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.

There’s no question about it, email marketing is extremely challenging. A lot of emails wind up in spam folders without ever getting looked at, which means that all the work that went into that email was for nothing. If you want the time you spend creating your emails to count, you have to take a few steps to ensure that your emails will get read, rather than deleted, or flagged as spam.

First and foremost, it’s important to understand that you’re never going to get everyone to read your emails and respond to them by buying your products and visiting your site. Almost everyone gets a lot of newsletters, and other promotional emails in their inbox every day, and they’re just not going to read every one. You can increase the chances that yours will get read by working to build a relationship with your subscribers.

In order to build a relationship with your subscribers, you have to give them some really strong reasons to keep opening your emails. For starters, be sure to do more than just send advertisements to them. Send out emails with interesting information about your niche. Link to any news that might be of interest to your subscribers, and maybe even give them your take on it. Do everything you can to both inform, and entertain your readers instead of just advertising to them. If they see that you’re sending out great information, they’ll be more likely to keep reading your emails as they show in their inboxes.

It’s also a good idea to engage your subscribers in a conversation. For example, you could include a poll in one email, and the results of that poll in the next email. That way, you can get some useful user feedback, and engage the reader. When you ask your subscribers questions, and include them in what’s going on with your company and your products, you create a feeling of inclusion in the reader. If they feel like a part of your company, and they feel like they’re engaged by your emails, they will be more inclined to keep reading your emails.

It can be tough to keep your emails from getting lost in the sea of messages in your subscribers’ inboxes, but if you work to inform and engage your subscribers, you’ll find that they pay attention to your emails.

Selling just about anything online can be extremely challenging. Every product imaginable is already for sale somewhere on the internet, and that means you need to set your product apart from the crowd in order to get it to sell well. One of the best ways to get your product some positive attention is to get a lot of favorable user testimonials up on your website. There are two sure fire ways you can generate some quality user testimonials from your customers.

The first is to offer them something in return for their testimonial. By “something” we don’t mean money. Your customers won’t trust a paid testimonial. In fact, paid testimonials can even lead to a negative impact on sales. Customers get the impression that if you have to buy your testimonials, there must be something wrong with the product, or even that you were paying for favorable testimonials only. Instead of money, consider offering them a discount on their next purchase, or a coupon they can use whenever they’d like.

The other sure fire method is to simply ask your customers for testimonials. A week after they receive the product, send them an email asking them to submit a testimonial. Also, if you have any promotional videos up on your site for the product, make mention right in the video that testimonials are appreciated. If you have a Facebook, or Twitter account, send out a message occasionally asking your users to submit testimonials. You don’t want to bombard your customers with requests, but asking occasionally is likely to yield results, even if you’re not offering anything in exchange for the testimonial.

Once you have some testimonials coming in, it’s important to be clear about what information you are going to share about the customer. For example, some people might prefer that you only show their initials, rather than their full name. Others might be OK with their first name, and last initial. Some people might be comfortable with you showing what town their from, others might not. It’s a good idea to yield to the customer’s wishes and display their name the way they want you to. It’s better to have more testimonials up than not, so it’s OK to sacrifice some of those details in exchange for having one more testimonial on your site.

Ask your customers for testimonials, offer them incentives, and honor their wishes. If you do those things, you’ll have a lot of high quality testimonials up in no time.

Sending out a sales letter to your customers can be a great way to generate sales. It can also be a huge waste of time if you don’t do it right. There are a few simple rules you can follow to create an effective sales letter.

The first thing to think about is the headline, or subject of the letter. An effective subject should be attention grabbing, and exciting for the customer. It should either show a benefit for the customer (10% off sale!), or create curiosity (Great Bargains In This Email!). If your headline doesn’t grab the customer’s attention, then you might as well forget about the rest of the letter, because it will never get read.

When you’re working on the body of the letter, be sure to talk to your customer the right way. Treat the letter as though you’re writing to a personal friend. Talk to the reader in a personal fashion, and be sure to write as though you’re talking to just one person, no matter how many people will actually receive the letter. People tend to be more receptive to a letter that speaks to them in a personal way. That personal interaction generates trust and comfort, and that goes a long way toward getting the customer to keep reading.

In addition to being personal, the writing should also be formatted correctly. Use short paragraphs, and bulleted lists whenever possible. Making the information easy to consume will help to keep the customer’s attention.

While you’re writing, think about any questions your customer might have about your product, or the things mentioned in the letter. Try to answer those questions before the customer even asks them. If the customer walks away from the letter with unanswered questions, they’re likely to hesitate before making a purchase. If they’re hesitant to make a purchase quickly, there’s an increased chance that they’ll just walk away without ever making a purchase.

By creating a personal, and engaging sales letter, you can generate a great deal of positive attention for your products. Remember to choose your words carefully, and keep the letter simple and easy to read. By keeping these steps in mind, you’re sure to create a letter your customers will respond to, instead of a letter they’ll just ignore.

Youtube has recently stated that they now receive 1 billion views aday from people all around the world watching videos.  Since they are now owned by Google they are offering a partnership program called Google adsense that allows you to make money from advertising from viewers watching your videos.

If you have a youtube account that has 1000′s of viewers youtube will invite you to join their Google adsense partnership program that will allow you to place Google adverts on the right hand side of your videos and also text ads at the bottom of your videos.  If a viewer clicks on those adverts you instantly earn a commission.  You can earn anything upto $5 a click depending on what the adverts are.

To get started you will first need to setup a youtube account and start making and uploading videos regulary then once you have a certain amount of viewers watching your videos (around 100,000), Youtube will then invite you via email to join their partnership program.  They will ask you to join Google adsense and then adverts will automatically appear on your videos and on your youtube channel.

If you also have a website or a blog it is a very good idea to place your website url in the description as this is a great way to drive traffic to your website and also helps with SEO for your search engine rankings.

The best way to get loads of views and star ratings on your youtube videos is to get as much traffic to your channel as possible.  Some ways to do that are:

1.) Embed your youtube videos into blogs, forums, as many websites related to your video audience as possible

2.) Submit your videos to social networking sites – twitter, digg, facebook, myspace, bebo, etc..

3.) Email all your friends and family to view and rate your video