Being a self employed person is the ultimate dream of most people nowadays. To be working at the convenience of their own homes and at their own time, without bosses to yell at them and paperwork cluttering all over the desk. In the competitive world of online business, you don’t only need the guts to make it work.
There are several attitudes that you should have or acquire to be successful in this arena. Some of the attitudes that you have applied while working in a traditional business will still apply to the online business arena but you need more than that.
Here are a few of those primary attitudes that you need to possess so you can be successful in the online business arena:
1.Patience and Trust. Patience is always needed because you won’t be an instant millionaire in just one blink! There is no such thing as that. Online businesses are real and similar to traditional businesses; it requires you to be patient in all aspects of it. You have to have the desire to invest time and effort. Success won’t come overnight. Profit may not appear instantly but it will come knocking at your door.
Trust is another factor to consider when doing online business. Make sure that you have trust on the business that you’re in. If not, you will have a hard time to motivate yourself to be patient and to be positive about everything that you are doing. Research on the business first and ask questions about it before plunging in. This way, you’ll know what the pros and cons are.
2. Self confidence and Discipline. One must be self confident and discipline to motivate him to do what he needs to do even if success is still vague. This means you will need to go ahead, keep on going in spite of obstacles and huge competitions.
3. Willingness to learn and be trained. There is no business in this world that doesn’t need learning. Actually, in our lifetime, learning should not stop. We always have to learn new things along the way. We should be open-minded in all things that are presented to us. If you are willing to be trained, coupled with discipline, your dreams of being successful in online business won’t be hard to achieve. You must be willing to go an extra mile to succeed.
4. Gratitude and Respect. Learn to respect all people in your circle especially those who have helped you with your online business. There are people who ask for help and when they are harvesting the fruits of their labor, will never glance back to those people who have helped along the way. Never burn bridges for you still might need the help of these people in the future.
5. BE HONEST. This is a very important attitude that should be use anywhere, anytime. Remember the golden rule of Confucius to not to do unto others what you don’t want others to do to you. A lot of internet businesses are now mushrooming, most of them are legitimate but there is also a fair share of scams in the online business arena.
Learn to distinguish one from the other and make sure that your business is not part of the latter. Remember that making money in a dishonest way will return back to you ten folds. Although there are people who said that a program is a scam but were unable to really try it and discover the pros and cons of it. Every business has its own advantages and disadvantages. It’s up to you to investigate more and decide for yourself.
Starting an online business is really hard at first, how much more being successful with it? You have to climb up the ladder slowly but surely without hurting others. If you have these attitudes, you are not close to getting the success you desire so much but it can help you get there.
Success does not bear any secret ingredients but these attitudes coupled with hard work and optimism. If you have these, you will succeed in any kind of business, be it traditional business or online business.
We’ve mentioned before that opt-in email lists are crucial to affiliate marketers nowadays to gather more traffic and ultimately, more sales. Everyday, the internet is growing at a rate that neither of us can’t imagine so if you are in the online marketing arena, you should look for people who are already online and those who tends to do business online as well.
Using an opt-in email list is still an effective way of marketing your online business whether you want to sell a product or simply looking for someone who could join your network. The people who join an email list do so because they want to have more information about what you are offering or what you are promoting. Opt-in list are populated by these people who have agreed to receive email from specific types of marketers and most of these consumers welcome these kind of emails because it’s an effective way to get offers from not just one vendor.
However, the real question is what kind of customers do you really want? When you are in the internet marketing business, getting your product to the right buyer is primarily the first thing that you should consider. Do you just want to go ahead and flood email inboxes with information on your products or do you want to target a specific market where you know that most of these people will read all your emails and not just skim through it or worse delete them every time they get one from you?
There are two basic types of opt-in list. First is when a merchant includes an opt-in form in their site and collects information that way. Example of that are newsletters, where you, the merchant will send occasional information to the subscribers. Another type is a list purchased from a researcher or a company whose sole work is to collect information from willing buyers of the same products like the one you are promoting in your site.
Most marketers used both types. They have an opt-in form in their sites and they also purchased list of email addresses. As an internet marketer, your goal is to put your products or service at the hands of people who will most likely buy it. So why waste with random email list that have a response rate as low as 1% when you can purchase a list that has a 10% click through rates? It goes back again to the overrated reason of having no money while starting an online business.
There are actually a lot of opt-in email listservice providers that you can use which is reliable and the cost is based on your needs too. Several names that come to mind are Constant Contact, Vertical Response, iContact, Emma, Aweber and Get Response. I have tried some of them and each of them charged pretty much the same depending on the features that you are after.
While many people have questioned the effectiveness of this type of marketing due to the rapid increase in unsolicited mail in recent years, it still proves to be a very effective means of promotion on a budget.
My answer is generally, “You don’t!” You have to work for it to make it happen.
But, the truth is, there are a few ways to make money rather quickly and even as soon as today.
Here are just 5 of ways to make money online in no specific order…
1. Sell something on Ebay. It “almost” doesn’t matter what it is. Maybe it’s something old you have lying around the house. Heck as long as you’re honest and say what it is you’re selling, you can make money on there. There are people on Ebay right now selling, of all things, “Broken Cell Phones!” Yes people even buy broken stuff.
2. Blog for money. Blogging has become so popular and important in the eyes of the search engines that you can now get paid to, blah blah, I mean write about things you like, don’t like or stuff you know about. PayPerPost.com is the place to go.
3. Sell your services. With the sheer number of freelancer websites out there, if you have a skill someone needs, SELL IT!
4. Sell other peoples products. It’s called affiliate marketing and it’s a term you’ll hear bandied around the internet quite a bit. But… the fact is, affiliate marketing is growing in the billions of dollars of revenue and income made on the internet. Go to any major “affiliate network” or big ecommerce website like Target.com and you can find an affiliate signup link somewhere on the page. There, you sign up to become a reseller of their products and they give you a percentage of the sale.
You’ve just become their freelance or remote sales force. All you have to do is use online advertising methods such as Pay Per Click using Google Adwords or something similar and you can use it to sell other peoples’ products through your “affiliate link” by placing small “classified like” ads on their pay per click network. A person sees the ad, they click to the website you’re advertising and if they buy, you get paid! Even if you make as little as $50 a day, that’s a nice start and heck, it can pay your bills. Remember you have to invest money in your advertising but would you spend $200 a month to make $1,500? Of course you would!
5. Start your own website. This is probably the most difficult one of these but it really isn’t difficult once you know the steps you need to take in order to accomplish it. I can’t possibly explain them all in detail here but, I can give you a quick list.
* Get a domain name.
* Get a website hosting account.
* Get an Autoresponder. You will need one to collect the names and email addresses of your customers and/or visitors.
* Get an HTML editing software like Microsoft Frontpage or a free one like NVU
* Get FTP software. FTP means File Transfer Protocol and it is the best method to transfer files on to your website hosting account. These are files like webpages and such. Filezilla is a great free choice for the beginner.
* Get a way to process credit cards. You can start our with Paypal and even expand your business using all of their services. It’s free to join, fast and secure for you and your customers.
* Create a digital product, get the resale rights to one or sell a physical product. It really doesn’t matter as long as it’s something there is a need or a want for.
* Put up a page selling your product.
* Advertise and send traffic to your website.
* Collect your Money and follow-up with your customers!
I know that last one was a bit overly simplistic, but like I said, “It’s way too much to get into here.”
Keep in mind that these are just 5 among the dozens of other ways to make money online. Take action and change your life!
Lately I’ve been looking into more simple systems into making money online. The latest one I found, I cannot release until I get permission because it is a “By Invitation” program. (Sorry)
I’m researching more though… just one of the perks of “making it” on line. You get to discover lots of things you normally wouldn’t otherwise. I’ WILL let you know though.
Hey, I learned something else as well that I wouldn’t have otherwise…
“I came to the realization that after all the money I spent online to make it big… you know… all the wasted money I thought I spent… I would have actually spent over 100 and even 1,000 times more for a top level education and I wouldn’t be guaranteed a job OR the kind of income I now make! ”
I think that fact is pretty incredible, don’t you?
Tell me your thoughts in a comment below… I love hearing from you!
Some people find posting and participating in forums a strategy that’s boring and hardly ever use it, however, the huge traffic it can help generate is invaluable especially for newbies to the online world of marketing. In forums, people from all over the world can engage and interact in a conversation as a person asks questions and others react, further generating responses. If you want to guide visitors to your site at no monetary expense, try using forums and you’ll notice more guests signing in to your site.
There are several steps for you to take in order to use forums for your marketing needs. There are five main steps to go through and these are as follows:
Searching of forums. You need to search for forums that carry the topic that you are interested in. Find forums that are related to your website. Use keywords in searching for them and for sure, a lot of results will come up. Since there are numerous results, you might want to try to register to all of them or most of them as you want.
Prioritization of the forums. This step entails picking the cream of the crop out of your list of forums. Not all results that you found on search engines are accustomed to your needs. You need to select the forums that have more people interacting with each other and that is always active.
Registration. This is another tiring process because most forums need you to be a registered member before you can post topics or reply to existing topics of your choice. Being a registered member gives greater access to more posts some of which restricted to members only. You can include backlinks with your answers to guide interested people to your site and increase traffic to it. When you have more visitors, marketing your address becomes easier.
Introduction. To generate consistent traffic, make your introduction as appealing as possible but make sure what you say is true. Online guests are used to false claims and lures and can determine if you are only creating a false image.
Keep Being an Active Member. After registering and introducing yourself to the people in the forum, keep yourself active by posting comments and starting a new thread yourself. Never comment on certain issues where you lack substance to make useful contribution. You can pick topics related to your expertise and post answers or clarify doubts of other members. Always follow forum rules to have a good credential.
Forums create a sense of community where everyone’s opinion is open for others to criticize. And since people always wants to be in the know, they’ll jump on the bandwagon when they see a thread take off because everyone wants to share their opinions whether they know what they are talking about or not.
Using forums as a way to generate more traffic to your site requires time. However, the relationship it creates with your readers can produce a more substantial rate of success, one you’ve never imagined. With backlinks attached to your signature name, readers can instantly be guided to your site and thus increasing your traffic.
As lots of emarketing methods are growing, there is one who poses to be cheaper than traditional means for both the consumer and the marketer. Also easy enough for almost any age group to understand and get involved with is Mobile Marketing.
Mobile Marketing involves communicating with the consumer via cellular (or mobile) device, either to send a simple marketing message, to introduce them to a new audience participation-based campaign or to allow them to visit a mobile website.
Mobile connectivity not only enables people to connect to the Internet via a cellular telephone, PDA or other gadget, but also consolidates the different communication channels in a simple, yet effective, medium. Some of the tools used are Multimedia Messaging Services, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, Bluetooth, Wireless and Infrared, Mobile Internet and Social Media and other mobile applications.
Mobile marketing enables companies in many sectors such as travel and retail to send promotional messages and vouchers via Bluetooth and SMS for example. It is a direct, targeted approach to connecting with limitless clients. One of the reasons why businesses are experiencing great success with mobile marketing is because it features a fraction of the competition than other media-Internet and email tools are engrossed in a jam-packed and highly competitive environment.
What adds even more potency to this special type of marketing? It’s the only marketing media that reaches prospects and clients while they are on the go! Mobile marketing and text messages allow you to automatically update, announce, invite and communicate when you want and how you want!
Very few businesses are actually taking advantage of mobile marketing right now. That means you can get a gigantic head start by incorporating mobile marketing within your business today. Plus, you can easily integrate mobile marketing and text message marketing within any offline and online marketing campaign. Of course, this type of marketing is substantial enough to form a standalone marketing campaign.
If you’re questioning the type of potential you have with text message and mobile marketing then consider that there are 270 million mobile subscribers in the U.S. alone, and 91 percent of them are said to keep their phones within just a few feet of themselves 24 hours a day throughout the year! In addition, text message marketing has an incredible reach of almost 5 billion compared to Internet marketing’s reach of 1.7 billion.
Mobile Marketing is also considered a method for lucrative lead generation. Every time a prospect or customer opts into one of your text message offers (e.g. to get informational updates, coupons, discounts) that creates a lead. You now have the means to market to that person as much as you’d like. Take this opportunity to up sell, build belief in your business, provide additional value, increase attendance at events and just about anything else you can think of.
Text message marketing is like having hundreds of obliging little marketing assistants hustling around doing all the work for you. All you have to do is press a few buttons and you’ll have instantly reached out to your entire database of leads, customers and prospects-with a 90 percent success rate of being read! Build a herd and market like there’s no tomorrow.
There are dozens of modern way advertising on the Internet and that was spearheaded for the last six years or so with PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing. It is predominantly administered by Google Adwords. There are numerous PPC sites like Adbrite, Kontera, Infolinks, Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) and MSN’s Adcenter. There are more but it is Google Adwords that’s predominant when it comes to PPC.
The ads manifest as sets of words that have been pre-written by you and appear only on webpages where the content is relevant to what you’re selling based on the words you’ve chosen. Some Internet marketers have seen PPC (Pay Per Click) as a goldmine…but many others have felt they do not get good results, or could do much better.
Then came PPV (Pay Per View) marketing, Instead of costing a few bucks per clicked ad, PPV Marketing costs you only pennies to make a far better ROI–and not just in terms of time spent, but clearly in terms of your bottom line, too. With a mere $1, PPV can send you 100 super targeted visitors, people just waiting to buy from you.
What’s more, you can forget all about needing to compose targeted ads, researching the ten thousand “hot tags” that are floating around and being used by everyone, and taking so many shots in the dark that don’t result in sales but do cost you money…those couple of bucks per click-through do add up quickly. Unlike PPC Marketing, PPV Marketing is almost risk-free. While an unsuccessful PPC campaign can cost you hundreds of dollars, an unsuccessful PPV Campaign won’t cost you more than a couple of bucks.
PPC and PPV differences
PPV refers “Pay Per View”. PPV is used for cost per view advertising or contextual advertising. You will get paid when any visitor opens your web site or blog o forum. Moreover, you will also get paid when the visitor clicks on ads within the text on your webpage or blog or forum.
While, PPC stands for “Pay Per Click”. When someone clicks on your ads of your website or blog or forum, you’ll get paid. But you won’t get paid even they visit your website or webpage.
Pay-per-click is loosing its popularity day by day and many publishers doesn’t suggest to use pay-per-click because of their bad experiences i.e. account freezing for invalid clicks. It’s also seen that many people earn more than $100 but their account is being disabled for some reasons.
“Keyword”, another factor of PPC is playing much for the earnings. Keywords may be expensive or inexpensive. If the keywords are expensive, those are going to the next page ads. It really breaks down the high expected earnings.
PPC ads are similar to Google AdSense ads and the format is quite common to all. As most visitors are quite familiar to these types of ads, now-a-days people are ignoring this type of ads.
For PPV, keyword has a lesser role. You don’t need to think about keyword the way you do with PPC and there is no effect of successive analyzing and deploying of keywords. But for PPC you must have to care about this.
For PPC, you see several ads. For example, if you are visiting a site and there is an ad of latest computer. Say, a visitor click on the ad and it redirects to a “non-working page” or “error 404 page” or other place which has no relevance to the ads. The visitor won’t like it and he or she click the back button of the browser and from that time never feel interest to click such type of ads. Thus you are loosing lots of visitors every moment if the ads are not properly working.
Throughout the discussion, it’s clear that PPV is always secure because it pays you when the visitors are on your web page or blog. PPC may offer high earnings but it’s not risk free. You may get earn much through PPC but you can’t tell the future of PPC. If the AdSense advertisers banned your account, you have not said regarding that issue. I think, if you can organize your articles / contents of your website or blog or forum, you can earn much every month through PPV.
Email Marketing is the use of email in marketing communications. People who are unfamiliar with email marketing often wonder what all the fuss is about. They thought that spam have killed email as a marketing vehicle. And another reason why they think it is outdated is because of the many clever ways that we can communicate online using blogs, Twitter, Facebook and all other social media sites.
Although there are a lot of strategies now for marketing, email marketingstill works because it allows targeting, it is data driven, it drives direct sales, it builds relationships, loyalty and trust and most of all it supports sales through other channels.
Modern email marketing services and solutions support database integration, segmentation and various other tricks and techniques for improving the targeting of outgoing messages. Advanced methods generate on-the-fly emails customized down to an individual recipient basis.
And every email campaign you send out generates a heap of actionable data you can use to refine your approach and messages.
Email promotions and offers generate immediate action: sales, downloads, inquiries, registrations, etc. Informative email newsletters and other emails send people to offline stores and events, prepare the way for catalogs, build awareness, contribute to branding, strengthen relationships, encourage trust and cement loyalty.
Convinced? But don’t get carried away…
Just like trees only bears fruit if managed properly, so is with email marketing. We know it works but you have to get the basics right. The basics of building a list of people who want to hear from you, crafting a message and ensuring the emails get through to those on that list. And when you have the basics right, there’s a whole spectrum of more sophisticated tactics you can employ to drive further success.
Now, several marketers used a lot of forms of advertising and they believe that it is not worth it to use email marketing anymore because of spam. There have been numerous challengers to email marketing’s throne, not the least of which is social media. However, email is still a vibrant, growing medium that has a future for a number of reasons.
Many people are getting very frustrated by how hard it is for them to make decent sales online via email marketing. Are they doing something wrong or has things really become that hard? In reality it is a combination of several things.
First of all the way to make email marketing work has changed for the simple fact that many consumers are getting used to the way many online marketers email. Another thing is that too many marketers are putting their eggs in one basket, thinking that a big list is the key to online profits. Some are even blasting email after email promoting a certain product, while their email list is getting tired of them.
You have to avoid the things that everyone else is doing online in order to make email marketing work for you. Responsible email marketing is based on the idea of permission. This is a complex issue and the subject of intense debate in the marketing community.
Essentially, you need an email address owner’s permission before you can send them a commercial email. If you don’t have this permission, then the recipients of your mail may well regard your message as spam.
Email has been around almost since the advent of the Internet. It’s a staple of the marketing world and one of the most commonly used forms. It’s still effective, both from a cost and conversion standpoint. Marketers should bear in mind that email marketing can co-exist with any marketing channel and it can help leverage social media and vice versa. Consumers are not choosing one medium over the other; they are just utilizing more mediums.
So for me, email marketing is not dying….it’s simply going up and working with any other medium so it doesn’t have its own spotlight anymore though it is still working effectively.
An internet business is no different to a traditional retail business that we can see on the streets, in that it needs customers. A high street shop or retail store needs traffic in order to get people looking in their window so they can entice them in, the main difference online is the volume of traffic that can be achieved. Remember an internet business means that you have the potential to sell to anyone anywhere in the world that is if you choose the correct product or service.
Establishing your own site is not like what it used to be. There is thousands of competition that is all too willing to get a bigger share of the pie. Every scheme and method you can find to augment your sales would be very beneficial.
We have got to admit to ourselves. Most of us are into it for the money. We are not going to waste our time and effort just for the fun of it. Many sites would not wait until hell freezes over just to see their profits. While there are some who takes things lightly there are always those who would rather see profit in any given day.
It is common knowledge that without traffic we have no business. Like any business, if you don’t have customers, you don’t have sales. Traffic represents all the people that get a chance to see what you have to offer. The more people who see your products the more people there would be to buy them. Common sense, right?
Making Money with Traffic
The best and most proven system of increasing revenue from your traffic is to advertise. The internet generates hundreds of thousands of users daily. The vast majority of them are probing for information about something. Although a few are simply searching for basic information, there is also a fair share that is actually eager to buy something, something that they really need.
The internet has proven to be a very reliable source in finding what was deemed to be a very unsearchable product. The internet has made the world a smaller place; you can advertise a product from the depths of the other side of the world and still find a buyer from the opposite side.
Generating traffic is not an easy task. You have to contend with a great number of sites to generate a good number of traffic flows. But if done successfully this could open up a Pandora’s Box of possibilities. One of the benefits is monetizing your traffic flow.
Advertising is the one of the best ways to create revenue; with a clever marketing plan you can use your traffic flow to give you a head start.
Now that you have a healthy flow of traffic you should now be experiencing a fair amount of interested customers, customers that are content to put money into your bank account. Additionally, these customers are also traffic that can be redirected to sponsored links that are eager to pay you for a larger slice of the traffic that you already have generated.
Another system of monetizing your traffic is the well-liked affiliate programs. This is the current favorite for new online entrepreneurs simply because it is the easiest and the most commonly advertised. Try searching in Google about it and it’ll return millions of results! You can join up with established websites and online companies and monetize your traffic by having a proportion of sales generated by traffic redirected from your site.
The principal concept is traffic generated from your website is invited to go to another website that can offer a niche product that you do not own. A number of programs can track activity and produce records of sales or refunds.
If you do not own a website, there is another way of using Affiliate Programs. Just join an affiliated website, the website owner will still provide you with a coded link which you can promote by any other means such as email, pay-per-click, traffic exchange programs and online free classified sites.
There are so many ways and methods to monetize your traffic. All it takes is a bit of hard work and the desire to successfully launch a profit-earning site. Even back-end sales is how most Internet millionaires took their business to another level so now you should learn what you can from the millionaires all about back-end sales. Once you see how this amazing concept works and then put it into action, you will never look back.
How to find hot selling digital products in general is quite a daunting, if not, a mind boggling task. Finding a good choice of idea or product is always accompanied by interfacing the demand for the digital product in the current market and the level of competition or market share that the product will be having in the long run.
For reasons of more than one, there are a lot of probable digitalproducts that you think you may sell, which however may not be as high demand as you think. So I suggest, work from common sense to research. Why? Common sense indicates you sell digital products that are not only functional but are in demand in the present times.
From then on, move aside common sense and narrow your list to research. You have to know the benefits of that particular good or service in order to market it to your target. You just don’t dive in blue water just because you assume its deep enough. You have to know facts and details.
There are all kinds of twists along the road that may lead you to think you have a high-demand idea. We must be able to understand and satisfy the need, wants and expectations of our customers on a certain digital product that they’re trying to buy. Needs are the basic reasons or the minimum requirements consumers are looking for in a product or service. They are called the qualifying or “gatekeeper” dimensions in a purchase. Wants are the determining dimensions among many choices. Expectations, on the other hand, are values or intangibles associated with a product or service.
Then further into research, you look for reliable portal or online marketplaces that give opportunities to newbie or fresh entrepreneur like you. Be sure to look for those with a reliable reputation as some could sniggle their way and work holes into your pockets.
The most popular and decent one I’ve heard of is Clickbank. There are others but the most popular marketplace of digital products is Clickbank. (It’s what I am using too!) A must-do before engaging in selling your products, you have to know the terms and conditions attached. You can work your way into adding marketing tools like adwords by Google for example among with so many others.
It may help also to put in feedback and suggestions forms. This is a healthy way of tracking what area needs to improve on and that which market needs a particular good or service. Having a feedback and suggestion form creates an interaction between your customer and you enabling you to know what goods or services is selling fast or if there is a particular digital product that is needed by a specific market.
The key is to keep the interest of the customer. Products like goods and services need to be functional, in sync with the current times and should be interesting for it to sell hot like pancakes.
Another point to consider is the market share. Market share or level of competition means the ratio of your brand sales versus the total market sales. While companies would naturally define its target competitors, it is actually the consumers who ultimately decide the competitive frame, or the list related digital products or services that consumers consider when exercising their purchasing power.
We must therefore choose the market segment where we can have a potential leadership or at least a strong challenger role. Because the overriding objective of getting into this business is not just to satisfy the needs and wants of our customers but to do so profitably better than his competition. Otherwise, our competition will end up satisfying the customers better than our own interest.
We must also learn how others are advertising those digital products. If there are a good number of them doing so, it may mean that it’s a good product to get into. Coming to the last phase of the process is analyzing and evaluating all the information that has been collected. We have to look at all of the data we have collected on demand, competition, and advertising, and make decision as how they all balance out.
Of course, price should be worth it. Price can be subjective, but as an online consumer like me I would always go for a bargain. So to keep it best, keep your prices reasonable.
There are over a million net browsers every single day. The only thing is that you need to catch their interest, demands and the price right. Just by learning the basics, with discipline and perseverance added with honesty and of course a great and in demand digital productthen you could be a fast earning businessman in no time.
Today, I wanted to go over the actual process of how to cultivate a list.
You see most people have a warped concept of what list cultivation actually is.
In fact many of the gurus out there actually don’t even know how to do this themselves.
After speaking with quite a few of these people and my mentors I realized soon enough that most of these so-called gurus never really learned how to actually cultivate a list.
That’s probably the reason why many of these gurus fail to ever successfully build a long-lasting Internet business.
Here’s what I mean…
Most of these guys and maybe this includes you, (don’t be ofended though) understand how to actually build a list – what they don’t understand is how to make that list actually “like” and apprediate them.
Think about this… after a person opts in and subscribe to your newsletter and actually makes the decision that they want your offer, most people tend to send them an e-mail a day for about seven days.
That’s nice but...
What they fail to realize is that human beings take about 45 days of consistent activity to form a habit.
So in other words… they have not formed a habit of actually accepting you into their lives and into their day to day lifestyle.
What that means is that you can send them an e-mail, but if they’ve never built the habit of opening your e-mails and accepting you into their life, you’ll never build that relationship with that person after they opt into your offer.
One of the other purposes of list cultivation is the simple principle of reciprocity. The principle of reciprocity is actually a very powerful human emotional trigger. This trigger almost forces you to give back to those that give to you.
In fact, many religion’s worshiper recruiters use this extremely well.
Have you seen this principle triggered and used by yourself?
This is the primary reason why many corporations and government offices do not allow their employees to accept gifts from outside parties or clients. The principle of reciprocity is so powerful that it is one of the primary reasons why people feel compelled to show unreasonable favoritism to those who have given them gifts… although inside they feel it is unfair.
I am NOT saying that you should cultivate your list in a way that forces them to give you money for just about any garbage product you find; I DO expect that you will use this knowledge in a ethical manner. Trust me, there is usually hell to pay when people figure that out that someone is taking advantage of them.
So here’s how to cultivate a list after they accept your initial offer in how to build a long-term relationship with people who actually want to hear from you and appreciate what you have to say…
1. Once they opt in to give them a high-quality free report or some form of high-quality content. This can be either your free report or some kind of free audio or video that helps them to solve the problem they are looking to resolve.
2. Every other day for the next 45 days you should send your new e-mail subscriber some form of quality content or about their particular topic of interest. What this does is it helps them to realize that you actually do want to help them solve their problem. When your subscribers feel that you’re actually giving them something of value they will not have a problem opening your e-mails and giving you their money… or should we say their hard-earned money (which many of those gurus out there don’t care about)… in return for your solution.
Just remember that people work for their money, so you should have respect for it.
3. Whether you’re an affiliate marketer or you are a product owner, you can freely space offers between the days of content. For example: on day one you give them the actual item they requested when they decided to accept your offer. On day two you begin to ask them how they liked the content and also recommend certain sections all of your content for them to refer back to and why it is important for them to apply or to read that content.
On day three you can freely begin giving quality articles or reference material related to the content they receive when they signed up for your newsletter or offer. From then on every other day in between your content e-mails you can make an offer of some sort. This can be either an affiliate offer for a related product that you are promoting if you’re an affiliate marketer; or if your product owner you can promote your own product or products.
You should continue to do this for 30 to 45 days.
If creating content is a problem for you don’t worry about it. You can easily find the questions people are asking on forums related to your topic or you can simply go to his website like Ezinearticles.com and look for their hottest articles and base your content around those.
What starts to happen as you provide content and offers is your subscribers will feel comfortable and freely open your e-mails read your content and respond to your offers. In other words they will either click through on your offers and check out whatever affiliate offer it is that you’re promoting and either decide to buy the recommended offer OR they will buy your offer.
(Sidenote: Be sure to check out anything you recommend FIRST!)
Remember this… cultivation is not necessarily about trying to make people buy immediately is about building a long-term relationship and trust with your subscribers so that they actually feel and know that when it comes time to delivering content and real value you are the one they want to read and listen to.
Here’s the thing… when my mentors originally opened my eyes to the reality of what cultivation was – I soon understood exactly why I felt so strongly about them as my mentors as well as about quite a few other people in different topics of interest that I have.
One interesting topic I have a very very strong interest in is self-help. No we’re not talking about the the law of attraction gurus and that sort of stuff. What I am talking about is how people in the self-help industry tend to always give you some level of high-quality content that has the ability to help you.
As a result of this content we generally stay focused on what they have to say and follow through on what they ask us to do.
So basically to cultivate a list your only requirement is to… give something of value in your initial offer, give quality content at least every other day for 30 to 45 days, make recommendations and offers between your content days.
If you did nothing else (bare minimum stuff) and all you did was build your list through your initial offer and allow that lists follow through on your cultivation sequence which you will place in your auto responder, you will literally have autopilot income coming in to your bank account 24/7/365 like clockwork!
This is one of the ways I’ve been able build the kind of income that I now have.
PPV and other advertising methods have been VERY good to me but that is one-time income and I need to keep advertising in order to sustain it.
When you build a list and cultivate that list; no matter what industry it is; you now have the ability to make money on demand.
In my next installment I’ll discuss how to create backend offers for your new cultivated list.
This is not the same thing as making offers and between your content e-mails.
If you have questions regarding this post please feel free to leave your comments below…
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