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For vendors planning a larger operation, it might be beneficial to consider a self-managed shopping cart option. Self-managed shopping carts have several advantages over managed plans like ClickBank. First, you have complete control over your process. You decide pricing, commissions, who can be an affiliate and who cannot, which payment processors to use, where to host your files, and when and if to provide support and refunds. In short, every decision is yours to make.

Most shopping carts include an autoresponder to allow you to contact your customers after the sale. You have the ability to fine-tune your sales funnel to steer buyers efficiently from one purchase to the next, promoting each one in turn and never missing the opportunity for an upsell or cross-sell. Every product you sell is housed in one convenient location, which is good if every product falls within a specific market, but probably not a good choice for the One Hit Wonder vendors, whose credibility might be damaged if buyers knew they produced a variety of products in a number of niches.

But there is a disadvantage to this method as well – every decision is yours to make. You have complete and total control. That might sound like a good thing – and for many marketers it is – but it can quickly become overwhelming if you're going it alone.

Shopping carts come in two flavors: hosted and self-hosted. Hosted shopping carts live on the host's server, as do your products. So you never have to worry about bandwidth issues, programming problems, upgrades, or server crashes. For this peace of mind, however, you will pay a monthly fee. Fees range from $30 per month for very basic service, to more than $150 per month. Some, like 1ShoppingCart, even charge extra for technical support.

Self-hosted shopping carts are installed on your server (usually where you host your website), as are your products. If you install a script that interferes with its function, you are responsible for either fixing it, or hiring a programmer to fix it for you. If your server goes down – as can happen on inexpensive hosting plans – your customers won't be able to buy from you. If your software needs to be upgraded, you will have to do that as well.

Even with all that, many people choose self-hosted carts because they only have to pay for them once. The cost can range from free to more than $2000 depending on the features, but there are no monthly fees involved. In addition, self-hosted carts can be easier to customize (since you have access to the code) and to integrate with your existing website, autoresponder, and payment processor.

Yet another option for digital goods delivery is through a membership site script. Scripts such as Amember, Digital Access Pass, and WishList Member provide easy gateways to payment processors while protecting your downloads and allowing you to have affiliates. Many marketers use membership scripts rather than fussing with a fullfeatured shopping cart. All membership scripts are self-hosted, and prices range from $150 to more than $300 depending on the number of sites for which you intend to use the script.

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This is as either an affiliate or as a vendor, look at the market and try to find out what other people are selling - and what their backend offers are.

Look for affiliate programs that you can send people to later as well.

The more products and the more affiliate programs the better, you need a funnel that people go through where they buy multiple products over time which increases your value per visitor.

The more sales you can make to your customer list then the more you can pay to get people onto it, the company who can pay the most up front to get their customers can beat all the competition when using paid traffic and steal all their traffic!

Also if someone has come out with a series of information products already then you can see how well they are selling and it saves you the hard work of thinking up ideas for multiple products!

Always, if at all possible, capture the name and email address of your visitors. Offer them something of value for giving you their information and then follow up with them over time with highly relevant offers for different products.

A customer who spends $50 with you today may spend $500 with you over the next 12 months – and it didn’t cost you anything to make the extra $450!

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A trademark registration is renewable. If a trademark owner wishes to do so, he may maintain a registration indefinitely by paying renewal fees, using the trademark and defending the registration.

However, a trademark or brand can become unenforceable if it becomes the generic term for a particular type of product or service – a process called "genericide." If a mark undergoes genericide, people are using the term generically, not as a trademark to exclusively identify the particular source of the product or service. One famous example is "thermos" in the United States.

Because trademarks are registered with governments, some countries or trademark registries may recognize a mark, while others may have determined that it is generic and not protectable as a trademark in that registry. For example, the drug "salicylic acid" (2-acetoxybenzoic acid) is better known as aspirin in the United States – a generic term. In Canada, however, "aspirin" is still a trademark of the German company Bayer. Bayer lost the trademark after World War I, when the mark was sold to an American firm. So many copycat products entered the marketplace during the war that it was deemed generic just three years later.

Terms can be deemed "generic" in two ways. First, any potential mark can be deemed "generic" by a trademark registry, that refuses to register it. In this instance, the term has no secondary meaning that helps consumers identify the source of the product; the term serves no function as a "mark". Second, a mark, already in use, may be deemed generic by a court or registry after the mark is challenged as generic – this is known as "genericide". In this instance, the term previously had a secondary meaning, but lost its source-identifying function.

To avoid "genericide", a trademark owner must balance between trying to dominate the market, and dominating their market to such an extent that their product name defines the market. A manufacturer who invents an amazing breakthrough product which cannot be succinctly described in plain English (for example, a vacuum-insulated drinking flask) will likely find its product described by the trademark ("Thermos"). If the product continues to dominate the market, eventually the trademark will become generic ("thermos").

However, "genericide" is not an inevitable process. In the late 1980s "Nintendo" was becoming synonymous with home video game consoles but Nintendo was able to reverse this process through marketing campaigns. Xerox was also successful in avoiding its name becoming synonymous with the act of photocopying (although, in some languages (Russian) and countries (like India), it became generic).

Trademarks currently thought to be in danger of being generic include Jello, Band-Aid, Rollerblading, Google, Spam, Hoover, and Sheetrock. Google vigorously defends its trademark rights. Although Hormel has resigned itself to genericide [5], it still fights attempts by other companies to register "spam" as a trademark in relation to computer products [6].

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Before we move onto the money making part of this system (getting the traffic and sales) let’s just briefly discuss your auto-responder sequence. Remember you’re building a list of buyers. These buyers need to be looked after carefully to ensure they remain responsive to your emails.

Start your auto-responder sequence with a few emails with top quality content. Inject your personality and encourage subscribers to email you with their feedback and questions. Make sure you reply to every email you receive.

After the first few emails, follow the 75% content – 25% pitch rule. Only one of every four emails should be a promotion for a product. Even when you are promoting a product, include some quality tips embedded within your promo. This will seriously boost your conversions.

Make sure you never sell crap products. Promote just one crap product and you could lose all trust your subscribers ever had to you.

View your subscribers as individuals, rather than a group of people to make money from. View each person as a friend and treat them the way you would treat a friend. Do this and your relationship with them will blossom and your profits will grow.