You finally realize that you need a good opt-in list. After reading countless articles and sought expert advices and have read many success stories of people creating a small fortune with opt-in lists you finally decide to have one of your own. Then it happens, you think you know everything there is to know about opt-in lists and have followed their advice to the T and you still weren’t able to make a profit.

So what could have gone wrong? Why have others succeeded where you have failed? The most common mistake is that you dove right in. You chose a topic you thought would be quite popular and would earn you money. Just because you emailed people from your list doesn’t mean they are going to buy instantly.

For those who have started an opt-in list and have failed, you can rejuvenate your failed venture. For those who are starting, here are three quick and easy ways to build a profitable opt-in list.

1) Your customers need to trust you and your products first. Just launching your opt-in list would not make you an expert and a believable seller. Write articles first before you start an opt-in list. Write about the topic you know and have used. Try creating a forum to gain knowledge about your customers wants and needs and target those wants and needs.

Join forums from other sites as well. Provide expert advice and recommendations. When you feel that people trust you, you will be able to start your own opt-in list. You can build a base as well with other forum users. You can ask them to join your list. Friends are always good customers. Put up a link to your site so that they may be able to see what you're business is all about.

The certain truth is, the money will only come in when the consumers and subscribers believe and trust in you. They want a product or service that could be a good exchange for their money. People are not going to buy something out of your recommendation if they don’t know you.

2) Find a product or service that people want and need. Although it may not be your forte, if you provide a service and product that you have researched and learned about well, you can carry it on forward. Invest your time on products that buyers or subscribers of your opt-in list can use.

While it is true that it is best to sell something that you have interest in, there are not many people who have the same interest as you. Do your research well and you would see the profits come in. Also provide your subscribers with promotional material that they could actually use and spread around (freebies).

3) Make friends with other opt-in list users. This is basically beneficial especially if it is someone who has already launched a successful opt-in list. These are people that have the experience in this venture and experience is still the best teacher. While there are many articles available for you on the internet, there is nothing like getting a first hand account from someone you trust.

Experienced opt-in list users will be able to tell you what to do and what not to do because they have gone through it. While different situations occur for different people, the general concept can still be very helpful. There are many things to avoid and these people will be able to tell you what they are.

Building a profitable opt-in list don’t just happen overnight. There are many preparations. Opt-in lists are built from scratch, as your list grows, you should also maintain the quality of your list. Keep it organized and manageable. Get or hire help if need be, just make sure that your subscribers are happy and satisfied and they will be willing to buy from you.

While the rest of the world have developed many barriers and protections to keep their e-mail accounts spam-free, there are also those that subscribe to mails that promote their products, services and their site. This is mainly because these subscribers want to know more about what these sites are offering and if it can be beneficial for them. They expect to be kept posted on what they are interested in and what is new in the market or field they have chosen.

Businesses would be so lucky to have these kinds of customers; the basic element needed to get these types of people is trust. When your customers trust you they will reward you with their loyalty. Many internet users have gone to great lengths in protecting their email accounts from spam mail. Some free-mail internet providers and internet service providers offer spam protection while there are also some internet based companies that screen your mails for you.

With an opt-in mail list, the mails you send containing your promotional materials such as newsletters, catalogs and marketing media will go through.

Your intended recipient will be able to read and view what you have sent making it a successful transfer of information. To be able to be allowed to do so, you will need permission from your recipient. To get this permission; you need to be able to gain their trust. With the great lack of disregard for privacy on the internet, getting the trust of an internet user you don’t personally know is a big achievement.

For a faster and quicker build up, you need to get your opt-in subscribers to trust you quickly. The faster you build your opt-in list the faster word about your site and company gets around. The bigger the scope of your opt-in list the more traffic you get earning you more profits. Its easy math if you think about it. Getting the numbers is not that simple though, or maybe it is?

• Getting the trust of your clientele shouldn’t be so hard especially if you do have a legitimate business. Getting your customers trust should be based upon your expertise. People rely on other people who know what they are talking about. Garner all the knowledge and information about your business. Ell, frankly if you decide to go into a business most probably you have an interest in it. Like how many basketball payers become coaches, you don’t really venture into something you don’t have any interest in.

• Show your clients that you know what you are talking about. Provide them with helpful hints and guidelines that pertain to what you are selling. Talk about how to install a roof if your into hardware products or provide articles on insurance settlements if you’re a settlement lawyer. You don’t have to be a big corporation to make use of an opt-in list. If your customers see you as someone who knows what he/she is doing and saying, they will trust you quickly.

• Be true to your customers, if you want to hype up your products and services, provide guarantees. The more satisfied customers you get, the bigger probability there is that they will recommend you. Generally, people will trust someone they know, when that someone recommends you then you’re a shoo-in. They will go to your site and check it for themselves and be given a chance to experience what the others have experienced. So make sure to be consistent in the service you provide.

• Another tip in getting customers to trust you quickly is to provide them an escape hatch. Show them that you are not there to trap them. Keep a clean list that would enable them to unsubscribe anytime they want. Elaborate your web form by providing information on how to unsubscribe from the list. Guarantee them that they can let go of the service when ever they want to. Many are wary that they may be stuck for life and would have to abandon their email accounts when they get pestered with spam.

Remember that when you get the trust of your clients, don’t lose that trust. Because if you do anything with their email addresses like sell them or give them out, you will lose many members of your list as well as potential members. The true quickest way to gain the trust of your subscribers is when you are recommended by someone they trust.

1. Auto responders have become an essential marketing tool. It can be used to maintain a client database and also to send out periodic broadcast emails which are an automated process when you use an auto responder.

2. These automatic emails which are sent out through the auto responder can increase your market share beyond what you can even think of. It can help in generating passive income as well as maintain a list of clients who are attached with your business.

3. You can easily combine affiliate programs with auto responders and make them work according to your choice. You can promote an affiliate product through a sequence of auto responder mails.

4. The most important thing to keep in mind while writing a marketing email within the autoi responder is to make the subscribers feel valued and make your emails high quality and rich in content.

5. Focus on the products you want to market. No doubt, the auto responders automate the hectic process of forwarding emails, but it is your job to make sure that the content of the email is appropriate and relates directly to product you want to market.

6. The primary aim of your auto responded email should to market your own product and provide value information about your business. But occasionally you can include a soft sell link within your email that attracts the subscribers and generates you a passive income.

7. Once your affiliate program kick starts, these soft sell links can be made frequent and they can work wonders by generating a stream of passive income for you. The frequency of such links can be should be carefully decided such as the subscriber does not mind seeing the link and clicking it.

8. The popularity of the auto responded emails are directly proportional to the content that you use in them. Obviously, you want more and more readers to subscribe and you should decide the material accordingly. Tell the subscribers what’s in your business for them and why should they join in.

9. Passive income that you generate from your auto responders may not be considerable but it should keep the things interesting as the flow will be continuous. You can also expect a few sales from the affiliate marketing initially which is your main objective.

10. Don’t be frustrated if you don’t receive any or less income through affiliate promotions. The subscribers’ first try and test your products through reviews and others sources and it is a time consuming process. Do not worry; you will eventually start cashing in sooner or later.

11. Change the look of your auto responded emails time and again. Subscribers don’t think highly of a stagnant look. Customize the emails and make them interesting content wise as well as feature wise. Good looking emails attract more customers and can help in generating a high affiliate income.

12. Multiple exposures to a product are required for the customers to finally buy it. High marketing skills can be quite important when you going to sell your services through auto responded emails. Provide exposures to your quality products again and again to the readers so that they are finally convinced to buy your product and seal the deal.

13. Auto responders can be implemented with any idea. The thing is that your idea has to be unique enough to attract the readers otherwise; there is no use of using auto responders. You can even begin an online teaching class through auto responder emails.

14. Just set the all the emails lessons and configure the auto responder for the time and date settings. Provide sufficient interval between two successive lessons. If the readers like your lessons, you will be showered with an excellent affiliate income and also a generous passive income.

15. If you have built a successful reader resource, try running multiple affiliate promotions. Try to analyze and figure out the list of readers you can separate for various promotions. Such a stride can help you boost your income and also the client base if your promotions are suitable to your readers.

16. Business involves a lot of risky decisions and you should be capable of devising a good enough plan for your promotions to be welcomed by the readers. If your ideas work, you will generate an automatic income which compound month after month and new readers that subscribe during this period can serve as the icing on the cake.

17. Just one good idea, a well defined plan and responsive email content can lead you to success. Such is the power of auto responders and guarantees high income opportunity of running affiliate programs.

18. Auto responders act well as lead generation tools for your business and provide you multiple opportunities to grow and prosper. It is quite easy to set up and is configured within a few minutes. Auto responders have become heavily common among blog users who implement their unique ideas through these and generate money.

19. Auto responders can be seen as maximum return for minimal effort tools. It has changed the whole scenario of affiliate marketing. Business owners saw affiliate marketing as the toughest phase of their product life cycle, but since the introduction of auto responders, the process has been automated and has become much effective that earlier.

20. Once your process of affiliate marketing starts, your database of email clients’ increase and your follower strength multiplies. Automation has become a necessary tool for expanding the business ventures to a great extent. Without automation, your market can not grow after a certain limit.

21. If you don’t like the idea of automation and decide not to implement in your business, your business may achieve a threshold corresponding to the amount of work you can handle in a day and that value will never increase unless automation takes care of it.

22. It manages the flow of the new users that have recently subscribed to your emails and also keeps you in their radar. They can see your old email postings and decide to join you or not.

23. Give your client and readers exclusive content and create a feeling of anxiety within them which makes them restless while waiting for your emails. If you successful in this, you can cash in the subscription money. A reader that finds your content great has more chances to shift from a monthly subscription to a weekly subscription.

24. Book subscriptions are gaining a lot of popularity through auto responders. You can deliver your entire book to the interested users through configuring the auto responder in an appropriate way. You can charge per subscription and also indulge in affiliate marketing from time to time.

25. Many readers also subscribe for e learning as well as online learning classes. E learning can be successfully implemented by using auto responders. If you have the resources and are passionate about teaching, you can create study emails and send them out periodically using auto responders.

26. Even if you are a creative writer or a wisdom expert, you can start your email series quite easily. Just make sure you use original content and the fresh content should be added to the emails every time you plan them to send. Readers often subscribe to horoscopes and leisure newsletters.

27. Readers have a strong affinity towards questions. Ask relevant questions keeping in mind the list of the readers you are posting to. Questions should be based on the reader interest and tell them to write back the answers or find them in the next email. Such ideas increase your readership.

28. Always focus on increasing the number of readers and not only increasing the amount of money you are earning. Once you have enough email readers, and then is the time to cash in by offering them quality services at reasonable prices. The offer should be such that they find it difficult to decline.

29. Once you have developed your idea and also the strategy to market it, now comes the time to make another crucial decision of deciding how long the auto responder messages should be and also how many messages should you write prior to configuring auto responder.

30. The lengths of the messages depend on the time gap between two successive messages. If you are delivering a message once in 3-4 days, you should keep them short and if you are considering a monthly email, you can keep the message length between 600-800 words.

31. Deciding on how many messages you should write depends upon your skills. If you feel that you can market what you write, it will be awesome. But you should take care that whenever you sit to write, you should make use of fresh content and new ideas. Communicate with your readers to know about their views on your messages and plan accordingly.

32. You should know the fact that whenever you schedule an auto responder with a sequence of messages, the content should be appropriate to what you are selling. No matter how good your product is, it will only achieve good sales if it has a strong description to go with it.

33. Leads can be followed up easily by using the auto responder tool. When potential customers read your newsletters and the content you supply to them, they can contact you back asking your company information. You can create a list of such readers and place them separately as these are producing results by contacting you which will ultimately lead to a purchase.

34. Give away free coupons and your product related eBooks to your readers via the auto responder messages. Such an activity will make the readers more interested in your services and can be converted into potential customers successfully. This is an affordable means of generating valued leads.

35. Give your auto responder messages a catchy title line such as “see for free gift inside” and “special discount edition”. Create such postings once a month or twice a month so that the customers can get to know what’s special for them in this issue. If you do this in every message, the customers will feel that you are too desperate to boost your sales.

36. One more idea to increase your profit is to train new consultants who are new to auto responder and are looking to market themselves. You can offer them paid subscriptions on how to use auto responder and be successful in marketing their corresponding businesses.

37. Look for the reviews of the readers who are subscribed to your messages. If they have any questions. Try to clear them as early as possible. This will inculcate trust in your readers and they will start taking you more seriously.

38. You can also prepare a set of FAQ’s and send them along with your messages every time. One more strategy can be implemented in this; you can give a link to the FAQ’s page of your business website. If the reader clicks the link, he will be automatically redirected to that page where he can find complete information of your business profile thereby increasing traffic on your main website.

39. As your direct business grows, you can promote your worthy team members to set up an auto responder for themselves also. Each new member can create his own list of readers’ database and can send out auto responder mail messages. This way, your newsletter reaches to maximum readers.

40. New customers that subscribe to receive your email messages should always be introduced with a welcome screen and your complete business contact information should be readily made available to them.

41. Once you start getting business from the customers in the subscriber list, give them continous updates about your products and new additions in the product range if any. You can also use a customer rating system which is highly useful in attracting potential customers.

42. You can also set up contests for your readers and offer new products to the winner. This increases your credibility among the readers. Choose a feasible contest option and work on the strategy. The contest questions should be based on your product range which will get the participants to know more about your business.

43. Your main motive behind setting up an auto responder tool and reaching so many potential customers should be to establish a strong, durable relationship with your subscribers. You should promise to provide them the services by valuing their money.

44. The first step of your relation building strategy starts right away as a subscriber gives you permission to email him. When people opt into your list, they usually expect something in return: valuable content, tips and tricks, special offers, product bonuses. So, be careful not to disappoint them.

45. Auto responder not only helps you to attract potential customers, but also gives an existing customer a belief that you are still with him and he can turn up to you in case he faces any problem. This keeps his trust alive and you should know that it is much easier to impress an existing customer than to attract a new one.

46. Several auto responder marketing programs are available on the internet e.g. Aweber, Mail chimp etc. It is your choice which one to use. All provide the same basic functionalities and the paid version can include the analytics system which helps you in analyzing your email marketing campaign with ease.

47. Instead of writing long email copies, simply send short, eye-catching emails to your subscribers with a short description and a link to a page of your site or blog. Pages can easily be bookmarked and shared around, unlike emails and this will drive additional traffic to your site or blog.

48. You can use auto responders for all your marketing and business generation purposes. If you are generous enough, you can also make the use of auto responders for non profitable income. You can teach students who remain at home.

49. If you decide to advertise in your email postings instead of marketing your own product, it can give you some cash but you have to decide the limit of advertisement postings. Most readers don’t like advertisements on emails and can tend to unsubscribe.

50. You can be in the front row of your business with the correct use of email auto responders. What you have to do is just show your readers clearly what you can offer and manage your content accordingly.

51. One more benefit of using auto responder is that your email reaches the readers well in time, so, they start remembering you and have knowledge about the services you offer. Your readers can also refer your emails list to their acquaintances.

52. Intelligence has been incorporated into auto responders to a certain extent. Auto responders can contain any type of information you want to put in them. Add more images to your message and adapt the text content accordingly. Give your potential customers a visual view of what is on offer for them. Adding images depends upon the auto responder platform that you are using. Free versions allow only text content to be added in mails whereas the paid version allows image content as well as attachments.

53. Auto responders can effectively be used to distribute information such as blog posts and other important information that may help your customers. This works really well when you offer a service and want to gain the interest of your customers. You can create a set of auto responders and configure them accordingly. It takes your instructions and executes them according to the schedule without the fear of failure and without consuming any time.

54. Auto responders help you grow your business and leap forward closer to your goals. If you are new to auto responders, you will be fascinated how quickly and efficiently it gets your marketing work done. You will have a new and exciting experience each day. You will start finding new customers and interact with them to service them better.

55. Auto responders can be categorized according to the product range available in your business profile. Separate auto responders can be configured for different product departments. The welcome mail that is the first mail to the subscriber should ask about the interests of the readers in a particular product and based on their interests, they are sent the respective messages.

56. Try interacting with your readers in order to share your expertise in a particular line of business. Make the readers aware of who you are and what you do. Trust is the key thing that your customers should share with you and it will benefit you the most.

57. If you run a local business plant to conduct an event for your existing customers as well as to attract prospective customers, auto responders can offer great help. Just schedule the message giving all details about your venue and the agenda of the event. You will be surprised to see how many people turn up at your event.

58. If you plan an event one or two months down the line, you can create hype among your subscribers by scheduling countdown messages through the auto responder. Jus select a catchy message every time you want a mail to be sent. In this way, the readers also remember when and where the event is to take place.

59. Technical support mails can also be handled by using auto responders. Whenever a customer responds back with a problem or a query, an automatic mail is generated by the auto responder and is sent to the subscriber. Mails such as we have received your query and will get back to you soon are important in handling technical support issues.

60. With the use of auto responders, business expansion in terms of customer activity can be increased to such an extent that it almost becomes impossible to handle the responder manually. Customers that query for products can be replied immediately with the price list and other credentials through the auto responder.

61. Weekly courses whether general or academic can be provided easily through auto responder. The first message can be the course module and the subsequent messages can contain the course structure and content. Such a way of delivering and attending courses is much easier as compared to the traditional way.

62. If you want to sell these courses to the students, you can ask the readers to get a paid subscription which will make them eligible for attending your course through the weekly or as scheduled messages. If the students find your course well structured and good enough, they can refer your messages to their friends. Thus the student community grows and your business flourishes.

63. Offer various promotions and try getting the reader to subscribe to an affiliate program. Try to convince him that the program will benefit him and make sure it does. This way the customer sticks to you as well as your business. If you sell him an affiliate program just for your benefit and it doesn’t benefit the reader in any way, you should forget him. He will curse for selling him a fake deal and never come back again. So, be careful.

Over the past few years, research has continued to prove the benefits of e-mail marketing for business: low costs, high conversion rates and detailed tracking are all notable features. But e-mail marketing is becoming much more than just a tool for spammers and e-businesses. Consumers are becoming increasingly savvy on the differences between spam and permission-based emails, and more and more of them are accepting permission-based e-mail marketing as a positive replacement for direct mail.

The best news is that the majority of people who receive permission-based e-mails open, on average, 78% of them.

Jupiter Research reports effective email marketing campaigns can produce nine times the revenues and 18 times the profits of broadcast mailings. But crafting an effective business email is both an art and a science. Here is a list of factors, potential problems and effective solutions to keep in mind:

1. Spam! Spam! Spam! I don’t need any Viagra!
The average consumer receives more than 300 emails a week, 62% of which are spam. No wonder there’s such hostility towards the industry. But spam filters, bulk folders and “report spam” features are helping consumers become more at ease about the perils of spam. While 89% of users cited spam as a major concern in 2003, that number dropped to 85% in 2004, proportionally to an increase in the use of spam-fighting tools.

So as a permission-based business email marketer, what can you do? One tip is to remind your subscribers to add you to their “safe senders” list. The second, and most important, tactic is to make sure your email marketing service provider has a good relationship with ISPs. This will ensure that your email marketing campaigns go into your subscribers’ inboxes, not their junk mail folders. When choosing an email marketing software, make sure the company has strict anti-spam policies and complies with the guidelines of Can-Spam.

2. Images and formatting: Why do my emails look broken?
Broken email campaigns are an increasing concern among email marketers, especially since several companies and web-based email providers now block graphics as a measure to combat spam. In fact, according to ClickZ, 40% of email marketing messages delivered to inboxes are “broken.”

So what’s the solution? Some email marketing programs publish all your sent email campaigns to a secure location on the web (a location only original recipients of the email can access, thanks to encrypted technology that automatically authenticates the user). In some programs, the technology also ensures you can track your users’ behaviors, even if they are reading your email campaign at the secure web location.

3. Personalization and relevant content: In a business e-mail, one size does not fit all.
In a recent study by DoubleClick, email users were 72% more likely to respond to a business e-mail if its content was based on the interests they had specified. That number points out the absolute importance of allowing users to choose their own interest groups and have control over which business e-mails they receive. The most popular interest categories, according to the study, are coupons and household goods.

But you’re coupon is no good unless the user opens the email. Users in the study said the most compelling reason for them to open a business email is the name in the “from” field. So it’s a good idea to make sure your company name is clearly stated there. Another major factor is the “subject” line. Users cite discount offers and interesting news as the most compelling subject lines, followed by new product announcements and free shipping offers.

4. Click-through and conversion: Show me the money!
So the user has opened your email and read the content. Great. But where’s the sale? There’s good news here. For one, consumers are increasingly likely to make purchases as a direct result of a business email campaign. One-third of users in the DoubleClick study had purchased something by clicking a link on an email. Another 42% clicked on an email link for more information, then purchased the product at a later time. Second, online couponing is booming: 73% of consumers have redeemed an online coupon for an online purchase, and 59% have redeemed an online coupon offline.

In terms of industries, the top performers are travel, hardware/software, electronics, apparel, food, home furnishings, gifts/flowers and sporting goods. All companies sending business emails in those categories said between 71% and 80% of recipients have purchased their products because of an email campaign.

There’s no need to fret if your company doesn’t fit in to one of those industries. The overall landscape for email marketing conversions is looking brighter every day. The average click-to-purchase rate has increased nearly 30% since 2004 and the average orders-per-email-delivered rate has increased more than 18% since last year.

5. Stats tracking: Who are my real consumers?
E-mail marketing is an increasingly popular tool in effective CRM, and it’s about time more businesses recognize that. First off, if your provider’s email services for business do not include detailed, real-time tracking, you’re getting a raw deal. Real-time tracking is now an industry standard, and it’s highly valuable, as it allows you to see the exact moment a user opens your campaign, clicks on your link and makes that purchase. Studying your users can help you improve your communications efforts, so each campaign performs better than the last (several email service providers also let you compare the performance of your campaigns).

But many marketers are still in the dark. According to a recent WebTrends research, only 5% of marketers are very confident in the measurement of their online marketing efforts, while 26% admit they’re “flying blind.” WebTrends says the low confidence comes from a lack of knowledge when it comes to measurement, which means there’s still a lot of work to be done.

In email marketing, a blind shot won’t take you very far. But if you aim properly by following these essential rules of play, you should soon be reaping the same major results as so many online and offline businesses.

As you age, it can be disheartening to realize that you are no longer as imaginative as you once were. This realization can leave you wondering how you can boost your imagination to be more creative. The good news is, there are several ways to boost your imagination, the top three of which are listed below.

Read

People often associate reading with learning and thus view the activity as work or some sort of burden. But the reality is, reading a fiction or fantasy book is an amazing way to boost your creativity. You often have to use your imagination to picture the scenes and characters from the book, which you don't do in your regular life. If you can't find an adult fantasy book, don't be afraid to check out another fiction genre. You might find your new favorite book!

Daydream

When you were a kid, was the teacher always telling you to stop daydreaming? While this may have helped you focus better in math class, it wasn't good for your developing imagination!

This reason is why you should get back into daydreaming as an adult. You can sit on the couch and wonder what your life would be like if it were different, or even spend your time visualizing your goals working out just the way you want to! Either way, the activity of picturing something that isn't in your real life will boost your imagination tremendously!

Do Something Creative

Now that you've learned how to boost your imagination by sitting on the couch, it's important to know that you can also boost your imagination by doing something creative. If you aren't sure where to start, consider taking an art class at your local community center. It doesn't matter what type of art it is, just that you take the time to create something from your thoughts truly! You can also work on building a garden in your yard or even writing your own book—both of these activities are creative and will get your imagination flowing!

Whether you want to be more imaginative when achieving your goals or get back something you lost, boosting your imagination can be a fun and relaxing activity. All you need to do to boost your imagination is to read more, spend some time daydreaming, and commit to doing something creative. Before you know it, you will imagine an all-new life for yourself filled with wonder beyond anything you thought possible!

Many people think that a healthy imagination isn’t part of a successful life, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Below are the top 5 reasons that you should work to have a healthy imagination—no matter where you may be in your life.

You Will Get Further In Your Career

Think of that one coworker that everyone, including your boss, hates. Are they very imaginative? Probably not. Having a healthy imagination is a huge part of propelling you forward in your career as it helps you problem solve and shows your boss that you have initiative. Not only that, it can help you to enjoy your career more as you will be able to imagine where you are going with it!

Imagination Leads to Passion

If you feel as if you aren't passionate about anything and that there isn't anything on this earth you could be passionate about, your problem isn't passion. It's the lack of imagination. Imagination helps you get excited about things that may or may not happen, which makes you passionate about activities in your life.

Imagination Stimulates Innovation

Is there something in your life that you wish you could change? Well, without a healthy imagination, you will probably never be able to change it. This is because imagination helps your mind innovate to find solutions to problems that may exist in your personal or professional life. It can lead to all sorts of amazing possibilities as you innovate your world to suit your dreams.

Imagination Helps You Cope

There is no way around it. Sometimes life isn't fun. If you don't have a good imagination, you may find yourself getting stuck in a rut every time something bad happens in your life. Imagination helps propel you forward and keep you thinking positively even when the future seems grim.

You Use Imagination to Design Your Future

Do you have a hard time picturing where you will end up? This is probably because you don't have a healthy imagination. Using your imagination is a critical part of finding goals you want to pursue and being able to visualize them to motivate yourself to work towards them! Without imagination, you may find yourself stuck in the present.

Regardless of where you want to end up in life, it is very clear that a healthy imagination needs to be part of your journey. This is why you should commit to boosting your imagination sooner rather than later.

If you're looking to grow your business online, it's not just about getting more traffic—it's about turning that traffic into revenue. That’s where your sales funnel comes into play. A well-optimized funnel can mean the difference between visitors bouncing and buyers pulling out their wallets.

The good news? You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. These proven funnel strategies are already working across industries—and you can steal them to boost your own revenue starting today.

1. Start With a “Micro-Commitment” Offer

One of the fastest ways to move a lead down your funnel is to start small. Instead of pushing a high-ticket offer upfront, lead with a low-cost, high-value product—often called a tripwire.

Examples:

• $7 ebooks or guides

• $27 mini-courses

• $10 templates or tools

These micro-commitments build trust and turn cold leads into buyers, which makes them more likely to purchase from you again.

2. Use a Value-Packed Lead Magnet

Your funnel is only as good as the leads going into it. Attract the right people with a targeted lead magnet that solves one specific problem and naturally leads into your paid solution.

Some top-performing formats include:

• Free checklists

• Webinars

• Templates

• Mini-trainings

• Quizzes

Bonus tip: Always make sure your lead magnet is directly related to your core offer. This ensures that the people opting in are the right prospects.

3. Automate Follow-Up With Behavior-Based Email Sequences

Not everyone buys the first time they see your offer—and that’s okay. That’s why email automation is so powerful.

Instead of blasting the same message to everyone, set up behavior-based emails that respond to what a lead does inside your funnel. For example:

• Didn’t open the email? Resend with a new subject line.

• Clicked the link but didn’t buy? Send a testimonial or case study.

• Abandoned checkout? Follow up with urgency or a bonus.

These smart automations turn warm leads into paying customers without extra work on your end.

4. Add an Order Bump at Checkout

Want to boost your average order value instantly? Add a simple order bump at the point of purchase.

This is a small, optional add-on that complements the main product. Think:

• A “pro version” of the product

• An exclusive template

• A recorded training or bonus resource

Since the buyer is already in buying mode, order bumps often convert at 30–60%—with almost no added effort.

5. Use Scarcity and Urgency to Drive Action

People delay decisions—unless there’s a reason to act now. That’s why adding real scarcity to your funnel can boost conversions significantly.

Try adding:

• Countdown timers

• Limited-time bonuses

• “Only X spots left” messaging

Just make sure your urgency is real. Fake scarcity damages trust, but ethical urgency gets results.

If you're serious about growing your business online, you need more than just a website—you need a high-converting sales funnel. A well-built funnel works 24/7 to guide your ideal customers from discovery to decision, turning clicks into conversions and browsers into buyers.

In this ultimate guide, you’ll learn exactly how to build a sales funnel that not only attracts leads but converts them into loyal customers.

What Is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is a step-by-step path that leads someone from their first interaction with your brand to becoming a paying customer. It’s called a funnel because it starts wide—capturing many leads—and narrows as people drop off or move forward toward the purchase.

A typical funnel has four stages:

1. Awareness – Your audience discovers your business.

2. Interest – They learn more about what you offer.

3. Decision – They consider making a purchase.

4. Action – They buy, book, or sign up.

Each stage plays a crucial role, and each requires specific strategies to keep people moving forward.

Step 1: Know Your Audience

Before you can build a funnel that converts, you need to know exactly who you’re speaking to. What are their pain points? What solutions are they actively seeking? The more specific you are, the easier it is to craft content, offers, and messaging that resonates.

Create a detailed customer avatar or buyer persona. This will guide every decision you make inside your funnel.

Step 2: Create a Magnetic Lead Magnet

To get people into your funnel, you need an irresistible lead magnet—something valuable you give away in exchange for an email address.

Examples include:

• Free eBooks

• Cheat sheets

• Webinars

• Discount codes

• Email courses

Make sure your lead magnet solves a specific problem and acts as a natural introduction to your paid offer.

Step 3: Nurture With Value-Driven Content

Once someone opts in, don’t jump straight to selling. Instead, use an email nurture sequence to build trust, educate, and add value. This is where you prove you understand their challenges—and have the solution.

Include:

• Storytelling

• Case studies or testimonials

• How-to guides

• Soft calls to action

Your goal is to move them from “just curious” to “ready to buy.”

Step 4: Craft a Compelling Offer Page

Your sales page or offer page is where the magic happens. It needs to clearly show:

• The problem you solve

• The transformation you offer

• Why your solution is unique

• What they need to do next (your CTA)

Use strong headlines, bullet-point benefits, and visuals. Include social proof, guarantees, and urgency when appropriate.

Step 5: Test, Tweak, and Optimize

No funnel is perfect from the start. Use tools like A/B testing, heatmaps, and conversion analytics to monitor performance. Tweak your copy, buttons, layouts, and emails based on the data.

Small changes can lead to big results over time.

You are out shopping for healthy, designer food. You visit two health food stores. The first one is bright and cheerful: Its products are displayed pleasingly and its staff, with crisp, starched aprons on, are slim, friendly and helpful with smiles that twinkle. There is another health food store just across the road: Similar products. A fat, greasy-haired sweaty man, breath redolent of whisky, garlic and fermented cheese, egg stains on the front of his crumpled shirt, the middle of which strains to stay closed struggling to keeping its charge – a protruding belly – within, tired buttons at the ready to pop…comes to serve you.

You are your website: It is a reflection of who you are, your product, your service. Portray yourself as a trained, seasoned professional. Your website is the only contact your customers, potential and current, have with you. You must create an atmosphere that is pleasing to your buyers to make them want to stay and buy, and more importantly, to want to come back again and again. You want to aim for repeat business. The long and short of it is this: Your website can make or break your sales…and your business.

TRICKS OF THE TRADE
What secrets can you apply in the design of your website?

1. Surfability
Do your research by visiting several websites. Note what make them appealing, attractive or the opposite. Always remember that visitors to your site have one goal in mind: They are either seeking information or shopping for a product. Your goal is to give them what they want without their having to search for it. It is a cardinal rule to make your site easy to navigate. Ensure that all the information is relevant to your product/service. Convince visitors that they absolutely need your product to solve their problem(s).

2. The First Impression Lingers…The Importance of your Main Page
The main page has a very specific purpose: It is the store front of your website where your visitor lands and from where she/he will shop. Therefore, this page must load very quickly and be easy to view. This is the first contact with your customer: First impressions can either close a deal or…lose this same deal which has exactly the same potential.

Make things simple: Ensure that links are easily viewable by your visitors and that these links will navigate your visitors to where they wish to go. Very often, a great choice is the use of tables when deciding how to design the main page of your site. If your page takes more than ten seconds to load even on a 56k modem, your visitor will click away, through impatience, or to save time, seeking information or products elsewhere. To speed up the loading of your main page, it is advisable to avoid large, or excessive, graphics. Too many banners or special effects often also cause a page to load slowly.

3. Make your Website Appealing to, and Easy for, the Eyes
* Colors
Mild colors are your best bet. If your site is a content site where your visitor will be doing a lot of reading, it is a good idea to keep to black and white. You can add color when using tables as a means to brighen up the page. However, always remember to keep the overall look of the page professional and appealing to your target audience that will be visiting more often.

* Screen Resolutions
These vary among monitors. It is, therefore, good counsel to set the pixels to a standard 800×600. You may also choose to set the tables in your web page to span a percentage of the page rather than a set number of inches. This will be sure to accommodate all screen sizes.

* Browsers
Bear in mind that a lot of Internet users will not use the same browser as you. Therefore, make sure that your site looks as good on other browsers as it does on your own. You can do this by downloading several browsers through which to look at your page.

Be aware that the overall look of your website is to make it attractive to visitors, which in turn appeals to emotions and, therefore, lead to sales and to make money for you. The appearance of your site, if properly designed, can be an excellent marketing strategy for your product/service.

There is no denying the fact that the success of an advertisement lies mostly in the headline. The headline should attract the reader and make him read the rest of the advertisement. The headline should be simply catchy and various key points should be embedded when deciding on the headline for the ad.

The headline should catch attention of the eye at the first glance. Words in headlines should act as tags for the advertisement. It should say it all about the content that follows. If a company is selling reasonably priced furniture, the headline of their advertisement should be Durable furniture for less price. This headline will attract the right customers who are on a look out for durable furniture as well as low cost furniture. If the customers to be reached belong to a category that are interested in decorating their house with beautiful furniture and arent concerned about the price to get the right look, then the headline can be Change how your house looks by our oriental furniture. Anything other than the prospects should not be included in the headline. If both men and women can use a product, both of them should be referred to in the title, missing out even one of the category is like losing a huge number of potential customers.

The title should be instant product seller. According to a research, five times more readers read just the headline when compared to those who read the complete advertisement. So the investment is of no use, if the title isnt good enough to sell the product. There can be a possibility that the content of the ad isnt strong enough. All the harm can be undone by having a powerful headline.

The headline should be centered on the product and not the company that is selling the product. The customers interest should be reflected and he should feel that he is directly addressed. Start with you and not we. So if the client specified on mentioning the companys name, dont start the sentence with it. For example, instead of writing Tylenol solution for sever cold , write Got sever cold? Try Tylenol. Never forget to mention the name of the product in the headline. The product name should be of top priority.

A snapshot of the benefits of the product should be given in the headline. This is an important quality of a well-phrased headline. The customers look out for advantages when he thinks of buying a product. Keywords like whiter teeth, nutritious cereals, or miraculous growth should be incorporated in the title.

If inculcating all these factors have made the headline long, it should be remembered to write the product advantages in bold. If a visual is placed in the advertisement, it will be a good complement. As a picture speak thousand words. But care should be taken that the headline should say some part of the story and the visual should say the rest. Dont repeat the headline or the picture.

Too much of cleverness should not be applied to design a headline. There are nearly five hundred advertisements in a local newspaper on weekends. A regular reader reads the headings of all of them. He will be able to classify between a false heading and a genuine heading. No false promises or information should be included in the headline. Over smart headlines are good for award competitions, but dont really work with the savvy customers.

The headline should give out a positive feeling to the reader. Negativity should be totally excluded as it not only creates a negative impression but the mind will also be not receptive friendly. It sometimes confuses the mind and it interprets a negative meaning of the message being delivered. Confidence should be reflected in the headline. Dont include any doubtful words like if and but. Conditional phrases are a strict no. The sentence should be in present tense, instead of past or future.

The internet is the information highway, this phrase has been used so may time it should be nominated for the Internet Clich Award. People that go to the internet are subdivided into groups, but generally, they are out to search information. Whether for gaming, business, fun or anything else the internet has provided us with information that has proved to be very beneficial.

Through the recent years many people have learned the secrets of Search Engine Optimization. More and more sites have seen the effects articles have done for the traffic of their sites. Some have even created sites devoted entirely to providing articles that could be read by their website visitors and have links that could lead to many sites that are related to the topics and subjects of the articles.

For example, the sites may feature many articles about a whole lot of topics. As a website visitor reads the articles they have searched for, they can find at the end of the article a resource box that can be clicked on to link them to the site that has submitted the article. Of course the article would be in relation to the site. Lets say if the article is about rotating the tires, the resource box may lead to a link to a site that sells tires or car parts.

A resource box is what you usually find at the end of an article. They will contain the name of the author, a brief description of the author, a brief description of the sponsoring site and a link. If a reader likes what they read, they would have the tendency to find out where the article came from to read more. The resource bow will be their link to the source of the article and this will entice them to go to the site and do some more reading or research for the subject or topic they are interested in.

But like the article itself, the resource box must also be eye-catching to demand the attention and interest of the reader. While the resource bow encompasses only a small space, providing the right keywords and content for your resource box will provide more prodding for the reader to go to your site.

Now we know what resource boxes are, what are the benefits of having a good resource box? Mainly its driving traffic to your site. Many sites would allow articles to be placed in their sites because they can make use of the articles to fill their pages. They also get affiliation with other sites that can be beneficial for them as well. For the sponsoring site, when you get people to click on your resource box, you generate traffic that can be counted upon as potential customers.

So what would be a good content for your resource box? Basically it is keywords, learning about the proper keywords that people are mainly searching for. There are many tools you can find in the internet that can help you in determining what keywords to use.

Resource boxes can also make use of all the creativity it can get. You only get a small space for your resource box so you better make the most of it. Try to catch the attention of your reader with resource box content that can make them give a second look. Unlike TV ads, you dont have visual aids to drive your point in. But you do have the power of imagination of a reader. With the right content, you can make them think and intrigued.

Another tip is to use keywords that should be related to your site. Do not mislead your potential website visitors. Build your credibility so that more people would get enticed to visit your site and browse what you have to offer. Make the people click your resource box by providing resource box content that makes a lasting impression. You only get one chance to wow them and hundreds of chances to repulse them.

Never underestimate the power of the resource box. It may be small in size but they will provide a significant aid in driving traffic to your site. A boring resource box will never get a job done. Be fun and creative but at the same time show that you have a great deal to offer, too much to ask for something that couldnt fit a paragraph? Yes and no, there are many tips and guides that can help you in doing this, the first step is realizing how important a resource box could be in making people click your link and be directed to your site.

Affiliate marketing remains to be a renowned marketing strategy, both for publishers and advertisers. In simple terms, affiliate marketing is described as an agreement between a site owner and a merchant. The affiliate (website owner), promotes the merchant's products and services on his website or through other media such as email marketing. In return, the affiliate receives a commission for every sale generated through his link. Here are the top 3 reasons why affiliate marketing is great.

Cost-Effective and Low-Risk

Many businesses have embraced the concept of affiliate marketing because of its cost-effectiveness. Contrary to other forms of advertising, the merchant only pays the affiliate once he delivers results. These results are determined by various parameters such as a sale, click-through or lead. Affiliate marketing is also ideal for small startups since it is a low-risk investment. With other types of advertising, one would be required to pay the costs upfront with no guarantee of measurable results. With affiliate marketing, you only incur an expense when a purchase is made. This is to mean that your investment always earns you a considerable return.

Brand Exposure

One of the secrets to a successful advertising program is brand visibility. Affiliate marketing allows you to market your product or services on hundreds of websites; thus, giving you the ultimate brand exposure. An increase in brand visibility translates to increased revenue. 

Moreover, affiliate marketing benefits merchants by offering targeted prospects. Most affiliates only market the products and services, which are likely to appeal to their site visitors. The affiliate understands his audience; hence, he takes offers that are best suited for them. For the merchant, this means that your product is advertised to a relevant demographic.

Easy Tracking and Transparency

With affiliate marketing, merchants can track the progress of their marketing strategy. It is achieved by assessing the purchases made, click-through rates and page views among other parameters. By monitoring the performance of your campaign, you can identify the areas to invest in more efficiently.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing offers a win-win situation for the merchant and affiliate. Merchants get to enjoy a wider market to advertise their products or services. Besides, this platform gives you direct access to your target audience.

On the other hand, affiliates can make immense profits quickly. Typically, you can generate income without incurring any production costs or inventory expenses. The best part is that you can join most affiliate programs for free; hence, you do not have to look for startup costs.

Affiliate Startup Mechanic

What is a Sales Funnel and Why Do You Need It?

There is no doubt that owning and running your own successful online business can be a tremendously liberating thing, as thousands of online entrepreneurs and marketers all over the world have discovered for themselves.

If you are already in a position where your business is successful, then congratulations are undoubtedly in order.

However, here’s a question for you.

Although your business is already successful, perhaps even already achieving as much as you could ever have hoped for, is there any possibility that you could be doing things more effectively? Are there ‘flaws’ in your systems that are letting potential customers escape without putting their hand in the pocket to pull out their credit card?

Alternatively, you might just be starting out on the road to earning an online income, and if that’s the case, there is probably a great deal about internet marketing or online business that is confusing and apparently complex. Trust me, this is a position that even the most experienced of online marketers will understand because we have all been there and experienced exactly what you’re going through right this minute.

The problem with online marketing is that by the nature of the beast, there are dozens of new products hitting the market every week, and it is only natural that the creator of each of those products or services believes that they have just invented the best thing since sliced bread.

Quite naturally in most cases, the product creator has probably not achieved quite as much as they might believe they have. Nevertheless, the fact still remains that there is a mass of new information out there in the world of online marketing almost every day, an ‘information overload’ that can make getting your new online business off the ground seem dauntingly difficult.

But here is the most important thing. It does not have to be this way because running an online business does not have to be difficult or complex. It is simply a question of focusing on the key issues, ignoring information that is not directly related to the kind of business you plan to set up and run, and getting on with it.

This course is focused on one of the most important issues that any online marketer will ever face, which is a simple question of making your business as efficient as possible.

The more efficient your system is, the less it matters what kind of business you are running, because you will be maximizing your profits at every turn in any case.

It is entirely irrelevant whether you are selling the latest ‘super duper gizmo-style widget’ or a product that has been around for years, with an efficient sales system in place, you are naturally able to squeeze every last drop of profit out of whatever it is you do.

It should be obvious that this is extremely important, but you may never have considered exactly why it is so important. You are about to find out in the upcoming lessons! Stay tuned!

5 Figure funnel Digital Training

Why an Efficient Sales System is Important to Your Internet Business!

You’re probably aware that it does not matter how attractive your website is or how fantastic the product or service offer that you’re making from that site is either. If no one ever visits your website, it is totally impossible for you to generate any sales so without site visitors, it is equally inevitable that your business is going to collapse around your ears sometime very soon.

You may also understand that sending visitors to your website is not enough because unless those visitors are targeted, your sales process is far less than efficient. This is something we will look at in a little more detail later.

However, for the moment, let’s consider how you attract visitors to your site.

There are in essence three different ways of pulling visitors onto your web pages.

Firstly, you can buy visitors by using paid advertising like Google AdWords to generate traffic. Doing things this way can be very efficient as long as you know what you’re doing with the possibility of driving visitors to your site in a matter of hours.

On the downside, you have to pay for advertising and it is a fact that when you are using AdWords in particular, it can work out extremely expensive until you have mastered exactly how the system works.

This is because the pricing structure adopted by Google is flexible with the cost of each click on your adverts varying according to whether your adverts and the supporting website at which your ads are ‘pointed’ are constructed in the way that Google want them to be.

There are of course dozens of alternatives to AdWords. Nevertheless, the fact is that most online marketers use AdWords because nearly 70% of the internet enabled population of the planet use the Google search engine rather than any of the alternatives.

In short, if you want your advertising to be seen by the largest number of potential prospects, then AdWords is the most sensible choice.

With AdWords, it is possible to reduce your costs by making sure that your adverts and your site comply with Google requirements. This can however take time.

The second option is to promote your business for free by publishing keyword focused articles, video materials on sites like YouTube and Google video, forum marketing and so on. All of these methods are effective but they are usually far slower than using paid advertising and there is considerable time involved in preparing the materials in the first place.

For instance, unless you are an expert article author, it could take you anything from 30 minutes to 1 hour to do your initial research and then write your article. If you were to follow the advice of many experts who suggest that you should always submit at least five or six articles that are based on the same topic or subject matter together, it becomes fairly obvious that even something as simple as creating articles can be pretty time-consuming.

The third option is to ‘borrow’ traffic by getting involved in suitable joint-venture operations with other marketers in your market sector or niche. This is a fantastic way of marketing, because you are leveraging the popularity and market presence of the person you’re working with to generate business. Consequently, joint ventures are often the most successful form of marketing.

However, there is yet again a proviso because joint ventures do not happen overnight. You have to build or develop your relationship with the marketer with whom you’re planning to work and you have to put together a top quality package of marketing materials to make their job as easy as possible. It is likely that you will probably have to spend some time and not a small amount of effort convincing them that you know what you are doing and that everything is ready to go to the market.

If you think about these three different methods of driving traffic to your site, you will probably begin to note that there is a common theme running through everything you have read so far.

Every one of these individual traffic generation strategies has advantages over the others, but at the same time, each of them also has disadvantages. And in every case, the major disadvantage is remarkably similar.

No matter how you set up your systems to drive traffic to your site, there is a cost involved, whether that cost is measured in terms of money (paid advertising) or time (which in business often amounts to pretty much the same thing anyway).

To a certain extent, the way that you promote your business will be decided by your own value judgment of which is more important to you, keeping money in your pocket or saving your time.

In my experience, when you are a complete beginner, it is money that is the most valuable, primarily because you don’t have any. However, as your business becomes more successful and starts to generate income, the importance of time tends to come to the fore as money is always replaceable, but time never is.

And here is another critical thing to understand about the cost of the traffic that you generate to your site.

Each and every one of those visitors is expensive in some way or another. Indeed, getting them to come to your site for the very first time is the most expensive visit you will ever generate. To get to this point, you have had to spend time, money or both to go out onto the internet and ‘grab’ that visitor.

Until you did so, they were not aware of your site or business. Hence, it naturally follows that if you had not gone out there with promotional materials that attracted their attention, you would never have been in a position to present them with your offer.

Thus, it is an inarguable fact that getting new traffic to your site for the very first time is expensive and that any subsequent visit to your site by someone who has already visited costs almost next nothing in comparison.

In some cases, the visitor will return to your site of their own accord, in which case there is really no cost to you at all. Alternatively, they might come back because you have a system in place that encourages them to return.

This system might take some time and effort to set up, but you only have to do the job once, after which your system continually pulls visitors back to your site. The cost per individual return visit is therefore negligible.

Knowing that each first-time visitor is the most expensive that you will ever attract means that it has to make sense to ensure that you do everything possible to turn that visitor into an asset of your business.

This is essentially what having a sales system in place is all about.

An efficient sales system is one that is designed to squeeze every possible cent out of every visitor who ever comes to your site. To go one stage further, it is about maximizing the profits of your business because profits always equal incoming revenue minus costs. As we have already established, the cost of each visitor is the highest it will ever be when they visit for the first time.

So far, I have continually used the phrase sales system. However, it is relatively common in all forms of business, both online and off, to present this sales process as a funnel, hence the title of this course. In the next lesson, I will illustrate why this is and how the concept works.

5 Figure Funnel Digital Training

The Basic Sales Funnel Model Explained

There are dozens of different ways of illustrating the sales funnel concept because the exact make-up of this funnel will vary from business to business depending upon the demands and operating style of different businesses.

Nevertheless, there is always a general similarity in the basic depiction of the sales funnel model. Thus, we can use a general stylized sales funnel to begin to illustrate exactly how the sales funnel is applicable to online marketing.

The basic idea of the sales funnel is that at the top (the ‘mouth’ or widest part of the funnel) you have your potential prospects. At this point in time, these individuals have done nothing to signify that they are likely to do business with you at any time in the future.

Depending upon how you create your own funnel model, these prospects could be just outside the top of your funnel or just inside the top lip.

However, as a general rule, it is normal to assume that anyone who is actually inside the funnel has made a least some degree of commitment to your business, possibly something as simple or basic as visiting your site.

This is the most basic commitment level from a potential prospect to your business. The prospect has seen some form of promotional material that you have ‘seeded’ the net with, was interested in what you had to say and decided to visit your site to investigate a little further.

Thus, they have taken the very first step that you wanted them to take, hence the notion that they have already made some form of commitment to you, albeit a very small one.

At this point, having just entered the widest, uppermost part of your sales funnel, the prospect has a choice to make. Either they are going to find your offer to be of sufficient interest to commit themselves further or they are going to decide the opposite. In this case, they jump back out of your funnel, lost to your business forever.

It is this notion that people can ‘jump out’ of your sales system at any time they want which leads to the basic funnel concept. At every step of the process, there will be people who make the decision to go no further and back out. Hence, you have less and less people still interested in what you are doing as they move through your sales process (or down your sales funnel) meaning that your scope for business narrows because of the dwindling number of people still involved.

But even at this early stage, your first-time site visitor has a choice to stay or go. If they do not jump out of your sales funnel by closing your page for ever, the next logical step is that they will increase their commitment to you to a greater or lesser degree.

For example, they may browse around your site to see exactly what you have to offer on a site-wide basis, an act that indicates that they are seriously interested in what you have to offer. Hence, this simple action indicates a higher level of commitment.

Alternatively, it is more common to ask them to take a specific action on this page, such as signing up for your mailing list, providing additional information or some action of this nature. If they choose to do this, the element of commitment is considerably higher because they have taken the action that you required.

In the first of these two commitment examples, the individual who takes a look at a few more pages on your site pushes themselves a little further down the funnel (or through your system) by this action.

However, we have already established that some people will already have backed out before now. Thus, there are less people still interested in what you have to offer at this slightly more advanced stage, hence the narrowing of the sales funnel.

On the other hand, the individuals who have taken the action that you asked them to take have pushed themselves considerably further down the funnel. At this level, there are again less people and therefore the funnel continues to get still narrower.

In the following simple sales funnel schematic, you might say that the upper blue layer represents the first time visitors that you have drawn to your site:

Of these visitors, the ones who make a minor commitment to you by browsing around your site for a reasonable period of time might be imagined to have moved down to the next (green) level of the funnel.

However, those who subscribed to your mailing list or took whatever other action you requested have moved past these slightly less committed people straight down to the red layer, where there are considerably less people and therefore a narrower funnel.

And so it goes on. The more commitment you are asking for from your site visitors, the less people are likely to make that commitment.

It should therefore be clear that the whole sales funnel concept is based upon the idea that selling products or services (whether online or offline) is a step-by-step process of pushing people down the funnel or through your sales system.

At each level of the funnel, you have to ask your prospect to increase their level of commitment knowing that by doing so you are going to drive some of these prospects or customers away.

This is absolutely inevitable but there is no inevitability attached to the number of people who might decide to jump out of your sales funnel at any particular level.

In other words, this book is going to show you how to create a sales funnel in such a way that you can prevent huge numbers of hot prospects from jumping back out of your funnel once you have got them to take the initial step that you want them to take.

5 Figure Funnel Digital Training

Getting Targeted Traffic to Your Sales Funnel

The sales funnel concept DOES NOT work on the basis of pulling just anyone to visit your website.

On the contrary, it is absolutely essential for the funnel concept to make any sense that the people you draw your website are targeted, pre-qualified visitors.

For example, if you have a website based business that promotes weight loss products online, it is logical that the best prospect for your business is someone who is overweight that wants to change their life.

Consequently, you would target your marketing and promotional efforts in such a way that they would be put in front of people who are overweight. By doing so, you ensure that the majority of people who come to your site already represents a hot prospect because they are looking for or interested in the products you have to offer.

If however you bring someone who is trying to decide whether they want to buy an Xbox 360 or Wii, the chances of that individual buying your products are almost zero.

Sure, it is perfectly possible that they might be overweight but they are still not going to buy. The fact is, they are not particularly interested in weight loss related products at this particular moment in time, so why would they?

They are searching for specific information that is completely different to that which you provide and they are therefore going to close your site within milliseconds.

Hence, all of your initial marketing efforts have to be focused on making sure that the people who you bring to your site (to the first, widest level of your funnel) are targeted visitors.

You have to make sure that your marketing efforts are targeted.

For example, your AdWords advertising materials must feature your primary keywords as must any articles that you publish on directory sites like EzineArticles as well as the descriptions that you attach to the videos that you publish at YouTube and so on.

This element of prequalifying visitors to your site is an essential part of an efficient sales funnel.

Or, to put it another way, without pulling targeted, pre-qualified visitors to your site, trying to construct an efficient, profitable sales system is a huge waste of time.

If the ‘front end’ of your system is not attracting the right kind of visitors to your site, then the chances of converting any of those visitors into customers are very remote indeed!

5 Figure Funnel Digital Training

One of the things that makes the Internet so appealing is the fact there is plenty of useful and entertaining information to be found. Of course, some website owners prefer to simply copy data from other sources as a way to flesh out the content of their sites. 

When this happens, they miss out on some great opportunities. Here are just a couple of reasons why original web copywriting is not only important, but essential to the success of a web site.

Firstly, original copy helps to make the website stand out from the millions of other sites that are already up and running. Even if the subject matter is the same that is found around the Internet, orginal copy is the chance to put the data into word combinations that are a little different. When the content of the site is not a copycat of thousands of similar sites, the chances for ranking higher on searches is much better.

Along with making the site stand out a litle more, creating original copy also makes it possible to use keywords to the best advantage. This can also help to push the ranking up a few more notches in search engines.

Strategically placing keywords that are part of common searches online help to improve the chances of showing up in the top ten results. Higher rankings mean more visitors. If the purpose of the site is to market an idea or product, this is a very good thing. 

Lastly, copywriting provides a creative outlet. Drafting original content makes it possible to show the world what you have to offer in the way of ideas, style, concepts and opinions. You simply can’t do that if the content is borrowed from another source. 

While it is true that coming up with original content takes longer than simply cutting and pasting canned content onto the site, the benefits far outweigh the time spend in the endeavor. When given a choice between going with tired old copy that can be found all over the Internet and coming up with something new and different, always go for the fresh web copy. 

Million Dollar Sales Letters

Mind mapping is a valuable tool when it comes to creating effective sales copy. While not everyone is familiar with the concept of a mind map, chances are you have seen the approach used to great effect.

Essentially, mind mapping is the presentation of a collection of ideas, concepts, or words that all relate to some type of central understanding. When it comes to applying this approach to the flow of your sales copy, mind mapping can provide some interesting and unique ways to identify benefits of your product that will attract the right consumer market. Here are some ideas of how to use the mind mapping approach.

1. Identify your central understanding. In this case, that would be your product offering. This will serve as the point of destination that all other attributes will map back to. Keeping your product as the central focus will make it harder to drift during the course of identifying elements for your sales copy. 

2. Use single word designations to identify the main functions of your products. This broadens on the central theme, but is still vague enough to allow for more investigation.

3. Take it one level deeper. Within the context of those broad themes or ideas, provide examples of how your product benefits work. For instance, if you are selling a carpet cleaner, one broad theme may be the deep foam action. Drilling a little deeper, you can also note the foam lifts dirt easily from both carpet and furniture upholstery. 

By mind mapping, you are not only helping yourself to visualize the flow of the text, but also using words to create images for the reader that he or she can easily relate to. Try this method and see what new and different angles you come up with to demonstrate the effectiveness of your product. 

Million Dollar Sales Letters

When settling in to draft original copy for a web project, it is important to keep the five Ps of Web Copyrighting in mind. In fact, using this simple formula will make all the difference in how well you stay on track with your objectives.

Here are each of the five Ps along with a simple definition. 

1. Problem – Whenever your task is to convince someone of a need, you must first convince the buyer there is a dilemma that must be addressed. This dilemma or problem helps to set up a sense of urgency, indicating action must be taken in order to take care of the issue at hand. Once your copy presents this problem, then you can begin the process of convincing the buyer you have the solution.

2. Promise – Essentially, your promise is that the subject matter of your sales pitch is going to make everything okay again. For example, if you presented the problem of dirty windows, you now promise that your product provides the best solution available.

3. Proof – Having made a promise or claim, it is now time to put your money where your mouth is. In order words, you are going to present all the reasons why your solution works better than anything else. Here is where you make your solution irresistible to the consumer by pointing out how quickly and easily the problem can be made to go away.

4. Price – After making all the benefits clear, you add the icing to the cake. That is, you make note of what a small cost is necessary to obtain all these wonderful advantages. The idea is to convey that your solution is worth every penny of the cost, even if it may be a little more than some of the similar but obviously inferior products offered by the competition.

5. P.S. – This is where you add in one more added benefit. This can be something that is outside the scope of the original problem, but somehow still related. For example, you may note that your product not only makes windowpanes crystal clear, but will also do a great job on that resin furniture in the back yard. The p.s. is your chance to provide one more benefit and thus nudge a consumer who is on the fence to go ahead and take the plunge. 

This simple formula can be utilized with just about any type of situation where you want to present an issue and then offer a viable solution. Give it a try. Think of a single problem and then see where this process takes you. The results will be a pleasant surprise. 

Million Dollar Sales Letters

No matter how well crafted the body of your content, a headline that grabs attention will always make a difference. Of course, you want to grab the right kind of attention. That is, you want the reader to be attracted by the headline and thus want to read the body of the text.

You do not want the reader to read the text simply because he or she wants to find out what type maniac would come up with a title like that. Here are three simple tips to keep your headlines interesting, compelling, and attractive to your audience. 

Tip #1 – Keep it simple, stupid. Yes, the old KISS principle that Toastmasters have used in public speaking for decades also works with the printed word. When it comes to your headline, don’t get too prolific with the word count. Choose your words carefully and use no more than you need to grab attention. A headline is not meant to tell the whole story, but it should help your prospect know what is coming next. is to come. 

Tip #2 – Make it relevant. Headlines that are misleading may grab attention quickly, but you will lose the reader in just a few seconds if the content has nothing to do with the promises made in bold. It is okay to use double entrendes or other plays on words with your headline. Just make sure that by the time your readership has made it through the first paragraph, they get the relationship. 

Tip #3 – Make the headline memorable. You want people to recommend the content to other people. If the headline is so bland that it really doesn’t stick with the reader, then you will lose a lot of attention. While you want simplicity and relevance, you do not want boring. Make the headline zippy and something people will want to repeat. 

Headlines are often overlooked as being unimportant or just a formulaic construct of writing copy. Neither concept is true. Headlines are essentials and can play a huge role in grabbing attention. When coupled with compelling copy, a great headline can make all the difference between success and failure. 

Million Dollar Sales Letters

Any successful copy is going to tell a story. Just how well that story is told makes all the difference in whether or not a prospect turns into a customer. Here are a few tips to help you tell your story in a way that will hold the attention of the prospect and keep it all the way through to the close of the sale. 

First, set the stage for your story. The idea is to grab the interest of the reader by presenting a situation that he or she can relate to. Ideally, the situation will form the basis for your story by creating a conflict that must be resolved. The more your prospect can identify with the conflict, the better your chances of enticing him or her to keep reading. 

Next, offer the ideal solution for taking care of the conflict. In a sense, this is your shining knight that comes over the horizon to save the day. This is your chance to work in all the good qualities that make your solution the perfect way to deal with the conflict and thus restore order to the kingdom, which is the life of your prospect. Use this element to start building confidence that the solution really will work.

Third, demonstrate how the solution does in fact resolve the conflict. You can use case studies, testimonials, or a number of other devices to back up the claims you previously made. Again, make sure this proof is reasonable and will appeal to your audience in a way that helps them to envision using the product or service themselves. 

Last, go for the sale. Inspire in the prospect a burning desire to possess this product by recapping all the great things it will do, and also note how reasonable the cost will be. Imagine, heaven can be had for such a low price! Once you have established this sense of urgency to own in your prospects, they will quickly become loyal customers who will gladly share your good name far and wide. 

Million Dollar Sales Letters

In general, your sales copy has only a few seconds to grab the interest of a prospect and move them along to closing the sale. That means you have to provide a quality introduction to what you have to offer and follow it up with all the reasons why your product should be chosen above all others. Here are some simple ideas on how to introduce your offer and quickly instill a sense of urgency about those power benefits. 

First, don’t spend a lot of time on fancy words. Write the copy just as if you were speaking to the consumer in person. This will help you to avoid using too many words, and especially to stay away from using too many technical terms that could turn off your prospect before you ever grab their initial interest. Essentially, you are letting the consumer know they have a problem and you have a solution. 

Next, get into the meat of that solution. Point out the main benefits of the product in question. Relate those benefits to common situations that come along with the problem. Illustrate how those benefits quickly and easily remove obstacles and restore order to a chaotic set of circumstances. Driving home how problems get solved quickly and easily will help to sustain interest. 

Third, toss in some added power benefits. These can be anything from pointing out the time saved can be used for more enjoyable tasks to noting how the product helps to cut down on related expenses. These value add talking points will help to demonstrate that the product is truly indispensible, and make it even more attractive. 

Last, recap the benefits. You can use a summary format for this, perhaps even a bulleted list. This helps to reinforce the benefits in the mind of the reader and prepare him or her for the close of the sale. 

Using this technique will make a huge difference in the way your prospect responds to your product, and how quickly you can move on to closing the sale. 

Million Dollar Sales Letters

Up to this point, you have done a great job. Your presentation of the problem was ideal. Your followup with the benefits and proof of how efficient and valuable your product was great. You even thought the close statement was right on the mark.

So why is the prospect still hesitating?

Consumers always have objections. It is a fact of life. It is also a fact that you overcame some of them in your copy already. What remains is to address the remainder of them and thus remove all obstacles to the final sale. Here’s what you need to do.

* Give bonuses – In other words, provide added value to the benefits already listed. These may be more specific, whereas the earlier content was broad.

* Give long period of money back guarantee – This will often hook in many consumers who are sitting on the fence. If you are willing to provide a six month money back guarantee where the competition offers thirty days only, you build a lot of confidence and credibility with the prospect.

* Give FAQ to answer common questions – This is your chance to get specific. You may even use questions that have come up in the past through discussions with established customers or general queries that came in to your website. Reading through the Frequently Asked Questions page can make a huge difference for your prospect.

* Offer trial for monthly memberships – this may be a short trial membership that is free for the first month, or one that is deeply discounted. This will depend a lot on your target niche markets, but keep in mind that people usually are suspicious of something that is given away for nothing. A discounted introductory rate might be just the ticket.

* Show testimonials from experts – People like to know that some type of expert thinks the product is a good choice. Your experts may be professionals who use the product, or even researchers who can point out some of the more attractive characteristics of the product.

* If it’s software, give a demo – A quick and partial test run can alleviate fears that the product may be too complicated for the prospect to figure out. Calm those fear with a test drive that shows just how user friendly the product really is. 

Million Dollar Sales Letters

One of the goals you have for your sales copy is to compel the reader to make a decision now. All too often, copy builds an excellent case for considering the product, but does not follow through with that little added extra that pushes the prospect off the fence and into making a decision to buy. Here are a three basic ways to make sure your prospect does not get away, and becomes a devoted customer. 

First, don’t assume that your prospect remembers all those great advantages you so painstakingly mentioned earlier in your copy. Instead, do a quick recap. The recap does not have to be an exhaustive replay of all those benefits. In fact, something as simple as a quick bulleted list will often do the trick. This simple device makes it possible for the reader to see the benefits one more time without having to scroll backward to review them. 

Next, don’t forget those ancillary values that your product provides. It can be anything from easily installation and storage to working well in another common but less likely setting. The idea is to convey the fact that the product is versatile and there is a good chance it will take the place of more than one product the prospect is currently using. That usually sets very well with consumers who want to get the most for their money.

Last, offer something that must be taken advantage of right now, such as a limited time offer of a discount on first purchase, or free support for a month. Everybody likes to get something a little extra when buying a product.

How many times have you noticed toothpaste manufacturers enticing people to try a new brand with by including a free travel size tube along with the main product? You can do the same thing as part of your copy presentation. 

Getting consumers to buy now rather than later is to your advantage. The sooner someone buys and actually uses the product, the sooner you can look forward to having one more satisfied customer who will provide good word of mouth. Try out these approaches and see how much good they do for you. 

Million Dollar Sales Letters

One thing to keep in mind is there is no such thing as a perfect sales copy. There is excellent sales copy that works perfectly today, but there are no guarantees that it will be just as effective a month from now, or even next week. The fact is that sales copy has a relatively short shelf life.

Of course, there are a few ways you can enhance the effectiveness of your copy and thus extend that life for a bit. Here are some ideas:

* Add video – Make your text come alive with video presentations that include slides, animation, and live action sequences. These can be positioned toward the end of the piece, or strategic points along the way. 

* Add photos – If video seems like a bit much, then come up with photographs that will help to drive home key points in the flow of the text. These add a bit of visual spice. Best of all, you can change them out with relative ease, and give the appearance of your content a fresh look from time to time. 

* Use new fonts. This is so simple that many people overlook it. You can give your text and the entire web page a fresh look simply by making some changes in the font styles and sizes from time to time. Just make sure your choices leave the text easy to read. 

* Make use Google AdWords to best advantage. This means inserting logical keywords in order to drive traffic to the site. Also make use of the feature the website optimizer to do split testing for different headlines, different fonts, etc. and see how they play with a live audience. 

* Rework a paragraph here or there. You do not have to completely rewrite the text in order to make it fresh. Changing some wording here and there gives you the chance to add fresh keywords, and also reorders the flow of the text to give it a new feel. 

Basically, always be on the lookout for some way to make a good thing better. Consumer tastes and demands change from time to time. With the right touch, you can anticipate those trends and use your copy to stay one step ahead of your competition. 

Million Dollar Sales Letters