Tuesday, May 26, 2009

STEP THREE: Concentrate on Building Relationships with Your Prospects

To fully develop an online business, you need to maximize your relationships with people. Although your goal in your internet business may be to set it up on auto-pilot, you have to remember at all times that you are dealing with real people. Credibility online is a major issue because there are many fly-by-night get-rich-quick operators on the internet.

To help you develop this credibility with your prospects, your overall strategy has to include such tools as ezines, message boards, chats, conference calls, dealer programs, etc. Many people keep asking exactly why does it seem ezines are popping up everywhere...it is simply because they work. They help you to develop the relationships you need with your prospects. You are able to contact your prospects over and over again providing them with good useful information.

The same thing is true of the message boards. Once you have worked them up to a certain level of traffic, the same people will keep coming back day after day learning from you and the other experts you may have brought to your board.
Use your imagination and develop other free services such as these to help you develop your web site and relationships online. How about doing JV's with other businesses? How about running a monthly conference call on your subject? Your business online is only limited by your imagination!

STEP TWO: Develop A Unique Aspect to Your Business...Your USP

Your business cannot just be a me-too business online. You need to develop some type of uniqueness to it...something that sets you apart from all of the rest of your competition online. You need to create a "Unique Selling Position" which makes you stand out from the crowd online.

For example, everyone is selling books online. How did Amazon.com become the most well known bookstore on the interne? They developed a USP which basically states, "The World's Largest Bookstore" which is exactly what they are. They have stated in one phrase exactly what makes them unique from the rest of the bookstores in the world.

How can you develop your own USP? You probably aren't going to own the largest selection of anything in your business since most of us have started out bootstrapping at home or in our small business. Let me give you a simple little formula you can use which will help you immensely in the creation of a USP for your business.

To find your USP, pull out a blank sheet of paper. At the top of the paper, write "You know how most __________..." Then, halfway down the page, write "Well, What I do is..."

I want you to write how most of the businesses in your market are in the first section. Then, I want you to write what sets you apart from them. Avoid using words such as quality or better service, because those types of things don't really mean anything UNLESS you are more specific in your description. This may take you a while to do. You probably will have to study your competition online for a while. Give yourself a few days to think it over. Then, write it down.

Next, I want you to boil down that entire sheet of paper to a single phrase or sentence. This takes some work. Write it out in a sentence or phrase as many times as you need to until you get just the right words. Again, if this takes you a few days, let it. Think about it when you are driving, eating, etc. Mull it over. Then, once you have just the right wording, that is your NEW USP which you will use to separate you from all of the competition.

Use it on your signature file online...use it on your website...use it in your ad copy. Let it become a guiding force to your online business that sets you apart and defines you as the person to deal with in this area.

STEP ONE: Create Your Overall Theme to Your Online Business

You can't develop a business around a single product. Even if you are promoting a single product upfront, it is not the product that people want. They want the BENEFITS they receive out of the product. When designing your site, think about an "Ultimate Benefit" to build your site around.

I first heard the phrase "The Ultimate Benefit" through Dr. Jeffrey Lant and it has stuck with me ever since. It is that ever abiding "WANT" or "GOALS" that your prospects have with them continually. Ultimate Benefits are things such as: more money, weight loss, online success, being sexually attractive, self-defense, etc.

Ultimate benefits are what your prospects are really seeking after. So, don't base your business just on products. Base your business on this Ultimate Benefit. This will be the theme that binds everything else you do at your site together. It is what you want your site to become known for. It is why people will return to your site over and over again forever.

What is it that your prospects ultimately want?
More Money
Better Health
Weight Loss
etc.

Once you have defined your "Ultimate Benefit," that's where the products can come in. You will want to provide multiple products that all fall under the same Ultimate Benefit. This will help you to create "Multiple Streams of Income" all generated from one web site.

What mail order or internet company do you know of that only has one product? There aren't any really successful ones. Even the sites which seem only to have one main product still have dozens of different profit streams which all originate from the main product. Your mission online is to help people reach their ultimate goals, and that cannot be done with just one product. It takes a variety of products to accomplish this goal.

One warning I do want to mention here though is that your site will be more successful if you have one LEAD product. By testing both multiple product sites and sites which focus on one lead product, I have found that the lead product sites will outsell the multiple product sites by a long shot in most cases.

So, the absolute best set-up is to focus on a main product, and then have many different backends or supporting products which will help your customers to further their goals. This type of system is often referred to as a marketing funnel. You may be selling a book about Ad Copy on your site, but you will also have consultations, seminars, audio tapes, and ad writing services which all support your theme.

If you are selling web sites as a primary lead product, you could also sell books on internet marketing, web design services, CGI programming, etc. If your theme is weight loss, your primary product may be a nutritional product. You could also sell weight loss and exercise books. A newsletter could be started. You could also do personal one-on-one consultations for specific individuals.

You also don't need to come up with all of these products yourself. Many of them can be found through Joint Ventures with other companies which have products you know your customers want.

Building Your Own Online Community

Too many people have just bought some web space, put up a sales letter for this or that product, and sat back waiting for millions to come in. I am going to tell you right up front in this course....that tactic won't work, ever!
If you want to succeed online, you have to put together a strategy for your website. Whether you call it a strategy, a theme, a world center, or an online community, it doesn't matter. It is still the same thing. You have to build a site that has a central focus on a specific WANT that your prospects have. Then, you find products which follow along the theme.
Free bonuses are then added to your site. Following the theme you developed, you could create a report on it, start a message board, or run an ezine. Some type of software program could be added to your site which helps people in this theme. If search engines were your theme, you could have a software program on your site which submits web sites to the search engines and visitors could use it for free. I have a sample of this type of program on my site at http://www.bizpromo.com/sesubmit/submit.html
So, the three keys to creating income from ANY web site and ANY theme are:
1. Have a lead product that people WANT.
2. Have freebies at your site that follow the theme.
3. Have multiple backend or supporting products for the theme.

I know some people who are brilliant strategists about online marketing who achieve amazing success even though their actual tactical skills are only so-so. They hire out the web site design, the search engine registrations, the linking campaigns, and the copywriting. As a matter of fact, one of these brilliant minds once mentioned to me that, "The concept is greater than the copy."

In other words, the right marketing strategy can overcome slight problems in the copywriting or even the carrying out of the plans. Even the best copywriting on the planet won't make a success out of a poor business strategy or concept.

No contractor would ever consider starting work on a project without having a detailed blueprint already done and in their hands. It also doesn't matter how good they are at following the blueprints if the blueprints are all wrong. For many people, their internet businesses are in this exact state. They have many of the internet tactics ready, but they have yet to develop a powerful strategy to empower the whole process.

So exactly how do you choose the strategy for your Internet Marketing Empire? Below you will find a three step process in helping you develop your overall strategy. I don't want to over-complicate the process by any means, but I do want to help you create ideas through this. Your actual day to day internet marketing tactics will then flow out of your overall marketing strategy.

THE BEST WAY TO PRODUCE A LIFESTYLE YOU ENJOY IS BY DOING WHAT YOU LOVE!

Take off the blinders...Take off the limitations. What do you love doing? What are your hobbies? What is it that you think about every time you get a spare moment?

That is the BUSINESS for you to be in...Don't tell me it can't be done. I will just tell you to figure out how to do it.

Let's go back to Barbara...What should she be doing? How about being a pet sitter, dog walker, pet day care, pet groomer, or dog trainer? She could write books on pet training, animal grooming, etc. That could be an information business. It could be a service business. Don't put limitations on yourself or others.

Don't tell me it can't be done! On TV, I just heard about a DOG BAKERY which only sells gourmet dog treats. They have over a million in sales and 20,000 mail order clients besides what they have in their little shop. If you love it, you will find a way once you make up your mind!

For many of you reading this, you may be in the wrong business. You are making money (Or you aren't making money it doesn't matter), but you just aren't happy. Well, now you have it. Somebody was finally willing to tell you the truth of the matter.

Find your LOVE and you will find success. Yes, it will be hard starting out. It is in any business you get started in. If your business is also your passion and your hobby though, YOU WILL make it through and won't quit when it gets hard, because you LOVE it.

Take my quick test below and let me know how it turns out for you...
1) Do You Dread Getting Out of Bed Every Morning?
2) Do you constantly wish you could obtain freedom in your life somehow?
3) Have you tried a home business before and failed?
4) Do you wonder if there is any purpose to your life?
5) Do you wish you could spend more time at your hobby than at your job?

If you answered "YES" to any of those questions, you have some thinking ahead of you. If you answered "YES" to all of them, you better do something in a hurry.

Choose An Online Business

If you have ever wanted to own your own profitable, low maintenance business, but just couldn't seem to figure out how to start one from scratch, then this product was created for you. We have come up with 101 of the best Internet Marketing Ideas, Tips, and Suggestions and put them all together in this one package...Read through this electronic book...Study it...Pick out businesses you could create online for high profits.
This product isn't just for beginners. We are also including ideas which you can use even if you already have a very successful business or web site. We are going to include profit models you can learn from. Every web site owner should find ways of bringing in multiple streams of income into their business...Use the ideas you find in here to do just that: create multiple streams of income from every web site you own or are involved with.
Throughout this course, we have added little golden nuggets of Internet profits and information that will work in any business. So make sure to read through every section...even the ones who don't focus on businesses that you consider especially interesting to you. One of the ideas in that section just may be the key to doubling or tripling the profits of your business.
NOTE: Make sure to connect to the internet when reading through this course, as all links (Denoted by Blue Text) are Active and do connect to specific web sites for more information or tools.
The key to being successful in your own business is to pick a business that you will really enjoy doing. If you hate doing something no matter how much potential it has for profit, then you just won’t be able to dedicate yourself to it enough to be successful in your business. Besides, who would want to spend the rest of their life doing something they hate.
That is what we are trying to get away from. We now live in the Internet Age and there are tens of thousands of opportunities waiting for you out there. The key is to pick the one you will love doing...no matter how silly or weird it may sound at first.
Your friends may tell you are crazy for having this Internet dream. They might even make fun of your “weird” idea, but you will be the one laughing when you have a full-time Internet income coming in from what you love...and they are stuck at their go-nowhere 9 to 5 job for the rest of their lives.
Let me tell you a story...

In Indiana, there lives a woman who works 8 hour days 6 days a week at a local computer company. We will call her "Barbara" for the sake of this article.

Barbara dreads getting up in the morning. She dreads getting ready for work. She dreads driving to work. She dreads clocking in. She absolutely hates her job.

She has a degree in computer science, but she can barely stand the sight of a computer anymore. Everything in her miserable life has become a drudgery to her. She can barely stand herself. The most important thing to her is that wonderful clock that chimes 5 p.m. when it is time for her to go home.

She rushes to her car...Drives as fast as the law allows home...and then immediately rushes into her house as fast as she can to the noise of overexcited door greeters. Both them and her have waited all day for this moment. Now, she can relax.

She sits down on the couch...collects up her pets (2 dogs and a cat) and gives each of them the attention she knows that they crave. She turns on "Animal Planet" on the television set and sits back breathing a sigh of relief that she lived through another day.

Every day this same process occurs. Sometimes she makes a stop by the library and gets a collection of books on "Dog Care" and on "Dog Training." On her day off (that wonderful day), her and her dogs go and spend the entire day at the local park. All of them wait all week for that wonderful event.

Because of the drudgery of her job and the desire she has to be constantly free from it, she decided to check into starting her own home business. Her friends sell Avon. As a matter of fact, one of them even makes enough money to do it full-time.

Barbara envies this woman...She gets up and works when she wants at her own business which she loves. She always seems to have a spring in her step and a smile on her face.

Then, one day her friend invites Barbara to join her. Excitement overflows inside of Barbara...She will be able to be in control of her own destiny. She can be in business for herself.

Barbara jumps at the chance...besides it is only $25 she says to herself..."What do I have to lose?" She is absolutely on fire with this new possibility...She can work for herself and make her own life.

She quickly begins to do everything her sponsor told her to do...She makes up lists of contacts. She begins contacting them all one by one. She does everything neccessary to get started as fast as possible.

Barbara begins making a little money...(It always starts out small in your own home business), but something is missing. She stills has her job...She has her new home business and is beginning to make a little income doing it...BUT she has even less time than before to do the things she loves.

Her day off came and went...She had meetings to attend in her new business. Her dogs stayed home staring longingly at their leashes wondering what was wrong. Barbara is making more money now, but is no more free time than ever before.

Now, after the excitement of her new business has worn off, that telephone is getting pretty heavy to use. It is getting pretty tiring to come home from work every day and have to work this second job...even though it is hers.

One day, her sponsor quits and she has no one to help her stay motivated anymore. That was the final straw. She can't do it any more. She goes back to the old routine feeling guilty that she "failed" in her home business venture.

Later on down the road, this same process occurs. She joins another home business "opportunity" only to later give up and quit because she just can't take it anymore. Dozens of times this happens. Every time she feels more guilty that she just doesn't have what it takes to make it in her own home business.

Every time this occurs she ends up exhausted on her couch. The funny thing is that the answer to her problem has been right under her nose all of the time. It happens to be staring up at her lovingly right this moment holding it's leash.

Her problem has been that she works a job she hates. She wants a way out and others are promising her a solution that just isn't suited to her. They make money doing it because they love it. She makes a little at it and quits because she can't stand that JOB either.

For them, it is a way of life and a passion. For her, it is just another JOB, yet with less starting salary. Her passion is for her pets, but she spends time trying to work up passion for other people's desires.

I will let you off the hook and tell you...Barbara's problem is that she is trying the WRONG home business for her. She should be starting a business where her passion is at. Instead, she just tries to imitate others who have completely different desires.

I wonder if that is your problem? If you can't wait to get off your job and get out to the golf course, but you are trying to sell health products, it won't work. If you only want to garden all of the time, but sell make-up, you are dead in the water before you ever start.