Archive | March, 2019

Whether you’re selling ebooks to make immediate profit, to build your list of buyers or to position yourself as an expert in your field, here are 15 simple ways to get more buyers.

1. Know your target market, find out where they hang out and then be there. Whether it’s forums, blogs, websites, etc., find out their favorite haunts and then figure out ways to get your book seen and talked about without spamming. Frankly, half the battle of selling more ebooks is knowing where your best customers are. Far too many marketers and authors are promoting their goods anywhere and everywhere, rather than concentrating their energy where they will gain the highest return for their efforts.

2. Use video. A 2-3 minute video about your book can be the perfect lure to use in social media to get people interested and heading over to your sales page.

3. Give away the first 1-3 chapters of your ebook. People want to know if they’re getting quality and the fastest way to prove they are is to give them the first chapters for free. Include a detailed, benefit-laden and curiosity provoking table of contents, as well as a cliff hanger at the end of the last chapter you give away. Be sure to place the order page link at the end of the free chapters as well, along with instructions to click the link to immediately get the rest of the book.

4. If you don’t want to give away the first few chapters, consider creating a special report that includes some (not all!) of the best information from the book. In the report you’ll mainly tell them what they should be doing, but not ‘how’ to do it. This way they need to buy your book to get the results they seek.

5. If you haven’t launched your book yet, build up anticipation for it. Build a wait list, use email and video to disseminate information, and basically get people excited to get the book when it arrives.

6. Offer a discount for a specific time period when the book is first launched to quickly ramp up sales and get testimonials.

7. Get testimonials before you launch. Give your book to prominent people in your niche and to people in your own network asking them to review it for you.

8. Make it super easy to order. Regardless of how you distribute your ebook, make the sales process as seamless and easy as possible. The more hurdles they have to jump through to get your book, the more likely they are to click away before completing the sales process. If you are selling the book from a sales page, make the sales page match the ebook cover with the same colors and same type of graphics for a seamless experience.

9. Use keywords in your book title and your website URL. This can make it easier for prospects to find your book.

10. Run contests via social media to give away free copies of your book.

11. Do webinar joint ventures. Find list owners, bloggers and affiliates in your niche who will promote a webinar to their readers. You provide free training on the webinar and then sell your book at the end, splitting the profits with the list owner.

12. Offer a free coaching course in conjunction with your book. This course is delivered automatically via autoresponder, and helps the purchaser to get the very most out of your book. This can get some fence-sitters to act, since they can see how this will make the book more useful and increase the odds they’ll get real value from it, instead of letting it gather cyber dust like so many other books they’ve purchased.

13. Hold an affiliate contest. Some affiliates will go all out just to get the bragging rights of having won the contest.

14. Find bloggers in similar but non-competing topics whose readers would benefit from your book. Send them a free copy and offer a special deal just for their readers.

15. Hold a challenge. Ask for volunteers to go through your book, implement the information with your help, and report the results. This can gain a lot of social media attention, depending on your topic.

Want to sell more of your amazing and life-changing product? Do one or more of these 21 things and customers will start beating a path to your physical or virtual storefront. 😉

• Talk about your customers, not about you. “Make the customer the hero of your story.” – Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, Marketing Profs 

• Respect your customers. In the words of David Ogilvy, “The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.”

• Be exclusive. Make it a privilege and a proud moment to purchase from you and join the ranks of your customers.

• Long copy outsells short copy because it tells more. But no matter the length of your copy, prospects will only read it so long as it’s interesting and relevant.

• Stay in contact with your customers. A lot. All the time. Everyday. Your goal is to stay in your customers’ minds until they are ready to buy your next product, and your next, and your next. He (or she) who communicates most wins in business.

• Let your customers take your product for a test drive. If you sell software, let them try it for 7-10 days before they buy it. If it’s information, let them see the table of contents and the first 10% of the content, whether it’s written, audio or video. Spend as much time on each item in the table of contents as you would on a headline, and make that first 10% of content totally awesome.

• Teach as you sell. You’ve seen the advertorials – ads that look like editorials. If done correctly, they teach as much as they sell. If you’re giving benefit through your sales copy, your readers will reason that you give a great deal more in your product.

• Write as though you are writing to one person, not a crowd

• Use emotion in your marketing. All the logic, stats and facts in the world won’t sell as well as emotion, so use it.

• Ask for what you want until you get it. Whether it’s a sale, a referral, a tweet or anything else, keep asking until you get it.

• Bloggers and graphic artists – make the image match the words. Otherwise the reader is left wondering what the image has to do with the copy instead of getting engrossed in the message.

• Don’t use the same stock images as everyone else. You know the ones – people in suits sitting at a conference table, having a meeting, on the phone, staring into a computer monitor, etc. Tests show those stereotyped pictures can actually hurt your conversions.

• Don’t just tell – show. Use your words to paint vivid pictures in the readers’ minds. “When you use abc product, you wake up feeling like you’re 20 years younger, vibrant, alive and knowing this could be one of the best days of your life so far.”

• Use incentives for any action you want people to take. It doesn’t matter if it’s joining a list or buying a product – give them an incentive to do it and to do it right now.

• Treat your prospects and your customers as you would good friends and that’s what they’ll become.

• Give prospects choices. Instead of ‘yes’ they’ll buy or ‘no’ they won’t buy, offer your product in different sizes, formats, colors, etc. This way you can get them to choose (Red or Blue? Small or Large?) which takes their mind of off whether or not to buy and onto how they should buy.

• Don’t reinvent the wheel. Time and again marketers are trying to find new ways to do things, while someone else has already laid down a proven method that marketer could simply follow. When you need to do something new, find someone who’s already done it and model what they did. Once you get good at it, then you can refine it further to suit you.

• Use “because.” If you are giving a freebie to your list, tell them why. If you are stipulating a deadline or offering a bonus, tell them why. If you don’t, you’ll leave an unanswered question in your prospects’ minds that could make them hesitate. “I’m limiting my coaching to just 10 people because I want to have the time to absolutely ensure the success of every one of my students.”

• Give reasons why what you claim is true. If you say your toothpaste whitens better than any other, tell them why. “14 years of clinical research culminating in a breakthrough discovery of 3 specific proteins that leave your teeth shiny white.”

• Test. If you have a successful campaign that yields $50,000, but with a little testing it could have been double that, you’ve just lost $50,000.

• Read your copy out loud. Whether it’s a sales letter, blog post, email or article, read it out loud. You’ll discover what works and what needs fixing.

True story: A student attends a strict private school that decides to ban a multitude of books. These books are classics such as The Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost, Animal Farm, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy and many, many others.

The student – appalled by the administration’s actions – uses her own collection of books to start her own lending library out of an empty school locker. She keeps an inventory log and gives students due dates. Before she started the locker library, she says, “Almost no kid at school but myself took an active interest in reading!

“Now not only are all the kids reading the banned books, they go out of their way to read anything they can get their hands on” she says. She and the other students are risking getting into trouble to read books, all because the school banned them.

The first marketing lesson here is loud and clear – the scarcer something is, the more people are interested in it and the higher price people are willing to pay. In this case the price paid is having to sneak around and risk getting into trouble, possibly even getting detention or being expelled from school.

The second marketing less is that taboo sells. How many times have you heard about a film only because some group was boycotting it? And what almost always happens? The more the film is protested by some people, the more others want to see it. Heck, if you have a movie that’s failing, get a group to denounce it and your ticket sales will almost certainly increase in direct proportion to the publicity your film’s adversaries are garnering.

And while you might not be able to incorporate the second lesson into your marketing, you can certainly use the first. Decide to sell your products for a limited time or to a limited number of people. When you hit the limit, pull it immediately. Do this each time and your customers will become trained to purchase your products the moment they become available or risk losing out.

Do you have a product that’s not selling well? Announce it will be disappearing forever in 7 days and see what happens. This psychology doesn’t just work on kids, it works on everyone.

One has to wonder if the administrators of that school were shortsighted for banning books, or geniuses for finding a way to get kids to read. It’s certainly a lesson other schools could use – perhaps giving a list of books to students that they “shouldn’t” read, placing those books in a special locked section of the library, and then having the librarian lend the books only on the condition that they tell no one. What a brilliant way to get kids reading. 🙂

Odds are you’ve been a hair’s breath away from a $10,000 product idea sometime in the last 24 hours – you just didn’t recognize it. That’s because great product ideas are all around you, but if you don’t keep your eyes and ears open for them they’ll pass you right by and get found by somebody else.

For example, you’re online reading about a famous athlete from the past, and there’s a sentence in there about how this athlete swore by using a special herb or a particular training technique. Most people would just breeze right by that sentence, but you’re on the lookout for new product ideas.

You do some research and find out that particular herb or technique does indeed give tremendous benefits to athletes and maybe even to people wanting to lose weight. Best of all, it’s not widely known. So you do further research and make a report on it. Then you write a sales letter with all the stories you found and the benefits of this practically “secret” herb or technique, and now you’ve got a product.

Better still, you back end your customer with related products, or even sell them the herb or the technique on video. And all because of one sentence you read in a biography.

Let’s give another example of finding ideas: You’re on a forum and you see a question you haven’t encountered before. You do a little research and realize this is a problem a lot of people are having, so you do further research and find a solution. Bingo! Another product.

One such bloke read comments from expensive sports car owners lamenting that their car emblems get stolen and they’re several hundred dollars to replace. He asked if they’d be open to a less expensive alternative and the forum members asked how to order. That was a pretty clear sign, so he did some research, found the exact same car emblems for far less money and had himself a new business. In this case he didn’t even need to create the product, he only needed to find it and make it available to his customers.

Let’s say you’re having coffee at the local coffee house, or a beer at the local pub. You start chatting with the guy next to you, and you find out he’s an expert in something or other. So you begin to quiz him on his best knowledge and you find this guy is a treasure trove. You do some quick research online and find this is a lucrative niche, so you partner with this person and create a product.

And it doesn’t have to be someone you meet by chance– it could be a book author, a blogger, someone in your local paper, etc. Contact them and see if they’re open to working with you to earn additional income.

Now you’re really into finding great ideas for new products, so you decide to get a little crazy. You place an ad in Craigslist looking for experts and offering to make them authors. Think you’ll get responses? Likely so, and even if you don’t find someone who fits, it didn’t cost you a dime.

You go to your mailbox and you find one of those packets of various local advertisers. You open it up and find the following advertisers, which gives you these product ideas:

Liquor store – book on how to make your own liquors

Satellite television – this is a good CPA niche, but you could also make a product on how to watch all your favorite TV without buying cable or satellite

Cafe – an info product on how to do marketing for cafes and small restaurants

Auto mechanic shop – either products on how auto shops can do marketing, or on how consumers can get cars for cheap and also save money on maintenance.

Home security system – how to keep your family safe from harm

Landscape maintenance – how to landscape for minimal upkeep by using native plants, installing automated irrigation, etc.

Carpet cleaners – Joe Polish is a marketer who caters to this niche, teaching carpet cleaners how to clean up financially. And he makes a gob of money teaching in this niche. Makes you think, doesn’t it? There are a ton of professions out there that desperately need marketing help.

Address labels – okay, this one has me stumped. While first class mail is at an all time low – who needs address labels? I’ll tell you a secret: The sellers of address labels don’t make anything selling the labels. They make their money by enclosing offers from all kinds of different businesses when they send out those labels. Sort of like doing multiple solo mailings at one time. Which is a great idea for a local service you can offer to businesses.

Dentist – info products that teach dental practices how to market, as well as products that teach how to get expensive dental services such as implants for a fraction of the cost.

Window cleaner – maybe a product on how to get new windows for cheap, or how to install them yourself? How about teaching people who to open their own window cleaning business?

Chiropractic – once again, how chiropractors can market as well as additional products and services they can sell to increase their profits

Golf course – anything that takes strokes off.

You get the idea – there are product ideas EVERY where, you just have to be open and attentive to find them.

If you’ve ever read Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich,” you know that he repeatedly alludes to “the secret” without ever stating exactly what the secret is.

A quick aside here – I wonder if his book would still be popular to this day if he had simply STATED the secret, rather than leaving it a bit of a mystery? I don’t think so.

Some have said the secret is to, “Conceive it, believe it and then achieve it.” That is, you need to decide what you want, believe with all your heart that you can and WILL achieve it, and then take the action necessary to make it happen.

Others have said the secret lies in Chapter 2, where even Napoleon’s own son said he was able to identify the secret. That chapter is about “Desire: The Starting Point Of All Achievement.”

Chapter 2 reads, “The method by which desire for riches can be transmuted into its financial equivalent consists of six definite, practical steps…”

“First. Be definite as to the amount.” Desiring a lot of money or to be rich won’t work. Making a goal of $5,000 a month in income will.

“Second. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire.” You don’t get something for nothing – if you did, you could simply make a wish and your desire would appear. You’ll need to exchange your efforts for the money you desire, so what is it you can do? How can you give tremendous value to others?

“Third. Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire.” Never underestimate the power of a deadline, or the need to be accountable to someone. Tell the person you least want to disappoint of your deadline, and be sure they hold you to it.

“Fourth. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action.” Decide what you’re going to do, and then just do it. Don’t wait – procrastination leads to excuses which leads to more procrastination. Begin immediately.

“Fifth. Write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire, name the time limit for its acquisition, state what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it.” You’ve heard this before – Write it down. Make it concrete. Make it REAL.

“Sixth. Read your written statement aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at night, and once after arising in the morning. AS YOU READ – SEE AND FEEL AND BELIEVE YOURSELF ALREADY IN POSSESSION OF THE MONEY.” Twice a day? I would suggest several times a day. Keep your goal right in front of you so that it’s on your mind always, like a mantra. It should be the last thing you think about as you fall asleep, the first thing you think of upon waking, and your predominant thought throughout the day. As you think about it, BELIEVE it is already done – you are simply going through the formalities.

You’ll notice that these 6 steps assume one thing – that you will take ACTION and do whatever it is you need to do to make it happen.

Six steps, plus action.

If we were to boil this down to its essence, what would it be?

Conceive it
Believe it
Achieve it

And there you have it – Napoleon Hill’s secret to Thinking and Growing Rich.

Famous sales person Ben Gay tells the story of being on an ocean going fishing boat with a very successful friend. His friend hooked a whopper of a fish on his line. The crew went crazy with someone shouting out “slow down, speed up, hard to port, etc.” Crew members were running around doing whatever they do and the entire boat had a feeling of total chaos while his friend was working on landing this fish.

But his friend was as calm as could be. When Ben asked his friend how he could stay so calm amid all this frenzy, his friend replied, “While the fish and the crew don’t know the outcome of this struggle, I do.”

His friend had already conceived and believed he would catch a giant fish. All that was left was to calmly and serenely land him.

Have you tried offline marketing yet? If not, why not?

Odds are you’re hesitant to offer offline services because you’re afraid of sounding less than super intelligent when talking to business owners. Maybe approaching them makes you nervous. Maybe you just don’t feel like enough of an expert.

Whatever the reason, take heart. Business owners are just people who need help, and you are there to do exactly that – help them. Treat them like they are your new friend and you can not only eventually turn them into clients, you can also keep them as clients for years and years to come.

Perform a service for them, no matter how small. Even if you only charge $100, that token amount is your foot in the door and a slam in the face to all other offline marketers. Now when someone approaches that business person about marketing, they will say, “No, I already have a guy/gal for that.” And once you earn their trust with that first small job, you can get bigger and bigger jobs from them in the future.

So how do you get your confidence up for that first phone call or in person meeting? How do you get yourself in the zone before you even pick up the phone or walk through the door? By talking to yourself or a friend. Literally.

This trick comes from entertainer Kyle Cease who accidentally discovered it on the way to an audition. Normally before an audition he would constantly worry about it. But this time he started talking to his friend about the upcoming audition as though it had already happened, like this: “Do you remember when I went into that audition and I just nailed it? I don’t know what happened but I got into a zone and I started feeling so good.”

By talking about it in past tense, he started feeling really good about it. The stress disappeared and he acted as though it was a done deal, as though the only possibility was nailing the audition, which he did.

Interestingly enough, I’ve been doing this for years without even realizing what I was doing or why I felt so confident in new situations. It took Kyle to point out that this technique isn’t well-known and needs to be shared.

Try this yourself. The next time you are stressed about something you’re about to do, talk out loud about how great it went, how you were positively on fire and totally nailed it, etc. It’s a simple trick that costs nothing but a few minutes of your time, but it can have a life changing impact.

This one technique will allow you to break through old comfort zones like you’re a super hero breaking the sound barrier. You’ll find you can do things and accomplish things you’d only dreamed about before.

Let’s face it – it’s getting a little harder these days to do offline marketing. There’s more competition than ever before as more and more marketers break into the field. There are also more potential services to sell, which just tends to confuse the heck out of both the business owners and the new offline marketers. And as more and more marketers are offering more services to business owners, the owners are often saying “no” before they even know what they’re turning down.

But it’s still true that offline marketing can be hugely lucrative for anyone who makes a serous attempt at it, especially if they find a way to stand apart from the crowd. Imagine the edge you could enjoy over every other offline marketer if you offered business owners just one thing – the thing they want the most – more customers.

Very few marketers are doing this, yet it’s probably the easiest service of all to sell to a business owner.

You could practically pick and choose which clients you work with, because what business owner is going to say ‘no’ to new customers? None in their right mind. Especially when they only pay you for leads or for actual customers. If you don’t deliver, they don’t get paid. Thus there is absolutely no risk to them. And with no risk, there is no reason for them to say no.

So how do you go about getting these leads and new customers for your clients? First, you’re going to think locally, not globally. You’re getting leads for a specific type of local business that serves a specific geographic area, such as a city or region.

Second, you’re going to build a website and then you’re going to drive traffic to that website. You do want to use good SEO, but you don’t want to rely just on search engine traffic. After all, your site could rise or fall on the whim of the search engines. That’s why you’ll want a paid traffic source you can rely on such as Google Ads.

You’ll be choosing niches that can pay you high referral fees so you can afford to spend money to get those leads and still pocket plenty of profit. For example, let’s say it takes you $50 in Google Ads to get a new patient for a dentist. If you’re charging the dentist $100 per new patient then you can do this all day long.

You’ll want to retain ownership of your websites for two reasons. First, if your client ever stops working with you, you’ll be able to sell your leads to a similar client in the same area. For example, if you’re getting leads for a contractor in Austin, Texas, and one day that contractor decides for whatever reason to stop using your leads, you can simply begin selling your leads to one of their competitors.

The second reason to retain ownership of your lead generating websites is so that you can make changes on the fly. Let’s say your site is ranking high but one day it falls to page 3. You can immediately make changes in your SEO without having to get them approved by the business.

As you can see, this business model is fairly simple and the competition is still relatively low. The field is wide open and getting clients can be as easy as asking if they can handle more business.

Here are a few questions you might have:

Q. What type of website should I build?

A. A small WordPress site targeting the best buyer keywords works well. Figure 5 to 10 pages, 10 to 25 keywords to start if you’re optimizing for SEO. Each website should target one niche in one town. For example, dentists in Tacoma or chiropractors in Atlanta.

Q. How do I find the keywords? Can you give keyword examples?

A. Use the Google Keyword Planner to find out which terms are commonly searched for in a particular industry. Then add those keywords to the location to form your keyword phrases. For example, Tacoma Washington dentist. Use singular and plural, and also add appropriate “buying” keywords, such as buy, rent, lease, hire, etc. Lastly, add descriptive keywords such as best, cheap, fast, etc.

Q. What domain should I use for my site?

A. First, don’t buy a domain that uses the actual business name. For example, if your client is Bob Smith, dentist, Tacoma Washington, don’t buy BobSmithTacomaDentist.com because if he ever stops using your services you won’t be able to use that domain. Second, choose something generic with your best keywords in a .com, .org or .net. For example, TacomaWashingtonDentist.com or DentistTacomaWashington.com. (These may or may not already be real sites.)

Q. What should I have on my website?

A. – A toll-free number prominently displayed.

– A contact form above the fold. (70-80% of people will call, 20-30% of people will fill out the contact form.)

– Images – either use images from your client or buy your own images.

– Lots of headings and paragraphs to break up the content.

– Great content with a clear call to action. Don’t use PLR for this – either write your content yourself or outsource it. If you need ideas, check similar websites but do not copy. Above all, make your copy engaging.

– Proof – real customer testimonials are good for this, as well as industry backed facts quoted with sources (IE: “People using a lawyer for their personal injury claim receive on average $42,000 more per claim than those going through the process without legal representation.” – The American Bar Assoc.) btw, I just made that up – DO NOT use it.

Q. What shouldn’t I have on my website?

A. Anything that is on the client’s own website. Assuming they have their own site, you’ll want to use all fresh and unique content. If you need to post their address, do so as an image so Google doesn’t see it as duplicating. And don’t use PLR. Ever.

Q. How do I charge?

A. It’s up to you and the client, but here are some suggestions:

Get paid for the leads you generate, rather than the sales you make. You’ll get paid less per lead of course, but you’ll get paid for every lead regardless of whether or not they become a customer. It’s important to note that clients may be more reluctant to do it this way if they are not confident in their ability to close leads. You can overcome their resistance by giving the first leads to them for free so that they can test the quality of the leads before agreeing to pay for your services.

Establish a flat rate for each sale you generate. Your client might offer many different services at different prices, in which case you can establish a different flat rate for each service. With flat rate you typically get paid right away.

Take a certain percentage of each sale. If your client bills far into the future rather than upfront, you might not get paid for awhile using this method. Commissions over the lifetime of the client/customer relationship. For example, if your client is a landscaper and they service the client weekly for months or years, you could get paid a small amount of money for a long time, which adds up.

Q. Are there any clients I should avoid?

A. Yes. Any business in direct competition with one of your existing clients. For example, you can work with one dentist in each geographical area, but not two dentists in the same small to mid-sized town (2 dentists in a large city would almost certainly be alright, but after that look for other locations or other professions.)

Also avoid any business that does not either make a large sale up front or offer a long term ongoing service. For example, a bakery wouldn’t be a good business since each sale is probably $5 to $20. But a doctor, lawyer, accountant, contractor, swimming pool sales, realtor, insurance agent, mortgage broker, etc., would all make for good clients. So would someone who provides an ongoing service such as the landscaping and lawn care we mentioned earlier, or a maid service, high paid personal trainer, etc.

Q. How do I know which businesses to approach?

A. Look for those that are already spending money on trying to get business. This might be in the Yellow Pages, Google Ads, newspaper advertising, etc. These are businesses looking for more customers and ready to spend money to get those customers.

Q. How do I track leads?

A. The opt-in form makes tracking of those leads easy. You can even offer an incentive such as a relevant report to encourage their opt-ins, and then follow up to encourage them to use your client’s services.

For the phone number, you can use a virtual reception service to take down the name and number of each caller before forwarding them to the business.

Local affiliate marketing can be extremely lucrative if you’re willing to put some time into it. You’ll need to build websites, optimize them and run Google Ads campaigns. But once you get everything set up, you can continue to make money for months or years to come with very little additional effort.

Hopefully you are the exception to these mistakes. If you’re not, take heart: 9 out of 10 online marketers make these very same mistakes. Here’s how to rise above your competition and increase your bottom line simply by NOT making these 5 mistakes…

Spamming on social media. You opened your Twitter account with the best of intentions to Tweet valuable content and answer questions, but now nearly every tweet you send out is a link promoting a product. If this is you, then it’s time for a change. Promotion is fine as long as it makes up only 20-30% of your tweets at MOST. The rest should be content rich and helpful to your followers. And this goes for every social media network, not just Twitter.

Not testing. You create a new squeeze page but you don’t test one headline against another. Result? Every day that goes by, you are losing money. Test everything and eventually the exact same effort will yield 1.5, 2 or even 3 times the results.

Not asking for the sale. Whether you’re looking for an opt-in, a share or a sale, tell them exactly what you want them to do. If you don’t make your call-to-action clear, you will get less than stellar results every time.

Ignoring your current customers. Are you so busy looking for new business that you forget to pay attention to your most important asset – your current customers? These are the people who already trust you enough to have purchased at least one of your products. That’s why your current customers are actually your best future prospects in the world – treat them like gold.

Talking about you, you and YOU. Do you know who your customers care about? Themselves. They don’t care about you, only about what you can do for them. This sounds harsh, but it’s true. Yes, you can tell them an anecdote about what happened to you last weekend, but it better have something in it for them. Your customers don’t want you or your products. They want solutions to their problems. Remember this and you can’t go wrong.

It’s almost cliché: People buy from and work with people they know, like and trust. People get to know you through your content, and they trust you based on your reputation and track record of service. But how do you get people to LIKE you?

Be honest. Who doesn’t like an honest person? If I came to you and said I did a really stupid thing and asked for your forgiveness, you would almost certainly forgive me AND think more highly of me, even though I did the stupid thing. But if I tried to cover it up and you found out, you probably wouldn’t like me, and who could blame you?

This is why mistakes are actually an opportunity to strengthen the relationship between vendors and customers. When the vendor owns up to the mistake and takes immediate action to correct it, the customer will often feel even more positive about the vendor than if the entire transaction had gone off without a hitch.

Be responsive. When someone takes the time to write to you, write back. When an affiliate has a question or concern, answer it immediately. If you can’t, let them know you’ve received their message and will be replying as soon as you can.

If your joint venture partners and affiliates can’t get a hold of you when things are running smoothly, they’ll be concerned that you won’t be there for them should something go wrong. And if you (or your assistant) answers customers questions in a timely manner, you will stand apart from those competitors who never bother to reply.

Be passionate. Yet another reason to work in niches you love – when you’re passionate about your topic, people just naturally like you. You exude an energy and charisma that draws people to you. Positivity is contagious – and people who are passionate about the topic will naturally bond with you.

Tell stories. Imagine a subscriber is on 10 emails lists. 9 of those lists are a constant bombardment of “BUY THIS!” But the owner of the 10th list tells stories. In fact, every email s/he sends contains a story, even if it’s still selling something. Which emails will get opened and read? And who will the subscribers like more? I know of list owners who promote a product every single day to their lists, but because they always tell an interesting story, their open rate is through the roof.

It’s no different than 150 years ago when the farmers would sit around the wood stove in the general store in the middle of winter. The farmer with the best stories was almost always the most beloved of the bunch.

Be yourself. Vulnerability, humility and authenticity will shine through every time. Which of your friends do you like the best? Odds are it’s the ones who don’t put on a facade and can just be themselves.

In the long running British series, “Last of The Summer Wine,” 2 of the main characters were Compo and Foggy. Compo had all sorts of faults, dressed like a bum and obviously didn’t care what people thought. Foggy, on the other hand, was continually trying to paint himself as a regimental, heroic leader. He cared a great deal about what others thought and often told stories of his many imaginary exploits in the great war. Of course he was really rather timid and somewhat incompetent. But he was too busy putting on a false front to notice that he was the only one who believed it.

So which character do you think was most beloved? Compo of course.

Use humor. You don’t have to be a comedian or even tell jokes if you’re not good at it. Simply telling tales about yourself and laughing right along with your readers and viewers will show you have a sense of humor. And they will be able to relate to you all the better when they see you can laugh at your own stupid mistakes.

Surprise people. Find ways to pleasantly surprise your affiliates and customers and they’ll keep coming back for more. For example, you might do a blog post in which you thank each of your active affiliates by name. It wouldn’t cost you a cent, but it would certainly surprise and delight your affiliates when you took the time to publicly recognize their efforts.

Be thankful. Thank your joint venture partners and affiliates every chance you get (see the previous paragraph.) And of course thank your customers. Simply sending an email is a good start, but consider taking your gratefulness further by sending e-cards or actual snail mail cards or even calling. Imagine calling someone who just purchased your $97 product just to say thank you. You’ll have a new best friend for a customer every time you do it.

Keep it simple. Every day the world gets a little bit more complicated, which is an opportunity for you to find a way to simplify things. Taking complex ideas and distilling them down to their simplest forms makes it far easier for your audience to understand what you’re saying and to appreciate you for making it easy for them.

Take a look at every component of your business and find ways to simplify. Is your ordering system a 4 page maze of forms and check boxes? Simplify it. Is your product 26 videos of step-by-step information? Make a mind map so they can see the entire thing on one page. Do you make new affiliates jump through a hoop or two before they can promote you? Simplify. The last thing anyone needs is more complication. By making things simple, you will again become that much more likeable.

If you are the marketer who is honest, responsive, passionate and thankful, who tells stories and uses humor, who keeps things simple and down to earth and even occasionally surprises people, you will be well-liked indeed.

Whether you’re just starting your first online venture or you’re going into a new niche, you want to hit the ground running. And because success loves speed and so does your wallet, these tips are designed to give you maximum boost for the effort.

Get your Unique Selling Point together. What makes you different? What sets you apart? Don’t say quality or price – everyone says that. Find your own unique voice that can be heard above the noise of the crowd and all of your marketing endeavors will become that much easier.

Decide exactly what you want. You can’t reach a goal if you don’t know what it is, so what’s your chief objective? To build a loyal list? To sell a particular product or service? To become the trusted authority in your field? Decide what you want so you can choose the best methods to get there.

Decide exactly who your target customer is. You can’t market to everyone, so create a profile of your ideal customer and then cater all of your marketing and content to that profile as though you were speaking one on one.

Get some partners. These partners will vary according to your goal (Building a list? Selling a product? Etc.) and according to who your target market is. Decide who is in a great position to help you reach your goal, and then start building alliances with them by asking them what you can do for them. Let’s say you can write – offer to write blog posts, articles, emails, etc. for them. Think of it as paying it forward. Yes, it works. The alternative is to approach them with an exciting goal, like raising a large amount of money for a cause or charity. Potential JV partners will often lend a hand to be a part of something big and newsworthy.

Get social. Choose the two social networks that are the best fit for your new venture. Create new profiles just for your venture and start reaching out. Incentivize people to share by offering them a bribe (ebook, video, etc.) or by running a contest.

Get your content on. Create content for your blog or website, social media content, videos, etc. Make it INTERESTING, make it informative, make it enjoyable. Mix in a little controversy (if possible) and you’ve got a recipe for share-ability.

Don’t just write and post your content, SHARE it. Use social media, guest blog posting, email and any method you can to get your content out there.

Give away small tastes only. There’s a theory that if you give away all your best stuff, customers will line up in droves to buy your products. But if they’re already getting your very best stuff for free, why would they? Because they think what you’re selling is even better. You can guess what happens when they realize it isn’t. Instead, only give away nibbles of your information. Tell them what to do, but don’t tell them how to do it. Make them buy your product to find that out. This is the secret of the marketers who charge 3 and 4 figures per product – they don’t give away their best stuff, they make the customers pay for it. And one more thing – people appreciate what they pay for. Want your customers to not appreciate you? Then give away the farm.

There you have it – 8 tips for launching your next IM venture. These are the solid techniques that build businesses. And you’ll notice something – no where in here did you see a gimmick or the latest piece of software. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel because building a solid business means using the rock solid basics that have been proven by successful marketers to work time and time again.