Recently I received an enquiry from one of our members asking me how to advertise her online store. I thought this is an interesting discussion and thus decide to discuss it in our blog today.

First, here’s her question:

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Hello Kenneth,

Firstly, I want to tell you that your blog is awesome. Its content is extremely rich. I can spend hours reading your posts and I learned many things with.

I’m Emilie To. I have just acquired this online store www.NiceDigitalGoods.com.

My questions are:

1) To take advantage at most your advertising system, do I write an ad for the whole shop or for a single category or for a particular product?

2) As there are 32 categories and over 380 products in the shop, how to determine in what category, on which product it is necessary to concentrate the efforts of advertising?
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Who is your target audience?

As an advertiser or a marketer, the very first question you MUST ask yourself is “Who is your target audience?” or “Who will buy your products?”

(Take a look at her website and see what she is selling www.NiceDigitalGoods.com.)

One extremely common mistake that online store owners make is to think that their target audience is EVERYBODY.

If you are targeting everyone, you are getting no one. Trust me on this!

You mentioned that your online store has 32 categories and 380 products. But seriously, who is likely to buy a dog training ebook from your online store? Someone who wants to train his dog or someone who wants to buy the Master Resale Rights of that ebook?

From my assessment, I feel that your target audience are internet marketers looking to buy MRR (Master Resale Rights) and PLR (Private Label Rights) products for their niche websites.

If so, the answer to your first question would be:

You do not write an ad for the whole shop, single category or a particular product. Instead, you need to write an ad to target internet marketers looking for MRR and PLR products.

What is the Unique Selling Preposition of your website?

Before you start to advertise your online store, you must establish a Unique Selling Preposition (USP) for your website.

Basically, you need to ask yourself, “What’s so special about your website? Why would someone bother to pay attention to it?”

Without a refreshing and attention-grabbing USP, your online store is just another online store started by a newbie who simply install a script and load some products into it. And if I’m a visitor to such an online store, guess what I will say: “DON’T WASTE MY TIME!!”

When deciding on a USP, you need to know what is REALLY a USP. For example, a website selling MRR and PLR products is not a USP. But a website selling such products at $0.99 each may be a USP.

Just to give you some idea, a good USP will make people say: “wow, that’s a great!”.

With that, let me answer your second question:

Forget about the 32 categories and over 380 products in your online stores. You should concentrate your advertising effort is delivering the USP of your online store. You need to tell me people “hey, I’m different. Take a look at me!”

How to get people to opt-in?

I probably repeat this a hundred times, but I still need to say this again… build a list!

This is especially true if you are running an online store.

Look, you may be selling hundred and one things in your online store that people have no need at the moment. But one day, they may need one of your products.

What’s the best way to make them remember you when they need your product or service?

2 answers: Either you keep on spending money to advertise in front of them or get them into your list so that you can remind them of your existence, for free.

Which way do you prefer? The second way of course!

How to get them to opt-in is another challenge. But first, you must make list building your top priority and make sure every visitor is presented with the opt-in offer.

After spending weeks to set up a website, the next challenge is, how to drive traffic to your new website?

If this is the challenge you’re facing, you are not alone. One of our members, Gina, is having the same question. Here’s her question:

“Thanks to your f.ree list builder script, I now have my own website ready. My question is, what should I do next to get traffic to my new website and build list?” - Gina

Hi Gina,

Congratulations. You are one of the few action takers. Most people can’t even pass the stage of building a website.

Before you start to drive traffic to your new website, you need to get a second opinion on the website. Just get your siblings and close friends to take a look at your website, subscribe to the list and go through the entire sales process. Ask them for their opinions. Now, 99% of the time, they are going to say they are not interested in your offer. That’s expected because they are not your target audience. You just want them to comment on the look and feel of your website. You want to make sure that your new website looks professional in the eyes of others.

Once you know that you have a well-designed and working website, you are ready to drive traffic to it.

First, if you have a list, promote it to your own list. You can use this chance to test how well your new website is converting.

You can also advertise in places that can get you targeted traffic. (If your website is in the internet marketing niche, you can subscribe to our PRO membership. That will usually get you 400-500 traffic every month.)

Initially, you may have to modify your squeeze page and sales letter to improve the conversion rate. Once you are comfortable with the conversion rate, you can then increase your advertising budget. You can also start looking for JV partners to promote your website.

When looking for JV partners, you can start by emailing the small time marketers in your niche with your JV proposal. A good place to start is Google. Search for some active blogs in your niche and contact the bloggers. With our list builder script, it shouldn’t be hard for you to seek JV partners. You are basically asking people to give away a useful product to their lists and let them earn commissions from OTO sales. Bloggers or list builders are always looking for good things (contents or free gifts) to give to their subscribers. If you have something userful and free, and can help them to make money, many of them will be interested to partner with you.

In your JV proposal, tell them that you’ve tested your sales copy and the conversion is XX%. You need to convince them that your system is proven and can help them to make money, providing values to their subscribers at the same time.

Continue to advertise and strike out JV deals. That should keep you busy for a couple of months.

Meanwhile, you should make it an effort to continuously improve on the squeeze page and sales letter. In particular, you should add more testimonials to the sales letter as you receive them. This will further boost the conversion rates.

If you do not have a blog, I also encourage you to start one. It’s a good platform for you to foster better relationship with your list. With a blog, you can also start looking into other traffic strategies such as search engine optimization, which is a big topic by itself.

For other traffic strategies such as article marketing, forum marketing etc, you can use them as part of your effort to build links for search engine optimization. These are slow but consistent way to drive traffic to your website, but they are not likely to make an immediate impact in short run.

As you probably know, LeadsLeap has just moved to a more powerful server.

And the reason to move the server now is because of the tool we’re launching today - LeadsLeap SlideSense

It’s a powerful advertising tool. You should have seen it in action by now.

Yes, it’s the little animation that bounce up from the bottom of this page.

What Can SlideSense Do?

If you run a blog or website, and you want to get people to opt-in to your list or simply look at your new offer, what do you do?

A typical trick is to setup a popup window. But as you know, popup is losing its effectiveness. More and more people are closing popups the moment they see it.

The solution? SlideSense.

You can use SlideSense for opt-in purpose or simply as a text ad. Here’s the demo:

Text-ad SlideSense | Opt-in SlideSense

Honestly, I didn’t come out with this idea. I first saw this animation on other people’s blog and I thought it was a great idea. So I got my programmer to design a similar one, adding some improvements here and there, and make it available to you.

(I later realized that similar tool is available for sale at USD67. Anyway, you don’t have to spend a dime. It’s free for LeadsLeap members! In fact, our version is much better in terms of browser compatibility, especially for internet explorer.)

Developing this tool was not easy. It took us 4 months to perfect every little detail. In fact, I threw away the first prototype because it was built on a specific js framework (for the non-techie, it means certain websites may have problem using this animation).

What you are seeing and using now is the second build. It was a complete rewrite of the first version.

I’m telling you all these because I hope that you can appreciate this tool.

Something To Brag About SlideSense

1) It’s easy to set up

Absolutely no script to install. If you can set up Google Adsense, you can set up SlideSense.

2) It’s highly customizable

Almost every component of SlideSense can be customized, from the image, text link , font, opt-in settings and even the animation speed.

You can use it on as many websites as you like, including your own Blogger blog!

How To Add SlideSense To Your Website?

To setup your own SlideSense is very easy.

1) Fill in the setup form here and generate the code.

2) Copy and paste the generated code into any page on your site or blog. For blog, you should put it in the template so that it appears on every page.

That’s all!

Remember to send us a feedback after you’ve played with it!

Today’s discussion is on using Adwords for affiliate marketing. It is my reply to the question from our member, HuiTzy.

I found her question pretty informative and it will relate to many of our members. I’m going to show her question in orange color and my comment or reply in black, so you can follow my train of thought as you go along.

Ready? Let’s start……

Firstly a very quick thanks for all the services you are providing i.e. your blog, product and free coaching.

I am currently setting up Adwords Campaign to drive traffic to affiliate products. My goal now is to “test” which of them are profitable and worth my time to further invest.

Here are my steps,
1. select several related niches eg: how to stop procrastination, how to increase productivity, how to focus. (I am doing this so that when I am going to advance level I can cross promote my list.)

The idea of related niche is good, but if you are a beginner, you may be thinking too big. If I were you, I’ll diversify as much as possible and test different niches from different industries.

Your selection of products to promote should be based on how well they are selling, regardless of whether they are in related niche. A good practice is to go to Clickbank.com > Marketplace and check the gravity rating. For example, if you search for products related to procrastination, most of the gravity ratings are less than 5. You can treat gravity ratings as a measure of how well a product is selling. Popular products usually have a gravity of more than 100. 5 is really way to low.

Instead of thinking of related niches, my advice is to fight a guerilla war, diversity and attack only products that sell well. Don’t think of going to any advance level. Take this chance to brush up your advertising and marketing skills.

2. select two affiliate products or more that I think will sell for each of the niches.

If you are doing a review page, you can promote 2 to 3 similar products at the same time. If you are advertising the products individually, you should treat each product as independent entity and select base on how well they are selling.

For your info, for each product that you test, you are likely to spend up to $100 before you can tell if the product is profitable. If you test 2 products in 5 niches, that’s 10 products in total and it can cost you $1000 to test. If you are mentally and financially unprepared, you chance of giving up prematurely is extremely high.

3. set up adwords campaign for each of the products.
4. track them so that i can know which keyword(s) and product(s) is/are profitable.
5. focus on those profitable products and scale up the sale.

Currently I am in step 3 and I am wondering should I directly link my ads to the sale page or to my own landing page? Based on what I heard, it is always good to link to landing page instead of sale page and landing page is also sort of “pre-sell” page. BUT I just want to so called “test” the market and I don’t want to spend too much time in this step. Only when I know I am able to convert well from that particular product or niche, I will then put all my focus in marketing such as building list, pre-sell, provide incentive etc. So I would like to hear what’s your opinion.

You should use a presell page, in most cases.

Think about it, you are going to invest $100 dollar to advertise for a product, and you are saying that you don’t want to spend too much time doing a pre-sell page?

I would like to focus on something that you said, “Only when I know I am able to convert well from that particular product or niche, I will then put all my focus in marketing such as building list, pre-sell, provide incentive etc.”

You see, if you’ve done your research, you should only promote products that convert well. If the product is not converting for you, it simply means that your marketing technique is inferior.

Imagine this, you advertise a product (that’s proven to convert well), but you don’t get any sales. What are you going to do? Change to another product? Or start preparing a pre-sell page?

The market is competitive. Your competitors are doing all kinds of stunts to get sales. Your job is to come into the market, with better tricks hopefully and compete with other marketers. Before you spend money to advertise, you should go to Google, do a search for the keywords that you are targetting, find out what the other advertisers are doing, see how they lure clicks and promote sales. Next you should come out with better tricks (in your opinion) and test if your better tricks work.

Your testing should be a test of your marketing strategy, not a test of whether a product can sell well.

My questions:
1. Are my steps going to work?

Anything is possible. I don’t dare to say your steps will not work. They are just not what I’ll do.

2. Sale page or landing page? All right to be honest, I have no clue about creating a good landing page. How much time it is going to take and in what format a landing page has to be? Seriously I am not keen to provide a “review” because I didn’t buy the product so I don’t want to crank out a false story to cheat my potential customers.

I think you have to get over this mental block. If you want to be a professional affiliate marketer, it’s your job to promote products and make them sell. Imagine if you are engaged to create a TV commercial for a product, are you going to try out the product and be very happy about it before coming out with an ad that sells? Treat it as a profession. There is nothing evil about it.

Of course, if you feel that a product is a scam or has lots of negative feedbacks, you can choose not to promote it. You do not have to force yourself to promote products that you don’t feel comfortable with. You can be ethical and professional at the same time.

3. If your answer is link to landing page. Could you show me some resources to create content for landing page?

Creating a presell page is not difficult. These two recent articles should be suffice to help you.

How To Write An Affiliate Presale Letter
How To Find Testimonials For Your Presell Page

Last week we discussed how to write an affiliate presell page and one reader asked “how to find testimonials for the presell page”. I thought this is an interesting topic and many of you probably have the same question.

So in today’s blog, let’s discuss the different ways to find testimonials for your presell page….

1) Your own testimonial

There is no doubt that the best testimonial is from your personal experience with the product. You can provide your own proof, such as earning or traffic screenshots, to show the prospects that what you’re promoting is indeed a good product that works.

But if you are promoting hundred and one things, or you’ve just started an online opportunity, it’s almost impossible for you to have your own testimonial. In that case, you need to resort to other creative alternatives.

2) Get from the product seller

I briefly discussed this last week. You can either use testimonials from the product sales page or email the product seller for more testimonials.

Given a choice, it’s better not to use the same testimonials as the ones in the product sales page. The reason is obvious - you don’t want your prospects to see that those testimonials are not independent.

Most product sellers will be happy to facilitate you with more testimonials, with photographs if you request. Some sellers even have a dedicated page that lists down all the testimonials they’ve received. You can select those that are not used in the sales page for your presell page.

3) Get from other product users

Google for “ProductName forum” and you are likely to find people discussing about the product you are promoting.

Users of the product are likely to share their experience with the product. Your job is to gather the positive feedbacks and use them as the ‘independent’ testimonials in your presell page.

Some forums even have moderators reviewing the product. If a moderator gives a thumb up for the product, his review is also a good testimonial that you can use.

4) Get from other affiliate marketers

Google for “ProductName review” and you are likely to find other marketers’ presell pages promoting the same product.

This is a good source for you because they are likely to write a lot of good things about the product.

Some marketers even provide their personal screenshots as proof that the product works. If you find such a presell page, bingo! Borrow their screenshots and quote their testimonials in your presell page.

5) Get video testimonials

Last but not least, search YouTube! Video testimonial is powerful. If you can find someone giving a video testimonial on the product, use it!

How To Make Other People’s Testimonials Look Like Yours, Without Cheating

This article will not be complete without the following discussion.

So far I’ve discussed the different ways to find testimonials for your presell page, and most of them are other people’s testimonials. To increase the conversion rate, you need to make those testimonials look like yours, so as to make the prospects think that you are recommending the product because you’ve benefited from it.

No, you are not going to cheat and claim that those testimonials are yours!

The trick is through the smart use of words.

For example, say if you just manage to find an earning screenshot and 3 other testimonials, you can easily create a presell page with a headline that says “If A 19 Year Old Girl Can Earn $9,285 In One Month Spending Less Than 5 Hours A Week, So Can You. Proof Below……“. Below this headline, show the earning screenshot. Next, say something like “Don’t just believe in me. Check out what my peers are saying about this product….“. List down the 3 testimonials you’ve gathered. Finally, add a link that says something like “Get Your Instant Access To The Same System That We Use”

That’s it. Technically, I never say that I’m the 19 year old girl with the screenshot proof. I also never say that I am making that kind of money. Lastly I didn’t say that I know those people who give the testimonials. But through the smart use of words, I manage to create an impression that I’m that 19 year old girl with that kind of income, having other friends equally benefiting from the product, now highly recommending the product to you.

For those who are advertising as an affiliate, I always advice them to write their own affiliate presale letter instead of advertising the standard sales page prepared by the product owner. There are 3 important reasons why such move is advisable:

1. People believe a 3rd party more than the product owner, even if they don’t know you! Your presale letter is the best tool to deliver your confidence in the product.

2. By not revealing too much about the product in your presale letter, you can increase prospects’ curiosity and they will be more interested to read through the actual sales letter.

3. You have more control over your advertised page. For example, you can build a list, follow up with the prospects and sell them other products. You can also track the click through rate to the sales page and determine if you are advertising to the correct target audience.

The big challenge is, how to write an effective affiliate presale letter?

Below is a simple format that has been working for me……

1) Story telling

A presale letter typically begins with the classic Feel-Felt-Found method which goes something like this… “I understand how you ‘FEEL’…. I was in your position before and I ‘FELT’ the same before…. Now I finally ‘FOUND’ the solution….

That’s only the beginning.

2) Give proof and sell dreams

To make the presale letter more powerful, you have to end the presale letter with 2 things - Proof and Dream.

Proof usually comes in the form of a written or video testimonial, which can easily be copied from the product sales letter.

Painting a dream requires some talent from you. If you are promoting a money making opportunity, post some of your pictures taken from your Europe tour, tell the prospect how your dream has come true.

3) Call to action

Last but not least, if you want to build a list, you will want them to opt-in to your list to get the full report on how you manage to solve the problem. You will only reveal the product that you’re promoting AFTER they’ve opt-in.

If you are not building a list, you can just give them a link to see the solution you’ve found, which is the product you’re promoting.

No Time For Long-Winded Presale Letter? Here’s The Short-Cut

1) Write a powerful headline that stirs curiosity and sells dream. For example, “Discover A Lucrative Alternative To MLM - You Are About To See A Simple Online System That Pulls In Over $21,900 A Month (Proof Below)…”

2) Throw in a few proofs, such as proof of earnings.

3) Throw in a few testimonials (with photographs if possible).

Tips: You can copy the proofs and testimonials from the actual sales letter. If you can get proofs and testimonials from other sources, it’s even better. One trick is to write to the company to ask them for other proofs and testimonials that are not used in the sales page.

4) End with a call to action, such as “Get Your Instant Access Now!”, “Get The Report Now!” and recently, one of my regular advertisers use this - “Click Here For More Testimonials”, which is not a bad idea I thought.

This is part of our Tuesday With Kenneth series, where I reply our members challenges in internet marketing.

Today’s question is from David Nuzzi. Here’s his question:

“LeadsLeap is the only program that seems to be working for me. What is the best way to utilize your program to it’s fullest?” - David Nuzzi

To answer David’s question, let’s first look at how LeadsLeap helps our members to generate leads.

How LeadsLeap Helps You To Generate Leads?

LeadsLeap helps you to generate leads through a 3-pronged approach.

#1 - Leads Building Network

The first approach is our leads building network, where you refer people to join and build your network at LeadsLeap.

You may ask “Kenneth, isn’t LeadsLeap supposed to send me leads? Why am I sending leads to LeadsLeap?”

Fair question. Let me explain.

The people you refer to LeadsLeap are your ’seed’ leads. Remember that your ad will be shown to 10 levels of your network, for life. (Read our homepage again if you don’t know about it.) As your referred leads bring in more leads, you’ll see your network grow. Over time, more and more people will see your ad.

To illustrate, say if you refer 20 people to LeadsLeap, you may end up being able to advertise to 100s or even 1000s of people, for life.

That’s the leads building element of the system. (Note: In addition to building leads, you can also earn recurring commissions on sales made from product order and/or membership upgrade.)

#2 - Text Advertising On Our Website

Some new members ask “Is it possible to generate leads without referring people to LeadsLeap?” The answer is yes. This is done through the 2nd element of our system.

Besides being able to advertise to your LeadsLeap downlines, your ad will be posted in our members area and LeadsLeap blog. Our blog receives tens of thousands of traffic every month from external sources such as the search engines. This means you ad will be exposed to fresh leads months after months.

Sounds good? Yes. But there is a catch……

To have your ad shown in our network, you need to have excess credits in your account. I’m not going into the details of how to earn credits. You can read about it in your account. But I have one advice for you - try to focus on methods that can earn you credits on autopilot in the long run. You may need to work harder in the short run, but in the long run, you’ll not have to worry about credits.

Alternatively, you can become a PRO member of LeadsLeap, where your PRO ad will be rotated in the system indefinitely.

#3 - Leads Generation Tools

The last element of the system is more for advanced internet marketers, where we develop top-notch tools that you can use to generate more leads on your own, outside of the LeadsLeap system.

Two examples are the Affiliate ID Manager and M.Y.O.B List Builder Script. Even our Advanced Link Cloaker can be used as an advertising tool that you can use to get traffic from forums etc. Again, I’m not going into the details. You can learn about these tools in your members area.

More tools are in the pipeline. The next one will be released real soon!

So, what is the best way to utilize LeadsLeap to it’s fullest?

The answer is to make full use of all three elements of the system. Build your team at LeadsLeap, earn advertising credits on autopilot and check out the free tools that we offer and see how you can make use of them.

Last but not least, if you are new to LeadsLeap, check out some of our older posts in LeadsLeap blog. If you experience any internet marketing challenge, it is very likely that I’ve covered that topic in my previous blog posts. If not, you can always send your question to me (details in our email to you on every Tuesday).

“Please advice me on how best to get internet network marketing leads. I just joined an MLM company whereby I need to introduce the business to prospect and they purchase a product before I will get my commission. How best or which way can I do this in order to be successful in the business?” Winnie from West Africa

Apparently there are many ways to get internet network marketing leads. Different network marketing gurus will claim to have their proprietary leads generation methods.

I don’t have any proprietary leads generation methods. But I do know some effective ways to get internet network marketing leads and I’m going to discuss some of them here.

1) Just Advertise

Almost all internet network marketing companies have their standard lead capture squeeze page. If your company doesn’t have one, run away from it.

The easiest way to get quick networking marketing leads is to advertise the lead capture page in ‘established’ lead generation websites.

I’ve seen many of my customers (my advertisers) getting good response using this simple method.

One warning is that if your network marketing company is a popular one, this method will not be effective. This is because the lead capture page has been overused. Fresh and interesting lead capture page usually can generate better response.

2) Create Your Own Lead Capture Page

As I said, fresh and interesting lead capture page usually can generate better response. So instead of relying on your company’s standard promotion tools, why not create your own lead capture page?

Of course, in order to create one, you need to learn copywriting, basic html etc.

3) Use Funded Proposal Concept

This is by far the BEST way to get internet network marketing leads.

The idea of funded proposal is to charge your prospect upfront before selling them the actual backend product.

If this is the first time you heard of this term, you may wonder why these prospects are so stupid. Who in the right mind will pay for something upfront knowing that they will be asked to buy other things later on?

If you have such a doubt, wait till you see the example below……

Example - A $10 Internet Marketing Course

Will you pay an ‘experience’ internet marketer $10 for a half-day course teaching you how to make money online?

Many people will.

During the course, the marketer will ‘really’ teach you some good internet marketing skills and at the same time show you a good business opportunity that he is making money with.

See the idea?

The $10 fee will help to offset for his advertising cost. These prospects are in a way paying him to sell them.

4) Give Away A Book, Audio CD or DVD

Giving away free ebook for leads generation is becoming old school. Advanced marketers are now giving away a real book, Audio CD or even DVD. The cost of production is negligible but the perceived value is much higher. The response is hence higher.

5) Brand Yourself As A Guru

You must have seen some internet network marketing gurus online. They sell products to teach you how to make lots of money from internet network marketing.

This is another typical example of funded proposal, where they sell you their products upfront and then their network marketing opportunity subsequently.

Anyone can be a guru. It all depends on how you position yourself.

“How to build a list of people, if I do not have the funds to do this? I have tried some free advertising companies but nothing yet.” - Jay Rossi

If you are in the same situation as Jay, I hope this article can help you.

First thing first, stop dreaming!

Many marketers promote internet marketing as a lazy way to make money. To a certain extent, it is. But if you talk about list building, it’s definitely not a lazy way to make money.

If you think all you need is an opt-in form and people will flood into your list, you’ll be wondering why your list building effort is in vain.

First of all, you got to ask yourself the following questions:

- Is your sales letter powerful enough to get people’s attention?
- Is your offer appealing enough such that people bother to opt-in to get it?
- Is your sales letter convincing enough to get people to take immediate action?

If your answer is ‘no’ to any of the 3 questions, you should first brush up your copywriting and marketing skills, before even talking about where to get the traffic.

I hope I’m clear on this point.

Why free advertising doesn’t work?

I probably say this hundreds of times. The key in advertising is finding targeted traffic. So long as the traffic is targeted, it doesn’t matter whether the advertising is free or paid.

So instead of questioning yourself whether free advertising works, you should ask yourself whether the advertising traffic is targeted to your niche. If it is, the problem is not with the advertising media but with your skills in converting the traffic into your list.

So, how to build a list, if you do not have the funds to do it?

Well, there are many ways to build a list without having to spend a dime in advertising.

These ways include exchanging traffic with other marketers (provided that you have an initial list), building a list through your blog (provided that your blog is getting free traffic from the search engine), starting your own affiliate program (provided that you have access to a list of affiliates), as well as other standard free traffic strategies such as forum marketing, article marketing, traffic exchange networks, list building networks and social networking.

But instead of limiting your option to free traffic strategies, why not think of how you can earn back your advertising cost?

My preferred way, of course, is to use the MYOB list builder script that I’ve developed for my own use and given free to our LeadsLeap members. If you do not know what this script can do for you, you better check it out. At least you know what are the options available to you.

Don’t keep thinking of how to build a list for free or how you can get free traffic. Instead, think of how to design a good sales letter and a good marketing system, so that you can profit from your advertising effort. This was what I did when I first started marketing online without any resources (read the full story at My Best Kept Secrets To Increase Web Site Traffic From Scratch).

If you are serious about doing business online, it’s important to learn how to do online business advertising. Whether the traffic source is free or paid, if you do not understand the basics of doing online advertising, the traffic you’ve generated will be wasted.

Recently a ‘rich’ surveying company advertised with us. When I looked at the ad, I almost fainted. It was a simple sign up form, expecting people to sign up without telling them anything about the company or the offer. Isn’t it common sense to ask oneself “will I act on this ad?” before one spend money advertising the ad?

In today’s discussion on how to do online business advertising, I’m going to share with you 3 “MUST-HAVE” elements in your ad before you even start thinking where to advertise it.

Hope that helps.

1. WIIFM “in 5 seconds”

WIIFM stands for “what’s in it for me”.

If you don’t tell people what’s in it for them, they are not going to be interested in your ad, not to mention taking action.

The problem with many advertisers is that their WIIFM is scattered all over the sales copy. One has to seriously read through the sales copy to identify them. Unfortunately, most sales copies are not read and thus the WIIFM message is not delivered.

For effective online business advertising, your ad must address the question of WIIFM within 5 seconds after a prospect first look at your ad. If not, you are losing them, period.

This means your headline, subheadline and the first paragraph of your sales copy play an important role in deciding whether a prospect will continue reading your ad or simply leave the page.

2. Become their friends “in 10 seconds”

Once you successfully capture their attention with WIIFM, you next objective is to gain their confidence in you and/or your offer.

Common ways to achieve this include the follow tricks:

- adding testimonials, especially ones with photographs;
- showing your own photograph and disclosing your name, email address and even contact number;
- showing other proofs such as earning screenshots, samples of completed work etc.

3. “Impossible-to-miss” call for action

Lastly, you must tell your prospect what to do next.

The problem with many advertisers is that their call for action is hidden somewhere in the sales letter. If it takes even 10 seconds for the prospects to search for the call for action, most of them would rather click the close window button.

The 3 elements above are the bare minimum that you must have in your ad if you want to do any online business advertising.

In additional to these 3, try to build a list regardless of what online business you’re advertising. The main advantage of online advertising vs offline advertising is that it’s easy to capture clients’ database. In the world of business, winners are those who own the customers. Think Walmart vs wholesaler. Think Ebay vs its sellers. The ones with huge customer base win. Regardless of what business you’re in, you are in the business of building customers.