Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

All Sorts of Value on the Hot Offers Page!
You may have noticed I've been kind of quiet about my Hot Offers page lately. It's not that I haven't been updating it. It's just that I haven't been terribly excited about the quality of the deals that I've been hearing about lately.

That has changed drastically this past week. Maybe it's a signal of people coming out the recession. Maybe not. But I've been unearthing all sorts of real bargains this week.

If you're into AdWords or pay-per-click marketing in general, I've found two offers for you:

• 17 Free Adwords cheatsheets MP3s and more from one of the premier authorities on AdWords and one of the most brilliant men I know
• A chance to try out a SUITE of killer AdWords tools for only $1

And AdWords isn't the only place I'm finding some great values this week.

A key component of a $297 article writing software is being spun off as a standalone product. Instead of charging $67, $97, or even more for this tool that drops into your lap all the research you need to write powerful, authoritative articles, they're GIVING IT AWAY for FREE.

Can't beat that price, can you? So if you've been putting off writing articles because you hate to write, this will make writing 100 times easier for you -- and won't cost you a cent.

There's a $97 keywords research webinar that's available for free. And two offers for business-building training, each for under $5.

In all, there's a lot of value on the Hot Offers page right now and nothing goes for over $3.95.

So I invite you to check out these hot offers while they're still available.
Jeff

Labels: hot offers

Stretching Your Way to Success
Here's a favorite quote from C.S. Lewis:

"Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither"

In the post I did a couple of days ago, I expanded on an excellent post I had read on another blog. One thing I didn't mention, though, was that the first comment made about that blog was a rather skeptical one.

The topic was about ensuring that whatever you presented to potential customers had great value in it. It broke down the different aspects of giving value and what you could accomplish by it in the long run.

That comment that stuck in my mind, though, heaped a healthy dose of skepticism on the whole subject. The person said something along the lines of, "Yeah, sure, but I can't see just giving and giving and giving away everything for free and then crossing my fingers and hoping that something good comes out of it."

That's the way that many business owners look at it. "Giving is bad; getting is good. If I can get with as little giving as possible, I've won and they've lost."

Marketing is not a zero-sum game, though, any more than Lewis viewed faith -- and God. Our world is set up -- created, if I may use that term in this context -- as something where the more you focus strictly on getting for yourself, the more you lose out on what you could have gotten.

It's a paradox, but I've seen it over and over again. Sure, those who focus strictly on what they get may seem to be ahead for a time. But in the end, they always lose. And those who focus the most firmly on themselves, lose the biggest.

It may engender skepticism from some, but giving value is indeed the best route to getting -- many times getting far more than you could have imagined -- sometimes in surprising ways.
Jeff

Labels: inspirational quotes

The Exchange of Value
I read an excellent post today about one of my favorite subjects, value. It got me thinking about the subject from some different angles, so I thought I'd share my response to it with you.

Marketing is not about coercing unwitting dupes to give you their money. Marketing is about solving people's problems.

Many business owners approach the exchange of value with the viewpoint of, "I've got a whole bunch of stuff that is absolutely worthless to me. I can't buy groceries with it; I can't pay the mortgage with it. I've got way too much of it and I need to get rid of it! What do I need to do to get rid of all this stuff and get people to give me more money than it's worth to me?"

If you walked into a store and someone said that to you, would you want to buy from them? Not a chance! You'd go flying out the door to find someone who isn't trying to rip you off.

When you look at it, though, from the perspective of your potential buyer's needs, you see a far different picture. They have a pressing need that you have a solution for. It's worth far more to them than it is to you. Focus on the value it has to them rather than on your eagerness to get rid of it and you'll get far more than it's worth to you while they feel they're getting a real bargain.

There's a lot more to it than just giving random stuff away and hoping you eventually make something out of your generosity. It's a matter of infusing what you give them with as much value as you possibly can so they're eager to do exchange their money for the value you offer.

Business transactions exist only when both sides feel they got more value than they're giving up.
Jeff

Labels: marketing