How To Make MORE Money From Your Online Business?

The key to selling more online is to treat your online business like the old corner store. Offer products that people want. Gurus call this "niche marketing." Search the keywords that people use in the major search engines. Join forums and see what questions people are asking. Offer programs - or develop your own information products - that help people solve these problems. This works. I've done it.

Get customers to visit your store repeatedly. Gurus call this "list building." When a customer visits your site, get his or her name and email address. Change the content of your site, and keep sending emails to your list, so they have an incentive to return. Offer them free stuff to come back. This works, too. I've done this, too.

I was looking through the "eWork" folder on my Desktop, and I looked at the sub-folders in there, containing the various free eBooks I have downloaded. I have sub-folders called "Traffic Building," "List Building," "Copywriting," "Web Design," "Direct Email," "Viral Marketing," and on and on and on.

And I have ONE sub-folder called "Customer Relationships." And it contains ONE eBook. Because I wrote it. Because gurus DON'T.

Oh, they tell you - in EVERY eBook called "30 Days To MILLIONS!" or some other such title - that you need to establish a relationship with your clients by sending them 5, or 7or 9 emails, written BY you, with YOUR personality. And you need to do SURVEYS and POLLS, to see what your customers want. And you need to send out a NEWSLETTER or an eZine, to keep your customers interested and reminded that you still exist.

Wouldn't it be EASIER just to TALK with your customers? Back and forth? Like a conversation? Think about it. Have you ever become friends - or trusted - someone who only talked TO you, and never WITH you?

Don't JUST build a list. A list is bunch of email addresses. Build a COMMUNITY of people - REAL people - who talk TO you and WITH you, AND with each other. Once you get to KNOW your customers - and they get to know you - you will know EXACTLY what they want, and they will know where to go to get help with their problems.

ERIK CARTER maintains "Start Your Life NOW!" (http://StartYourLifeNOW.bravehost.com), dedicated to helping you IMPROVE all areas of your life, including turning your list into a COMMUNITY to improve your marketing efforts, as well as the FITNESS Portal (http://fitnessportal.bravehost.com), focused on making fitness seamless with your life, and "Aggressive Pleadings For The Non-Custodial Father" (http://dadpleadings.bravehost.com), for fathers who want to RAISE their kids, not just visit them.