provides
results in line with the pages of a specific web site matched with the site's search and
ad share. It's a great marketing tool making a big positive change to the amount and
quality of visitors that review a webpage. Anyone who wishes to market their products
and services can enrol with this service.
The AdWords program is preferable to all the conventional advertising programs since it
targets people's particular interests. The creation and editing of adverts can be achieved
within a few minutes and Adverts can quickly be observed by prospects straight after
this. Advertisers may also get extensive performance reports to allow them to assess
the potency of adverts by using this tool.
This kind of unique online marketing helps the advertisers to handle single and multiple
adverts using one or many key words. This can help to create consistent website traffic
for the advertiser's services and products. There's ample space for, at the very least, 8
to 10 advertisers on a solitary webpage. An advertiser can decide to book the topmost
or maybe the most visible space on a webpage to create traffic for his or her site.

Google AdWords may also help an advertiser to find out the profitability, quantity and
type of searches that individuals or potential customers do. This is often helpful for SEO
purposes too. The advertisers may use the tool to create changes within their sites to
obtain top rankings in major search results.
This internet marketing tool is ideal for those who have just started their business and
don't have big bucks to market their products and services. Regardless of how small the
budget of a company is, it may still make use of this service. There is absolutely no
minimum monthly charge. Google only charges a little activation fee for the
advertisement. Advertisers also have the choice of choosing among text, image, and
video adverts.
Google AdWords has changed the way in which people advertise their services and
products. It will not only retain old clients but, additionally, attract new clients to a
company as well. Consequently, your brand name becomes popular and your sales will
increase.
Marketing Offline
The primary aim for any business would be to turn prospective buyers in to actual
buyers. Many marketers have questioned the potency of offline marketing to enhance
on-line sales, however, they are related if the campaign is performed precisely and has
enough substance to stimulate the web marketing opportunity.
You will find so many products and services that it's difficult to state for definite that
offline marketing can greatly boost your online marketing efforts. The rewards for
creating an enticing direct mail campaign might help your web conversions but this, in
conjunction with using the right list and the best offer, remains the key to the success of
the web income opportunity.
Here are some key offline creative techniques to produce an engaging direct mail
campaign which will directly affect your web conversions:
The Package. You have to plan the direct mail package and the primary focus should
be on exactly what it will include. Most marketers begin with a letter, an action call and a
return envelope. You could play around with this approach but the fundamentals will
always be the same. Work-out how large it will likely be and what creative course of
action to take. Much of this is determined by your industry as well as your audience.
The Envelope. If the prospective audience recognises your envelope as spam, they're
not going to even open it and your offer is useless if no-body sees it. Provide the
customer an incentive to open your envelope and find out more about your product,
service and deal. Do some research on other direct mail campaigns that compelled you

to open the envelope and view the offer.
Value Postcards. If your company has a budget restriction for this kind of marketing,
then the utilization of postcards could be a good way of keeping your costs low. The
inclusion of postcards can steer clear of the problem of unopened mail and they may be
an effective way of driving individuals to an on-line offer. This is so long as the offer is
gripping enough to motivate them to go to the web site. Be sure you have a distinctive
URL for the visitors included on them.
An Action Call. This should be clear and readily accessible by the client. A great way is
to produce a multi-order system, telephone call, on-line or fax order form. The action
call should be bold and no nonsense. Make certain the ordering process is
straightforward as this can encourage the client to return for multiple purchases.
Begin with an easy campaign and an offer that's simple to track and manage. Test an
inexpensive direct mail campaign in the beginning and you might discover that this
drives traffic and sales to your online business.
Blogs
With regards to business, blogs can be a supplemental type of advertising that can be
used to communicate with your clients. On top of that, blogs can be set-up free of
charge and may easily stand alone, with no existing site to help them.
Blogs have ended up being quite well-liked and a growing number of blogs are
appearing on multiple web sites. Blogs serve as business tools and people adore
communicating with others via blog postings and allowing others to discuss their
comments.
Blogs are regularly updated so they have fresh content on them constantly. This makes
them attractive to visitors and SE's like Google. Each new post counts as unique
content on the site and, should you add to your blog weekly or daily, you will notice it
expanding rather rapidly. With new content, you are able to rank higher in the search
engine results positioning and draw more people to your site.
Additionally, you can include links on your blogs and begin a hyper-link exchange
campaign. In doing this, you will see your page ranking upsurge in the SE's due to the
fact that SE algorithms usually focus on the amount of links which are pointing to your
site. The greater the number of external links that point to your site, the simpler it will be
to be discovered by the big SE's.
Blogs might be employed to freely advertise your goods or services. Also, blogs are
excellent for providing existing clients with updated details about new services and
products you might be offering. Want your customers to talk about their feelings about

your services and products? You'll be able to use blogs to get and share client
testimonials. There certainly isn't any limit to the advantages you are able to experience
with blogs.
What's equally great about blogs is the truth that you are able to produce them free of
charge. Sites like Blogger (purchased by Google), let you begin a weblog totally free.
More-over, there are numerous fonts, templates and layouts to choose from and
Blogger will even enable you to display pictures. Finally, web sites like Blogger provide
you with the opportunity to archive your postings to ensure visitors can go back to them
over and over.
Making blogs is enjoyable and easy for everyone. Blogging is the new wave in Internet
advertising that allows you to get up close, personal and interactive with your prospects
on a daily basis. Communicate with individuals from across the world who share the
very passions that your business caters to. Find out what they want and what they think
about what you currently provide.
Before the internet, no other form of advertising even came close to offering this scope
for customer engagement.
Social Media
In the event that you have not started using social media marketing, you might want to
have a closer look. Not just are you missing a strong marketing tool, you are potentially
missing being seen by potential customers who're being driven to your competitors
who're using this marketing medium.
It's no secret that many people head to the net to find information nowadays. Including
to find the services and products they require. Instead of searching via a printed phone
book, it's much more likely that they're going to visit a common internet search engine.
Due to this, S.E.O. (search engine optimization) has been, probably, one of the most
highly promoted marketing tools recently. These kinds of searches, however, await a
prospective customer to become active. Promoting companies through social
networking can generate a nearly passive response following the first initial click.
Facebook, for instance, probably one of the most commonly visited websites every day
on line, enables you to produce a fan-page for your company. Somebody 'Likes' your
company by clicking a button and becomes a fan.
Once somebody becomes your fan, a notice is posted for their own profile page so their
friends can easily see this and may then choose to go and see what your fan-page is
about. At that time, a number of them could decide to become fans of your business.

Additionally, each time you post something to your company fan-page, these details can
also be delivered to the news feed for your fans and is then visible to many of their
friends.
Everybody knows that person-to-person advertising may be the most effective form of
advertising that exists. A Facebook fan-page is a combination of person-to-person
advertising and viral marketing.
Simply by creating that page, you'll be able to reach people that you might not have
found when you are introduced to them by your fans. When potential individuals are
introduced to you in this manner, they're more likely to wish to support your company.
Other social networking outlets, such as Twitter and LinkedIn, work in a very similar
way. Among the best facets of this whole genre is that it's a totally free, or really low
cost, approach to potentially reach huge numbers of people.
With a tiny bit of daily effort, you are able to keep your organization at the forefront of
the minds of everybody who's part of the social network.
Social media marketing isn't something you ought to be considering for future years. It's
here, at this time and you ought to be utilizing it.
Because the primary investment to get started is simply a tiny bit of time, it certainly is
sensible to begin as quickly as possible.
Auto Responders
An auto-responder service is really a 'must have' service included in an Internet
marketer's box of tools. Together with your subscription for this on-line service, the
marketer can put up a contact message to automatically be sent to his / her list each
week to stay in touch with their subscribers. Here are a few tactics we've discovered
that work well:
When employing your auto-responder to recommend the purchase of a service or
product, you need to be careful the way you word your messages. Keep building on
what your prospect's problem is and how your service or product can solve that problem
for them.
In your first email, welcome them and thank them for subscribing to your list. Let them
know the benefits they'll receive from you, such as: free ebooks, free audio recordings
and free computer software. You're getting them to truly like you and build trust. Don't
sell them anything in the very first email message.
In the 2nd email to your list, send them 2-3 links where they are able to visit sites to

obtain free related products to your niche but, this time around, make your second and
third links 'affiliate links' from other marketers' websites you have joined as an affiliate.
They are still free products and services, such as: free membership to a website that
provides many free items. You hide your longer affiliate link using tinyurl.com so you
don't tip them off. When they click on it (as they have become accustomed to do) they
will go to the free membership site (or whatever item it is), get the free item and
(hopefully) also buy one of the other items for sale.
In the 3rd email for them, send them 3 links where they are able to obtain a free
software package, a totally free audio, or perhaps a free ebook. Again, you need to
send them the 2nd and third link as a disguised affiliate link that you could earn a
commission on. This is the way you build your sales with auto-responder emails.
With each email message, make sure you are giving the client free information
associated with the subject. It's this that could keep them interested.
It is probable that, by the fourth email to your list, many people may have bought a few
of the products and services available (i.e. those that are also offered by the free
websites) and that you begin to see some commission payments enter your pay-pal
account.
Remember, it's a popular fact in marketing that visitors frequently need to be subjected
to an offer seven times before they decide to purchase. Sales may begin slowly, but just
getting it started is the biggest challenge.
The Joint Venture
In the event that you sign up for newsletters and mailing lists from marketing specialists,
you might have run into the word 'JV' or 'Joint Venture'. Essentially, a JV is a
partnership of sorts, although not in the legal sense.
A JV may take many forms, but it's mostly about collaboration - working together to
produce better results than each one of you can achieve by yourself.
Listed here are just some ways you can 'JV' with others:
Tele-seminars and workshops - Partner with a person who is serving an identical kind of
client to you to provide workshops where the delegates will get several perspectives
(and also you share the job involved with organising and marketing the big event).
Creating Products and services - By yourself, developing a product (like a CD or on-line
course) may appear daunting but, in the event that you use another person, you are
able to brainstorm some ideas and take action in a fraction of the time. Plus, you are

able to each market the merchandise to your personal databases of clients and
customers.
Product Launches/Special Offers - We recently teamed up with some others who help
coaches to promote themselves to advertise a book of ours relating to this topic. They
donated a totally free bonus and marketed the book for their e-mail lists - everyone
profited. People purchasing the book got an excellent group of bonuses and heard
about sites where they could find extra information on marketing. The folks providing the
bonuses got additional exposure and PR.
Joint Bidding/Pitching - You might face tough competition when you are bidding or
pitching for corporate or government contracts but, with a little team of associates, you
are able to stand a far greater chance in the event that you pool your expertise,
testimonials and resources.
Affiliates - You are able to either be a joint venture partner for another person's products
and services and promote them as a swap for a commission, or look for affiliates to
advertise your personal products and services, paying them a commission once the
sales are made.
One good free site to get involved with is jvme.com, which is a leading joint venture
social network run by internet marketers via Facebook's base software applications.
Whenever you're thinking about doing a JV, one thing to be clear about up-front is how
much money and time each of you will be investing and how you will distribute the
profits when they come in.
The best option here is to be transparent at the start and keep costs to the minimum
required to do the job well.
JVs, with the right people and the right companies, can work wonders for you and they
don't have to be as daunting or on such a large scale as some people would have you
believe.
Measuring Success
There are several different tools on the market that can help you gauge the success of
your sales funnel efforts. In this chapter, we will provide a brief overview of a few of the
more popular ones:
Google Analytics is a terrific way to examine how well your web store is working. Once
you have built-in Analytics together with your store pages, you are able to access an
enormous selection of helpful reports.

Google Analytics enables you to set-up a sales funnel and see just how many
individuals are deferring at every step of your funnel. That ought to alert you to which
areas of the funnel process you need to improve.
Say that, for each 1, 000 people who visit your product page:
100 add the merchandise for their cart
80 of these people go to the checkout
40 of these people complete the checkout form
33 of these people confirm their order
Out of this example, it's clear that many shoppers (fifty percent) are leaving the
purchasing procedure when they are asked to fill out the check-out form. This could
imply that there's something about the form that's off-putting to people.
StatCounter is also a web tracking service that enables you to access up-to-date
statistics about web visitors throughout several sites.
Just like a standard web-stat tool, you'll have the ability to see the details of your unique
site visitors, visitors that return, page loadings, and 1st time site visitors. You can
observe the information presented daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually as well as
choose specific date ranges.
Over-all, Statcounter is a good tool while offering all you need to help make the
necessary changes to your website.
Smartsheet.com is a spreadsheet with special features that allows you (among other
things) to track company objectives and operations and manage projects and
deliverables by teams and individuals. This is a comprehensive solution for strategy
analysis.
The sales funnel estimator at mathmarketing.com allows you to approximate your
market profitability and calculate precisely what quantity of purchases you can expect
from a sales funnel and what quantity of prospects you require at the top of your funnel
to reach your targets.
ClickBank Analytics provides you with the capability to interactively set-up trend charts
based on different topics over customized time ranges. Data and chart tables are
supplied to help you witness sales trends along with the information that supports
everything in a single glance. Also, the charts could be manipulated in various ways,
letting you begin to see the trends you'll need to handle your company.
It's well worth taking the time to acquire and familiarise yourself with these tools
because they can highlight vital areas for improvement in your campaigns that you
would be unable to identify in any other way.

Top Sales Funnel Products
As well as being a good source of affiliate products for you to promote, Clickbank also
sells a number of ebooks and software relating to sales funnels which you would be
advised to acquire when you are first starting out. Below, we will give a brief description
of a few of the better ebooks (and other items) about this subject that Clickbank
features:
'The Silent Sales Machine' by Jim Cockrum is one of the best selling ebooks on
Clickbank. It has been sold since 2002 and details a myriad of techniques for creating a
recurring income online with a minimum of start up capital and little or no ongoing
maintenance required. It has been updated for 2011 and focuses on E-bay auctions and
the power-selling of particular products.
'The Profit Pulling Sales Funnel' by Ben Brooks, shows you how to attract targeted
buyer traffic to your website free of charge from a little known traffic source using article
marketing.
The 'TAP Profit Funnel' by Grant J Ferrari, is an unorthodox affiliate marketing system
for beginners using Twitter that only take 15 minutes per day to operate. It shows you
how to build a sales focused audience on Twitter quickly then sell Clickbank products to
them.
The 'Video Sales Letter Creator' is some innovative software that will let you
professionally video market your products with very little user input. If you use
Wordpress, it also comes with a Wordpress plug in so it will work with your theme. It
comes with a whole raft of features for customization and there are no monthly fees to
pay.
'Sales, Lies & Naked Truths' by Corrine Edwards is a book aimed at all salespeople
wanting the most up-to-date, modern sales techniques. The methods in this book do
away with the out-dated 'hard sell' methods and are aimed more at making you genuine
and likeable in the eyes of the customer. This ensures that they will purchase from YOU
after you've established an honest relationship with them.
Finally, 'Sales CSI' by Rick Braddy is a complete course on how to maximize the returns
from your current marketing campaigns including list building, Google Adwords,
Facebook advertising and how to cut out any wasted spending on advertising that you
might be unknowingly making at the moment. This is a unique video training program
that outlines where you should concentrate your SEO efforts to increase your ROI
substantially.
These ebooks, courses and software can all be a useful source of information for
budding online entrepreneurs and even for more for experienced people who want to
expand their knowledge or capabilities into different areas.

You are advised to do your own research, as well, because the full quantity of resources
available on the internet relating to this subject is, obviously, far too big to completely do
justice to here.

Mastering e commerce

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