by Marlon Sanders
"Patrick," I exclaimed. "I'm embarrassed. I've been missing out on three quarters of my back-end sales!"
I just got off the phone with a good friend.
"Patrick," I exclaimed. "I'm embarrassed. I've been missing out on three quarters of my back end sales. Listen to this."
I continued with great passion, "There are many products my customers need other than 'how to market on the Internet' information. In fact, these other sales are much easier than my information product sales. Why? Because people HAVE to buy the products if they're going to be involved in selling online."
"What do you mean?" Patrick asked. I spit back, "Here, let me give you some examples. These are other things my customers have to buy:
"Patrick," I continued, "If you're going to market on the Internet, you don't have to buy information on how to do it. But you do have to buy web hosting. You do have to process credit cards or checks. Yet, I haven't been selling any of these services."
Patrick laughed and then said, "Oh I get it Marlon. It sounds like you're talking about all the things I SELL!"
Boy, he got me on that one.
In a minute, I'm going to explain why I'm telling you this story and what it has to do with your making an additional $5,000 or $10,000 a month.
The interesting part of this story is that I hadn't bothered selling these other peripheral services because I've been so wrapped up in marketing my products. But then I ran across another online marketer named Jim Daniels. He shared some figures that opened my eyes.
He makes $1,000/month selling a software program that submits your web site to the search engines. He makes $1,700/month selling web hosting services and another $500 a month from a software program that tells you where you're ranked in the search engines.
OK. So an extra $500 a month isn't a fortune. But it will pay the lease for you on a very nice car. Or a significant chunk of your mortgage payment every month.
My conversation with Patrick continued. "Have you considered putting a sales letter in your web site?" I inquired. He shot back quickly, "Marlon, I don't need a sales letter. I have a web site. People go there, read our information and then email us if they want more information. Our sales reps follow up over the phone."
"What percentage of the people who come to your web site contact you for further information?" OK. I scored a point on that one. He wasn't sure. And actually, he had recently put my letter-writing services on his list of upcoming expenditures.
But I wanted to take this conversation to the next level. "Patrick, did you know Jim makes $1,700/month just selling web hosting services? I bet anything, he'd promote YOUR web design services if you offered an attractive percentage." My enthusiasm kicked into high gear as I elaborated.
"For example, I have a web site. I have customers who need your amazing web design services. But I don't sell any for you on an automated basis. Yes, I send you customers by direct referral. But I'm talking about another level here - automated referrals from my web site."
Patrick was intrigued but feeling a tad impatient, "I like where you're going with this. Are you proposing to write some letters for me or what?"
I got to the point, "If you had a sales letter I could put in my web site, I could sell your services. The letter would begin something like:
Dear Customer,
Did you know that the design of your web site can make or break your sales?
It's true. The wrong colors can raise the guard of a potentially responsive prospect. The wrong font, background can make your copy difficult to read. The wrong design can brand your company as amateurish or unprofessional. The wrong style can kill your sales. The list could go on and on.
The problem is, most web designers are clueless about marketing. While they know how to make your web site look pretty, they don't know how to make it sell.
That's why I'm thrilled I ran across the folks at Adnet International. They showed me how to make you're my web site look extremely professional and also make it a lean, mean selling machine.
Here are just a few things I learned from them about designing web sites that make money.
I could tell Patrick's mental wheels were spinning now. But I wasn't ready to stop. There was more.
"Marlon, I have this service. We guarantee top search engine placement. We sell the service for $2,500 and people are going crazy over it. The reason is, we don't just mass submit people to the search engines. We have worked at our system to the point where we can guarantee top search engine placement."
That triggered a thought for me: "I think you need a sales letter for that so you can walk people through the service step-by-step. That way, you can offer it as an associate program through other people's web sites. But you aren't going to be able to do that unless you have a sales letter."
Patrick agreed.
We continued that conversation for another thirty minutes. And I'm going to helping him write several sales letters. Here are several questions I want you to ponder as we glide through this article:
1. Are you missing out on your EASY back end sales?
2. Is the lack of a potent sales letter costing you a lot of money?
Are You Taking Maximum Advantage of All Your Online Profit Opportunities?
Let's talk about that question and the answer a moment. You have a web site. Do you have a sales letter in it for your product that walks prospects through the sales sequence that has been working for the past 100 years?
That's a very simple formula. In my product The Online Ad Copy Seminar I elaborate on it in great detail and punch it up with extra steps.
In our last issue, I talked about how to create perceived value when you craft your marketing letter. The greater the perceived value, the higher the price you can charge for your product. Review that issue for more tips on creating your sales letter.
Now, here's the nugget you may have been overlooking: Once you have a powerful sales letter for your product, you can roll out with a commission-based affiliates program, where people put your sales letter or banner ad on their web site, and you pay them a commission per sale.
Or, on the flip side, if you're like me and haven't been taking advantage of all your referral opportunities, you can locate companies with existing affiliate programs and begin promoting those on your web site.
Hint: In addition to the quality of the product or service, look at the sales letter or promotional copy. Does it pass the standard of the "perceived value" test we discussed last issue? If it doesn't, you may need to create your own introductory sales letter to kick start the sales process.
Could You Add An Extra $500 - $20,000/Month In Sales?
Let's now move our attention to specific things you can do to add a big chunk of change to your sales each month.
One: Create a sales letter for your own product and post it in your web site.
Did you know that the direct mail industry is a $26 billion/year business? It's true. Now think about this: Companies aren't spending $26 billion on direct mail because they're losing money. They're making money.
The advantage of online marketing is you can send a letter to your customer list without the postage, the lettershop expenses, the printing and all the hassle. There is absolutely no excuse for not asking your customers to buy from you once or twice a month. You've got to do it.
Now, if you don't have a product to sell, that's not problem. You can locate many companies who will allow you to sell their products on commission at: http://www.associateprograms.com.
Two: Use the sales letter you create as the basis for rolling out an affiliate program.
Here are two software programs/services for tracking that I recommend:
1. World Merge. This is an expensive product that lets you personalize your outbound email letters. It's very easy to use. You can download the free demo at: http://www.higherresponse.com/wm1064.exe.
2. Email Merge: My friend Stephen Mahaney of Planet Ocean sells this product. It comes with a really terrific manual that shows you exactly how to use the program for optimal benefit. It shows you how to harvest your opt-in names, how to set up your database and other neat tricks. The drawback is that it costs 3 times more than World Merge. http://www.email-solutions.com.
Three: Ask yourself, "Am I overlooking the obvious? What other products do my customers HAVE to buy or almost always buy? What are your customers already spending money for?"
You'll probably find (as I did) a whole circle of products you can promote.
If you aren't sure what other products your customers are buying, put a survey in your ezine or web site and ask them. Then, create strategic alliances with other companies that sell these products. You can do this on a simple or complex level.
The simple way is to sign up for existing affiliate programs. You can find these at:
http://www.associateprograms.com and http://www.refer-it.com. These two web sites serve as clearing houses for companies that offer affiliate programs.
Here is a listing of the programs currently available through refer-it.com. The figure to the right of the listing is the number of affiliate programs offered in that category.
Adult (20)
Art / Photo (7)
Astrology (3)
Automotive (7)
Banking (1)
Banner Ads (15)
Beauty (3)
Books (14)
Cards (4)
Classifieds (7)
Content (free) (10)
E-Commerce (2)
Education (3)
Finance (15)
Flowers (4)
Food & Wine (12)
Gambling (10)
Games (2)
General (8)
Hardware (4)
Health & Fitness (14)
Magazines (5)
Marketing (25)
Matchmaking (8)
MLM (not rated) (5)
Music (15)
Real Estate (4)
Retail Products (37)
Services (15)
Shopping (15)
Software (10)
Sports (10)
Telephone (3)
Travel (13)
Videos/Games (6)
Web Design (14)
Web Hosting (25)
Web Tools (51)
Earlier I mentioned that one of the services I could to resell is web hosting. To add my new profit center, all I would do is click on web hosting, read about the programs being offered and sign up for one. Quite often, there is no fee required to promote the program.
Of course, you'll also want to perform your due diligence, so you're proud of the companies you're recommending.
What this means is, you now have access to dozens of additional profit centers you can add to your existing online business with virtually no up front expense. You can promote these programs through your web site and through your regular communications with your customers, including but not limited to your monthly ezine.
To get the most sales from your affiliate program, you'll want to endorse the product in your web site and your monthly ezines. Which brings us to our next point.
How to Make Money With Monthly Mailings
I'd almost bet money that you have a totally untapped resource: You have prospects and customers you've gathered through your online activities, but you don't ask them to buy anything on a regular basis.
The most expensive thing you ever do in marketing is generate a customer. The second most expensive thing you do is generate a lead. Your customers and prospects are the single most valuable asset you have. Yet most companies do far too little to harvest that asset.
Imagine for a moment that you're a farmer. You've spent enormous amounts of time and energy plowing your fields, watering the soil, using all the right fertilizers. You hire staff to plant the fields. Consultants to tell you the rights things to plant in the right seasons.
You do all this. But when harvest time comes - you're too busy doing other things to harvest your crops.
As absurd as it sounds, most businesses are like that farmer. They spend so much energy preparing their crops that they never harvest them. Sometimes there's even a twinge of guilt, "We wouldn't want to ask our customers to buy from us again because that might damage our relationship with them. We're trying to build long term relationships here!"
Which is like a farmer saying that he/she doesn't want to harvest the crops because that might damage future production.
The point is: Harvest your crops! Every month ask your customers to give you money in exchange for something. Give them to opportunity to do more business with you.
"But won't that alienate my customers?" Not if you approach your customers from the standpoint of a problem-solver. They have problems. You have solutions. Right now their problems are costing them dollars. You can solve those problems for pennies.
Are you using this billion dollar secret?
A client of mine, Walter Hailey, has principle called the rule of 15. The rule states that:
I'm advocating that you use the rule of 15 with your clients. And the most incredible way to implement this strategy is with the new economies available through online marketing and fax technology. Did you know you can send your faxes for free through the Internet? It's true.
And, of course, there is no cost to email solicitations. Someone said to me the other day, "Marlon, did you know that 40% of people don't read their email?"
My answer is this: That's astounding. That means 60% of people DO read their email. Compare that with direct mail. I'll bet you 60% of people don't read direct mail. Yet it's a large enough industry to support billions of dollars of sales every year. The last figure I heard was $26 billion a year. And I believe that was 5 years ago. The numbers are staggering.
Other people ask, "Marlon, why a sales letter? I thought a sales letter was something you sent through the mail. And isn't it "spamming" to send a sales letter to my customers?"
First of all, I advocate opt-in marketing. This is where customers and prospects opt-in to receive your email communications. So if you structure your system properly, this won't be a problem.
Second, The reason you need a sales letter is to create emotion and persuade your prospects and customers to take action. Last issue I gave you the perfect example. But from talking to some of you, I don't think I made the point crystal clear.
If I called you up and said, "Hey, I have this really cool walking cane. It's old and has ornate designs on it." How much would you be willing to pay me for that walking cane?
Twenty bucks? If you really, really like it, maybe $100. But how about $25,000? No way. Not in a million years.
Unless, of course, you happen to flip on your TV and watch the Antique Road Show. On that show, people bring antiques they've dug out of their attic and have the value appraised by the experts.
On one show I watched, a guy had a cane. The expert says something like, Sir, this appears to be a cane made in the late 1800's by John Doe Craftsman. He was one of the elite European craftsmen. This carving here is the insignia that appeared on all his works. It's like his fingerprint.
You'll notice the fiber is rosewood. This particular grain came from the famous cane forest in the mountains of Tibet. It's extremely rare since the forest only had 5 trees. Recently at an auction, a similar cane brought in $25,000. However, this is the nicest cane I have ever seen at one of our road shows. The quality is pristine. It shows almost no wear. It's hard to say what it will bring at auction. But $25,000 would be a minimum estimate.
I made that up. But it's very similar to what you'll hear on the show. The point is, the cane is only worth $25,000 after the explanation. That's what a sales letter or online ad does for your product. Instead of just pointing out bland features and benefits, it builds a compelling case for the value of your product. It creates perceived value.
Why do you need a sales letter or online ad? Because people aren't going to know the value of your product unless you tell them. Most web sites contain far too little information about the items being offered.
Imagine this: You call me up to have me write an online ad for you. I spend 30 seconds telling you about my services. Then I stop and say, "Ooops, times up. I don't want to overwhelm you with information. Here's my price. If you want help, get in touch with me. You know the number. Gotta run. BYE!"
Or how about this. You've met the love of your life. You're going to get married. You're shopping for wedding rings. The person at the jewelry counter displays two rings with a large price tag. The salesperson begins telling you about the quality and cut of the diamond, the construction of the ring, the craftsmanship. The he or she says, "Give me the rings back! I've exceeded my 30 second quota for this sale. I'm sorry but I have to go talk to the next customer. Feel free to look around all you want. BYE!"
Do you know how many web sites say BYE! to their customers at the point of the sale? It's amazing.
I don't care if everybody reads the ad or not. What I do care is that a percentage of people read ALL the ad and feel compelled to take action. That's what matters. Your job is to present the most compelling case possible for your product or service.
Your job isn't to get 100 people to listen to your 30 second presentation. It's to get 2 to 5 people out of 100 to go through your complete your presentation and buy.
What if my objective is to generate leads, not make a sales? Different campaigns have different objectives. The goal of a letter is similar to the goal of a sales person. If you sell a high-ticket item, you may have a pre-planned sequence of calls you make before you go for the close. In that case, what you have are mini-objectives for each sales call.
At the end of each call, you want the prospect to agree to the next logical step. If the next step is to request a quote or participate in a survey, your sales call is successful if the prospect agrees to take that step.
In the same way, the objective of your online ads and sales letters can be to convince your prospects to take the next logical step. That's the close. The close doesn't always have to be "asking for money." It can be many things.
Your objective may be simply to have a prospect fill out an online form to request more information. Can an online ad and/or sequence of sales letters help you? Yes. How? By increasing the percentage of prospects who fill out the form and request more information. And, if you have salespeople who follow up, you can also decrease the amount of time required to qualify your prospects and move the sale forward.
In other words, you can shorten your sales cycle. I know of companies that have cut their sales cycle in half by using direct mail and smart marketing strategies.
Illustration of how this would work for a travel agency
Let me take this out of the abstract and make it tangible for you with an illustration. I signed up with an airline to receive regular notices of special "sale" prices on travel packages.
Once a week I receive an email that gives me the latest hot deals.
That's fine. And I'm sure it makes money. Doing anything is 100% better than doing nothing. Does that make sense?
The economy is so good right now that you don't have to be genius to make money. You don't even have to be good. About all you have to do is answer your phone and ask for money! You know the economy is booming when you call companies ready to spend money and you can't even get someone on the phone who can take your credit card number. You literally have to leave your name and number on a voice mail and wait for a return call!
That happens to me quite often. That's how great our economy is right now. I guarantee you that in the next recession I won't have any problems getting sales people on the phone!
Anyway, here's what I would do if I were a travel agent. I'd pick a vacation destination and write a letter about that one place. I'd tell what the trip would be like, why people go there, what you do while you're there. I'd walk prospects out on the sunny beach and squish the sand between their toes. I'd put the relaxing sound of ocean waves in the background. I'd sit them down at an outdoor grill underneath the palm trees, drinking the freshest glass of pineapple juice they've ever had. I'd paint compelling mental pictures that begged for completion.
Can you see the difference between that and sending an email announcing a cheap price? The question is, are you giving your prospects and customers the cheap price approach or walking them on the beach?
Interesting things you can do with online ads
There are many proven offers you can extend with online ads and sales letters. These offers have been selling products for literally the last 100 years. And they'll be working 100 years from now. Because they're based on an understanding of human nature.
And that's just the beginning. There are many appeals that have worked over and over in direct mail. Almost all of these approaches can be adapted to your online marketing.
Example two: How to sell software online
Let's say that you have a software program you sell. You could do like every other software manufacturer and have a web site that simply lists the features and benefits and how those stack up to the competition. Nothing wrong with that.
But I see a need for more. As a person who buys lots of software, I want you to walk me through a mental demo of the product. Put me in action in my business. Show me what the software does that saves me time or makes my life easier. Walk me through all the terrific things it does.
Instead of just assuming I can infer all those benefits from a bare-bones listing of features, paint a mental picture that SHOWS me what the software will do.
A friend of mine, Corey Rudl, has two excellent examples of sales letters for software products at his web site:
http://www.marketingtips.com/sonic.html
http://www.marketingtips.com/mailloop.html
Read those two letters, and you'll see how different the online ad approach is from the typical software site you see.
Example three: How to sell nutritional supplements online
This example is a sales letter to convince prospects to make an initial order of supplements from this company. I wrote this letter for a friend. Nothing fancy. But it presents the benefits quickly and makes a compelling offer. Go to: http://www.supplements4less.com.
Is there a $50,000 check with your name on it waiting at your web site?
How much money could you make from the ideas I've presented? Do you have a $50,000 check waiting for you with your name on it?
Let's find out.
Step one: Take the number of customers and prospects you have email addresses for.
Example: 10,000
Step two: Multiply that number by 1%. Write down that total.
Example: 10,000 x 1%=100
Step three: Multiply that number by 5%. Write down that total.
Example: 10,000 x 5%=500
Step four: What is your gross profit (before G & A) on your most profitable product?
Example: $300
Step five: Multiply that number by Step two. Write down the figure. Label it "A." A is your low-end profit objective.
Example: $300 x 100=$30,000
Step six: Multiply the gross profit figure from step four by the number from step three. Write that figure down and label it "B." B is your high-end profit objective.
Example: $300 x 500=$150,000
Step seven: Multiply the figure from step five times 10. What is that dollar figure? Write it down with a big star beside it.
Example: *** $300,000
How to interpret your results
In step two, we used 1% as a multiplier. If you're sending your offer to your existing customers, unless you have an exceptionally high price tag, one-half to one-percent is a good figure to use for the low end of your anticipated response. If you've done any direct mail at all, you have a good idea of what to expect on the bottom end.
In step three, we're using 5% as the high end. In actuality, this could be 10% or higher. Again, if you've used direct mail before, you have a good idea of your anticipated response. You can plug in different figures here based on your past customer list promotions.
In step five, you're calculating gross profit based on a low-end projection. In step six, you're looking at gross profit based on a not-too-optimistic high-end projection. These figures represent your profits based on one mailing of a highly-profitable product.
In step seven, you're using the low-end profit figure times ten to determine a low-end profit expectation if you sent out 10 mailings to your customer list in one year.
If you wanted, you could also calculate this figure for a high-end expectation. In addition, you could also manipulate the figures based on an expectation of mailing your customer list more than ten times in one year.
In the direct mail industry, it isn't unusual to mail customer lists weekly for an entire year! And these businesses have to support the tremendous overhead involved in printing and paying postage for traditional mail.
But I want to create very conservative expectations for you. Now, take the figure gross profit figure you came up with for your first mailing (labeled with the letter "B." Take 10% of that figure. For example, in the illustration above, the "B" figure was $30,000. The magic 10% equals $3,000 in that scenario.
If that figure is $2,000 or greater, send me an email with your phone number so that we can talk. If your magic figure is $2,000 to $4,900, I have an expert writer I can put you in touch with. Over that figure, I'll look at working on your account personally. The prerequisite is that you have a viable, profitable business with an existing base of customers and prospects for whom you have email addresses.
Of course, if you prefer, you can write your own online ads and sales letters.
Could the right letter or online ad turn your small business into a multi-million dollar venture? (Or could it add an extra $4 or $5 million to your bottom line?)
What I'm about to talk about is exceptional. It is not an average nor every day occurrence. However, you do have to respect the power of well-crafted marketing letter backed by astute marketing.
Earlier I mentioned Corey Rudl. Corey attended the seminar I spoke at last year in Boulder. He has an amazing online success story that shows the potential of what we're talking about.
Corey has a basic web site. It's called marketingtips.com. The graphic design is tasteful but simple. The web site gives marketing tips and contains links to his sales letter for his marketing course.
It's one of the only online marketing products I recommend other than my own. If you haven't read about it yet, you can at: http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/46856/
This online business combine with his 3 others gives him a multi-million dollar corporation. I'm not at liberty to tell you the exact number of millions. But I can tell you that it's a very healthy figure. And all his businesses are built on sales letters that he rarely changes. He gets a letter that works, puts his systems in place and just lets it generate cash for him.
Just one of his web sites gets 60,000 visitors a month and nets $140,000 a year - without the back end offers.
Another Internet millionaire I know has a similar business. His success is predicated on one very powerful sales letter. That's nearly all his web site is - a sales letter with testimonials. I'd tell you the URL but he doesn't want people to know how well he's going because that would invite competition.
Now, don't get me wrong. It takes more than a drop-dead sales letter or online ad to have a million dollar web business. For one thing, you have to generate traffic. Which is why one of my latest products is called The Traffic Generation Kit.
But I'd say that a potent sales letter can certainly be the foundation for a multi-million dollar business.
Could one letter or ad generate $500,000 profit?
Some time back I had the opportunity to speak on a marketing cruise with a number of outrageously successful marketers. Joe Cossman was there. (You've probably seen his book before How I Made a Million Dollars In Mail Order) And another guy there was Ted Nicholas.
Ted has made insane amounts of money through direct response marketing. For example, he has earned as much as $500,000 from a single 1,000-word ad! He's responsible for generating over $200 million in sales. And he did it all with ads and sales letters.
Imagine having only one ad that generates $500,000! Can you imagine? I think it's Ted who says "you're only one letter away from a million dollars." Naturally, I'm not suggesting that you're going to become a multi-millionaire through one ad or sales letter, nor come close to these sales results. That is an exceptional achievement.
On the other hand, it does show you what others have done. And it gives you something to shoot for.
My goal when I work with clients isn't to make them multi-millionaires. But it is to double or triple their money every time out. In other words, if a project costs $12,000 for all expenses (my fee and any other expenses involved), I want my clients to get back a bare minimum of $24,000 in profits.
Would you like to make $98 for every letter you send?
If you double or triple your money every time out the gate in marketing, you'll do quite well. Of course, I do have outrageous success stories. For example, one client mailed 1,200 copies of a letter I wrote and brought in over $98.00 for every letter mailed!
The attitude I invite you to adopt is this: Be willing to test, experiment and try new things. One oddity I've discovered about marketing is this: Out of 10 new marketing activities you try, only one of them will often be successful. But that one will pay for the other 9 activities many times over.
The cost to try out 10 different marketing approaches is a fraction of what it is in the non-Internet arena. That means the odds of success are in your favor. You test a number of things inexpensively and you roll out with the ones that work.
How a crazy idea brought in $2,250,000!
Sometimes an offbeat idea can end up making a ton of cash. A minute ago I mentioned the marketing cruise I spoke on. One of the attendees at our seminar had a little book she wrote. The title was Everything men know about women.
The book didn't take long to write. It was all blank pages! When I met Cindy, she had sold 750,000 copies at (as I recall) $3.00 each! Conclusive proof that off-the-beaten path ideas can make a lot of cash.
Cindy invited me to her home to help her brainstorm business ideas. She's a very interesting person. The single most important thing I learned from her is that you don't have to be a rocket scientist to make a lot of money. All you have to do is act persistently on simple (but good) ideas.
Selling 750,000 copies of any book is an exceptional achievement and rarely achieved. But my point is: You can unleash your potential and be the best you can be by testing and trying a range of marketing ideas.
Here are a few ideas I suggest you try out
Idea one: Could this 3-day follow up letter method net you an extra $31,000 next year? I'm going to refer back to Corey Rudl one more time. For two reasons. One to remind you one last time to check out his course at: http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/46856/
But more importantly, I want to share with you a really neat trick that Corey uses to make a ton of extra money. You can use the very same trick he does. Even as we speak, I'm implementing this one in my business.
What you do is set up an autoresponder that sends out a follow up letter three days after your customers buy your product. (I tell you where you can get this kind of autoresponder set up free in my Traffic Generation Kit.) The key to this letter is that it must be positioned as an update and offer your customers additional tips or ways to obtain more value from the product they purchased. What Corey does in his follow up letter is offer 4 tips. The first one contains a link to a follow up report that contains pure information with no sales pitch.
The other 3 tips contain links to products that solve problems for the customer. So while the objective of the letter is to create additional sales, it only does so by solving additional problems for the customer.
I'd reprint the actual letter here but since it's in Corey's course (which is copyrighted), I won't do that.
Anyway, this letter hauls in an extra $31,000 a year in pure net profit! How can you use this idea?
What you do is select one or two products to sell your customers after their initial online purchase from you. Then you set up the autoresponder and craft a follow up letter that is positioned as a problem-solving update to their purchase. The letter goes out automatically so the system runs on auto pilot once you get it set up.
But as in all marketing, although simple in concept, the actual execution does take experimenting. Corey had to try a number of different products in the follow up letter to find a few that sold well. But that's a small price to pay for an extra $30,000 a year.
If you want to set up a system like this for your business, I'll help you with it turnkey. The follow up letter, the autoresponder. Testing different products. The whole nine yards. Just send an email to me at: 4days@higherresponse.com. In the subject line put the words "4 day follow up info."
Could you use an extra $108,000 from automated back end deals next year?
One more thing: The above figures are only for one of Corey's online businesses. If you count up the back-ends from all four of his businesses, he makes an extra $9,000 a month or $108,000 per year.
Keep in mind, though, that this is additional profit for an already profitable business. If you have a business that doesn't have many customers, obviously you aren't going earn an extra $100,000 from back ends.
However, if you do have a successful online business, tweaking a follow-up system like this could be a real goldmine for you.
Idea two: Could you be making $5,000 a day with this method the way my friend in Canada does?
When people visit your web site, it's essential that you install systems to gain permission to market to your customers. If you don't have tools installed to do this already, here are a couple of web sites that make it easy for you: http://www.gweedo.com and http://www.freedback.com and http://www.gta-tech.com.
I like gta-tech.com because you control the thank you page that customers are taken to. Some services takes you to their thank you page that contains advertising.
By the way, the service that these three companies offer is an excellent example of the type of lead generation mechanisms I teach in The Traffic Generation Kit. In other words, by offering these free tools, these businesses are generating traffic to their web sites.
In any event, after you gain the permission of your prospects to contact them via email, what you do is send a series of carefully targeted letters that sell one or more of your products.
What we've found is that a sequence of letters like this will get a higher percentage of your prospects to buy from you than a single letter will.
How a friend of mine sells $795 packages on the Internet like hotcakes!
I have a friend in Canada named Scott Covert. Scott is a genius at banner advertising. He and his partner Jack sell $577 (and up) courses on how to make money trading stocks. Jack has some intense information. And if you're into that kind of thing you should definitely check it out.
But what is more important is how they make sales. It's simple. Scott increased his banner ad profitability 500% when he followed the system (at my recommendation) that I'm teaching you. He often grosses $5,000 a day in sales. Naturally that's an exceptional result for follow-up letters. Your results will vary.
But Scott is sold on it. He now practices opt-in marketing to the Nth degree. He gains permission and then sends weekly bulletins about making money in the market that are so cleverly written, you'll have to hide your wallet to keep yourself from ordering his product!
Scott would be the first person to tell you that the money is made in the follow up. He makes almost all his sales from the follow-up letters, not the initial contact.
If you're interested in having a turnkey package of letters designed and you have a budget between $1,000 and $10,000, send me an email at: sequences@Higherresponse.com.
In the subject line put the words "sequence letter package." In the body of the email tell me what your product is and what your realistic budget is for the project. I'll set you up with a talented writer who matches your pocketbook. Please include a phone number for follow up.
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Making Money With Your Own Associate Program
My friend Declan Dunn recently came out with a new product that is already considered an instant classic. It's called The Complete, Insider's Guide To Associate and Affiliate Programs.
If you've been thinking about starting your own affiliate program, or if you have one and want to make more money with, this product is a must buy. Declan interviewed many of the major industry key players to create the e-book.
It's also a shining example of the principles I teach in How to Create Your Own Product In 2-10 Hours. While I haven't asked Declan how long it took him to create the book, I know that it was a fraction of what would normally be required. Why? Because the book is built on interviews with others.
Of course, talent helps and Declan happens to be the fastest transcriber I know. He actually typed the interviews as he was conducting the interviews on the phone. Amazing!
One last note: As always, the examples I give are intended to inspire you to action. They are not necessarily indicative of the average results obtained with a particular strategy. Your results can and will vary for better or for worse.
Until next issue,
Marlon Sanders
P.S. You may republish part or all of this article in your ezine or web site. The one thing and only thing I ask is that you publish the following resource box after each article or excerpt.
Article by Marlon Sanders of Higher Response Marketing, Inc. Marlon's web site and ezine have helped thousands get more traffic and sales. For FREE Internet marketing software, instant traffic generators, and cool services, hop over to: http://www.higherresponse.com. Subscribe to Marlon's FREE Marketing Secrets email newsletter: subscribe@higherresponse.com
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