The Internet Has No Magic
By Bob Osgoodby    http://adv-marketing.com

When starting a business, there are many factors which must be considered. If mistakes are made along the way, the business may not flourish.

There are basically three things that those in an online business must do. First - you must pick your program carefully. If you get involved with the wrong one, you will not succeed. Just because a program has been around a long time, does not necessarily mean it will work for you. Some of the affiliate programs on the web are played out.

You should also avoid the programs that make money mainly by garnering new recruits. At some point the new recruits will slow down and the program will go the way of most Ponzi or pyramid schemes. Secondly, you must advertise. A one time or sporadic ad will not get customers. Exposure, Exposure, Exposure gets the customers. It is a common maxim in advertising that it takes 5 to 7 exposures to an ad to get someone to react. Your copy must also be geared toward your target market. It must be well written, makes an offer that gets someone's attention, and allows immediate feedback. If you are consistent in your advertising, experiment with your copy until you start getting responses. If your ad doesn't pull, change it - couldn't be simpler.

Let's stick with exposure for a minute. It takes a dedicated person to place their free classified ads on an ongoing basis. Miss a week here and there and you are committing a big mistake. You are not being consistent.

Consistency means that you advertise on a regular basis. Let's face it - any advertising program must use multiple ways to reach their audience. Search out those publications which are geared toward your target market, and contract with them on a "long term" basis. Many offer discounts for ongoing ads. When someone sees your ad in different places, they start to pay attention. Enough exposure and they just may contact you for further information.

Which brings us to the third step in your program. If you don't use some type of auto-responder, you are simply not serious in your advertising efforts. The auto-response presents the details to them about your offer. They not only get your response within minutes, but you get their E-mail address for follow-up purposes.

You can get auto-responders from a number of places, but perhaps the simplest is using the Eudora email client. If someone sends an email to a specific address, or with a specific subject line, it can automatically file it in a follow up folder and send back a canned response.

The final step is the actual close, and you must have the proper tools. You must have a way to immediately close the deal and for the prospect the make payment. You can use a number of resources including your own merchant account, online checks or a service such as PayPal.

Advertising on the Internet has no magic. Unless it is done properly, however the world will NOT beat a path to your door. You must use the same techniques and procedures that you would use in any offline advertising campaign. Those that do will have a successful business.
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