********************************************************** ** Be Your Own Guru - Part One ** ** The Condensed Version Of The $100 eBooks They Sell ** **********************************************************
Buy any eBook you want that's written by the gurus. Read all the articles. Call them on the phone. Do whatever you want. The #1 thing most of them will tell you is this.
To make money, real money, on the Web - you must have your own eZine.
There, I just saved you $24.97! (a $143.97 value). And, you didn't have to read a 200 page long eBook filled with 400 affiliate links to get this. The best piece of advice in almost all the books is the same. You must have your own eZine. What, in the old days we called a newsletter.
The reasons are numerous to have your own eZine. I could write a book on the reasons alone. But, to keep it short:
1. You Build Your Own Credibility. As you read this article, and others I've written, my credibility with you increases. At least, if these articles make sense to you. And, so it will with your subscribers. As what you write makes sense to them, your credibility increases. Oh, you will always have some people unsubscribe, but each week your subscriber base should increase.
Now, you may ask, what does credibility have to do with making money on the Net? If you get an email from some anonymous person asking you to buy a new product that they are affiliated with - do you? Or, do you call it spam and delete it? If you get a special edition of an eZine you read on a regular basis, and the editor recommends that same product - are you more likely to check it out? That's what credibility counts for on the Net, or in the real world.
2. Have A Ready Made Mailing List. What do you do when a new, hot affiliate program comes out? Or, an ebook that you bought resell rights to? Most people run to the search engines to get listed, or flood the FFA pages that nobody sees with their listing, or get their banner that nobody will pay attention to on the banner exchanges. But, not you!
You have your own eZine. You may only have 100 subscribers so far. Maybe you've made it to 1000 subscribers. It does not matter. You have a ready-made mailing list. As soon as you get those resell rights, or sign-up for that brand new affiliate program - get your keyboard ready. You are sending out a special issue of your eZine. In it you write your own testimonial for the ebook or program & expound upon the benefits for your subscribers if they join.
Now, you don't need to worry about a 1%-2% click-through rate on your banners, with a low percent of those actually buying. You don't need to wait 3 months for the search engines to list you - if at all. You don't need to wade through 3000 confirmation emails from the FFA pages. You have your own highly targeted mailing list. Your own eZine. And, you have spent months, maybe even years building your credibility with your subscribers.
You are someone they trust. If you tell 100 subscribers it's a good deal, maybe five or ten will buy in. If you tell 1000 subscribers, maybe that becomes 50 or 100 who buy in. To get 100 to buy in through the use of banners, you may need to buy 70,000 to 100,000 impressions. But, now you are doing it the way the "big boys" are. You have your own eZine & mailing list. You have presold your program because you have presold yourself!
One caveat. Be careful that you only push programs or ebooks that are good, and have the potential to really benefit your subscribers. If you get in the habit of pushing any old thing that comes along, you lose your hard earned credibility, and with it, the trust of your subscribers.
3. Promote Yourself! Eventually you will have 1000's of weekly, or biweekly, subscribers. In each issue you will be promoting yourself by helping them. In each issue, share a tip you used to increase sales, increase webpage hits, increase your subscription rate. Give examples of how your subscribers can use these same methods to help themselves.
And, with each tip you give that works, you increase your own authority, credibility, and reliability with your subscribers. You are beginning to become a guru to them. So, when you recommend a good product to them, they will buy! Just don't get in the habit of recommending too many, too fast. As Yoda might say, "to the dark side of the Net, will this lead!"
4. Promote Yourself!! See above explanation.
5. Promote Yourself!!! By George, I think you've got it!
By now, you should see the importance of having your own eZine. To effectively sell on the Web, you need one. It doesn't matter if you have anything to say or not. Steal your content. Oops! Did I say that? The fact is, there's plenty of free content for you to use. You'll be suprised at how many people want you to publish THEIR article in YOUR eZine. After all, they want to become gurus, too!
Part Two deals with this subject - Content for your eZine.
********************************************************** Dan Levy is the webmaster of Take "My Freebies ... Please!" which has been online at http://www.den-tex.com/ since 1995.
This article is not in the "public domain", but permission is conditionally granted for re-distribution. Conditions being: this article is left intact with no edits (including this paragraph), and this article must be distributed free. The following notice must also be attached:
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