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Seven Sure Fire
Recipes For Internet Failure
By Terry Dean
This article is quite a bit different
from our usual publication. Instead of showing you how to succeed, today I
am going to show you how to fail. Below are seven recipes for the
surefire failure of your web site. I will show you how to cure each of
these faulty recipes underneath each listing. Once you know the steps that cause
failure, you can avoid them. Failure Recipe #1: Sell Something
You Don't Understand. Do you want to know one of my pet
peeves? It is when someone comes to me asking how they should sell the new
book they wrote on "Internet marketing." My question is...If they wrote the
book on it, why are they asking for my advice? This is a Surefire recipe for Internet
failure...You shouldn't be trying to sell something you don't know,
understand, and aren't an expert in. In other words, don't sell an Internet
marketing product if you haven't made money in Internet marketing. Don't jump on a business opportunity
just because someone you know is promoting it. Find something that you
love. Then, build a business out of that. If you love gardening, then find a way
to develop a web site and product around that. If you love mountain bikes,
then create a web site about that. If you are always on the golf course,
then create a theme out of that. Review golf courses and golf clubs. Sell
golf videos on your site. Joint Venture with a travel company and offer
golf getaways. The most successful online sites are
not in the "business opportunity" field. They are special interest sites
built around specific themes. Failure Recipe #2: Don't Add Your
Personality. Don't try to compete with corporate
sites with your little $100 domain. They have the huge advertising budget
to overcome their site mistakes, but you don't. You must use your secret
weapon...YOU. Many people are ashamed to do this,
but you absolutely have to add a little bit of you into your web sites.
Your visitors are not looking for another corporate site. They are looking
for real solutions to their problems, and they want them to come from a
real human being. Include your name on your site. Give
your phone number and personal email address. Tell them facts about why
they should listen to you. What experiences or credibility do you have in
the field? When you write something for your
site, let it include your personality. Include your opinions. In other
words, be interesting to the people who visit you. Failure Recipe #3: Ignore Your
Traffic Stats. Where does most of your traffic come
from? Ask that question of 90% of the webmasters out there, and they will
just give you a blank look. They have no idea where their traffic comes
from. This is a serious mistake and one you
will have to correct if you have any ambitions for your site at all.
Virtually every hosting company you could possibly purchase your site from
comes with some type of tracking features. If you don't know what your
hosting company currently offers, ask them.
Examine your stats to find out where
your traffic is coming from. What search engines do they use to find you?
What keywords did they use? Who else is linking to you? Which pages do they visit first? Which
section of your web site do they go to the most after they visit the front
page? These are the types of questions your traffic stats should be
telling you. Once you have a chance to look at
them, increase promotion in whatever areas are working. If you notice that
you are getting a lot of hits from a specific search engine, increase your
promotion on that engine. If you receive most of your hits through links
on other sites, then work more on creating links. If you notice your traffic surges
every time an ezine publishes one of your articles, then send out more
articles for ezines to use. Keep on doing whatever is currently working
for you! Cancel the rest. Failure Recipe #4: Don't Collect
Email Addresses. Sites which only have one shot to sell
their visitors are eventually going to fail. You have to create a sales
system where you can follow up on them again and again. The best way to do this is to create
your own ezine. You could also offer a special series of reports which are
sent out to your prospects by email every couple of days or every week.
Either method will increase your web site sales and increase your profits. Think about it this way. If you can't
get a prospect to commit to you by giving you their email address, then
there is no way you can sell something to that prospect. So, focus on
collecting the email address when someone visits your site. Offer your ezine (or your special
series of reports) on every page your of site. Give free ebook bonuses for
subscribing. Offer other incentives for subscribing. Build the list and at
the same time make your first product offer to them. So, you are still
doing a sales presentation, but you get to follow-up at the same time.
I will venture to say that your actual
web site serves two primary purposes. It is there to give you the basic
credibility so that they subscribe to your email publication, and it is
there to help you take online orders. For most businesses, those are the
two most effective purposes of the entire site! Failure Recipe #5: Sell Shoddy
Products. If you are out to fail, then sell some
shoddy products. It used to be said that if one customer had a bad
experience they would tell 10 of their friends about it. Now, with the
global efficiency of the Internet, instead of them just telling their
friends, they may tell thousands of people about it. When you sell a really good product,
the news gets around. When you sell a poor product, the news gets around
even faster. So, make sure any product you sell is
your best work. Figure out a way to add additional bonuses to it. Give the
customer more than they expected. You have to "WOW" them. Give them faster shipping then they
expected. Purchase reprint rights to someone else's product to throw in as
a bonus. Call them up and ask them if they need anything else. Go beyond
the call of duty and your name will begin to become well known around the
Internet. Failure Recipe #6: Build It and Sit
on It. The phrase "Build It and They Will
Come" is a great statement to use in a movie, but it doesn't work on the
web. Too many webmasters spend thousands of dollars building a web site,
and then they sit on it. They don't do anything with it. If you want traffic, then you have to
go out and get the traffic. There are two commodities that you can use to
build traffic to your site:
#1: You can spend money building
traffic through offline advertising, banner ads, ezine ads, and the like. #2: You can spend time writing
articles to submit to ezines, participating in forums, exchanging links,
etc. Spending your time is actually more
productive in 90% of cases then spending your money, but either way it
does cost you something. If you want traffic, you have to advertise. Failure Recipe #7: Do What Everyone
Else is Doing. Most Internet marketing methods only
work until everyone knows about them. Innovations only last so long on the
web. For example, it used to be really easy to get top positions on the
search engines. Now, you really have to work to get those positions
because every market has thousands of competitors who know the secrets to
search engine marketing. You have to do something a little bit
wild and unique to build your traffic bases in most cases. You have to
come up with your own ideas and not just rely on what a few select gurus
are telling you.
If a guru tells a method for building
traffic, then you can rest assured that thousands of marketers will soon
be using that exact method for building traffic. Although the method will
still work, it won't work as well as when it was first invented because of
the increased competition. Learn to use your mind...and then
success in your business will follow. Terry Dean, a 5 year veteran of
Internet marketing, will Take You By The Hand and Show You Exact Results
of All the Internet Marketing Techniques he tests and Uses Every Single
Month" Click here to Find Out More: |
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