Did you ever want to just call it a day and forget about internet marketing? Well… me too…. thank God my senses took over and I am back at it but it was a close call.

The reason I am sharing this with you is because I figured you might have had the same problem as me and maybe this could help.

You see…. I was all over the place with my marketing… trying to develop products in five different niches at once and having just limited success with each niche. I just wasn’t committed or patient enough to get it going. They all looked like a green markets (and probably still are) but I just couldn’t kick the door down so I move on to another niche the same way….half assed.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a couple niches doing well but I wanted to expand and duplicated the success so I got away from what made me successful in the first place. Just finding a niche with a problem and solving it. Strip it down, keep it simple, and keep delivering the goods…. keep solving the problems….. AND BE PATIENT!

That is so difficult to do after you have tasted a bit of success. You see the potential and want to go from zero to sixty in no time at all… leaving all the fundamentals in the dust. Well…… I guess that doesn’t work so it’s back to keeping it simple.

I am consolidating all my resources into one site , The Guru Hub Members Area, and that is it. The moving has begun and the site is well on its way. I look for it to be live before Christmas and EVERYTHING I know will be in there including a ton of videos.

Everything I’ve done lately I’ve recorded…. from start to finish…. step by step to try to help newbies get started and save a bunch of money and time…

…to the advanced research and testing techniques that separate profit from loss….

So don’t stray too far off the beaten path, specially if you were spreading yourself too thin like I was….. time to get back to basics and get back to moving the business ahead…. one niche at a time.

The purpose of your sales letter is to grab and keep the attention of your reader. Once you have accomplished that step the next step is to get them to take immediate action. One way to accomplish this is by engaging your reader in a good story without finishing it. After starting the story, pause in the middle to tell them you will complete the story in a minute… but first you would like to tell them about _____.

For example, you may use something comparable to this:

“The next day Jack was shocked when he looked in the mirror. In just a moment I’ll tell you what he saw – you’ll be just as shocked as Jack. But first…”

Once again, you use curiosity to compel the reader to keep reading. But the other reason he’ll keep reading is for the same reason people watch movies all the way through – namely, they have to find out what happens. You can use that curiosity and desire to leave no loose ends to your advantage.

As referenced above, another effective way to guarantee to keep your reader engaged is to bring out their emotion For example:

• You can gently remind a person who stutters what it felt like to get laughed at in school.
• You may gently remind an overweight person how embarrassing it is not to fit in an airplane seat, and how humiliating it is to go shopping for clothing.
• You can gently remind a person how it feels to be stressed out all the time at work.

Notice I said “gently” in each case. You want to get your point across but with a great deal of sensitivity. You want them to realize you feel their pain and you sympathize with them. A good way to do this is to say something, “I used to feel my cheeks get hot every time someone laughed at me when I stuttered”.

The purpose is to make them relive the problem in their mind and create a sense of urgency to solve the problem. Then, highlight the positive benefits they will experience after purchasing your product. If you take your prospects through this process they will be much more likely to purchase from you more often.

I learned the fine art of reciprocation many years ago while in the furniture industry. I had no idea the power it contained yet was amazed by its results. Results that seemed so innocent on the surface but were so complicated at its core.

In its simplest form, reciprocation is the act of you doing something for someone and in return they feel the obligation to do something for you. They feel the “pull” of Mother Nature to reciprocate. This is a natural response in most people and one that can be used to sell more products than you ever thought possible. Let me explain why. But first a little story of how I came across this powerful concept.

While working in sales at a furniture store, a new regional sales manager had started a new process while greeting customers to try shore up sagging sales. This process was very simple, when a customer walked in the store, greet them, give them a rose, and ask them “what can we help you find today?”.

The normal response prior to this initiative was “just looking”. This response was (and I am sure it still is to this day) so common place that it was a joke among us sales people. How many time are we going to hear ” just looking” today? You could bank on the same response yet we struggled to find a way around it.

Then we started the new process of greeting and giving the rose. What followed was astonishing. People were so taken aback by the act of kindness that they immediately started to talk and laugh and tell us exactly what they were looking for. This had a tremendously positive effect on our close rate and sales and left all of us trying to figure out why. The reason was very simple. The natural human response called Reciprocation!

The fine art of reciprocation is on display everywhere. Walk into a store or restaurant with a set of double doors and hold the first set of doors open for someone, nine times out of ten they will hold the second set of doors open for you. Reciprocation. Go out of your way to tell someone how nice they look today, some will say “thank you” and leave it at that but most people will compliment you back. Reciprocation. Do something nice for people and they feel the need to do something nice for you. It is everywhere!

Use reciprocation to increase your sales by giving your prospects something of value for free and watch what happens. I know you will be as amazed as I was trying to make a living selling furniture.

Advertising your product or service will be (or is) your largest expense if you are a small business trying to generate sales online. Google has been the destination for advertising dollars for quite some time now due to the enormous amount of traffic they produce. It looks as though the paradigm is about to shift to a company called Facebook. I highlight the opportunity for businesses in my book Secrets to Mega Marketing on Facebook.

I am sure by now you are familiar with Facebook (if not, click here to visit my Facebook page). It is one of the fastest growing social media sights with over 400 million active users. They have built a community that is inclusive of just about everyone. The reason I say this is because MySpace used to be the place but the crowd was so young that it pushed many people away (me included). I didn’t care for all the garbage that was on there and it certainly was not my scene. I figured, if I felt that way then I’ll bet that many people 30-55 years old probably felt that way and this has proved to be true.

But getting back to Facebook. For whatever reason “everyone” feels safe on Facebook. From teens to grandmothers, it doesn’t matter, they are all on Facebook and networking like crazy. The social experience has remained civil, at least for now, and the dialog is fun and informative. And get this….50% of all users log in each day! This is about a perfect storm for you as an advertiser.

So we know the “eyes” are there, why advertise with Facebook over Google. Well, I don’t know that you want to cut Google out totally, but lets go over a few points. First off, Google is very difficult to deal with. They are not user friendly and they are not there to help you get started. If you are new to internet marketing you better have all you ducks in a row prior to spending your money with Google. As a matter of fact, they will not hesitate to ban your account and without notice and without any reason given.

I know this first hand because it happened to me. I was spending $500 to $600 per month with them and last December noticed that I wasn’t getting any clicks. My ads were still approved but no traffic (impressions) were coming to my ads. So I sent Google an email asking why I was not getting any traffic to my ads and they responded with a clip and paste response saying that I had violated some editorial rules and that I would never be permitted to advertise with them again.

Banned for life! No “warning”. No….”this doesn’t look right can you please adjust it”…nothing… just “you are banned for life”. Why was I banned for life? What did I do that was so terrible. I was experimenting with sending people to a “lead capture” page prior to gaining access to my site. This is a page where people enter their email and then are sent to the sales page. I figured, for the cost of the click I should at least get their email so I could market to them.

I thought this was acceptable and I found out the hard way that it was not. Talk about arrogant, I don’t wish Google ill will but let’s just say that I am not sad that Facebook is now giving them a run for their money!

This is not the first post you will see from someone who was banned by Google and it won’t be the last. Many hard working entrepreneurs were banned and now there is a big movement to capture the opportunity on Facebook. I have been advertising on Facebook for about a year now and have seen very good click through rates (CTR). This doesn’t surprise me due to the high amount of targeting that you can activate if you choose to. I will leave that for another post but you can really get granular with your advertising and it can pay off in a huge way.

Will Facebook overtake Google as The Place to Advertise? I sure hope so!

When I first started to market online everything was trial and error. I didn’t know where to start but I did know that I was going to jump right in and figure it out. That seems to be the best way for me, don’t procrastinate, just jump right in. So that is what I did. Little did I know how complicated things could be.

Talk about being overwhelmed! Everything was an hour or two to learn or a day or two to set up. Nothing was simple but that was OK because I was determined to learn how to do this.

About two weeks into it I came across a site called Site Build It. It looked really simple to follow and I didn’t have to be an expert at HTML. It was a bit more expensive than GoDaddy or other sites but offered much more in tutorials and step by step SEO information. This really cut my learning curve in half.

Now I no longer use SBI because I don’t need too. I have become proficient enough at SEO and HTML, WordPress, Joomla and the like to not need all the tutorials and step by step help. This enables me to save some money by going through GoDaddy and Host Gator. But I would have never got to that point without SBI.

The reason I am saying this is because using information that others have put out there is a great way to save you time and money! Don’t reinvent the wheel when getting started. Use what is already out there. I liken it to my golf game. I fought a slice for 15 years and was embarrassed to go to a pro for help. When I finally did he had me straighten out in 30 minutes. Now, it took a lot of practice on my part afterward, but the point is, I could have save myself 15 years of aggravation and had a lot more fun if I would have just sucked it up and went to a pro early on.

If you are just starting out on line, take a look through the video’s and articles I have posted in this blog  as they should give you a pretty good head start to your online marketing.

Have you had a simlar experience? Leave me a comment below or if you have a specific question please post it below and hit the submit button and I will do my best to answer it.

****some of the links on this page are affiliate links and if you purchase something I could make a small fortune -:)