I get approached by a lot of different people who all have questions about making money online. They generally ask questions like: “What’s the latest and greatest?” “What’s the new information out there?” And, “What’s changed?”

I always tell them what’s on my mind at the time and then try to answer their questions. One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is the answer really isn’t about what’s new. It’s kind of about what’s old.

It’s “what aren’t you doing right” to begin with.

I market products and services on the Internet quite frequently. I’ve made millions of dollars doing it, but there’s honestly only three ways to really make more money on the Internet.

1. Get more traffic to your website.

If you have a website right now, one way to increase the amount of income you earn is to get more traffic coming to that website. If you get more traffic, no matter what your conversion, you’re going to get more people to buy. That’s easy enough to understand.

2. Increase your conversion.

Increasing conversions means you need to get more people to buy.

For example, if you had 100 people coming to your website, and you had 2% conversion, which means two out of 100 would buy, then you’d have a 2% conversion. For most people, that’s a good number, but what if you had five people buy? Then you’d have a 5% conversion. You could make one tweak on your website, get more people to buy and instantly make more money.

Those are the two primary things that people focus in on.

1) Ways to get more traffic to your website
2) Ways to get more people to buy

They are usually tricks like pop ups, popovers, ways to interrupt people when they’re on your site in order to get them to pay attention to your marketing messages.

I have to tell you, there are some amazing tools out there that will help you do this, but sometimes I run across a site that has every single one of these tools on it at the same time. How ridiculous is that? In this case, you’re just pissing off the customer or the prospect when they come to your website. You don’t want to do that.

The third way though, I think, is a way most people don’t even think about. In fact, It’s what I call the mystery element.

3. Have a great product.

It seems strange that I would say the mystery element is to have a great product, but it’s true.

Most people don’t really think about how great their product is. You see, we can put all these tricks in place, we can get more traffic, we can figure out ways to use all kinds of tactics to get more people to buy from us, but at the end of the day it’s still the same product. If the product is crap, people are not going to buy and if they do, you’re going to get refunds.

I was thinking about this the other day. You can spray air freshener on dog crap, but at the end of the day it’s still dog crap. So, what you need to do is increase the value of your product.

Ultimately, if you want to make more money from your website, you have to do ALL three things. You have to increase traffic. You have to increase your conversions. And you absolutely have to have a great product.

Is your product the best that it can be?

My grandfather passed away a couple of years ago. He was a carpenter and always worked on other people’s homes. He fixed them up and installed siding and roofs. I worked with him a lot when I was a kid growing up.

My grandfather was one of those people who had his own home, but would just kind of do things halfway on it to get by. He fixed everyone else’s house, but at his own house, he would only do what he absolutely had to do.

For example, my dad asked him to come over because we needed some steps on the front of our house. He came over and built us some temporary steps. He explained that they were good enough for now. Those steps were installed when I was probably five or six years old, and they were there until the day I left home when I was 18. I guess that was “good enough for now.”

The point I’m trying to make here is that a lot of people are like that with their own products… “that’s good enough for now.” “Just put it up. I can fix it later,” but later never comes.

Therefore, they’re putting up a half-ass product that really isn’t good. There are three things you should ask yourself about your products.

1. Is your product the best you can possibly create?

Think of the product you have — how can you make it better? Not for you, but for the consumer using the product. How can you make that product better?

The ideal customer service situation is you should have no customer service. You know that’s not going to happen, but that’s the idea and the objective. If you have a great product, you will eliminate a lot of your customer service.

2. What makes your product unique?

What is it about your product that’s different than every other product on the market? What makes you different than all of your competitors?

Sometimes, when you really think about it, there’s absolutely no difference whatsoever between your product and your competitor’s, except maybe that you have a different look and feel on your website.

You may say the information a little differently, but that’s not enough; you have to have something that the other guy doesn’t. You have to give the customer a unique product in order to make it stand out from the rest of the crap people offer in the marketplace.

3. Will your product change with the times?

Will you have to modify the product in the future? Did you create that product just because of a trend that’s happening in the marketplace, or did you create a product that is evergreen, one that never has to change?

That’s the ideal type of product, a product that never has to change.

For example, a weight loss product, for the most part, doesn’t really have to change, unless what you’re teaching people is blatantly wrong or could possibly hurt a person.

If you create evergreen products, you don’t have to keep going back and redoing your product because of changes that occur in the marketplace. Constantly having to update your products is a pain in the butt.

Do it right the first time, so that you never have to worry about fixing it later, and never settle for your products being “good enough for now.” Create the best products you can, make them unique and evergreen. Creating products that fit these criteria is the first step to long-term success in your business.

We want to ask all of you which city we should have our next Armand Morin LIVE event in. We’ve done them in many cities across the US, but we want your opinion to help us decide our next event in the spring of 2012. Please select your choice below as to which city you would prefer.

NOTE: This is for our US event. We will be having an event in the UK and Australia in 2012 as well.

I just released my laterest product called WP Sales Letters. What is it? It’s a WordPress plugin which creates high converting sales letters, but there’s one huge advantage of this plugin over many of the other options out there on the Internet.

Most WordPress sales letter solutions are THEMES. In fact, I’ve even created my own which is awesome called MarketerCMS. But there’s a problem with using a theme for a sales letter. You have to change your whole theme. So in essence the solution is the problem. That’s where WP Sales Letter comes in.

WP Sales Letter is a plugin. Which means it works on ANY THEME. You don’t have to change your whole look and feel just to have a sales letter. No matter if use WooThemes, Elegant Themes, Genesis, Thesis or any of the other themes on the market, WP Sales Letter will still work for you.

Check it out right now.

Click Here:
http://WPSalesLetter.com

I think you’ll like it a lot. Make sure you watch all the videos on the page.

I love research. It’s one of my favorite past times on the Internet and I do it just about every day in one form or another.

Researching competitors and other industries out there is something you should be doing on a regular basis to see exactly how they work and if you can get any ideas for your business.

In fact, many of the tactics you see that are being used in whatever market is typically borrowed from another market. We borrow all the time. At one point a few years back I was called the most honest thief in the industry because I would steal ideas from all kinds of industries, but I always shared where I found it.

Recently, I happened to be on a website, and I was looking at the product. It sounded good so I wanted to see what their price points were. Here is what I noticed, and it was a very interesting strategy.

The first thing was that you could join this particular site for $99 a month. I thought that was fairly reasonable, but beneath that it said “or buy one full year for only $497.” I stopped for a moment and read it again.

Let me ask you a question. Which one do you think they were really trying to promote? If you said the $497, then I would say you were right.

Now, I don’t know this company, but let’s break it down and check it out. At $99 a month, that’s approximately $1,200 a year or, you could pay a one time cost for the year of just $497, which saves you about $700. So, you would be a fool to take the $99 a month option.

They are using a tactic I call the value gap, which means there’s a distance between what you want people to take or to actually purchase versus a decoy.

The decoy is set out just to show value and without the decoy, the value would just be $497. Here’s why — $497 by itself may or may not be attractive, but when you compare it to paying $1,200 a year, $497 instantly becomes very attractive.

You have to be careful as far as the structure on this. If you didn’t have $497, then the $99 would sound attractive, because it’s affordable and if you don’t have the extra $400 on top of that, it may be your better option, but again, over the course of a year, you’re paying $1,200.

The point about this particular strategy is that it only works if you have the decoy. So, there are two distinct strategies.

Think about how you could do this for your business and how you could implement this strategy as well into a membership site.

Think of how you could implement this into one of your products. You could even twist it to make it work for a service business. It’s quite a brilliant strategy and I have to applaud them for implementing it. It’s something I will have to try out on something in the future. If it works, I’ll give you an update on it in a future article.

Just keep it in mind that there are different ways to present your information to people and to make it so they actually want to buy it. You see, I believe that any information can be made more attractive from a prospect’s point of view.

This new tactic was found simply by researching what is out there and what is being used and working in other industries. Drop me a line with your results if you try this tactic out.

Ok, just started using Google+. I have to say I’m extremely impressed with what I’ve seen so far. It’s fast which is a lot more than I can say about FaceBook. One of the key points for me though is that it is very intuitive. Sure I had a few things that I didn’t know immediately but I figured them out in a matter of minutes.

How does this compare to Google Buzz? Buzz is pretty much irrelevant now. Google+ makes it totally obsolete. Do I think this is a FaceBook killer? Probably, not, but is it an alternative option? Definitely YES! It seems so much more streamlined and certainly well thought out. I have to say, from what I’ve seen so far, I really like it.

Can you follow me on Google+?

I’m so glad you asked… YES YOU CAN. LOL

Click Here To Follow Me on Google+

After a long break.. LIKE A YEAR… I’m back with the Armand Morin Show. This first edition back we cover 3 important piece of information which can and will help your business. Plus, I give my thoughts on some controversial issues. Listen in I think you’ll like it!

Download Here

Click Here To Subscribe To The Show Via iTunes

Ok, I’ve been pretty quiet lately especially here on the blog. I’ve been speaking, creating new products a lot of other stuff. One of those things was what I’m excited to tell you about right now. It’s by brand new report called… “It’s Not Your Fault”. I just put this up and I think you’re going to love this.

It details why I believe people can’t simply seem to succeed online. Like I said, “It’s Not Your Fault”. In it, I describe the various scenarios which are happening today. The good, the bad and the ugly. In the end you’ll see the reason why and it’s really quite obvious. Do yourself a favor and download today.

Seriously, this report is a real eye opener.

Here’s The Link Download It Now – Click Here To Download

It’s my birthday this month and I decided to do something a bit crazy. After talking about it with my team I’ve decided I’m going to celebrate my birthday with all of you! So here’s what I’m doing. I’m giving away $100,000 in FREE TICKETS to come to BRAND NEW Success Leaves Traces Event I’m holding in Los Angeles on February 5th and 6th. Yes, that means you can come for 100% FREE.

My Special Guest Larry Winget

I have a very special guest, Larry Winget also speaking there. You may have seen Larry on his Big Spender TV show or maybe you’ve read one of his best selling books. Larry tells like it is and unlike anyone you’ve ever seen. I know you’re going to love him. The best part you get to see Me and Larry 100% FREE as my gift to you. All you have to do is sign up.

I made a special video giving you all the details. Click Here To Watch The Video: http://SuccessLeavesTraces.com/event

WARNING:

As you can imagine, seats for this are going fast. So you really do have to act quick on this as I will have shut the registration down after we hit 500 people. We can’t fit any more than that in the room. So go ahead and register your seat right now.

Due to the recent post I made, I think some people may feel I’m totally down on Google. That actually isn’t so. The reason of my last post is certainly show a level of disappointment with Google and their inconsistencies in reviewing websites. I’ve stated for the better part of a year the reason I feel the Internet Marketing community has trouble with Google is not only content and I’ll get to that later but really the way in which we display our information.

The days of a one page sales letters or even a one page video sales letters as far as advertising on Google Adwords is basically done. Sure you may get away with it for a time, but for the most part you’re going to need more content and I believe they want use to be more mainstream with more content.

As many of you know I do a training seminar called Armand Morin LIVE where I go into great detail of various advertising methods. Bing, Facebook and yes Google as well. I just updated one of my presentations and shortend it for Internet viewing because it can get quite long. I felt it would be appropriate considering the interest in the last post.

The video below is a 40 minute training on what Google wants. The key here is that the majority of the video is me reading Google’s own rules with my interpretation. Is it perfect? NO, but I wanted to get something up quick so people have an understanding of what is going on.

Here’s the video… Enjoy!