You SAY you want to achieve online success, right?
But, with all due respect, how do you expect to
pull this off when you're making so many mistakes?
I mean, this is real life, folks, not just another
edition of "Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour"!
So, let's get SERIOUS, shall we?
You're Trying To Make Money Online W/ THAT Website?
The number of self-defeating websites is staggering.
What's really pathetic is that real people are
trying to make real money with them. They never will,
of course, and will no doubt blame the Internet for
failing them when it's their own darned fault no
one's knockin' at the door.
Now go to http://www.trafficcenter.com/properties
These are professionally designed sites which are
ready for you to move into NOW NO WAITING!
Then look again, closely, at your site.
Here are some of the things you're very likely to
see that are dragging you down:
1) your site isn't trying as hard as possible to
capture the prospect's follow-up information, including
the all-important e-mail address
2) your site doesn't start out with a strong, in-your-
face flash graphics presentation that puts you in
immediate contact with your prospect.
3) your site doesn't make motivating offers.
4) your site is jumbled, without clear focus; you're
not guiding the prospect to do what you want her
to do.
These are all problems which destroy your ability to
profit online.
You're Trying To Make Money Online Selling THAT?
Take a look at what you're selling. Is there any VALUE
to it? As I write, we're in a period of massive
economic uncertainty and confusion in all the world's
leading economies, including Europe, Japan, and the
United States.
What do people do in such conditions? THEY GET VERY,
VERY CAUTIOUS.
Thus, if you want to profit in a downturn, you'd
damn well better focus on presenting VALUE.
People always want VALUE, of course, but when times
are good, they get slack. They buy whatever takes
their fancy; they're less questioning, less critical,
more laid back.
However, when times are troubling, they start asking
tougher questions which all emanate from one central
question: is it worth the money?
By this standard, a significant percentage of online
"businesses" are a joke. Look at one site after another
and ask yourself one question, "Where's the VALUE here?"
Sites packed with cheap affiliate and MLM programs are
doomed! Sites focusing on low priced products and services
for the "little guys" will crash! Sites that feel (and look)
like "get rich quick" schemes never make it.
If you do not sell VALUE, you're just asking to flush
your business down the toilet.
You're Trying To Achieve Online Success With THAT?
To succeed online, you need certain tools, including
your own domain
a listserver, so you can reach all your prospects,
customers, and subscribers with the touch of one button
a sales manager, so you can automatically, personally
follow up every single prospect you've got
professional website design, because the way you
present what you're selling is too important to be left
to amateurs
guaranteed traffic.
How many of these tools do YOU have? Yeah, I thought
so. You're trying to build the Hoover Dam with a teaspoon and
a rake. Get serious!
Now go back to http://www.trafficcenter.com/properties
Each and every one of the e-properties you're looking at
has all the tools you need to succeed online.
You are not going to succeed online without the right
tools. Every day you try to make it without them you're
just fooling yourself. It can't be done. If you keep
trying to succeed online without the tools you need,
you're just proving that you're a fool.
You're Trying To Succeed Online With THAT "marketing"?
The Internet is a marketer's paradise but only if you
know how to market.
Millions of people are discovering, to their chagrin and
disappointment, that marketing means more than posting
a site, running a few free classified ads, trading some
free links, and waiting to hire the Brink's truck to run
their millions to the bank.
In fact, this Great Age of Marketing, is proving to be
the Biggest Age of Marketing Disappointment to the vast
majority of people online.
I, for one, am NOT sympathetic to this problem.
People like you go online without any copywriting skills
and try to write copy. It fails, miserably but
predictably. Copywriting is a profession. You have to
study what it takes to succeed. Yet the vast majority
of online "marketers," suffering from that fatal mixture
of hubris and stupidity go merrily forward, only to
fall flat. Humbly, I suggest they study my best-selling
book "Cash Copy: How To Offer Your Products And Services
So Your Prospects Buy Them... NOW!" (Go to
http://www.jeffreylant.com for further details on this
and other materials that'll turn you into a better
that is to say, profit-making marketer!)
People like you expect to profit without knowing the
BENEFITS of what you're offering and bringing them to
your prospects' attention over and over and over and
over and over again.
Your prospects like mine are being overwhelmed
with marketing offers. You can't just send a single
offer and lean back, pleased with yourself, expecting
riches to follow. But millions do.
What's fabulous about the Internet is its incredible
marketing economies. You can contact far more people
far less expensively than you ever could in "real life."
Yet the sad truth is, most online "marketers" don't
understand this environment and certainly aren't
profiting from it. I'm talking about YOU!
You're Trying To Profit Online With THAT Attitude
About People?
You want to profit online? Then you are going to have
to mix it up with a lot of people. Not just a hundred,
or a thousand, but TENS OF THOUSANDS of people!
One dirty little secret of the 'net is the fact that
lots of people doing business on it detest PEOPLE.
They recognize that since people have the money they
want, they're going to have to communicate with them.
But they want that communication to be as antiseptic
and arms length as possible. TALK to people? WORK
with people? YIKES! Those are concepts that make tons
of e-marketers shiver and get real, real nervous.
The truth is, the higher the cost of what you sell,
the more you are going to have to TALK to and WORK
with your prospects.
This thought may well disconcert you. You're probably
one of the "marketers" who thought that all you'd have
to do is "post it and they will buy." That's one
of the biggest jokes around. "Post it and they will
buy" is like taking e-poison and killing yourself and
all your hopes for online success.
If you want to succeed online, you've got to contact
your prospects regularly with valuable information
(including information about the benefits delivered
by what you're selling). You need to use email, of
course, but you also need to use the TELEPHONE! Get
used to the idea that the higher the cost of what you're
selling, the more contact with your prospect is necessary,
including TELEPHONE contact! If you're not going to do
this, don't delude yourself into thinking you're going to
profit online. All you'll do is just waste your time
online, wondering where the money went. Friend,
without constant client-centered contact, you're
just fooling yourself.
Last Words
The Internet is changing again. Just since 1999
we've gone from the days when people thought you could
put ANYTHING on line and profit to the crash that
started in 2000 and is still going on in 2001. The good
news is that the next phase has already begun. This
is the phase when smart people will run value-centered
businesses, taking advantage of the mind-boggling
business economies and speed which are only found online.
These people will be the consummate realists. They
will not merely expect to "post it and they will come."
They certainly won't think they can build a profitable
business without the necessary tools. And they won't
be daft enough to keep their prospects and customers
at arm's length, because they really don't want to be
bothered by them.
In short, remembering the English poet Robert Browning,
"The best IS yet to come" on the 'net.
I, for one, who have lived through every single Internet
incarnation since 1994, am ready for it. Indeed, I'm
as eager as eager could be. But then I've done my homework;
I'm already doing what needs to be done for maximum
online success.
What about you? Are YOU ready, really ready? Or are you
just going to keep on fooling yourself, thinking you
can get rich off a self-replicating website and some free
links and ads?
About the Author
Dr. Jeffrey Lant is Co-Founder of
Worldprofit at http://www.worldprofit.com and author of some
of the best regarded marketing and business-development
books around. See them at http://www.jeffreylant.com