Does Your Online Business Have the 3 Essentials?
by Becky Mundt
http://www.art4fortune.com/passive/
It's hard to imagine that three simple things so seemingly
obvious and straight forward could be overlooked by so many
on-line businesses, but statistics don't lie, and clearly,
they are being overlooked by many.
A Super Product
Lots and Lots of traffic
The Best Copy
That really is the formula. Somtehing great to sell, lots
of people to see it, and the sales copy to convert those
visitors into buyers.
1. A great product. That may sound intimidating at first,
the truth is it's not that hard to accomplish. What won't
work, no matter how many times and different ways to try it,
is a product you don't believe in, care about or respect.
That's because you only have a limited amount of energy
and you can't sustain it if you have no enthusiasm or real
joy or respect for the product you're selling.
There are so many examples of great products, and they are
as varied as the desires and ideas of people. But every
great product does at least one of the following
Solves an important problem for the customer
Increases profits or "makes money" for the customer.
Saves time, money, or both.
Makes something complex simple.
Often enough as people begin the journey of developing an
on-line business, they miss this most crucial step. No
amount of traffic or great sales copy will fix the problem
when the problem is a product no one cares about.
There is ample evidence of the failure to comply with this
one rule all over the internet. The result of failing to
get this right is always the same. No sales. No business.
To make sure your product is worth spending the time to
build a business around, do some simple research before you
begin. First, take a look on a few search engines and see
how many times your product or product idea is listed.Don't
fall for the trap of thinking that if it isn't in the
engines it is "wide open". It is more likely not a viable
market.
Next take a look at the keywords people might use to look
for your product. What problem will they search for to find
your solution? How often are they looking for it? Yahoo
resource tools can help you find the exact answer. If no
one is looking for any of the words you come up with,
that's a good indication you need to find a new idea.
However, if you find a good deal of competetion in your
first searches and lots of people searching for those key
words you picked, it's a pretty good indicator you've hit
on something worth pursuing.
Tip: Many on-line marketers suggest "finding a market and
getting in front of it". This is not bad advice, especially
if you keep your sights on what you are already interested
in. Using the searches above can also give you ideas for
new products in your market.
2. Did we say traffic? LOTS. Entire books and volumes
of expensive courses have been created to teach the subject
of getting traffic to your site. Essentially, there are
only two ways to do it. Either you have to pay for it, or
you have to do the work to create it.
If you are going to pay for it, only pay for what you can
track and monitor and continue to improve. Otherwise, you
are simply wasting money.
Don't overlook other forms of advertising, however. You
may not want to invest your time and energy in "surf for
clicks sites" or want to blast classifieds out to a million
free ad sites, but what about off line or newspaper ads?
many highly successful on-line businesses use off line ads,
from newspaper to radio and television.
Creating the traffic through your own efforts by posting
to forums, writing articles and adding valuable content and
useful information which also links to your site will take
longer, and is more labor intensive, but in the end it has
the highest long term value for your business and can
produce the longest lasting and most effective results.
Tip: When you add value to the on-line community you boost
your own reputation, you get more than links out of this,
you get reputation. If you market your own product(s), put
them up in one of the affilate network sites to get added
exposure. (Clickbank, PayDotCom, CJ etc)
3. Great copy writing is the final component. Miss this and
all the right effort with all the right products and tons
of visitors won't solve the problem for you. You sill
won't make any money, because without great copy, no one
will buy what you are selling.
To understand copy writing takes some time and effort, but
is certainly well worth it. Alternatively, outsourcing or
partnering in order to have access to great copy writing is
an investment well worth the effort and expense.
A top of the line professional copywriter may charge as
much as five thousand dollars for a single sales letter,
which should give you an idea of how important good copy
writing is.
You don't have to be intimidated by this, however. You can
find perfectly useful copy writers in places like elance
who, while they may not yet be "expert" are plenty good
enough to get you started. There is plenty of room for
improvement in this area for most online businesses, so
don't fe el afraid to start. Just be willing to work to
improve and to learn
Tip: Read successful ad copy. Follow the ads on the Pay
PerClick engines and note which ones are consistent. Read
their sales letters. The biggest library of successful
copy writing is out there in the marketplace. Use it!
One thing is sure. If you keep these three items at the
top of your list of what is important to your on-line
business, you are very likely to have great success.
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