In a few hours Kevin Wilke is opening up for registrations to the Never Ending Clients Mastery program.

With limited space, and thousands of eager local online consultants wanting to take part, it’s going to fill up quickly.

Kevin will walk you through everything you are getting in this 5-week Mastery program.

And he will show you how you can use it so, you too, can have a consistent stream of never-ending clients coming into your business.

Also, there are a couple specific bonuses he’s including in the program for you.

To ensure you are getting the complete solution you are looking for, he is including:

#1 – Beginner’s Guide To Local Online Marketing

This training program is for you if you’re still just getting started in this business. Kevin walks you through the business model and how to be successful with it.

Never Ending Clients is the most powerful course on the most important part of the business, Getting Clients. That’s 80% of the business “taken care of” already.

This training module focuses on the other 20% of the business.

If you are already following a “local” business model and program, he’ll show you how to synergistically combine it with Never Ending Clients.

Or, if you are still new to this business, he’ll show you a business model you can get started with.

#2 – The Instant Credibility Creator

Some people feel they don’t have enough credibility to compete approach new clients. And, in this business the more credibility you have, the easier it becomes.

This module gives you a quick and powerful technique to create instant credibility for yourself. 100′s and 100′s of brand new (as well as experienced) local marketers use this technique to propel their business forward quickly.

#3 – Access to Kevin’s highly trained and highly effective Outsourcing Team

A big sticking point for most local marketers is providing the high-value service after getting a client.

If you do it yourself, you can’t focus on getting more clients and even worse, over time you end up getting burned out.

To make your life is really easy, Kevin is going to share with you one of his most valuable resources…he’s going to introduce you to the same outsource team he personally uses.

One person who recently started using them said, “Before you told me about your outsource team, I thought charging over $1k/month was hard, but now I just closed a recurring deal for $4700/month! And it’s for 8 months! My goal, now, is to build this business so I can live in Bali for 6 months and now my business will keep running.”

As you can imagine, this is a SUPER valuable part of his own business. However, I also know having the service side of your business “dialed in” is going to make your business and life much, MUCH better.

#4 – MASS Influencing

This is an ADVANCED way to apply the Never Ending Clients approach. It’s only for people who want to (and are ready) to get a lot of clients in a quick period of time.

It’s not for everybody, because it results in getting big surges of new clients each time you use it. That means you need to be ready to handle lots of clients (yeah, I know,a really nice problem to have!)

However for the intermediate and advanced members, this is like throwing gasoline onto a fire!

#5 – Live Webinar Coaching

Both Joe and Kevin will be doing live webinar coaching for the Mastery Members. This gives you that personal touch and expert guidance as you implement this into your business.

And these coaching webinars and Q&A sessions ensure, as you move forward, you get your questions answered and receive expert guidance and mentoring.

Whew, those are some great EXTRA bonuses to support you as you go after your dreams with this business.

I really want to see you knock it out of the park these next few months.

And I know, with the right guidance, step-by-step training, ready-to-use tools and a proven plan this is giving you, you can do it.

To Your Success!

According to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business, nearly 30% of small business owners have lowered their prices.

When setting your own prices, consider these ideas:

>> Be flexible – offer a wide variety of pricing options to win over and keep risk-averse customers.

>> Customize – ask your clients what they need, and then change your mix of offerings to emphasize the most affordable.

>> Target customers when they have the most cash. The first week of the month after shoppers have received their pay checks is usually the best time.

Source: Evans, Teri, “Slash & Earn,” BusinessWeek SmallBiz.

In a rapidly changing environment spotting and capitalizing on trends can become more and more difficult. Especially if you are a bootstrapping entrepreneur, the idea of “trends” or “forecasting” becomes laughable.

Yet, regardless of the shifting “trends” something that will never go out of style (if you’re building a real business) is relationship marketing, and in a way that still makes you money!

So despite your current level in your business, let us capitalize on the atmosphere of reflection, and take a step back to see the life-blood of your business: your consumers. More specifically we will focus on the relationship between you.

The aim: higher conversion rates and cultivating better clients.

Clients that actually help you build your business with repeat sales, referrals, and glowing social media reviews rather than burying you with support issues, refunds, and scathing complaints in the social sphere for all to see! It can be much easier than you think when you have a good framework. So today I am going to reveal to you the “Three Critical Phases of The Consumer Lifecycle”.

If you have any one reason to give your Consumers Lifecycle serious attention, it is this:

“If you don’t have a process for what you are doing, you don’t know what you are doing.” – W. Edwards Deming

A path that ensures you make the most of every opportunity, while giving you accurate information with which you can refine a water-tight funnel; building your business with efficiency and scalability!

Each one of these stages has a number of stages within them that I have identified in the complete cycle, but it is important for YOU to build out according to your unique business model.

1. Generation to Conversion

Do you sometimes feel as though you have the best product in the world? If only more people could find out about it, then you’d be set! I think everyone goes through this “phase”, until they start generating serious traffic that is!

It doesn’t matter if you’re in a strip mall, a business complex, or online; you will always need traffic in one form or another. The more the better, however, it is not just the amount that matters, but also the quality of the visitors (how closely what they want is aligned with what you have). Bottom line: traffic is great, but leads are better!

When put into a choreographed process, leads can “move along” a pipeline toward becoming actual customers!

During this phase it’s important to educate your leads and, while educating them you can watch their behavior and find out towards which they gravitate. By focusing on relationships, their behavior, in addition to surveys and market testing, you will find that getting sales conversions become natural and easy! You will get more than just buyers; you will get the Right buyers! Buyers who actually use your product or service enough to get value!

2. Adoption to Causation

Basically, it doesn’t matter how great your product is, unless people actually DO something with it, they will most likely not be coming back to you for more products, let alone give you a referral, a testimonial, or positive review online. And why should they?

It is through better adoption of your product that your consumers naturally become a causative force for you in the marketplace. This leads to more natural repeat sales, upsells, referrals and testimonials.

As more and more business are struggling with diminishing e-mail open rates, lower quality leads, and diminishing sales, you will find more and more businesses realize the value of each and every lead and customer. So DO NOT make the mistake of thinking that just because the deal is ‘closed’ that the relationship has ended!

3. Affiliation to Ascension

Entire empires have been made from affiliates and affiliate marketing, but despite the vast opportunity many business owners still struggle with how to 1) Get affiliates on board and 2) get them to actually DO something! But while there is nothing wrong from going straight to affiliate networks, it would be reckless to ignore the greatest affiliate goldmine you may have: your happy customers!

As you can see, the third stage relies heavily on the efficiency of the second stage, much like the second relies on the first. Thus, if you get the right traffic (which generally comes from good affiliates, which you can grow inside your own organization) you will easily get higher-quality leads.

Higher quality leads makes getting sales much easier. With the right clients on board, they will naturally use more of what you sold making it easier on your support team. When people see actual realized value, it makes it MUCH easier to get authentic testimonials. Likewise, it is now much easier to get a referral from someone who gave you a testimonial. At this point it is surprisingly easy to turn your referral sources into full-blown affiliates!

Finally, with the right kind of motivated affiliates on board, they will see their traffic turned into a goldmine. It soon becomes easy for them to become super-affiliates who flood your sites with the perfect visitors for your products! It is actually quite easy and takes relatively very little effort to take someone to this level of ascension when you plan and act deliberately with a holistic process in mind!

It may seem complicated, but it also seems complicated to have to date a person before asking them to marry you. Thus you build a relationship, which is exactly what you need!

Tips for a Strong Consumer Lifestyle

• Have a process for what you are doing
• Remember Relationships
• Generate traffic and convert them into buyers
• Get buyers to adopt your products (this is part of your relationship)

Extracted from StomperNet SEO Intelligence Report, November 4, 2011.

How do you ensure that the information products you sell give fair value to your customers?

One way is to follow Internet marketing guru Fred Gleeck’s “ten times” rule.

Fred says that the information products you sell should be worth at least 10 times the price you charge for them.

Alex Mandossian and I discussed this in an ETR tele-seminar, looking for a way to determine whether your product and pricing meet Gleeck’s criterion.

The solution we came up with is something I call the “loose-leaf test”.

Here’s how it works…

Traditional non-fiction paperback books (around 200 pages) typically sell for around $10 to $20 or so.

To determine whether your book is worth ten times that amount—Gleeck’s “ten times” rule—imagine printing out the book manuscript on 8½ by 11-inch sheets of paper.

Now, three-hole-punch those pages and put them in a three-ring binder and maybe even add tabbed dividers to separate the sections or chapters.

Information products in three-ring binders are typically dense in content and consequently command much higher prices than bookstore books.

It’s not unusual for these “loose-leaf services” to cost $100 to $200 or more per copy.

(One loose-leaf service for executives on how to write and give speeches, American Speaker, sold for $297.)

Does your $20 paperback book contain enough valuable, in-depth content that you could reprint the thing in a three-ring loose-leaf binder—and sell it for $200—to customers who would feel they got fair value for their investment and not ask for a refund?

If it does, then you can rest assured that the content you deliver in your book is indeed worth at least ten times more than the $20 you charged on it.

However, if you think customers who paid $200 for a loose-leaf version of your book (remember: same content, just different packaging) would feel gypped and ask for their money back, then your book doesn’t pass Gleeck’s “ten times” test.

I increasingly see today non-fiction business books that are thin and light. They present just one or two new ideas, often in a short book of 150 pages or less.

If a reader buys such a book in a bookstore, they probably won’t complain: expectations for trade books are modest. If it’s a good read, they’ll be satisfied enough.

But your customers perceive information products published and sold online as containing more specific and highly specialized content than a “bookstore book”.

So if you are an Internet information marketer, you have to deliver far more value to your customers for their money than a bookstore book.

Gleeck’s “ten times” rule—and the Bly/Mandossian “loose leaf test”—help you ensure that you do just that.

I have discovered that, if the customer thinks your information product was worth the $20 you charged but no more than that, they may be dissatisfied and want a refund.

One customer, JB, recently asked for a refund on one of my e-books. He wrote: “Your e-book was certainly worth the $19 you charged me, but no more than that. So please send my money back.”

At first, I thought: how odd! JB says the product is worth what he paid for it. So his desire for a refund made no sense to me.

But in Internet information marketing, we make big promises in our copy to grab the reader’s attention—and make a sale.

(In a bookstore, by comparison, the only “selling” is usually done by the book’s cover and its jacket copy.)

JB apparently felt that the book did not live up to the copy on my landing page, and was disappointed on that basis.

The solution, of course, is either to charge less (not very desirable), write weak copy (also not a good idea), or,
preferably, to make the product stronger.

Add content until the product meets the Gleeck/Bly/Mandossian test and delivers content not just worth what you charged for it but worth ten times what you charged for it.

When you sell an item worth $200 for $20, customer satisfaction will soar, and refunds will be minimal to non-existent.

I can’t remember who said it or where, but a famous marketer once stated: “It is our goal not to give the customer her money’s worth, but to give her more than her money’s worth!”

Or more specifically, at least ten times her money’s worth—or even more.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

A few months ago AWAI co-founder Don Mahoney e-mailed me an article about the National Enquirer.

In that article, Editor-in-Chief David Perel revealed the secret of the tabloid’s outrageous success:

“The big news organizations tell people what they think they should be interested in, whereas we try to give them stories that they are interested in.”

I think Perel has hit upon a key principle that applies to all writing, not just newspaper publishing.

And it is especially relevant to information marketing.

Namely, that your sales will be many times greater when you offer your customers information they want to read and learn instead of information you think they should read.

The late Gary Halbert went even further, advising marketers to sell exclusively to what he called a “starving crowd”.

A starving crowd not only wants what you are selling but has an insatiable appetite for it.

Therefore, even if there are a lot of players in that market, they can all do well, because the market’s demand is a bottomless pit.

In particular, there are 3 “starving crowd” markets that have an especially consistent and unending demand for information:

>> Hobbyists—hobbyists read about antique collecting or quilting not because they have to, but because they want to.

Those who are heavily “into” the hobby, whether that hobby is calligraphy or macramé, can’t get enough of it.

In these niches, a lot of competition is a good sign, not a negative sign, for two reasons.

First, it proves the niche is viable. If others are making money selling information online to this market, you can too.

Second, you can make joint venture deals with these other marketers to sell your products to their lists and vice versa.

>> Business opportunity seekers—there is an insatiable appetite for information on how to make money in your spare time, start a home-based business, change careers, or earn a living without a job.

I believe these business opportunity seekers can be divided into two groups.

The first group is doers. These doers are serious about changing their lives, and they actually pursue the course of action you recommend.

The second group is dreamers. The dreamers enjoy learning about small business, yet take no action beyond buying and reading how-to information products.

You can’t usually distinguish between these segments when marketing. But you really don’t have to, because both consume an unending stream of info products purchased online.

>> Money making and investing—it is a nearly universal desire to make more money and increase one’s wealth.

If you sell information that helps people get greater returns from their investments with less risk or accumulate a 7-figure net worth or become financially independent, you will never run out of eager buyers.

Of course, there are other starving-crowd niches for information marketers, including: self-help, relationships, sex, health, beauty, fashion and fitness.

But the 3 above—hobbies, business opportunities, investing—are by far the largest and most active.

One of the biggest mistakes beginning information marketers make is choosing, as their primary niche, a market that is not a starving crowd.

Reason: without a starving crowd of buyers, you will always be fighting an uphill battle to peddle your info products.

And you will be forever frustrated that your prospects aren’t buying your valuable information when you know it’s stuff they absolutely should have.

But people don’t readily do what they should do—or what you think is good for them.

They are much more easily convinced to buy what they already want rather than what you think they need.

And when you select as your primary niche in information marketing a starving crowd…like hobbyists, business opportunity seekers, or wealth seekers, you can sell your prospects the stuff they want over and over again.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

“Tis the season” doesn’t have quite the same ring when you’re going on no sleep and trying to deal with stressed-out employees and/or customers. The holidays are a time to step up, not a time to slump to the ground at the end of each workday.

So what do you need to think about now to avoid this scenario? Two major things: little helpers and your workshops. We’ll start with the hard one.

Little Helpers, i.e. employees. If you have none, you might need some. And if you already have some, you might need more. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you determine if you need another body or bodies to help you handle the season.

Are you ready for more calls?

If you take calls, have your employees keep track of the number of calls per day and duration of each for a week or two. Then ask yourself if your current employees can handle double that volume?

If the answer is either no or “but that’s all they will have time to do”, you want to think about getting help or set up with a call center for the season.

You do not have to continue using them once your business returns to normal volume if you don’t want.

If you currently use a call center…give them a call! Ask for more operators if you need them. Be sure to do this before things start to get busy. If you wait, the service center may not have as many operators available.

Do you run extended holiday hours?

I would recommend that you do!

Remember, this is a stressful time of year for shoppers. No one wants to be the one person whose present is still in the mail, and they typically get less friendly with each voice mail or e-mail they send that doesn’t get answered until the next day.

Angry customers around this time of year exponentially add to your stress levels. Offering more opportunities for them to contact you, gives you happier customers and employees.

If you can talk your current staff into extended hours, awesome. If not, getting another person or a call center to handle the extra time. Even if the call operators cannot answer specific order questions, your customers will be happier that they are leaving a message with a human rather than an automated message system.

Will you be open weekends?

As with extended hours, I recommend weekend hours during the holidays. If a customer has a product question on Saturday do you think they’ll patiently wait until Monday for an answer? No, they’ll go to whichever competitor can answer them first.

Rules change during this season. Whoever provides the best service not only wins the holiday sale, they will also have a higher chance of winning any repeat business that comes from that customer.

It is important to have someone who is knowledgeable enough about your products to be able to answer questions. So in this case I recommend having an actual employee working on the weekend, and not just a call center. Your need to available to your employees in case they get a question beyond their ability to answer.

After answering these you should have a good idea whether or not you need a new hire.

What should your new temp be able to do?

Your new temp needs to be able to do more than answer the phone and take orders; you can get a call center operator to do that for much less. Your temp should take more of the burden off your regular staff.

I require a basic knowledge of what my stores sell, the ability to quickly navigate the sites to find information, and a flexible schedule to work nights and/or weekends.

This is stuff I expect them to pick up and be fairly competent at within one week. They need to learn the basic skills it takes to service customers, my current employees can handle all the brainy stuff.

What about your workshop?

In other words, making sure your vendors are set to service you the best way they can. That means you need to get on the phone and talk to them.

Ask what products they have the better stock on and what stock is going to look like in the coming months. Add the products with a lot of stock to your gift and holiday pages and promote them. As long as you know it to be true, you can advertise “In stock and ready to ship!” Also find out what products have low or no stock. Don’t spend time advertising these since there is a good chance they won’t be available.

You could also pre-order extra quantities of your bestsellers. Every year I get a list of my top 5 to 10 bestsellers and buy them in bulk before the season hits. This way I can keep advertising them as in stock after my competitors use up the vendors’ stock. An added benefit to this is that buying bulk is cheaper than dropshipping single items so you’re making extra pro?t, which is always welcome. Before you do this, make sure it fits your budget.

If it comes down to buying stock or doing more paid advertising, go for the ads. You also have to think about storing the products. Some vendors may hold and ship the products, bulk orders. Not all vendors will do this and some will do it only for customers who bring them a certain amount of business.

Increased holiday business is awesome. Just make sure you have the people and resources in place to handle it…otherwise it can turn the best season of the year into a nightmare of stress and frustration. Luckily, some simple analysis and a few calls can keep the holiday ‘jolly’.

Holiday Preparation:

• Tally your calls and their duration; factor the holiday rush into it to determine whether you need extra hands to handle calls.
• Decide what your extended holiday hours are going to be and who is going to work those hours for you.
• Determine your weekend hours and who is going to work those.
• Hire a temp or a call center to ?ll in any holes in your holiday business plan.
• Call your vendors and talk to them about stock.
• Pre-order quantities of best sellers to make more profit.
• Enjoy the holiday rush

Extracted from StomperNet SEO Intelligence Report, October 28, 2011.

I was recently asked a question by a social network friend: “How do you start your business in a niche?”

At some earlier point in time, I could have grown envious of expert marketers who seem to be able to sell anything and everything, but the best way to get into business is to know the one area where you know you have the passion and skill set to solve its problems or fulfill a need, then expand your business into sub-niches. Of course, the other method is to do quantitative keyword research. A friend once told me another great way is to get at least 5 friends to tell you what they think you’re really good at.

It’s not so much a question about niche as it is about your forte.

If your prospect says “I want to think it over,” it’s likely for one of these 4 reasons:

1) He’s not convinced he wants what you are offering.

2) The prospect has not been completely honest with you or doesn’t want to reveal the real reason he’s not buying.

3) The prospect wants to shop around first.

4) The prospect is afraid he may be overlooking something.

Source: Harry Browne, “The Secret of Selling Anything”

Over the past several days, I’ve sent you some incredible videos and training from Greg Habstritt.

And the response has been overwhelming!

THOUSANDS of comments, Facebook likes, and people getting results from what he’s teaching.

And now, the real opportunity begins because he’s just getting started.

Greg just opened registration for his new and exclusive Trusted Authority Coaching Program.

In this incredible coaching program, he walks you through his simple 5-step process to become the Trusted Authority, and build a 7-figure business doing what you LOVE.

If you’re tired of the usual hype and just want something that WORKS, you owe it yourself to see this for yourself.

There’s a reason that he’s worked with most of the top names in the speaking, training and business world.

People like Sir Richard Branson, Dr. Stephen R. Covey, former President Bill Clinton, and even His Holiness the Dalai Lama (yes, really!).

It’s rare to have the chance to not just learn from someone that’s “been there, done that” but this is yours.

Don’t let it pass you by.

Can you really afford to have another year like last year or the year before?

It’s time to step up, and here’s your ladder!

If you stumbled upon a switch which would immediately allow you to step into your brilliance, would you flip it?

Because I think you’re being given that opportunity right now.

A friend of mine has just released what I can only describe as “the map to the treasure”.

Greg Habstritt laid out a simple, 5-step blueprint that will allow you to become the Trusted Authority in your market, and create freedom for yourself, doing what you love.

And the best part is, he’s giving the blueprint away right now…

There’s nothing to buy, just amazing insight. You’ll need to put in your e-mail address, but it’s worth it.

When you go here, you can not only download the complete PDF blueprint, but also watch a video that takes you step-by-step through it.

He even shows you specific examples of how he’s used these steps to create several multi-million dollar businesses himself.

If you want to gain credibility with your prospects, participate in the markets you serve.

For example, I knew of a fellow who sold welding equipment to welders. To relate better to his prospects and make them more comfortable with him, he took courses at night and became a certified welder.

Similarly, if you sell million-dollar life insurance policies, it’s difficult to convince someone else to buy a policy unless you own one yourself.

Here’s a powerful thought for you: the quality of your business (and life) is determined by the questions you ask yourself.

Think about it. If you ask lousy questions like “why can’t I attract more clients?” or “why can’t I make money doing this?” you’re always going to come up short.

But if you ask powerful questions, everything changes in a moment.

My friend Greg Habstritt just released a powerful video that helps you ask the 3 most important questions for YOU. Right now.

It takes less than 10 minutes, and yet you end up with amazing clarity, knowing exactly what you need to right now to move forward.

If you don’t know how to identify the RIGHT questions to be asking yourself, this video will give you the key.

Improve the quality of your questions, and you’ll explode the results in your business. Try it now, you’ll thank me later.

You may know that Steve Jobs was a college dropout, and he once got fired from his own company before, but there are still some things his authorized biography probably won’t tell you…

Like the insider business aspects of his life: how did he turn Apple into the most valuable company in the world after overtaking Exxon Mobil in total monetary value? Or a question as simple as: How does he sell?

Well, one man tries to decrypt the mystery of Steve Jobs, and I just ended up watching this incredible video that shows the crazy-simple (but POWERFUL) strategies he used…and that you can easily use as well.

Steve Jobs was the Thomas Edison of our time, and the greatest thing we can do is learn from him and build on his incredible legacy.

Check the video out, and you can also download an awesome PDF here that walks you through this unusual but incredible idea.

All it will cost you is dropping your e-mail address in to get the video and PDF links sent to you (but you can unsubscribe anytime). It’s TOTALLY worth it, so check it now!

According to a brochure from Appleton Coated, a paper company:

1) Consumers receiving a printed catalog are 2X more likely to buy online than consumers who do not receive a catalog.

2) 67% of online action is driven by offline messages.

3) 80% of Americans read or skim direct mail, and 38% find direct mail interesting.

4) 75% of consumers say they have made a purchase as a result of direct mail.

5) Consumers rate direct mail as 3.9 on a scale of 1 to 5 for the acceptability of various communications channels above all other channels.

There are 3 places that you can look online to find red-hot local prospects.

And if you approach them the right way, and say and do the right things…

They’ll be calling YOU every week ready to get started and pay you for your online marketing help.

In other words, no going to meetups or face-to-face meetings, or ever having to pick up the phone and make a cold call.

You’ll see what these 3 places are when you watch this presentation.

There are local business trainers out there that ‘kinda’ show you how to target these places, and you might get some results (if you get lucky)…

But usually you’re told to go after them in a way that does NOT separate you from all the other wannabe local marketers.

So you get ZERO results.

Kevin Wilke of the Local Internet Marketers Association (LIMA) shows you a groundbreaking way that at first may sound too good to be true…

But it works. And it lands you high-paying local clients anytime you turn the “machine” on.

It’s like giving yourself a pay raise any time you need it, just by pressing the gas pedal for 30 minutes a day.

Go check it out.

Many entrepreneurs I meet—even mom-and-pops and SOHOs—spend thousands of dollars on hiring so-called experts to advise them on how to make their businesses more successful.

Sometimes, the expert’s advice works out, the investment is recouped, and the entrepreneur is better off for consulting with a professional.

Other times, the expert’s advice is either useless or wrong. The client has thrown thousands of dollars he can’t afford to lose down the drain, and sees no improvement in his bottom line, productivity, efficiency, or operations.

Since I am frequently on both sides of the table—I sell my services as a copywriter and consultant, and also buy lots of services for my little Internet marketing business—I have a small bit of advice that might save you this agony…and enable you to select advisors who can actually help you.

In my experience, there are 3 types of experts for hire.

The first type of expert I call the teacher.

“Teachers” are those who give training, speeches, and seminars…write books and blogs and columns…sell their expertise as consultants or coaches—but don’t actually practice what they preach.

You know the expression “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”

I don’t think it’s always true…but these teachers have never, for the most part, proven that they can do what they talk about. They’ve only taught it or advised others how to do it, but have never done it themselves.

An example of a “teacher expert” is Tom Peters.

He is revered as a management guru, and writes endless books and gives speech after speech advising CEOs on how to be great managers and leaders.

But he has never been the chief executive of any company (running your own consulting business does not count).

The second type of expert is the practitioner.

This is someone who knows a particular skill or area because he does it—and does it successfully—rather than writes books or articles about it.

An example is Gary Bencivenga, who is arguably one of the greatest copywriters who ever lived.

Yet until his retirement, Gary—to the best of my knowledge—never wrote a book, article, or column on marketing. Nor was he a speaker at marketing conferences.

The third type of expert is the teacher/practitioner—an active practitioner who is also a writer, speaker, and teacher in his area of expertise.

A good example of this is Michael Masterson, who writes best-selling books on business success and entrepreneurship—based on his decades of experience building and growing many successful companies.

Some of the many companies he has been involved with generate annual sales ranging from $10 million to $100 million and beyond.

Now, as to which type of experts you should hire—and when…

If you are a seminar organizer or meeting planner, most of your speakers are probably teachers.

That’s because speaking is how they make their living, and so they are actively seeking these speaking engagements. And, they are good speakers.

The hidden truth is many practitioners for the most part shun speaking requests; they are too busy making money running their companies.

You may think hiring a professional speaker to give a professional speech makes sense.

After all, you want someone who knows the topic and can communicate it in a clear, motivating, and entertaining fashion.

The problem is that the teacher’s knowledge is all theoretical: gleaned from research and observation and thinking, but not actually doing.

Therefore, the teacher thinks he knows what works…but in reality, he is just making educated guesses.

MA, a professional speaker who also owned and operated several successful insurance agencies, once said that nobody should be a full-time speaker because if you are not practicing what you preach, you really don’t know what you are talking about.

Yes, you can hire a teacher as your seminar presenter or keynote speaker.

Many can deliver a rousing talk that gets a standing ovation and great evaluations.

But their expertise rarely extends beyond the content of the talk. And this shallowness inevitably comes through in both their presentation and their interaction with attendees after they step down from the platform.

If you are a small business owner hiring expert advisors and professionals—copywriters, strategists, consultants, and advisors—you should never hire pure teachers.

Think about it. Let’s say you want to hire someone to manage a pay-per-click ad campaign for your company.

Do you really want to take the advice from someone who has, over his lifetime, done fewer actual PPC ad campaigns than you have?

Someone who has merely written a book based on studying the PPC campaigns of others or real entrepreneurs with the guts to actually put their own money where their mouth is?

The bottom line?

Your key business advisors and vendors should all be practitioners or practitioner/teachers.

First and foremost, they should have long experience—and a terrific track record—in the discipline for which you seek their help.

For this purpose, either a practitioner or a practitioner/teacher will do nicely.

The one advantage of the practitioner/teacher over the practitioner is an enhanced ability to clearly and efficiently explain what he is doing…so his clients can learn and—over time—become more self sufficient.

I once heard the definition of an expert as someone who doesn’t necessarily know more than other people, but their information is better organized.

A practitioner expert, however, does know more than other people because he has learned from real-world trial and error.

A teaching expert, on the other hand, usually does not know more because his knowledge is gleaned from studying practitioners who do know more.

But the teacher’s information is better organized as a result of putting it into a seminar, workshop, or book.

As for the practitioner/teachers, they can in some instances give you the best of both worlds.

As their client, you get the expert’s in-depth experience and authoritative knowledge of the subject in which they advise you.

You also benefit from the expert’s ability to help you both understand what they are doing (and why) as well as educate you in their field.

That way, you can learn over time to do more and more on your own—if you are so inclined.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

1. Tell your audience what kind of support they’ll get after they buy. It could be free consulting, tech support, free servicing, etc. This may also answer some of their buying questions ahead of time. People don’t want to buy products without knowing you will be there to help if they have problems.

2. Ask people at the end of your copy why they decided not to buy. This will give you new ideas on how to produce ad copy that’s more profitable. Have a web form or e-mail link in place so they can answer you. You may find out they don’t like your guarantee or graphics. It could be anything.

3. Think of ways to get your site or business in the news. You could sponsor a fundraiser, break a world record, hold a major event, etc. Simply write a press release about what you’ve accomplished, then send it to media outlets that cater to your target audience.

4. Hold a contest on your website. Give other websites the option of offering it to their visitors. This will multiply your advertising all over the Internet. It would become a viral contest. Of course the contest must either be ongoing or held regularly so you could allow other online publishers to offer it to their visitors or subscribers.

5. Tell your potential customers that your ordering system is highly secure. Also reassure them that you take every effort to protect them. People want to feel they are safe online. They want to know that you care about their well-being. Tell them all about what you currently do for them to make them feel more secure.

6. Carry business cards with you wherever you go. Have your web address printed on them. You can hand them out to anyone you meet. Just think of all the people you meet on a regular basis: grocery clerks, post office workers, bag boys, family members, friends, salesmen/women, etc.

7. Contact national radio stations to ask them if they are looking for guest speakers. Tell them your area of expertise; maybe they’ll book you for a show. Of course you would want to contact targeted stations and shows which would want to know more about you and your area of expertise.

8. Join clubs related to your area of business. You could trade leads with other businesses. Learn new ways to run your business and sell your products. You could also create your own online business club. You could provide private chat rooms, message boards, articles, etc.

9. Think of a domain name for your website that’s easy to remember. It should be related to what your business does, sells or provides. If there aren’t any business names available, use your actual birth name. You could at least brand yourself. Your own name will give you credibility.

10. Position your website at the top of pay-per-click search engines. You will only pay your set amount for each click-through you get to your website. Just make sure your profits will pay for your advertising cost. If they won’t, maybe you could share a website with another related business and split the costs.

11. Allow your visitors or customers to increase your traffic or sales. Ask them how you can improve your business, website or product. You can ask them at your website, in your e-zine, on your message board, in your chat room, in your guest book, in your product packages, etc.

12. Team up with other e-zines that have the same target audience. Combine subscriber bases and then publish one e-zine together to increase subscribers. You could all include your ads and announcements in the e-zine. You could also take turns for the top advertising space.

13. Swap endorsement advertisements with other websites. Endorsement ads usually pull more sales and traffic than regular advertisements. People have taught themselves to ignore advertisements because they see hundreds of them every day. Endorsements usually don’t look or sound like normal ads.

14. Outsource part of your workload to save time and money. You can spend more of your time and money promoting your business. You’ll save money on employee costs, space costs, training costs, etc. Keep the work you enjoy doing to keep you motivated and outsource the work you don’t like.

15. Include a signature file on all the e-mails you send out. Provide your business name, phone number, e-mail and web address, etc. Also include a brief blurb for your business or the product you’re selling. For example, you could say, “How To Wash Your Car In Two Minutes or Less!”

16. Use pictures or graphics on your website that support the product you’re selling. They could give your visitors a clearer vision of your product, the benefits of the product, people’s emotion when they own the product, etc. You could also use ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures.

17. Create a friendly, long-term relationship with all your customers. Practice good customer service and follow-up with them on a regular basis. You could follow-up with gifts, greeting cards, free things, coupons, special offers, reminders, your e-zine, helpful advice, etc.

18. Create strategic alliances with other websites. You could exchange banner ads, sell each other’s products as back-end products, cross-promote, etc. You could also create a website together and promote it on your separate websites. You would both just split the costs and profits.

19. Increase the perceived value of your product to skyrocket your sales. Add on free bonuses, after-sale services or an affiliate program. Other factors that would help are: your own domain name, a professional web design, a good-looking product graphic and persuasive ad copy.

20. Give customers a discount on their total order to increase sales. You could give them a discount for ordering over a set dollar or product amount. For example, you could say, “Buy over $39 worth of products and get a 20% discount on your order!” Another example, “Get a 15% discount if you order 3 or more products!”

21. Allow your visitors to reprint the content on your website. Just ask them to include your resource box and a link to your site in exchange. This will turn your content into a traffic machine and the external links will help increase your ranking in some search engines.

22. Provide a free contest or sweepstake at your website. It’s a fact, people like to win things. If you can fulfill that need, people will visit. You can also attract them to revisit by holding one every week or month. You could also start an opt-in list for people who enter your contest or sweepstake so you can follow-up with them regularly.

23. Save time and money by using ad submitters. You will reach a larger part of your target audience far more quickly than by manually submitting your ad. You should manually submit your ad to the most popular websites so you have a better chance of being listed or placed in a good position.

24. Create a good first impression. You will not be able to sell very many products if your visitors think your website looks unprofessional. Use crisp graphics, attractive color combinations, a readable text size, even spacing, even margins, bold headlines, indent benefits etc.

25. Stop procrastinating and start finishing all your business tasks. Do one at a time. Don’t get caught up thinking that you can never get them all done. Make a list. Do the easiest or most crucial one first and move down the list. Cross off each task as you complete it.

26. Develop a relationship with all your visitors and customers. Tell them how much you appreciate them visiting your website or buying your product. Invite them to online and offline events like free chat room classes, parties, dinner gatherings, business events, etc.

27. Hire a business coach to help improve you and your business. That could help increase your sales, motivate you, balance your workload, etc. It would be like renting an extra brain. You would have double the thinking power.

28. Stay away from being too comfortable with your income or life. You should always be making new goals for yourself and developing new sales ideas. The world keeps changing and if you pause too long, you might miss out. You only live once.

29. Make sure you don’t become a workaholic. Your mind needs time away from your business life. This will help your brain think clearly while working. The best time to get profitable ideas is when you’re not thinking about them. They just pop into your brain.

30. Create and follow short/long-term goals for your business. The short-term goals can create early success and the long-term goals can create future success. Design each goal so they all add up to your ultimate goal. Don’t make your goals too unrealistic otherwise depression and frustration could move you farther away from them.

If you like to elaborate on some of these tips, feel free to expand on them by putting your comments below. Thank you!

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It’s one of the leading causes of new business failure, particularly on the Internet where entrepreneurs try to do everything themselves.

Yet it is also one of the most overlooked aspects of running a successful business.

I’m talking, of course, about business organization.

If you are an Internet entrepreneur, without the right organizational system in place you are likely to be overcome with paperwork, lead generation, customer service and all the countless other duties you will be forced to deal with on your own as “boss”.

Over the years, trying to run a business without the system in place has proven too great a challenge for many talented entrepreneurs who have ended up either spending too much time on business management and not enough on sales or too much time on sales and not enough managing their business.

And no matter which scenario you choose, the ultimate end result is the failure of your business and the destruction of your dreams.

No, to succeed on the Internet, particularly today, you need a business system that will allow you to quickly and easily manage your business.

You need to ensure you don’t spend more time working IN your business rather than ON your business.

You need to stop wasting countless hours on administrative tasks.

Having a firm system in place will keep you on track and prevent you from becoming overwhelmed or, worse, overlooking critical details that might cost you money or diminish your professional credibility.

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Well, the one that I personally use and that I’ve found to be particularly effective in helping me run my business more smoothly, more efficiently and more profitably is the eBusiness Organizer.

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At one time the Florida Marlins, with 23 wins and 14 losses, had the best record in Major League baseball.

But that meant the best-performing team in professional baseball was losing almost 4 out of every 10 games it played.

And remember: that was the best record in baseball.

What’s ironic is that businesspeople who accept this statistical truth about baseball without a second thought…absolutely go bonkers when even one of their marketing programs fail.

Experienced direct marketers know, and expect, a percentage of their test campaigns to under-perform the control or even lose money.

They accept this fact without despair, because they know that if one test mailing in every two or every three or even every five is a winner, they can make a lot of money.

Inexperienced direct marketers don’t get this, however.

As a result, countless small businesses test direct marketing once every few years.

And if they don’t hit a home run the first time at bat, they loudly proclaim that “direct mail doesn’t work” and abandon it wholesale.

If you’re a business owner or marketing professional, is there a better way to get direct marketing to work for you?

Yes. And it’s to do more testing than you do right now.

For example, let’s say you are planning to mail 5,000 postcards to drive people to a web page.

You just can’t decide which of two headlines you like—”Tastes Great” vs. “Less Filling”.

If you subjectively pick just one, your risk of selecting the wrong sales appeal—and therefore having your postcard mailing bomb – is 50 percent.

A much better approach is to split the postcard mailing into two batches, half with the headline “Tastes Great” and the other half with “Less Filling”.

Each drives traffic to a different URL so you can measure the click-through and conversion rates…and then see which generates the most leads.

Especially on the web, testing different variations—headline, copy, graphics, format—is relatively quick, easy, and inexpensive.

Therefore, if you create a long-copy landing page to sell a product on the Internet and your conversion rate is poor, don’t give up on the product.

Instead, test different headlines, visuals, pricing, offers, premiums, subheads, copy leads.

You’ll notice that one headline pulls slightly better than another…or one price generates 40% more orders.

Start incorporating the winners of these tests into your landing page, and in no time flat, you can take the promotion from marginally profitable to a real winner, all courtesy of testing.

I am amazed at how many marketers, both large and small, invest significant sums in developing products and promotions—both online and offline—and then just advertise each product with a single promotion…with no testing of any kind.

If you are doing this, then you are essentially hoping you get a hit with only once chance at bat.

In baseball, a .250 hitter who only gets one at-bat has only a one in four chance of getting a hit.

In reality, for product launches, the success rate is often as little as 10 percent, which means that a single promotion has only a one in ten chance of making money.

Therefore, the odds of winning with a one-shot promotion are 10 to 1 against.

By testing different copy, offers, design, and formats, you can significantly tip those odds in your favor.

Giving your marketing multiple chances to score a winner through testing is a much more sensible way to go.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.