Stop,Wasting,Time,and,Money,Pr marketing Stop Wasting Time and Money by Promoting the Wrong Thing

Automation technologies represent a fundamental aspect of any modern industry. The major types of industrial automation solutions, such as DCS, PLC, SCADA, and MES, are used on a large-scale in process and discrete industries.DCS technologie Awhile ago, I got an email from one of the "gurus" I follow and it shocked me. The gist of it was this person wanted to trade services for a household item.To say it floored me would be an understatement.What was worse was a few days later t

PUBLISHERS: You may use this article in your online ezine oron your web site provided you do not change the article. You must also include the resource box at the end of the article.Any links that appear in the body of the article or in theresource box must be hyperlinks and should be made active ifthey are to appear on a web site or in any archive available fromthe Internet.Rights are not granted to use this article in any e-book or any compilation of articles without the express written permission ofthe author. Please contact the author if you would like to usethis article in any other manner: mailto:[email protected]*****************************************************************THE VICTORY LAPby Charles DavidsonToday's Track: Stop Wasting Time and Money by Promoting the Wrong Thing*****************************************************************Hi there! Welcome to another issue of The Victory Lap. Here atthe Victory Lap, you'll learn how to kick your business intooverdrive.There's no hype or fluff here. Just down and dirty, whiteknuckle advice to steer you toward the fast track. Noadvertising. No gimmicks. No shameless promotions. Just thestuff you really need. Plus a kick in the seat to get you toshift into high gear.Sit down . . . buckle up . . . here we go . . .FORGET EVERYTHING ELSEYour opt-in list is THE most important marketing tool you willever have. It is the foundation for everything else you do onthe Internet.Forget about affiliate programs. Forget about web sites. Forget about advertising. At least for right now.If you are starting out in online marketing - or if you've beendoing this for a while - you need to spend time focusing on youropt-in mailing list.Here's why:THE DOWN 'N' DIRTY MBAHere's all you need to know about business . . . Business profits depend on a transaction between a business anda customer. In order to make money online, you MUST havecustomers who make purchases from you.Whether you sell products or services, you need customers. Ifyou promote affiliate programs or network marketingopportunities, you need customers. If you are going to makemoney online, you need customers.Get the point? You gotta have customers. 'Nuff said.Most people understand this concept, but they still make somemajor mistakes when it comes to Internet marketing.CHRYSTAL: A CASE STUDYLet me tell you about my friend, Chrystal.Chrystal heard about how easy it is to make money online. Shestarted surfing for money-making opportunities and stumbled on a few affiliate programs she thought she could promote and makesome good money.So far, so good.Chrystal copied some of the pre-written ads from the affiliateprogram web site to use in her advertising campaign.She changed all of the URLs to include her unique referral IDnumber and then started placing free classified ads all over theInternet. The first few days, she threw everything into it. She spent hours at the computer typing in her ads.Every day for three weeks, Chrystal checked her stats. Everyday, she was disappointed that her hit counts were not gettingbigger and bigger. Worse yet, her sales remained at zero.You can imagine how Chrystal felt at the end of those threeweeks. She was about ready to give up. Her hopes of anInternet fortune seemed to vanish right before her eyes.Sound familiar? Many people take this exact same approach toInternet marketing. No matter what affiliate program youchoose, no matter what advertising copy you come up with, theresults are the same. Nothing.ABOUT TO GIVE UPWhen Chrystal came to me, she was ready to give up. I listenedto her story and I was glad she hadn't thrown any money at heronline marketing. At least she had focused on free advertisingsources.Would her results been much different if she had spent money onadvertising? Maybe. But probably not.Chrystal and I sat down for a long talk about differentapproaches to Internet marketing. As I explained about opt-inlists, I began to see a light bulb go on in her head. She beganto make the connection.She had been doing it all wrong.STARTING OVER WITH A NEW STRATEGYThat night, Chrystal went home and started putting together anonline ezine she could use to build her opt-in list.It only took her about an hour to create the template and puttogether a few bonus gifts she could giveaway as an incentive tosubscribers. After that she spent another couple of hourspromoting her brand new ezine. When she launched her ezine, she only had about 20 subscribers. She advertised her ezine all over the Internet - even to many ofthe same places she had advertised before. Her list began togrow. Slowly and patiently she grew her list until it had a fewthousand subscribers.Now, this didn't happen overnight. Overnight success onlyhappens when people don't see the days, months, or years of hardwork that happened before.It took Chrystal many months of hard work and constantdedication. She worked hard at putting together her ezine. Shetinkered and fine-tuned it. She made it something unique andspecial. She was proud of her effort and she enjoyed tellingpeople about it.And then something happened.In each issue of her ezine, she promoted her affiliate programsand recommended products and services to her loyal subscribers.Every week she made contact with the people who joined her list. As she did, her affiliate commissions started growing. Themore people that joined her list, the more money she made.THE MORAL OF THE STORYSo, what was different this time around?Chrystal advertised at many of the same places. She didn'tspend that much more money on advertising. She still promotedher affiliate programs?So, what did she do differently that allowed her to be moresuccessful?Chrystal made one slight change in her marketing methods and itallowed her to start making money.The difference was in her email list.Here's why . . .THE MAJOR MISTAKE MOST INTERNET MARKETERS MAKEPromoting an affiliate link through ezine and classifiedadvertising is a major mistake. Think about it. If I'm sitting at home looking through my emailand I find an ad that looks interesting, I'll click on it andsee what it has to say.When the web page comes up, I'll spend a few seconds skimmingthe text. If anything grabs my attention, I may hang around alittle longer and read a little more carefully.If I don't like what I see, then I click off and go somewhereelse.And that is probably the last time I ever visit that web siteagain.The owner of that website spent a lot of time and money topromote their website and the only thing I did was come in andlook around for a few seconds. Once I leave, you can bet that Iwill forget all about that website.Doesn't seem to make any sense to advertise like this.And that's exactly what happened to Chrystal. She put out a lotof ads. She even got some hits, but once they clicked away, shelost that prospect forever.RADIO SHACK BUILT AN EMPIRE ON A LISTI remember many years ago, whenever you went into a Radio Shack,whenever you bought something, the sales clerk asked you foryour name and address. It didn't matter if you were buying abattery or a stereo system.By simply taking a few moments to get a customer's name andaddress, Radio Shack was able to build one of the largest mailorder catalog businesses in the United States.They've since stopped collecting this information in order torespect their customer's privacy. They still have an opt-inemail list, however, that customers can request to be added toin order to get their catalogs. They just don't ask for it atthe cash register.GENERATE CUSTOMERS NOT SALESThe main reason you should be promoting your opt-in mailing listrather than an affiliate link is so that you can continue tosend your offers to your customers.You should focus all of your marketing efforts on generatingcustomers and future prospects, not on immediate sales.If you have a list of people who want to receive informationfrom you, you can send them information on a constant basisabout your affiliate programs.They'll become familiar with you and what you have to offer. Pretty soon, they'll start to buy.REPEATED EXPOSURE CREATES SALESThe first time someone visits your affiliate link, they may notwant to buy. But if you keep promoting it to everyone on yourlist, then pretty soon, they'll want what you have. You may notcatch them today, but you may catch them tomorrow. It's assimple as that.It's common knowledge in the advertising industry that aprospect will probably not buy from you on the first exposure toyour offer. You must constantly expose them to what you aretrying to sell. As they build trust in you and begin torecognize your product or service, the walls of objection willstart to come down. When they become more confident in you andyour offer, they will start to think about buying.Mmost people agree that the magic number is between 7 and 10. This is the number of times people will need to see your offerbefore they will even begin to consider putting their cash onthe line.Only through repeated exposure to your offer can you expect yourprospects to become customers.When you own a list, you have a base of customers that you cancontinue to market to month after month and year after year.Instead of an unknown person who clicks on your affiliate linkand then disappears into the abyss of the Internet, you willhave a customer who will grow to trust you over time and beginto act on your recommendations.You will have the ability to generate income at any time simplyby sending an announcement to your opt-in list.The success of your business lies in your list and in how youcontinually market your offers to your list.If you're still promoting affiliate links and websites, then youneed to stop now and focus your time and money in the rightplace.SHIFT TO HIGH GEARYou'll get nothing if you do nothing! Here's are your Victory Lap action steps to help you shift yourbusiness into high gear . . . DECIDE - once and for all - that you will no longer promoteprograms and affiliate links except to your opt-in list. Noexceptions. Stop wasting your time and money. Capture thosenames and email addresses starting today.CREATE an opt-in mailing list. Below you'll find a link for afree autoresponder that you can use to host your opt-in list. It's easy to set up. It's free. There's no excuse. http://www.rapidbizsuccess.com/recommended/get-response.htmEMAIL ME to let me know you've done it! Let me know you'retaking the steps to kick your business into high gear. I'll behappy to subscribe to your opt-in list. Maybe we can even talkabout some joint ventures. mailto:[email protected]?subject=opt-in-start Article Tags: Stop Wasting Time, Stop Wasting, Wasting Time, Into High, Opt-in List, Affiliate Programs, Affiliate Link