It is a debatable point, but I know many online marketers who believe that of all the skills that are required for success on the net, the hardest to acquire is the ability to write powerful, effective sales copy from scratch.
Indeed, if this were not the case, then the stories of marketers who have paid five figure sums for one single sales page would not be quite so widely accepted as they are. However, the fact that the top people in online marketing are willing to spend this kind of money indicates how important it is to have a sales page that converts visitors into customers.
Of course, sales copywriting, creating promotional and advertising messages that sell, is nothing new.
Since mankind first stopped bartering and started using money so that sales became a part of everyday life for the very first time, there have always been people who have worked hard to improve their written marketing materials to increase their sales and therefore the revenues that those sales brought in.
And in many cases, what worked in copywriting terms all of those years ago is still remarkably relevant and effective today. Even though many online marketers seem to believe that conducting business on the net is completely different to business in the real world of ‘bricks and mortar’ based commerce in some way, the basic principles of writing powerful sales copy that were around 100 years ago still apply.
Creating effective sales copy is likely to be one of the key factors that dictates how successful your sales campaign will be.
At the same time, being aware that writing successful copy is not at all easy can make the whole idea of creating your own sales page appear extremely daunting.
Fortunately however, it does not have to be this way. Although starting from scratch with a blank monitor in front of you can be nerve racking, there are certain shortcuts that you can use to help you write effective sales copy quickly and efficiently, and you’re going to discover three such shortcuts in this manual.
I make no great claim for originality with these three ideas, because I have little doubt that they are ideas I have picked up from other people over the years. Nevertheless, they all work and especially if you have little experience of copywriting, they will give you a significant push in the right direction.
Archive for the ‘Getting Started’ Category
3 Simple Copywriting secrets – Intro…
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010Niche research to go…!
Saturday, April 17th, 2010If you have a problem coming up with fresh, new niche ideas for your online marketing from time to time, here’s the easy answer:
If you find this useful, why not help others by bookmarking it? Just click below (and don’t forget to comment either)…
New free moneymaking guide
Friday, April 16th, 2010As anyone who markets online knows, there are lots of different ways of pulling cash from the net. But the best method, the one through which the ‘gurus’ become gurus in the first place is by creating and selling your own information products.
This puts cash in your pocket for many reasons (as I hope to prove with a case study that I’m putting together right now).
First and most obviously, you have a product to sell. That’s cash source #1 right there.
Secondly, you add customers to a mailing list when they buy your product.
Take a little time to build up trust with them and you can recommend products and services which you can be pretty confident they will buy.
And as every experienced marketer knows, existing customers are always the easiest and most economical to sell to (every new customer costs you in both money and time terms), so these are ‘maximum profit’ sales too.
Thirdly, when you create your own products, you build your brand and authority in your market too. When prospects know your brand and recognize you as an expert, their resistance to buying from you is minimized.
I’m sure there are other ways that I’ve missed (if you can think of anything, please add your comments below) but these three give you an idea why when it comes to making the big ‘moolah’, creating our own product has to be the way to go.
But most marketers think that creating a product is difficult which is why I’ve just published a new guide called ‘Product Creation Essentials’ which you can download completely free.
This guide is designed to show anyone who has never created their own information product before everything you need to consider before and during the process of doing so.
It deals with every individual aspect of the process including research, creating and then marketing the product, highlighting many hurdles that beginners usually find alarmingly easy to run into!
If you have ever considered the possibility of creating your own information product, this is one not to miss. Even if you have not done so, the book is packed with background knowledge and concepts that cannot fail to help in your online marketing efforts.
To grab your free copy, click the following link:
http://stevecowan.com/recommends’FreePCE
And please add any comments, queries or questions you might have about this guide below this post.
Thanks…
Increase web site traffic – 21 easy ways for $0…
Thursday, July 30th, 20091. Write and submit articles to the article directories.
2. Leave comments on other people’s blogs with a backlink to your site.
3. Answer people’s questions on www.answers.yahoo.com.
4. Post in forums and have a link to your site in your signature.
5. Write a press release and submit it to www.PRWeb.com.
6. Advertise your website in the appropriate category on www.CraigsList.com.
7. Give an unbiased testimonial on a product/service that you have used in exchange for a backlink to your site.
8. Start a blog and submit it to the 100’s of free blog directories.
9. Manually submit your website to the major search engines.
10. Optimize each page of your website for a particular keyword or search phrase.
11. Add a link in your email signature to your website. It’s a free and easy way to get a little more traffic.
12. Make a custom 404 error page for your website redirecting people to your home page.
13. Use PPC search engine advertising.
14. Add a “bookmark this site” link to your webpages.
15. Have a tell-a-friend form on your site.
16. Send articles to ezine publishers that includes a link to your website.
17. Hold a crazy contest and make it go viral.
18. Give away a freebie (ebook, report, e-course) to keep people coming back to your site.
19. Add an RSS feed to your blog.
20. Submit your site to any related niche directories on the net.
21. Post information about any content you publish to social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon etc.
What happens in an economic depression – part 2
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009In the first part of ‘what happens in an economic depression’, I tried to suggest that in these extremely difficult times, many people are going to start trying to earn a living from the internet, primarily because there is less work and therefore less money flying around.
Hence, the first question that people who are thinking of earning a living online are going to ask is, ‘how do I do so?’. The simple answer is, by blogging.
Traditionally, if you want to generate an income from a blog, you would do so in one of two different ways.
Either you would feature paid advertising on your site (generally using Google AdSense) or by promoting someone else’s products as an affiliate.
However, I would suggest that neither of these solutions is going to be effective or profitable in the future, for several reasons.
Firstly, there is less money available to the businesses who were previously spending lots of money with Google, and it therefore stands to reason that there are going to be less companies advertising with the ‘big G’ in the future. Furthermore, one of the big bugbears of anyone who has ever used AdSense is that Google has steadfastly refused to tell you how much you will get paid for featuring their advertising on the site, or indeed, what percentage of the money they are paid ends up in your bank account.
Am I wrong in thinking that the percentage is likely to come down when Google see less and less people advertising? And when that happens, will you be any the wiser?
I believe that the answer to these questions is ‘yes’ and ‘no’, in this order.
Thus, if you are going to feature advertising on your blog as a way of making money, you really need to look at other advertising companies apart from Google, companies who offer paid advertising that is an awful lot more transparent than AdSense.
But, why depend on advertising in the first place? After all, by doing so, you are relying on other people (Google et al) to place advertising materials on your website, and then you are relying on your visitors to click on those ads. Granted, that is the very basis of PPC advertising, but it is a fact that the average net user is becoming increasingly ‘ad blind’. AdSense is almost everywhere nowadays, even featuring on the websites of the quality broadsheet newspapers so the average net user is nowadays bombarded with online advertising. Thus, they are becoming increasingly adept at ignoring it.
Then, you have the affiliate product option.
In this situation, you find a product or service created by an individual or company which you promote in exchange for a commission. The problem here is that the product or service you are promoting does not belong to you and you did not create it, so you have no guarantee of the quality of the product unless you buy it yourself.
As 99.9% of affiliate marketers don’t do so (if you bought every product you are thinking of promoting, you would probably spend more money than you generate from sales), there could plenty of refund requests, and again, you are relying on other people for the success of your business.
Add this to the fact that you only ever going to earn a percentage of the overall customer spend as your commission, and you again have to ask is this the best way of earning money online?
As far as I can see, neither of these traditional solutions is going to be the answer for how to make money through your own blog site in the future.
So, is there a better option?
The answer is, of course there is.
More on this next time…
What happens in an economic depression – Pt 1
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
Like me, I am guessing that most folks who are reading this are too young to remember the last great economic depression back at the end of the 1920’s which lasted pretty much throughout the 30s. But, it’s interesting that so many people are now searching online for information about what happens in an economic depression and how to survive a depression, although not perhaps that surprising.
There is little doubt that the world in general is in a financial mess, with big business shedding staff like there is no tomorrow (I suspect that for any companies, there won’t be!) and people all over who are really struggling.Whether what we are going through is truly a depression is open to debate, although if you accept the definition of the Great Depression as being an ‘economic crisis and period of low business activity in the U.S. and other countries’ from dictionary.com, it is hard to argue against it.
But, here’s the thing that I see.
As long as you have a computer and a net connection, there is no need to struggle. Indeed, rather than seeing this as bad times, I am certain that for many people out there, this is the point in their lives where they set off on a journey to true financial freedom.
What happens in an economic depression is that the go-getters get going.Rather than complaining about their lot, they start doing something to alter their position and situation, and unlike the 20s and 30s, your computer is all that you need in order to start doing something today.
Bloggers in particular are in a position to take the bull by the horns and really make a killing in these hard times. The thing is, even if times are as hard as they have ever been, it doesn’t take a great deal of money to get yourself set up your own internet business, and it is pretty much something that anyone can do.
So, rather than being a downer, I believe that for many people, what is happening in the world right now could represent a fantastic opportunity to do what they have always wanted to do. I guess that for most people, stepping away from the security of a job and a steady, guaranteed income is hard, but if your hand is forced and you need to look elsewhere to secure your future, starting your own online business is definitely one very good way of going about it.
But, having said all of this, I also believe that to make money in the future, bloggers are going to have to change their approach and tactics, because I am not sure that what has been working during the ‘good times’ is going to be quite so effective when money is a lot tighter. Nevertheless, that does not mean that you cannot start an online business, nor does it mean it cannot be successful either. And it still costs a lot less to get started online than it does in the real world.
Maybe you know all this already, and have been seriously thinking about starting your own online business for some time. If so, then all I can say is, stay tuned for the next installment…or even better, subscribe to my RSS feed, so I can send you the information as soon as it is available!
What happens in an economic depression and how do you survive a depression?
You finally launch yourself towards financial freedom, that’s what and how! More very soon….
New Years Giveaway – Take a look now!
Sunday, January 6th, 2008The number of seasonal “Giveaway” events was certainly up over the recent festive season, wasn’t it?
How many of them did you sign up for? Those that you did join, did you find much that you liked?
I must say that in the majority of cases, I was not overly impressed.
A lot of the products being given away were not particularly difficult to get hold of and I thought that a lot of the events themselves, especially the newer ones, were more ‘glitter and tinsel’ than substance.
One that I HAVE found worth looking at, however, is the excellent “New Years Giveaway” that is running from now until the end of January, and I would seriously recommend that you should take a look sooner rather than later.
There’s three hundred or so free gifts on offer and unlike most of the ‘festive season specials’ that I looked at, many of them are actually worth downloading. There are e-books, software programs, video and web authoring tools for everyone from the newest newbie to the most experienced, and (the thing that I most like),a lot of them are new to me too!
Now, you know and I know that the idea of these events is to allow the contributor to add your name to their mailing list, so I would recommend that you create a new gmail or yahoo email account for your sign-ups and that you only download that you can actually use. Downloading something that you ‘might’ use in the future is just cluttering up your disk space, trust me, because you will never use it!
Anyway, whatever your own experience of the recent glut of ‘givies’, you must take a peek at the New Years Giveaway now, if you have not already done so.
Improve Your Guarantee, Make More Sales!
Thursday, December 27th, 2007One of the simplest ways that I know of increasing sales is increasing your guarantee! Many marketers seem worried that by having a generous guarantee, people will take advantage of them, but in my experience that just does not happen, and, anyway, thinking like this is really missing the point.
Here’s an example. Everyone is doing a 30 day money back guarantee, so why don’t you do a 6 month guarantee?
A 6 month guarantee will almost certainly increase your conversions and your refunds will probably not increase a whole lot either.
I know that the longer and stronger the guarantee is, the more likely I am to pull out my wallet and let my credit card see the light of day, and I am fairly sure that I am not alone in this.
And in any event, we all know that there are many people who are serial refunders but they generally ask for their refund within the first few days anyway, and I think that most folks have better things to do with their lives than wait around 6 months to try and rip you off for a refund.
So, don’t be mean with your refunds policy. Be generous, and I am willing to bet that it will increase conversions and you will make much more money off of the extra conversions than you will lose in those handful of extra refunds.
$800k In One Week From Facebook?
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007A couple of days ago I was listening to an interview with some guys who run a leading PLR website and it struck me that the market for PLR products is now becoming a mature, grown up one!.
That is, whereas even six months ago, if you bought a PLR product that was what you got – the product alone. Now, you are far more likely to buy a ‘package’ in which you get everything that you need to start selling straight away, like ready made sales pages, graphics, squeeze pages and so on.
But, I guess that it is only sense that you would expect such quality to come at a price, so seeing these sites selling monthly memberships for $50-100 is not uncommon. It is good value, no doubt, but it is not cheap by any means.
So, here’s a deal that you should definitely be taking a look at.
Take a look at IM PLR Club or read on, and then look!
Now, I am going to begin the spiel with that dreadful ‘my good friend’ thing, but, in this case, it is actually true!
Anyway, one of the straightest guys I know in internet marketing, Ben Shaffer, has just launched his own PLR private members site, limited to only 250 people and (this is the kicker) the trial is only $1.00 and, if you decide to stick with it, then it’s a measly $20.00 a month (or only $12.00 per month if you pay in advance for a year)!
That is for a fully packaged, ready to sell product, the first one being all about Facebook, graphics, sales pages and squeeze page included. And it is good – like quality writing, obviously by someone who has more than a passing acquaintance with the English language and great graphics.
How do I know? Well, Ben told me!
No, seriously, I have read the book cover to cover, and it is well worth reading, because Facebook is not something I had even thought about marketing on or through before (which pretty much guarantees that no-one else has either) and it is very definitely not the same as MySpace.
But, if I told you that there is a worked example of how it is possible to earn $800k in one week with Facebook, then you’d be interested, right? Interested enough to spend $1.00 to find out more?
Now, there is no affiliate program (unless it’s a secret one) so I have nothing to gain here, but Ben is a friend and this is a top quality product at a ridiculous price, so get over there now and take a look.
And, if you like IM PLR Club, you can say thanks by leaving a comment here
10 More Simple Traffic Tips
Wednesday, December 12th, 200711. Add a link in your email signature to your website. It’s a free and easy way to get a little more traffic.
12. Make a custom 404 error page for your website redirecting people to your home page.
13. Use PPC search engine advertising.
14. Add a “bookmark this site” link to your webpages.
15. Have a tell-a-friend form on your site.
16. Send articles to ezine publishers that includes a link to your website.
17. Hold a crazy content and make it go viral.
18. Give away a freebie (ebook, report, e-course) to keep people coming back to your site.
19. Add an RSS feed to your blog.
20. Submit your site to any related niche directories on the net.
And, in case you are wondering about what happened to #1-10, you will find them HERE