When you pass on helpful information to your readers because you feel like that information will help them without necessarily promoting a product it accomplishes two things.

Passing on resources to your subscribers without always worrying about your commissions builds trust because they start to think that you want to help them and not just get money from them. This makes them more willing to give you money when you ask for it. That’s just the way it works.

Prompting your subscribers to send you feedback on the resource(s) you tell them about is what helps to make your list responsive to your future offers. Get your readers used to interacting with you. Get them used to doing what you ask. In order to do that, you have to keep asking them to do stuff.

When you find anything you think is useful and think your subscribers will find useful as well, pass it on to them even if you don’t get a commission from a product they buy.

You don’t have to do that every single time you write something but do it and ask them for their opinions on what you wrote. Writing to your readers without caring about getting commissions for every single product you mention is a small price to pay in the long run for the level of trust you inspire.

That trust (built on the fact that you have shown your readers they are more than just a dollar sign) is what will set you apart from 99.9% of the other publishers out there.

Let’s be real. I publish to profit. Period.

If my subscribers don’t buy from me I stop publishing because at that point it becomes a burden on my time. I am in business to make money and so are you. My readers understand that and so do yours.

What does this mean to your bottom line?

The more you give to your readers without asking for a lot in return the more they’ll feel like the NEED to give back to you. That’s the law of reciprocation at work. Most of us were taught to give back what we get from people. That being the case, be careful about what you give because what you give is what you can expect to get back. That’s a scary thought huh?

Like I said just a minute ago your subscribers understand that you are in business to make money. If you don’t make money, you go out of business. The issue a lot of the time with publishers is that if you haven’t been giving your readers information they actually value, they won’t care if you stay in business or not which means they won’t bother buying the products you recommend.

I buy products from publishers who do their best to give me value because I want them to stick around. The only way I know how to keep them around is to buy from them.

Give your readers some credit. They know that to keep you in business they have to buy what you recommend. The only real question is do you give them enough value in the form of quality information for them to care if you stay in business or not?

On the line of valuable resources, I would like to pass this along – as you know, creating and selling (or giving away) your very own product, is the easiest way to make money on the internet. Well, my friend Joel Osborne just released his ‘Product Creation Success Package’.

If you have ever wanted to create your own product but was unsure of how to do it, the “Product Creation Success Package” has the information that you are looking for! He covers such topics as “What is an Information Product” all the way to “Delivering The Info Product” and everything in between. The Product Creation Success Package contains 3 ebooks, each with Master Resell Rights and each targeting different topics about product creation. You also get the sales page to go along with the main product.

I wouldn’t be promoting it if I hadn’t picked it up myself and gone through it. There are some points in the book that I hadn’t thought of and that will help me with my next products.

I highly recommend it…again, get it here

Stay tuned for the fourth and final segment of Relationship Marketing.

Til then,

Here’s to YOUR Successes

This is Part II of my Relationship Marketing posts. Last time I talked about your reader’s perception of you and how you must strive to get across that you are helping them, not just out to make a buck. Today I am going to talk about one of the biggest problems I see with Internet Marketer’s: Giving. Or lack of.

There’s no point in building a list if your readers don’t think you care about them. You should. Otherwise you don’t deserve to have them as subscribers. When you give to your list, you always get back much more in return so you’re actually being selfish by being unselfish. Knowing that you will get back more than you give ahead of time allows you to focus on giving.

There are some publishers I listen to above all others and when I took the time to try and figure out why, it hit me. They all do one thing that now seems so obvious.

Something you may feel compelled NOT to do.

They all give me valuable information many times without promoting any products in some of the emails they send me.

They give me pages and pages of content I can actually do something with. When they do have an affiliate link in an email I don’t even care they’ll be getting a commission from my purchase because of all the great content surrounding that affiliate link.

Am I saying give away your commissions?

Absolutely not!

I’m simply trying to get the point across that you don’t need to be an affiliate for every product or website you happen to mention to your readers under the guise of trying to help them.

It’s really not necessary anyway.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t promote products to your readers.

You should.

Just don’t club them over the head with your offers before they’ve gotten a chance to get a feel for you and if you’re someone who’s looking out for their interests or just your own.

Some of the publishers I pay attention to are ones who from time to time will pass on resources to me just because they think those resources would be of interest to me and my goals.

When someone does something for you just because, without appearing to gain anything financially from it, especially online, you take notice.

Perception is all about appearances.

You have to present yourself as you would like others to see you. If you want others to see you as someone who is giving and truly interested in them and what they want to accomplish then you have to do things that make you look that way.

Speaking of giving…a marketer friend, Mike Paetzold, (and by the way, I like his blog theme ) mentioned in one of his posts recently, how we tend to throw Internet Marketing terms and acronyms out without really thinking about it. What we sometimes fail to realize is that someone may be reading our blog for the very first time and may not be familiar with what the acronyms or terms mean…

Well, I would like to give you, my readers, a free Internet Marketer’s Dictionary, so that newcomers (and seasoned marketers, for that matter) can read through it and learn the terms and not be lost anymore.

Just a small gift for you today. No strings attached. Just click the link and save it to your computer!

OH, before I forget…the website that I talked about in the last post – it has launched – Guys, you will definitely want to check it out (and gals too…pass it on to your significant other for future reference).

His Guide to Her Jewelry. It’s not just for Valentine’s Day…use it for any of those special days in her life!

Stay tuned for Part III

Until then,

Here’s to YOUR Successes

One of the easiest to implement yet most overlooked ways to get the subscribers of your newsletter, or your customers, to warm up to you and feel like you value them and want to help them is to ask them simple questions.

Everybody’s favorite subject is himself or herself so why not show some interest?

Ask questions and do things that require some sort of interaction from your readers. It doesn’t really matter what you ask. You can ask questions that are completely unrelated to what your newsletter is about so long as you get people to respond.

When you get them used to doing things you ask them to do, no matter what it is, it’s easy for them to keep doing things you ask them to do like buy the products you recommend.
The more you can get your readers to communicate with you, the more they will feel like they know and can trust you.

A relationship (as far as an online newsletter or email course goes) is nothing more than two people (you and each individual subscriber) knowing what their place is in relation to each other.

You are the provider of helpful information and someone who wants to help your reader succeed at something.

You must get that across.

Your reader is someone who will learn to trust your advice and listen to your recommendations because you have built up a history of doing things that seem to benefit them more than they seem to benefit you. That doesn’t necessarily have to be true, as long as it seems like it’s the truth to your readers.

Remember, perception (or what people believe) is the only truth that really matters as far as they’re concerned.

As attractive and inviting as this website looks, it’s just one of millions of pages/sites on the internet and just like email messages, can be a very impersonal place, unless you make it otherwise.

What it boils down to is: The Internet is a cold and distant place. It’s just a series of tubes where people dump text and images (or at least that is what you would get out of this video)

That’s actually to your advantage because if you can consistently get across to your readers that you are a real person with real concerns (just like them) and you know what it’s like for them to be in the situation they’re in because you’ve been there, you won’t have any trouble getting people to warm up to you.

People in general tend to like others who look out for them because people (again, in general) think about themselves first. If it seems like another person is looking out for them first then that person will automatically take a high position in their eyes.

In other words, when you’re writing, not every link in it has to be an affiliate link for a product you’ll get paid from.

Understand this…

Your readers are buying products and services all the time that aren’t putting money in your pockets so it doesn’t hurt you at all to tell them about a product or service that you won’t make money from.

This sets you up to make money when you do have something to recommend that will put a commission check in your pockets.

To set yourself up to make money you have to give, give, give and then give some more. Now it’s important to note that you don’t have to give everything away.

Giving (as I’m using the term) means to give of yourself. Share stories with your readers, point them to helpful resources and let them know about things they probably haven’t found on their own.

In other words, offer your guidance. That’s what they signed up to your mailing list for. Not for a bunch of ads they can find on their own.

Are you publishing your own newsletter? Are you stumped for content? No worries, my friend Doug Champigny has the solution for you. Newsletter in a Box is the perfect solution for you. There is over a year’s worth of content for your newsletter, article submissions, or create your own info product from the content! It’s a GREAT resource!

Looking for more ‘Inside Information’ like this, subscribe to my K.A.R. Newsletter (Knowledge, Application, Results) and receive a few unadvertised bonuses for signing up. You can sign up in the upper right hand corner of the page.

Stay tuned for Part II – Guys…you also stay tuned…I will be launching a new website later today that you will be VERY interested in…I guarantee it!

Until next time,

Here’s to YOUR Successes,

Ron