Becoming a good salesperson

As would be expected of any good salesperson, the first thing I had to do when I was learning the ropes of copywriting was to get to know the product that I would be selling and the market I would be selling it to.  When I say “knowing,” it goes beyond merely gaining a basic familiarity.

Why?  A basic principle of consumerism and marketing is that in order to sell, you need to know your product-—and know it well.

Let’s say that I’m selling a brand of shampoo.  If all I know about my product is that it is meant for cleansing the hair, then I would have little to say about the benefits you can get from using it. If this were the case, my income will be solely dependent on luck; the chance, perhaps, that a thousand people with dirty hair will come across my website.

But if I am well-informed with regard to the ingredients used as well as the people I am targeting to sell my shampoo, I can make recommendations, such as which one is best for those with oily scalps or which variants work best with certain hair types.  What significance does this have?  I have a better chance of turning even “No, thanks” into an “Okay, maybe I’ll take one.”

For me—-and almost every other person will agree—-there is no better way of knowing a product than using it myself.  Beyond sales ethics, I think that marketing a product you have not even tried will make the work seem more complicated than it really is.  Companies do product tests and restaurants do taste tests before releasing their goods into the market. And why shouldn’t you do the same thing and check the product out before telling the whole blogosphere about it?

When I do use a product, I don’t expect to discover every little thing about it, but I always try to keep my perspective the same as that of any consumer.  The first time I tried this approach, I created a checklist of basic questions about the product that I, as a consumer, felt that I should find the answers to.  The list I came up with contained the following questions:

• What is it for?
• How does it work?
• What benefit will I get from it?
• Will it work?
• What makes it different from other products/brands?
• How much does it cost?
• What options are there for payment and delivery?
• Is there a money-back guarantee?
• How do I get in touch with Customer Support?

I often realize that the more I see myself as the buyer, the more questions I can think of.  Returning to my role as the promoter/seller, I try to answer all the questions based on my personal experience of using the product.  In some cases, I try to research the product over the Internet.  This is especially helpful when I have no means of contacting my client for any information other than what is written on the copywriting job description.  In particular, I look for blogs or forums where people may have written what they like or don’t like about the product.  This way, I’ll know how to highlight the product’s strengths.

Having good product knowledge is crucial in building a copywriter’s credibility and confidence.  However, without knowing how to connect to your target audience or market, product mastery will seem unimportant.

Before I can establish rapport with my market, I have to know who they are. In sales and marketing, demographics are important.  To come up with a good target market profile, your questions should include the following:

• Who is the target market?
• What age, gender, and income group are they?
• Who will benefit most from it? Why and how?

From the profile created through answering these questions I can figure out how important the price factor is in closing a sale and how much time these people can possibly spare in reading copy.  Knowing your market means identifying their lifestyle needs, so you will know what approach to use.  Remember: people will hardly give you the time of day, unless you can tell them right away what’s in it for them.

When I use the inverted pyramid style of writing, I group my article into three main parts: the main point, details, and the least important information.  It is a commonly-used template for news articles and press releases, memos, articles, and essays, but you can also use this template when making your sales letter or any other kind of web marketing copy.

This style of writing is useful in writing meta descriptions, a good example of which is Google Snippets, since Google displays meta descriptions verbatim according to how they are written in the meta description tag.  The pyramid approach helps website owners like me increase traffic to their sites apart from writing convincing sales copies to promote or sell products online.

Why the inverted pyramid works

The main reason this style of copywriting is effective is because most people using the Internet as their source of information do not have time to read through page-long descriptions of products.  Putting all the important information–the what, where, when and the who-—in the first paragraph is enough to give them an overview of what the entire article or sales letter is about.  As long as you make the first few sentences interesting enough, you can use it to lure the reader into finishing the whole article.  Even if the reader has no intention from the outset of finishing my article, I make sure that they will at least walk away with the most important information it contains by placing such information at the top.

Pros and cons of using the inverted pyramid

While the inverted pyramid is considered the best writing style for giving all the facts in one quick serving, it also has its share of critics.  Some say that it is outdated, boring, and an artless form of writing.  Most authors say that the pyramid is the anti-story, and it deprives the reader of an exciting climax and a satisfying conclusion because it does not follow the traditional beginning, middle, and end sequence of traditional storytelling.  In short, the inverted pyramid strips the story to the bare bones and robs it of the emotional dynamic  that most people look for in a story or an essay.

However, most readers, I believe, appreciate the concise nature of the inverted pyramid. Why? Because online readers are not online to read.  In most cases, they are online to browse or shop, and only a rare few are there to read anything lengthy down to the very last letter.  Few online readers ever scroll down below the fold.  In most cases, they read only the top of the page, which makes the inverted pyramid style the perfect choice for Internet users.  Its structure also makes it perfect for online news articles that are laid out according to the classic method seen in traditional printed newspapers.  It also helps writers avoid writing overly-long articles.

The inverted pyramid and marketing copy

If you are making copy for your product, it is easy to use this template as the base.  The simplest way would be to start with the most important feature about your product or service, followed by an explanation of the benefits of the product.  Follow this up with the second most important feature of your product, its benefits, and so on.  Another alternative would be to state all the important features in the first paragraph and elaborate on these as you go down.  Usually background facts are placed on the last portion of the article.

How to avoid boring copy using the inverted pyramid

While being criticized as an artless form of writing devoid of emotion, you can avoid writing boring copy using such techniques as:

• using exclamation points to drive home the intended message
• using different fonts and sizes to make the sales copy more interesting to read
• use shorter lines to make the copy more readable
• avoiding long paragraphs and
• using only everyday words–avoid jargon

When it comes to using the inverted pyramid for copywriting, you have the advantage of being able to stop anywhere because all the important information has already been shared at the start of the article. However, this does not mean that you can do away with good description and explanation.  If you want to produce good copy, providing all the needed information along with thorough and clear description is always important.

What makes a good testimonial?

Many testimonials are good in themselves but lose their effectiveness due to poor placement in the article, the webpage, or the sales letter. A good testimonial must hit the sweet spot in terms of placement and good use of language or grammar without sounding contrived or obviously fake. Based on experience, I can say that the best testimonials are those that come with pictures of the writer and possibly an email address or a website through which the maker of the testimonial can be contacted for more information. You can’t expect potential customers to rely on your word alone or just believe something positive that has been said about your service. Some will actually verify claims, and if the claims turn out to be false the knock-on effect can be very negative and damaging.

How can I get testimonials?

If you have a good online social network, whether through your blog or your website, you can get testimonials from loyal followers or from customers with whom you have done business in the past. You can ask for a testimonial in exchange for links or a reciprocal testimonial from yourself, especially from customers who trust you with their business.

As most consumers tend to trust testimonials they know they can verify, you will gain more credibility points if your testimonials contain pictures and contact addresses. You will need to ask for permission from the maker of the testimonial for these, but most will usually oblige, especially if you offer to do the same for them.

How can you use testimonials effectively?

There are several factors to consider and test when attempting to maximize the effectiveness of your testimonials, from finding the most strategically effective locations to use them in your page or sales letter to using the right size, font, and color to grab maximum attention.

First though, make sure your testimonials sound professional and give off no scent of being contrived or manufactured. If you are asking for testimonials from a select group of clients, the best thing to do is use the testimonials in the way they came in, without doing any editing, whether it concerns grammar or the content of the testimonial. Testimonials coming from genuine customers usually sound natural and “unprocessed.”

I daresay that more is not necessarily better when it comes to testimonials. Choose the testimonial that sounds most natural and position it in an optimal location on your webpage or blog. In most cases, you can place the best testimonial on top of the sales page, in a larger font than the rest to grab more attention easily. I usually spread out several other testimonials in between paragraphs to break up the monotony.

An effective technique is to write the testimonials in a larger font than the rest of the paragraph so that they stand out, even though they are embedded in the paragraph. The reason you should only choose the best ones to post in your sales page or website is that online most customers only skim the tops of pages and refrain from reading the smaller print.

Another good way to make portions of the testimonials stand out is to underline the important parts or use boldface. A common example is writing slashed-off prices or special offers in bold, larger, or red letters while keeping the rest in standard black in a generic font. The big, bold, and red letters can easily grab keep readers’ attention if what you are offering is interesting enough.

If you want to show off the rest of the testimonials from loyal customers, you can place them in one corner of your page. However, reserve your best testimonials for your sales pages and your headers.

Should you fake testimonials?

One drawback to using testimonials is that they can easily be faked. It is easy to write a testimonial singing the praises to your product, attach a fictional name, and post it on your site or slap it on your sales letter. But if you want to develop a reputation as an honest online merchant, refrain from using fake testimonials and instead rely on goodwill contributions from customers who really like you. If you have no testimonials to speak of, this is one thing you can use to motivate yourself into giving the best quality service you can provide so that you can easily ask your customers to spread a good word or two about you and your service. All it really takes is one confirmation that your testimonials are fake for all your customers to lose respect for you, and decide to take their business somewhere else.

Why write in a conversational tone?

Extensive and intensive research bears out the truth of the statement that online readers prefer a conversational tone to a formal one. When it comes to web marketing and creating engaging copy, writing as if you’re personally talking to your customer is therefore essential. Writing in a conversational tone makes the writer or the seller appear casual and approachable. A conversational tone will make it easier for you to build rapport with your online customers.

A piece that is written in an informal and conversational tone helps readers to feel at ease and relaxed, making them able to focus more on what they are reading. Very few people revel at the sight of a well-written academic paper–the rest of us usually cringe and move on to look for lighter fare. A conversational piece is easy on the eyes and the brain, and we can be sure that it will accommodate the short attention spans for which the inhabitants of the web are notorious.

Writing as you speak is especially important if you are trying to convince someone to buy a product or avail of a service. When the
reader is at ease and feels like he or she has found a good buddy in you, it makes selling your goods to him or her easier.

Have you ever noticed that you remember more of the details of a book or a movie that you really liked and were emotionally engaged in, compared to the information contained in that History reading assignment which you desperately tried to memorize? This is because you focused your attention only on the book, instead of on the act of memorizing details.

The basics of writing conversationally

There are a few handy things to remember when writing conversational pieces for online publishing. If you are a newbie to writing for the web, start by reading blogs and other websites that are written in a conversational tone. Magazine articles and newspaper columns that use this style of writing are also good general sources of ideas and positive examples of how to write in a conversational style.

Use contractions

When writing for the web, I suggest using contractions. Contractions are a no-no in academic and formal papers, but are a familiar feature of everyday conversation.

Bend some rules of grammar

Formal pieces require a strict and proper use of grammar in order to be acceptable. One can sometimes bend some grammatical rules when writing conversational pieces. No one pays much attention to grammar when talking to a neighbor or a friend. For example, ending sentences with prepositions and starting sentences with words such as “but” and “and” are acceptable in conversational writing, because this is how people usually talk in casual settings.

Talk to your reader directly

A good tip is to write while imagining that you are talking to someone you know. Most writers think of an “ideal” reader as they write, so they can write a piece that can be read by the reader in mind. When it comes to writing conversational pieces, I imagine that I am talking to my friends, my sister, anyone whom I see every day. I use the same tone of voice in the piece I am writing. This approach will help you develop a strong conversational voice and avoid you “accidentally” coming up with a formal piece. No one ever uses a formal style of writing when talking to a best friend or a family member.

Read your piece aloud

Reading your piece out loud is a good way to listen to it and get a feel for the “flow” of words from one paragraph to the next. If you can read your article and hear yourself talking to someone you know in an informal and casual way, then you are good to go. Reading a portion out loud is a good tip, especially if you are not sure if that portion captures the conversational tone of voice that you want.

Edit as necessary

Mozart aside, no piece is perfect on the first try. After reading your piece out loud, edit any sections that sounds stiff or unnatural. Editing is important not only when you’re trying to capture a certain tone in an article, but also generally in terms of establishing a professional image for yourself online. Sharp and well-written articles will help you to appear reliable, competent, and like someone whom anyone can feel safe doing business with.

A technique that works

This method has been proven to work in web copy written for products ranging from video tutorials and software to e-books and diet programs. By using a question that strikes directly at the thoughts and the emotions of readers, you are able to steal a few seconds of their time which you can use to expound on the benefits of the product.

When you ask an intriguing question, your readers’ minds will feel compelled to find the answer to that question. Why? Because we as human beings have been hard-wired to respond in this way. It is believed that when a person is asked a question, it opens a “loop” in the brain that can only be closed by finding the answer. If left open, the person feels a form of mental (and sometimes even physical) discomfort. You’ve probably experienced this when you’re trying hard to remember something that you know you once knew—say the name of that Japanese restaurant you took your business partners to five years ago.

The right way to ask questions

While asking questions has been discovered to be really effective in creating headlines, it must be done in the right way in order to get the desired response. Here are some suggestions to help guide you to ask the right kind of questions.

Make your questions thought-provoking

“How Did I Turn $1 Into $100?” and “How Do You Know For Sure When Somebody is Hiding Something From You?” are examples of thought-provoking questions. These questions will arouse most readers’ curiosity. The first question has been used to promote an Internet marketing product, while the second has been used in offers for lie detection and investigative services.

By using questions of this kind, you are able to influence readers to stay longer. However, simply keeping them on your page doesn’t guarantee they will take your offer. You have to be sure that the rest of the text on the page is able to sell the benefits of your product effectively so that page views are converted into sales.

Use rhetorical questions

It can be a good idea to use a rhetorical question as a headline. Examples of these kinds of questions include “Would you like to double your monthly income?” “Would you like to lose weight without exercise, diet, or pills?” and “Do you want free information on how you can retire early?” These kinds of rhetorical questions are designed to get a “yes” from the reader who will then read on to find out how these rhetorically-stated goals can be achieved.

Tip: Rhetorical questions are best used to introduce the benefits of a product. Instead of asking, “Do you want to learn how to sell products online?” you should say something like, “Do you want to know how to earn four-figures a week through affiliate marketing?”

Try to appeal to readers’ emotions

Your questions ought to speak to the most common reasons that people actually purchase the product. This is the key to using questions in headlines, especially rhetorical questions.

Another form of emotional questioning that you might use is one that appeals directly to a reader’s fears. The headline “Do You Make These Costly Internet Marketing Mistakes?” will make a reader want to read on so that he or she can learn how to avoid making such mistakes. Such a headline is almost guaranteed to snatch the attention of both neophyte and experienced Internet marketers.

Choose questions that are relevant to the reader

Remember that you have to ask questions that are relevant to your reader. If you ask questions such as “Have you seen our new location?” “Do you know what I use on my face?” or “Have you read our latest blog post?” most readers will not be interested in learning what the answer is, unless perhaps you are some major celebrity. You have given your reader no reason to care about the answer to such questions and “who cares?” will probably be the reply as she clicks the X and leaves your page.

When is asking questions inappropriate?

Although there are many occasions in which “question” headlines may be used, you should be careful not to overuse them.

For example, it is a bad idea to use question headlines to structure your sales page. Instead of, for example, “What are the advantages of this product over another product?” “How much does the program cost?” and “Where is this company located?” it would be better to use subheadings such as “Advantages of this product over product B,” “Program Fees,” and “Company Location.”

If you raise a question, even a rhetorical question, it is also necessary for you to quickly move to answer it in the next portion of your sales page. If you asked, “Do you want to earn $100 in 24 hours?” in your headline, don’t wait long to start explaining to your reader how your program is going to help your reader to achieve that.

Of course, more generally, just about anything in excess isn’t a good idea. But with just the right amount of questioning, you are well on your way to creating a great, effective sales page.

If it were easy, everyone would be able to make money blogging, but the truth is that to make money blogging is not easy. It’s a process that takes time and energy.

But, you CAN make money blogging. I’m doing it and so are plenty of other people. The top 100 bloggers are earning six digit incomes from blogging and most of them are more than happy to share the secrets with you. Just like I am doing now.

Since I started blogging in 2001, I’ve made a lot of money at it. Suffice to say that I’ve paid for my house, paid for travels to more than 20 countries, and made a lot of mistakes.

Here are the ten best lessons I’ve learned:

1. Domains matter. SEO is not so much a science as a lot of guesswork. One thing I’ve learned is that no matter what anyone says, a domain that contains keywords about your topic makes a difference. My domain for this site is not good, in fact, it sucks. To shortcut your way to lots of traffic and pagerank, get a domain that sums up your topic. A unique short word might seem like a good idea but a better idea would be a longer domain full of keywords.

   Not NewsNotion.com but instead BloggerMoneyPro.com, maybe someday I’ll move this, it would be a smart move.

2. Tons of content and rich keywords. Most of the money I’ve made has been through having keywords that advertisers pay for, so while it might seem like a good idea to write about bums, bums don’t have money so a better keyword to use would be luxury watches or real estate investment. You can write these into your posts if you are creative. A solid word combo like asbestos lawyer is much better than something like beer can.
3. Find a theme that suits your site. If you want to look like a circus or a flower shop, you will not have a great personal injury lawyer blog.
4. Maximize your use of plugins. Plugins add functionality to your site, they make it more user friendly, and sometimes they make your site look like garbage…be careful with this one.
5. To make money blogging you need to find a way to make money blogging. Research whether affiliates, contextual ads, or actual product sales are the best way for you to make money. If you have a craft site, you can probably sell craft supplies but you may not do so well with laptops and Kindles.
6. Add new content as often as possible. The more words and pages you have, the more content you have to sell. Each word is a potential big money maker for your blog. To make money blogging you need to be prolific and creative.
7. Bring traffic. No matter what they say about baseball fields, if you build a blog, they may not come. You need to find your readers and bring them to you. Become active in forums, participate on similar blogs by commenting, guest blog, and if you have to, pay someone to bring you traffic through advertising, links, or reviews.
8. To make money blogging you need more than one person. A blog is about the people who write it and the people who read it. Never forget that when you write something you are making an agreement to the reader “I will write things you will enjoy reading, as long as you read it.” Break that agreement and you will lose readers. Period.
9. Blogging is about people. If people want to read a technical manual about social engineering, they probably won’t go to a blog. People go to blog because they are extensions of people. Don’t be scared to share the person you are with your readers.
10. Tricks and scams are short term ways to make money blogging. If you want to make money blogging consistently and for a long period of time, stay away from any sort of tricks and scams. Part of the reason people come to your blog is because they trust you, when you pull bullshit tricks and scams, you violate that trust. If you want to make money blogging, do it in a way you can feel good about. Maybe all those get rich quick schemers make money blogging about bullshit, but let’s face it, they all deserve to eat dirt.

That’s it. Dig around on NewsNotion for more specific tips, but even if you don’t, if you follow these ten easy lessons, you will make money blogging. I’m sure of it.

All the best,

R.W. Jackson




]]> http://www.needmoney.com/2009/09/making-money-blogging-10-easy-lessons/feed/ 27 http://www.needmoney.com/2009/09/making-money-blogging-10-easy-lessons/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/needmoney/ufju/~3/nMZ3zmfGOJ4/ http://www.needmoney.com/2009/09/an-introduction-to-crafting-headlines/#comments Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:13:03 +0000 admin http://www.needmoney.com/?p=323 The headline of your ad or your blog article is the first thing your prospect will read. A well-crafted headline will draw the attention of readers and make them want to engage with the rest of the text. On the other hand, a boring and unappealing headline will cause the reader to leave your webpage seconds after opening it.

From personal experience, I can state that creating good headlines is no easy task. Large Internet marketing firms hire the services of professional web copywriters and pay them thousands of dollars just to have them write sales pages with headlines that produce good conversion rates. When you’re just beginning to explore the field of Internet marketing you’re probably not going to have that kind of money to throw around—but don’t despair! You can create stimulating, motivating headlines yourself, without too much training or effort. In this article I will give you a list of the headline-crafting rules that professional web copywriters follow.



The most common approaches to writing headlines

The direct approach

Just state in your headline, succinctly, what the rest of the article is about. For example, if you are offering a discount for an e-book on blog creation, your headline might read “Only for Today: Blogging Guru E-book at 30% off”. (For another example, see the headline of this article. ;>)



The indirect approach

This approach requires more creativity. You may wish to make a play on words to intrigue the reader enough to continue. For example, a headline such as “Sleep Soundly Tonight” may lead your reader to assume that you are going to talk about food, herbs, or some special pillow, when your product is actually software to protect one’s website from DDoS attacks.



The newsy approach

The news headline is similar to a direct headline in that both are direct and to the point. The main difference is that the former is used to reference events or products featured in the article in a “breaking news” sort of style. “Microsoft Internet Explorer 8: Latest Updates Cause Headaches for IT Industry” as a headline for an article promoting software which enforces CSS cross-compatibility is an example of this style of headline.



The how-to approach

The how-to approach to headline creation is another kind of “direct” headline style. It is often as simple as beginning the headline with “How To,” and following it with the features or benefits of reading the article/ buying the product. This approach is used by many copywriters and is believed to be one of the most effective kinds of headlines. A good example of this style of headline might be “How To Lose 10 Pounds in 10 Days.”



The questioning approach

In order to capture the attention of the reader, you can use a question in your headline. This will encourage your prospect to discover the answer by reading the rest of the article. For example, the headline “Do You Really Need to Hire an Expensive Copywriter?” will encourage a person to read on to find out what other options are available to them.

Another way of using questions in your headline is to make the headline a rhetorical question that the reader will most certainly say “yes” to. A good example is “Do You Want to Earn Five-Figures Monthly through Affiliate Marketing?”



The “reasons” approach

This is usually used if you have an article that uses a list to format its content. For example, the headline “Ten Reasons Why Wordpress is Better than Blogger” will encourage surfers to read the whole of your article.



The command approach

This uses neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) techniques that attempt to plant in a reader’s mind what you would like him or her to do. By saying “Grab this Limited Time Offer Today,” the reader will be compelled to find out what the offer is about and hopefully make it more likely that they will purchase your product.



The testimonial approach

Name-dropping isn’t only a way to attempt to boost your social status, it’s also useful in online marketing. If someone reads the headline “I wish I had this product when I was just starting – [name of a well-known Internet marketing Guru goes here]” readers will surely want to know why this guru endorses your product, and will be impressed by the fact that he or she does. You should at least manage to grab the reader’s attention so you can continue to promote the product–the guru’s testimonial might even be enough to convince your prospect to buy your product outright.



Common pitfalls of headline creation.

Do not be ambiguous.

While wordplay is sometimes effective in headlines, make sure that subsequent statements quickly clarify what the customer is getting. Remember that you only have a few seconds to grab the reader’s attention. If you confuse your readers during those few seconds, they will leave.



Sell the benefit, not the feature.

Every good salesperson knows this rule. It’s a rule that also holds true for crafting a headline that sells. Since you do not have an actual salesperson online, your webpage acts as your salesperson. Instead of saying something like “Do you want to learn ad copywriting?” in a headline (speaking to a feature) it is better to say something more like “Do you want to save thousands of dollars on ad copywriting fees?” (speaking to a benefit.)



Use the right keywords.

For anything you’re pushing there is likely a number of other people out there online who are selling similar products. To give your headline the best chance of pushing your sales page to the first page of the search engines, be sure to sprinkle your headline with relevant keywords.


Professional copywriters hone their craft by continuously writing copy, testing the copy, saving what works and throwing out what doesn’t. While you may not be a professional copywriter (yet!), you can write your own ads by observing how the experts do it, and learning from their examples.




]]> http://www.needmoney.com/2009/09/an-introduction-to-crafting-headlines/feed/ 16 http://www.needmoney.com/2009/09/an-introduction-to-crafting-headlines/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/needmoney/ufju/~3/OzDtXWvTLEQ/ http://www.needmoney.com/2009/09/top-5-wordpress-plugins-for-making-money-online-blogs/#comments Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:05:11 +0000 admin http://www.needmoney.com/?p=317 To master your craft, it’s important to have good tools. R.W. over at NewsNotion recently posted this great article revealing what he thinks the best wordpress plugins for your money-making blog are. I think I was running them all except for the twitter one, which I am TOTALLY GOING TO INSTALL RIGHT NOW.



There are a ton of these lists out there, but for my money making blog, these are the five wordpress plugins I would not want to do without!

1) CommentLuv – Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.

2) Dofollow – Disables the rel=nofollow attribute in comments.

3) Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, Bing, and YAHOO.

4) WP to Twitter – Updates Twitter when you create a new blog post or add to your blogroll using Cli.gs. With a Cli.gs API key, creates a clig in your Cli.gs account with the name of your post as the title.

5) FeedBurner FeedSmith – Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.




]]> http://www.needmoney.com/2009/09/top-5-wordpress-plugins-for-making-money-online-blogs/feed/ 20 http://www.needmoney.com/2009/09/top-5-wordpress-plugins-for-making-money-online-blogs/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/needmoney/ufju/~3/O-iFTQLA3_E/ http://www.needmoney.com/2009/09/how-not-to-make-your-website-look-like-an-ad/#comments Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:56:51 +0000 admin http://www.needmoney.com/?p=312 We all know that some websites are created simply to procure ad placements. With every mote of informative content and helpful text, the surfer on such sites is hammered by inline ads and pop-ups. While advertising is the bread and butter of this website, I see no good reason to turn it into a giant ad. It’s tacky and looks desperate. Though I’m certainly not averse to sales, I don’t think it’s a good idea to shove my sales pitch down my intended consumers’ throats. It may choke them!

Your readers should find it easy to discover information about the product or service you’re pushing on your website. By all means highlight the product’s advantages, just don’t get too carried away and resort to hype and starry-sky promises that you know are too good to be true. This will only make your readers wonder if what they are getting is accurate information.

Here’s what you should do:

Tell the truth

Be open about the product or service you are promoting. Give your prospects the kind of general information that will answer their queries and satisfy their curiosity. Do not focus on the particular brand you are representing. Instead, think of your service or product’s claim to uniqueness. For example, if your site is made to promote a weight loss product with the main ingredient as L-Carnitine, you could write an in-depth report on what L-Carnitine can do. Write about the benefits of this particular ingredient. Explain why the ingredients L-Carnitine is combined with in your product offer better benefits than L-Carnitine alone (because L-Carnitine is also found in other weight loss products.)

Why provide factual, detailed information? Most people go on the Internet to look for information. This means that before they buy a product or avail themselves of a service, they want to do their research. They want to find out if they are making a good decision. They don’t browse the Net looking for ads–in fact, people prefer sites that don’t have ads distracting them from what they are reading or looking at. If the site comes across one big ad, it will be off-putting.

On the other hand… don’t bombard

If you want your site to be successful in both providing information and selling products and services, you should focus the most important and attractive details. While your reader is looking for information, he or she will not appreciate being swamped with unnecessary detail. Unnecessary information in this case includes things that may be hard facts, but are not really the stuff that people want to know. Just include easy to digest, relevant information–something readers always need and enjoy.

Adopt a logical, unbiased voice

Though you are promoting your product, do not disparage competing products. Instead, concentrate on promoting yours without any obvious hype. Just focus on your product’s good points while providing scientific (or at least logical) explanations and justifications. Reference legitimate research whenever you can. Consumers want to see good research.

If you sound like a retarded gonzo hype machine, your audience will regard you with suspicion. Is the product or service really that good? How can it be that good? Just state positives and back your statements up with facts. (Interestingly, people will trust you more if you are willing to share both pros and cons. This suggests to them that you respect their intelligence and that you want them to be properly informed.)

Be professional

Your site must not look like a bazaar selling novelties. You don’t want an online version of a print ad. Use clean, minimalist, professional-looking designs.

Convince your readers

This relates directly to all the above-mentioned tips. If you provide relevant and adequate information while being logical and unbiased, you will be able to convince readers to buy your product or service. Remember–you don’t have to act like a desperate salesman. Go the tasteful route. Provide content that will make the readers really think about your product or service.

Subtlety is the key to good sales and building customer loyalty. You have to make people believe that it was their idea to buy the product or service. You just happened to provide the information that led to their purchase.

Even though you are selling something, you do not have to have your site look like one big, fat, sleazy ad.




]]> http://www.needmoney.com/2009/09/how-not-to-make-your-website-look-like-an-ad/feed/ 12 http://www.needmoney.com/2009/09/how-not-to-make-your-website-look-like-an-ad/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/needmoney/ufju/~3/DIK4JstS7iY/ http://www.needmoney.com/2009/09/how-to-make-an-offer-your-reader-cant-refuse/#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2009 05:27:45 +0000 admin http://www.needmoney.com/?p=308 It has been said that to run a successful online business, it’s helpful to be either psychic or extremely well-researched. That is to say, in order to convince your prospects that the product you are offering them is exactly what they want and need you either require extra-sensory powers or you need to be prepared to do your market research homework extremely diligently. As with most things in life, though, there are some tricks, secrets, and shortcuts to success. In this article we’re going to look at some gimmicky and non-gimmicky effective ways of turning casual surfers into sales.

Offer your prospect something unique

Have you done your research about your competitors’ offers? Is there something new and different you can do to your offer to differentiate it? A chance of winning a trip to the Bahamas with every online application for a credit card? Zero fees on on-time credit card installment payments? A free DVD chain store voucher when subscribing to a movie download site?

Whatever you add to “sweeten” your offer, it’s important that it be the sort of thing that that your target buyer wants. For instance, offering a piece of skull jewelry as a free gift with every purchased subscription to a religious magazine may make your offer “unique”, but it is not going to appeal to the market you’re targeting.

Longer free trials

Most paid services offered over the Internet offer some kind of free trial, in order to let prospects see the benefits of the service before committing. This is also a good way of helping prospective clients to gain confidence that your service is not a scam–that it is a genuine and reliable offer.

If your competitors are offering free trials, you can consider providing a longer free trial to create a positive point of difference between your offer and theirs. If you try this, it’s important to be sure that the kind of service you’re offering isn’t one that clients are only going to want to use briefly, and then abandon.

An example of a service that may backfire with an “extended free trial” approach is some kind of “online library”. What if a user of such a service only needs particular content to solve his immediate problem? In such instances is important to make sure that the offered levels of trial free access do not give all your valuable content or service products away.

Bigger discounts

Many, many consumers are price-sensitive bargain-hunters. Discounts against the perceived value of products is what such individuals are looking for. To compete against your competitors’ offers in price-sensitive markets, you can simply offer bigger discounts than they do. While this may mean a reduction in profit, or even a loss, it can be worth it to attract loyal customers.

If you’re going to try discounting, be aware that it’s extremely important that you are clear about your offer. It must be an honest, straight-up deal. While it may be tempting to craft a misleading “discount” offer, the point of discounting in the first place is to attract long-term, loyal customers. You will not do this by tricking people into parting with their cash for superficially exciting deals that are eventually revealed to be cons.

Free gifts

Free gifts are commonly seen offered alongside subscriptions. However, this kind of “sign up bonus” requires a lot of careful research. You need to know what kind of things your targeted customers will respond to. If you want to try a “free gift” offer and have multiple target markets, it can be worth giving prospects multiple “free gift” options.

Attached urgency

Sometimes, your offer is attractive but your reader feels that he or she can just come back another time to purchase, perhaps after doing some comparison shopping or further research. To avoid this, you can attempt to create a sense of urgency on the offer, so your prospect feels that they have to buy immediately or risk missing out. For example, you could tell prospects that your offer is only good for the first 100 buyers, or until some particular time.

When you are crafting an offer that cannot be refused, there are also a few things that should be givens, paramount amongst these things is having a great product or service.

No matter how many free gifts you offer or how long your free trial is, you will not convince readers to purchase your product or service if the quality of it is lacking. The first thing that you should ensure is that you are offering a great product or service. With a great product or service, you will have additional advertisement through word of mouth–never underestimate the power of this. Most people purchase products or services based on recommendations by friends or relatives.

Buyer Psychology

If you want to be successful in online marketing, you need to know a little Psychology. You need to know what drives people to buy and what sort of things trigger people to stop what they’re doing and pay attention. One approach to acquiring this kind of knowledge is to study S true “shopaholics.” What makes people like that want to BUY NOW? Can such triggers be used to seduce people who never go binge buying or make unplanned purchases?

I hope this article has provided you all with some insight into making offers hard to refuse. Get out there and get selling!




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