Having been a satisfied customer of GetReponse since 2006, I have to say that I’m no longer impressed by its service.

For the sake of people not knowing what GetResponse is, GetResponse is an autoresponder company that provides email marketing services so that marketers can follow up with their prospects/exisiting clients to sell more products and services to them.

I first signed up for GetResponse in mid-to-late 2006 (I forgot the exact date) and have always been a satisfied customer until July 5, 2009 when it did a major upgrade to its system to version 6.0

The Upgrade To Version 6.0

The upgrade was a COMPLETE DISASTER as it turns out that many important features that were previously working were now either not working at all or working only partially.

I was tempted to blog about my frustration with their new upgrade, but managed to suppress my temptations after I’ve reminded myself of the fact that it’s okay to have some bugs in the script when you’re doing a complete system upgrade.

However, in my opinion, this has to happen reasonably.

It is now July 15 as I blog about this (which is 10 days after the major upgrade). 10 days have passed and there are still bugs that affect me and tens of thousands of customers.

This is TOTALLY NOT ACCEPTABLE! These bugs are costing me and other marketers money. Every other day that the bugs are not resolved is money lost!

Though I’ve not done a thorough analysis of the functionality of every single feature they offer, below are some key disappointments that I’ve experienced as a customer. Please note that bugs that have been resolved as of this writing are not included below. I’m ONLY going to report bugs that have not been solved at the time of this writing.

The Frustrating Problems That I’ve Experienced (That Have Not Been Resolved)

1. [[sig]]code for signature that is used in the previous GetResponse is not working in the new GetResponse.

The weird thing is [[sig]] is changed automatically to [[pre signature]] which is also not working. Have to manually change all instances of [[pre signature]] to [[pre sig]] across ALL campaigns to get it to work.

2. Dashboard says “last newsletter” sent out, when in fact it’s not the last newsletter.

3. [[ref]] code is not working.

This is a VERY IMPORTANT feature for tracking how we acquired our subscribers. By knowing where our subscribers came from, we can focus our efforts on the marketing methods that generate the best results, thus giving us the best bang for the buck and time invested.

When querying GetResponse for subscribers that were associated with a particular [[ref]] code, no results were returned. This is true for subscribers acquired BEFORE the upgrade and partially true for subscribers acquired AFTER the upgrade.

I say partially true because for some weird reasons, subscribers acquired AFTER the upgrade sometimes show up and sometimes they don’t.

4. Export via CSV not working properly.

When exporting subscribers’ to CSV format, the results returned under the “ref” column and our own custom fields column are wrong. It’s basically printing the same results from top to bottom.

5. Daily report not working.

Even though I’ve set up a daily report of subscribers that were added to a certain campaign to be emailed to me every day, I did not receive this daily report until only a few days ago. However, even though I’ve now received a daily report, it’s for subscribers added a week earlier and NOT for that actual day.

Essentially, I’m receiving a daily report that’s 1 week old.

Also, the daily report’s “ref” column is blank.

6. Some delivered broadcasts are missing when trying to view their statistics

Statistics such as the open rate and click through rate of a particular message is important in analyzing what kind of subject works and how responsive our lists are. When trying to view the statistics of some of the broadcasts, they were not there.

7. Preload without authorization set to “YES” automatically

Campaigns that were previously set to “NO” preload without authorization is now set to “YES” after the upgrade, making our campaigns prone to be copied by other marketers.

I have contacted support for SOME of the above issues, but they were still not resolved yet. As for number 7, I was so frustrated (because I have a lot of campaigns) that I asked them to manually set the preload without authorization setting back to “NO”.

What I Think Of GetResponse NOW

I seriously think that they could have done a MUCH BETTER job and cause MUCH LESS bugs in their new system. About a month or so before the upgrade to the new system, they conducted a beta test of the new system by inviting existing customers to participate in the test.

With the beta version, they should have discovered most, if not all, of the bugs. With a business as large as GetResponse (mind you they have 93,000+ customers), this is REALLY a shame.

I’m not the typical “complain” guy, but this time GetResponse has gone overboard. I’m not the only one who’s disappointed by their poor service, there are tons more people feeling the same way I do. You can take a look here at this thread from the Warrior Forum.

I should have started with Aweber in the first place 3 years ago. If I did, I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in now.

Right now, if I wanted to switch to Aweber, I’d have to run the risk of losing a lot of folks on my list because Aweber is only allowing me to send out a confirmation message once to my current subscribers.

I used to be a satisfied customer of GetResponse, but not anymore.

Bottom line

Lesson learned: If you’re providing a service that SO MANY people rely heavily upon, be sure that when you release or upgrade the service, you test it thoroughly through extensive beta tests, thereby reducing the number of bugs/errors to an acceptable minimum.

If you’re looking for a professional autoresponder company, go for Aweber. I know I will be for my new business venture with my partner. In fact, I will be signing up for a new account tomorrow or later today.

Your Thoughts?

What are your thoughts when a company as big as GetResponse upgrade its services with bugs all over the place? Do you think it’s acceptable? Better yet, if you’re a customer like me who underwent the major upgrade, what do you have to say about this incident?

Let me know in a comment below…

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The fact is: we simply can’t make everyone happy. That is simply not possible. Everyone has different standards and expectations. What impresses customer A may not impress customer B.

When a customer’s expectations are not met, they are unsatisfied. When that happens, 3 things occur:

1. They won’t buy our products or services again in the future

The key to making big money is to sell other related products that increase in price and value. In the Internet marketing field, this is commonly known as “back end” products.

If customers are ONLY buying your product/service one-time, then there’s not going to be a lot of money being made. In some cases, you may even lose money by selling ONLY your low-cost front-end product.

2. They will bad-mouth our name to other people

Worse than number 1 above, these unsatisfied customers tell EVERYBODY about our perceivably (at least in their eyes) “poor” product or service. Our supposedly “bad name” spreads like wildfire.

This is especially enhanced with today’s web 2.0 where consumers interact a lot, thanks to the help of social networking and bookmarking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Stumble Upon, Digg, etc. People can interact and communicate freely and easily with one another.

Unfortunately, we human beings behave like herds of sheep.

One bad-mouth leads to another, and people follow other people in joining the bad-mouthing bandwagon, even though they have not purchased the product/service in question yet and hence do not know about its quality.

This is, of course, VERY BAD for our business.

3. They will ask for their money back (also known as refund), if at all possible

When selling physical products, asking for a refund also means that you have to return the purchased goods to the seller/manufacturer. Services-type of goods is harder (or sometimes impossible) to return.

In the online information business, asking for a refund is VERY easy. The customer still gets to keep the product after the refund because in most cases, information products are delivered digitally. This means that customers can consume the digital product, and then ask for their money back, and the product is still in their PCs.

So what do you do if you do indeed sell digital products? Do you actually need to refund the customer’s money if he so requested?

The answer is, of course, YES!

Having sold thousands of copies of my own information products for the past 15 months, there are VERY few refund requests that I’ve gotten. I forgot the exact number (I have to dig through my files to find an exact number), but I’m pretty sure it’s less than 10.

Had I not put up the “money back guarantee” sign on my sales page, I’m VERY sure that there would be a lot less people buying my products.

What I’m saying is: the benefits that “money back guarantee” bring far outweighs its disadvantages.

You might be thinking “That’s great Welly, but what happens if a freebie seeker takes advantage of this? They can buy my digital products, and then ask for a refund. Won’t I be losing money?”

To which I’d answer: That is inevitable. In every market, you’ll find this kind of people. It’s not a matter of IF they’ll rip you off; it’s a matter of WHEN.

My advice is to FOCUS on your good, paying customers instead of worrying for the very small number of freebie seekers who refund your products.

One tip you can use is to record who refunds what, so that if a serial refunder keeps refunding your products time and time again, you can ban them from ever purchasing from you again.

Instead of exerting our efforts and time on a few bad eggs, we might as well focus on our good, paying customers and make them happy so that they want to buy from us again and again.

Conclusion

To summarize, it is a heavy price to pay if we let our customers down (not meeting their expectations). That said, it is also NOT possible to please EVERY SINGLE customer and make them happy.

The key is to cater for the majority of our customers and find out what they want, and strive very hard to please and make them happy, so that they become our lifelong customers. If they’re happy and satisfied with our products/services, there’s also a high chance that they’ll refer their friends to us.

What do you have to say about satisfying your customers? Please let me know in a comment below…

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Loyal readers of this blog most likely would have noticed that I put up a slide up opt-in form on the bottom of this blog a few months ago.

This slide up opt-in form is called Ultimate Footer Ad.

In addition to using Ultimate Footer Ad for this blog, I’ve also been installing it on my other sites. And today I’d like to share my results with you.

Apart from this blog, I’m also running an Internet Marketing blog for my local Indonesian folks in the Indonesian language (be warned thought that you won’t understand a single word there since it’s written in the Indonesian language).

I installed Ultimate Footer Ad on this Indonesian blog on March 17, 2009. Before the existence of this opt-in form (February 15 to March 15, 2009 to be exact), there were 16,469 visits and 1,488 opt-ins according to Google Anayltics. This equates to a conversion rate of 9.04%.

From March 17 to April 17, 2009, 17,788 visits and 2,869 opt-ins were recorded. This means a conversion rate of 16.13%.

By leaving everything the same except the addition of Ultimate Footer Ad, I’ve managed to increase my opt-in conversion rate from 9.04% to 16.13%, which is a 78.43% INCREASE.

If only Ultimate Footer Ad had come out earlier to the market, I’d have grabbed this great script and would’ve have increased my subscribers my 78.43% earlier!

Ultimate Footer Ad Pros

1. Increase Your Conversions (Like In My Case)

Right now, there are not many scripts like this in the market where you literally capture the visitors’ attention by having something “slide up” from below.

It’s too obvious not to notice it, yet not too disturbing and intrusive compared to a pop-up. It gets the job done by increasing the conversion rate, especially if you’re installing this script on a blog where you have a lot of outgoing links that distract visitors. The more links you have on your blog/site, the lower your conversion rate will be.

Did I also mention that Ultimate Footer Ad can also be used to display whatever ad or sales message you want to display to visitors? If you don’t want an opt-in form to slide up, and instead want a sales message or some kind of ads to show up, no problem!

2. Very Affordable

At a retail price of just $47, Ultimate Footer Ad is very affordable. Any serious business owner and marketer who markets on the Internet MUST have this tool to boost their profits.

3. License Is Good For UNLIMITED Domains

You can install Ultimate Footer Ad on as many domains or websites as you like. No more paying additional fee just to install this script on different domains or websites.

Pay ONCE and you can use it infinitely.

4. FREE Lifetime Updates

When you purchase Ultimate Footer Ad, you’re also entitled to receive FREE lifetime updates of the script.

A lot of people do not understand this, but having a script that provides Free lifetime updates is AWESOME!

Why?

Because due to the nature of scripts, there is a high possibility (almost certain) that scripts contain bugs that need to be fixed. In addition, as time passes by and new technologies and methods are found, the script needs to be updated as well in order for it to work effectively.

Just three months into the purchase of the script, it has undergone one update from version 1.0 to version 2.0 (Just  a few days ago, I’ve also updated my 1.0 to the 2.0 version).

5. Several Pre-Made Design Templates

Another thing to note about Ultimate Footer Ad is that it comes with several different design templates ready for you to use in your slide up opt-in form.

However, if you want to have a custom design that matches your website or the offer you’re giving away, then you need to enlist the help of a graphic designer to help you do that.

In my case study above, I used an existing pre-made design template that was included in the package. I’m pretty sure that if I were to custom design my opt-in form to match the offer I’m giving away, my conversion will increase even more.

Ultimate Footer Ad Cons

One of the cons of this script is that some people might find slide up opt-in forms to be disturbing and intrusive, although this is A LOT LESS annoying than pop-ups.

That said, it must be noted that you can’t please every single person out there. As the saying goes “you can’t make everyone happy”.

My advice is to make the MAJORITY of your CUSTOMERS happy.

Do you know that most people who complain all the time are those freebie seekers who will never buy anything from you. Forget about them and instead focus in making the majority of your CUSTOMERS happy.

Conclusion

At $47, Ultimate Footer Ad is VERY affordable.

Actually, it’s a STEAL!

Can you imagine increasing your opt-in conversion rate by 78.43% like I did for just ONE of my sites?

I highly endorse this product as I know the small investment you make will pay itself MANY times over!

However if you currently don’t have a website/blog yet, then please don’t buy it because you’ll simply be wasting your money as you simply can’t put it to good use.

GOOD NEWS

The good news I have in store for you is that you can secure a 21.28% discount by buying Ultimate Footer Ad from my link (but don’t buy it from the link I’ve given you above). This means the regular retail price of $47 is going to come down to $37.

IMPORTANT: To claim your $10 (21.28%) discount, DO NOT BUY from the link I’ve given you above. Instead submit a support ticket and I’ll be sure to give you the discount link. I’m sorry for the extra step, but Graham Cox, the owner of the script, does not want me to publicly advertise this discount link to everybody.

Hence the reason for having to contact me via my support desk to ask for the discount link. Click here now to submit a support ticket and you’ll be on your way to getting yourself a very powerful Ultimate Footer Ad script that will boost your conversions at a discounted price.

Enjoy!

PS. Let me know your comments and feedback in a comment below…

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At the time of this writing, although this blog is number 1 in Google for the keyword phrase “internet business make money online” (without quotes; click here to see it in action) and a number 7 ranking for the keyword phrase “make money on the internet” (without quotes; click here to see it in action), I’m by no means an SEO (Search Engine Optimizaton) expert.

If you don’t know what SEO is, SEO is simply the process of improving your search engine’s ranking for the keywords you are targeting, as I’ve explained before in this post.

As far as SEO is concerned, I’m essentially doing only 4 things to get the results I’ve gotten:

1. Get as many 1 way incoming link from as many sites as possible

This means that you go out there and gather 1 way link from other sites to your site (make sure that the sites you’re trying to gain links from is “do-follow”, or to put in another way “nofollow free”). You can do this via blog commenting, forum signatures, social networking and bookmarking sites, submitting your site to directories, etc.

However, doing this manually is a monotone process which can get VERY time consuming and VERY boring (at least for me). Personally, I really hate doing repetitive tasks like these, which is why I’ve been using professional link building services for my link building campaign for almost 2 years now.

Not only does this save me hundreds of DREADED hours trying to find 1 way incoming links to my site, it saves me the hassle of having to keep track which sites have I submitted to gain a backlink to my site.

I might as well invest my money into professionals who know what they are doing and use the time I saved to focus on other more important larger-scale aspects of my business.

Seeking reciprocal linking partners where “I link to you and you link to me” almost no longer works. You might say that this method still work. But why invest your time and energy soliciting these kinds of links when you can instead build 1 way incoming links by spending the same amount of, if not less, time and effort?

2. Use the keyword you’re targeting as the anchor text for the incoming link

Getting 1 way incoming link to your site is great ONLY when you use the keywords you’re targeting as the anchor text of the link.

For example, let’s say you’re trying to target for the keyword phrase “make money on the internet” (without quotes). When seeking 1 way incoming links from other sites, be sure to make the phrase “make money on the internet” (again without quotes) hyperlinked so that when people click this link, they’ll be taken to your site.

This is VERY important and it will play a huge success in the success of your SEO campaign. The more incoming links (with your targeted keyword phrase as the anchor text) you have, the better your sites’ ranking will be in Google.

CAUTION: If you’re seeking links from a lot of sites, be sure to vary your incoming links a little. You should have at least 3 different but related keyword phrases that you’re targeting.  Doing this will help your site “fly under the radar” so that Google will not penalize you.

3. Make sure to put the keyword you’re targeting into the title tag

Although not as important as the first two factors mentioned above, inserting your targeted keyword phrase into the title tag will help your search engine ranking.

You do this by using the <title></title> tag within your site.

Using the same example again, if you were to target the keyword phrase “make money on the internet” (without quotes), you’d use this:

<title>Make Money On The Internet</title>

You can insert additional words before or after your targeted keywords to make your site look natural to human eyes as well.

4. Make sure that the keyword you’re targeting is mentioned in the body content of your site

This is the least important factor compared to the other three when it comes to ranking your site on Google.

If you can, strive to insert your targeted keyword a few times (DO NOT overdo it) within your site and you should be fine.

So to summarize, if you want to rank well in Google (especially number 1 in Google), you have to:

1. Get as many 1 way incoming link from as many sites as possible

2. Use the keyword you’re targeting as the anchor text for the incoming link

3. Make sure to put the keyword you’re targeting into the title tag

4. Make sure that the keyword you’re targeting is mentioned in the body content of your site

Last but not least, make sure you IMPLEMENT the methods outlined above. If you simply read and learn and you don’t do anything about it, you won’t get any results. Period.

If you have trouble motivating yourself to take action, then please read this beneficial article by my mentor Jonathan Leger. I’m sure it will help move you forward to take the actions you should have taken ages ago.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, so please leave them in a comment below…

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I’ve always believed in investing in high quality graphics when it comes to selling products or services, both online and offline. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words and having high quality graphics will “WOW” your prospects at the first point of contact, thereby leave a lasting, great impression.

Let’s take a look at the offline business. Product manufacturers couldn’t simply just sell their products and services without some form of accompanying graphics. They could, but it just wouldn’t convert that well.

Can you imagine going to the local grocery store and buying a bottle of milk that simply has an ugly “Fresh MILK” label on it without any kind of graphic ornaments on it? Would you buy this bottle of milk or would you buy the bottle beside it that is professionally packaged with its colorful and attractive graphic elements?

High Quality Graphics In Action

The automotive industry, food industry, telecommunications industry, and all other industries - they all have great quality graphics attached to their products. It makes perfect sense actually.

These huge companies with huge budget set aside a certain amount of money for graphic design purposes to “beautify” (so to speak) their products and services so that they attract more buyers.

You might argue that big name manufacturers don’t need to have those fancy-looking graphics because their brands are already famous and people will buy regardless of how ugly the graphics are. That may be true in certain cases; but the FACT is, there is not a single product and service out there by a big company that actually use poorly designed graphics - at least not that I know of.

Automotive industry - take a look at the high quality brochures car manufacturers have.

Food industry - those food pictures attached to the packaging of the product that are so “REAL” and juicy that make our mouth salivates uncontrollably.

I could go on and on…  but you get my point.

The power of these high quality graphics and the impact they have on your business is even more obvious when it comes to selling products and services on the Internet.

As we all know, anyone can sell on the Internet. And we also know that everyone is “hiding” behind a computer when they’re selling online.

Please note that the term “hiding” is not meant to discredit people selling online (Hey I sell products and services online too).

Think about when a prospect comes across your product/service when shopping online. Think about their thoughts and emotions just when they’re about to decide if they want to buy from you or not.

Since they don’t know who you are and they have no previous experience buying from you, they’re definitely afraid of being cheated of their money.

Scams are becoming more and more commonplace nowadays. Thus they have every right to be wary, especially when shopping online, since like I’ve said above everyone is literally “hiding” behind a computer.

The Disadvantage Of Running An Online Business

A lot of online marketers talk about how great it is to run an Internet business where you can profit almost 100% when selling digital goods. Very few of them, though, talk about the disadvantages of running an online business.

Everything else being equal, it is harder to convince a person to place their trust on you when it comes to buying online than offline since when buying online, they can’t see the real person behind that website and they perceive it would be harder for them to settle any dispute should there be any in the future. They perceive that the website owner can simply “run away” and not respond to emails, etc.

Another important point to note - unless you or your Internet business are already well-established and people have had a positive buying experience from you before, then convincing them to trust you when it comes to buying online is also going to be harder.

How To Lower The Barrier

For us Internet marketers, one very good way to alleviate this problem so that people trust us more and want to buy from us online is through the use of high quality graphics to demonstrate our products and services.

Why is this effective?

Because with high quality graphics on our products and services:

- You increase your credibility

- You are perceived as being serious in your business (a professional) as you wouldn’t have taken the trouble to have those high quality graphics designed if you weren’t serious about your business. People want to buy from professionals.

The above two points lower your prospects’ resistance to buy from you, which means higher conversions.

In short if you have any kind of product or service that you want to sell, especially if you want to sell online, then you really need to attach high quality, attention-grabbing, professional graphics to your products and services.

New Minisite Design Service For Internet Marketers

I bet you didn’t see this coming, but in conjunction with this, I want to make an announcement. Me and my partner, Adi Djohari, have just started a minisite and eCover design service specifically catered towards Internet marketers who sell their products and services online.

Our minisite design service is called WOW Minisites, and we’ll custom-design your minisite and eCover based on what YOU want (NOT what we want). Since we’re also Internet marketers who’re heavily involved in the IM niche, we really do know what YOU want from an Internet marketer’s perspective.

In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t design the minisites and eCover design. Adi along with our team do the design.

You may be wondering why I don’t take part in designing minisites?

Well it’s because I don’t know a thing about graphic design. Seriously. I’d be a lot of better off focusing on my strengths, which is marketing on the Internet.

If you’re currently about to release your product or service, do seriously consider getting a professional minisite design done.

If you’re currently already selling a product or service but you don’t have great quality graphics to accompany it, also consider getting a professional minisite designed for you.

You don’t have to use my professional minisite design service if you don’t want to (though I highly recommend it because I’m sure you’ll be VERY satisfied with our top-notch quality design at a price much less than what other minisite design services are charging).

Whatever you decide, just get a professional minisite designed for your product or service okay?

In summing up, high quality, professional graphics that accompany your product or service will increase your credibility and lower your prospects’ resistance to buy, thereby increasing your conversion rate and and bring you more profits.

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In the last article we’ve learned that getting all the traffic in the world is useless if we do not know how to utilize it well. Specifically, if we don’t know how to convert our traffic into money, then our efforts to drive traffic to our sites will simply go down to waste.

In this article, I’m going to assume that you already have your goals laid out - what you want your visitors to do once they‘re on your site. If you still don’t have a clue what your goals are by having visitors to your site, then you need to sit down and take some time to think about it carefully.

This is VERY IMPORTANT!

Once you’ve identified your goals, DO NOT go out there and start implementing all the incredible driving traffic techniques you’ve learned.

Instead PREPARE first.

Since almost all of us are interested in building our lists, let’s say that your goal (when visitors land on your site) is to persuade them to subscribe to your newsletter.

Then in the preparation phase:

- Make sure that your opt-in box is above the fold so that they can spot it easily

- It’s better to use a bigger “subscribe” button to make your opt-in box more “eye-catching”

- Make sure you give them some kind of valuable Freebie (ebook, report, audio, video) and say it to them in their face what benefits they can get from your Freebie.

Simply asking them to join your newsletter will produce meager conversions as they can’t see the immediate benefit of joining your newsletter.

They’ll be thinking to themselves along these lines “Newsletter? So what? What good can it do for me? I’m already subscribed to dozens of other newsletters. How is this different? Nah… I’ll skip it for now.”

- Make sure that you have several autoresponder messages stored in your autoresponder account so that when subscribers opt-in to your list, they are automatically followed-up with valuable content PLUS sales messages to sell your products or affiliate products.

A note about following up with your subscribers:

There are basically 3 kinds of marketers who do things differently when it comes to following up with their subscribers…

The first one is the “I send you sales pitch email every day to squeeze every penny out of you”. I’ve made a post about this some time back. This kind of marketer is ON THE LIMIT, sending you sales pitch email every day (sometimes even 2 emails in a single day). He never bothers to send you valuable content, all he does is sell and sell all the time.

The second type of marketer is the complete opposite of the first one. He almost never sends out sales pitches to his subscribers. All he does is provide valuable content all the time. He is too afraid that if he tries to sell to his subscribers, they’ll unsubscribe from his list.

The third type of marketer is somewhere in the middle. He provides a balance of valuable content and sales pitches. He understands that building a beneficial and trusting relationship with his subscribers is VERY important.

That’s why he only sells or recommends high quality products that he knows will help his subscribers. He will never jeopardize his reputation by selling a crappy product or service just to earn a quick buck for the short term. He is in the business for the long term.

So which marketer are you?

For most people, I’d suggest you go for third type of marketer. Unless you’re a big name “guru”, you won’t survive belonging to the first type of marketer.

People will unsubscribe from your list so fast that you’ll lose your current subscribers faster than you gain new subscribers. Even if they don’t unsubscribe from your list, they’ll never open and read your emails.

The second type of marketer will not bring in any profit for you, since you’re always afraid of selling to your subscribers. What good is building relationship with them if you can’t make money out of them (sorry to blunt but let’s be realistic here from a business perspective).

This Preparation phase is VERY important. Because if you don’t prepare first, you’ll never achieve your desired goals. Even though it takes quite some time and effort to prepare, it’s very worthwhile.

In the example above, you might have to spend a few days to create your valuable Freebie (I suggest that you create your own unique Freebie instead of offering some low quality PLR or MRR stuff).Then you have to spend additional time to create your autoresponder messages.

However, if you do this correctly, your efforts will pay off multiple times!

Now that you have your opt-in box ready, and you have your valuable Freebie ready, and your autoresponder messages are all set up ready to go, you can then drive traffic to your site and watch some of your visitors being converted to subscribers.

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I’ve noticed a lot of people, or more specifically Internet marketers, talk a lot about things like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as if it is THE MOST important thing in the world. I know they want to get traffic now, but is it just a matter of traffic all the time?

Read on…

Now if you don’t know what SEO is, SEO is simply the process of optimizing your website so that it ranks on the first page of Google or any other search engines for a particular set of keywords.

So let’s say that you have a website about selling anti-virus software. Essentially, what you want to achieve by doing SEO work is to get your website showing up on the first page of Google when someone types in “buy anti-virus software” (without quotes) in Google.

You might think that this is a fantastic way to get visitors to your site.

And it is. No contest about that.

Getting visitors when they have voluntarily typed in a keyword phrase related to our website is of course good news for us as website owners, since they are seeking what we have to offer.

They’re already interested in the subject of “anti virus software” and they’re looking to buy it with their wallet in their hands. That means you don’t have to educate them about the importance of having an anti-virus software and why they should buy one.

The education part is already done for you there.

How do you know?

Because of the fact that they typed in the phrase “buy anti virus software”. Notice the word “buy” there? They won’t want to buy it if they weren’t sure of what “anti virus software” is all about, wouldn’t they?

While you may have achieved number 1 ranking for this keyword phrase, what good is number 1 ranking if you can’t convert your visitors?

There is simply no point in having a huge influx of visitors if you can’t make them do what you want them to do.

In other words, you have to know and be VERY sure what your goals are. What do you want these visitors to do once they’re on your site?

Do you want them to click on your Adsense ads? Or do you want them to click on your affiliate link which leads to a leading anti-virus software company? Or maybe you want them to subscribe your anti virus newsletter that delivers tips and the latest updates related to combating computer virus?

Whatever your goals/objectives are, you need to define them first before you do all the hard SEO work (or any traffic generation work) that is going to bring all that Google traffic to your site. Otherwise all that traffic will go down to waste as you don’t even know what your goals are.

Make sense?

Now at the start of this article I mentioned that a lot of marketers are so “addicted” to SEO as if it is the most important thing/skill in the world (I may be a little exaggerating here… but I’m sure you get my point).

But achieving that all important 1^st position in Google for your targeted keywords really won’t do you any good if you don’t know how to utilize your traffic well.

You have to start thinking about the bigger picture like this: “Okay once visitors land on my site, what do I want them to do? What is my ultimate goal?”

Take this blog for instance. At the time of this writing, this blog is ranked number 1 for the keywords “Internet business make money online”, which also happens to be one of the keywords I’m targeting.

When visitors come to my blog, my goal right then and there is to convert them to subscribers.

I have 3 mechanisms in place to do this:

1. There is an obvious opt-in box to the top right of this blog (on the sidebar) enhanced by a glaring red rectangle surrounding the submit button to make it stand out.

2. A slide-up opt-in box (aff) appears from the bottom of the blog. If you’re a returning visitor, you’ll see this in action for every 3^rd revisit. (By the way, this slide-up box has increased the subscription rate of one of my sites by 78.43%).

3. There is the “What would Seth Godin do WordPress plugin” which displays a message box to new visitors and ask them to get my FREE report “How To Earn Your First 100 Dollars Online” (which also pulls them into my list). Visitors returning to this blog after the 5^th time would not see this.

But is this my really, really ultimate goal?

Of course not! What good is there to have subscribers if you can’t convert them into… errr….well… money?

But at least my goal when new visitors reach my blog is to ask them to enter their name and email address so that I can follow up with them on a consistent basis to build beneficial and trusting relationships, as well as to sell them products and services related to Internet marketing or Internet business.

Since I know that most people will not buy my products when they’ve just landed on my site because they don’t who I am, my realistic goal is just to have them subscribe to my newsletter, and then sell to them later on.

So in essence, when a new guy lands on my blog and he subscribes to my newsletter, I have achieved my goal (at least at that level).

The ultimate goal is to sell related products and services to my subscribers, be it my own products or affiliate products which I believe will help them.

The end result?

I make Moolah (Money) of course

Now that I’ve made clear that you need to set what your goals and objectives are for your site before you go out there and get traffic now, the next thing you need to do is to PREPARE before you go out there and try to drive visitors to your site.

After all, simply by knowing your goals is not enough, you need to PREPARE on how to achieve your goals.

And we will take a look at the preparation phase in part 2 of this article, so stay tuned…

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The power of focus….

Read this and see if this you…

You get easily excited when first starting out a new project. But a few weeks later when you don’t see the results you expect, you abandon the project and go on to find “the next big thing”, start a new project, and the all-too familiar abandoning situation repeats itself AGAIN.

If this is you, then I’m sorry to be blunt but this is absolute craziness.

I mean, ask yourself this question “When was the last time you really, truly put conscientious effort into your project for it to be able to yield at least some decent results before you deem your project ‘a failure’?”

You need to be patient when it comes to seeing results. Hey, we’re talking about building a real Internet business here.

Any kind of business, both online or offline, needs time and commitment before you can see any real results.

The key thing is to focus on what you’re doing and not move to another new project before you at least give your current project a fair try.

And by a “fair try” I mean putting consistent hard work every day and giving it some time to yield results. Not simply haphazardly putting in some poor effort and then expecting to be making millions instantly!

When I first got started in IM back in June 2006, I was completely overwhelmed with the amount of information out there about earning money online. Today I would receive information about “the best way to make money online via method X by guru Y”, and the next day I’d receive “the best way to make money online via method A by guru B”, and so on…

It is not uncommon to see conflicting advice - Guru Y says do this; Guru B says do that, etc.

And the BIGGEST LIE you and I have been told is the notorious “Make money online easily and instantly just with a few simple mouse clicks”.

So we can’t really be blamed can we? I mean, here we are being told that making money online was so easy that our grandmas can do it (sounds familiar eh), and after we’ve tried for a few days (or at most weeks) and when we don’t see any results we give up and move on to “the next big thing”.

If you’re one of these people, please wake up and come to your senses now like I did a few years ago  (you can thank me later..)

If I were to offer you only one solid piece of advice, then that advice would be to focus on what you’re doing and STOP jumping from one business opportunity to the next.

FOCUS on 1 (one) area that you’re good at, work like mad, track and evaluate your performance, and improve it.

Success in your Internet (or offline) business is about making incremental improvements on an ongoing basis. It is not about finding that “magic button” where you can simply press and money will spit out automatically!

It doesn’t work that way and it never will.

I’m not saying that you can’t enter more than one niche or market.

You can.

But before you do that, make sure that you already have an established base for your current market first before moving on to a completely different new market. Make sure that you have spent enough time and effort optimizing your current business first for maximum returns before trying to enter a new market.

You’ve so often heard of the term “rinse and repeat”. This is where “rinse and repeat” will be useful for you - once you’ve conquered your current market and are ready to enter a different new market.

FOCUS IS KEY to your success!

To summarize, today’s actionable tips for you are:

1. Building a successful Internet business requires consistent hard work, dedication, and time before you can see any real results.

2. STOP jumping from one business opportunity to another. Use the power of FOCUS to concentrate on 1 area that you’re good at, work like mad, track and evaluate your performance, and improve it.

3. Take action now!

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It is no longer a secret that people buy from those people that they trust. This is especially true:

1. In the online world where every product owner is “hiding” his/her face behind a computer.

2. When you’re selling a product that is not a popular brand (meaning people haven’t heard of the brand before).

These potential customers can’t be blamed either, since it is very easy to scam people nowadays simply by using the power of the Internet.

Armed with this knowledge, we as Internet business owners should build beneficial and trusting relationships with our prospects so that they know who we are, what we do, what our expertise are - so that they trust us and want to buy from us.

If you’ve been a loyal reader of this blog, you should have already known that I talk and advocate this a lot.

Without a good relationship with your prospects, it is VERY hard to sell them your products and services. Without a good relationship with your customers, it is also EXTREMELY difficult to sell other related products to them.

The key to successfully sell to them is to build, as I’ve said before, beneficial and trusting relationships with them. You do this by first creating some kind of valuable Freebie to “bait” your visitors to hand you their email addresses.

If you don’t want to create a freebie yet, you can also use some PLR freebies. Just make sure that they are high quality freebies and that you put your name as the creator of the freebie.

After your visitors hand over their email addresses, you want to impress them by giving much more than they expected of you. At this stage, your visitors have been converted to leads/prospects, thanks to the squeeze page that you’ve created.

For example, let’s say that on the squeeze page you promised to give them a Free report on how to train their dogs effectively. However on the download page, in addition to giving them this Free report, you might also give them another surprise freebie that shows them how to make sure their dogs are eating healthy, balanced diets.

The surprise freebie should be somewhat related to the main freebie that you promised.

A few days after they’ve subscribed to get your freebie, you ought to follow up with them to check how they are doing and if they have successfully downloaded the freebie (and surprise freebie) yet. You also want to remind them to implement what they’ve learned and that if they have any questions they can feel free to ask you.

Then a few days later you follow up with them again to give more free valuable content. It is very important that on the first few follow-ups with them you don’t sell them anything but instead concentrate on providing great content to educate them.

This is to impress them that you care for them and you know what you’re talking about. When they see you as someone who they can trust because you’ve stood out from the crowd by giving, giving, and giving first without even trying to sell them anything, their resistance barrier towards you will decrease.

Let’s say that your visitors are on 30 other marketers’ lists. 29 of them send out sales pitches all the time every day promoting the next big product launch, while the remaining one marketer (that’s YOU) give, give, and give, which one do you think will stand out from the crowd and get their attention?

I’m not saying you can’t send them sales pitches. At the end of the day, you and I are still marketers. We need to sell stuff in order to make money.

I’m simply saying that you should focus your efforts when you first come into contact with a person who doesn’t know you yet with the right approach, and that right approach is to impress them that you’re different than the rest of the pack and that you truly care for them.

You need to demonstrate that you’re in this business for the long term and that they can count on you to provide them with the stuff they need. In other words, you want them to buy from you.

I would say after 3 - 5 follow-ups with them, you can insert your first sales pitch to them. After this sales pitch, you would then educate them again with free, valuable content. Then once in while do your sales pitch again.

You need to have a balance between free content and sales pitch, and be sure to send more free content than sales pitch. In my current Internet business I’m using a 3:1 approach - meaning for every 3 content messages, I would send a sales pitch.

Different markets respond differently, so you need to test what works best for your market.

Please drop your comments below, I’d like to see what your opinions are…

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Ads Marketing - You allocate a certain portion of your website to display advertisements from other people/companies and you get paid in return.

Affiliate Marketing - You promote other people’s products and services and in return you get commissions. The commissions you get can be in the form of pay-per-sale or pay-per-lead.

The other method of making money online, which is through creating and marketing your own products and services (which I call Product Creation), is not suitable for beginners who are just getting started to learn the ropes of making money online. I don’t recommend beginners go this route.

Why?

Because creating your own products is no easy task for beginners, while at the same it’s not as difficult as it seems if you have some kind of previous Internet Marketing experience.

If a beginner were to jump straight in creating his own product without any kind of Internet Marketing knowledge, there is a high chance that he will fail to make even a single red cent.

Heck, even if he tries his hands at Ads or Affiliate Marketing there is already a high chance that he will NOT make it. Let alone creating his own product!

I’m not saying this to discourage any beginner who’s reading this. I just want to paint a more accurate picture in their minds that making money online is very, very hard.

The good news is that once you’ve managed to earn your first elusive $1, the next $10 becomes easier. My FREE report shows you how to earn your first $100 online. If you haven’t had a chance to grab it yet, I recommend that you do so now.

Once you’ve made your first $100, your confidence will grow. You will start believing in yourself - that you possess the ability to earn money online. You will then put in more effort and time because what you did has already proven to bring in results.

As you continue to earn more and more money, your confidence grows even bigger, which will result in you taking yet more action to produce greater results. This is like a cycle of continuous improvement.

The converse, however, is also true.

If you’ve been going around in circles trying to make money online but have never made a single dime, you confidence will get smaller and smaller as time passes by. You start to wonder if everything you’re doing is worth it. You start to question your ability to really and truthfully make money from the Internet.

A few months passed and you still see no results at all. Your confidence shrinks even further and you take even less action.

Eventually you give up and you conclude that making money online is impossible and is only a scam.

Is this story familiar?

It certainly is for me because I’ve spent a total of 11 months before I earn my first money online. June 2006 I first got started in Internet Marketing. May 2007 I received my first paycheck.

Can you imagine the thrill and excitement I felt at that time? I was close to tears LOL! If you’ve already received your first paycheck, I’m sure you can relate to my feelings. That was a moment I can never forget for the rest of my life!

Now, coming back to the topic at hand….

If you’re a beginner reading this, my advice is to start with Ads and Affiliate Marketing first. Beginners Blog Profits shows you how to set up your own WordPress blog step-by-step (I do really mean step-by-step) and generate income through Ads and Affiliate Marketing from your blog.

After you’ve made some money this way, you can then start creating your own products as this is where you can make the most money. Instant Product System shows you how to instantly create your own sizzling, high quality information product in 1 day or less.

To make money online for beginners and intermediate marketers alike, the key is to always take CONSISTENT action every single day.

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