As far as getting traffic to a blog is concerned, there are numerous ways to achieve this. Here are some additional methods that you can use to get more traffic coming in to a blog:

• Participate in Other Blog Comments

Blog comments are very diverse. Some are blatant spam, usually advertising some online casino or pharmacy site (the good thing is that most of these are picked up by spam filters automatically now anyways), many others add little or no value to the discussion (Yeah, I agree!/Good Post!/Thanks, etc). But some are truly insightful and genuinely add to the discussion on the topic of the blog post. By participating in other blog comments, you can get a link to your blog, which can be visited by other visitors and also the blog owner. If the owner of the blog finds that your comments are truly beneficial they may even add a link to your blog on their main page and share some of your posts on social media. This can bring you a lot of traffic, especially if you get linked to from a blog that is already popular.

• Interact With Your Users

Allow your readers to leave comments on your blog. Read and respond to them. Allow your readers to subscribe to the comment thread through email or social media. By openly interacting with your readers, you will increase the amount of attention that they give to your blog and this will make them a lot more likely to come back or to share your content with others.

• Establish a Strong Social Media Presence

Use social media such as Facebook, Google +, Twitter and maybe even video sharing sites such as YouTube or Daily Motion to complement your blog and bring more attention to it from users of these services. However, to get more success, remember that your social media pages should be more than simply links to your blog posts. You can post on social media sites whenever you update your blog and share that post, but be sure to include other, original content as well. The goal is to get a following on social media as well as on your blog. The more visitors and followers you’re going to have on your social media page the better the chances that some of these people will also become followers and readers of your blog.

• Establish Yourself as An Authority in Your Niche

This is one of the hardest ways but also the most profitable in the long term. You will want your blog to be known and respected in your niche. This will give you access to many visitors, perhaps even thousands a day if your blog is very successful. How is this done? There are various methods that you can employ to increase the authority of your blog. Apply them, be patient and they will work. We will explore some of these methods tomorrow.

We’ve previously seen just how important it is to employ good security measures when using social networking sites for your business. The two main common sense security tips involve making sure your email is secure, as well as choosing good passwords for your social networking accounts and not using the same password on different websites. But there are also some security tips that are unique to social media that you should employ as well. Take a look at them if you use or are considering using social networking services for your business needs. These will help make your use of social media sites in the course of your business activities a lot safer with less potential for problems caused by malicious software, hackers and other security breaches.

• Be careful with apps and plugins that you install

There are many plugins and apps that were developed for social media sites, especially for Facebook. For example, you can find apps that let you post to numerous social media sites at the same time, as well as integrate your website content better with your social media accounts. While they may be useful, there have been some rogue apps that were detected. Usually, Facebook is good at finding and removing those, but before this happens some damage could get done. For example, rogue apps could steal compromise the security of your profile, as well as post spam messages on your or your friends walls. Before you decide to use an app, you will need to do a bit of research about it to make sure that it’s actually a legitimate tool and not some piece of social media malware. Simply Google the name of the app or plug in. If it’s something legitimate, then you will find some websites, blog posts, or online news articles that talk about it in the form of reviews and information, as well as some background information on the developers of the application. If it’s something rogue, then you will probably find cautionary messages that have been posted in many places on the web to warn social networking site users about it, that way you would know that it’s an app that should be best avoided. Doing a minute or two of research of Google could save you a lot of trouble, so this is not a step that should be skipped.

• Beware of impersonation

Since no identity verification is required to join social networking sites, there’s little out there that could stop a cyber criminal from creating a fake account and impersonate someone that you know, such as a client, business partner, etc. If you discuss things with someone on a social networking website, make sure that you actually know the person that you’re dealing with and that you’re sure they are who they claim to be. This is something that is easy to do and simply requires a bit of common sense on your part.

During the holiday shopping season, it is important that you make some additional promotions on your online merchandise for your website visitors. When shopping during the holidays, everyone wants to save money, so retailers often respond to that by giving discounts on some or all of their merchandise for sale. This applies both to e-commerce sites and brick and mortar businesses. But in addition to lowering the price of your items for sale, there are many other things that you can do to make your online shopping site more attractive to visitors during this upcoming holiday shopping season. Remember that creativity is always a good thing in the online world and if you have many competitors in your niche, making your site and your holiday promotions stand out from the rest will definitely put you at a strong advantage. Here are some examples of things you may offer to your buyers:

• Free Gift Wrapping

Many people who buy holiday gifts online have them shipped directly to the recipient. This is definitely a good idea if that recipient doesn’t live in the same area. Offering to gift wrap the items for free is a good service that you can give to the buyers on your website.

• Free Shipping

One of the things that turns people off from shopping online for the holidays is the shipping fees. But some e-commerce sites have responded to this by offering free shipping on some or all of their items. To do this, you would just need to calculate the cost of shipping certain items to see if it would be still profitable for you to sell the item and offer free shipping. Consider offering free shipping on certain orders, such as those over $100. Take a look at the rates offered by shipping carriers to see if you can get cheaper shipping rates based on the volume of packages that you send out every day.

• Loyalty Offers for Existing Customers

If a buyer purchases something from you, consider sending them a discount code in their email which is valid for a certain percentage off their next order. While this is more complicated to integrate into a site, you could also set up a points based rewards program, where shoppers could earn points and exchange them for discounts on your merchandise.

• Deeper Discounts for the First Buyers

You could offer an even better discount offer than what you currently have for, say, the first 10 buyers of an item. This can help you sell one of your items that is not too popular. If the price is low enough, it can also serve as promoting an impulse buy, especially if it is something small and relatively inexpensive.

These are all some great examples of offers that you can make for your website visitors during the busy shopping season. But of course, the key element is creativity. If you believe that something else will work well with your audience, then don’t hesitate to try it on your website!

If you are an online entrepreneur or marketer, then you will probably be doing most of your work online. To get online, you will probably use a PC, or maybe another device such as a laptop, netbook, tablet or a smart phone. There has been a lot of talk lately about cloud computing and the benefits that it can bring to business users. However, is it time to switch to cloud based applications yet?

When we are talking about cloud computing, one should know what exactly this concept means. It is actually quite simple to understand. It means that your applications are running on a remote server online (on the “cloud”), as well as the majority of your files can be saved remotely. This has the advantage that your files will be accessible from anywhere and that your programs are actually running on the server, you are merely viewing them on your PC or other device.

One mobile computing device that has caused a lot of talk in the IT industry lately is the Google Chromebook. It is basically a netbook, a smaller version of a laptop, that runs on the Google Chrome OS. With it, all applications are hosted on Google’s cloud servers. Therefore, to do anything useful with it (except play Angry Birds, which can be downloaded to it and runs locally), you need to be online.

Now the problem is that the current set of applications available is quite limited. It is mostly designed for business users that want to browse the web, check their email and remotely connect to another server or use a remote desktop tool on a regular PC.

Now since most applications that are used by internet marketers, such as SEO tools, web design applications, graphics tools for creating logos and ads, etc. will not run on the Google Chrome OS, we can see that the device is quite useless for most online marketers.

There is also the issue of price. It is much more expensive than other netbooks, without bringing in any features that are significantly superior to them. Sure, the Google Chrome OS may be a simple interface if all you need to do is browse, but if you really love it, then there is another way to get it without needing to spend almost $500 on the Chromebook. There is actually an open source version of the same OS made by Google called the Chromium OS, which can be downloaded for free and installed on any desktop, laptop or netbook computer.

Many online marketers would find that getting a netbook would be an excellent way to catch up on work while outside their home, thanks to a very portable mini laptop. However currently, it would seem that the Chromebook does not really have anything that outperforms some of the other netbooks on the market today, which run Windows or Linux and sell as low as $150.

Yesterday, we have seen some tips on how to reduce problems while advertising CPA offers on classified ads sites. You’ve seen some tips such as not using an autoresponder, not direct linking and also being creative in your ads. Here are some more tips for you which will help minimize instances of your ads being flagged or reported as spam:

• Don’t use a sales copy as your reply

You’ve probably seen what a sales copy looks like. This is what you get to see whenever you get on the home page for any Clickbank product, or any other information product that is sold through other channels. Sales copies are cleverly worded with words that are of different sizes, fonts, underlined, etc. Sales copy writing is a million dollar industry, with professional copywriters charging thousands of dollars for a single sales page. Sounds profitable and useful, right? Well, it may be good for a website, but using a “sale copy” tactic in a reply to someone who replies to your ad, or even worse, in your ad itself is pretty much a guarantee that you will get flagged or reported as spam. Don’t do it. It’s just not worth the effort. Even if most people will not flag you, they will simply pass by your reply, as it will look plainly obvious that you are trying to sell them something or are getting them to sign up for something.

• Personalize your reply

The person who replies to your ad has written the message themselves. You should too. Use their name in the message. Answer any questions or remarks that they have made in their reply. This will give the person who is reading your message more of an assurance that you are actually a real, human being and not some spam bot that is sending out automated messages to all those who reply.

• Don’t include your link in the first message

This is another useful tactic in minimizing the amount of times that your ads will get flagged down. In your first email, you will basically acknowledge what the person said to you, answer any questions, add some more information and then ask them to confirm that they are still interested in what you have to offer them. While some marketers may think that making someone jump through hoops to get to the offer is bad and that it will reduce conversions, this is actually not the case.

Yes, there are some people who will flake and not reply to you. Try sending out another message asking them if they are still interested. If they don’t reply, just drop them. The same people who will bail out at this time will be the ones that wouldn’t sign up for your offer in the first place. Plus there are also those who like to play “Internet Sheriff” and reply to some ads, only to see if there will be a web link that looks like a CPA offer included in the message you send to them. If so, they will flag your ad or report it as “spam”.

Even though it may have gotten more difficult in recent times, it is still possible to use Craigslist (and other classified ads sites) to promote some CPA offers, and there are still many merchants and networks which allow this kind of promotion. While these tips work for Craigslist, they will obviously be good for any other similar classified ads site out there.

However, many people report having problems, such as getting their ads flagged within minutes, or having their ads not appearing. Here are some tips that will help you get the most out of classified ads sites when used with CPA campaigns.

• Don’t direct link to a CPA offer

While this may seem pretty obvious, a lot of new marketers seem oblivious to the fact that if you put an affiliate link directly into your ad, you will get flagged down rapidly, or your ad will not appear at all. You basically have two ways that you can use to direct traffic from a classified ads site to an affiliate or CPA offer. Either you build your own landing page and register a domain for it, or you have people email you and then reply to them by email. The approach that you will use will vary depending on what you are promoting, but the second option seems to be the most popular and effective for the majority of CPA offers.

• Don’t use an autoresponder

An autoresponder is an email feature which automatically sends a reply with a pre-formatted message to anyone who sends you an email. Autoresponders have their value and are in fact extremely useful for some types of marketing. However, for classified ads, they are not a tool that you can use. Whenever someone gets an automated response to an email that they’ve sent, it automatically shows that something “spammy” is going on. Therefore, you are highly likely to get your ad flagged as spam very quickly if you use an autoresponder. I know that replying to emails personally takes time, but this is something that needs to be done if you want to have success. The task could be outsourced very cheaply as well. If you have to use an autoresponder (not recommended and we will get into more reasons later on) at least use one which is on a delay of a few hours and does not reply to emails automatically as soon as they are received.

• Be creative in your ads

There are certain words such as “make money online” which will get your ad flagged right away. Furthermore, avoid copy pasting ads that you saw in an e-book or in a forum post that details some money making method for Craigslist. These have a high tendency to get flagged right away, since chances are there are many other people who have used them before you. Therefore, the bottom line here is: the ad that you post needs to be creative.

One of the ways to earn money by using CPA networks is by using a content locker, also called a gateway on your website. This is something that can be used with incentive offers to increase conversions. Now what exactly does a gateway do? The principle is very simple. When a user gets to your page, a content gateway will pop up, asking them to complete a CPA offer before they get access to the content presented. These offers are usually short email submits or mobile offers that pay around $1 to $2 a lead.

Is this better than simply having CPA text ads or banners on your site? Well, the answer is usually yes. Many people are used to seeing ad banners, especially the cheesy “Shoot X to get an iPhone” type of ads and will usually ignore them. However, with a content gateway, they will actually have to complete one offer before they get access to the content that they want. Sure, some of them will simply walk away and go to another website. However, some of the visitors will complete the offer, especially if they are really looking forward to seeing the content that is presented on your website.

Many of you may be thinking: sounds great! How do I set this up on my site? There are essentially two ways to do this: either you can sign up for a CPA network such as CPA Lead or Adscend Media, that offers CPA content locking gateways, or use a third party script with incentive offers from another network. Of course, the first would be much easier, as the script has already been designed by the CPA network and all you would need to do is to insert some pre formatted code on your website. If you do use a third party script with another network, make sure that you only do so with incentive offers. Also, discuss with your affiliate manager first to see if you are allowed to do so, to make sure that there are no restrictions on this type of marketing with the network that you are using.

One question that remains is: should you use this on your site at all? The answer here will vary. If you have a completely new website that you’ve just started sending traffic to, then this might be a good idea. However, on the other hand if you have an established site with plenty of regular visitors, you may want to think twice before using a content locker on it. This is because if you are already making a good amount of revenue from these visitors from “regular” CPA offers or pay per click ads, you might risk losing some of your regular traffic if these visitors don’t really like the idea of filling out a CPA offer to get to your content. But there is always a compromise, for example you can set up a “premium” section of your website that requires filling out a CPA offer to access. Or you could display the gateway only to random users, or after they have visited a certain amount of pages on your website.

When searching for web hosting, you may have seen companies that offer you really inexpensive hosting, such as $2 a month for an unlimited plan without any commitment. Obviously, these prices are attractive, but there must be some catch, right? Well in many cases, these hosting companies are places that you should stay away from if you are serious about your online business. Here are some reasons as to why:

• They are usually not real “web hosting companies”

What is meant by that is that they don’t have their own offices, staff, servers and connections. In most cases, these cheap hosting providers actually rent a server from another web host and then resell the space to their customers in an effort to make money. But what could be worse is simply one person buying a server and then plugging it into their internet connection at home. Obviously, don’t expect much in terms of reliability with that kind of arrangement.

• They don’t provide good support

It would be very rare for such a company to give you 24/7 customer service and technical support. In most cases, the only way you have of getting in touch with them is by email or by opening up a support ticket on their website. It can take several hours, or even days for them to get back to you. Don’t assume that if they have a toll free number and claim that they offer “24/7 support” that they are actually a real hosting company with staff standing by to take your call. Any kid can get a toll free number and then just forward it to his cell phone. Many times, you will find that when you try calling them, no one is available and you are told to leave a message.

• They haven’t built a reputation in the web hosting industry

These inexpensive hosts are usually “no name” companies that have not built a reputation and have not been reviewed by many customers. As such, you will have trouble actually trying to find out whether they offer good service or not. Buying hosting from a reputable company is the key when you want stable and secure hosting. Consider this: which one would be a better MP3 player? A real iPod, or some Chinese imitation that sells for $10? The same principle applies to web hosting as well. You are much better off sticking with the known companies and brands if you want decent service.

• Security and reliability could be a further problem

Professional web hosting companies know how to keep their servers running in optimal condition and how to secure them from attacks by hackers, viruses and malware. A no-name hosting company might not. In fact, they may cut down costs by not even making any backups, so if data is lost due to a server malfunction or hacking, it could be gone forever unless you have made your own backup copy first.

If you are using article marketing in order to increase the popularity of your business online, chances are you will need to write a decent amount of articles on a regular basis. While some people don’t have any problem with article writing and actually enjoy it, others seem to have trouble creating enough unique content to get their marketing efforts rolling. Is it possible to write articles faster? Here are some tips:

Get rid of distractions.

A lot of people aren’t able to write articles fast enough simply because they are so easily distracted and not focusing on the task at hand. Turn off the television. Close your email. Close your IM clients. Close any website that is not needed. Doing so will allow you to better focus on what you are doing and complete the required work a lot faster.

Organize everything beforehand.

Taking advantage of the power of article marketing is a great thing. But you need to be very organized in order to have the maximum success. All aspects of your campaign should be carefully planned beforehand. And this means before you sit down and starting writing articles.

Here is what you should do:

Think of what you will be writing about. Will the articles be more of a product review? Or will they instead be general information articles that will give information on the niche of the product you are promoting?

Do the necessary research. If you are already quite familiar with the topic, then you may not really need to do this and can write a great article off the top of your head. That’s great, but what if you are promoting a product on a niche you are not that familiar with? For example, if you are an affiliate for an “alternative energy” Clickbank book and don’t really know much about that. You will need to do some research to get ideas for your content.

Here are some sources of information for you to use:

The product’s website / sales page. You will get insights as to what it does, how it works and how it can help people solve a problem that they have. On some Clickbank products, you will also find a few articles written about the niche in the “affiliates” section of the website (usually a small link at the bottom). Use these to get some inspiration.

Wikipedia. The free encyclopedia. A great resource for information on various topics. For example, if you are writing a review of a certain cell phone model, you can find information about it’s technical specifications, features, the countries where it is sold, etc.

Article directories – Go Articles, Ezinearticles, etc. Here you will find some articles already written by others on your niche. What are they saying? A great source of info.

Google – I hope you already know what this is. Simply type some keywords related to your product or niche to find content that is related to it which you can use in your article.

Ever wondered if there was an easy way to make money with CPA email submit offers? Don’t worry, there are some ways that you can make a decent amount of money promoting these types of offers. At first, it may seem quite difficult to earn some cash from an offer that pays $1 to $2 per lead. The key here is to get traffic to the offer which is inexpensive and converts well enough for you to make a decent amount of cash. This is possible to do by making use of pay per click advertising services such as Google Adwords.

Now normally, running these offers and sending traffic straight to the merchant would not be so profitable. You will face rather stiff competition and the price per click would almost guarantee that you lose money. But there is a way to change all of that. It’s called the “poll” method.

The first thing you need to do is to find a topic that is hot in searches and is trending right now. Issues that are in the news right now are very good choices. Google has a service called Google Trends (trends.google.com), which allows you to see the current hot searches. You would then pick some topics and run their related keywords through the Google Adwords keywords tool. This will allow you to find the one with the least expensive keywords.

Now here’s the main part of the method. In order to promote the offer, we will create a poll. That’s right, a one question survey. For example, if there is an election going on in the United States, the poll could simply be something like “Who will become the next president? Candidate A or Candidate B? Vote now to get a [Insert freebie promoted in email submit offer]” Once the user votes, they are told to enter their email on the next page and redirected to the email submit offer.

Now, how do you design the poll page? You have two options. Either you can get a poll script that is made for this purpose. There are plenty which are floating around for download in some internet marketing forums. They are relatively easy to install if you have some experience with running scripts on your web server.

If not, then simply design a page with the options and two radio buttons (the round options that let the user make a selection) which actually do nothing and a “click here to vote” button which goes to the next page telling the user to enter his email on the offer page, and then automatically redirects him to that offer. There’s nothing really wrong about that, since, after all, you’re not here to collect statistics, but to make money from the email submits. Technically, the poll is only used to draw the user’s attention and nothing more.

When you are promoting various kinds of affiliate or CPA offers, you need a way to get traffic to your offer. Obviously, the traffic will not come by itself so you would need to use some advertising methods to get people to see your site. There are many different kinds of ways you can use to draw visitors to your site. Each one of them has its unique advantages and disadvantages, so it is up to you to consider all available methods and make your decision. You would also need to see what types of promotion are allowed for a certain offer, as not all offers and networks allow certain methods of advertising. For example, email ads could be forbidden for certain offers. Let’s take a look at some ways you can advertise online:

Article Marketing.

This consists of writing short articles that will get the viewer interested in your offer and want to click through to your link in order to learn more. While these are often used in order to tout the benefits of digital products, such as ebooks on the Clickbank network, they can be used to promote almost any kind of affiliate or CPA offer.

The format that your article takes on will also depend on what offer you are promoting specifically. The most common types of articles are either general information on the niche or a review of a specific product or service. For example, if you are promoting a fax to email service and writing a general article on the topic, you will detail some of the advantages of using a fax to email service and explain to the reader how it works. If you were writing a review, you would write about how a specific fax to email service works and what its good points are.

Since you are writing in order to promote something your tone would need to stay positive. It is OK to include some slight disadvantages of a certain product or industry, but these would have to be drowned out by the positive aspects. It is also possible to compare different competing products in a “review” type article, but once again, the overall tone needs to stay positive.

Depending on where you are submitting your article to, you may be able to include your affiliate links in the body of the article itself, or you would be provided a “resource box” where you could write a short statement about yourself and put a link to your offer.

You don’t need to be a professional writer in order to create promotional articles. In fact, most of the content on the web is written in a way that even a 4^th grader will be able to understand. You also have the opportunity to outsource your article writing to someone else if you are unsure of your article writing skills.

Where do you submit your articles to? There are many article directories online, such as Go Articles and Ezine Articles where you can post them.

If you are running CPA or affiliate campaigns, or even selling your own digital product, you are probably used to advertising through various online mediums. Pay per click ads, media buys, online directories, these kinds of things. After all, that’s what an “online business” is all about, right? Maybe so, but there are also many other advertising opportunities for you to explore.

Let’s see some simple examples. Say you’re running a simple email or zip submit offer that gives the buyer a chance to get coupons for pizza, or maybe to get a free gift card from Best Buy or Wal Mart. Sure, there are many places where you can advertise these offers online, but have you tried to do some marketing in the “real world”? It is actually quite simple, all you have to do is this:

1. Buy a domain that’s relevant to your offer, and have it redirected to it.
2. Design and print out some fliers promoting it. You can do this with any printer, or pay a professional printing company to print them for you. Many printing companies can print full color fliers at very low prices now, so the cost isn’t something you would worry about too much.
3. Distribute them at strategic locations.

Now the last part is quite important if you want to see some results and conversions. If the offer that you are running is “Win an iPod Touch!”, putting up your fliers in nursing homes may not necessarily be the best idea. But giving them out in a college campus could be a brighter one. But what if, say, you live in the middle of the desert and the nearest city is hundreds of miles away? There’s ways around that too. You can simply outsource the whole process to someone who lives near a more desirable location for your marketing. You can find someone to do print the fliers out for you and distribute them on places like Craigslist, on forums or on some freelancing sites. Just make sure that they post proof, such as a video taken with their cell phone of them actually passing out your fliers. A popular site where you can find people to do such simple tasks is Fiverr.com. It costs $5 per gig and many people would be willing to do things like pass out fliers, cards or wear your website on their t-shirt for the day for this amount.

Naturally, there are also many other offline advertising methods for you to explore. For example, you can place ads in newspapers and promote your site there. Due to the fact that this costs a bit more than simply giving out fliers, you may want to try it with an offer that pays out a bit more per lead or sale. You could, say promote some dog training guides from Clickbank in your newspaper ad. The possibilities are practically endless, so remember to think outside the box!

It is a known fact that CPA networks are a great way to earn money online and have made many people very successful in the internet marketing industry. This is in part due to the fact that they have a wide selection of offers that can be promoted by their affiliates. When you join a CPA network, you will have the chance to run a variety of different campaigns, like trial offers, email submit offers, ring tone campaigns and more. The problem for many people new to the internet marketing industry is joining a network and getting accepted into one.

There is one main reason why CPA networks have gotten harder and harder to get into as an affiliate: increasing amounts of fraudulent affiliates singing up. Remember, CPA networks have a responsibility towards the merchants who run offers on them. If half of transactions made through the network end up being fraudulent, the merchant will often consider leaving the network. Furthermore, merchants do not want to pay for fraudulent transactions, so the network will often be left holding the bag if they have paid the affiliate but the merchant refuses to pay due to fraud.

Since you are a legitimate affiliate, you must make every effort to appear as one when you apply for a network. The first thing to do is to get a company name. Most of the fraud comes from “individual affiliates”, so simply registering a sole proprietorship such as “Max Marketing” will help a lot. The next thing is to get a domain name for your company, which you will use for your email. Your email should simply be something like “you@yourcompany.com”. You have to admit, it sound way more professional and serious than “cute_kitty_princess2839389@hotmail.com” or “bob_the_big_gangster2821@yahoo.com”.

While a website is not 100% necessary if you don’t plan to promote offers on your own site, it is still recommended that you set up a site for your company. It doesn’t have to be elaborate and have any bells and whistles. Just a one page site that you have done with a freely available template will do. Simply state what your company does and your contact details on the page.

Now comes the phone call. The vast majority of CPA networks will want to talk to you on the phone before accepting you into their network. Generally, they will call you within 2 – 3 business days. But if they don’t, go ahead and give them a call. This shows that you are serious about joining the network. During the phone call, you will be asked a few simple questions, such as your marketing experience, how long you have been doing internet marketing, which offers you plan on running, which other affiliate programs you are taking part in, how will you be promoting the offers (PPC, SEO, email, media buys, etc). Just have your answers ready and you should be able to get approved in no time.

When you finally start getting a list together of perspective people interested in what you are doing, you need to give them something.

Once they are opted in – giving them a free gift such as an audio book, ebook, video series, or access to premium content (limited of course) gives them an incentive to stay tuned to what you are doing next.

For example, in order to get people to opt in you could offer a free 10 step guide to starting your own internet business (if that is your niche) to get them to sign up to your newsletter.

Once there, that is when you start giving them away information for free. Don’t simply spam them with links to affiliate products. Create value for them.

If you are trying to sell a video series on outsourcing, a great lead in to that would be a video of yourself giving a quick overview of what the program offers, how much it costs, and some great things they will learn from doing it. Even give away the first 5 minutes of the first video for free.

Giving free content without commitment from the buyer is a great way to build social proof and trust. You can show them the quality of the offering without them having to worry before buying it what the content will be like.

There are many times I am interested in a video series or ebook but without a sample I will not purchase it — simply because I haven’t had a chance to see the quality. So give a sample in the email and let the people know what they are going to be getting into (in a great way).

Another thing is to space your affiliate or selling emails out. Maybe once every two to three times you email is a good idea to try (test it out to see how your list responds). That way, it doesn’t feel like you are trying to consistently push an idea or product on them, something that will deteriorate your relationship with them and cause them to be skeptical of your intentions.

In conclusion, provide value and gifts to your followers without asking for much in return. Give away plans, ideas, short ebooks, and videos. Without expectations. Create value for them, build trust, and when you finally decide to sell to them, you might just find they are more receptive to your offering.