Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

A Little-Known, FREE Way to Learn How to Market Online
Want to know a great way to learn how to market—from top marketers—without paying a penny?

Watch their product launches.

When a top marketer launches—or relaunches—a high-end product, they roll out a lot of free content to attract potential buyers to learn about their product. Some of the content is specific to the product they're launching.

They'll show you the results people have gotten from their product in the past. Or they'll show you how effective their product is in doing some profit-generating task.

The first kind of info isn't all that useful. Those aren't as useful. They can be inspirational. They can help you build the mindset of what it's possible to do.

But prelaunch campaigns that are like gold are the ones that show how the product helps you generate income.

Why?

In the process of showing how the product helps you, this type of free content gives you tips you can use in your business even if you don't use that product. It simply takes a little longer without it.

One excellent product relaunch I'm following right now is PortalFeeder.

Personally, I'm a PortalFeeder owner and have found it to be an incredible tool for building sites quickly. It streamlines the process of building sites and gives you a full range of tools to help build your search engine rankings and promote your site in ways that actually build traffic.

Like another favorite site-building tool of mine, SiteBuildIt!, PortalFeeder also provides complete training and ongoing support from a community of business owners who have already achieved the success you seek.

I've never mentioned PortalFeeder before because it's been closed to new members. I got in on PortalFeeder over a year ago when it first opened. Since that original opening day, PortalFeeder has been closed to new members.

Right now, though, PortalFeeder is preparing to open its doors again to a few new members. And they're giving out some great information in their blog to get people to sign up for their advance notification list.

In the past couple of weeks they've shared some great tips that you can use.

For example, in their April 16 blog entry, they posted tips on how to boost incoming links from an authority site that most people don't realize will provide links if you use it right.

In their April 13 blog entry, they posted an ingenious way to generate affiliate income.

Other posts discuss the difference between some of the obsolete business-building techniques that many new business owners use—to their detriment—and the way of business building that works today.

Their April 20 post falls into that first category I spoke of. It gives a case study of someone who built a steady—and still growing—income of $3,000 a month in only four months with Portal Feeder. But along the way, he describes all the tools that made this rapid business growth possible.

You'll find all these posts beneath the Advance Notification Signup Form on the PortalFeeder blog. I encourage you to check out these posts.

And while you're at it, sign up for the Advance Notification list. They promise more tips in their newsletter and advance information about when PortalFeeder will reopen.

Even if you're not interested in PortalFeeder as a platform for building a successful business, you can learn a lot from their tips—and even by studying any promotional emails you receive.

I take other people's promotional emails and save them in my swipe file. Then, when I do copywriting, I pull them out to give me ideas. There's nothing wrong about getting ideas from the best in the business!
Jeff

Labels: PortalFeeder, site building, start business

One Stop Web Support Newsletter #54 On the Way
The latest issue of One Stop Web Support Newsletter is scheduled to arrive Sunday, April 22, 2007.

This newsletter starts a four-part series on the Building the Four Key Parts of Your Business. It contains:

• Building the Four Key Parts of Your Business - A Way to Build Relationships
• Reviews -
  Website business - 1 Shopping Cart
  Auction business - aWeber Autoresponder Service
• Special guest corner - thoughts from top marketers
  Your Small Biz Online Marketing Funnel
  By Caroline Melberg
• Success quote by John Eldredge

If you haven't signed up for my newsletter, you can do so at www.onestopwebsupport.com/newsletter-signup.htm. And I'll make it worth your while if you do. I'll give you $250 worth of free gifts for signing up!
Jeff

Labels: building relationships, business system, newsletter, start business

Hottest Offers for April 20
Each Friday I share with you the hottest online marketing deals I've come across in the past week.

aWeber Autoresponder Service Free Tips and Tools
I've been preparing a full review of aWeber Autoresponder Service for this Sunday's newsletter.

I received a surprise.

I knew it was a great service. But what surprised me was to see how much you can get out of them for absolutely no cost.

And that makes aWeber a great pick for this week's hot offers.

Click here to find out what all you can get from aWeber for free.

Or go straight to aWeber to check out their full service.


FREE Trial Subscription to "Secrets To Their Success"
While no one could accuse the price of Derek Gehl's "Secrets To Their Success" membership site of being excessive, it just got even better for this week.

He's offering free trial memberships to "Secrets To Their Success" for this next week.

That means you'll get to see two extensive case studies of successful web businesses in which Derek's interviewers tear into every aspect of the businesses to find out what made them successful.

Personally, I have page after page of notes that I've taken on these case studies over the years. And I've put many of those tips that made other businesses successful to work in building my own profits.

But remember, time is limited on this one. Click here to find out more

Or click here to go right to the trial offer of "Secrets To Their Success"




Those are my picks for this week.

You can still check out some of the top offers that are still available from previous weeks. Check it out for some exceptional bargains that cost next to nothing.
Jeff

Labels: aWeber, hot offers, Secrets to Their Success, successful business

Creating Profitable Infoproducts Quickly
I just added an article about creating $7 e-reports to a permanent spot on my main site.

As I mention in the article, it's an ingenious system that lets you:

• Quickly create and sell infoproducts, often from content you already have created
• Build your optin list
• Build your own affiliate network without having to invest in expensive affiliate software or services.

You many remember me talking about this concept in my hot offers post last week. But if you want to check out more about this clever idea, click here for information on creating $7 special reports.
Jeff

Labels: ebooks, infoproducts

Die, Scum-Sucking Scammer, Die!
Forgive the venting, but I'm worked up.

I declined a link exchange request the other day. Now, I don't do link exchanges any more. They're dead. They provide no traffic from potential buyers and nowhere near as much value from an SEO perspective as they used to.

But even if I still did link exchanges, there's no way in the world I would ever link to that site.

I have nothing against the business owner who sent the request. I'm sure he's a great guy, excited at the prospect of taking control of his own financial destiny on the Web.

The reason I declined his link exchange offer is that the site was a business-in-a-box type site. And it was a particularly insideous type that represents the worst kind of exploitation that I see being done to prospective business owners on the web.

The scum-sucking scammer (SSS for short) who sells these "no-effort, profit-generating websites" to people like this link requestor makes a fortune selling the same website to unsuspecting new business owners hundreds or even thousands of times.

The problem with business-in-a-box websites—duplicate content
Oh, sure, you can customize your site a little bit, but it's still essentially the same site in the eyes of the search engines. And, sure, maybe SSS originally got good rankings for his site. But is Google really going to rank all 10,000 versions of that same site in the top 10 of the keywords SSS originally ranked for? No way.

The problem with business-in-a-box websites—designed to fail
I'll grant you this, these cookie-cutter sites are somewhat attractive and professional looking. I can see why it would look like a dream come true to someone who wanted to start their own business. But to a typical website visitor, the site is a disaster!

The top of the cookie-cutter home page gives a brief warning against the many scams that people who want to start online businesses might encounter. It warns the visitor that the only business offers they should trust are the ones on the site. The site has that half-right. True, there are plenty of scams to avoid, but I would count SSS's business as one of them.

Most of the rest of the visible part of the home page encourages visitors, in one way or another, to sign up for their own profit-generating site just like the one they are on. So, after warning people to be on guard against scams, the pre-written text of the site encourages them buy SSS's worthless business-in-a-box.

If you scroll down the page, you find a hodgepodge of banner ads and text links. It seems designed to overwhelm the eye and send them back up to the top of the page where nothing but SSS's business-in-a-box is sold.

Sure, the site has plenty of pages. It gives the impression of being a big site. But, in reality, it's set up to overwhelm visitors visually and discourage them from moving beyond anything but SSS's own business offer.

Why this business model works—but just for SSS
The business-in-a-box business model works well—for the person who sells it to unsuspecting new business owners. It works very poorly, though, for the buyers.

It's first claim is this: "The site is ready made. You don't have to do a lick of work to get it running." The problem is: just having a site is not enough to ensure a profit. And if your site is NEARLY IDENTICAL to 20,000 sites that are all competing for the same search engine rankings, inbound links, etc., competition for traffic will be fierce.

The other claim is: "the original site made a lot of money, therefore yours will make money, too." Once again, though, you don't have the field all to yourself, like the original site did. You will have to work even HARDER to generate traffic to your site than the original site owner did.

The reality of this kind of business is this:

• New business owner gets swept up in the hype and buys a site.
• New business owner tells friends and family to check out his or her new business.
• Maybe new business owner encourages friends and family to sign up for their own Internet goldmine like his or hers.
• A few of them do and new business owner makes a little commission off the sales.
• Maybe new business owner gets lucky and makes a couple of sales from people who somehow wander into the site.
• Eventually, both traffic and sales dry up.
• New business owner gives up.
• SSS keeps getting money from the few sales that trickle in from each of the other 20,000 sites.

So SSS keeps making money. And one wave of prospective business owners after another sour on Internet marketing because the business-in-a-box they bought from him is virtually guaranteed to fail.

It sickens me to see this people like SSS exploiting prospective business owners. I hate to see SSS and his ilk churn through them and spit them out when he's wrung every last penny he can get from them.

Is Internet success impossible? Not at all! But it takes more than a cookie-cutter site to succeed. It takes a willingness to find specific problems that people have and to provide unique solutions to them.

That takes effort and it takes commitment. But it provides far more than just monetary rewards. It also provides the feeling of purpose and accomplishment that no cookie-cutter shortcut ever could.
Jeff


P.S. OK, I've vented at SSS and other baddies out there. I don't want to leave it at that, though. I know of reputable companies that help you to build a UNIQUE, niche business based on your own strengths and interests instead of on whatever products some business-in-a-box creator gets PAID to talk you into promoting.

If you want to uncover the business that lies hidden within you instead of settling for what worked for someone else many years ago, check on these:

• SiteBuildIt!
• PortalFeeder

I've found both of them to be outstanding at giving new business owners everything they need to build successful businesses.

Labels: start business

Are You Talking Yourself Out of Success?
You call an acquaintance on the phone.

A day, two days later, you still haven't gotten a response.

What happens?

With most people, we build a story in our heads to "explain" why that person never returned our call.

"He must not want to talk to me." "She's still mad because of what I did last week." "He's just stuck up. I didn't really want to talk to him anyway."

Notice what each of those stories do? They each slam the door on further interaction with that person. Some of them slam the door in the mistaken perception that there's something lacking in us that makes further communication impossible. The other assumes there's something wrong with the other person that makes them unworthy of our overture.

But both decisively slam the door and isolate you from someone you had wanted to interact with.

What does this have to do with your business?

It's simply this:

We have the same tendency to create inner stories to "explain" the things that don't go according to plan in our businesses as well.

Sometimes our inner stories pin the blame on ourselves: "I'm not good enough at this." "Maybe my plan isn't working. I'd better start from scratch on something totally different instead of pressing on according to my plan." And in this way we stop ourselves from achieving what we could have achieved with just a little more perseverance.

Sometimes our inner stories pin the blame on our customers: "Why aren't they buying? Are they stupid? Are they cheap?" And we dig in and cut ourselves off from actually finding out what they want.

Either way, we're talking ourselves out of success.

We need to get beyond taking refuge in our insecurities or our resentments. We need to stop those inner stories that "explain" what we see around us in terms of the thinking errors with which we define our lives.

How do we overcome these thinking errors?

First off, when you hear yourself jumping into a characteristic way of thinking, catch yourself. Try to look at the situation from the opposite point of view.

If you immediately think that you must have done something wrong, stop and look for what you did right in the situation. If you immediately turn to blame and resentment, stop and look for what your role in the problem is.

Many times, by looking at problems from the opposite perspective than you normally do, you can get fresh ideas that help you solve the problem instead of letting the problem stop you.

Changing your perspective can be the difference between a dead end and a new direction that leads to success.
Jeff


P.S. If you want more information about the power that changing your perspectives can have on your success, check out the BANABU multi-media personal growth course.

Harnessing the power that your perspectives have over your success is one of the 11 principles BANABU reveals. It reveals it through no-nonsense insights and simple exercises to help you put those insights into practice in getting the results you want in your life.

You'll be surprised with the difference BANABU makes. I certainly was surprised with the changes for the better it made in me!

Labels: BANABU, mindset, personal growth, successful business

Turning Your Negatives Into a Positive
What do you do if your business is saddled with something that puts you at disadvantage in comparison to your competition?

Turn it into an advantage, of course!

I saw a great example of this in a TV commercial last night. Let me pass it along to you as a lesson in effective copywriting that you can apply to your business.

A popular allergy medicine had just been taken off the shelves and put behind pharmacy counters. It wasn't because anything was wrong with the medicine itself. It simply contains an ingredient that could be extracted to manufacture illegal drugs.

Suddenly, this medicine was at a severe disadvantage to those drugs that remained within easy reach of the general public.

So what did the company do? They made the fact that the medicine had been restricted the key selling point of the commercial.

The commercial showed one happy allergy sufferer after another thanking the maker of this drug for keeping the restricted ingredient in the medicine. And in doing so, they backhandedly accused this company's competitors of making their medicines less effective so they could stay on the shelves.

It was a classic example of framing a disadvantage as a considerable advantage. Not only did the commercial portray the medicine as far more effective than its competitors, but it also trained potential customers to obtain it by asking their pharmacist for it by name.

And it portrayed the manufacturer of this medicine as a company that was genuinely concerned about the well-being of its customers instead of as one that looked out only for how it could make the most sales.

Take a look at your own products. What disadvantages do they have when compared to your competitors? Then think creatively. Figure out how you can turn your disadvantages into advantages like this medicine did.
Jeff


P.S. Copywriting is perhaps the most important skill to build as an entrepreneur. Nothing can boost your sales as powerfully as well-written copy.

If you want to take steps to improve your copywriting skills, click here and sign up for Clayton Makepeace's free newsletter. You'll get four free reports for signing up.

You'll get a lot more than just that, though. You'll get frequent copywriting tips from the copywriter who is considered by many to be the best in the business.

Frankly, I think you'll be amazed at the tips this guy gives away for free in his newsletter.

Labels: Clayton Makepeace, copywriting

Updated 1Shopping Cart Review
I just updated my 1ShoppingCart Review to reflect some changes in what it does.

If you're considering a shopping cart (or an autoresponder service, or ad tracking software, or a newsletter publishing service, or an email marketing program), you might want to check this review out.

I've found that 1ShoppingCart elegantly and reliably merges the best of all of these programs into one, saving you the hassle of trying to get multiple programs to work together.

But I'll let you check the more detailed review for yourself and see whether it fits your needs.

Or you can go straight to 1ShoppingCart if you want to check it out for yourself.
Jeff

Labels: 1ShoppingCart, autoresponders, reviews, shopping carts