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One of the most important things, and you have to do this if you want to make money with your list, is to create rapport with your subscribers. They have to believe that you care about them, that you are offering them support to help them, not to make money.

Now, everyone realizes that you make money selling, but they have to believe that you are in this to help them and that you are making an income as a result, rather than feeling that you are just trying to make a buck selling something to them.

This is a critical distinction - and you have to project the right feeling to your list, or you will not become very profitable with your list.

Now, you may ask, well, I really am in this for the money. That is ok - but you have to decide what you are going to exchange for the money. You see, everything you do is an exchange. When you go to work at your day job, your boss pays you, not because you want to make money, but because you give him something that is worth what he pays you. And that something that you give him is whatever it is you do all day, whether you am a company, cook food, or count money.

You are exchanging something of worth for something else of worth - in the case of your job, your wage or salary. And you have to do the same thing online. You are exchanging your expertise for their money. And it is an exchange. It is not YOU selling THEM. It is an exchange - you are producing something that they need and they are willing to exchange their money for your expertise.

That is the attitude you have to have to make money online. You have to view this as an exchange, you have to be willing to help your subscribers - then they will pay you.

So how do you create rapport with your customers?

There are two things that have to happen - 1) you have to give first and 2) you have to interact with them 1 will cover giving first. It is a commonality among us humans that if you give something to someone, they feel obligated to give back. If you give me something for nothing, I feel obligated to give back to you.

What do you do (offline) when you meet someone new and you think they might make a good friend? You give. You ask them to lunch, or you give them something. What happens next? Either they accept the gift, and normally will respond by giving back or by asking you to lunch in the future. Or they do not (in which case they probably do not become your friend). You give. They give back. Eventually they give and you give back.

The same thing happens online. You give something of value to your subscribers.

Some accept and give back to you (they buy from you one day). Some do not accept, and never give back. Of course, there are many other points on this spectaim that occur - some take, and never give back - but they are generally ones that have no ability to pay (unforeseeable online, except through appropriate targeting) - or they don’t like what you give them - also fair - and some (very few) will give (buy from you) first.

But the typical pattern here is that you give first, some accept, most of those give back by buying.

So what do you give? You can give free ebooks, informational ebooks on your topic. You can give information - send them articles or exceipts from ebooks or other information you have.

So what is the second way you can create rapport?

It is via communicating with your subscribers, creating interaction. There are a number of different ways this can be done. You can ask questions of your subscribers, you can ask your subscribers to ask you questions, and in both cases you can continue the correspondence personally. You can create an online forum, you can hold teleseminars or online Q & A sessions for your subscribers.

The bottom line with this is that it has to be interactional. It cannot be one-sided - you have to have an open exchange of information flowing both ways.

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This particular area of article marketing has probably had more to do with my success in article marketing than anything else that I have done.

I am a particular avid tester, and by testing 1 was actually able to create the two article marketing methodologies I mentioned earlier in this toolbox.

I created different tracking pages for different sets of article directories, and ranked each of these sets of article directories according to the amount of traffic they brought me. Using the process of elimination, 1 was able to quite quickly determine which web sites were good for generating direct traffic from my articles, and which web sites were best for creating long term inbound links.

I have also used my tracking techniques to determine which article marketing submission and distribution services were most effective. This actually spurred me to drop some of the article submission and distribution services I was using at one time, in favor of doing more of the work myself, and outsourcing to an individual rather than a firm, the submission of my articles.

There are two primary tracking methods I employ, and I will attempt to go through these in as detailed a fashion as possible, as 1 personally believe this is one of the most important aspects of your web business.

You see, in most of the web marketing you do, you will find that on average, your long term results are not necessarily positive, in aggregate. But if you isolate the productive portions of your strategy, and drop the ones that are pulling you down, you can often create profits or results, even when initial results are ho-hum.

The idea is that only a small percentage of marketing sources (including those in article marketing) are actually profitable, and the profit from that small percentage carries the losses on the large percentage that is not profitable.

For example, if you submit to 100 article directories, but 5 of those are producing 95% of the results, if you were to focus on just the 5 with the highest results, you will have maximum results (my apologies for the redundancy) - but you have to know which are productive and which are not.

One of the tracking methods 1 use is that of tracking the articles by their titles.

The way 1 do it is I create original titles for my articles, using the google search tool. I put in my suggested article title, in quotes, into the google search tool, and if it comes back with ‘no results’ then 1 can be reasonably sure no one has written an article (or anything, for that matter) by the same name as I am planning to use.

If the search results come back with results, then 1 will alter the proposed title until the results come back with ‘no results’.

Then I write and submit my article, using this unique title. Within just a few days after submission, 1 can put that title again in quotes into the google search engine, and very quickly I can see how many articles I have in circulation with that title.

This allows me to individually test different article directories, different article submission services, or different article distribution services.

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Because I am big tester online, meaning that I test just about everything that I do to make sure that I am not wasting my time, I create duplicate squeeze pages and use a different one for different article directories. This allows me to track the traffic that goes to each squeeze page to determine how effective a particular article directory is for my purpose. I also use different autoresponders for each of my squeeze pages, so that I can also test the conversion rates of the different article directories.

I think that one of the main reasons that I have been able to succeed so quickly online while others have not is that I am a pretty stringent tester. I believe that everything can be tested, and that everything that is going to be effective will be effective pretty quickly. Now, for article writing, it can take a few weeks and a few dozen articles before you have clear indications of success or failure with a particular directory or process, but no more than a few weeks.

Unfortunately, I get emails regularly from people who are still struggling with something online that hasn’t been working for a year or more.

Although you must be committed to the long term process of internet marketing if you are going to be successful, you must not spend too much time on something that isn’t working. That is not to say that you cannot continue to make adjustments, especially when you are just getting started and are learning, but if a new traffic source or article directory isn’t pulling in a few weeks…it probably never will.

Now one thing that you can do when you are testing, is to always be testing multiple things at one time, then you will have some things that do better than others, and you can drop the poorer things and add in new things, rather than testing and eliminating one thing at a time.

When I first got started online, I would test as many as 10 different traffic sources at one time, keep the best few, make changes, add more, and keep testing. As you know by now, my current emphasis on article marketing has been due to the phenomenal success and income I have received via articles and article submission.

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When you first start writing articles, especially if you have not written much before or lately, it will be natural that your articles are not going to flow easily and naturally. That will change as you write more articles, especially if you are making an effort at reading a correcting your articles, and perhaps even having a friend or family member read them and take their suggestions.

Remember, if you ask a family member or friend to proof something for you, always be appreciative of their help, and do not let them know that you disagree with a comment they have made. You see, if they are afraid you will be defensive when they offer honest criticism, they will simply begin to withhold the honest criticism and tell you the article looks good. You do not want that. The more criticism, the better. You see, you can always choose to ignore the criticism, but if you do not receive it at all, you will not be able to improve your writing or make the necessary adjustments to become a better writer.

Another very useful technique for proofreading your own work is to read it out loud, word for word. You see, when you read it silently, you might tend to overlook some small words or prepositions that your brain simply scans over, but a fresh reader would pick them up immediately. By reading it aloud, you will catch many of your mistakes.

Take some time to read online articles by other writers, and make note of the ones you like. What are they doing differently than you are doing? Are they writing more or less, with stronger or weaker language, at a higher or lower level? If you are a scientist, for example, you may be used to communicating at a different level of vocabulary than the average person reading your articles, so you might need to make some adjustments to make your articles more readable.

If you are genuinely having a difficult time writing at any level at all, look into an online correspondence writing course.

But at the same time, do not allow your lack of writing ability stop you from writing articles. Write and publish at whatever skill level you currently possess, and you will get better over time. Do not allow the fear of not writing perfect articles stop you from making money online or developing a web business.

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There's learning the easy way (from reading and the experience and wisdom of others), and there's learning the hard way (from our own failures). When you're an entrepreneur, there will probably be both.

You might think that being a lifelong learner is a strange skill for an entrepreneur. Really, it's just the opposite. The mindset of a lifelong learner is teachability. It says, "Whatever is going on, I know I can learn from it." Can you see how that attitude can change adversity into an advantage?

Learning Lessons from Setbacks

In You Can Do It Too: 20 Essential Things Every Budding Entrepreneur Should Know, Rachael Bridge discusses 20 entrepreneurs who failed in business and then went on to become multimillionaires. Each one offers some advice based on the mistakes they made.

Kim Fletcher, an adviser with Business Link in Kent, says: ‘You need to be able to detach yourself from it. If you regard failure as being something personal, you will not be able to take a step outside it and look at it dispassionately. You have to be able to say, did I make the right decision or the wrong decision? What information didn’t I have that would have helped me make a better decision that would not have taken me down this route?’

He says a vital element of being able to learn from your mistakes is analyzing the type of failure you experienced so you can find out the reason for it. Normally, on closer inspection, it will be obvious what caused it. ‘Is it a failure because you lost money, or because you lost a customer, or because you lost a person in your business? Perhaps you were far too engaged in the technology at the expense of delivering what the customer wanted?

Daniel Ronen, an advisor from DoS UK, says the big benefit of making a mistake is that it gives you time to reflect: ‘Failure forces you to stop, look, think and act. That is the cycle everyone should be doing in business. The problem is that people are so busy doing what they are doing that they do not stop and take a hard look at what is working, what is not working and what needs to change. But with failure you are actually forced to stop what you are doing and start thinking about it again.’

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And then there are insights that can change your life. Autoletic thinking turns problems into challenges to be met and learned from. It is an approach that will change your life if you practice it.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, a remarkable book in which he discusses how our thinking can enhance our quality of life. He explains how a rich, strong, powerful person is no more in control of his consciousness than someone who is sickly, poor, weak, or oppressed. The difference is in whether he sees challenges as threats or as opportunities for action.

What he calls the autotelic self refers to someone who has the ability to translate potential threats into enjoyable challenges, and thus has an internal balance. The term autotelic self means a person who has self-contained goals. For most people, goals are shaped by biological needs and social conventions - things which are outside the self. The difference is that the autotelic self, or the person who is capable of defining things for himself, is also capable of transforming threats into non-threatening challenges. This can be done with a simple change of perspective, a shift in consciousness: that is, seeing a threat as a challenge that you can overcome. Once you can do that, the steps are simple;

Be crystal clear about the goal. Once you know exactly what the goal is, you have an understanding of what is needed to meet it. Then you can decide on a series of actions necessary to accomplish the goal.

You can modify these actions as needed in order to meet the goal.

Become involved in the activity -- This means commitment. This means action. Whether things are going your way or not, you consistently take action with the next best steps. This demands concentration, commitment, and follow through.

Pay attention to what is happening - This really means that the project becomes more important than your own feelings about what is happening. Your concentration is on the results of the project. You invest your energy in the project. You are committed, you are involved -it’s about the project, not about you.

Enjoying the experience - the autotelic self is able to set goals, develop skills, be sensitive to feedback, get involved, and look past obstacles. The benefit of learning to be an autotelic personality is that anything that happens can be a source of joy because it is a source of learning and step to the next goal. In other words, there are no failures, only learning experiences.

This approach to thinking can mean the difference between living life in fear or living life in joy. Developing autotelic thinking will give you the ability to transform random events into learning experiences that eventually result in success. Life is change - by definition and for everyone. Seeing that as a challenge to be accepted, enjoyed, and built on is the “secret” to successful living.