One of the most common mistakes people make when it comes to putting their items up for bid on Internet auction sites - especially large ones like eBay - is that they end up putting what they want to sell in the wrong category.

This is a very common occurrence on sites like eBay. How does this happen? Most people who put things up to be sold have one thought - it has to sell. They don’t spend any time trying to figure out what the best place to put the item up for bid is.

The category you place your product in is ESSENTIAL to your success. If you place your product in a category that is not correct or specific enough you will not make the most money that you can with your auction!

Why? Because, if you put it in the wrong category, the people who will be looking at it will not be the people most interested in buying it. They’ll be wanting the things that BELONG in that category . . . and you’re auction bidding will end up ending at a price much lower than you could have potentially gotten had you placed it in the right category!

Study the auction sites you plan to use. Check out the categories. See how specific you can get . . . and make sure to get your product in the right category when you get ready for auction!

Since there are so many people who’ve gotten their products in the wrong categories, there’s actually a way you can use it to your advantage . . .

Want a great way to find cheap product to sell over the Internet auctions? Here’s something you could try. Search through the categories on the auction site. Find products that are obviously in the wrong category. When their auction time comes around, bid on them!

As we stated earlier, since that product is presented in the wrong category, it won’t bring in nearly what it would have if it had been in the right category. But what if you were to win the auction, turn around, and offer it in the category that it really should be in?

That’s right . . . you could potentially make a huge profit! This is how to cash-in on a simple mistake that many auctions make!

Remember, people who are interested in something stand a higher chance of buying it that people who aren’t interested. And the more interested they are, the more they’re willing to pay for it! Use this to your advantage - both ways!

Here’s another thing about competition: the people, when people buy one thing, chances are they’ll buy from you if they’ll buy from your competitor. From what we’ve seen, there is plenty of business to go around. There’s plenty of business for everyone.

If somebody buys from you once, they’ll buy from you again and again, and they’ll buy from your competitors, and they’re insatiable. For years, we have rented our mailing list out to other companies who sell the same types of products and services that we sell, and we get additional revenue every month from renting our mailing list out.

In this article I want to direct your attention to another great source of information that is yours for the picking, almost always absolutely free, and can be used anyway that you want.

It’s the Consumer Information Center out of Pueblo, Colorado.

You’ve seen all the ads, the little consumer information booklets, pamphlets, and what have you that you can order for fifty cents or a buck. They’ve got millions. They are basically the publishing outlet or sales outlet arm for the federal government’s publication service.

They have a website at http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov where you’ll find categories such as: cars, children, education, employment, housing, health, food, money, small business, travel, and more. There’s a button link there that actually says “and more”. Click on these button links and you’ll find that there are dozens of their pamphlets you can order on-line.

You don’t have to order a thing. What’s really wonderful about web technology is they are now making these pamphlets and the information in them available to you to read right on-line by clicking on the pamphlets. Many of them come in Adobe Acrobat format, which means they’re already typeset and looking really good.

Now here’s the secret. When it produces one of these booklets, the federal government CANNOT COPYRIGHT THAT MATERIAL. It is owned by every citizen of the United States. It was produced with taxpayer dollars.

Now I want to caution you: there are some pamphlets and information, such as some from this Consumer Information Center makes available, that are produced and copyrighted by various companies for the federal government. They may place a restriction such as it being free to use only for educational purposes. Most, however, are yours free of charge.

There’s one drawback to this information - most of it is deadly, dry, and boring. It’s filled with the facts, figures, and information you need from federal government agencies. You can then wrap this information into your own products very easily, and flesh out and use snippets of them.

In fact, what I found really fascinating is some of these pages and online pamphlets are actually designed as very pretty websites that stand on their own. You can literally put together links on your website that jump to these pages and offer the information on your website, as if it was from your website but jump people over to that page and then come back to your site. You would not even have to take the information, just push people over to it.

Now the secret to making this stuff...

The reason I said it’s dry is because of what it’s missing. The one element that I wanted to bring up that is the one thing people most want to know about is other people. They want information, but I think one of the key secrets is that the real power of having other people create your product for you is that it’s people telling you this.

It’s different people, you’ve got more then one person involved in that product, people telling stories, war stories, and what have you, about how they’ve survived this or that or come up with this or that new technique or new idea.

It’s the information being imparted through people. I wanted to mention that because it really does have a lot of power. People are the power. Look at People Magazine. I thought, what an idiot idea. That shows you where I went with that. And they’re one of the most popular magazines in America today. The bottom line is everybody wants to know all about people.

One of the techniques many marketers use to avoid refunds is to let prospects and/or customers have a sample of their product to try out. ZERO REFUNDS!! This is how to get virtually no refunds on everything you sell!

By supplying that prospect or customer with a sample, they can get a taste of what you really have to offer, and whether or not it’s what they themselves really want to purchase. This way, you better qualify your prospects and customers, and can zero in on the ones that are going to make you the most money with that product.

Unfortunately, there are negative angles to some sample techniques. Producing a sample product can cost you money. If you’re offering an informational product over a website or such, you could simple create an e-mail sample product, which wouldn’t cost you anything.

If you are not in a position to do so, it can indeed be expensive to have hundreds of people asking for free samples. Plus, most people will quickly sign up for something that’s being given away for free, no matter whether it’s really interesting to them or not. They don’t care what it is, they just know they’re getting something for free.

This can be a very bad thing. Many people could end up getting your free sample, but only a few might end up actually buying the product.

One way you could curb the people who’ll get anything for free and qualify good prospects at the same time is to charge a small price for the sample of your product. This way, really interested people will only have to pay a couple of dollars to try out what you have to offer, while those who’re just looking for something free won’t want to pay for it, and they’ll leave you alone.

A sample should contain a very limited amount of usefulness - it should present the customer with enough information to try it out to a limited degree and see whether or not it will work for them. That’s the whole point - to try it out and see if it will work for them or not!

Then, once they’ve found that the sample was good, they’re going to want to buy the full product - and you’ll have justified sales coming in!

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking the customer is just a name on the list. People call us about lists as if they’re something from another planet. All they are is a group of buyers. A group of friends actually.

You need to think of these people as your group. They’re your pals. Gather them all up, take good care of them, talk to them, and communicate with them. It’s a group and you might as well tell them it’s a group and make it a membership.

We are speaking from experience when we talk about associations. Years ago a friend of ours was giving a talk on publicity. He would be paid $1,500.00 to come and speak for the day in various businesses. Ted Thomas, for example, had him speak to his different groups over, and over, and over. At least once a month he would drop in there and speak for one day to his people. These were Harvard Business School graduates, so he was really flattered.

But then one day we told him, “You know, you wrote a letter for us that made us several million dollars. Russ has written us a letter that has made us millions and more. But look, Russ puts his information into a package and sells thousands of them. And you’re standing up and talking, which is fine. Why don’t you put it in a book and write a letter like you wrote for us?”

He did that and he started mailing that out and it started selling that book. It was doing well, and then he came up with a catchy name. Like what Russ talked about, the other people have this club, and that club, and he called it The Financial Freedom Association of America.

That made his sales just go through the roof! The idea of belonging to a financial freedom association was very appealing. We think some people sent the $29.95 just to join up. They didn’t really care what the book said. It was like an extra gift to them. They just wanted to belong, to be a part of this group. This is how The Association Concept Can Help You Make Millions Of Dollars On The Internet!

He sold 100,000 memberships at $29.95 and had $3,000,000,000.00 in gross sales. We think a big part of it was the association - the club.

Look at SAMS Club. Everywhere you go there’s a SAMS Club. You have to pay to be a member, but look at the benefits of membership. You get discounts!

They are wide open and anyone can go there, and you can’t really talk in confidence there because the whole world might see what you’re talking about. This one is a private consultation. It is like you can talk to us anytime you want, even if it’s late at night and you have a question. You can type it into your email, or rather post it, and then we’ll see it later and we’ll answer it. It’s an amazing concept. And we’re making a fortune with the private discussion group.

Now there’s discussion group software out there you can get for free, and there’s also password protection software you can get. When someone pays you, you assign them a password.

A lot of sites are going to this model now. Stock tips, for example, are being given out on one site. You have to pay to be a member, but every day you go there and they talk about what stocks they think are going up and down and what not. It’s a big, big concept.

Think about a private discussion group. Because of the association concept, you’re part of this association that other people are not part of. It can help you make millions of dollars on the Internet.

Using small ads and small postcards to drive people to your web site is how to use the Internet to leverage your way to massive on-line profits! It gives you leverage that you never had before, because you don’t have to spend all of that money on printing and postage. Now your small postcard does the work that before took a lot of money to do.

We’re talking about working out an arrangement with a couple hundred other web sites out there. Now you’re talking about multiplying yourself and getting yourself tremendous leverage. Who says that little people, average people don’t have more chances now then ever before?

We feel that the Internet age, and the direct marketing age, which have become very prominent in the last twenty or thirty years, gives people like us - and people like YOU - a chance to compete with the big boys. The big boys are the slower, big corporations. They have to get together with a board of directors to decide to do anything.

We’ve heard Bill Gates on public television saying that he lives in mortal fear that there is someone out there working in their bedroom or garage that’s going to come up with a better program than Windows. The commentator said “Do you really worry about that?” He said “Hey, that’s how I got started. I’m sure there is someone just as clever, or bright, or more so, than me.”

We don’t even have to be so clever and bright. What we have to do is learn how to market. If we market non stop and if we use this free publicity tactic, there is no stopping us. The Internet is a vehicle that works perfectly because nobody cares if you’re a giant, billion dollar corporation or if you’re working out of a spare bedroom. If you have information, product, or services they want, they’ll buy it from you just as quickly as they’ll buy it from Sun Microsystem, IBM, or anybody else.

If you’re selling one $20 product on your one web site, you’re going to make $20. If you’re selling one a week you’re going to make $20 a week. If you go out there and work out an arrangement with a hundred web site owners, that same $20 now becomes $2000 a week, which is a $100,000 a year. Go out there and initially, over a period of time, work out an arrangement with a thousand web site owners, which is definitely not impossible. It will take consistent work on a weekly or daily basis.

That’s $20,000 a week now, that’s a million dollars a year. You’re just selling that one $20 product still, but you’re leveraging yourself out. See how powerful that is?

Now the average person can have more power than ever before!

And, when you’re leveraging and working these joint ventures, and you get that product out on a thousand web sites, that just increases the odds of millions of people pouring over web pages all day long finding your product and hitting it six or seven times, sometimes. They say, “Gosh, I’ve heard about this. I keep hearing about this. I’ve got to buy it!”

If you just work at this on a consistent, daily basis, within a matter of almost no time at all, you could actually have joint ventures with a thousand different web sites. One $20 product a week is a million dollars a year.

Basically, it’s all with NO COST advertising. You reach these web site owners and develop the joint venture with them. It just took your time . . .and it took no money!

A simple trick you can use to learn how to become a master copywriter is to write your copy as if you were writing to a friend. The more you know about your market, the more likely you are to sell them something. So, try to think of the one friend you have that would be the most interested in your product. Then write your copy to them.

Don’t actually use their name, but put a lot of “you’s” in the copy. Make it personal, as if you were writing a letter telling them about this product they will love. Tell them all about it and how it is something they want and need, and then tell them where they can get it!

You will be surprised how easy it is to write super sales letters when you take this approach! Mail order is a personal sales medium. Your ad may be run in a publication with over a million readers, but only one person at a time is reading your ad. They need to feel like your ad was written directly to them! The more the person reading your ad feels like you are writing to them, the more responsive they tend to be!

So, put some personalization in your letter. Without using specific names, use lots of “you’s” and tell them why they will benefit personally from your product! When you write to them as a person, they will begin to trust you. Once they trust you, they are more likely to become a sale!

Now, finding a sponsor ...

Another thing to do is find a single sponsor for a book. This can be a related book - say you do an e-book on maintaining your garden and doing landscaping professionally, tips and tricks that you can’t beat. Now you’ve got an entire world of companies that are related to this topic.

Scotts Turf Builder, the people that make Toro mowers, and it may not be anybody that big. Maybe it’s going to be an online company that sells catalogs that has an online catalog of garden seeds and a gardening informational book or material that you need. Again, these are great possible sponsors for a book like this.

In this case, you just determine how much you want to make from the book and they put up the money that you are paid, and you distribute the book free again. Actually offer it to them free, particularly if they’re an online business. Give away the book and always include an ad for your web site where you have other informational products that are available free of charge, and where you tell people the details on how they can also sign up to distribute the book free.

You have to pick the magazine that caters to the same specific market that your product or service is designed to serve.

If you have a general purpose product like the book we discussed earlier, How to Stretch Your Paycheck, you have a product that can work in many different publications. Some products can work in a lot of markets.

Products should be matched up with the publications that cater the most to the market the product was produced for. For an entrepreneur magazine you would want to send a product dealing with how a person can get started in business. For Forbes magazine you would send something that dealt with investing.

You should match up your product or service with the market that the magazine reaches. The better you can marry those two, the more potential for the product or service to make more money! This is how to “target” your news release to make up to 100 times more money!

In this article I’m going to give you a great idea for a hot product that someone could literally create within a twenty-four hour period.

It’s a directory. Directories have been very popular. In fact, directories are so popular that there’s a directory of directories out there now! If you get to a large library in your area, I strongly recommend that you go look at the directories, because you will discover that directories are hot sellers.

There are a lot of directories out there being sold on a variety of different topics. For example, there are directories of bed and breakfasts all across the U.S., arts and crafts shows, vacation spots that welcome pets, or discounts for seniors. All these are just a compilation of sources that offer a particular thing to a particular group of people.

The best thing about this type of a product is that you don’t have to do any creative writing. Basically you’re compiling a variety of different sources that a niche market would be interested in.

This can be very simple to do. I think that, with the Internet, when you tie these two together it’s a powerful tool. When you talk to people about the Internet, of course, there’s a lot of entertainment that will come up. But a lot of people use it for research.

If you want to create a product very quickly, then the Internet is a tremendous tool you can use for creating a directory within twenty-four hours - in fact, maybe even less -because you can get on there very quickly, and you’ll know exactly what you’re looking for.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re creating a directory on freebies - specifically we’ll use free things for children as our example. You can get on the Internet on any of the search engines, and now you’re looking for companies and large corporations that offer freebies for children.

Within a couple of hours, you can have a big list of companies that offer freebies to children. You can compile that list into a print product and immediately have a product to sell!

Because the Internet is always growing, you’re always going to have new sources of information for your directories. I think that’s another strong point about directories in general - with the constant updating, people have a reason to buy the new version year after year.

The great thing about a directory is the fact that, not only can you sell it long term, but the information in the directory, over time, will get outdated. The directory that someone buys today, maybe in two or three years, is going to be completely outdated. They’re going to want to come back to you again and again to purchase updated directories.

You might have a customer who purchases an initial directory from you. Maybe next year when you have your newest edition, and the year after that when you have another new edition, they will constantly come back to purchase that new edition.

There are a variety of companies that offer directories. They offer drop ship directories and import directories that continuously update their directories. They have most of their customers coming back year after year to purchase the new updated versions. In fact, it’s become easy to create profit centers for their business.

There’s really no creative writing involved. You might write an introduction, but your real time and effort will be put into the research. Fortunately, with the Internet as your tool, you can get your research down to a very small amount of time instead of spending weeks or months in your local library. The Internet has made research very quick, very fast, and very easy.

In many of the promotions we send out now, we give people three ways to respond. They can call our office 24 hours a day, and even if we’re not there, we will return their call. They can fax their order, or they can mail it in.

It is important for you to make it as easy as you can for people to order what you have to offer. People are busy and tend to procrastinate. Your offer is an intrusion in their life, and you have to make it as easy as you possibly can for them to respond. Otherwise, you will not meet your full profit potential.

Once they turn their attention away from your materials and start to focus on something else, the chances are high that they will put off accepting your offer.

There is a small window of time for your promotions to work. Use it to its full advantage! Making it as easy as you can for them to accept what you have is one way to make the most money from every ad you run!

We’ve been using “ghostwriters” to help us create our informational products since 1989. It’s easier than you may think. Here’s a simple strategy we’ve used to make huge amounts of money:

1) Come up with an idea for a book, manual, or report you think will sell very well to a specific group of people.

2) Now, think of all the benefits that such a book should have. Think of all the great things that could be included in this book. Try to come up with at least 50 main benefits.

3) Then write an advertisement to sell this imaginary book. Make this ad very compelling by telling the reader all the great things they can get by buying your book.

4) Now it’s time to hire a ghostwriter. Just run an ad like this one in your daily paper:

5) Writer wanted for small publishing company. Up to $10.00 an hour. No experience necessary. Work from home, choose your own hours. Call (____) ___-_____ for more information.

6) You’ll get a flood of calls from the ad above. Believe me, there are many people who want to get paid to write. Just take the calls and pick the best person. Pay them $10.00 for every 8-1/2 x 11 single space page they write for you.

7) Give them the advertisement and the list of 50 main benefits you’ve already written to sell the book. Tell them to write a book that clearly delivers all these promises. They can write 2 pages on each one of your 50 main benefits. Give them several similar books they can use for reference material. Tell them they can use the main ideas in these books - but must never copy anything word for word.

8) They will write around 100 pages. At $10 a page, your cost will be $1,000 for a product that could sell for many years. This can be typeset into a smaller 6” x 9” book that will give you about twice as many pages.

9) Your book can sell for up to $29.95. Your cost to print it will be as low as $2.00 for fairly small quantities. This leaves you with a huge gross profit!

10) Assuming you have the right title and the right sales material, you can sell this book for many years at a significant profit. We sold over a million copies of just one of our ghostwritten books.

These simple steps have helped us make millions of dollars. They can help you get rich, too.

Ghostwriters can be found everywhere. Many good writers don’t know how to make money with their skill. You are different. You are figuring out a way to make money with the book before it’s even written. This may seem like a strange concept, but believe me, it contains the true secret of getting rich in Direct-Response Marketing. Writing the sales material first is a powerful strategy because all your focus is on selling the book. You’ll end up with a book that sells much better when you use this method.

We’re going to discuss how to make a ton of money paying your affiliates 100% commissions while getting people to pay to get on your mailing list. It sounds almost too good to be true, but it really isn’t!

We must be honest with you. In the beginning we didn’t care for affiliate programs. They just seemed too much like multi-level marketing to us. But we’ve changed our mind. We decided that there are great advantages to affiliate programs. You get more visibility for your product and, in effect, free advertising.

A good way to look at affiliate programs is shelf space, like in a supermarket. The more shelf space you get, the more likely you are to make a sale. And the same thing is true on the Internet.

The more your product is seen on the Internet, the more likely you are to make a sale. And if you can do all that and be seen for free ...

We just can’t think of anything better than to have hundreds or maybe even thousands of buttons, and banners and links all over the Internet that you haven’t had to pay a dime for. And you pay only for results!

That is the best kind of advertising there is, when you only have to pay when someone makes a sale. But most people sign up affiliates to sell their products just to make money. They want the profits from the sale of those products. And if you’ve been on the Internet for any length of time, we think you’ll learn that the real value of the Internet is not making that first sale.

In terms of the profits from it, it’s in building a relationship and getting a customer, and getting that email name so you can market to it later. That’s the real gold on the Internet. It is a mailing list that you can mine again, and again, and again.

So, we look at an affiliate program a little differently. We’re willing to give away the store, so to speak, on the first sale. We’ll be crazy like a fox - give away the profit on that first sale if I can get someone on my list that I can sell to again, and again, and again.

That makes an affiliate happy because they can make a lot of money, and it makes us happy because I get a lot of names.

Here’s how you do it. First of all, if you’re selling an informational product, create another product that’s a slimmed down version of it, something that will appeal to the same market that you are trying to reach with your product. It might be a couple of chapters from your main product, or a little bonus information under a different title.

For us, our back end product is “How to Create and Market Informational Products” and we have a manual on how to create a product in two to four hours that customers want to buy. We then would create a product that would appeal to people who would be interested in buying our real back end profit making product.

We might create a manual that says “How To Sell Information On The Internet For People Who Can’t, Won’t, Or Absolutely Refuse To Write.”

Now, that’s an interesting title for someone who might be a prospect for selling information and buying my back end product. So we create that product. We extract that from our other back end products. We create that and put a price tag of say, $10 or $12 on it, and we make that available to our affiliates to sell and keep all of the profits from.

Now, how can we afford to do that? We create a little file, and we load it up on our web site at a location, and we just sell download.

So when an affiliate sends a customer to us, they fill out the credit card information, and they get the password to the location on the site. They get to download the product instantly.

They get instant gratification. And our affiliate gets 100% of the commission, or 90% of the commission if we want to extract our processing fees.

But, for the credit card processing fees, we now have the name of someone who we know for certain is interested in our product area. We know for certain they are willing to spend money with us. We know for certain that they have sampled our product, and if we have done a good job in creating it, we’ve created a product that delivers more value than the amount of money we charged.

So, we have someone who has sampled our product, knows what we deliver, and hopefully we have satisfied and pleased that person - and added that person to our mailing list.

And by having a credit card sale, not only have we just added their email address to our mailing list, we’ve added their physical postal mailing address, as well. We essentially have created a double mailing list. And we’ve done that at no cost to us! We have given the affiliate all of the profits but we didn’t have to lay out money for printing, storage, or mailing, or shipping. All of those things were taken care of with electronic download.

It is a situation where we now have someone on my mailing list who paid to get there. We have an affiliate who is very happy with the sale. And while we’re continuing to mail our customer and trying to make other sales, our affiliates are out bringing new people into the fold.

It is a perfect situation to get people, in effect, who have paid to be on our mailing list. Everybody wins.

We know there’s a fellow who has written a series of books about frisbees and collecting them. He put a book up every two weeks or so - a brand new book - you get the book, and you get one of his business cards. The card is actually his information printed on a mini frisbee.

We’ve seen his little business frisbees - for lack of a better term - sell on the Internet auctions for $45 or $50. We’ve been outbid by other people a couple of times, and we started noticing - well, wait a minute - this is the same book that’s going up here! How many of these does he have?

We left an e-mail and asked if we could just buy it outright. He said yes, it’s $20. So, here he’s taking an item that he’s selling in his regular business for $20, and just through the mystique of on-line auctions, he’s able to get more than twice as much for it!

Internet auctions are like any other auction - people bid in order to own a product. But unlike any other form of purchasing, auctioning involves more than an exchange of money - it involves competition with other bidders, it involves the excitement of having to engage in a war of bids to earn the right to call that thing you desperately want yours.

Products that people really want are going to be worth a lot to them, and they will push bids up to prices that may seem ridiculous to most. But they’re not just paying for a product - they’re paying for bragging rights, for a victory over his or her opposition. You could double your profits with Internet auctions! It’s happening right now . . . just go watch the auctions; look at the example of the frisbee man . . . and you could be next! Internet auctions could very well supply you with the means of selling your products for twice the money you regularly sell them for!

YOU can stand to make a ton of MONEY when YOUR sales material has these ten words in it. HOW is this? PEOPLE love to find out about NEW things. They WANT to get these things NOW! WHY? Because YOU live among PEOPLE WHO WANT things NOW! They don’t like to wait. So, if YOU can show PEOPLE in YOUR copy HOW they can make MONEY NOW, and if YOU can use all these ten words, YOU stand to make a lot of MONEY yourself!

Each of the words above in ALL CAPS is one of the ten words that can make you rich. Here they are again:

MONEY YOUR WHY NOW
WANT HOW WHO YOU
PEOPLE NEW

These are powerful words that, when used throughout your copy, can make you rich. When you are writing your next sales letter, try using as many of these words over and over as you can. Don’t make it sound redundant, though. Your sales piece should still flow. These words will make an already successful sales letter outstanding!

A professional reporter has the power of the written word. This is combined with the power of the perception the readers have that the magazine is giving them this story on their own accord because it’s something the readers might find helpful or be interested in.

This is a powerful thing. Therefore, when the readers read the write-up the magazine gave you, it carries a lot of weight in giving you credibility. This is why a professional reporter can make you HUGE amounts of money over and over again!

Remember, people don’t know you, your company, or your products, but they do know - and trust in most cases - the magazine that prints the story written from your press release.

A reporter can give you a great story with their writing ability. And the more they believe in what you have, the better they will write the story. You have to speak their language and show them what you can do for them and their readers.

One of the most important aspects of creating promotional copy, whether it be for print, website, television, or whatever media, is justifying the claims you make.

If you can’t justify what you’re saying, people aren’t going to believe your copy. It’ll sound too good to be true, and if you don’t prove otherwise, they’re not going to want to take a chance and spend their hard-earned money on whatever you have to offer them.

So, here are 3 easy ways you can instantly prove that everything you say is true!

1. PROOF OF INCOME

When it comes to selling money-making opportunity products, proof of income can be extremely important in getting you that sale. This is a market where a lot of people get scammed and many programs don’t live up to the promises they make.

You want to show potential customers that the claims you make in your copy really can come true - and the best way to do that is by showing proof that someone who has used or currently uses the program has had success with it!

You could take pictures of them with the expensive items they can afford now that they’re enjoying a bigger income, or you could ask permission and put copies of bank statements up on your website, presenting a “before the program” and “after the program” difference.

If you can prove that your product really can bring your prospects more money, you will move a lot of units!

2. TESTIMONIALS

Another great proof tactic you can use is testimonials. Testimonials are favorable statements made by people who have used, reviewed, or come in contact with your product used in copy to boost its believability.

There are a few ways testimonials are placed in copy. Sometimes they’re used as headlines or sub-heads. Sometimes they’re used as “blurbs”(blurbs are those star or circle shapes on packages that state something wonderful about a product). Sometimes they’re incorporated in the copy.

Ultimately, though, no matter how they’re implemented in copy, testimonials always serve the same purpose - to supply prospects with proof that the product being offered can really live up to the claims of the promotional copy.

3. ARTICLES YOU’VE PREVIOUSLY WRITTEN

This can be an especially powerful method - especially over the Internet! If you’ve written articles for trade publications and websites, you could use that material for proof. Over the Internet, you could link to sites that have your articles - much easier than searching for old magazines!

Prospects will be interested in reading articles you’ve written because, by reading it, they will feel they can better gauge whether or not you know what you’re talking about, and if your information is truly good. A good article will really boost that prospect’s confidence in you . . . and in your products!

Once you’ve learned how to get that computer on the Internet and doing what you want on the Internet auction sites, there’s another whole new business opportunity waiting for you - - Namely, teaching people how to make money with Internet auctions!

Yes, you read this correctly. Once you’ve learned how to use the Internet and the Internet auction sites, and you’re making money with your auctions, you can move on and start making even more money by teaching others how to do it!

Remember what it was like when YOU started. You might have known very little, perhaps even nothing, about a computer. You might have been quaking in your boots when it came to the idea of getting on the Internet.

There are many people out there, in the same situation you were in when you got started. But, with some success under your belt, you can advertise yourself as experienced . . . and start teaching others!

Your services could range from simply introductory computer information, to using the Internet, to using the online Internet auctions to bring in extra money! And the whole time you’d be building YOUR fortune, simply by passing the knowledge on to others and charging them for it!

Guarantees are one of the best marketing tools ever devised. When it comes to attracting prospects and helping them justify purchasing a product, guarantees are extremely powerful.

Guarantees are what we refer to as a risk-reversal tool. In direct-mail, risk reversal is an important factor. Your prospects can’t see your store. They can’t just walk in, take a look at your product, maybe try it out, and decide whether or not they want to buy it.

They might see a picture of your product, and they have to send you their hard-earned money - with no positive proof that they’ll ever get the product at all.

In order to buy your product, that prospect has to put themselves in a position of taking a risk. And the more risk a prospect perceives an offer presents, the lower the chances they’re going to buy what you have to offer.

Therefore, marketers want to find a way to take that risk off of the shoulders of their prospects. And guarantees are one of the foremost ways of doing so!

Through a guarantee, a marketer is saying, “look, we promise you that this product will help you, and we have enough confidence in it that, should you be dissatisfied with it, we will refund your money.”

In essence, the risk has been taken off of the prospect’s shoulders and placed on the marketer’s. If that product doesn’t turn out satisfying the prospect, the marketer will lose the money.

But there are ways to make guarantees even more attractive to prospects - one of which is to offer to “buy the product back” from the prospect or customer! This is how to use a guarantee that will make people buy now - and blow away your competition - by changing only a few simple words!

You may have noticed that “buying back” a product is really no different than providing a refund. It costs the same amount of money either way, and both end up with you getting the product back. So, what’s so different about the offer? What makes it more powerful than simply offering the customer’s money back?

The answer lies in the wording of the guarantee!

“We’ll refund your money,” can sound negative to a prospect. It can call in mind a grudgingly slow wait, and the company doing whatever they can to keep that cash in its checking account.

On the other hand, the picture called up by offering to “buy back” a product can be very different. It sounds friendlier, and less grudging. When you buy something you tend to lose the money instantly, leading them to believe that they’ll get their money quicker.

It also sounds more impressive, as if it’s a more daring operation - “If you don’t like it, we’ll buy it back from YOU!”

In your offers, tell prospects that you’ll buy back their products. It may be no different from a refund guarantee, but it won’t be perceived that way. Prospects will feel much more positive about spending their money on your products and, as a result, you could potentially make a lot more money!

Recently we were reading an investment magazine. They were talking about the reasons why people either don’t invest or don’t buy when they should.

There’s a lesson there that applies to us. They were saying that more people are afraid to fail more than they are determined to succeed, and that fear grips them so much that they don’t do anything. So they sit there and they’ll stew over the small details.

They make little decisions here and there, and plan to do one thing and another, but they never actually get started because they’re afraid of making that one mistake.

That fear grips them and makes them not do anything.

If you just get over that fear and start with the one thing, the one idea, that excites you most, then you can carry that over to success – seeing small successes – and then you can start trying other things that maybe you weren’t so sure about but that you know will work if you’ll just get out there and use them.

Sometimes the fear of failure is what grips people and makes them not do anything and sit on their hands. If you can get over that, you can get started and go somewhere.

Creating distinctive ads that are different and stand apart from your competitions’ ads is the one thing you can do to get MAXIMUM INQUIRIES from all of your ads — and end up making seven times more sales! The more it stands out and the better the benefits are, the more potential money you can make!

“Distinctive” means that it must be unique in design, size, and copy, so that a reader is drawn into the copy with a desire to know more. This is accomplished by concentrating on a benefit-packed and different sales proposition.

Remember, your ad should be benefit-packed, but YOU’RE NOT TRYING TO ATTRACT EVERYBODY. One phrase that we like to tell people is that if you’re trying to attract everybody, you don’t have anything to offer anyone.

Any product you might see on an infomercial has a wholesale source. You can find that wholesale source, go directly to the company, purchase a few of their products, and put them up on the Internet auction! This is where to get super-hot-selling infomercial products at sub-wholesale prices!

You have people seeing infomercials going to the Internet auctions - and they bid on the infomercial product. Of course they’re not going to want to pay the full price, but even if they only pay 50% or 75%, you’re still making a profit, because the mark-up on some of those infomercial products is quite large.

It’s very easy to find these sources. You might think it’s difficult and that these companies might not want to do it, but there are actual companies out there that can supply you with everything you would see right on the infomercials.

If you are going to engage in this type of marketing, another thing you might want to do is create an actual web site where you are promoting a variety of items you might see on an infomercial. So let’s say, for example, someone goes to your auction for a piece of exercise equipment that they’ve seen on TV for $300, and they bid on it for $100; finally, they get it at $175.

At that website, there’s actually a link there that takes them to YOUR website, where you not only sell that exercise equipment, but also maybe Tae-Bo videos and that miracle car polish that you can set on fire, and it won’t harm your car.

Since you would be selling a product that people are seeing on TV day after day, in some cases year after year - very successful products - you have some exposure, some advertising, that’s not really costing you anything, but you take advantage of it by offering those exact same products.

In fact, we’ve talked to quite a few people who go to the Internet auctions specifically to find products that they see either on infomercials or in stores at a much lower rate or price. If people are going to do this, why not use it to your advantage?

This is one of those things where you plant some seeds and come back and do the harvesting in one day or less. If fact, I think it’ll take you less then a few minutes. I’ve got a couple quick tips here that are insider secrets that I use myself.

In other articles I’ve mentioned putting together directories and a similar product that sells excellently on the newsstands, in book stores, and by mail is product or service directories. Particularly product directories that are specific to a market. One of the greatest ways to get product information, what’s new, what’s hot, and what’s being developed is press releases. The beauty of a press release is the fact that when the company sends you a press release it’s material that’s written and ready to go.

I have had excellent luck listing myself as an author, as a publisher, or as an editor with Bacon’s Information Incorporated. You can send it e-mail to update at Baconsinfo.com, or you can call them at 800-922-2477. They’ll send you a form that will get you listed in their huge directories that go out to all the P.R. agencies in the world. This is one of the bibles that they use. You’ll start getting press releases that you can just gather together on the topics of your choice and use to create a directory with detailed info about new products.

Another great place is a company called E-Releases. They’re located on the Internet, at, surprise surprise, www.ereleases.com. There’s a little place you can join today and start receiving by e-mail the press releases that they distribute for their customers.

Press releases can put together a product for you in a snap. Especially if you’re doing an informational product. You’ll also find all kinds of other interesting leads and ways that they’ll be happy to put together stories for you. Now you are in touch with P.R. professionals. What are they going to do? They’re going to write the stuff for you. It’s just great!

Regardless of how smart people are, they still must be told exactly what to do after they read your sales material. You must use words that demand that they take immediate action. Here are thirteen action words that will help your prospect send their orders right now:

1. Act Now!
2. While Supplies Last!
3. Don’t Delay!
4. Don’t Wait Until Tomorrow!
5. Do It Now!
6. Don’t Put It Off!
7. It Will Take Less Than 1 Minute To Fill In Your Order!
8. Phone Today C Your Order Will Be Shipped Immediately!
9. Take Advantage Of This Bargain C NOW!
10. Order Today!
11. Rush Your Money-Making Order Today!
12. Hurry! Mail Your Order Now!
13. Send In Your Order Without Delay!

The list could go on and on. These are just a few of the many action words you can use. Try to come up with your own list! On another piece of paper, right now, before you do anything else, write at least 10 of your own action words. Do it now, while you are still thinking about it! You see how I use action 90 words to get you to make your own action word list? Action words can be very powerful sales tools if you will use them properly!

Generally, adding a link to a web page or an e-mail is just a matter of typing one line of code that references or puts a string of text that is then highlighted and presented as a link including the address that it links to.

Usually, when you are working with someone they can give you the link. Most links that you add to sites are very easy to add. You could just type a web address with most web design software. Type in any line of text that you want, highlight it, go up and click add a link, and type in the web address. Blink! You have this string of text highlighted to take you to that web site when you click on it. It can be very, very simple.

In fact, we should stress, too, that a list of links is one of the best contents that you can provide, especially if you are constantly changing and upgrading it. You can do it on one page. Direct people to that page from elsewhere in your site. Never even touch the rest of your site, just have that one page that you update and place on your web site on a regular basis. People will keep coming back. If they don’t make it their home page, they will still at least bookmark it as a place to go to find resources - by continually attracting people to your web site, the higher your chances of making even more money - therefore, links help you make huge sums of extra cash profits. And all you had to do was add simple links to your web site!