BluePrint for Internet Success
By: Profitstation News and Offers
I will not bore you with a long introduction here, I will just start telling you what I have learned over the past three years about starting a business on the Internet.
Absolute NR 1: You must get your own domain name. To start your own business on the Internet, you need a location, a place to hang your hat. That is called a domain. Would you open up the family store in an apartment building? NO! That is essentially what you are doing if you use a free web site. You are a tenant that advertises for the landlord. Can you see that? You will NEVER be taken seriously. Sure, you can start that way…but just realize that your customers will sense that you are just fooling around. Your own domain is YOUR space…not someone else’s. You can get domain hosting for only a few bucks per month. Check it out here: <http://www.profitstation.com/displayvillage>
Absolute NR 2. You need to be able to SELL something. Money cannot come to you without dispensing a product or service in exchange for it. That is called selling. If someone ever promotes a moneymaking opportunity on the Internet and chirps in "no selling," run the other direction because it is simply doomed to fail. You must make money by selling YOUR stuff or SOMEONE else’s stuff.
If you do not like selling, get off the Internet. The chances of making any kind of decent money by just posting your product info with a link to your order form are about as close to zero as it can get. There is certainly an opportunity to make money selling other people’s stuff on the Internet and you certainly CAN make what I call "random money" that way, but by far the greater number of dollars will be made by actively selling. Transmitting your belief that your product or service will solve a prospect problem or fill the need that the prospect has…is called SELLING. It takes time and constant contact to get the prospect convinced enough for him/her to pull out the credit card. An important side note: YOU have got be totally convinced of the value of your product or service or you will not sell anything except to the most stupid of customers.
Anyway, for my purposes, we will presume that you understand that money is transferred in exchange for a product or service. I will also take a leap of faith and presume that WHAT you are selling is worth about what you are asking for it--that it is a quality product/service. Naturally, that is a judgement call, but YOU can probably best judge this for yourself. I can absolutely guarantee that if the product or service is valueless, you will fail. Remember the old mail order rules about back end profits? They only come to those companies that offer GOOD products/services at reasonable prices, offer excellent customer service and contact their customers frequently throughout the course of their relationship.
OK, you have to have stuff to sell. Now, explore that a bit. If you are a store that sells vacuum cleaners in a mall--which means that you only have essentially one product line, by the very nature of statistics, you will have fewer sales than a department store. Pretty obvious. On the Internet, you must be as close to a department store as possible. You MUST have a wide variety of products/opportunities/services and you must have worldwide appeal.
Absolute NR 3: Traffic. You have got to get lots of it to get the necessary exposure to the items that you are selling. This is where most Internet businesses fall short. They don not understand the need for traffic, or they intuitively understand the need, but presume that it will simply materialize through search engine submission. They do not understand the mechanics of traffic. Where does it come from? How does it arrive? Your web site will start out invisible by definition. What will YOU be doing to fix that? No salesman can succeed without a steady source of sales prospects (there is that 'sell' word again). You cannot open up your Internet store in a virtual Nebraska cornfield--you will not sell a darn thing because your traffic will be zero. When you have got that beautiful Internet store and not a single visitor, you will be left standing there with a bunch of bills and no revenue. Make sure you understand how your traffic is to be generated BEFORE you plunk down any money. So what are you going to do about your traffic? That, my friends is one of the toughest problems on the Internet to crack for the average new businessperson. If you do not know, STOP right NOW and email me and let me help you solve that problem before proceeding. I have done quite a bit of work in that area and will be happy to help. Mailto:traffic@profitstation.com
Absolute NR 4: You MUST publish an email newsletter or Ezine. It is the best way to communicate with your customers and to create new ones. It is also the best way to SELL. Selling to your "house" list is the magic behind mail order. Back end profits have always been where mail order companies make their millions. It is not much different with Internet direct mail except that it is free to periodically mail to your current customers. Your back end orders from your happy customers will provide you additional income…as will UP-selling your current customers. You need to do just what the mail order companies do. Build your house list. Which is the next step.
Absolute NR 5: You must get the E-mail addresses of your visitors--you must build your house list. If you do not get these--your efforts simply will not work. How do you do it? Subscription forms, FREE stuff for enrollment, etc. Whatever--just get as many visitors to voluntarily enroll in your Ezine as possible. You cannot succeed without it. Additionally, it is the only way to follow up with your customers--which is a vital step in every selling process. Your web site only really exists for one reason. To collect email addresses so that you can sell stuff to them. I do not mean, "harvest" them like a spammer…I mean getting the visitors to voluntarily enroll in your Ezine.
Absolute NR 6: Just as LL Bean does, or Victoria Secret--you must mail offers to your house list. Mail order giants call them catalogs; we call them offers, either embedded in our Ezine or sent separately. You must make offers. If you do not ask for money for your stuff, you certainly will not get any. Call them "sales" or "specials" if you like, but you must present your products and services in such a way that the customer knows that you are offering a valuable commodity at a great or reasonable price. They must also know that you offer post sale service, and that you are providing a bunch of incentives to purchase the product/service RIGHT NOW! These incentives must be something that is appealing to your subscribers. (FREE advertising, for example).
Absolute NR 7: Test, test, and test. Send offer after offer and see what works for you. Keep track of results and re-use the ones that work, modify or trash the ones that do not. Never stop building your house list, and keep presenting your great "stuff" to that list at great prices. It does work. Neat thing about making offers on the Internet. You know immediately when you have just mailed a wet dog…and you know when you have mailed a winner just as quickly.
Absolute NR 8: Never stop: Follow up forever. Keep touching base with the customers that have expressed an interest in your product/service. DO NOT STOP until they tell you to--and then ask them WHY--and then tell them some more. Finally either make the sale, or remove them from your list when requested. Probe, follow up, promote, sell, and never EVER stop. Most people do not read everything every day. They may go weeks before hunkering down and reading what you are offering. If you do not repeat the offer, they will miss it and you will miss the sale. They need to recognize your name, feel comfortable with you…trust you. Then they will start warming up to your products and services. I can show you exactly how I follow up with prospects. It is easy, it is unrelenting and it is nearly HANDS OFF. Just email me: (mailto:webmaster@profitstation.com?subject=relentless-followup)
LAST WORDS:
Most of you will sit back and tell yourselves as you read along, "sure, that makes sense," but then you will never DO anything! Some of you already have a few pieces of this blueprint in place but are missing a few pieces.
Here is my offer. I will work with you personally to put each of these in place or any specific one, depending on your need and your budget. I guarantee that you cannot succeed in an Internet business by ignoring these Absolutes for success. If you would like to discuss more details of this blueprint, feel free to contact me (mailto:webmaster@profitstation.com) at any time.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark, webmaster of http://www.profitstation.com, http://www.profitstation-isp.com and http://www.all-prizes.com can solve ALL of your Internet business problems. Email Mark (mailto:webmaster@profitstation.com) for free consulting and much More!
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