OnlineInfoBiz.com

The way I see it, there are three skills we must master to ensure our entrepreneurial success and hence, financial independence.

Persuasion

Profitability

Personal effectiveness

So you may find the new book by Robert Cialdini to be of tremendous use in your Persuasion training.  It’s called Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, and it’s on sale now at Amazon.

Please also visit the Yes! Blog at http://yes50book.com for more resources.

And that includes me!

Just checked my Clickbank account and I’ve made a further sale of the affiliate product I’ve been promoting at ==> http://guerrillainfobiz.com/gbs

Now, I know I’d already made a few sales through people in my face-to-face network, including one person I work with (he’s one of my staff so he may have felt a little obliged to buy it, poor chap).  But this sale is the first to have come directly through my online marketing activities - and to a complete stranger.

I can’t stress enough how exciting this is.  What a breakthrough this is.  A real watershed.

Hey, I guess that makes me a bona-fide Internet Marketer now. [grins]

It also means I’ve officially made my first dollar online, and that, my friends, requires me to change the name of this blog.  Today, it becomes ‘My First $100 Online‘.

Stick with me here.  I know it’s a long way from $1 to $1million, but I’m getting there… in tiny little steps.  And I hope my experiences are helping you see how you really can do the same thing too, even if you’re completely new to this game.  Especially if you have hardly any money - or no money at all - to start an online information marketing business.

You really can do it.  If you just stick with it.

Meantime, a celebration is called for tonight.  I’ll put the champagne on ice.  And drink a toast to our continued online success!

Warmly,

Deb Kenyon-Roberts

Just joined up at Technorati.com so posting this post to ‘claim my blog’.  I’ll include some html (given by Technorati)  then release their spiders to check out my blog.  Then I’ll be able to benefit from get Technorati easily talking with my blog in future & I’ll be able to use all the benefits of the free membership of Technorati.  Watch this space for updates on how this goes.
Technorati Profile

Please take our latest survey.

We’d love to know where you are in the process of starting up and running your own successful online info biz.  And what your biggest question is about the process!  It’s really, really quick.

(This is an anonymous survey, no names or email addresses are required.)

==> Follow this link to take the survey now.

Thanks very much, you’re input is appreciated!

There’s a simple idea within Information Marketing.  Grasp it and you have the whole thing in the bag.  (Well, almost!)

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Three is a Magic Number

It’s the simple idea of a three-stage selling process…

1. Front End product (the one you sell to your customer first up - generally a loss-leader)

2. Back End product (the one where you intend making the big bucks)

3. Recurring product (or service) (some kind of subscription model, where your customer pays you on an ongoing basis)

All successful online information marketing businesses have mastered the art and science of this business model.

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As Easy as A, B, C, …

Traditional business teaches us that there are three ways to generate more sales:

A. Sell stuff to more people

B. Sell people more stuff

C.  Sell stuff to people more often

And you can’t go wrong in any business following this basic method.

So you’ll want to recruit more customers - engage in New Customer Acquisition (A).  You’ll also want to find ways to sell more to your existing customers at each point of contact, each selling opportunity - increase customers’ Average Order Values or AOV’s (B).  And, above all, you’ll really want to develop ways to get your existing customers coming back to you more often to buy more from you - increase the frequency of purchase, and wherever possible engage customers in Recurring product or service purchases.

So how does that relate to an online information business?

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As easy as 1, 2, 3, …

Let’s map the 1-2-3 onto the A-B-C and it will become very clear indeed.

A. New customer acquisition = 1. FE: Front End product

Use a simple report or e-book or other low-priced or free item to draw your prospects in, and begin to build a relationship with them.  The item may be given freely, or at a deep discount, to maximise distribution (a loss leader).

Alternatively, it can be sold at a price point low enough not to discourage a speculative or impulsive sale, but high enough to cover your initial costs of production and guarantee some income..

B. Increase average order values = 2. BE: Back End product

Now that you have your prospect qualifying themselves (i.e. showing that they’re interested in what you have to offer) by requesting the free or paid FE item, you must try to encourage a higher average order value from that one customer, that one sale.

Hence the regular use within internet marketing of the One Time Offer (OTO).  Such a mechanism encourages the customer to act there and then, purchase the upgrade (upsell) to the Back End product, the BE.

The result?

You’ve done exactly the same amount of work in prospecting, in traffic generation.  But you’ve earned more revenue from that one customer.  Your profitability on that one customer is now higher.  Your Return on Investment (ROI) is higher.  (And that’s the case whether you’re tracking your Investment in terms of cash spent, time, or both.).

C. Increase frequency of purchase = 3. NE: Never-ending or Recurring product (or service)

NE is the most powerful of all three stages, in both online and offline businesses.

NE is the holy grail.

Here your aim is to engage the customer in a long-term sales relationship.  You are engendering loyalty.  You are aiming to increase the Life-Time Value of that customer.

In order to achieve this you must offer some kind of on-going benefit to the customer that they’d be unable to get elsewhere.  Or, offer them a service which it would be difficult or costly for them to switch away from in future.

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Free Is Not Always Best

There’s a huge trend within Internet Marketing right now to offer something for free.  Get the leads in.  Get the list built, at any cost.  (Usually at the cost of quality.)

But there is another way.

By adopting the second pricing strategy for your FE product, by charging for it instead of giving it away, you benefit from several simple but important facts.  Firstly, it’s a well-known that it costs massively more to recruit a new member than it does to encourage an existing (or recent past) customer to purchase again.

So of that three-stage process, B and C sales will always be easier (and therefore cheaper) to make than A sales.

Furthermore, a customer that has spent a nominal sum for your initial product has shown themselves to be a customer of higher quality.  They show themselves to be a buyer rather than a freebie-collector.  They mark themselves out as being of higher quality, and of greater motivation and interest in your product offerings.  They have also shown that their credit card is good.

But another important factor also comes into play.  Once they’ve bought one thing from you, you’ve established that crucial buyer-seller relationship.  And that relationship is what will drive your ongoing sales.  It is easier to walk people through a series of ‘sales gateways’ of increasing size and commitment in an incremental way.  (This is the basis for the fundamental principle of the Sales Funnel.)  Get people to take one small action for you, make one small commitment in sales with you now, and it’s easier to encourage that upsell to the next highest level of sales, and so on.

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Getting Paid For Your Marketing

If you adopt the strategy of charging for your FE, your Front End, you’ll find you have a higher-quality list of customers, who should then be easier (and cheaper) to convert to a higher-priced sale.  They will more likely remain loyal to your product suite/brand for longer.  This should also result in more word-of-mouth referrals as they become evangelists for your products.

All of this pays off handsomely in higher AOV’s (B, 2, BE), higher ROI, higher Life-Time Value (C, 3, NE).  Paradoxically, the word-of-mouth referrals will also generate increased new customers (A, 1, FE).  And so the cycle begins again.

So by really focussing on your Front End as a marketing tool, you are getting paid for your marketing.  And you are paid many times over.  You’re paid when you sell the FE upfront.  You’re paid with higher quality customers resulting in more upsells (BE) and more recurring product sales (NE) more cheaply.  You’re paid with greater loyalty and word-of-mouth recruitment.

I’d like to get paid for my marketing.

Wouldn’t you?

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Learn more about the ideas contained in this article in the Guerrilla Balance Sheet, a clear and simple yet powerful report which shows you how to get paid for your marketing and create never-ending profit streams in your business.

Follow this link to read more about the Guerrilla Balance Sheet ==> http://www.guerrillainfobiz.com/gbs

There’s so many social networking and business networking sites out there.  I’ve only just begun the slow torutous process of linking and profiling and group moderating and on and on and on…

But as I go about my Daily Tasks of blog commenting, I run into sites and blogs and posts that highlight me to future areas to explore, exploit.

Here’s one such site, which gives an example of the kinds of things I can and should be doing…

Success Coach on Myspace

It’s all just a matter of time - and getting a successful plan together, doing it all step-by-step.

So here’s another one that’s going on my action list: set up profile on all important social networks, linking all back to relevant blogs and affiliate links.  Utilise key functionality within those sites, primarily membership groups.  These can act as recruiters/traffic generators for (1) building a list, and (2) future paid membership models.

Also, add all the links and icons to allow people to list my blog posts on Technorati, Digg, Sphinn, etc.

And, add contact page to this site + add block on main social and business networking profile links.

… very clever indeed.

And looking very professional.

http://drock.myinternettour.com/lcv1/

Have signed up just to see what their marketing system looks like.

Since this business and associated blog must be run on Guerrilla principles - doing more with less - low cost marketing - no cost marketing… it only stands to reason that I should make full use of all available Free Advertising.

Just came across this website for Free Classified Ads (USA based).

http://www.usfreeads.com/

Ad placement is free.  A Premium Upgrade exists for more advanced functions.

Not sure how effective this would be as a free ad service (that would need to be tested over time), but if it’s free it should be used.  I’l get this set up asap - I’m adding that task to my actions list right now.

The advertorial I wrote on Day 20 was really written as a long-form advertorial/article as blog content for this site and it’s visitors (refer my Day 20 post for the reasons why), so it was already in the format of an article ready for submission.

This article has now been submitted to EzineArticles.com, in the same way that my first article was submitted on Day 13.  It will take up to 7 days for this article to be approved and published to the site.

Days 15-20 review and evaluation… What results did I get? Unexpected things (good and bad)? What lessons have I learnt?  What will I do better/do more of next week?  (Using same format as last week for ease of comparison and completion.)

Results

1. Biggest result this week: Made my first sale of an affiliate product on Monday 14th April.  Made My First Dollar Online!  A small beginning but definitely a good one.

2. Still finding tasks easy this week once I’m actually doing them - technical aspects easy, writing aspects I’m finding enjoyable.  I’m finding the hardest part is just GETTING STARTED.  So the biggest obstacle here is just getting on and doing it - whether it’s because I don’t like the idea of doing it (especially writing blog comments), or whether it’s because I feel I’m not going to be any good at it, or because I feel it’s not actually going to make a difference/make a sale.

3. Still have timetabling issues, falling behind the program (mainly due to lack of motivation in getting started on tasks).  Finding it really difficult to motivate myself to work weekday evenings on this project after coming home from work.  But, number of hours spent weekly is still rising (details below)

4. Came across a great blog which gives details on how to write effective blog comments, so will need to study that (as well as other ways to study) to learn how to write effective blog comments that get people to take action

5. Results on getting blog comments published continue to improve

     5.a. ‘Affiliate Link’ comments posted: 20  Successfully published: 13 = 65% (Last week 9 of 12 = 75%)

     5.b. ‘Invitation to my Blog’ comments posted: 1  Successfully published: 1 = 100% (Last week 11 of 14 = 78.6%)

     5.c. Total comments posted: 21  Successfully published: 14 = 66.7 % (Last week 20 of 26 = 76.9%)

6. Slight reduction in number of blog comments getting through moderation this week.  Suggests that using www.guerrillainfobiz.com/gbs doesn’t make significant difference in getting the comment ‘posted’.  Although it may still make a difference in number of click-throughs achieved, but not yet testing this so can’t yet say whether that’s true or just a hunch

7. Received 3 comments on my blog.  At least one of these was traffic generated from random search engine results (use of keyword ’social networking’ within blog title)

8. Advertorial was quicker to write this week.  Also generated many more ideas for other articles, so have another two article titles to write in the series in coming weeks.  First article was accepted by Ezine Articles, second article awaiting acceptance

9. Branched out with other non-internet selling, particularly selling through my own existing networks (personal, social and business) by email, marketplace listings and personal recommendations.  Resulted in the first sale of affiliate product and showing good potential for another sale to a co-worker at my day job

10. Spent productive time this week thinking and planning how to quickly and easily set up the consultancy service to find and help one or more people make their first dollar/pound/euro online, which should (I hope) earn me Guerrilla Information Marketing Certified Trainer status, as well as provide opportunities for testimonials and social proof

10. Hours spent on onlineinfobiz.com (and associated activities/websites) this week: 

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Unexpected - good

1. Made a sale of the affiliate product I’ve been promoting

2. The sale was made through my own business network, so the time and effort spent on selling to my network paid off this week

3. Realised the benefit of the sale came through people who already know me, who I’ve already built some relationship (hence trust) with.  This is a crucial insight to help me go forward.  The only effective way to begin to make sales is off the back a relationship built with prospects who trust me enough to follow my recommendation.  And why would complete strangers trust me when they don’t know who I am?  So need to build credibility/authority and social proof that I know what I’m talking about and that other people value my information and input

Unexpected - bad

1. Still having terrible time trying to motivate during weekday evenings, need to find a way to get motivated to work harder and work more hours - this is really going to be crucial.  If I can’t put the hours in, I won’t get the exposure and coverage I’ll need to be able to begin building a following of people who trust me and value my input/information/advice

Take-outs

1. Still need to do more on learning to write effective blog comments, and need to start testing and tracking click-throughs to my affiliate links from these comments (big technological learning curve required to do that)

2. Keep doing more network selling as there appears to be a good opportunity here (leveraging existing trust relationships)

3. As highlighted before, still need to write LOTS MORE COMMENTS and do FAR MORE TRAFFIC GENERATION activities

4. Therefore need to get motivated to keep writing and posting those comments - just begin it and keep at it.  Stop wasting time weekday evenings.  Start working harder, putting more hours in

5. Product creation continues to be top of my mind.  Need to take this forward now, not just thinking and strategising and planning, but begin creating products and services.  I can’t make sales unless I ask people to buy from me.  So need to have this all in place and just move forwards.  Need to begin setting up consultancy service/related products on www.guerrillainfobiz.com.  Need to set up my ‘membership’ training group on Ecademy (with additional networking through Meetup) (leveraging existing technology and networks to keep exposure levels up and keep costs down)

5. To help me stick with the timetable and keep working on tasks everyday, I need to get my Accountability Program up and running asap

6. Make sure I’m posting to my blog every day, don’t get distracted.  Definitely don’t get disheartened

7. Work on this every day, consistently.  Maintain Profitable Momentum!

Things to do BETTER

1. Prospecting activities; blog comments - more, more, and more!

2. Less thinking, more doing.  Ideas are great, but I really need to move to Implementation

4. Keep with the plan. Spend more hours every week

6. Re-engage with the fun of it… Re-engage with the ultimate purpose of it…

Things to do MORE of

1. More Traffic Generation activities. Last week’s targets still stand: 25%+ of time spent on Traffic; this week meet the 30-Day plan’s requirements for blog comments (it’s a heavy week for comments).  [This week’s actuals achieved were: 21.1% of time spent on traffic generation vs. 25% target and 21 comments posted vs. 20 required per 30-Day Plan]

2. More external networking as this proves successful

3. More hybrid prospecting, social and biz net optimisation and article submissions to get my name and websites out there more

4. Build the Membership site/consultancy service via www.guerrillainfobiz.com and on Ecademy and Meetup

Onward and upward…