Starting an Legitimate home business opportunity

Starting an Legitimate home business opportunity
What To Expect
(But More Importantly, How Much To Expect)
With an order system set-up as described in "The Perfect System" section of this newsletter, you can expect your orders to be broken down approximately as follows:

80% through the secure server
5% through the non-secured server
13% through the 800 number
2% through regular postal mail

I want to state again how crucial it is to have the ability to accept credit cards in your Internet Legitimate home business opportunityfor your orders. As astonishing as it may sound, credit cards will increase your orders by a proven 400% (compared to just offering the option of sending in a check or money order). These simple things mean the difference between making a profit of $100.00 a day or $400.00 a day.

There is one more thing I want to say in the closing of this section it is to "ask for the order". Create urgency. Ask for the order. Make it easy for the customer to buy. Ask for the order. Offer a strong guarantee. Ask for the order. Use testimonials. Ask for the order. Offer a bonus for a quick response. Ask for the order. Tell them how they are going to benefit by ordering now. Ask for the order. Tell them what they stand to loose by not ordering now. Ask for the order.

Speaking of asking for the order if you have not picked up a copy of our #1 best selling Internet marketing course called "The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet", check out all the tips and tricks it offers at http://www.marketingtips.com/tipsltr.html. What you learn in the course will make you thousands of dollars...you will learn from the best! Between my four Legitimate home business opportunity, I get over 2,000,000 to visit my websites every year, do over $2,600,000 of business online every year all from one small office. So I know what I am talking about when it comes to starting and promoting an Legitimate home business opportunity. In the course, I guide you step by step on how I do it so you can copy my success. Don't sit there thinking that your "opportunity of a lifetime" will come to you soon it is here now. The Internet has grown at unbelievable rates and made thousands of millionaires over the last 2 years. Now don't take me wrong, it takes "work" on your part to make money online - you won't become a millionaire overnight but the potential to make enormous amounts of money online is here right now! Don't get left behind! Get on the fast track to starting an online business or if you already have one, learn how to skyrocket your profits, from what I teach in the course (before your competitors do!)! Click here to check out all the details and what is covered in the course.





Anyway, back to "asking for the order". This notion may sound a little corny, however, it has been proven by top salespeople throughout this country (including names such as Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar). You will increase your closing ratio by at least 80% by simply asking for the order. It is one of the most commonly over-looked methods. Many people are so busy trying to show the benefits of the product or service and why it is so great, that they assume people will just ask them how to order, thus missing the boat entirely. YOU HAVE TO ASK FOR THE ORDER!

Net Fact: 70% of people say they shop on the net, while only 23% buy on the net. It is our job to get people to make that purchase on the net by offering something they cannot get anywhere else and by making it extremely easy and simple to order. This is the key to increasing your sales!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Internet marketing expert Derek Gehl specializes in teaching real people how to successfully start, build, and grow their own profitable Legitimate home business opportunity on small budgets. To get instant access to the step-by-step strategies, tools, and resources he's used to grow just $25 into over $60 Million in online sales, visit: http://www.marketingtips.com/tipsltr.html

Legitimate Home Business Opportunity Blog

Legitimate Home Business Opportunity Blog

Pay Online

Make It Super Simple For The Customer To Pay
If you don't accept credit cards because you don't have merchant accounts, forget it!
You MUST be able to accept credit cards online if you plan to do business over the net. If you can't, you will lose over 60% of your business. Customers on the net are impulsive and want everything NOW. If they have to get off the net to phone you (most families only have one phone line in their house) OR, if they have to write a check, fill out an order form, address an envelope and put it in the mail you can forget about doing any kind of volume. You have to make it easy for them to order! Would you believe that 80% of the orders I am currently receiving for my products are placed with credit cards?
Credit cards will also give you a measure of credibility because your home business will not seem like a "basement operation". They will not only quadruple your business because credit cards offer convenience, but they make your job a lot easier as well:
Not as many trips to the bank (everything is deposited electronically).
Easier and "cleaner" paper-trails for sales records.
No bounced checks (credit cards are almost like getting cash).
Easier to trace orders for customer service.
...and many other benefits.
I will show you how to get your own credit card merchant accounts for only $40 a month a little further down this page. The broker we deal with has a 98% approval rate and can almost guarantee to get you merchant accounts at extremely low rates (plus they will bend over backwards to make sure you are satisfied not to mention that they include all the software and tech help you need to make your order system fully automated).
Automation Is Crucial For Your Success
There are three ways people should be able to order, all of which have to be automated if you truly want to be successful. As I mentioned before, if you don't do this, you will be a slave to your business every day (including weekends and holidays) just processing orders. That leaves little time for marketing your business, as most of your time will be spent doing administrative work.
In brief, customers should be able to order:
Directly Online.
With an 800 number (24 hours a day, seven days a week with live operators).
Postal mail ("snail mail") or fax.
Lets go over each of these in detail:
Online: My orders are accepted and processed on a secure server while the customer waits online. Then, software charges the credit card company which deposits the money directly into my bank account. The order is automatically emailed to my fulfillment company who ships the order the next day and also sends me a copy of the order by email for my records. I also allow the customer to order with a non-secure form, which will be explained further on.
Note: A secure server is a computer server that can accept and transmit confidential information (like credit card numbers) without the risk of someone intercepting the transmission and "stealing" the information. It is all done through encryption techniques. Almost all browsers (unless they are very old) support secure server transactions.
800 number: I deal with a company that accepts phone orders 24 hours a day on a 1-800 line with live operators (this is the same company that processes my email orders), and then, pack, and ship them out. I send them a few hundred items every couple of weeks so they can maintain their stock, and I get a fax every night telling me what 800 number orders came in the previous day, what was shipped, and how much was deposited in my bank account. You will find it will cost you between $5.00 to $7.00 per order to fill using the 800 number (they charge about a buck a minute to take the order over the phone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). Please note that when you are starting, you may just want to get an 800 number attached to your regular business phone numbers and take orders 9-5 when you are in the office (your local long distance carrier can arrange this easily). Then as you get more orders, transfer this responsibility to a company like the one mentioned above.
Snail Mail or Fax: My customers can also send a check or money order by mail, or fax the order form with their credit card number to me. Most people will order online, and if they feel uncomfortable giving out their credit card number they will call the 1-800 line ( it is rare to receive many orders via snail mail or fax). The fulfillment-company receives a copy of the order, ships the product and then mails me the order forms and checks they receive, once a week.
I do nothing except get a report of what was sold through any of the ordering techniques, and everything is done automatically. I can go away on a vacation for a week or two and the whole system runs as though I were there, doing all the work myself. I can't emphasize enough, how important this is. All I need to do is simply look at my accounts at the end of the week (or end of the day) to see what sales I have just made.
Why is this so important...?
You want to concentrate all of your time on marketing your product or service, not on paperwork, processing and shipping orders... especially when you have a successful product or service!
With my four successful online businesses, I would have a full-time job just processing orders if I had to do them everyday. There would be no time to market my products and increase my sales, let alone time to try new marketing possibilities.
Let me repeat what happens: The orders are placed by your customers, the money is deposited in your bank and the product is packaged and shipped without you touching anything. The only thing you have to do is drop by the bank once a week in order to deposit the checks sent by the fulfillment company, for incoming orders. You don't have to answer the phone or even log on to the net every day to check orders. Everything is done automatically.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Internet marketing expert Derek Gehl specializes in teaching real people how to successfully start, build, and grow their own profitable online businesses on small budgets. To get instant access to the step-by-step strategies, tools, and resources he's used to grow just $25 into over $60 Million in online sales, visit: http://www.marketingtips.com/tipsltr.html

Internet Home Business Ideas Blog

Online Businesses

Online Businesses
Exclusive Case Studies: Three "Regular People" Share Their Secrets to Earning More Than $100,000 a Year From Their Online Businesses!
Every so often, I like to use an issue of this newsletter to share the online success stories of some of my students and fellow Internet entrepreneurs.
It's a great opportunity for all of us (myself included) to see how some of you are using the kinds of strategies I teach for growing your business and boosting your profits!
All too often, I see entrepreneurs trying to market their businesses a dozen different ways all at once... and not really succeeding at any of them! If you have many different marketing strategies in place, and you find that none of them are really getting you’re the results you need, try focusing on just one and giving it all you've got. I think the results might surprise you!
As you read the case studies below, remember that these are "real people" just like you and me. Each one of these entrepreneurs focuses on the key marketing strategy they think will benefit their business, does it well, maximizes profits, and then moves on to developing their business further.
PLEASE NOTE: The three profiles I've included for you here have been heavily edited and condensed. The success stories that are posted at the SecretsToTheirSuccess.com Private Site are typically 15 to 20 pages each, so there is no way I could reprint them in full in this newsletter.
Case Study #1: GreetingsFromSanta.com
Mark Bulleit not only hit upon the winning idea of selling a seasonal information product based on the name of the town he lived in, but he also chose just the right strategy to make it a roaring success!
Mark's town is Santa Claus, Indiana, and his site GreetingsFromSanta.com offers people the chance to send children personal greetings from Santa Claus himself… complete with the Santa Claus postmark!
And, with all of the Christmas-related web sites out there, an affiliate program was the obvious strategy to focus on. The result is that Mark pulled in over $100,000 in revenues last year in only seven weeks -- and how he's planning to double that figure this year!
Critical to that success is his affiliate program that accounts for over 40% of traffic to his site, and up to 30% of his total revenues.
"For me, starting up an affiliate program was a no-brainer," says Mark. "There are just so many non-competing Christmas-related web sites out there that can benefit from offering my product.
"In my experience, a strong affiliate program can be the key to your success."
Mark's approach is to actively look for potential affiliate sites, and then take the time to study the site and contact the owner personally to ask them to join his program.
He has the following tips for those of you thinking of starting up your own affiliate program:
Use affiliate management software that has good tracking and reporting features -- this helps encourage potential affiliates to sign up
Offer generous commissions to "super affiliates" -- as they are the highly motivated sellers who will generate the most sales
Look after your affiliates and do everything you can to make their job easier -- this way you both benefit and you build good, profitable long-term partnerships with your affiliates
This is all great advice, and well worth following. As Mark himself says, "You'll save yourself a lot of wasted time and money if you follow the example of other entrepreneurs whose online businesses are successful."
Now that Mark has a successful affiliate program up and running, he can focus on developing NEW ideas to build his business. "Every year, I come up with a new volume of ideas to help me solidly establish myself on the Web as the dominant site in my industry," he says.
And he's helped in doing this by the fact that he first identified and focused on one KEY strategy to help establish his business -- an affiliate program that, according to Mark, "opens so many doors that would be difficult -- if not impossible -- to open otherwise."
Case Study #2: VGSportsInc.com
How would you like to play video games for a living? Well, Bert Ingley turned his love of sports video games into an $187,000 a year online business, producing and selling sports video game strategy eBooks!
And, key to his success was his early decision to focus on using effective search engine optimization strategies to drive visitors -- and lots of them -- to his web sites.
"Search engines have been the core building block of our marketing plan," says Bert. "In the early days of our business, we spent huge amounts of time working on our search engine placement."
And it worked… Bert was able to establish a real presence on the Internet -- consistently listed in the top five in Google for his main keywords. He recommends the following as crucial to search engine success:
Make sure that you have relevant keywords in your web site copy
Buy domain names that contain relevant keywords and use them as your main URL or direct them to your main web site (Bert does this with http://www.maddentips.com/).
Many search engines re-rank sites on a weekly basis, so spend some time seeing where you stand and make necessary adjustments
Keep up to date with the latest search engine news through http://www.searchenginenews.com/ for example, and update your sites accordingly
Link to other popular sites in the same subject area and get them to link to you, as linking to other relevant sites helps boost your search engine results ranking
Use Wordtracker to find the right keywords for your web site
All this early hard work really paid off for Bert, and saved him time later on: "Now that all our sites have high rankings," he says, "we spend just a moderate amount of time maintaining them."
And the time he now saves on dealing with these day-to-day tasks leaves Bert free to concentrate on building his business (seven web sites and counting!) and, of course, to play video games!
Case Study #3: Decorate-Redecorate.com
After becoming increasingly fed up with her consulting job, Barbara Jennings finally decided to take the plunge and start an Internet business doing what she REALLY loves -- giving home decorating tips!
Now, the 59-year-old grandmother's web site Decorate-Redecorate.com brings in $102,000 a year, and she only has to spend 30 to 60 minutes a day on the day-to-day management chores!
Barbara spends such little time actually managing her business because she has focused on automating her business, allowing her to spend more time on developing new products and providing good customer service. The areas of your business Barbara suggests automating include:
E-mail communications using autoresponders
Stock control and ordering processes
An affiliate program
One example of this automation is e-mail -- vital for delivering her eBooks to customers. "I use Mailloop 24/7. It handles the purchases and usercodes and autoresponders for all my products," says Barbara.
"I just returned from a 10-day trip to Japan, and was able to track and administrate my business overseas with my laptop and a little help from a family member in the USA."
That kind of automation is worth its weight in gold. Not just in allowing Internet business owners like Barbara to take vacations AND check up on their business at the same time, but in creating invaluable business development time.
"I only spend about 30 to 60 minutes a day managing my business," she says. "The rest of my time is spent marketing it, developing more exclusive products, and expanding the web sites."
And, in Barbara's case this automation has freed up enough time for her to create SEVEN eBooks in just over a year!
Final thoughts
These three entrepreneurs all had a great idea for an Internet business, and they got their web sites going by focusing on selected strategies, including:
Starting an affiliate program
Effective search engine optimization
Automation
Of course, there are hundreds more techniques you can use to build a successful online business. But if you try to implement them all at once, you're going to be scattered and unfocussed -- and none of your strategies will work as well as they could.
It's better to focus on just one or two strategies early on, and learn them as well as you possibly can. Then you'll be in a position to move onto other strategies as your business grows and develops.
Now for the fun part! If any of you think you've got a success story that my "Secrets To Their Success" subscribers would like to read about, please do not hesitate to visit www.secretstotheirsuccess.com/suggest and tell me all about it. I'm really looking forward to hearing from you!
We may even feature some of the stories in a later issue of this newsletter, so get writing!

Internet Home Business Ideas Blog