Attracting and Keeping Members

A membership site without members will not make any money. Finding the right target of customers is critical to a membership site's success. A well constructed site will be about delivering niche information to those who need it.

Your market for members are already in places that you may know about:  discussion forums, social media sites, professional organizations and Internet groups. People also search for information with keywords that will pull up articles, videos and blogs where you can advertise your membership site.

Elements of a membership site that people will find attractive will be the amount of material they can access, how often it is updated, whether the site has guest interviews, insider information from the experts and material that they can't find anywhere else.

Other incentives can be discussion forums, networking possibilities, freebies, invitations to member exclusive events, discounted products and labels and logos that you can display on your website.

When advertising your membership site, include the fact that there is a webmaster or someone in charge of the site. Too many lazy membership site owners put the access on ‘automatic', with no one to interact with or too little updating of new material.

The real money in membership sites is made from recurring income, when the member pays every month to stay in the site. If material runs dry and is not updated frequently enough, there is no reason for members to keep paying.

Interaction is a big benefit to belonging to a membership site. Members want to feel they are a part of a family or belong to an exclusive club. The discussion forum plays a big part in this. Knowing that members can ask questions of other experts that they would ordinarily not have access to is a huge value.

How can membership sites create large amounts of passive, everyday income?

Google Editions

Google opened an ebook store in the Fall of 2010 using a universal format that can be read in any web browser. Google eBooks (formerly Google Editions) is an e-book program run by Google. It offers universal access and non-restrictive copying. The store is headed by Dan Clancy, who also directs Google Books. Google eBooks purchased at the Google eBookstore (Google eBooks' online store front) or other retailers are stored online and linked to the customer's Google account.

They can then be read online, or downloaded to a cache for offline reading. Holding purchased books on Google's server theoretically allows Google to serve books to users under a variety of formats, including new formats that might not be available at the time of purchase.

From within your Google Books Partner Program account, you can submit settings to make Google eBooks of all your books available for purchase, or specify individual books that you wish to sell.

Simple steps to take part in Google eBooks

1.Sign in to your account and agree to the Terms addendum

2.Specify your default settings for Google eBooks

3.Adjust individual book settings and prices

Fancy Ebooks

Despite warnings about customer service issues, some of you are going to try to make fancy ebooks. The problem with fancy ebooks in the past was that they were primarily .exe files which only worked on PCs and scared people because .exe files frequently contain viruses.

In part this is still true. Corey Rudl’s old organization had an ebook program that would allow you to turn off an ebook from working even after the customer had purchased it. It also didn’t allow people to pass their ebook around to others. This program delivered the ebook in .exe format. It wouldn’t work at all on Macs and as stated above, people are afraid of .exe files because of viruses.

Also, the ebooks required a viewer to see them. You’ll see tons of great reviews about this software on the Internet because Corey’s organization were masters at giving affiliates ammo to sell stuff to people quite carefully hiding the flaws.

Learn more about ebooks and how to sell them!

Good customer service skills are required in almost every business, but especially so on the Internet. Good customer service maintains current customers and helps attract new ones, so it's important that you develop and refine effective skills that will assist you in meeting the demands of customer service. While good customer service involves a wide array of skills and experience, there are several skills every person should have.

Product Knowledge:
The best customer service representatives are the ones who have a firm understanding of their company's products and services. These representatives understand the processes and procedures and can easily explain them to others. Whether they have obtained this information through the company's continuing education programs or hands-on company experience, they are able to assist customers quickly and efficiently.

A majority of Internet sales are made up of training systems and software. This presents a unique problem over brick-and-mortar, physical based products. Customers are often under-educated in basic conputer techniques such as opening PDF files, downloading .zip files and other ways to deliver electronic products. This makes it more crucial that the employees of any Internet company are well versed in how the product is sold and delivered, how to walk through its use, and the practical applications that it can be used for.

Communication and Listening Skills:
Strong communication and listening skills complement product knowledge and enable you to provide clear instruction and assistance. Your verbal communication should be clear and include proper word selection. Your tone should be pleasant and friendly. You must listen to the customer, ensure that you clearly understand the question or concern, and respond in an effective manner. On the Internet, a majority of customers will contact the company via telephone when they have problems. Exceptional telephone skills will be required to solve these problems effectively. This includes being able to pace your explanations, not talking to fast and not talking in ‘jargon' or words that only insiders are aware of. This will confuse the customer quickly and turn into a bad customer service experience.

The Internet business world requires strong written communications as well. Your written language should be free of grammatical errors, include the proper punctuation and read in a clear and concise manner. This includes proper wording on email instructions, autoresponder messages and on webpages such as the Terms of Service. Writing in clear, concise wording will avoid costly mistakes and headaches later.

Customer service skills will make you more desirable as an employee. Learn the skills you need in the fastest amount of time.

Merchant Accounts

To make money at this Internet game you have to have some way to take credit cards. You must have a way to capture a sale immediately when you create the impulse to buy in your customer.

You don't even want your prospect to have to get up from their computer. Anything that distracts them could translate into a lost sale.

One of the most important ways to grab the sale NOW is to have your own Visa/MasterCard/AMEX merchant account tied to your shopping system. It used to be really tough to get a merchant account, especially if you work out of your home.

Now, you can't turn on your computer without 200 ads hitting you in the face from companies wanting to give you merchant account status. . . .Well “give” is not exactly the right word. . . . It's going to cost you.

You can visit http://www.HowToUseAShoppingCart.com to find the one we recommend.

You'll run into all kinds of deals where people will want to lease you card swiping equipment . . .unless you do a ton of live sales at trade shows or flea markets, you will never see a actual credit card when doing business online. All the sales are either via Internet or telephone.

Sometimes a fax will come in. You simply don't need a card machine. You can even take an order over your cell phone while on a plane before it takes off!

Get firm numbers on upfront fees, monthly fees, credit card percentages, and per transaction costs. While you're at it, find out exactly what a transaction is? Does calling for an “authorization only” constitute a transaction? Does doing a return equal a transaction? All these fees add up, but you’ll consider them chump change when you start doing lots of business.

Learn how collecting money on the web can make you a valuable asset to online companies. 

Joint Venture Partner:

Another business owner that you start a business relationship with. This person helps promote your products and services through email marketing, and/or website advertising and seminars in return for money or similar and equitable promotion to your database.

A Joint Venture can include any product, consulting, training or seminar that is complimentary to the database list of another business person. When that business person promotes your business, service or product, they will receive paid commissions on any sales you make through their promotions. The sales are tracked and recorded through affiliate tracking software as provided by KickStartCart.com or some others.

An example of a joint venture might be as follows: Mr. Smith has a product that he wishes to sell, but has no idea how to go about doing this online, as he has no potential client base. However, another Internet marketer, Mr. Jones, already has an existing client base with an interest in the type of product Mr. Smith is selling. By forming a joint venture with Mr. Jones, Mr. Smith can enjoy a number of benefits, including driving traffic to his own website, and generating product sales and orders. Mr. Jones would also benefit, as by endorsing Mr. Smith's product he would earn a commission on each sale, thus increasing his own income.

A joint venture can be used not only as a tool for increasing sales but also a valuable tool simply to increase traffic to your own website. Developing a sizeable client base isn't always easy, but joint ventures have provided valuable opportunities to make this far simpler. With the right joint venture partners you could see a huge increase in sales and/or traffic depending on your aims. Your joint venture could be with one partner or a number of partners – no matter how many parties are involved in the joint venture, the combination of tools and resources means that everyone involved can enjoy the benefits.

IMTC teaches the finer points of online business partnerships.

The first thing I'd like to mention about this is that this is a good technique to try to find websites you can buy cheaply that have some established incoming links. These sites also have an advantage of being up and running continuously which gives you a “longevity” boost in most search engines.

Finding a site that has been abandoned and purchasing it is not a guaranteed deal. You have to first locate one and then you must locate the owner and land a deal. It's somewhat like searching through flea markets to find a certain antique lamp you like. You might do quite a bit of searching to locate just the right lamp and then you still have to negotiate a deal on the purchase of the lamp.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there might be something inherently wrong with the abandoned site you've located. Maybe the old owner did some nasty search engine tricks and got caught. The tricks weren't bad enough to get the site banned altogether or you wouldn't have found it in the first place, but the tricks were bad enough that the search engine is making sure that site doesn't get a high ranking. The best way to determine that is to simply talk to the owner and get a feel for why they abandoned the site.

So how do you find the abandoned sites using the copyright notice method?

Almost all sites have copyright notices usually located at the bottom. If you search for a site that has an old copyright, it could mean two things. 1.)You found a possible abandoned site or 2.)the owner of the site has simply been lax in keeping up with the copyright notice. (I've been guilty of that myself)

To search for abandoned sites type in the search box at Google or whatever search engine you are using the following:

“copyright 2000” + [your keyword]

You can also copy the “©” symbol from the bottom of a website and try it this way:

“copyright © 2000” + [your keyword]

Don't forget to put quotation marks around the “copyright © 2000” phrase and to try different years.

Here's an example

I searched for

After sifting through many “2000-2008” copyrights I came across this site:

https://southbark.com/ The site looks updated to me, so it might be like number 2 above. The owner just never got around to changing the copyright. A simple call to the owner would tell me if that was true or not.

Here's a blog that the last posting was October of 2005 http://dogtrainingsite.blogspot.com/

https://www.silver-dog.com/ Dumb music playing

http://www.threedevilskennel.com/ Last updated 2000

http://www.friendlyfido.com/ Last updated 2005

For this article, I limited myself to the first 100 sites that came up on Google under the keyword phrase “dog training”. As I went through the later pages I found less and less professional looking sites many of which looked homemade. This can be a bonanza for you because homemade looking sites are more likely to have been started on a whim with no budget and then abandoned. So,I would keep looking as long as you can stand it.

After you locate your hot list, you could do a link popularity test at http://www.LinkPopularity.com to see if the site has any number of incoming links. Remember that's part of the reason to try to buy the site in the first place. . . When you buy the site you also buy the incoming links.

Start contacting the site owners either through contact information on the site or by doing a “who is” looking at some place like https://whois.domaintools.com/

Well, that's the method. Yes, I know it's time consuming and tedious, but you could uncover some real gems that you can pick up for a song.

Is Internet Marketing the right career choice for you?

Sending out permission based* emails has been the most profitable thing I have ever done in 30 years of business. One way to maximize the response from any emails you send is to personalize them. In email marketing this is known as “mail merge.”

Mail merges can get a much higher response from people because it appears personalized when it is received in the email box of the recipient. Although you can overdo this, in most cases you will get more people to open and respond to your email when using this technique.

A mail merged email message may look something like this before you send it out.

Subject: <$firstname$>, we have a special on Marketing CDs

Body of message:

Dear <$firstname$>,

Thanks so much for purchasing the <$product$>, on <$date$>,. By now you are certainly putting all the techniques you learned into action.

(Insert good copywriting paragraphs here . . . )

<$firstname$>, don't you think it's about time to make the next move and get the knowledge you need to increase your revenues on the Internet.

If so, order easily from our secure shopping cart . . . . .

In the above example <$firstname$>, <$product$>, and <$date$>, are placeholder fields.. When you send out a mail merge the person's name is inserted where the <$firstname$> field is. The product they purchased is inserted where the <$product$> field is and so on. You can make any number of custom fields and insert the actual data in each email that goes out.

You actually have two files that are “merged” as each email is delivered. One file is called the data file. This is where all the real information about your email recipients is housed.

The other file is the message file (like the sample above). This is the structure of the message you wish to send. It contains the placeholders <$fields$>that will be replaced by the real information from the data file.

The downside is that some people put in goofy or fake names or no name at all which makes their email look funny when they receive it because information will be missing from the data file. Some programs can correct for this.

Make it really personal Once in awhile I have a little trouble with someone who bought something and listed his/her name as R. Wilson or something like that. If you mail merge this person the message would read “Dear R.” which sounds and looks stupid. When we run across a record like this we do everything possible to find out the real first name.

One way to make an educated guess of their name is to look at their email address. It might say Rob@123.com . In that case we change the database to say Rob Wilson instead of R. Wilson.

In some cases we visit 123.com and see if they own the site. Their real name is usually listed.

Another thing we'll do is call the customer to make sure their order is OK and in the course of conversation make sure we get the first name.

One more tip. The database may say the customer's name is William Harrison because William used his legal name on the order form to make sure his credit card authorized properly. If we see a formal name like William we make every effort to determine if William is actually “Bill.” It doesn't sound very personal to get an email marked “Dear William” if William goes by Bill. Mail merging to Dear William could actually be counterproductive because Bill will know immediately that you are not very familiar with him and he may delete the email as soon as he sees the name William in the Subject Line of the email or the Dear William inside the email.

Mail merge can really increase the amount of money you make from your existing database.

* Permission based means that people have asked to receive my emails

IMTC teaches the latest techniques in proper and effective email marketing.

Facebook and Twitter have grown to enormous popularity in our culture. It's no surprise that companies large and small are taking to these massive social networks to promote their products and services. But under the surface of strictly promoting products, there is a dialogue emerging: one that is full of ideas, opinions and significance. A dialogue that is dynamic and alive, and NOT controlled by the companies, but by us. For the last 125 years of common advertising, transitioning from newspapers to radio to television, something unique has taken place. The web has given the consumer power to take control of the conversation and the drive for content creation. It's the media owned by the people.

On Youtube, the Coca-Cola company researched (as much as they could) the number of views generated by the words “Coke, Coca-Cola” and other trademarked brand terms related to their business. They found that 26 million views had been generated by advertising and content created by the company itself, but over 150 million views were generated by fans and consumer owned content. This shocked the company to say the least, quickly realizing that brand recognition and opinions were owned by the consumers, not the company. The control over how Coke had always presented themselves to the public (30 second ads) was now lost to the whim and power of the consumers themselves. The people now controlled more than just the money, they controlled the image as well.

The strategy to keep hold of the brand image turned from promotion to curation. To curate that input meant to be ‘conversational' and engaging. Coke needed to nuture and seed those opinions and consumer input into a “dialogue”, and not just an ad. They concentrated on featuring ‘fan content' into their marketing: sharing the stories of their consumer base and making the consumer the focal point and not the drink itself. To push hard advertising in the face of social networking was met with resistance. Consumers reminded Coke and other larger companies that “this is our arena.” If you take a look at the details of how Outback, Pepsi, Nike and others use their Facebook pages to engage and celebrate their fans, you'll see a stark difference in how advertising has changed.

How can small businesses use these examples to engage their fans? A company is a company, some may have millions of fans more than another, but the rules of engagement stay the same. Most small companies have a hard time re-working their thought patterns: they have always related success to big, expensive advertising. Then again, there are others who get it. Success is all about conversation and relationships. Reaching out and curating the thoughts and opinions of your customers – making them the stars. A marketer who understands this model will be in extremely high demand as an employee. Could this be you??

Things to Consider When Choosing the Perfect Shopping Cart and Auto Responder

Shopping Cart and Auto Responder

For all successful Internet marketing it's important to have an advanced shopping cart and auto responder for your email campaigns. There are many shopping carts and auto responders available for free via web hosting services, but unlike advanced ones they are fairly basic and lack the power.

Before choosing a cart and auto responder you should take into consideration several factors. Below I will discuss several features and options to look for that will benefit you the most.

1. When sending automatic emails to your opt-in list it's effective to have the option to send personalized messages. Sending a message with the subscribers name automatically added to the email makes it personal, and can psychologically have an impact on them to become a buyer. Therefore, being able to send personalized messages is one of the biggest factors when choosing an auto responder.
2. The next feature to look for in an auto responder is having the ability to send follow-up messages. Most auto responders from hosting services only allow you send one follow-up message to your subscribers. It's important to have the ability to send multiple follow- up messages because this helps to boost sales dramatically on auto pilot!
3. Another key feature you should look for is having the ability to update or add new messages to your email campaign. This gives you the power to inform your subscribers about new products or opportunities you may offer, which can increase your earnings.
4. Having the ability to track your adverts performances is another option to look for in an auto responder. This enables you to track your marketing campaigns and performance, letting you know what's working and what needs improvement.
5. If you plan on selling digital downloads make sure you choose a shopping cart that has the features to handle automatic digital downloads. The cart should have the ability to create automatic downloads and expiration’s.
6. Recurring billing is an important feature if you plan on selling products or services that have monthly billing. This feature has an automated recurring billing system built in that automatically bills membership or recurring products.
7. Another excellent feature to look for in a good shopping cart is having the ability to upsell. By adding post-sale upsell options to your campaign can dramatically boost your sales. You can create upsell funnels to display different offers to each customer.
8. Multiple Shipping options is another feature to look for when purchasing a good shopping cart. It should support different shipping methods, have the ability to offer free shipping, real-time UPS/USPS shipping calculations, international shipping, ship by quantity, price or weight and much more.
9. You should also purchase an auto responder that offers support or some sort of training. By having training videos and tutorials helps you to learn and become more familiar with its features 24 hours a day.

These are a few important features to look for when purchasing an advanced shopping cart and auto responder.

To get more information visit the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia – http://imtcva.org , and don’t forget to download your FREE career brochure!