Ebook Sample Content Preview:

Start-Up Principle Number Six: Opt in Page

As you were reading the previous section, you may have felt that to give up on people in the research process is missing an opportunity. And to some degree, you are correct. The question is what will you do when interested individuals come to your website and they are not ready to purchase a product?

One of the first things that you'll need to do is to create an opt-in page. An opt-in page allows you to collect names and e-mail addresses of interested individuals before they leave your website. As was discussed earlier this is a key feature in your list building process.

This is how you will make use of those visitors that you attract that are in the research phase. Of course, they aren’t ready to buy from you, but you do not want to waste the opportunity gained by having attracted them to your site. Therefore, you will offer them something of value, that they would be happy to exchange their contact details and information for.

Typically, the opt-in website code is given to you by the e-mail database company that you choose to work with. It is a simple cut and paste operation. When you're using a WordPress site, simply gather the code given to you by your autoresponder company and place it someplace that your visitors will clearly be able to see.

One of the best things to offer on your opt-in page is an audio interview with an expert in your market. As you get more experienced in working in this particular niche, you will be able to develop relationships with people that would be happy to have you interview them. You would be giving them more exposure, and access to people that they would not have met otherwise.

This also comes back to one of the reasons why you want to work in a niche where you already have some knowledge, experience and even relationships. This will put you at a head start in terms of being able to attract new visitors to your site and prospective buyers into your marketing funnel.

Start-up Principle Number Seven: Video Content

Whether you attract people through research keywords or buying keywords, you want them to come to your site as interested visitors. In today's fast paced world, with iPads, Tablet PCs and smart phones, it's difficult to attract visitors to your site and your web presence through within content. While people still do lots of reading, many are not interested in long articles or long explanations.

They’re interested in getting the understanding quickly and easily to be able to move on to use the knowledge they've gained to better their life in some way. Text requires people to have to imagine what a process or product looks like and how it would fit into their lives. Therefore, when they see lots of text to read they may not necessarily use it to make a determination to come to your website.

However, people are interested in video content now more than ever. Video allows site visitors to see and understand what something would look like in their own lives. They are easily able to make the determination as to whether or not something is worth their time by seeing it being demonstrated.

The other thing that video content does is give site visitors a sense for who is talking to them. It allows them to connect with individuals creating the content. Video is probably one of the most potent weapons that you will have in developing a following of people who like your products and services.

In order to develop a sustainable competitive advantage, you will need people who are fans of yours, and not just customers. Video gives you that opportunity, in the same way that movies do for actors, actresses and celebrities. In effect, video allows you to be the star of a show that you create.

Therefore, you should use video content liberally. And you should use it on the keywords that you find helpful to attract the kind of people interested in your products or services. When you combine the keyword research that you do with video content, you will begin to attract the kind of buyer who is ready to make purchases and in some sense already presold.

Video creators typically use the website YouTube.com to display their videos. This is an ideal website to use because it stores the actual video and allows you to share it on social media websites.

YouTube is versatile in what it allows you the video creator to do and is also a place online that certain individuals go to seek information. In fact YouTube is considered to be the second most used search engine in the world. That means that you should have your content on YouTube to attract site visitors to your web presence.

What typically stops new e-business owners from creating video, is that they feel as if they don't know what they are going to say. Actually figuring out what to say in your video is the easy part. If you think about what attracts a visitor to your site when you create video, it will be easy for you to come up with topics. You will be able to spell out in your video what viewers should do.

The best course of action to determine what you should be doing in your video is actually the key to creating any content. When you're looking to attract people to your website you want to solve their problems. What kind of problems do you want to solve? You want to try to find the problems that people have indicated that they need to solve based on the phrases that they’re typing in to the search engines. This of course, comes back to your keyword research.

Once you have found the problems that people have type into the search engines, you should add to this list by finding knowledgeable professionals in the market or niche. The question that you want to ask these individuals is, “what are the most frequently asked questions in your profession?”

And then follow up with another question. Ask the question, "What should be the most frequently asked questions in your market?" When a knowledgeable professional answers these questions you will then know what to create your videos about.

Ebook Sample Content Preview:

Pricing is a tricky thing and basically comes down to testing one price against another.

But okay, what if you've just written your book and you have no idea what to charge for it. Well, remember, when you did your initial research, one of the things you checked to see is if there were any products out there already being sold. If there are, make a note of the price

You then have one of three choices.

Price Higher

Price your product higher. Now, if you’re going to do this, you better be darn sure that your product is that much better.

How will you know?

Buy it!

I have bought many of my competitors’ products just to see what I was up against. If I really believed my product was better, I'd price it higher and in my sales page even do a comparison of my product to theirs so that the prospect could see the difference.

Price The Same

This is what I call taking the safe road. If you price your product the same as other competitive products, you’re basically relying on your marketing alone to make more sales. If you can also show that your product gives the prospect more for the same price, this will help too.

Price Lower

You can do this whether your product is of equal quality, better or maybe doesn’t have as many features or doesn’t go as much in depth.

For equal or greater quality, you’re simply trying to undercut your competition. By being able to say that your product is just as good if not better (and it’s $10 cheaper), you’re likely to get a lot of sales you might not have gotten had your product been released at the same price or higher.

This is how Walmart makes so many sales. They simply undercut everybody else.

Ebook Sample Content Preview:

Building your reputation as a freelancer is no different from building your reputation as a marketer, whether it is selling affiliate products or your own products. The only difference is, instead of selling your product, you're selling yourself. Having said that, there are differences to the approach.

With sales, if you're doing affiliate marketing, the best approach is to write unbiased reviews of the products you're selling. This will help increase sales immensely.

If you're selling your own products, you need to get testimonials. In order to do that, you have to give away copies of the product at the start. After a few people use it, you can then use their testimonials on your sales page to assist in the selling of the product.

But what about if you're selling yourself as a freelancer? You certainly can't review your own work since you can't possibly be unbiased. And there's no product to give away.

However, you can do one of two things.

First and quickest way to build your reputation as a freelancer is to offer your services for a number of people at no cost. If you go to a forum that specializes in whatever it is you do and make this offer, you'll get tons of people taking you on. Just decide how many jobs you want to take. Make it clear that you are doing this in exchange for a testimonial if they are happy with the work.

Now, it is critical that you complete the assignments on time and do the absolute best job that you can. You do not get a second chance to make a good first impression. This is it. Screw this up and your reputation is shot right out of the gate.

Once the jobs are complete and the testimonials are in, the next step is to put together a sales page promoting your services. If you can't write killer sales copy yourself, get a professional to do it for you. Now, if you're a copywriter, you better be able to do this yourself. If you can't write killer copy, you have no business going into the copywriting freelance business. Obviously you can see that, right?

After the sales page is completed, the next step is to get it online. You need to get yourself a domain and hosting. You want to pick a domain that is going to brand you and your service.

Ebook Sample Content Preview:

When you get there, you want to put in a request for 10 articles for your site content. These can be 350 words. You don’t want to pay anymore than $2 a piece for these articles. Don’t worry, you will find plenty of people who will be willing to write for these rates. This will cost you a total of $20.

You then want to put a request in for 20 more articles of 500 words each. You’re going to offer $3 per article for these. That will cost you an additional $60.

Now, what you want to do is specify what each article is to cover.

For example:

What is acne?

What causes acne?

How does diet affect acne?

What are the traditional treatments for acne?

See what we’re doing? We’re actually creating an outline for an ebook. By doing this, we can take each article, put them together, and actually create an ebook for the product.

Why do we want to do this instead of just asking for an ebook on acne? Because instead of paying $60 for 20 articles, we’d end up paying $300 for an ebook. That’s the reason why we ask for articles.

After you get your content, take the 20 articles and put them together to form your ebook. Make sure you add a table of contents and name each chapter. You may want to add an introduction as well.

Ebook Sample Content Preview:

The first thing I tell everybody who I mentor, whether it be for writing articles, sales copy, email ad copy or whatever, it to be yourself. Don’t try to write like Michel Fortin or one of the other big names, especially if you’ve only been doing this for a short period of time.

However, while you need to be yourself, there are some things that I strongly suggest that you incorporate into your writing style.

The last thing that a reader of your sales page wants to do is go to sleep in the middle of reading it. Trust me, I have read many a sales page that has bored me to tears. You need to keep your reader engaged and entertained.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to tell stories and write in a conversational style. In other words, write your sales letter as if you were speaking to your prospect face to face. If you were trying to sell your best friend on one of your ideas, what would you say to his face? That’s the way you should speak to people online through your sales copy.

Another thing you have to keep in mind is who your audience is. If you’re promoting a product to the teen set, you’ll need to learn how to communicate in a way that they will relate to. On the other hand, if you’re writing ad copy for people who are looking for an arthritis cure, these are usually older people and you’re not going to speak to them like you were a rapper.

Is this going to take some research on your part? Yes, a lot of it. But if you don’t do it and you don’t craft your sales message to fit the target group who is going to receive it, you’re not going to reach them properly and the end result is no sales.

This is one of the reasons why many copywriters specialize in certain niches. Maybe they realize that they’re not going to be able to write in a style that is going to appeal to kids or maybe they know that they’re too young to relate to the issues of older people. You will find very few copywriters who will write sales copy for anything and everything. For example, I’ll never try to write sales copy appealing to a target market my daughter’s age. I’d sound like a complete idiot and they’d never respond to my tone.

By keeping your writing style natural and conversational, with the addition of the tips in this book, you should have no trouble writing sales copy that sells.