Hello,
Welcome to part 3 of the step by step business creation guide.
Part 1 and 2 can be found in our archives (www.webpromotion-weekly.com)
The project is moving right along and by next week's issue I hope
to begin openly promoting the site and making some money.
I wanted to be able to show you the completed web site today
but I haven't finished the sales copy for the site. I wrote
the sales letter and posted it on the site but it's just not
quite right so I'm re-writing it. You can take a look at the
site without the copy though if you want to at least get an
idea of what it looks like. I'll give you the URL below.
This was a busy week for the project. I picked the domain name
of our site (which I'll explain below) and picked the price
that I will be selling the book for, I also created a "bump"
(otherwise known as an upsell - see webpromotion-weekly.com
past issues to learn more about bumps) and I picked the
freebies that I will be giving away with the book. I also
created the affiliate program for the site and did the programming
that goes along with it. I also tweaked the site graphics a bit
and picked the headline from my brainstormed list.
I'm going to talk about most of those things this week. It's
going to be a little longer than usual, I hope you don't mind!
First I'll talk about picking the domain name. Now initially
I was just going to post the site on a sub directory of a domain
name I already own, like http://www.Market-Tek.com/neweBook.html
But then I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and register
a new domain name and set it up as a whole new web site.
I rent an entire web server, and my web host charges around
$25 bucks to add a new domain name to the server. Plus they
charge $10 to register the domain name for one year. There are
no additional monthly costs for any of this.
So we're looking at $35 bucks total. That's not much and
we'll get a lot of benefits from having a new domain name. For
one thing, it will be easier to get the site listed at the
search engines if it has it's own domain name. And then
there's the intrinsic value of creating a brand...but we won't
get that theoretical!
So what domain name should I pick? The domain name is very
important, it should be selected with care. It should be as
short as possible but as descriptive as possible. The obvious
MakeALivingOnline.com was taken, of course! So here's a few
of the names I came up with (that weren't already registered).
- AnInternetLiving.com
- ALivingOnline.com
- AnOnlineIncome.com
- EarnOnlineIncome.com
- CreateALivingOnline.com
I wanted the domain name to start with a letter towards the
beginning of the alphabet like a - b - c - d - e because I
wanted to test a theory that those show up better on search
engines because some search engines use alphabetical order
(just a theory, not proven maybe not true but what the heck,
I thought I'd test it out!)
Then I pulled out my copy of the Submission-Spider software
http://www.Submission-Spider.com and started using the
keyword analysis tool that comes with it. This tool makes
it REAL easy to pick a domain name. You just start searching
for keywords...I was leaning towards EarnOnlineIncome.com
so I plugged in the keyword phrase 'earn online income' into
the keyword tool to see how many people searched for that phrase
each month at the engines...111 searches last month (OUCH!) then
I typed in 'make money online'...57,874 searches last month.
(you can see how extremely valuable this tool is!)
57,874 now THAT's more like it. Of course, makemoneyonline.com
was already taken as was make-money-online.com, but
makemoneyonline-Now.com wasn't
True, it's a little long and it's not catchy. But I ran
a search at google for the phrase "Make Money Online" and
of all the sites listed on the first page, only like one
or two actually had the phrase 'make money online' in their
domain name. So that means it's going to be pretty easy
for me to get my site listed there under that phrase. And
if I can get even a tenth of those 57,874 searchers each
month that's nearly 6,000 targeted visitors to my site
each month for free...imagine if I got HALF of them!
With the lineup shown when I typed in that phrase, I think
it shouldn't be too hard.
Next I want to talk about price for the ebook, and how I arrived
at it. Choosing the correct price to sell your product is
very important. Too high and people won't want to buy it,
too low and people think it's cheap and worthless. Setting
the correct price can make or break a project.
I usually sell anything for either $49.00 or $99.00 or higher.
Over the years those prices have tested well in a full range
of products that are similar to this one.
This time, however, I decided to sell the eBook for just $19.99
Why? Because of two reasons.
- I'm offering a very good bump product for $18.72 and I
think many people will upgrade their order to include the
bump thus adding $18.72 to the $19.99 to get a total of
$38.71
- The backend products that I will be selling to buyers
after they buy this ebook are especially strong. These
products that I will try to sell are higher priced
products (like our submission-spider software and other
books I have written). And they are all highly
complimentary to this eBook so I believe I will be able
to convert a high percentage of customers into ongoing
customers.
So really by offering this low $19.99 price initially, I believe
it will make me more money in the long run. Long term goals
are always my number one priority. Building a large past
customer list that you can continue to sell things to for
years to come is what this business is all about. Plus
remember, I can always raise the price from $19.99 to $49.00
later on if it doesn't sell well at the lower price. More
than a few times, raising the price has turned a dud product
into a stellar seller for me...keep that in mind.
Next lets talk about the bump I chose. Recently I had to
increase the price of my Marketer's In A Box membership site
to $99 per month. I did this because I only want a limited
number of subscribers to it since I spend so much time helping
them succeed with their businesses.
For the bump in this project, I'm offering 3 months membership
in my Marketers-In-A-Box.com for only $18.72 I think this is
a tremendous deal and I believe a lot of people will take
advantage of it.
I also hope that after 3 months of my expert advice at their
fingertips and access to my support staff 24 hours a day to
help them in any way (via web design help, copy writing help,
web programming help, advertising help etc etc) that they will
go on to purchase full time membership for the regular price
of $99 per month. Of course, not all will do this, but if
only 5% of them do, I'll make a lot of dough.
This bump fits in perfectly with the eBook. The eBook teaches
you how to make a living online, Marketers-In-A-Box.com gives
you "face to face" (well email to email!) personal one on one
help doing it. Two products couldn't compliment themselves more!
Next I want to talk briefly about backend sales.
I have yet to program the backend automated follow-up system
that will automatically email customers after a certain amount
of time to pitch them new products. But I have decided on what
products I will pitch them. It's always important to have a
backend sales system and products in place when selling anything
on the Internet because the backend is where you make most of
the money in any project.
For this project I will be pitching my Submission-Spider software
and a couple of my other books on the backend. Both those products
compliment this eBook well.
I'll talk more about the backend system next week when I've
finished creating it.
Last I want to talk about the affiliate program. I've finished
building it. I write the code for my own affiliate programs
though most people would just go out and buy an affiliate
program code or use a free one from any of the free programming
sites out there. Or if you didn't want to even do that, you
could sign up for clickbank.com and let them take care of your
affiliate program themselves (at a very reasonable fee).
But as I said, I write the computer code to create my affiliate
programs myself. Actually I use the same code for all my
affiliate programs, so creating it is only a matter of changing
a few lines of code and uploading it to the new domain which
takes about 2 minutes.
That's not really important though. What is important is the
fact that I've decided to only offer the affiliate program
membership to people who have bought the eBook.
I know, that will decrease the potential number of people out
there selling my product for me, but I've always felt that
a person should own a product themselves before recommending
it to someone else. That's just the way my ethics fall.
But on the other side, I've put a price on the affiliate program
'membership' of $49.00 So it costs $49 to become an affiliate
for this project and have the ability to earn 50% commission
for recommending this product to others.
But I'm going to give away that $49.00 'affiliate membership'
for free with the purchase of the eBook. So if you buy the
eBook, I'll wave the $49.00 affiliate fee. This way I kill
3 birds with one stone.
- I only allow people to recommend this product who have
purchased it themselves (thus upholding my strange ethics)
- I've created out of thin air a $49 free gift to give away
to people who buy the eBook.
- I only get people promoting my product who are serious
about it and really want to make some money.
Maybe I'm too clever for my own good...but then again maybe
I'm not nearly as clever as I think I am! :-)
I was going to talk about the other freebies I will be giving
away to entice people to buy this book, but this article is
getting too long and you can always go to the site in a few
days when I finally finish the sales letter and see them
for yourself. I shouldn't have to tell you that offering
high quality freebies can increase sales like nothing else
in the world!
I'm having a lot of fun with this project and sharing the
process with you. I hope you are enjoying it as well and
hopefully we can get on to the really fun stuff next week,
which is showing you how to drum up customers and sales!
That's all for this week. See you next Monday!
-John Skorczewski
