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6g. Flexible Memberships: The Low Maintenance Option.

Now a moment ago we talked a little bit about if your product suited to a membership site, i.e. is it long enough to sustain long periods and bring you the returns that you want? You may have noticed already that a lot of the differences between membership sites and single sale are pure presentation, how you present your product, how it brings you the cash and how quickly you can put that to use using the time you have remaining.

This is no exception. If I’ve put you off membership sites so far, this is where they start fighting back and rearing their best sides. First off, I want you to think about the flexibility you have to present. A membership site doesn’t mean something that you’ll set up and leave running itself forever, at least it doesn’t have to. Of course I’m talking about limited memberships.

Rather than limiting the number of users or members as the name might suggest, the change is much larger than that, and offers your product over a set period of time, through which the members pay you a recurring income until that time is up.

This is an excellent choice, and a good mid way between an everlasting membership site and single sale products, and is often the choice for the sale of information, or set courses. This one for example. If we didn’t go single sale this would have been the choice. Not only does it allow those who can’t afford to pay up front all in one go to get their hands on it by paying smaller installments than they would with a three month pay plan, or even straight up front selling, but it also ditches the maintenance too. You’re not constantly updating or improving the content, you don’t need to. It’s a set creation, a set piece if you will. Limited membership is just an alternative form of presenting a high ticket, single sale item, ideal for info product sales without the maintenance, and without the worry of ever running out of content to sell.

So why would you create a limited membership site out of the single sale product, when you could just make it single sale for the full course and pull in all the cash anyway? Well, high-ticket items, single sale products are often high in price. Anywhere from $200 up to $10,000 and sometimes even more.

A limited membership allows for three things. First, it gives the power of the trial. It’s not easy to get people to commit to a high priced product, if they’re not bombarded by proof that it’s the best out there, and even then, some can be wary, especially if they haven’t spent this much on a single sale product online before.

The limited membership allows you to overcome this by offering a trial for the first section. It eliminates a massive amount of risk and boosts the confidence of the customer in you, furthermore it allows them to experience your work first hand before shelling out what is a large amount of cash to most people, something that even three or four installments for a high ticket item cannot achieve.

The second thing the limited membership allows you to do is establish a relationship with your customers. Turning first time customers into longterm customers has been and will continue to be a big focal point throughout this course. It’s something that allows you to profit again and again from the same resources without having to go out and acquire more every time you launch a product.

Have you ever bought a single sale product, downloaded it, and just maybe had a glance, had a little look, and then put it aside and moved on? Well that’s something that goes on a lot with single sale items, especially those that aren’t particularly expensive. Of course if you spend a thousand dollars on something, you’re likely to use it for a long period of time, but when spending a hundred, two hundred, it’s all too easy to lay something aside and forget about it.

Within limited membership, because you’re effectively getting your product in installments, you begin to make a connection with the seller. You get to know a little about them, you follow their course, and through each installment, the connection and trust grows stronger and stronger, something that you don’t get with smaller ticket single sale products.

What happens when you’ve made a connection with your customers? Well they begin to feel like this know you, they trust you, they’ll remember who you are because they’ve been receiving your product from you over a sustained amount of time, and this in turn paves the way for turning these customers into long term customers. They’ll be more receptive to further offers, they won’t forget you in a hurry, they’ll begin to trust you and your products, and what’s more they’ll buy from you again and again in the future if they enjoyed this first installment. It’s a pretty simple process, but using this method, but as you can already see, through that long term connection you make is very powerful, and after the first few installments, you’re no longer just a random person trying to get their money. Establish that connection, it’s immensely powerful.

We’ll talk more about establishing this connection with your customers later, for now though all I want to demonstrate is that it is easier to do through limited membership than single sale, without having the often large maintenance and unsuitability on a per product basis of the full blown ever lasting membership site, something to keep in mind when selecting from these three options.

The final advantage of this type of membership site is flexibility. Imagine you’re selling a single sale product for a thousand dollars. What kind of flexibility do you have to choose when to claim your income? Not a lot, people buy, you receive the money end of, but if you’re looking for a reoccurring solution the aspect of flexibility is extremely powerful.

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6g. The Roles Of Each Stage

Next, comes the big part. Those two examples of the different types of backend sales are great, and they do indeed demonstrate the type of effect we're going for in your online marketing here. What I'm going to do now for you, is take each type of product, from the free one, all the way up to the really high ticket one and talk about them to you in direct relation to the five primary resources and online marketing we discussed earlier, and the goals, problems, solutions and most importantly what each stage grants you in terms of these marketing resources.

Ok, first up in this chain of events we have the free product. This is something that you're going to be giving away that will generally be related to your final high ticket item, even if not directly, you need to be making sure that you're attracting the people that are going to be interested in your higher priced product and your target market.

Now obviously, seeing as this product is free, it's goal isn't to make you a huge amount of cash. What you will find though, is this is the area that will be exposed to the most amount of people and will start you down the road to building all five of your resources, but initially, before you move on to the next stages, it'll only be building your mailing list. There's nothing to buy yet, nothing to promote, so there go the JV, long term and short term customers ideas.

Eventually some of these people may develop into these resources, and cash in your pocket, but for now, that's not what we're after. A simple entry level product that will build the numbers that you can promote to for free. They won't be the most targeted in the world either, remember your previous customers are far more likely to buy from you again than these people to start buying from you, but it's still important as a starting phase. Gotta start somewhere, this is where.

Now depending on your product, this free section can vary in size and type. If I were creating a marketing based info product as my highest ticket item, I'd make sure I'm getting people interested in marketing by creating a small, original document relating to my high ticket item. Even if I'm not selling a marketing based product, I might still be able to create a how to document that gives valuable information about how to do something that relates indirectly to my final product. For example, I may release a document that explains how webmasters can attract a large number of affiliates, where as my end product may be a webmasters affiliate solution or software.

So you see, at this stage, even if your end product isn't an info product, you can always go out there and learn, and create a short info product that relates indirectly to your final high ticket item. The reason it’s so important that your free item is connected in some way to your high ticket item, is because our aim is to take these free signups and distribute them not only through your five main resources, but to get those sales flowing for your high ticket item too. It’s no good if the list you’re gathering isn’t interested in what you will end up selling to them.

I've seen this done numerous times, and have carried this out for myself, and I have to say it's highly effective for grabbing a targeted but diverse list. Try to think laterally when creating this product, and most of all be original. A 1980's e-book reprint doesn't cut it anymore.

Length wise, for an info product of this type, you can be looking at anything from three or four pages of said information in exchange for mailing list details, up to ten or twenty pages. Don't go too far and give away the world for nothing. You'll only end up attracting a bunch of freebie seekers. Instead, make sure your info is solid, focused, and the best thing you've ever written. After all, it's these people that are going to go on and turn into your other resources. Through follow-up and hopefully if you've done it well, straight through the info packed report you've written and instantly onto product number two. It's almost an extended sales letter that contains good information intended for quick conversions.

Stage two, the cheap product. The second stage in this cycle, however also sometimes the first (usually my first also). It really depends on the person and their promotion power, and whether or not you think that you can get the word out about free products (of which it's very hard to joint venture for unless it's directly tied in with your end high ticket item.) So we'll call this starting point number two. Your choice totally. Both work incredibly well. Keep in mind however that when choosing, it's harder to promote for free to try and sell a freebie than it is to promote for cost to sell a freebie, and even promote for free to sell something that costs.

Now when I say cheap product, I'm talking ten to sixty dollars. Again, totally depends on your aims and your target market. What we have to remember here though, is that people are paying for it. This is the first time you've asked your customers to get their wallets out, and when they do they're going to expect a real, useful and functioning product to come out of it. At this stage you must not under any circumstances make this a glorified sales letter.

Yes indeed your intention is to sell people on to the next product on the ladder, but that's just it. If someone pays you for just a sales letter of some sort, they're definitely not going to be happy, and will see the quality of what they've just bought and never look at your products again. This is the exact opposite of what we want them to do. The idea here is that they can read through it, or test out the product, and at the same time subtly be sold on to the next product, either through followup, or links at the end of the document.

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6j. Affiliates Into JV’s.

Finally in the affiliates resource crossing list, lets look at our final resource with a view to turn affiliates into a joint venture partners. This is real easy to do, and it's quick and painless for you. All it involves is either a simple phone call, or personal e-mail. Now we're getting into rare, doesn't happen every day, gotta make this meeting as personal as possible territory.

What you're looking out for is a high rate of sales through your affiliate software. A simple search should do that if you've chosen a good system. Pick out the top two percent that have really made a dent and will generally make up the numbers big time and keep them handy. Not only should you have already rewarded them, but you should keep them ready and waiting for your next product, especially if it's related to your previous one.

If they did a good job promoting your previous product, it generally means they have the resources and ability to continue. You should be there when they decide that with a pre-empted contact prior to the release of your shiny new product, offering first stab at promotion and higher commissions than the norm. You may even be able to figure something else out if they have something you want. I can't detail that here, every joint venture is different. Make of it what you need of it. The deal doesn't all have to be higher commissions and more money more money all the time.

If you could have anything right now that would move you towards your goals more quickly, or in an easier way, what is it? Does this person I'm dealing with have it? If the answer is no, a safe bet is always the standard higher commissions. And remember, why are you giving them a load of special-ness, over standard affiliates? Because they're valued affiliates. They probably know it already, but it doesn’t half hit home when you say it, especially, as in the above example in the customers resource crossing section, when they see the standard offer going out to all the other affiliates (they will be on the same list still after all). That'll sure show them that you're for real, they won't forget you either. Treat them right and they'll continue to make you a whole load of money for many years to come, and provide some really fruitful joint venture proposals and deals.

6k. What To Do With Your JV Prospects.

Talking of joint venture deals, lets move on now to the fifth and final section on crossing your resources over and talk about the do's and do not’s of probably the most lucrative marketing method in the business. Of the big five, your joint venture prospects and partners will likely be the least numerous of all your resources, but with the most stopping power per person. When you think that some of your JV's might end up being seen by lists of ten to a hundred thousand or more, it suddenly becomes clear how important this is. Lets look at where to take your joint ventures with regards to the other four resources, starting with affiliates.

6L. Turning Your JV’s Into Affiliates.

First up, you should keep in mind that most joint ventures that you receive after launching your fist two products will come from your affiliates anyway. As far as those who don't, they’re really glorified affiliates only. As with the difference between customers and long term customers, you'll find that even with those who aren't your affiliates, you'll be in contact with them pretty frequently anyway, whether they're on your instant messenger list, or you just fire emails at each other when you each launch new products.

Building up a circle of contacts that act in this way is extremely powerful in itself, just it takes a little more time to set up when it comes to product launches. Maintenance won't be a problem if you're using good affiliate software, so in this respect, keep your joint venture prospects separate. They're something special, and you'll likely find yourself in contact with them even more so than your long term customers, and they will be your first line of attack when launching future products. So when it comes to turning JV's into regular affiliates, don't bother, because they're all that and more already.

6m. Turning Your JV’s Into Your List

Secondly, turning joint ventures into your list. Not something to dwell on, because your joint ventures shouldn't be a list themselves. They should be a selection of business people that have access to resources that are beneficial to your business, not a bunch of e-mail addresses that you fire out ads to. Some may be on your list already, those that like to see what you're getting up to and when, and some may not. Either way, it doesn't matter, and you should never be thinking of your joint ventures as just a list of e-mail addresses. Things should be far more personal than that, at a cost of set up time to you, but producing some major profits and massive resource building potential.

6n. Not Turning Your JV’s Into Customers.

Moving straight on to the section I've been itching to tell you about, and that's moving joint ventures over to become your customers and long term customers. It's possible that some may have bought from you before, or even learned how to promote from you if your products are geared towards that way of thinking, however, your joint venture partners are way too important to go advertising to unless it's in a 'hey check it out, thought you might find it interesting' kind of way.

Let me tell you a little story about how not to do this. I used to work with a few people when I first started, and we were getting along fine, we created a few sites, experimented and compared notes a lot, and things were going great until I decided to branch out on my own. At regular intervals over the next three or four months whilst I was working on building my affiliate software, I started to receive interesting e-mails and messages from these people. Now understand that we were business colleagues, kind of like the people you talk to and hang around with and take your lunches with and had a laugh with at work.

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An ad list is generally a list that you build and send outside ads to without any useful content at all. This is the easily the fastest method of list maintenance of all of the above, and despite a major a downer in unsubscription rates, and the challenge of getting people to subscribe in the first place, is still widely used solely for income from ad sales.

The ad list. Oh this one makes me shudder. It's the bane of my existence, and the totally blatant amateur marketers club. The ad list. Take every example that we've used, and everything that I've shown you so far, from relationship building, to useful content, personal lists, and your reputation, throw it out the window, go fetch it, then throw it out the window all over again.

So you may be wondering why this is even reviewed if it's so terrible. Well, the reason for me doing so is to show you what your list can turn into if you're not very careful about managing it. If things get out of balance and get out of hand, and your list turns into an ad list long term, you've had it, aside from the cash you're going to bring in through selling ads, which let me assure you, doesn't even compare to what you can earn to selling your own products, Jv’s, or promoting other peoples programs.

So what do you get from an ad list? Well ads really. That about sums it up. All you're doing here is getting a bunch of people together on a big list, saying 'forget the relationships, forget Jv’s, forget my own products, forget useful content or anything of the sorts, my aim is to get the biggest list so I can sell ads for the highest price'.

Despite my apparent lack of enthusiasm for this type of list, some people do still seem to insist it's the best way to go about things. Maybe if you didn't know how to create your own products, or how much money is in affiliate promotion (when done correctly) or just didn't have the time or wanted some quick short term income, this is choice of most with these kind of attitudes. Lets take a look at why I'm so harsh about this list type. Oh and don't be offended if you've been running an ad list, or have run one in the past, just let it be known, it is not by far the best way to make money from your list.

Unsubscription Rate: * Owch. One star. On an ad list where your main aim has been to sell ads over and over again to people for the highest price possible, with no other means of communication or content, it's obvious many subscribers will get bored quickly. I would, and I do too. You might argue some want to see the ads, but would you rather see a load of random ads from random people, or see ads from someone that you know for sure knows what they're talking about, what they're promoting, and what they're JV’ing? Start an ad list, and be prepared to have to top up often from the ubsubscriptions, that is if your mail even gets read before it's deleted or filtered.

Subscription Rate: * One star again. Now I one starred this because in all honesty, telling people all they're going to receive is a bunch of random ads isn't really the easiest way of attracting subscribers. Many of the lists of this type that I've come across don't come from previous customers or valuable affiliates, but purchased leads (which also make me shudder almost as much).

If in all honesty you're telling the subscriber what they get before they subscribe, they probably just aren't going to bother, aside from the odd few who want the freebie. Buying leads still gets the one star from me, because one hundred thousand random subscribers has nothing on one thousand people who know your name, your reputation and speak highly of you. If you go down this route, prepare to either have a really small list that just doesn't care about anything really, or a really huge list that cost a lot, that., really doesn't care either. What is there for them to care about, random ads? I think not.

Ad income: ** Two stars. Not that this makes up for the other huge short comings mind you, but generally the ad income can be ok depending on the size of your list. An ad to a list of a hundred thousand for a hundred dollars can look like a good deal to the entry level online marketer, or someone who hasn't been around and seen the sights yet. Of course we know better though. The response rates tell the story, and when your customers don't see any response to their ads, if they're smart they won't be coming back to give your their cash ever again. Bad news for your long term prospects.

JV Circle: * One star, once again. Unfortunately a list that isn't personal, doesn't have good subscribers, people that have bought from you, willing to spend cash, affiliates, or even populated with people in your target market won't be a hot topic for joint ventures. Try to barter with one of these, and don't expect to get very far unless your JV prospect is inexperienced. And in any case, if they're inexperienced, it's unlikely the joint venture will be profitable to you in any case.

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6h. Rule 2 - No Constraints.

Which brings me to rule number Two: Don't be constrained by length. As I mentioned in the previous sales letter section, some of the best sales letters I've ever read that have just totally sucked me in using the same format as we've been talking about throughout this guide. Some have taken me over an hour to read, and turned out to be big selling products with great visitor to sales ratios.

So here's the thing. Don't fall into the checklist trap. A small list of features planted on a page is no match for the structure we talked about above. Now back when I first started, I wrote this big long sales letter, a little after the previous example of amalgamating all the features into one, and needless to say it was a tad large. I wasn't really all that confident about keeping things as they were as the people that I was selling to were busy people. People who don't want to hang around for ages reading long reams of text. Or so I thought anyway.

So I went away and created this list type sales letter that I thought would do so much better, and ran a split run test with the very long and very short versions. A week and a half and twenty five new signups later from the long sales letter, and still staring at a blank from the shortened version, I had to actually check of everything was working correctly because the short version was performing so badly. Testing time was over.

I never went back. Thinking that short sales letters would outperform my long ones was probably the most profitable test that I've carried out with regards to sales letters. Without the testing though, based on the untested and incorrect assumptions at the time, it probably would have been the most expensive. Thankfully that thought was squished at an early stage.

6i. Rule 3 - Four Elements Of A Successful Sales Letter.

Rule Number Three: Your sales letter should only ever be doing one of four things. Enforcing your expertise, enticing with benefits, crushing fears and doubts about your product, or asking for money. When you're done writing, take a read through your sales letter and see if you can spot the points at which you may have deviated from your original objective, and wipe them out. Contrary to some very strange examples I’ve come across in my time online, there is no reason for any other text to exist other than to distract, confuse or get in the way.

We saw this example earlier, but it applies here too. See your sales letter as kind of a bridge. The starting point on one side is the headline, and anyone who successfully gets across the bridge to the other side has hit your order link and purchased your product. All those little niggly bits that have no place, all those distractions, and problem areas are giant dirty holes that customers that should have been yours, are falling through on the way to your order link. All you're doing is plugging those gaps by removing the un needed areas and distractions, and giving the best chance of a safe crossing, which of course means money in your pocket.

So here's the deal. Keep focused, rip out all those irrelevant parts of your sales letter. If it doesn’t enforce your expertise, entice with benefits, crush fears or ask for cash, it plainly doesn't need to be there. Plug the gaps. Remove the dead wood. Stop losing customers through the holes.

6j. Rule 4 - No Assumptions

Rule number Four: Never assume anything about your readers. There's so many renditions of this, and I'm guilty of doing this too in draft versions of texts. It's only natural if you've been around something for a long time that seems simple, obvious, or the norm to you. Remember it's not necessarily the norm for others. Depending on the market you're going after, there's going to be some degree of variation in the type of visitor you get and their previous experience on the subject.

There’s so many variations of this, but let me give you a few examples. "Inverted commas" is a good one that seems to be taking sales letters by storm recently. When you're talking about something in a focused way, coming out with something contained in inverted commas may mean something to you, but could well mean something different to someone else, and is very easily misunderstood, along with sarcasm, irony and slang.

6k. Rule 5 - Spice Up Your Sales Letters.

Rule number Five: Spice it up a little. Your writing style doesn't have to be hard sell all the way, but don't make it boring. Make it colorful, especially when you're talking about your products benefits. Remember your product isn't good. It's not cool, or nice. It's amazing, astounding, rock solid, laser targeted, and unbeatable. Get a little excited and replace some of your descriptive words with something a little more spicy and interesting.

It may sound like hard sell, but not so when coupled with my favorite writing style, which couldn't be easier for anyone to do, and that's just typing as you'd talk. It goes from hard sell TV ad sounding, and changes instantly to have a personal, but excited and confident feeling about it. There's nothing wrong with injecting your own personality either if you want to, in fact this actually adds to your sales letter. Just remember to avoid the pitfalls we talked about earlier whilst making your benefits sound a little more juicy and attractive.

6L. Rule 6 - Keep It Structured.

Rule Number 6: Don't lose your structure. We already talked about the four aims of your sales letter, but if you take a closer look at what we’ve just been discussing there's a particular structure about it. We started off with the headline, and the sub headline pulling the readers into the letter, then we went on with an intro and some reinforcement, proof and testimonials, then benefits of your product, guarantees, damage limitation making the price seem less significant, and then the PS's.

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Make sure you craft your congratulations e-mails and welcome emails well. Still on the subject of mailing your affiliates, it's important for everything to be smooth, quick and easy for them. Some just have lists that they want to blast your ads out to. Your job is to make that as smooth as possible. Send them a log in link in the welcome mail, tell them again how much they'll earn, give them some small stats and figures; ‘With just '10 sales, you'll earn $7000’. Emphasize the second levels, no matter how small. This passive earning is really important to a lot of marketers.

Think of this as kind of a small sales letter, but crossed with an instruction manual. They've signed up, now sell onto the promotion with how much they can earn and how quickly. Don't forget to tell them to click the link below, copy and paste the pre-written ads, blast them out to their lists or the list of provided e-zines, and await the congratulatory e-mails from you, saying they have cash. Don’t just suggest an action and expect them to do it. Close the sale.

Tell them to do it, and your response will increase dramatically.

Emphasize pay days, and tell them to look out for special promotions and bonuses from you that will give them the opportunity to promote your other products, or even promote thisproduct at a higher commission. This really should have gone in the bonuses section that we talked about earlier, but since we're here, try not to give the reader any excuse to hold off.

For example, I remember four years or so back I joined a membership site and was all ready to go off promoting for them as an affiliate, then when I saw the welcome mail, I was told to look forward to an e-mail soon that would entitle me to extra earnings promoting the product. Just that wording almost put me off. I later found out that it was actually bonuses and top affiliate rewards for the previous couple of months, but see how that mail seemed like a good deal, but made me wait? No doubt this was the opposite effect they were looking for.

You don't want your affiliates to think twice. This letter will have them log in, grab the ad and blast it out. As quick and as easy as possible for them, with the best possible rewards, which in turn means the highest amount of additional income for you. Give it a try. You won't be disappointed.

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6. Adding Value Explained

Welcome to the adding value to your products section. You may remember we talked a little about this earlier in the sales letter writing sections, but we didn't quite go into the depth that I would have liked, so I saved it for here instead.

In this section we'll be talking about how to directly influence your sales through the addition of value for your products, ranging from offers, joint venture deals, consultation fees, bonuses and others. You see, it's all about perceived value, and getting the most out of your product. Again, something we talked about in pricing strategies, was getting the price you think your product deserves and persuading people to buy it by stacking on reasons for them to do so, something once mastered will push people over the edge again and again. Pushing them over the edge being hitting the buy button on your site.

Most importantly of all, there's a lot of ways of pulling this off, and they're forever changing, and marketers are coming up with more and more innovative ways to add value to their products. It's worth watching in fact, next time you find yourself reading through a sales letter or some ad copy, look at how they add value to their offer using things that aren't directly related to the product itself. Watching how others do things on their sites is one of the most valuable cost free and pretty much effort free way of doing things you have in your arsenal, but it works extremely well. Keep that in mind all the time, not just throughout this section.

Come back here once you have got your product up and running if you’re not working on that right now, because all of these are elements of a sales letter in some way or another, bar two. So lets get started. How about taking it from the top and starting with the most used and widely known and working down to the least widely used, and the new and innovative ideas.

6a. Cut Off Dates.

Cut off dates and limited numbers. A great place to start, and really easy to slip into any sales letter for any product. The old cut off dates are probably the most widely used out of all of these methods, and they seem to still be working. All this requires is notification of your low price only being guaranteed until a particular date. These are great words to use, because if you do decide to extend the deadline, you'll find that you can without causing a stir. Way too often recently I've visited sites that say the price will be going up for sure on a particular date, but it never does, and the date magically moves forward each day. Not a good way to be doing business I can assure you. This is catering more to the impulse buyers rather than adding value, but I thought we'd get that in there too anyway, as it's worth a mention for sure.

6b. Limited Numbers Done Right.

Next up comes the limited numbers method. Only allowing a limited number of people into the site at a particular time, or only allowing a particular amount of people to buy at a particular price. Again, quite widely used, and both catering to impulse buyers as well as adding value, depending on which method you're using. Now this one I especially like. One of my previous sites has this very system up and running, where I only let a few hundred members in at a time. It's a membership site of course, so reoccurring incomes all around for me, and it makes my members feel a little lucky. Some of them have even told me this themselves, and I've had requests from my list on several occasions asking when a spot will become available because they really wanted to get in.

Now you might say that I'm losing money on such a deal, only letting people in a small number at a time, but it really doesn't happen like that. The reason the limit was set in the first place was so that I'd have time to start working on other projects and could run my other sites on autopilot, so you could say I discovered this one by accident. Don't forget that you can always raise and lower your limits if you do try this, which I highly recommend you do try, even if limiting numbers doesn’t suit your situation, limiting numbers on a lower price, very likely will suit every situation, not to mention it always amazes me how far word of mouth travels about this.

6c. Standard Testimonials.

Next up comes the hugely widespread and popular standard testimonial. I'm only going to touch on this, because there really isn't a huge amount to say, and I highly doubt anyone out there has never seen one. A standard section of text either throughout your sales letter, down the side of your nav bar, on a separate page or a database of happy customers works without a problem and goes a long way to cementing in your customers minds that your product is good. This is especially true if the person or people writing are well known and respected in your field. Try to get in contact with at least one well known, hand them your product for free, and request a testimonial for it.

6d. Testimonials But Better.

That's standard text testimonials over with, so how about looking at the slightly rarer audio testimonials. These cement value in your product even further and increase customer confidence no end. I've personally looked at text testimonials before, and seen some major flaws that gave away to me, and proved without a doubt that they were faked. This pretty much put a big dent in what I thought of these things early on, and I've even had people come to me and tell me they faked their testimonials in the past. Needless to say I wasn't happy about that. Granted, audio testimonials can be faked too, but it's generally not something that pops into your head when listening compared to reading written ones, hence the big confidence booster and value adding of this method.

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12. Question 8. You keep talking about joint ventures, but I can't seem to score any, what gives?

Joint ventures is a very interesting subject. Many people unfortunately misunderstand the concept when they're told to go out and get joint ventures. If you're having trouble pulling in the deals that you need to get your business off the ground, the first thing you need to carefully look at is who exactly are you contacting about these joint ventures.

Many people seem to think that the answer to all their problems is to get an ad to a list through the big names, but with this comes a problem. Imagine you were earning at least 20k a month and releasing your own products, had a nice sized list of customers, and a large affiliate base, and that this is widely known. All the people that think you're the answer to their problem, and the list and people you're in contact with are the answer to their problems, you can imagine how many joint venture request mails you're going to get every week. All these people out there that see you earning all that cash, and think that if they get access to your list, they'll earn this cash too.

This is not the case at all. When we speak about joint ventures, I'm definitely not advising you to go out there, pick every big earner out of the bag, contact them and try to get an ad to their list, because there are already so many people doing the same. So unless you have something under your belt in the way of resources and products already, it's not going to be easy to prove that you're going to be worth it. And at the end of the day, that’s what we're all doing including me.

Every time I contact someone for a joint venture, I'm in a position where I have to sell myself and my product to them, proving that it's going to be worth their while, and you're doing exactly the same thing. As you can imagine, if you have a few products under your belt already, this is going to be far easier to do this, especially to the big names.

Don't worry though, all is not lost and, there’s a lot more potential out there than you may think. When we previously talked about subscribing to peoples lists as a first step in the joint venture operations, we were talking about, not just the biggest names that you know but, the ones where you're more likely to get a response and noticed, simply because there aren't so many people vying for the same thing.

That's not to say you're settling for second best, far from it. There have been plenty of sites that I've joined previously that displayed top affiliates, those that obviously have the big targeted resources already built up to promote to. Throughout these names I come across some of the big guys, that is true, but it might surprise you to find out that at least ninety five percent of those top affiliates I've not heard of before. They're not big names, but they sure bring in as much cash as the big names.

Don't for a moment think that your resources are limited to the ten or so big guys you know, because let me tell you there are thousands and thousands of people out there, even just taking the online marketing scene for example, that are doing really well, even though they haven't achieved this almost celebrity status with your particular circle of marketers.

Keep this in mind, and don't feel trapped or constrained by being fooled into thinking you have to compete with hundreds of others for a single joint venture. That's not to say you shouldn't contact big famous names at all, or ever, but be advised, many others are doing the same. One joint venture with a relatively unknown can be far more powerful than joint ventures with the well known too. It all depends on the resources they have in hand, so if I could give you one tip about joint venturing, and one tip only, it would be to widen your search, and don't just stick to those that you've heard about.

Thankfully, we're not limited to one tip, so I'm going to give you another big one and hopefully put your mind at rest. Now when you create and launch your own product, and manage to pull your target number of joint ventures, don't fret and worry about how hard it was, because, I won't lie, making the contacts in the first place is by far the hardest part, but, again, this snowballs. You meet person one, who introduces you to person two, three and four, and so on preventing the need to go out and look for new joint ventures for each and every product you create. You simply don't have to do it.

In addition don't neglect the people you've done joint ventures with before. Work with them again, look at their proposals, listen to their ideas and what they have to say, and you'll find that once you have your first few you don't need to go out doing all of that again. Kind of creating one big circle of marketers that promote each others stuff and joint venture with each other.

Not only that but add in the fact that after your first few successful products with this system, for want of a better word, is set up in such a way that you're going to be gathering your resources, and be pretty hot joint venture material yourself. Most importantly, it's at this stage, even if your name is only known by your customers and affiliates, that they're going to start coming to you with proposals which will allow you to develop your already rather large pile of resources and promotion power.

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6b. JV’s From The Other Side.

You'll also see why we always ask ourselves one question about the person that we're talking to if it becomes obvious they're looking for a joint venture. Once you can see how this works, and understand why we're always asking, you should be able to eliminate all doubt from your joint venture prospects mind about what you're there for and score even more successes. Before I tell you what the question they're asking and you're answering is though, let me give you a run down of the first time I experienced something that I'm starting to see more and more regularly, the more sites I launch.

6c. The Dreaded JV Approach

*Ping* Up comes a message from someone I haven't spoken to before on one my instant messengers. (Granted I don't give me instant messenger address out anymore unless I've spoken to the person directly, but the same is true when this happens via e-mail). Anyway, a conversation ensues. Hey, I'm a member of your site, and I'm launching my own product soon, I wondered if I could ask you some questions seeing as you've already done your own. Of course I agree, I've always got a couple of minutes to spare to answer some quick fire questions, as long as it doesn't progress into something that would turn into consultation length and impose on the services I'm charging for.

The conversation continues, and after spending a few minutes talking about both of our sites, the real motivation comes through. How big is your list he asks. Of course at this point it's obvious he's looking for some sort of joint venture. Not a problem I think, I've never been approached for one before, I've always been doing the approaching, so this might be a good chance to practice. We continue talking for a few minutes, until it becomes clear what he thinks I'm going to do for him with the most irrelevant things being given in return, he even tried to spruce it up by asking the phrase that he repeated so many times it's embedded in my head now. Do you want to be my marketing manager?

After a little bit of a conversation, it became clear to me that not only did this person want to joint venture, but he wanted me to make his site successful for him. He started talking about how much an ad to my list would earn him. So what was he going to give me in return for an ad to my list? Let me tell you, he wanted to grant me a whopping one dollar per sale commission, on a twenty five dollar product but only when I'd sold a hundred copies for him as the sole promoter of his product that wasn't actually his. It was an un-brandable resale product anyway. Anyone can see that this is worst deal ever, but it got even worse. He wouldn't let me have a look at the product. When I asked him to send me it, even before he told me what his offer was, I was pointed to the sales letter and told to buy it.

6d. The Questions On Our Lips When You Approach Us.

At this point, as you can imagine, I was a little fed up, and after five or six no sorry, I'm not interested comments along with the reasons, I had to log off because he just wouldn't stop. Now as much as you and I can see that this was probably the worst deal ever. It never ceases to amaze me how many people still try to do that without offering something good in return. So aside from the obvious question you should be asking yourself when someone approaches you, which is, is this product quality enough for me to be promoting, I can’t help but wonder exactly what I'm going to get in return with every joint venture approach. Is this another one of those that thinks I can make them rich by a single ad to my list, or is this a serious joint venture, with a good give and take, with a quality product, coming from someone that understands the nuances of this subject, and knows a single joint venture isn't going to make anyone rich overnight?

Even though the above example is extreme, you can see why it's sometimes hard to score joint ventures. It's because of this barrier that's gone up to protect against this kind of attempted deal, and let me assure you, as silly as it sounds it happens a heck of a lot. Put yourself in my position back then, and imagine you get a couple of these very offers every week or so every time you launch a new product. You should be able to see immediately the way you should be approaching this, and the way in which you should be answering these questions immediately taking any doubt out of your JV targets mind that you're one of these people. Once you can do that, you'll get noticed, and you're sure to score more joint ventures.

6e. 3 Important Tips.

Remember three things here. One the equal give and take. Number two, make it your top priority to eliminate any doubt in your joint venture targets mind that you're one of these people. It's business. Get in, make your offer, get out. Don't beat around the bush, because they won't thank you for it. Number three, put yourself in this position, and understand what’s going on, because before long, people are going to be contacting you with these offers, just like they contact me, and hundreds of other marketers out there, and you'll be able to spot immediately who's the real deal, and who thinks you're going to make them rich with one ad. Be on your toes, it's not always as obvious as the above example.

Oh and don't worry about contacting me either just to let me know how a product is, or about a joint venture. I don't want to put you off ever contacting anyone for a joint venture, so long as you follow the above unwritten rules, and understand why these questions are the first thing to hit marketers minds when a joint venture offer comes through, you'll do fine.