Imagine if you could get companies to handle all the orders, all the deliveries, all the order taking...all you have to do is drive people to your Web Site and get them to buy.

That's what this online training system is all about. Many of your affiliate competitors are committing online marketing insanity; they are setting up Internet flea markets, selling everything from Beanie Babies to UFO books, and then they wonder why people don't buy. You will avoid their mistakes and learn the secrets of what works by applying tested, proven formulas to take advantage of one of the most promising Internet marketing opportunities.

In this system you will learn how to simply, quickly, and effectively build your affiliate business. You will discover how to save 6-12 months of time and countless dollars. Best of all, you are plugging into the only affiliate-based network in the ActiveMarketplace. This site was designed to help your efforts, to show you how to market and sell, and give you access to the best resources.

Let's jump in now, and I invite you to participate by emailing me at declan@linkstosales.com.

Peace,
Declan Dunn

How many times have you picked up a newspaper and seen other people making tons of cash from their Web Site?

Thousands are profiting with affiliate programs, people who are no smarter than you are, no more experienced, but who seem to know exactly what to do. If your Internet business isn't generating significant income (and I mean at least $2,000 a month), here's the reason why.

You are about to discover how to do this. The money being generated by the Internet is staggering, and experts point out that it will only grow even more dramatically in the next 5 years:

"By 2002, 25 percent of the expected $37.5 billion in Internet retail sales, not including autos, will have originated on affiliate sites"
-- Nicole Vanderbilt, Jupiter Communications

The Internet is obviously one of the great economic revolutions: the real key to success is to copy what is already working, and put it into action for yourself. The fastest, risk free way to get your share of the Internet fortune is to take advantage of affiliate programs.

Earning Potential

Imagine if you were selling a product and making $20 per sale. No inventory, no credit card processing or customer service, simply marketing and making $20, free and clear. Here's the kind of income you could be looking at:

Now anyone can open up a Web Site and join an affiliate program, just like anyone can open a store. The real secret is in making money with a tested, proven process that can build your business for the long run without risking your earnings, time, or sanity.

The best part is, most of the affiliates out there are making the same mistakes. They are wasting time and money on online marketing insanity that simply will not succeed.

In this book, you will tap into the strategies that do work, by focusing your efforts like the affiliates we are about to explore such as:

1. The Web Site dedicated to helping children learn and paying its way by selling books;
2. The engineer who sells toys and videos about robots as a profitable side business;
3. A journalist in Australia who writes, while on the beach, to an international audience of over 5,000 people who regularly buy affiliate products and services from him;
4. A software entrepreneur who sells his competitor’s product and makes up to $1500 each month with absolutely no extra effort; and
5. An Ohio couple who set up their own network and in a few short months expect to generate millions with an approach so innovative, so simple, it boggles the mind.

The key is to pick a few good products and test which ones sell best. Build your business for the long haul, because it will be worth it: Most of all, generate enough traffic to make sales.

"Online Media is entering what we believe will be the most rewarding period in its development... We believe that the prevailing forecasts for online advertising expenditures will be comfortably exceeded in the coming years, and that the leading firms in the sector will be powerfully profitable in the longer term."
-- Online Media Rules, Salmon Smith Barney, August 1998

What you will discover in this book is the true secret of success; enjoy what you are doing and sell only those products you know, enjoy, and feel comfortable offering. Here’s how:

1. Create an automated system that pays you to just market. Let them handle all the headaches.
2. Generate visitors and put your Internet sales system on autopilot.
3. Offer products that people are buying. Sounds simple, but few people are doing it!
4. Offer products that are easy to sell to your target audience.
5. Instead of creating mediocrity, why not copy genius.

Let’s begin by showing you a few of the geniuses putting affiliate programs into profitable action. To some, paying their hosting fees and helping children learn are the riches. To others, it may be a full time business that allows them to quit their jobs and be their own boss.

Whatever your goals, remember these business models. What they have discovered is no secret; the best way to sell products and services online is to sell a few items and sell them very well. Forget about Internet flea markets, and focus, focus, focus…Now!

"Specialty retailers will embrace syndicated selling -- distributed points-of-sale -- within smaller, but more targeted communities…where high levels of trust will yield conversion rates in excess of 10%."
-- On-line Retail Strategies, The Forrester Report, May 1998

Overview: The Cybrary is an educational site (http://remember.org) set up since 1995 to educate students from sixth grade to early college. The visitors to this site are mostly teachers and students from throughout the world who come for the free information. The site has a long growth curve to its current steady traffic of 500,000 visitors a year, with 10-20,000 in slow months and over 100,000 on its two peak months, generating over a million hits.

How This Site is Marketed

The Cybrary built its traffic through word of mouth advertising; since it is an educational site, many newspapers and online awards have helped promote their efforts for free. Combined with strategic positioning on the search engines, this site has developed a loyal following. Niche markets like this, with a passionate audience, grow by announcing themselves to the newsgroups, mailing lists, and Web Sites where the audience goes. No monthly marketing is involved.

With just one week of effort searching Amazon.com, this site set up its own bookstore. Books are a natural market for these visitors. Since it only took a week to set up this book store, with no changes in two years, the time factor is limited. Now this book store pays the hosting fees for this site for an entire year, not much but enough to keep it going. Let's break this down to see the value.

They generated about $250 in sales for Amazon.com and make $10 a week., a little less than 5% margin on average (many of the books bought here are hard to find items). Let's estimate the value of this small affiliate over a year, with these as an average sent through Amazon.com:

For no effort, the Cybrary pays its own way. Riches here cannot be measured in money alone. Not bad for a week's worth of work; this site it totally on autopilot.

Carlo Bertocchini is an engineer who loves robots. His site is a natural extension of his own interest, applied in a very specific and profitable way. Here's an interview with Carlo.

Overview: "I work full time as a mechanical designer. I have been involved with robotics (mostly as a hobby) since about 1993. I have built several robots for robotic competitions. I won the heavyweight division of Robot Wars in 1996 and 1997. My robotic Sumo wrestling robot has won the annual competition at the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco every year since 1994. RobotBooks.com is the first web site that I have put together (except for a site about one of my robots on one of the free web page services).

I noticed Amazon's affiliate program one day while I was shopping for books. It sounded like a great idea, so I reserved the RobotBooks.com URL that same day."

"I have contacted over 700 robot related web site owners and asked for a link. My first email does not offer a reciprocal link, but I give one to most of the sites that ask for one. This is important not just for the traffic that you will get from the links, it is also important because some search engines take into consideration the number of other sites that link to yours when they decide how high to rank your page in their search results.

I have submitted my web site to over 100 search engines and directories. There are many businesses that will do this for you for a fee. Here is a free one: http://www.selfpromotion.com/. Most of your search engine traffic is going to come from the big ones (Yahoo, Alta Vista, Excite, InfoSeek, Lycos, Hotbot, and a few others). You want to come up on the first page of the search results. It's not that easy, and there is a whole cottage industry devoted to raising search rankings. We have pretty poor rankings right now. I have a lot more work to do in this area, but that is where much of our growth will come from.

I wrote two articles for the magazine "Robot Science & Technology". Almost all the readers of this magazine are hobbyists. In exchange for writing the articles, I get six months of advertising and some cash. I'll use that cash to buy small ads in other magazines.

I have announced my site on several news groups, and I started an on-line forum on robotics at www.delphi.com. Delphi provides the forum for free in exchange for the right to post advertising banners on it. This forum is now getting about 100 unique visitors per day, and each of them sees my advertisement every time they log on.

I had a service send out a press release to about 1300 newspapers and magazines. This cost $225, and I have gotten two calls from reporters so far. I don't know yet if this will pay off.

Banner adds probably won't work for a product that such a tiny percentage of the population is interested in, but I might look into one of those pay-per-click banner add services for bringing in more traffic."

"We sell books, toys, kits, movies, and magazines that have something to do with robotics. The market I am going after is the hobbyist market. Each item that we sell has a picture and a short description. All the order taking, money collecting, and order fulfillment is done by the companies that I am affiliated with. My plan is to never touch the merchandise myself. I spend all my time on content development and promotion.

Our first full month was September '98. We averaged 50 visitors per day, and we earned about $100 in commissions. In October we averaged about 140 visitors per day, and we earned about $250. It is now near the end of November, and we are on track for an average of 275 visitors per day and earnings of about $500.

Our book vendor is Books.com. They offer 12% commission on all sales, which is the best deal I have seen for books. I actually started with Amazon, and I was looking forward to those 15% commissions they offer, but it turns out that most of the books that I wanted to sell did not qualify for their 15% plan. They would only pay 5%.

Our toys vendor is eToys.com. They offer 25% commission to serious sites that have their own domain names, and 12.5% to smaller sites.

Most of our sales are books. Toys are doing pretty well, but magazines and videos are not moving. I will keep offering them though because it adds content and rounds out the site. They may also help bring some people to the site."

"To be successful with affiliate programs on the web you have to bring several things together. First of all you need to have a product that people want. If you choose a popular product like computers, you have the potential to make lots of sales, but many businesses are selling computers, and you will probably have to spend some big bucks to get their shoppers away from them. I chose to go with a niche product.

Robots aren't as popular as computers, but selling them has some advantages. The robot hobbyists are easy to find. Alta Vista returns almost 700,000 hits on the word "robot". The interest in robots is growing rapidly, and very few web sites offer as large a selection of robotics products as we do. In fact, when it comes to robot books with reviews, we are the biggest.

You need a good web site that is easy to navigate. The user should also be able to get something of value from it without spending any money. We have a "Robot News" page on which we post a new press release or article every week, and a links page where we link to over 20 robot clubs, and 25 robot competitions around the world.

GoTo.com, one of the smaller search engines, allows you to pay for better rankings. I reserved top position for about 25 key words and phrases and most of those only cost me 1 penny each. For example, at the time of this writing, I have top position for the phrase "robot toys". If the surfer clicks on the link to my site, I pay GoTo one penny. This is a great bargain. But if your keyword is "computers", be prepared to pay almost 30 cents for top position. I don't know if GoTo is going to make it with this mode of doing business, but I hope they do because we get almost 10% of our traffic from them. This will probably go down to 2-3% when we get our rankings up in the other search engines.

"Visit http://www.associateprograms.com for lots of info on affiliate programs.

Notice the high commission levels of most of my vendors. Most operators of affiliate programs offer much lower commissions. Don't waste your time with them. If all you are getting is 5%, you really can't afford to pay for any advertising. Even the few pennies you pay at GoTo.com will start to eat into your profits.

This isn't easy. It takes a lot of work to put together a decent web site. Once you have done that, your real work begins. Marketing is the best name for your new job if you decide to try to earn a living with affiliate programs.

I reserved several other domain names, and once I get RobotBooks.com going pretty good, I plan to do the same thing with GourmetBooks.com, VideoGameBooks.com, NutritionBooks.com, and several others. It should be a lot easier the second time around.

How can our readers contact you for more information?

Visit us for an introduction to an interesting and fun new hobby!
http://www.RobotBooks.com or email Webmaster@RobotBooks.com

Associate Programs is an excellent resource for associate/affiliate programs (just ask Carlo!); the unique approach of its creator, Allan Gardyne, incorporates actual, personal involvement with affiliate programs along with a community sharing feedback. He offers discussion boards and insights into this market, as well as recommending his Top 10 programs. This is an excellent site to get a personal view of affiliate programs; the key strength is Allan's email list of over 5,000 subscribers. A list like that will keep you in business for a long time. Let Allan show you how he makes a good living with affiliate programs himself.

"I'm Allan Gardyne. I live with my wife Joanna in a pole house among gum trees and jacarandas by the beach at Tuan, a tiny fishing village without a shop, in sub-tropical Queensland, Australia. I wasn't born here - I just got here as fast as I could. Three days a week I work as a sub-editor for a daily newspaper and Joanna usually works one day as a reporter. These days, I spend just about every other hour I can manage working on AssociatePrograms.com."

"I run a directory of associate programs - the Associate Programs Directory, at http://www.AssociatePrograms.com . I began it because I had joined Jim Daniels' associate program for his introduction to marketing on the Internet, "Insider Internet Marketing". (It's http://www.bizweb2000.com/d2080.htm ) I loved the way commissions arrived regularly in the mail - I was making money while I was walking on the beach - so I searched for more companies offering similar programs.

I was amazed that apparently no one had started a directory of such programs, or if one existed I couldn't find it. So I decided to start my own. At first it was just a one-page Associate Programs Guide, but it quickly expanded into the Associate Programs Directory and I got my own domain name in March, 1998."

"My directory of associate programs is different from most directories. It allows companies running programs to list them, but also allows other people to recommend programs. I also publish an associate's special URL or ID number, so in some cases they can earn commissions from those links. I also allow them to include their own web site's URL, giving them free publicity.

This gives people a strong incentive to send me listings, so the directory grows fast."

"Traffic to AssociatePrograms.com has grown quickly, from 4227 unique visitors to the main page in April, 1998, to 12,305 in August. The Associate Programs Newsletter has gone from nowhere to more than 3000 subscribers in just over five months. I love getting e-mail from people thanking me and telling me how helpful the newsletter has been. It's fun, making money by helping people make money."

"I tell people which programs have made money for me and for other people, and also give marketing advice. I took Corey Rudl's advice and after buying his marketing course, I wrote a personal recommendation for it, instead of just posting banners. My sales soared from $195 (US) to $845 for a month. I use advice from Corey's manuals to market his course and have now achieved more than $1100 in sales for a month - just for course alone; it's at http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/7134/"

"The Internet is growing an a phenomenal pace and so there are always new people seeking products and services. For example, I've found that there are a lot of new businesses looking for an easy way to accept credit cards online, so associates of a company such as Thomas Harpointner's AIS Merchant Services should do extremely well. It offers an amazingly generous $175 commission per sale, and also has a second-tier commission of $50. It's at http://www.aismedia.com/x/cc.cfm?AG45xDUNN

(Note the nifty trick in the URL. AIS allows an associate to change the last part of the URL, so if any sales are made because of this publication I will know. All programs should include that excellent feature.)

Beware of thinly disguised pyramid schemes. I'm extremely suspicious of businesses which excitedly emphasize how much money you can make, instead of telling you about a wonderful product or service.

Brian Clark heads Radiation, a software company offering LinkTrakker software. Drawing on a strong technological background, and offering his products to WebMasters and Web Development companies, he taps into a natural and huge market on the Internet; offering software. He has an affiliate program he runs, as well as participating in his "competitor's" program. Here's how he approaches the affiliate market.

"We've been doing CGI web development since 1994, mostly from the entertainment industry. We needed to be able to track promotionally what was working and what wasn't. We really want to be able to see the results coming from search engines, links, banner banners, and get a feel for how our techniques were working online.

We decided to build the tools because we need them ourselves. LinkTrakker has been around since March 1995 with 16 point version upgrades since then. Now it is the centerpiece of our well tested, well deployed products under the Radiation brand.

In my mind, the most beautiful affiliate's system requires the affiliate to do the minimum amount of special things. Amazon and Barnes & Noble use their cgi program, making you link to a particular book, which is not the easiest thing to do for an affiliate.

In the ideal world, the affiliate would just make a link, and it would count towards their sales, friction-less. It is not about managing the sign up process of affiliates, calculating the percentage they should be paid, and setting up all these systems. Affiliate programs have extreme customization needs on the front end and the back end. On the front end, what info do you want to collect, and how much do you want them to track real time?

Linktrakker fills the middle, connecting each visitor to the Web Site with the outside Web Site that led them in from lead to sale, just by reading a cookie on a browser. It's simple to customize shopping carts to read that cookie and store it as an extra field of the order.

Our affiliate program for LinkTrakker has allowed us to dedicate support resources to everyone who's installing before they bought. Affiliate programs are becoming accepted and free up resources for support, for customer service. We launched our affiliate program 3 months ago and have over 220 affiliates already, providing them the technology without requiring having a direct relationship with their clients; we are thinking like an outsourcer."

"I discovered WebPosition software, which is a great match for RankThis's services, so close that a business person who is more narrow minded might see them as competition. I signed up for their affiliates program, and dedicated 40 CPM of banners for WebPosition, generating $1500 in commissions a month. I get $37.50 per CPM for my banner advertising with this affiliate program, measured in commissions.

Compare that to my other options; if I sell the banner ads, the book rate is $15 CPM. If I can't sell the banner bars via that method, and put that into the hands of a broker, I earn about $1.40 to $5 CPM...compare that to the money ($37.50) from WebPosition. Plus I don't have to convince WebPosition to buy advertising every month, like I would if I was simply selling banner ads at my Web Site.

The problem with banner ad CPM is that it doesn't provide enough accountability to advertisers. Clickthrough doesn't provide enough accountability to publishers. Affiliate programs protect both."

Brian looks to the SellThrough, instead of the clickthrough. He finds that certain sites related to his product line generate much more sales than others through his affiliate program.

This amazing story, inspired from the interview in Inc. Magazine Tech 1998 No. 3 issue, shows how two entrepreneurs took the idea of affiliate programs to create a full time business. They have built their own affiliate program by following the Amazon.com model and putting in their own, unique approach. They have provided a middle ground between the companies offering products and the non-profits they have targeted to help.

Rudy Socha and Carolyn Darrow thought of the idea for this online Gift Store in 1997. By March 1998 they opened their own store online. Socha had learned about Amazon.com's model and the amazing amount of affiliates they had.

Instead of copying Amazon, he invented his own approach, targeting non-profits. By May 1998 they had signed up their first, affiliated non-profit: the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). The ASPCA gets a customized entry page to their gift store. This is a model they have extended by working with just a select few non-profits, instead of managing the headache of many affiliates.

They provide products as the retailer of a variety of dolphin and whale related items (isn't retailer another name for affiliate?). They then sign up non-profits like the ASPCA, who gets paid 10% per transaction. The non-profit gains a source of ongoing income as an affiliate, while the gift store is able to focus strictly on doing something that matters to them, helping non-profits.

They do not actively promote their Web Site. They do not collect emails or customer information, because they feel it just isn't the right thing to do. Despite what appears to be the wrong thing to do, they are profiting by working through high traffic, non-profit sites, mostly wildlife organizations. Their marketing cost is the 10% they pay on every transaction. That is it. Donations are also accepted and routed to the non-profits.

By following their own passion and taking the high ground in business, they have developed core relationships with non-profits. Socha has estimated $7 million in earnings their first year, all for doing something they love, with little or no marketing, and helping non-profits survive.

Making money for yourself is the goal of any business. Imagine if you could help others, giving back money to the community while profiting yourself. Unlike the previous story, the following is a site based on giving more than on selling a specific line of products. Its success is an inspiration for anyone seeking to really use the power of the Internet to help themselves, and their community.

The goal of iGive.com is for the shopper to give back to the community. A wide selection of products are available from merchants such as:

• eToys
• Beyond.com
• software
• Music Boulevard
• Avon
• Reel.com
• J.Crew

Notice that the profit margins for most of these are in the upper ranks; this gives the site an ability to generate profits. This profit margin is split equally, half going to the non-profit of the shopper's choice and half to keeping iGive.com's efforts going.

iGive.com earns its money by matching shoppers to the selected merchants. It creates cause related marketing, donated a matching fund for each purchase. In essence, the good will of the shopper is encouraged and the non-profit gets half the net profits.

iGive.com opened in 1997 and in its first year estimates to have generated over $180,000 for 43 non-profits ("Organizations make it easy to donate time, money online", Jamie Beckett, San Francisco Chronicle, December 24, 1998, p. D3). Remember that since they split the profits, they also earned $180,000. Total earnings is over $350,000 for the first year, while helping non-profits and the community. No inventory, no burdens of order processing or delivery; simple, direct cause related marketing. Where else but the Internet could this happen?

Now that you have read some amazing stories of how others are achieving their dreams, it's time to get focused on the results you can generate.

You will notice something common among all the success stories; every one of them intensely enjoys what they are doing. The first thing that leads to most affiliate's failure is the lack of real interest, passion, or love for what they are doing.

In fact, most people assume that they should just sign up for every program and chase customers down. They set up sites with hundreds of programs on it, putting up banner after banner on their site.

In the following chapters, we'll show you how to set up your Web Site and marketing. For now, remember the most important lessons the success stories have taught us all:

1. Measure your success in your own terms. For the Cybrary, it may be paying its hosting fees and breaking even. For others, it may be money. But if you look closely at those success stories, every one has an extreme joy in helping others achieve their goals.

2. This joy is part of their success; if you do not enjoy what you are doing, eventually you will get cynical and give up. Your customers will pick up on it, even if you don't think you are being negative. As the saying goes, "Life is a state of mind." Prepare yourself with a positive attitude.

3. Begin with the end in mind; determine what is important to you, set realistic goals, and pursue your goals. Test your efforts cheaply and when you find what works, then you can sink your money into it. You want to find the best affiliates programs for you; target ones that you can sell a product a day, and make $20 of off each sale. These are the ones that can build your business.

4. Remember that none of these stories happened overnight; promises of instant success is not what this book is about. Focus on your long term efforts and building an Internet business that fits into your life and doesn't make you work too hard.

5. You only have so much time in life; enjoy what you have. Let the Internet help you further that enjoyment. If you find yourself complaining instead of doing something to solve the problem, you have missed the point.

6. Abraham Lincoln put it so well: "The pessimist sees the difficulty in opportunity.
   The optimist sees the opportunity in difficulty."

No achievement comes without its challenges -- and that's where the real fun comes in. Ask any successful person about the most enjoyable, alive time of their lives and it inevitably comes down to when they were just starting their idea. These really are the good days.

Time: 10 minutes

Goal: Make a list of the following:

• Every job you may have had
• Every hobby you may have, or would like to have
• Every personal interest, hobby, related topic, business, or special interests you may have

High profit ideas can be found with a little fishing. Don't think too hard, just write it down. And limit yourself to 10 minutes. You are looking for those subjects, interests, and related products and services that you can offer.

Imagine yourself 5 years from today, the day you made a decision to change your entire life, and you will look back on this moment as the time you took the next step. Picture yourself doing what you would like to do; what sort of people would you like to meet? How much vacation time would you like to take?

Take some time to take your dreams and put them together with what you are thinking now. What can you realistically achieve and within what time frame?

Time: 10 Minutes

Goal: Take each item from Phase 1 and ask:

1. What are the major problems facing people interested in this subject?

2. What are the important goals that people interested in this subject would like to achieve?

Do this as quickly as possible, 10 minutes only. Remember not to think too hard; if you cannot list them quickly, it is likely your target customers cannot as well.

Think of yourself traveling up in an elevator with one other person; this person will get off on the next floor. You have 30-60 seconds to describe exactly what you do and make it so interesting, that they do not want to get off.

Don't worry if this doesn't come too quick; in fact, you should work on your elevator speech throughout your business. It will change and adapt as you do. What is important is to focus your efforts on being able to exactly and quickly explain what you do in the time it takes to ride up an elevator.

Let's start judging what you wrote. Which ideas are worth your time and which are wasted time?

Go back through your list from Phase 1. Ask two questions of each:

1. Can I write about the solutions or goals these people want to achieve?

   People who write about something based on their own experience put out more interesting materials than "experts". Don't think of yourself as an expert, can you simply write their goals and solutions from experience? If you can, customers will pay for it. The real challenge is to provide a new twist to the subject that no one else has.

2. Can I provide products/services to supply my customers? Is anyone else doing what I'm doing?

   This question is usually assumed by most businesses; if no one is selling what you are, you have to create a market. If too many people are selling what you are offering, your competition may hinder your results. Be honest and don't use your own opinion only; get feedback from others. It is often easier to take part of an existing market than creating your own.

Phases 1 and 2 are for letting your ideas go. Use Phase 3 to sort your ideas, check them out. Do this for yourself and work with a partner. Make sure you are honest in Phase 3 and take only those ideas that are workable, and throw out the rest.

Remember that competition is not necessarily bad; it has been proven that in a town with a McDonald's burger restaurant, that opening up another McDonald's in the same area can actually improve sales in both stores. People want more of a good thing, but be sure you don't pick out a business with an 800 lb. Gorilla that owns the market.

For example, it would be silly to create a Personal Computer software system to compete with Windows. But if you could sell something that Windows users would want, you gain part of a natural market. What you are looking for is your natural market, things that you understand and can easily explain, and offer, your target customers with affiliate programs.

The first step was brainstorming exactly what it is you are selling:

1. A solution to the problems your customer has.

2. Supplies to help them solve the problem.

Now that you have an idea of what it is you would like to offer via the Internet, apply this to what is actually selling online. Certain products move better than others; for example, most online shoppers would not buy an expensive suit, because the expense and need for personal assistance are not available.

Yet these same people would buy apparel from a catalog like L.L. Bean or Habitat, Inc, the kind of apparel that is not priced too high, that you can look at a picture and decide whether or not you want to buy it. At the end of this chapter is a long list of Web Sites you can visit to discover exactly what it is that people are buying,

Apply this to what you want to sell via affiliate programs and use the following criteria to measure whether or not you select an affiliate program to work with.

You should be able to:

1. Open an online store, ie, Web Site, as your primary business or additional revenue stream and immediately begin selling products.

2. Take advantage of online customer service, automated order processing and delivery, and the ease of having a business that virtually runs itself with no overhead.

3. Drive people to the door and help them decide what to buy, wherever they are.

4. Use your highly trafficked Web Site to attract traffic and generate residual income.

5. Increase your profits by putting an automated system in place that works for you.

Most of all, you do not need to be an expert. The affiliate store and staff are set up to answer questions and fulfill the orders. Your job is to simply get people into your store..

All you have to do is market and cash your percentage of net profits your store generates, hopefully doing something you enjoy. Sound good? Let's look at what is selling online:

1. Computers: If you want to prosper during this Internet economic revolution, then you need to offer the products that people want to buy, quickly and easily.

   Today, they want computers. Lots of them.

   They want faster computers and modems, better monitors, and more software. Most people who visit your Web Site are using computers. Our whole Information Age is powered by computers. Here is a conservative estimate of what the future holds for Online Computer Hardware and Software Sales:

   1996: 140 million
   1997: 323 million
   1998: 701 million
   1999: 1,228,000,000
   2000: 2,105,000,000
   Source: Forrester Research
   

   While computers are an excellent item to sell, the affiliate programs are even better. The challenge is in selling such a wide variety of products. If you choose to sell computers, make it one of your core focuses and make sure that you know what you are doing.

   Once again, don't worry about being an expert. I had a computer salesperson in my staff in San Francisco who had never sold computers. He simply read trade journals, one hour a day for a period of 3 months. By the end of that period he was the best salesperson in our office.

   Computers have and will be a major part of this market.

2. Books are the next biggest item sold online by most estimates. You have a broad selection of affiliate programs to choose from, including Amazon.com's famous affiliate program.

   Barnes and Noble, Books.com, and many other book stores await you. Measure these stores on the profit margins you can gain from them. Remember in our success stories about the engineer who started with Amazon.com, but found out that most of the books he sold went at just a 5% profit margin.

   He opted to go with Books.com, which gave him 12%. Another Web Site, targeted towards a niche market of Pets online, generated over half a million visitors a month and ran into a similar decision. This Pet Web Site owner was selling many books for Amazon.com and negotiated with them to get 15% of everything he sold.

   Then he called the distributor of books (this affiliate was selling many, many books) and asked if he could sell directly from the distributor and by pass Amazon.com. Because of the high volume of books he was selling, the distributor allowed him to become a direct reseller.

   Books are an excellent product to sell as an introduction to your customer base. Keep in mind that even at 15% per sale, you are most likely selling a product in the $20-$30 range. That's only $3.50 to $4.50 in profit per book sold, not even close to our $20 a product item outlined at the beginning of this book.

   Yet books can help you get your customers used to buying from you, and they obviously like to buy them online. It is estimated that 23% of the people online buy books (Iconocast, October 1998). Look around at any of the bigger Web Sites and you see the are all offering books.

3. Travel is a huge market online and one of the most lucrative. From Web Sites like Travelocity to Microsoft's Expedia, the ability to book cheap travel online is powerful. Travel will continue to be a major portion of Internet sales. There are some affiliate programs with these travel opportunities, but don't just think about selling plane tickets.

   You may find people want to travel to a certain destination, which may result in a significant market. For example, Hawaii is a highly searched for vacation spot online. You may be able to sell apparel, travel, vacation rentals, and other Hawaiian related products. Just look in a search engine and you will find a battle for the top spots for this heavily searched for term. Keep an open mind if you are thinking about travel, because there is much more than the flight involved. People also like to remember where they have been with clothing, souvenirs, and videos.

4. Music is one of the biggest markets online as well. From music CD's, to personalized CD recording where you pick your own songs to make your own records, the market is vast. People like to buy music, but like books it comes with a lower profit margin than most other items.

   Even if an estimated 10% of people online buy music, you have to be sure that your target customer base is interested in buying this from you. Two great affiliate programs are Music Boulevard and CDNow; both offer decent profit margins, but this is again a commodity product.

5. Apparel and clothing are just starting to catch on the Internet, as people see the traditional catalogs make an online play. In 1997, American Online found that apparel was its biggest seller during the Christmas season.

   Apparel and clothing can be a seasonal play, as most buying happens during the December holidays, Valentines Day, and Mother's Day online. These patterns may change as more people shop online, but for now the apparel game is wide open.

6. Toys are also big online, with affiliate programs running with good profit margins. This is most often a seasonal play as well. Etoys is the biggest player in this market, but look for a wide variety of companies as this market develops.

   Also consider that toys shouldn't be limited to Christmas-type gear; if you count computer and Nintendo/Sega type games, this market is very big.

7. Flowers and Greeting Cards are an obvious fit for the Internet. If you can pick up a phone and make a transaction easily, the Internet can facilitate this commerce.

   From companies like 1800Flowers to ProFlowers.com, these sites have networked florists nationwide and offer decent profit margins. Products like this would again move in according to certain holidays; Mother's Day in the United States is one of the biggest days for sending flowers, as is Valentine's Day.

8. Outdoor gear and sporting goods are also a good target. In particular, fishing is a very popular sport online. Most of the major sports like football, baseball, and basketball are dominated by the bigger sites, many of which do not use affiliate programs. Still you can look around for what is available. Outdoor gear for hiking, fishing, for extreme sports like rock climbing or mountain climbing may move well, along with vacations that relate to this gear.

   Here is where you could combine the travel with the actual sales of outdoor gear. Imagine a site selling fly fishing rods and travel to select areas to fly fish around the world. If you worked through our 30 second brainstorm and found fishing as your passion, you have an active market with many possibilities.

9. Vitamins and health food are really just beginning to make their niche on the Internet. From affiliate program providers like GreenTree.com and MotherNature.com to many, small suppliers of vitamins and health supplies, this is another growing market.

   In a recent study, the one thing people didn't mind hearing about often were health related items. If people are continually concerned about staying fit and healthy, this kind of product line makes sense. It encourages repeat business and is likely a good, long term play.

10. Personals online are very popular. One and Only is the most famous singles program, which run the gamut from dating services to just about anything you can imagine. Some of these personals tend to run into adult services, so be sure it is something you are interested in before you get started. Research what the product line is and look for subscription based services, which can be very lucrative.

    Many Personals services have monthly subscriptions; you get paid each month the person stays as a subscriber. Look into these programs for long term revenue.

11. (Bonus) Credit cards and merchant card services are an excellent market online as well. The business to business market for services is very big, and there are some great profit margins to be made on moving people to merchant card services. Some credit card companies are offering bounties, or payment per customer, for referrals, but they don't tend to add up to much. Still this market obviously has a major market online.

This is a simple overview of the best selling products on the Internet; subjects like pets, investing, and career development are major categories that we have not touched on. Look for more growth in these industries as affiliates programs spread.

In the next chapter we will cover the places to go and find your affiliate programs; for now use the following list to keep up with the latest trends in the market.

Remember these sites, because they keep up to date continually with the growth of the Internet. This is an important tool in determining what affiliate programs to offer.

One last word of caution; don't expect to stay with all your affiliate programs for a long time. Test them and move to the ones that give you the most sales. Be flexible and set your goals so that you can gauge whether or not it is worth your pursuing for a long time.

Charts and Graphs re: Sales Projections on the Internet and types of product purchases:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/reports/1998-04-Netshop2.html

Spending by location (USA, Europe, etc.), gender, experience, and age group:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q49.htm

Web vendor to traditional vendor comparison, suggesting that the web has certain positive attributes and credit safety is not an issue:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q6.htm

Opinions on Providing Credit Card Information:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q4.htm

Which of the following features are MOST IMPORTANT to you personally, when shopping, or considering shopping, on the Web:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q66.htm

How often do you use the web for shopping for personal reasons? (including gathering product/service/vendor information, placing orders, making purchases, and/or customer support)
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q80.htm

How often do you use the web for shopping for professional reasons?
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q81.htm

Listed below are some of the alternative manners in which you might purchase from Web vendors. For each scenario, please indicate how likely you are to buy a competitively priced product/service that you really wanted. (In each case assume that you are providing the needed information, and receiving the product/service directly from the vendor.)
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q5.htm

How often do you make a decision to purchase (or not to purchase) a product/service based primarily on information that you have gathered on the web whether or not you use the web to make the purchase?
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/personal/q99.htm

Growth Projections of the Internet:
http://www.c-i-a.com/199809iu.htm

Forrester Estimates Worldwide Internet Commerce Will Reach As High As $3.2 Trillion In 2003:
http://www.forrester.com/press/pressrel/981105.htm

A statistical snapshot of the net today, and a glimpse of where its going tomorrow:
http://www.emarketer.com/estats/welcome.html

How many are online throughout the world?
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/index.html

The old saying in marketing applies to affiliate programs; there are two important keys to any business:

1. Making the right offer, so that it clearly outlines the benefits to the customer

2. Making that offer to the right list, the people who are interested in the product or service.

In this workbook you have identified what you would like to do and the best selling products online. Now is the time to put these two together and select the affiliate programs you would like to offer at your Web Site.

If you are looking to select affiliate programs, there are numerous sites popping up all over the Internet. Many great directories are out there in a market that is fast becoming crowded. Two of the oldest and most reliable Web Sites to look for affiliate programs are:

1. Refer-It, http://www.refer-it.com; they judge the top affiliate programs and rank them.

2. AssociatePrograms, http://www.associateprograms.com, which is run by Allan Gardyne and is a rich resource of information on the subject.

   Before we begin, remember that there are two ways for you to affiliate with these programs:

   A. At your own Web Site, which you update periodically to reflect changes in your product line and marketing;

   B. Via your email/ezine list, which can operate without a Web Site.

You would be surprised how much more effective a good ezine/email list is than a Web Site. Web Sites are important but don't expect your visitors to be so energetic that they seek you out. If you have a Web Site, be sure to capture email addresses of your visitors and remind them to come back.

You will hear this theme throughout this book for a reason; the companies that do well have great email lists. Their customers don't mind hearing from them. Amazon.com has an email mailing list, including sending out to its own affiliates. Xoom.com has built its entire business on email contact, follow up, and sales.

Most affiliate program providers seem to be in love only with banner advertising at your Web Site, which is not necessarily the best way to go. Banner ads get a small amount of traffic and sales generated (see the next chapter for details). Consider this when you are choosing an affiliate program.

 Here are the rules to follow when selecting an affiliate program:

1. Get paid well for whatever you do. Make sure that you have a good selection of products to choose from. If you are selecting more than one affiliate program, make sure they fit together logically, ie, don't sell flowers and hunting gear.

2. Select your affiliate program based on your target audience and your ability to contact them. Be wary of signing up for every program under the sun and hoping that a few will work out. Even though most of them are free, the cost in your time and lost customers is tremendous. Confusing people by posting as many affiliate programs as possible will not work.

3. Make sure that the sign up procedure is easy to fill out. If you find it complicated to begin with, you may find it hard to work with the affiliate provider long term. Also be careful not to pick up an extra workload with an affiliate program. Amazon.com, for instance, insisted that people only promote recommended books at their Web Sites. While the logic is good (an endorsement is much more powerful than simply posting a banner ad at a site), the delivery was flawed. Affiliates wanted an easy way to send traffic to Amazon, even if they got paid less. The result was a growth of this program to include raw links and searches from other Web Sites at a reduced commission.

4. In keeping with this workbook, take time to find the products you would like to offer. Don't sell anything you don't really believe in, or from a company that is not reliable. One bad experience can ruin your customer's opinion of you, even if it is the affiliate company that is the source.

5. Check the way the affiliate program tracks and records your orders. Do they offer you statistics, email notification, and are they good about paying on time? Read about the rules and the system they have set up. Do they offer a third party auditing service? Have people complained about this service?

6. Do they give you the marketing tools to help you sell more? Look for banner ads, free reports, text ads that you can use in an ezine or classified advertisement. The more you have to create, the bigger the burden on you.

   But also keep in mind that if you are really selling well with a company, you should look for innovative ways to incorporate this into your business. Are they willing to go along with your innovation?

7. Finally, make sure that you have some way to generate long term revenue. Few affiliate programs can afford to generate traffic back to your Web Site. Do your best to capture information about your visitors and your buyers. If you find that someone bought via your Web Site, send them a thank you note as well. If you let the affiliate provider do all the work, you will lose a long term customer. Make sure you build your customer list.

Here's a checklist from Refer-It to help guide you along the way.

You can find this updated CheckList at Refer-It, http://www.refer-it.com, the leading search engine for Associate/Affiliate Programs

1. Does the Program allow only certain sites to join (e.g., specific demographics, minimum website traffic, and focus of the site)?

2. How long has the Program been in place?

3. What sites are currently in the Program?

4. What form of compensation is offered - actual cash or only store credit for their product or service?

5. What are the financial terms of the agreement -- a percentage of the transaction or a flat fee? Does it stay the same, or change with the amount of volume you send them?

6. Is there a set-up fee, either in terms of dollars or traffic?

7. How will the referral be tracked? Will a third-party audit it?

8. How is reporting of actual activity done? How often is payment made?

9. Do you get paid on only the first purchase or on every purchase? What if your lead returns to their site later - do you still get paid a fee?

10. How long is the agreement in effect? What is the "out" for both parties?

11. What is your responsibility to promote their product on your site (banners, buttons, links)?

12. Will your visitors find these advertisements valuable or annoying?

13. Are you sure you want to give revenue away to another site? Perhaps you should do your own merchandising. Visit http://www.refer-it.com for more information on setting up your own program.

If you understand all the elements of setting up an affiliate program, a natural question will arise:

How do I get enough traffic to my Web Site to generate sales?

The key to getting traffic is to put your energies in what will bring you back the most value. It's like deciding where to put your efforts so you'll get the most return.

Choosing how to generate traffic means understanding that you have to adapt your efforts to see which is working best. Think of it like the choices you make for your house; if you had to choose between putting in a bathroom, which returns most of the value of your investment, versus putting in a pool, which is more fun but returns nothing on your investment, what would you do?

Most affiliates, unfortunately, choose to put in the equivalent of a pool at their Web Site. They focus on short term marketing that brings them little return and demands enormous expenditures.

Make your marketing time and money go further by focusing on the following 5 techniques. These will cut your time, costs, and headaches down, and help to boost your sales.

1. Ezines

2. Search Engines

3. . Banner Ads

4. . Press Releases

5. Internetworking: Strategic Linking Strategies

E-Zines

The e-zine is just a fancy way of saying an article or collection of articles published online. Most of these come in the form of "newsletters" and consist of various information that will hopefully be of value to those subscribers and visitors. The focus and purpose of the Ezine is to attract attention to other sites and services or products that will be available to purchase at a profit for the company offering it. Information is always of value and is the best way to get the interest of the person. You must offer some idea or concept that they cannot find anywhere else, or at least give that impression. Then, after giving a taste, build the desire to form that mental need for more.

To properly measure the success of an ezine is to record the responses from the replies of the customers. If you are promoting the website of a friend by sponsoring his information in your newsletter, perhaps an open dialogue with that friend will enable you to track your success through his response, and this may up the value of your newsletter to him and others, opening other opportunities.

1. Always offer something for free to spark interest in the Ezine.

2. Publish or Swap Articles in other Ezines if possible.

3. Focus on Ezines that are related to your product or service.

4. Build Business to Business relationships with publishers

5. . Gain access to ezine recipient list and offer yours.

6. Use ideas from others in tailoring your offer.

7. Search out for different and new Ezines and evaluate them. Did they have important information, are they sponsored by a company or and individual, what is their method of delivery, their topics, is it worth pursuing and contact owner to see how we can be published as well.
   You can use search engines to find access to ezines or you can go directly to related subjects columns and find a wealth of publishers, companies and individuals who are eager to provide this information. There is email, fax, and mail access available from most publishers.

8. Sites to go to include:

   http://www.dominis.com

   http://www.bestezines.com

9. Most of all, be sure to develop your ezine list. If you send out messages regularly to your list, you forge loyalty with them. The next time you make an offer, they may remember you. Without an ezine, you will be sending out messages to people who don't know you. Even worst, you may spend all your time marketing to strangers, a less than 5% game of sales...more like 1%. More on that later...

Search Engines

Search engines are the simplest solution. Sometimes too simple. People just believe in these things, and I don't know why. It's not like you find anything half the time you are looking in. I've never been through so many dead ends to get where I'm going.

Search engines perform a function of cataloging the Internet, but I use them for finding niche markets. Once I go there, there is no point in searching any more. Here's the criteria I developed:

1. If you can name your product or service in four words or less, search engines are something to consider.

2. If you can afford to always focus on them and stay on top, they can be a powerful tool. Be prepared to fight this battle every week though; if your keyword is one lots of people want, beware!

3. It is better to pay someone on a monthly basis, or a per click through (per lead) basis to test these out. Services run from $100 to $1,000, with clickthroughs costing anywhere from 5 cents to a dollar. Twenty five cents seems to be a norm.

4. Places to visit are a good reason to use search engines as a form of advertising.

Here's some good ideas for getting to the top of the search engines. Please understand that every search engine has its own unique way of looking at things. It is worth it to invest in one of the many excellent subscriptions for search engine positioning, such as Planet Ocean Communication's book at http://www.searchenginehelp.com

Some tips for getting one top:

1. Do not waste your time posting to hundreds of search engines; post only to the top 7 including Yahoo, Lycos, Infoseek, AltaVista, WebCrawler, Excite, and Hotbot. This is where 90% of your traffic will come from, and it is best to focus your energies getting on top of those.

2. Create doorway, or portal, pages to your site for each individual product you sell. Search engines used to frown on this, but as long as you don't play too many games, this is a great way to get on top. The logic is simple; create one page featuring one product and word it well enough that it passes rank at the top search engines. Use this for all your affiliate programs and even when you market, drive people to that single page.

3. Understand how the search engines look at what the keywords you are submitting:

   • Many look for how early on a page you put a keyword, especially after the first tag.

   • How many times a word appears on a page; don't take this to mean you should just repeat words. The search engines have improved their technology and incorporate standard English rules. Repeating words is not an effective way for getting on top any more.

   • How many other Web Sites link to yours. Infoseek is well known for using this as a criteria, and like all things with search engines, it may change. But it isn't a bad idea to get many links.

   • The ratio of keywords to total words is also judged. If they read too many keywords to total words, meaning that you are simply repeating again, it can work against you, so be careful.

   • How close keywords appear together on a page; this is again to target those simply repeating key words and phrases.

   • Where the keywords are located; some search engines rank highly if they are in the title. Only a few now look in what are called "META" tags, which appear at the top of the page. Some also look for words as links, in headers and rank this as important. Again this varies from search engine to search engine.

   • Grammar; believe it or not, some try to check your grammar to see if you are cheating.

   • There are specific places search engines look for keywords, including::

     Title

     Meta Tags (Description and Keywords)

     Headline tags like H1, H2, and H3

     Within links

     In the actual copy on your page

     In "ALT" tags, which are used to describe graphics and sometimes a good

     place to hide keywords

     In comments tags like this: <!-- my comments here -->

     Some even look at words in your domain name to judge you.

Maximize Your Banner Ad Results

Banner ads are a common tool for generating leads, but one that is often used ineffectively. Instead of relying on random impulses, banner ads should lead to a contact point, a specific offer, and a way to follow up with a customer. After all, impulse buys are just one small part of the entire game; if they come to your Web Site, your online storefront, you want to capture email information so you can quickly and effectively invite them back to consider buying again. Here's ten tips on improving results online with banner ads:

1. Don't use Fancy Graphics

   Banner ads work when they immediately deliver a message and load quickly. Keep them as small as possible, 5-10K tops (that is file size). Forget using photographs or actual pictures. Focus on text, your headline, and keep the colors as simple as possible.

   Use four colors: Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow. Use black type and have your main headline, or main words, stand out in a different color. These four colors will allow you to save your images in the smallest format possible.

2. Make it familiar

   Make it familiar and keep it small. Many banner ads are limited to small sizes -- 400X50, 480X60 (that's width versus height, measured in pixels...your average computer screen is 640 X 480 pixels). Your banner ad should be the size it is allowed to be, and the sizes listed here are fairly standard. Don't stray too far from these; the most successful banner ads follow these standards.

3. Use the Windows Interface

   The most successful banner ads emulate a familiar computer behavior. If you visit the link at Smart Clicks, you'll notice that the top banner ads look like the Windows interface. Pull down menus, OK/Cancel buttons, scrollable text, and check boxes dominate.

   Please understand that none of these actually work in the window, you are just supposed to click on them. What they do is make people take an action they are familiar with. Since over 90% of your visitors use Windows PC's, they are used to clicking on these.

4. Use underlined words that look like links.

   If you want to really increase response, under your headline words in blue. This makes them appear to be links. Links appear on your Web Pages, and people know to click on them.

5. Have a person staring out at you, make it personal

   It is an old advertising trick to have a person, usually a woman, staring out from the banner ad (or print ad). Ever notice how a computer companies who want you to order via phone have an operator staring out at you?

   The goal is to make it live, as if a living human being with a real identity is on the other end.

6. Use Click Here, OK buttons, and action words

   The goal of a banner ad is to get them to act. Always include some action for them to do, like "Click Here". OK buttons work well, as do action words; Act Now, If you Want to Win, Click Here...you have to ask them to act.

7. Use "You" in your headline

   The headline trick works in banner ads as well. For example, a Yahoo white paper measured banner ad results. The most successful ones used headlines with the word You or Your. Address your surfer directly to get them to click.

8. Use small animation

   A small mouse moving over a banner ad, a blinking cursor, a blinking "Click here" button, and many small animations have proven to elicit clicks. Remember that the human eyes notices movement on a screen. Just make sure the movement is repeated a limited number of times, and let it stop. Don't let your animations keep going, it will get people queasy.

9. Send them to a Portal Page

   Your banner ad should send the person who clicked to a specific page that has to do with that banner. Keep it limited to one product, and one offer. Remember that banner ads just create click throughs; it's a good idea to try and grab email addresses instead of selling people from banner ads.

10. Keep it Simple!

    Create a banner ad that delivers an immediate result. If you are giving them something for free, or a discount or coupon, get them to fill in some basic information and reward them. Follow up to turn your banner ads into lead generators.

Banner Ad Resources

http://www.wilsonweb.com/articles/bannerad.htm

Excellent resource for banner advertising information for the newbie

http://www.markwelch.com/bannerad/]

Banner advertising consulting

http://www.wprc.com/wwpc/consulting_banners.shtml

Banner Ad Placement Study

http://www.webreference.com/dev/banners/research.html

http://www.whitepalm.com/fourcorners/bannerdesign.shtml

Conclusion: Based on 2.1% average click-through move to Active Banners

www.activebanner.com

Sites to advertise on and why

Good explanation of the "big boys" services and what you get

http://iaswww.com/iashome/promotion/bannerplace.html

Directory of banner ad placement services

http://advertising.utexas.edu/world/WebMedia.html

Design Firms to use

www.adnetintl.com

www.animation.com

Press Releases

Press releases are one of the most effective ways to get your name in print. There is a whole unique approach to using press releases. Remember that an editor or "decision maker" is basically sitting at a fax or email, looking for good stories.

There goal is to get readers interested and sell more advertising. So don't just send out a glorified press release bragging about your product or service. Focus your efforts on promoting the newspapers and magazines to interview you as an expert about a subject.

Here's how to get a press release going, followed by a sample:

1. Put all your efforts into writing a good headline. Your headline and first sentence are what drives the whole process.

2. Be sure to put your contact name and phone on the upper right hand corner of the page, and for immediate release in the upper left hand corner.

3. Lead with short sentences and prepare a quotation from whomever is the expert to be interviewed, likely you. Make it newsworthy so you can help the editor do the job they get paid for. Your job is to get interviewed.

4. Don't expect consumers to read this until you get in press.

5. Email is not always the best way to submit press releases; fax still works well for most print publications.

6. Target specific publications within your industry; don't just send out your message to anyone you think might be interested. Save yourself some money and don't waste the editor's time; they will not like it if you come back after doing this.

7. Visit these sites for some more information on how to create and distribute press releases:

   Paul Hartunian is a master of press releases and has great information online at:

   http://www.netrageousresults.com/pr/

   NewsBureau is an excellent service (with an affiliate program itself) at: http://www.newsbureau.com

Let's look at a sample press release for a company; notice the formula, the way it is written, and how it drives the editor to interview the expert. This one press release resulted in over 150 visits to a Web Page, not bad for a very limited run of an extremely exclusive, niche product.

For Immediate Release     

Contact: Scott Cathcart
(415) 292-5390

Date: Thursday, November 12, 1998

SAN FRANCISCO, CA.

For Immediate Release

What was once a secret tool of the elite has just been released for the first time to the public.

First Security Capital (FSC) announced today the release of a financial tool that previously has only been available to select high-net-worth individuals -- the 90% Stock LoanSM. Their Web site, http://www.firstsecuritycapital.com, allows investors to manage their portfolios like the elite. This innovative strategy empowers them to avoid taxes and protect their liquidity with little risk exposure.

"This loan product gives investors 90% of the value of their stocks in cash without taxes and allows them to remain invested -- and sleep at night -- even if the market drops 1000 points like it did earlier this year," says Dr. Charles Cathcart, President of FSC and a nationally recognized financial authority.

Dr.Cathcart was one of the early contributors to the financial tools now know as "derivatives." In 1987, he led a team at Citibanks's New York Headquarters that introduced a new form of "commodity derivatives" -- now a multi-billion dollar business in the financial world.

This new stock loan has previously received critical acclaim from Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Barron's and Investor's Business Daily. Today's open release of the 90% Stock LoanSM is an exciting development for investors, giving alternatives to high risk portfolios and capital gains taxes.

Dr. Cathcart is an excellent interview who gives a fascinating outlook on the future of investments, based on his success as senior executive and consultant to many large multi-national firms including Citibank, Chase Manhattan Bank, W.R. Grace, and Sumitomo Bank.

To schedule an interview with Dr. Cathcart, call 415-292-5390 or email info@firstsecuritycapital.com.

Internetworking: Getting Other Sites to Link With You, As Well As Targeting Sites To Generate Traffic in Your Direction

While this is the subject of our final chapter, the term "Internetworking" means running out a strategic linking strategy. You target the Web Sites that are related, as well as drawing your target customer base. Here's some criteria to use as you surf the search engines and directories for sites.

Why is a website worth looking at, what to look for when selecting a site for research and marketing possibilities:

1. Search for related topics and words that deal directly with the item or subject you want.

2. See that a site is professionally created and look for links that go to other credible sites. You are looking for the few players, the circles of influence, that have developed for a specific subject.

3. Look at the main pages by shortening the URL to the minimum, review it and add to favorites if it looks good enough to save and is related.

4. Does the site offer banners and deal with the same general subject.

5. Look to see if they have an active directory and if it is one that would be viewed by your potential customers, then see what it takes to be listed on that site e.g., free, barter, or fee/commission.

6. Review site and directory and see if noted people have been listed; this would be a good tip that the directory is worth being listed in.

7. See if discussion boards are listed on site and review them if possible.

8. Notice if there are offers to promote your business in the site.

9. See if sites ask for exchanges of information and bartering.

10. . Notice if the format is similar to the one you have, the same ideas etc.

The most important part of your Web Site is a clear and focused offer. Many Web Sites try to be everything to everyone, which is impossible.

Whatever you offer, focus on the word "Just". "Just email marketing". "Just Generating Leads". "Just selling books" (Amazon.com is an example of this; will they succeed by also selling music CD's?). The following section will show you how to position your offers at your Web site; consider any offer an affiliate program that you are working with.

What's the point of your site? Focus on what you deliver best, and deliver "just" that.

1. Establish as Many Points of Contact Possible on Your Home Page

   Never expect a visitor to return to your Web Site. Use your home page as a place to generate emails, phone calls, faxes, and inquiries. Use your autoresponders wisely; get them set up to answer a basic guestbook (tell us why you visited), surveys, sales letters, mailing lists, and contests. Gathering email addresses is really the name of the game.

2. Where to Place Your Affiliate Offer So They Will Notice

   A Web Site has a few hot spots which will literally triple your response rates if you use it right. The screen a visitor looks at is wider than it is tall. If you want a hint, take a look at the computer interfaces on the two most popular machines, Windows and Macintosh. Most of the places to click on are located on the top and bottom of the screen; the left hand margin in particular is a favorite place to put your initial offers on a Web Site.

   Both place all the action points, the points for people to click, in the frame of the screen. The hottest spot to put your words is the upper left hand corner. People who read English read left to right. Their eye naturally drops on the upper left hand corner.

   Place your first point of contact in the upper left hand corner. Develop your important sections down the left hand side. Use the bottom of your screen as well, especially the lower right hand corner. This is where their eyes scan.

3. How To Use Web Pages as Optional Entry Points, or Portal Pages, for Affiliate Programs

   You can use more than your home page to get people exploring. If you want to promote a specific product, you can direct them to that Web page. Then give them a place to contact you and make it clear how they can explore further. Give them one choice; it really works. Remember the search engine strategy we suggested? It keeps coming back; give them one choice.

Summing Up

The reason most Web Sites fail is that they fall in love with an idea, and never think of what their customers want. Be sure you focus on:

1. Researching your customer base and finding those select places they go for information and entertainment. Find a way to drive them to your site.

2. Study your competition continuously. Always be on the look out for people to partner with. As one Silicon Valley exec puts it, partner with as many people as possible, because you do not know which ones will succeed.

3. Commit to increasing sales AND decreasing costs. A sales only approach means you miss half the value of the Internet. Create a Web marketing plan and apply it, step by step. Evaluate your cash flow monthly, find out which promotions work, then sink your money into the one or two best places to generate leads and sales for your specific niche.

4. Focus on a few affiliate programs and sell their products. Do not overload your visitors with too many choices, or affiliate programs. Find 3-4 that generate revenues and stick with them; try to generate more sales from fewer affiliate programs.

Five Keys of a Great Web Site

Key 1. Save Time and you Save Money:

You have 30 seconds to make a sale at your Web Site. Make sure that your home page text and graphics do not add up to more than a total of 40K (just look on your computer at the file sizes). That will take about 15 seconds to open up, which means you have to hit them with your message immediately.

Think of your site as having three reasons for your customer to visit. Focus on those three reasons and answer them quickly with headlines that link to specific pages. There is an old rule of design called the "Rules of 7"; never give them more than 7 perceived choices to make, or you will confuse them.

Keep it simple, and minimize your links. You can embellish on your other Web Pages, but at your front door, your Home Page, orient and:

A. Focus your customer on exactly what you offer, your affiliate programs, and why it will benefit them. Everything else is just commentary.

B. Show why they should believe what you are offering. Back up what you say with testimonials, what other people say about you. Have a page where you introduce the owner, with a picture, or show the track record of the business. If you are new and have no testimonials, focus on success stories and show why you follow the same model.

C. Make your site believable. Credibility is 50% of the reason anyone will stay at your site. Prove you can do what you say, and show the results. Put it in percentages, dollars saved or earned, leads, and compare it to your industry. Make the examples so concrete that there are no questions left. If you are beginning, partner with others so you can benefit from their experience as well. After all, every business began some time; don't let this stand in your way.

D. Get them to contact you immediately. Put your free report on an autoresponder, and get them to fill in a small form on your home page immediately. Do not create a home page without such a simple form.

Key 2. Color

The Web brings color printing to anyone; this is a scary proposition. People put so many colors up, it distracts. Adapt the following rules and you'll be safe:

1. Use just a few colors on your Web Page. One trick I use is to focus on the color blue for my links, dark blue for a new link, and then a lighter blue after they have clicked on it.

   Try to use just 3 colors on your page; after all, computer screens are based on an RGB (red, green, blue) model for a reason. These three colors are the most reliable ones for looking the same on most screens Too much color just turns people off.

2. No more than 20 percent of your Web Page should be in color. Use white backgrounds, black text, one color for links, and keep your colors simple. Avoid fancy patterns or gradients, because while it may look good on your computer, it can look awful on others. Use color for your left hand border.

3. Use simple color lines at the top or bottom of the page to separate sections.

   If you use text as a graphic, make it a different color to separate sections of your Web Page.

4. Use your color to accent what you are doing, for key points of action, links, and places you want people to go to immediately. Have one main color for your page, and use the other two sparingly.

5. Color affects people psychologically, for example:
   1. Yellow promotes optimism, but too much makes people uneasy.

   2. White is associated with truth.

   3. Orange is associated with fun, while red promotes appetite.

   4. Black is the most dramatic color for backgrounds.

   5. Blue implies authority, financial responsibility, and security.

   6. Green means health and tranquillity.

   7. Blue is the most popular color.

   Key 3. Consistency

   The style of your Web site should be consistent from page to page. Select a background and colors, then stick with them.

   Web pages comes in one, two, or three columns. Ninety percent of the time, a two column format works best. Make your Web Pages about 600 pixels wide, with 20% (120 pixels) for a left hand border. This is where you put your table of contents, or listings. Use the rest to put your text, headlines, banner ads, and key offers.

   Most of all, don't change your formatting from page to page. Use the same colors and standard look so people don't think about where things are. It should be easy to get around your site.

   Key 4. Ad Copy and Testing

   Like every other medium (print, radio, and television), it all comes down to your ad copy. Words are what make people respond and react.

   Spend your time with your ad copy and test what works. See which headlines pull at your Web Site, and via email. Test and change these most of all, especially on your home page. Don't think of updating, think of testing your ad copy.

   Key 5. Design

   A Web Site should be easy to navigate, which simply means breaking down your offer into its own logical structure. Try to make everything accessible with one or two clicks of a mouse.

   Write an outline of your ideas, then for each of your major subjects, write the name on a piece of paper. Put these on the floor in front of you, and circle them around your home page. If you find yourself branching out so much that there is little floor space, try to reorganize it.

   The further you get from the home page, the more you need to edit. If you can make everything available in one or two clicks, you will make it easy for your visitor to quickly get through your site.

   Make your files names descriptive as well, so people know what they are looking at. If you focus on writing a site simply, you will find that most sites break down into:

   1. The Home Page, i.e. Table of Contents, to center everything around

   2. Content that shows what you are doing, and that you know what you are doing;

   3. Credibility building pages, like resumes, testimonials, and company information

   4. Places to contact the business for emails, faxes, inquires, and phone calls

   5. Points of Sales, where they decide to buy or not

   6. Products/Service pages, to outline what you offer, the benefits, and the costs.
   7 Warning Signs of an Unprofitable Web Site
   1. Selling To Everyone Means You Sell to No One

      If you do not target your offer, it will confuse your customers. People are not patient. In a recent survey, 73% of people claimed to be "insanely busy". If you do not develop a target customer profile and appeal directly to them, you will lose customers. And they will never come back to your site again.

   2. Web Flea Market: Buy a Web Site or Get a Grocery Coupon

      People are selling Web Sites, classified advertising, pre-paid legal services, long distance phone cards, and reminder services via affiliate programs...All on the same Web Page!

      Think about this the next time you go to your grocery store. Do they offer to sell you a Web Site with your pickles? Flea markets diminish the value of what you are selling. Most people who own these sites tell me they depend on selling a high volume of low price items. How do I know this is a doomed approach? Visit their sites and see if there is any life there.

      

   3. Huge graphics that make your site take 30 seconds to open, which is all the time you have to sell your customer on staying.

      The worst thing about computers is that they enable us to do things we just should not be doing. Graphic design is a skill; most people get some Paint program and have absolutely no sense of size, or what the graphic makes them look like. If you want to SCREAM AT YOUR AUDIENCE AND BE OBNOXIOUS, then use big graphics.

      The average screen is about 600 wide X 440 high (pixels). Keep your graphics down to less than 25% of this screen at most, 150X110 as a general guideline. You can make them wider, just beware of making them too tall. At some sites, all you see on the first screen is a huge company logo.

   4. This site has XXXX number of visitors (How many bought?)

      Does it really matter to anyone how many people visit your store? The sure sign that a store is visited often is the success and profits of the owner. All the rest is empty bragging.

   5. Explaining what technology you use, frames, etc.

      To this day it amazes me how people explain the technical design of their Web Page. If you use any reference to technology, you are distracting your customer. Keep it simple.

   6. Download the following plug-ins to get this site working.

      No one will spend ten minutes downloading the plug-in to see your cutesy message. Avoid plug-ins, with the possible exception of RealAudio.

   7. No place to send an email, or gain a free report.

      After spending all this time to create a site, most people forget to ask for inquiries. They just think people will work hard to contact them. Assume that a person will visit your site once, and never return....unless you remind them to via email.

   How to Double or Triple Your Profits:
   New and Easy Ways To Get Customers For Life

   Develop your Lead Product, Back End Product, and Other Related Products and Services

   

   Direct response online marketing is based on eliciting a response from your visitors. That response could be an email they send you, exploring your Web Site, or an actual purchase.

   Think through your affiliate program and forge your long term relationship with your customer by building a sales process that takes them from first contact to close, then follow up with more products and services - more reasons to visit your Web Site and buy. It all begins with considering your product line, and the first product you introduce them to when visiting from your affiliates' sites.

   A. Your Lead Product

   A lead product is the first thing you offer a customer to buy. Think of when you first are introduced to a person, or a business. You have never worked with them, and even if an affiliate has given your site a glowing recommendation, the proof is in the actual product.

   The fact is, you are qualifying your customers, and they are qualifying you. Think about why they would not buy what you offer on first contact and see if you can find a way around this objection to start the sales process.

   Your lead product should be a low cost entry point to working with your business; for example, statistics at a leading Internet commerce center found that 90% of customers purchased products under $100, and of those almost 80% bought products under $40. This shows that there is little or no price resistance below $40 for these retail products, a good starting point if you were to build your customer base.

   Your lead product should not provide a barrier to entry to your business; for example, if you are selling a piece of software for $450, you can offer them a free download. Even better, you can offer a simple how to training manual on how to use this piece of software, with simple screen captures showing them how this product actually works. If you give this away for free, then you get customers who have not qualified themselves. But if they are really interested in buying a $450 piece of software, a good training system that shows the value of what this software does would be worth testing. Offer it for less than $40, then follow up once they buy.

   A buying customer is a more qualified lead than someone you give something to, so be careful of offering things for free just because you think that's what your customer wants. Just make sure that you show the value of what your software does; for instance, if you are selling a statistical software that shows how many visitors come to a Web Site, create a training product that shows them how to use this information. You might even be able to offer a book from Amazon.com, or join another affiliate program that offers such a product that fits your customer's need on first contact.

   B. Your Back End Product

   If your customer purchased a $39 training program to learn how to take advantage of statistics for their Web Site, then the actual software itself could be your back end product, the next thing you offer them. Your affiliate site has sent you a prospect who is interested in Web Site statistics and tracking; you sell them the training product so they begin the purchase decision, understanding why they should invest their money in the software.

   Face it, a $39 decision is much easier to make than a $450 decision. The more expensive the product, the longer the sales cycle is the general rule. There are exceptions, like people buying plane tickets; we know what plane tickets cost and many people know that travel online is the best way to save money, so price resistance is less. But if you sell an expensive product, especially more than $500, there is more to consider. Why not offer your first time customers a lead product that trains them, and build your back end product as the more expensive choice?

   Many times affiliate programs fail because they force someone to make an expensive decision. Get your customer to understand the value of that decision with a good lead product, then follow up with your back end product. You may find that what you originally wanted to offer sells more when it is a back end product, than if it is a lead product.

   Don't believe this? Go out and shop for an expensive item, like a hot tub. Unless you have the disposable income to afford this easily, you will likely take time to make the decision. Which brings up another key point to your back end product; if your customer base can afford it and price is not an object, then lead with the item and offer them accessories to go with their purchase as the back end.

   If your customer base can afford the hot tub, give it to them on first contact. Then you can create a back end product that compliments their purchase. If they need to think about buying it, find out what they are comfortable spending and make your lead product reflect that price.

   How do you do this? Test, test, and test again. Research your market, and your customer base. Find out what is too little to spend, what is too much to spend, and what is just right. All marketing is based on testing, not on your assumptions.

   C. Related Products and Services, Your Affiliate Opportunity

   Let's say you have an excellent SellThrough ratio, and your back end products move as well. Your customers have just bought twice from you. It is proven (see next Key for more) that people who buy more than once from a business are significantly better customers than one time buyers. The logic is simple; buying your product is a sign of trust. Buying twice is a sign of great trust.

   Honor this trust by finding related products and services to what you offer, and find a way to get these to your customers. You could affiliate with other Web Sites to give your customers these products and services. Let's say your lead product was a "How To", Fly Fishing video. Your back end product was a fly fishing reel you were offering. A related service to this would be fly fishing vacations; you could find an affiliate program offering these vacations and give more value to your customer.

   By doing this, you develop a long term relationship and develop your business as the resource for their specific interest; in this case, fly fishing. When you do this, you will discover the long term value of your customer is the first purchase (let's say a $19 video), followed by the back end (your fly fishing rod, $400), and then followed by the next logical purchase (a vacation, upwards of $500).

   Take this logic out further and you can find related products and services like camping gear, fishing lures, books on fly fishing, clothing to fish in like waders, and the list goes on. From one simple product - your fly fishing rod - you may be able to deliver products for a whole specific niche by not only maximizing the value of your affiliate program, but by using other affiliate programs to maximize the value of your customer base. After all, if they don't buy this from you, they will go elsewhere; good, loyal customers are what will keep you in business today, and five years from today.

   The Complete, Online Marketing Action Plan

   If you plant a tomato, and it does not grow, you do not blame the tomato.

   You explore why it is not growing; does it need more sun, water, and/or better soil? What can you do to help that tomato grow?

   Funny how this simple logic escapes people online. They plant their business, spend all their efforts on a Web Site, and do little if anything to market it. Then when the Web Site returns nothing, they blame the Web Site.

   Even worst, they blame the Internet. They justify their failure by comparing themselves to Time Magazine (which recently claimed it has no clue on how to make money online), or Microsoft's shutting down of its entertainment sites.

   They embrace the problem, instead of finding the solution. Meanwhile, they could be searching for the water (customers), the sun (an online marketing plan based on generating results) and the right soil (the Web Site) to grow their business.

   While the corporations fumble, you can step up to the plate. Commit to a tested, proven sales process based on one factor: what your customers want. Let's explore how to do that right now.

   Getting Closer to the Water:
   How To Target Your Customers

   No plant or human can survive without water. Your business cannot survive without customers. Target your customers by using the following strategies.

   Search Engine Strategy

   Most people try only to fool search engines, hoping that their customer will find them on top of the heap. In reality, the search engines are a better research/marketing tool for you than your customers.

   Have you ever been to a search engine and found it frustrating? Why not absorb the frustration and use the search engines to lead you to your customer base.

   Directories: The Power of Yahoo (www.yahoo.com)

   Yahoo is the most heavily trafficked site on the Internet, because it took all these millions of sites and created an organized directory. It is a great place to start your search.

   As you click through the various subjects, you will find groupings of businesses. You will also find related businesses, networks, and professionals that work together. Yahoo also has local directories; you can enter by zip code or search by state and find listings of local businesses.

   You can click on any directory to go to a deeper level, or to go back up a level. Check out the words that appear here and write them down. This will help you collect keywords and categories for your specific customer base.

   Also look for Web Sites that act as directories, or guides, for a specific subject. One guide is worth its weight in gold. For example, if you search for local businesses in Indianapolis , you will find a site called www.indylinks.com which acts as a local directory.

   What better way to market locally then to discover who is marketing, and where? This is an excellent way to begin targeting customers whether you know who you are looking for or not.

   Use Yahoo to help establish the meeting places your customers are going to. Look for small directories that specialize in a niche and harvest them for leads, networking, and researching what your competition is doing.

   Concept Based Advertising:

   Excite (www.excite.com) and WebCrawler (www.webcrawler.com)

   Directories and listings will give you a good overview. Take the keywords and concepts you find and visit Excite. WebCrawler will soon become much more like Excite, with channels and special interests listed.

   Excite organizes its pages by themes or terms; enter your keywords and you will see more related words suggested for you to look into. You can develop the keywords that your customer base is looking for with this approach.

   See what sites appear as well; how are they grouped?: Check out the top 10 sites; why do you think they appear on top? Emulate what they do to improve your listing online.

   Once you find what you are looking for, you will be within a click of related businesses and sites. Excite also reviews sites online, to give you an idea of which ones are best.

   Newsgroups: Visit Deja News, www.dejanews.com and Lizst, www.lizst.com

   A few years ago, newsgroups were the place to market. Today there over 50,000 newsgroups, with an estimated 900,000 posts a day, according to Deja News.

   That's the good news; the bad news is that over 50% of these posts are spam. Newsgroups have run amok with wild claims and crazy advertising. You may still find your customers, but it is a headache.

   Use Deja News to research, and use newsgroups to find out the Web Sites, meeting places, and areas where your customers are going. Since over half the posts are advertising, it may not be that great a place for you to actively promote yourself. But it is not a bad place to ask questions and research. Some times you can just check the FAQs for the newsgroup and find the best sites for that specific interest group. Finally, you can "spam the spammer", and sell to all those people selling.

   After all, what better customer than someone out there trying to market their products and services?

   One final idea is to visit Amazon.com, www.amazon.com, the online book store. Enter your keywords and see what comes up. You will have more information on the products and services related to what you are offering. More importantly, you will know where you customers are, and how to contact them. The only cost is your time.

   As you start to search for your customers, make a list of:

   1. Keywords related to your business; use long and short forms of each word. For example, if you are looking for consultants, use the words "consult" and "consultant" and "advisor" and "consulting" , and so on.

      Microsoft Word has a Thesaurus that will suggest related words for you as well.

   2. Web Sites that act as directories for your specific audience. For example, if you are targeting local customers in the Indianapolis area, find

      local directories, listings of their addresses, and professional associations.

   3. Email addresses and names of sites you visit. It is much more powerful to name the owner of a site, and the name of their site, in your contact than to send out spam to millions of Web Sites. Personalize your direct email campaign by focusing on hundreds of Web Sites, instead of millions of addresses.

   4. Be sure to visit http://www.lizst.com for many mailing lists you can sign up for and at least do some market research.
   The Most Powerful Secret Weapon Every Affiliate Must Have 

   If you look over this book, you will see that setting up a business online is not something that happens instantly. You have to plant the seeds and help grow your garden of customers.

   The most powerful weapon you have is email; it is also one of the most misunderstood. The people who built the Internet, the techies, absolutely hate anything to do with email because they consider it spam.

   Spam is a term for sending an email without thinking who it is going to; it is so simple to send out hundreds of thousands of messages, that people forget to care about who is getting what. Yet if it is not done as a free for all, but as a targeted approach, direct email can work very well.

   Here's why; your initial advertising will likely only sell 1-5% (tops) of people who come to your Web Site. Most people accept that and delude themselves into thinking that people will be energetic and keep coming back to their Web site.

   Nothing could be further from the truth. What these affiliates are doing is digging their own grave, because they do not make it easy for the customer to work with them. If you decide right now that your customers are incredibly valuable, then you will do everything in your power to make sure they always come back to your site.

   The best way to do this is to create your opt-in list, gaining their permission to email them.

   What Would You Do If Your Business Ended Today?

   The Power of a List

   I have a friend who is one of the most successful marketers online, Stephan Mahaney of Planet Ocean Communications. He is always teaching me about the importance of the list, or as he likes to say: if my business was to end today, if they came and took my computer and shut me down, I could simply take my database of names -- my list -- and open up for business the next day.

   If he didn't have a list, he couldn't do this. If he didn't have a list, he wouldn't have a thriving business. That is the most powerful weapon any business can have, because it is not a list they build randomly. It is a list of satisfied customers, familiar with you, and happy to hear from you.

   This kind of list is the real gold of business; now surf the Internet and look at what your affiliate competition is doing. They are trying to suck money out of banner ads, which are a nightmare to get your investment back on. They are running around to newsgroups and posting messages hoping someone will notice them.

   Meanwhile you go to their site and no one notices you; no one invites you to submit your name and email in return for a free gift, coupon, or discount. They just expect you to work hard to visit them, and won't do a thing to make it easy for you.

   The real secret weapon is in making a busy person's life easier by giving them what they want. Affiliate programs are an excellent way to do this. Your ultimate success, like any business, is built on the repeat business you generate.

   Direct Email and Fax Is How You Do This

   Direct email and fax are two ways to contact your customers without intruding. The key is to target your audience and tailor your message to what they want. Many people focus their ad copy on price only; success is generated from your service and benefits you deliver, more than your price or "knowledge".

   First contact is a place to introduce yourself. Don't get into a heavy sales pitch; drive them to a Web page for that. Even better, invite them to hear from you again. Remember not to spam, stripping masses of addresses in hope that a few will respond. The time you spend targeting your customers will more than compensate for waste of time, money, and effort you get by randomly emailing customers who may or may not be interested in your offer.

   Promote safe, secured email with a protection of privacy. Whatever you do, don't apologize. So many people are frightened by the dangerous nature of spam, they forget that a living person is reading their ad copy.

   Those who want to attack you will with or without this message. Those who want to buy will wonder why you are so paranoid about contacting them.

   Compare the first lines of these two messages:

   Example A.

   Headline: How You Can Turn $100 Into A Fortune.

   The benefit of this headline is compelling, but is it believable? Fortune is a vague word, if you turned this into "How You Can Turn $100 into $50,000", the terms are more concrete...but still exaggerated. Get rich quick headlines are weak, but not as bad as the following introduction to the sales letter.

   Content Notice

   ===========================================================

   Thank you for the information you have provided for us and/or others to see on the Internet, and thank you for making your email location available in the process so we can interact with you. The following offer is in response to accessing your web page/publicly accessible posting or information published on the Internet. Or it is in response to email you have sent to one of our accounts, that caught our attention because of the information it contained. We believe our research indicates it is a response that may be of benefit and interest to you.

   If we were mistaken in thinking you posted this information in order for people/us to see and respond to it and exchange information with you, this is notice that you should not read the below contents of the email. It is not our intention to email those who do not want a response or to offend you in any way. Just accept our thanks for your contribution to the Internet, which got our attention.

   ===========================================================

   This politeness is phony...and exhausting. Try this next ad, which tells you why you should read it...and is not ashamed of selling.

   Example B.

   Headline: ADV: A Personal Message....

   I think the headline stinks, and I don't like the ADV intro. This stands for advertising, done to protect the sender. Good advertising is never thought of as an ad, if it is targeted and delivers benefits. Why remind them of this? Also, a personal message is delivered from their CEO. Why not mention this? "A Personal Message From The CEO.."

   Why I Liked This Ad: The Intro Ad Copy

   "We placed an ad in one small area of the Internet. And when the dust started to settle we had over six thousand responses in ten days."

   Compare this to the one above; instead of apologizing, they show you an immediate benefit of what they actually did. This is a success story, with a result that is not beyond the reach of most people. That's because they put a real number, a concrete figure, on their claim to make it believable and real.

   Even better, the ad copy develops to show how they converted the leads into customers. The power of such simple ad copy cannot be stressed too much. The results are tangible, easily understood, and invite you to read more.

   If you take a professional approach to direct email, you will find that less resistance. Spam is a term for unsolicited email; the real goal is to use your first contact as a way to solicit their input, and start communicating.

   Take the following approach with professional, direct email:

   1. Realize that a real person exists on the other end, one with limited time. People only complain about advertising that gives them little or nothing. If you have researched your customer base, hit the benefits that your offer brings to your customer.

   2. Write your ad copy to focus on a short headline. Personalize it with their name and email address, to show how you reached them. It is good to include the name of their business as well, to show that you actually know what they offer. If you have done the steps in the search engines, this is easy.

   3. Get a database program and focus on it. You can use your database to export names and addresses to your email program, personalizing your message to a broad customer base. It is easy to do, and database programs are often less than $200. ACT, Microsoft Access, and MyMailingList are three Windows databases. I use FileMaker for Windows. It also allows me to customize my invoices, sales letters, and personalize campaigns via direct mail, direct email, as well as providing customer tracking.

   4. Do not forget the power of different media. Faxes are cheap and a good way to reach someone in print. One site I visit contacts you via email, then follows up via fax with a guarantee to get you one contract as a consultant within a year of joining them.

   Paper is still a good way to reach people, and fax is not intrusive. Just make sure that you have earned the right to contact them, and don't intrude on anyone who does not want to hear from you.

   Networking and Advertising Online

   Business to business selling is one of the best markets on the Internet. Many people get into competitive stances online, like they are competing for a local market.

   The irony is that in the "real" world, networking is a central element of business. Take the real estate industry, for example. Real estate agents, lenders, accountants, appraisers, construction, painters, title companies, escrow companies, and many others have a referral based system.

   I know one appraiser in San Diego that gets half of his work referred by out of state lenders. A professional network exists in real estate, one based on referral instead of advertising.

   Now go and visit real estate sites online and see how few are applying this model. Everyone is trying to sell their one piece of the pie, when the customer wants to buy the whole package.

   This will not last for long. Intuit, the makers of Quicken software, have taken their stronghold in computer based banking and stretched it to the real estate market. They have created a mortgage site (http://mortgage.quicken.com) where you can apply for a loan online, pre-qualify, and get a choice of six lenders for your loan.

   Soon Intuit will be a broker itself, and will do what every mortgage company basically does. Everyone shops from the same banks to give you a loan. Intuit is using its software as a lead generating mechanism, a referral, for all these real estate professionals. They are also targeting accountants, generating inquiries for these professionals and selling a subscription basis to their lead generating mechanism.

   Remember this model of professional networking, and apply it in the following ways:

   1. Does a network exist for referrals in your market? Invite people and businesses to network with you. Use your links page as a referral mechanism, and build a select circle of influence to profit from.

   2. Think in terms of appointments and actual sales instead of referral fees. You can arrange a professional referral system by forwarding work, more than putting a money figure on it at first.

      If you generate enough leads, you'll be able to charge for them. Use your network to enhance your own reputation, and make sure that whoever you work with backs up what they do in action. Make sure that whoever you work with is as good as you. And backs up what they offer with great customer service.

   3. Banner Ads as a networking tool. Banner ads will not make you money, unless you are Yahoo or Netscape. Invite selected businesses to post banner ads in your network, in exchange for showing your ad on their site. Also use Link Exchange, www.linkexchange.com, to target customers for banner ads as well. For a little extra, you can specify who will see what you are offering.

      Finally, there is a site called the Web Ring (www.webring.org) that helps people create networks of links. Each person puts the code on their home page, and members are added easily. You just need one person to maintain it, and the benefits can be tremendous.

   4. Qualify anyone in your network; do not link for the sake of linking. Get your network to be as professional and responsible as you would be in the real world. One bad piece of your network can bring everyone down.

      Make sure that you ask the right questions and take the time to find good partners, not just links.

   5. Sponsorships are a great way to work closely with other sites. At the Forbes Web Site, Fidelity sponsors a specific section. Their articles and advertising are the only ones you will find in this section.

      Use these sponsorships to your advantage. Place content at other's sites, and use sponsorships as an ultimate form of networking. Work your way up to this via experience and the ability to mutually generate leads for each other.

   The most powerful weapon of all is a good network; it all begins, and continues, with safe, direct email sent to people with permission you have earned. Here's how to write the ad copy that makes them stop, think, consider, and hopefully open up their wallets for you.

   How To Write Effective Direct Email Pieces

   Rule 1. Direct email generates leads, not sales. Plan to follow up.

   Rule 2. Be wary of lists you buy.

   Any list you buy is either an informal opt-in, where people have allowed themselves to be emailed advertising. Usually this means they receive free information, or reports, from the business who owns the list.

   The second list is one step from spam, lists that have been harvested and hopefully targeted. I say hopefully because many are just the second step in a bulk email mailing.

   A good list that does not mind being mailed to and generates sales is what you want.

   You can buy millions of addresses for practically nothing, but these lists are not worth it. You will likely get shut down, get tons of duplicates, and acquire a giant headache.

   Think in terms of hundreds of customers, not millions of emails ´ quality, not quantity.

   Rule 3. Create Impact in Three Words If You Can

   People are busy. They are looking at tons of emails. Why should they open yours immediately?

   Your goal is the three word headline; you may need to use more or less. If you cannot sum up your pitch in one sentence, keep working on it until you do.

   The Subject Line is the headline of your email; this is what they will look at. If it does not make them want to act, they will hit delete immediately. No one wants to spend time figuring out what you are offering.

   Forget tricks; do not use cute phrases or dollar signs. Be direct.

   Which approach creates the most leads? Use what works, not what you like, or hope will work.

   Rule 4. Personalize the message. Address your customer directly as "you". Keep it brief.

   Calling your customers by name in an email should be required of all businesses. If you are not doing it yet, start now.

   There are so many database/email programs that will allow you to personalize your email. Use them. NetContact is one; many databases allow you to export and merge for print letters. Mail Merge is possible for many email programs, and will become so increasingly in the future.

   Rule 5. Write in bullets; in the information overload, the person with the easiest copy to read wins.

   Sum up your main ideas in 5 bullets.

   After you write each one, read it out loud. Ask yourself why what you said is important. Does it increase, boost, save, discover, explore, intrigue, and all together focus on the word you? Cut out the riff raff and select the bullets that generate the most response.

   Rule 6. Write short copy, with an invitation to get more.

   Your introductory sales letter should be short and to the point, two or three paragraphs at most. Invite them to get the whole story. Then send them to your Web Site (preferred), autoresponder, and telephone/fax. Expect to generate leads and give them autoresponders that are 8-10 pages long at most.

   If you have a sophisticated sale, ask them to fill in a brief questionnaire at your Web Site in exchange for your sales letter. Try and follow up with a personal phone call.

   Experiment with posting the sales letter at your site, and including it as an autoresponder.

   Rule 7. Never expect them to buy on first contact. (How often do you?)

   Rule 8. Write so anyone can read your direct email.

   Write your ad copy in a word processor and check the reading level of what you are writing. I use Word's Grammar Checker, located under the Tools menu. You can run sentences, paragraphs, and whole documents to find out what grade level you are writing for.

   For example, I ran the word SimpleText through the checker. The trick is to run the entire check; this report appears at the end.

   I ignore everything except the Flesch Grade Level; notice how the word SimpleText is at the sixth grade reading level. That is why Apple used that word, because it is easy to remember and say.

   If you use this tool on your sales letters, you will be amazed. I was writing at an 11th grade to early college level. It was great for academic research, but the death of a sales letter. I just shortened my words into two or three syllables. I stopped using contractions if possible. My words became simpler. My sales increased.

   Most word processors should include this feature; if not, there are many third party grammar checkers. Just look for the Flesch Reading Level and you should be fine.

   9. Amaze them With an Immediate, Surprise Bonus

   Many people give away free reports, newsletters, and bonuses to start the direct response process. Giving away for free is good, but only if you make an impact. When you write a direct email, you need to direct the visitor to check out a Web Page/site dedicated only to what you are selling.

   Forget driving them to your home page, with all those choices. Give them one choice, and give them their free bonuses immediately. Autoresponders are the most common way.

   Bonuses in Action: Astrology.Net

   Astrology.net sells astrological readings. They have about 10 or so packages to choose from. But when you visit their site, you are asked to join up and to get your free report.

   The process begins with a listing of all the possible readings you can purchase. The free one is in the upper, left hand corner of the form, where all important information should be. This is where the eye first rests, then reads left to right. You scan through their choices and get to the bottom of the form, submitting for your free report.

   You enter your name, birthday, and time of birth. Time of birth is very important and not all of us know this one. They give you the option to include the time or not. You trade them demographic information for the report.

   The information product is created as you fill in three forms. The result is a 3-5 page report and a personalized graphic of the stars alignment at the time of your birth, posted at their Web Site.

   You receive an email telling you the Web Site address. You also learn that this report will be taken off-line in a few days, so you visit immediately. They get your email address, and using a statistical program can check to see if you even bothered to visit.

   What a great way to qualify your leads; they buy the demo, then have to visit your Web Site to pick it up. You could do this with a password protected area as well, with information delivered as a text file (.txt), a Word file (.doc, Save As "Word for Windows 2" will allow whatever you create to be opened on most word processors), or even Acrobat PDF files for those of you with an Internet savvy customer.

   Delivering your bonuses immediately is critical to online marketing. And it does not have to be complicated. From autoresponders to automated reports, the trend is clear; get them thinking, participating, and requesting information. Delivered online, your distribution costs are virtually zero.

   Use this information to qualify your leads. Then close with those interested customers, and follow up with the rest as prospects. Unleash your Web Business through leads and direct marketing.

   Internetworking Your Way To Success
   The Networking Parallel between the Cyber World and the Real World by Bob Burg, from his book "Endless Referrals"

   Just as our intent in the real world of networking and prospecting is to find the right people, meet them, and then win them over through effective follow-up and follow through, the same is true in the virtual world of sales and marketing. According to Patrick Anderson and Michael Henderson of ADNet International of Atlanta, a company specializing in Internet design and marketing, "The Internet is a big world and rather confusing at first. However, once the methods of prospecting are understood, you'll be in a position to increase your profits substantially."

   Make a Good System Even Better

   If, as part of your overall sales and marketing plan, you already utilize referral-based marketing, direct response advertising, outbound calling and telemarketing, introductory sales letters and brochures, and/or any of the principles and techniques discussed throughout this book, the Internet will provide a wealth of new prospecting leads, networking contacts and strategic alliance partners. In this chapter, we'll cover various Internet techniques to use with each of these strategies.

   From a technical perspective, the Internet is an interrelated network of computers. From a business perspective, it is a way to interact with people who share similar interests. When the principles of this book are applied to the online world, it becomes, according to Anderson and Henderson, "Inter-Net-Working."

   So, Who Is Online?

   By and large, people use the Internet when they are alone at their computers and have set aside time to explore, communicate, research, or relax. This is a very opportune time to connect with them. Whatever is on their minds at this very moment is what they will search for. Whatever intrigues them or interests them in the next moment is where they will go to next. They will remain in, and return to, the areas which interest them the most.

   As Henderson and Anderson point out, "Look at what your fellow business people are doing on the Internet. They are spending time and money creating Web sites that tell us who they are and what they are interested in. They are leaving notes and comments in public discussion areas. They are telling us something about themselves and their needs and then they are asking the Netpreneur, or seller, to get in touch with them!" And the general online consumer is actively searching for what interests them as well.

   Because of this, the Internet allows us to do something truly unique. It allows us to target and prequalify our prospects in a very different way - not by demographics, but by actions! In other words, as an online marketer, we are able to target our audience by finding people who, by their very actions, have already demonstrated that they are interested in our products and services.

   This leads to a very interesting observation made by Anderson and Henderson: "By looking through someone's Web site, and/or listening in (observation through public chat rooms) on their online conversations, you can learn quite a bit about them. People will reveal several things about themselves and their business or wants that make it easy to predict their level of interest in what you have to offer. You can read their personal stories, look for things you both have in common, and quickly strike up a mutually interesting conversation. This doesn't happen in any other medium. Don't ignore it! Anyone who catches on to this idea will never have to make a cold call again!"

   The Principles Remain the Same

   Know you, like you, and trust you becomes more critical than ever while establishing yourself on this new medium. After all, there is still lots of uncertainty by the general populace over who can be trusted on the Internet. The media fuels the fear of Big Brother practically every day with stories of credit card thieves, hackers, and viruses all somehow invading our computers and getting access to our personal information. However, such an extreme amount of unverified information sometimes makes it difficult to determine which sources can be relied on. For these reasons, mistrust is the single most important obstacle to overcome in order to establish an opening dialog with a new prospect.

   And that's okay, because those who can overcome this challenge will profit greatly. And Anderson and Henderson explain that it is actually very easy to set yourself apart from the crowd. They describe this as the biggest secret to Internet success, and it is simply, "Don't act like a computer! That's all. Interact with people on a "personal level." The two explain that although it seems obvious, most people try to rely on automatic ways to contact people "en masse," and it makes their prospects suspicious. "Remember," says Anderson, "that they are alone at their computer, willing to visit with another human - but not another machine."

   How to Work Any (Virtual) Crowd

   Many people who begin marketing online are anxious to jump right into the various newsgroups, chat rooms, and listservs in order to promote their various products and services. Not only will that strategy prove ineffective, it would rank right up there with Spamming when it comes to irritating, if not downright offending, the very people they want to have as customers.

   Newsgroups and chat rooms are basically just a crowd of like-minded people. A group of people like any other group. Try not to see the Internet as one large network of computers but instead as several different communities, ongoing conversations, and meeting places for people with similar interests.

   The good news is that, just as in the real world, within these cyber groups are centers of influence. These people can be determined by the fact that they are very vocal (lots of posts) and, more important, they receive lots of responses. This indicates they are respected by others.

   Many experts suggest that, when researching a particular market, finding its related newsgroups and chat rooms and "lurking" is a good idea. This way you can monitor the conversations and gain a deeper understanding of the wants, needs, likes, dislikes, etc., of their participants before jumping in. It's a good form of recognizance, and that is an excellent start. Let's take it even a step further:

   Let's set a goal to identify the centers of influence within those groups and then propel the relationships with those people using the information in Chapter 3 - how to work any crowd. Also, refer back to the section in this chapter on linking.

   A Great Example

   Patrick Anderson noticed in one of the local Atlanta newsgroups that three people seemed to fit the category of center of influence. One was an artist. Patrick checked this person's Web site, really enjoyed what he saw, and felt there might be some way he could use his work for his own Web site, as well as referring him to others. So he called the artist, whose name is Joe, on the telephone (note that he didn't e-mail him, he called him!) to introduce himself. He then related to Joe his thoughts about the artist's work.

   Understandably, Joe was delighted, and right away suggested someone who could use Patrick's Web site design and marketing services as well. Another 250-person or more sphere of influence was now part of Patrick's life, and Joe's as well. We can only imagine how far this new network beginning with Patrick and Joe will extend and how many lives and businesses will be affected and influenced positively.

   Now let's talk a bit about "time leveraging." The typical newsgroup prospector, in order to attain a large number of valid leads, must basically become a newsgroup junkie. The fact is, most of us don't have that kind of time to devote to this one avenue of prospecting. As Patrick points out, however, "when you make a great Inter-Net-working connection with someone who is, in fact, a newsgroup junkie, she can become your personal walking ambassador to the news room community. You are then benefiting as though you've invested the time there yourself."

   Here's a great example illustrating this point: Michael and Patrick were able to generate over 2 million hits for the Country Music Association Award's webcast with just ten days to promote! One person commented to them afterward, "I can understand how you pulled that off, I saw your promotions regarding the event all over the newsgroups." What's so amazing about this is that I personally know Patrick and Michael never posted one message to any of the newsgroups ,themselves. Not one! They simply enlisted the help of several of the centers of influence they had cultivated prior to the promotion, and those persons' natural cyber conversations and fantastic "third-party" endorsements resulted in a simply outstanding cyber turnout.

   When prospecting through newsgroups and such, Michael Henderson advises that the rules of the game are clearly outlined. Unfortunately, some individuals will ignore that and try to push their way into the process. He says that it is much more effective to ask questions of those in the know, in a very humble, unassuming manner. "You'll find the newsgroup veterans who will be only too glad to help."

   When it comes to establishing mutually beneficial relationships, the rules that apply to real-world organizations basically apply to the virtual world as well. That's why I suggest that before you begin to prospect via the Internet that you again review and internalize the information in Chapters 2 and 3.

   One more important point: Although this particular section really focused on newsgroups, please do not overlook the fact that the exact same approaches and techniques will work just as well in chat rooms, discussion forums, and listservs.

   Conclusion
   Scientific Internet Advertising: Internetworking Your Business

   If you have read this book, you know what it takes to set up an affiliate program that makes money for you..

   As with any other business efforts, one rule applies:

   "There are two types of businesses; those who test and those who lose money."

   Affiliate programs are an excellent example of people falling in love with an idea and then failing to test it. Just because you can sign up 200 affiliate programs doesn't mean you are making sales; those affiliations have value only if you empower them to succeed.

   Now let's show you how to put that into action in even more detail by sharing the aspects of what has been coined "Internetworking"; creating an online sales network of affiliate programs that deliver results your business.

   The key is to keep evaluating and testing your sales channel, honing it so that you get optimal value, as do your affiliates.

   Select just 3-4 affiliate programs and test them out; sell those very well.

   The first questions you must ask are:

   1. What are the primary goals of your business in terms of time and money?

   2. What will you do to achieve your results quickly?

   3. How can I adapt and test this?

   The journey begins with the first step, which you have just taken. I invite you in to explore some more, find out what programs work for you, and keep in touch.

   I thank you for your feedback and hope this book answers a few more of your questions.

   Peace,
   Declan Dunn

   Click here for the entire book...

   Winning the Affiliate Game:
   Copyright Notices
   

   Copyright 1998, 1999 by Declan Dunn. All Rights Reserved.

   No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electric, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission or more information should be sent to The Write Thing, 6960 Ridgeway, Magalia, California 95954.

   Published by Declan Dunn and The Write Thing.
   6960 Ridgeway
   Magalia, CA. 95954
   (530) 873-3637 Fax: (530) 873-0192
   email: dunn@webletter.net
   

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