The Tools You Must Have For Online Success.
If you were going to plant a garden, you wouldn't think of getting started without all the tools you need.
Or, what if you wanted to paint the living room. Again, you'd need certain tools, right?
The same is true of building a successful online business. You are going to need certain key tools. Trying
to build a business without them isn't just silly; it's a complete waste of time. And, remember, I'm a guy
who just cannot stand waste.
If I'm going to do something, I want to do it right, do it so that I get the desired results. That's why any
discussion of online success MUST begin by focusing on the necessary tools you need.
-- A Domain
The word domain goes back to the Middle Ages in Europe. My handy and much-used dictionary defines it
to mean "A territory over which dominion is exercised.... Absolute proprietorship in land." Let's apply this
to the Internet.
A domain is cyber "land", electronic territory that's yours and which you can develop as you see fit.
Consider it the "ground" on which you plan to build your international business.
When you consider your domain in this fashion, you should understand instantly why you want one and
why things like self-replicating websites that you don't own are pointless.What's a self-replicating website? It's something used by lots of online companies which call themselves"opportunities" but which are in reality nothing more than cash pits. How it works is like this: you go totheir domain and sign up for a free copy of their website with your client number on it. Doing this, you are totally at the mercy of the domain owner. If they go out of business (as happens with the overwhelming majority of online "opportunities") you're going to lose your website. It doesn't belong to you!
That's one very good reason for not trying to base your success on a self-replicating website. Another
good reason is the fact that you cannot edit such sites. You have to leave it just as it is, even if there are
errors on it!
Now think for a second of all the big-name companies you know: Coca Coca, McDonalds, Ford Motor
Company, you name it. Do these companies own their own land? You bet! And do they own their own
domains? Absolutely!
That's why you've got to have your own domain, too.
Owning your own domain tells people a lot about you; about the fact that you are a real business, that you
own your own site, that you are committed to developing that site, and getting the best possible return
from your "land."
In sum, having your own domain is absolutely essential for your online success. I say this: EVERY
successful online entity owns its own domain. You need to have your own domain, too!
-- A Listserver
Once you've got a domain, you need to focus your full attention on developing that domain. Having a
domain without wishing to develop it is pointless; the whole point of having a domain is to use it as the
launching pad for your ever-growing business. The question is, what do you need to develop this asset?
The first thing you need is a listserver.
A listserver is, without question, your #1 profit tool. Personally, I could never have developed my own
online enterprises and reaped the degree of profit I have without a listserver. Once you understand what
a listserver is and how to use it, you'll see why I say this.
A listserver is software which enables you to email, at the touch of the send key, everyone on any given
list. A listserver enables you to communicate with your prospects day in, day out at the touch of a button;
to send subscribers a newsletter, for instance, and key information about the products and services you
sell.
How easy is a listserver to use? This easy! Just write what you have to say to the people on your list; (you
can even copy things you've previously written and re-use them). Then put your message in the
appropriate area and hit the "send" key. That's it! Within just minutes your message will be delivered to
your prospects, customers, and subscribers worldwide!
Think for a minute what this means.
Say you wake up and have a GREAT IDEA, the kind of idea that's bound to thrill people from Alabama to
Zambia. In the old days, you'd have to
* write the copy
* get it designed
* get it printed
* get a mailing list
* get it mailed.
The time and money involved were substantial and, often, prohibitive.
Then you had to sit back and wait, wait, wait for your responses.
With a listserver, life is ENTIRELY different.
Like I said, you write the copy, you send the copy. You can have responses in MINUTES, not WEEKS!
I will be talking much more about a listserver in the pages which follow. For now, suffice it to say that
when you have a listserver you've been given an essential tool for online success, a tool which enables
you to send your marketing message at will, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, allowing you to hit your
market whenever you like!
Personally, I have several listservers, because I have developed several lucrative lists. On any given day,
I use these listservers to email these lists, how often depends on what I have to say and sell.
I consider myself the maestro of an amazing, powerful but invisible orchestra. Now I send a message to
List A with pulsating marketing copy about why they should respond to this. Now I send a completely
different message to List B with equally scintillating marketing copy about why the people receiving it
should respond NOW!
I write! The listserver sends!
I write! The listserver sends again!
I sit back and handle the responses as they come in!
The listserver is absolutely essential for succeeding online. It's one incredible tool, one you can learn to
use in just a MINUTE or two, and which you'll use (if you're smart) EVERY SINGLE DAY!
-- A Sales Manager
Until the invention and spread of the Internet, running a home business ordinarily meant thinking small.
You had a limited product line which you sold to a limited clientele in a limited geographical area. All that
is different now -- and you must prepare accordingly.
You must be prepared to market to thousands, even tens of thousands, of people, regularly
communicating with them, telling them about what you've got for sale, special offers you have available,
and the benefits they'll derive from what you're selling. The listserver can easily handle all this. But the
listserver needs help when it comes to personalized follow-up.
Say, for instance, that you use your listserver to send your customers an ad on a given subject. Some will
respond and some will not. The ones who respond are different from the ones who do not. They must be
treated accordingly.
That's where the Sales Manager comes in.
The Sales Manager was invented to give you the power of automated follow-up.
Now you know and I know just how important follow-up is. The truth is, people nowadays are
overwhelmed with information, helpful and otherwise. There's no way in the world all people will respond
in a timely fashion to all the things they're asked to respond to. They're going to need reminders.
However, developing a reminder system in the "real world" has all too often been a matter of "hit or miss."
If 5 people respond to one of your ads today, following up with them in a few days isn't such a bother. But
if 5 people respond to your ad every day, sending the right message each day to the right people quickly
becomes a nightmare. Most people "solve" this problem by giving up, following up if and when they feel
like it, leaving business on the table every single day because of their poor follow-up habits and because
they have so many other things to do!
Running a business online with the Sales Manager changes all this.
When you have a Sales Manager you have the ultimate follow-up tool, a tool that can send out up to 25
personalized follow-up messages per list to an unlimited number of lists.
To use the Sales Manager, you create just the number of follow-up letters you want (up to 25) for just as
many things as you sell. When a prospect subscribes himself to the appropriate list, he gets your letters,
spaced for sending as you wish. You could have them go out every day for up to 25 days or every third
day for up to 75 days, etc.
Because this is a fully automated system, when your prospect is ready to respond to your message, all
she has to do is hit reply and tell you so. You can then follow up by phone or email. Similarly, if your
prospect has had enough, she can easily unsubscribe the list automatically, so that you don't have to stop
what you're doing to handle it. Let the system do it!
-- Banner Exchange
Whether you're running your business online or off, you can NEVER stop thinking about your prospect
lead flow, about ensuring that you have the right number of people to sell to so that you reach your sales
and profit objectives. Online, there's a superb tool which enables you to generate prospect leads
automatically, every single day. That tool is the Banner Exchange.
Here's how the system works. Anyone can insert their banner into the system free. This means that their
message is being shown throughout the system, in return for which they post the banner code on their
site, thereby allowing banners from the system to be shown on that site.
When someone inserts their banner into the system, the system automatically appends to it a smaller (or
"strip") banner. This banner is a free ad for the owner of the exchange, that being Worldprofit in the case
of this example.
Now, as the bigger banner circulates throughout the entire system, showing up on tens of thousands of
websites, it is automatically accompanied by the strip banner and its sales message, a message which
can easily be changed at will by the exchange owner. This now becomes a perpetual (free) ad!
Think about this for a minute. How many perpetual ads do you have right now? If you're operating a
business in the "real world," there is no such thing as a perpetual ad. Ads run for a time;, then they are
superceded by ads which follow them. Nothing like the Banner Exchange exists here! However online,
the unique Internet environment makes it possible for a banner, once entered, to stay in the system
indefinitely. Moreover, when you're the owner of your own Banner Exchange the advertising message you
put on your strip banner is automatically linked to this banner, forever.
With a banner exchange advertising system, you'll find people worldwide clicking on your sales message,
being automatically taken to just where you want them to go -- to your home page, to a prospect form or
questionnaire, or to a particular page or information you want them to see and respond to.
Your banner exchange is always open, it never closes, and it continues to generate prospects and visitors
for you every single day! It is one amazing lead-generating machine!
Two More Essential Tools: Technical And Design Support
If you're already running a home business, I don't need to tell you just how many demands there are on
your time. They are incessant. What's worse, every time you focus on ANYTHING that takes you away
from selling products and services and making money is undermining your ability to profit. When you're
running any kind of small business, life is a constant pull and tug between things which help you profit
and things which get in the way of helping you profit. It is in this context that I want to make it clear why
you must have ready technical and design support.
My rule for all small business people is clear and simple: get experts to help you whenever possible,
thereby enabling you to focus on selling. It's so easy to forget, when facing a mound of "must do" tasks,
where the money is in business. However, unless you sell you cannot make the money you need to run
your business and profit. You can never afford to forget this.
The overwhelming majority of people reading this ebook will not be Internet technical experts or design
experts. Now hear this: that isn't necessary! You need to focus on what brings in the money. Solving
technical problems and designing your site are necessary but you need specialists to handle these
problems for you, just as you need a bookkeeper, accountant, lawyer, etc
To succeed in your home business means developing a stable of competent specialists and advisors,
allowing you to concentrate on the one thing that MUST happen for your business to grow and prosper,
MAKING SALES. Unless you do this, this saying will apply to you, "The operation was a success, but the
patient died." That means, you can run a perfectly ship-shape business, handling everything yourself but
from lack of sales your business will join the scrap-heap of people with dreams who failed to understand
what was important, what could be delegated, and arrange things accordingly.
Don't make this mistake. It's fatal!
