“Gold is in your mailing list.”

You’ve heard many veteran internet marketers and established gurus preach these very words time and time again, and for good reasons at that. It has been established as a fact that most of your sales would come after the 4th to the 8th contact. But before you could ensure that you’ll be able to keep in touch with your prospects for such number of times, you’d have to capture their contact details first.

This is accomplished through an opt-in list. An opt-in list, basically, is a system that would allow you to capture the contact details of your visitors. The way it works is that your visitors would be presented the choice to leave their contact details (usually their email addresses) so that you could follow up on them later on. This is the reason why an opt-in list is also called as a follow-up system.

An opt-in list is essential for your online business.

For starters, as we have discussed in the statistics above, most of your sales won’t come after the first contact. Your prospects should be given time to warm up to your offer. You’d have to contact them again, and again, and again, to assure them of your credibility and to make them believe that your offer would be truly beneficial for their needs.

Also, they may not be interested with your current offer, but this shouldn’t be taken to mean that they won’t be interested with what you could come up with in the future. An opt-in list would allow you to contact them for the future deals you will bring to the table.

There is no doubt that a follow-up system, or a mailing list, or an opt-in list, whatever you want to call it, would be very important for your success in the online field.

But the question is: how do you build the same?

I will not sugarcoat any answers. A lot of internet marketers are struggling to acquire subscribers for their mailing lists. They may have been in the business for a couple of years already, yet their mailing lists are composed of only a dozen or so subscribers.

If we are to peg an average, the conversion rate of your mailing list would hover around the range of 1% to 3.5%. Hence, the success of your mailing list would greatly depend on the number of users who would decide to subscribe to the same. If you only have 10, 15 or 20 subscribers, you won’t be able to make the most out of this system.

So again, how do you build your mailing list? How will you be able to acquire thousands upon thousands of subscribers at the soonest possible time?

There is only one answer to give. It’s not even a secret, as it is quite simple.

Incentive.

Your visitors should be given a reason to sign up with your mailing list. You cannot just expect them to leave their email addresses without receiving anything in return, right? If you were in their shoes, would you even bother to give out your contact details without deriving something from it?

The mistake that most internet marketers make is that they expect people to sign up by simply promising future updates. This isn’t enough incentive. People need something more than that, something valuable, something that is very much worth their time. If you will be able to give them such in exchange for their subscription, you’d be able to boost your number of subscribers really fast.

Here are some incentives that are guaranteed to work:

* Ezines or newsletters. Information is always a valuable commodity in the World Wide Web. If you could commit to create and deliver a regular eZine or newsletter for them, you’d be able to win their subscription and eventually their trust. Just make sure that your eZine or newsletter would be of premium quality.

* Freebies. Who would say no to something that is offered for free, right? It may be an eBook, a special report, a PLR product, a software program or another kind of digital item which your prospects could download in exchange for their subscription.

* Contests. You could offer a valuable digital product as a prize for a random drawing, with your prospects’ subscriptions serving as their raffle entries.

Any of the suggestions above are sure to make your prospects take notice. And as such, you’d have greater chances of bagging their subscription and building your mailing list to enormously profitable levels.

Let’s try this hypothetical scenario.  Supposing you’re in this position:

1. You don’t have a single cent in your account.
2. You don’t have enough marketing skills to catapult a digital product to the height of prominence.
3. You don’t have a mailing list composed of hundreds, if not thousands, of potential customers.
4. You don’t have any money – at all – to fund the creation and promotion of a digital product online.
5. You don’t have the brand name that commands credibility and immediately increases consumer confidence.

Should you give up on internet marketing?  Should you walk away from the potentials of making tons of cash online?

The uninitiated will say, any of the scenarios above – and more so all of them combined – would be enough to make you surrender the dream of making it big online.  But what do these people know?  Their imaginations are limited.  Their fears are doing all the talking.

You shouldn’t be one of them.  You shouldn’t lose hope.

All you need is an IDEA.

Yes, an IDEA.

Just one great idea can lead you to an online goldmine, and potentially, a windfall of profits that could come your way.

How can this be done when you don’t have the resources, financial or otherwise, to see your idea into actuality?

Have you heard about joint ventures (JV), dear friend?

Joint ventures are partnerships between online marketers who will pull their resources together for the success of one project.  For example, they could promote one product in all of their mailing lists for maximum exposure.  Or they could chip in their own products for one mega-package to increase its value and its salability.  They could promote this in their respective mailing lists with a system that would allow the members of each list to subscribe in the mailing list of the other members.  The effects of this could be long term.

Joint venture partners usually employ some sort of profit sharing scheme which they will agree on beforehand, so that each partner would know how much his share of the pie will be.

Joint ventures are encouraging options for any online businessman for the following reasons:

* They could trim down the expenses since they will be pooling their resources together.
* They could minimize the losses, if ever, since a lot of them would bear the same.
* They could promote the project to a wider audience through their combined number of subscribers.
* Less renowned personalities can piggyback on the credible names of their more popular partners.  This is great for branding purposes and for winning consumer confidence.
* Much can be learned from one another, especially from the more experienced partners.

So, given the scenarios in the first part of this article, where could you fit in with a joint venture?

Well, if you have a great idea, you could become a JV broker.  JV brokering is one of the few online opportunities that would help you garner a lot of profit without having to invest a single cent… for as long as you have the right connections.

If you have befriended established online marketers, or if you know how to contact them the right way, then JV brokering may be the option perfect for you.  All you need, as we have mentioned earlier, is an idea.  It may be your own idea, or someone else’s idea and you’d want to help him make it a reality.

With this idea, you could create a proposal.  This proposal is what you will present to the prospective JV partners you’d want to pool together.  If you proposal is viable and profitable, then there is no reason why your prospects would say no.

How will you get paid?  You could be paid directly based on a rate you have stated beforehand, or you could be paid via the profit sharing scheme that the partners would decide on.  Either way, you’ll get a piece of a pie.

Not bad for someone who only started with a plan, right?

Selling products with resale rights is a very lucrative online business.  However, not everyone can success with this endeavor because of the intricacies involved with the   trade.

To ensure maximum profitability in this field, you must learn how to package your resale rights products correctly.  And this involves some knowledge on the different factors that make or break resale rights marketing.  Let’s take a look at them, their nature and reasons, how to avoid the perils they bring, and how to use them to come up with a resale rights package that your prospects would find very difficult to resist.

1. Exclusivity.  People will be more interested to buy products with resale rights if their sale is limited to certain number of people.  There are many reasons for this.  Primary of these is the fact that resale rights are appealing because they would provide for the purchasers an additional income stream.  But if the product with resale rights is sold to an unlimited number of people, the market would just be saturated and there will be little room to make a profit.  The same is true for products with resale rights that may be sold to a limited number of people when such a number is in the hundreds if not the thousands.  The best approach is to sell your resale rights products to a maximum of 50 people, though a lower number would always prove better.

2. Price.  Though you are justified to sell your resale rights products for a price higher than the value of the basic package, if you sell the same for an exorbitant cost, you’d have problems effectuating some sales.  As a rule, multiply the value of your basic product by three.  Let this be the selling price for your resale rights product.  Though, you must remember, the lower the price, the more sellable your offer would be.

3. Restrictions.  Resale rights can come with restrictions.  But too much of them would compromise the value of the product.  You may restrict certain usages for your products for example, and this would alienate some people who would otherwise be interested with the same.  The rule here is to enforce only the restrictions that would preserve the worth of your resale rights product for the benefit of your purchasers.  These should be restrictions that are enforceable to all of them so that their interests would be protected from possible abuses by some of the purchasers.

4. Market life.  Selling your resale rights product when it is at the end of its market life would be tough.  People will find little value for it, since they would have the impression that they’ll have a hard time selling the same.  To allay their fears, suggest a unique selling proposition they could use.  For example, you could recommend the inclusion of valuable bonuses to increase the appeal of the product, in case they’d decide to buy its resale rights from you.  Or you could recommend the inclusion of supplementary products to come up with a turnkey package that would likewise increase the offer’s salability.

By considering these factors that affect the perceived value of your resale rights product, you’d be able to develop an approach that would make your offer more attractive to potential purchasers.

Here are the steps you should try to take, in a nutshell:

* Determine the cap for the number of people who could buy your resale rights product.  As we have mentioned earlier, the lower the number, the more sellable your offer would be.  But the determination of the cap should go side-by-side with the viability of the profit you will be able to make.

* If you decide to sell your resale rights product to 40 to 50 people, it is advisable to peg your offer at one and one-half the amount of the basic package if it were to be sold without resale right.

* If you decide to sell your resale rights to 20 to 40 people, it is advisable to peg your offer at twice the amount of the basic package.

* If you decide to sell your resale rights to less than 20 people, you could charge up to three times the amount of the basic package.

* Prepare a special report which would help your purchasers maximize the profitability of the resale rights product they would be buying.  You could do this by suggesting the employment of certain strategies that they may not have considered when it comes to reselling the product they have bought.  This would also give them the impression that you’re an online businessman who over-delivers, which would be great for branding purposes.

* Offer a post-sales service.  This is not limited to merely technical matters about the product.  It may include consultancy sessions that would help them earn some income from the reselling of the product they have purchased from you.

It’s all about the packaging.  The conditions surrounding the resale rights product you have prepared may not be favorable for your behalf, initially, but with some hard work and clever thinking, you’d be able to turn the tide to your advantage.

Are you an eBay seller? If you have been conducting your business in this widely popular online auction site, then chances are, you would’ve experienced some fraudulent activities perpetrated against your enterprise. Scam artists are everywhere, it seems, and the sheer anonymity provided by the World Wide Web makes the virtual world a paradise for all sorts of unscrupulous folks.

Condemning them is one thing. But you do need to positively act on the real perils of getting scammed. You have take some precautionary steps and adjust the way you operate your online business to minimize, if not completely eliminate, the risks that these scam artists present.

Let’s enumerate the more famous, or should we say infamous, of these eBay scams and discuss some ways by which you could avoid them.

* Bid shielding. Bid shielding greatly compromises the profit you could derive from your auctions. Bid shielding occurs when a bidder uses two eBay accounts. One account would bid a low price for your auction. The other account would bid a very high price for the same, thus dissuading other people from competing for the same item. When the bidding period nears its end, the second account would withdraw his bid, leaving the first account to win the item at a very low price. Bid shielding gravely jeopardizes the integrity of eBay itself. This is why the site promptly acts on any reports about possible occurrences of this scam. Pinpointing possible bid shielding is quite easy. If the current bid is grossly higher than the most recent bid, then bid shielding is probably in operation. Report it immediately to eBay, so that they could conduct an investigation while the auction is ongoing. Additionally, add a disclaimer on your auction, allowing you to cancel any winning bid whenever bid shielding is apparent.

* Bad checks. If you will take checks as payment for your auction, then you will have to live with the danger of encountering checks that would eventually bounce because of lack of funds. The solution to this scam is simpler than the rest. Do not ship your items until the checks you received have cleared. It’s the most prudent course to take. Add a notice in your auction that payments made through checks would have to clear before the items can be delivered. This would serve as due earning for your bidders that they would have to wait longer for the auctions they have won.

* Stolen payment information. Credit card fraud is rampant these days, what with new hacking technology and the abundance of spyware all over the internet. A winning bidder may pay you trough a credit card which is not his. He’ll ask you to ship the item to a P.O. box. Once the item is delivered, he’ll then close the P.O. box address to cover his tracks. And you’re left with no means to retrieve what you have lost. The best way to protect yourself against credit card fraud is to require payment from confirmed addresses only. Since PayPal accepts credit card payments, you could easily inquire from the service if a payee has entered a verifiable address. You have the option to cancel the bid of someone who’s not paying with a confirmed address.

* Drop shipping scams. There is no denying the popularity of drop shippers in the eBay business. Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE, wants to contact a drop shipper to increase his eBay offerings and profit. Some “enterprising” individuals have started to offer a list of drop shippers in eBay itself, as one of the many auctions in its pages. But eBay warned against these lists. 99% of them, according to eBay, would be filled with junk details like broken links, outdated information, and even fabricated entities. The solution? Do not purchase these lists. Look for your own drop shipper. You’d realize that finding one would only entail a little research of your own.

For many of us, eBay offers great income streams that serve us well. We must strive to protect the opportunity we have been given by being vigilant against scams and combating them through the implementation of precautionary measures for our every auction.

Visit Dave’s eBay Store by clicking HERE

You may have a new website you want to get indexed with the various search engines at the soonest possible time.  Or you may have an existing website which you want to position well in the search engine results.  Or you may have a good performing website which you want to remain competitive.  Whatever your reason may be, you’re sure to benefit from the blog and ping combo.

Now, you may have heard or read about this before, but your never realized how it works.  Or this may be the first time you have been acquainted with this surefire technique.  Regardless, much can be learned from this article as we discuss the basics and the mechanics of the blog and ping strategy.

It All Starts With A Blog

Web logs, or blogs as people have fondly referred to them in recent years, were originally designed for social purposes.  People used it as online diaries where they could post their thoughts, the events of their days, their secret desires and the likes.  But blogs possessed some very special qualities that internet marketers found hard to dismiss.

* Blogs figure prominently in search engine results.  The first few pages of some queries would yield many blogs occupying premium spots.
* Blogs are basically free web publishing tools.  A little tweaking and it could become a website of its own.
* Blogs are easy to update.  Just press EDIT or PUBLISH and you’d have new content in a flash.  No need to change the source code.  The system will easily take care of that.
* Blogs have their own communities.  Bloggers often link with one another.  This is a level of connectivity that is pretty hard to come by in other mediums.

Hence, online businessmen started using blogs for marketing purposes.

The strategy goes like this:

1. Create a blog dedicated to the subject your main website is catering to.  Preferably, you should create an account with www.blogger.com , because this service is owned by Google, the most widely used search engine in the World Wide Web.
2. Post regularly, and include a link to your website in majority of your messages.  Also include your links with popular keywords as anchor texts.
3. Include a link to your own website on the navigation bar.
4. Just to emphasize – you have to post REGULARLY.  This means at least every other day.  No sweat, though.  Short posts of 200 words in length would be enough.

It’s About RSS As Well

Blogs produce RSS feeds.  RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, a technology that would allow you to broadcast any changes on your blog to subscribed systems.  This is actually the heart of the blog-ping combo.  You have to learn how to syndicate your RSS feeds.

If you’re using blogger, it’s easy.  Take your blog’s URL.  For example, it is:

www.thisisyourblog.blogspot.com

Now, all you have to do is to add the extension atom.xml.  So, it should appear like this:

www.thisisyourblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml

This is the URL of your RSS feeds.

Now you need an RSS aggregator somewhere which could pick up your RSS feeds.  Preferably, it is a website that can be easily crawled by search engine spiders.  The perfect spot for this is www.my.yahoo.com .  Simply create a Yahoo account, then go to the said page.  Find the ADD RSS button, then press on the same.  Then paste the URL of your RSS feeds.

Every time you’d update your blog, RSS feeds would be generated and displayed in www.my.yahoo.com .

Now It’s Time To The Ping

Once your www.my.yahoo.com is set up, every time you’d post a new entry on your blog, you’ll have to go to www.pingomatic.com .  Fill up the appropriate fields, then submit.  This will inform a lot of blog directories that your blog has new entries.  And this would drive the search engine spiders on a feeding frenzy.  It’ll be a reminder for them to check out your blog come the next relevant query.

Again, you have to do this every time you will post a new entry.  No exceptions!

How powerful is the blog-ping combo?

Your new website will get indexed in Yahoo within 5 days.  This is guaranteed!  And with Yahoo picking up your website, and with www.blogger.com being owned by Google, it wouldn’t be long until the world’s most widely used search engine would index your new website as well.

And if the blog-ping combo could do this for new websites, just think of the possibilities it could provide for older ones.  Fantastic, isn’t it?