Welcome back to “The Five Stages Of The Buying Cycle” series. In the previous part we discussed the “Get Attention” part. Today we go one step further and discuss the “Grow Interest” part.

Now that you have your readers their attention, deepen their understanding of what your product does. A link to your created Video Tour is especially effective at this stage.

If you reach a “general audience,” encourage them to find the business that best fits their situation to see how your product can help them. On the other hand, if you reach a “specific target market” (ex., affiliates) or a “specific demographic” (ex., Work At Home Moms), send them to your specific landing pages.

If your visitors are retirees, Webmasters, real estate marketers, students, network marketers, auction sellers (eBay), and so on… create landing pages specific to their needs.

As always, mix and match links that best fit your approach and audience.

You can strike a positive chord with your visitors by showing how your product connects emotionally with its customers, the way Apple or Google does. That type of connection occurs for only one reason…

Your productis much more than “site-building” or “Web hosting”. It’s even more than about building successful businesses. It’s the end impact that is so important, creating lives of freedom and independence.

By the end of this stage, you should have some very interested pre-customers who want more information.

Next, move your visitors from “high interest/emotion” to logic and verification…

Previous parts:
1. Introduction
2. Get Attention

The seven eBooks below follow up with this post. You can get them free just by replying or giving a comment to this post. RECOMMENDED!!

Forums are a great way of marketing alongside articles, email and blogging – there is no real way to compare all of these, they are just a different way of communicating. The big difference however with forums is that many many more people will see you and get to know you which builds trust as you interact with the community.

Forums have been around in many forms since the dawn of the internet, they provide a means of conversation with like-minded people in a community-driven atmosphere of helping one another with problems. If you don’t know how they work, let me just tell you a bit about them.

First off, you have to find your forum in your niche, the best way to do this is type in subject forums as the keywords (replacing subject with your topic) into a search engine. Once you have found one in the topic you’re interested in, with a nice community going on, registration is the next step.

Registration is pretty simple, its just a case of filling your details in and perhaps entering a captcha (one of those funny sets of digits and numbers that tell the site that you are not an automated spammer!) You may have to click a link in your email to register the fact that you own the email address you registered with.

There usually is many sub-forums, i would reccomend finding one that usually reads something like “introduce yourself” and post a brief overview of what you are about and say hello. I would advise against just registering and posting “buy my product now” or “come to my website” etc. type comments as you’ll end up with a flame war – if you dont know what that is please do a search on it as its not a nice thing to happen to you!

Get involved in the forum, post replies to people’s problems to help with any questions that you can – its a community-type feeling that you will enjoy. Forums which are busy have the advantage of many more people in the nich you are targeting, so you can find out about some really exciting new widget thing in your niche that is very important to you, and also reply and ask more.

Some forums have a specific buy, sell or trade section where you can sell your products, this is the place to be if you want to directly pitch your product. Another way of pitching your product is to enter links to your website in your signature, this is shown directly under each post that you make and is updated automatically – be careful however, some forums dont like this and will ask you to remove them. Some have rules on the size of images or links allowed, please read these before adding it.

Some of the more advanced forums that run vbulletin have private messaging which can be great to directly carry out business to people privately on the forum, i’ve bought many websites and domain names using this – some sites like digital point have itrader which is also a way of showing how trustworthy the user is in terms of buying and selling, similar to the ebay feedback system.

One last thing to remember, forums are a great place to communicate rather than a place to pitch-fest – if you want to advertise on a forum, but you cant find any other method other than the ones i’ve outlined, contact the owners of the site and ask for banner rates, this is a great way of getting in front of these people, then you have the right to freely talk about your product or service which is a huge bonus compared to advertising on a static site!

The 7 Basics That All Sites Need to Adhere To

Basic #1:

Have a great keyword-loaded URL [Get your domain and hosting at bluehost.com]. Create small uris with: Snipurl.com, Tinyurl.com, ICANN.org is the technical coordination body for the Internet (what to do about domain name disputes).

Basic #2:

Easy to use Site Is your site easy to use and navigate? Does it satisfy its intended purpose? Use techniques that are friendly to your customers and prospects. View compatibility with various browsers: AnyBrowser.com.  Check your graphics efficiency: Optiview.com ‘s Quickscan, keep track of your site’s performance: atwatch.com, dotcom-monitor.com, Keynote.com or lnternetSeer.com. Make sure your links work: SevenTwentyFour.com or validator.w3.org

Basic #3:

Give Away Value Give back to the community. Give something of value to your audience. Update this information periodically to keep your audience coming back. Examples include resources pages, books page, and white papers pages. [Or an ezine for example Matt's promotingtips.com].

Basic #4:

Satisfy Users Content Needs with External Resources Let your audience quickly find what they need. Valuable content, good navigation and easily accessible contact! feedback mechanisms. Add value to your site, by using some of the “free” tools on the Internet. For example, if you’re a U.S. public company, point to the Edgar database. If you want people to visit you, use [a mapping software] to give directions. If you can make maps.google.com to work for you, that would be great. Add a calendar supercalendar.com. In the language of your user such as Freetranslation.com.

Basic #5:

Put your URL Everywhere. All pieces of corporate literature should contain your URL: business cards, ads, letterhead, e-mail, company vehicles, packaging, promotional items, employees outgoing messages, signage around and within buildings, thank you cards, etc. GotLogos.com [or elance.com] to create a logo altterrain.com puts your url in a number of offline locations.

Basic #6:

Use a Signature Tag on your E-mail. A short description of your product or service should be automatically attached to the bottom of every e-mail. All employees should be encouraged to use it. Target your tag to the group receiving your e-mail.

Basic #7:

Submit Site at Search Engines, Directories, Announcement Spots, etc. Make sure people can find your site in Yahoo! and the top 7 search engines. Also try some of the vertical engines at searchenginewatch.com. Check out: Search.com for other places to submit to. Look at Yahoo’s list and Tucows.com list of search engine submission tools. Don’t forget to submit to DMOZ. Check your listings manually with MarketLeap.com tools (by keyword verification, search engine saturation, or link popularity). Learn everything you wanted to know about search engines from searchengines.net.

30 Techniques (Prioritized)

1. Pay-per-click (PPC) and other paid-for Internet Marketing
Pay-per-click is currently the hottest Internet Marketing technique and it’s only going to heat up from here. Although, Overture (now Yahoo!) started the trend, Google brought it to market. There are other locations to buy “from including Looksmart. Look toward Microsoft to create a service that is purported to leapfrog both Google and Yahoo! later this year. Create and manage the program yourself or use a firm.

2.Blogging
Search for Blogs at BlogSearchEngine or Technorati. You can blog yourself by sharing your thoughts on your site or you can blog on other sites. Create your own blogs with: Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal, BlogHarbor, Blogger, Blogit, Weblogs, WordPress, and Userland. Check out: eLearnSpace.org’s Blogging Tutorial, Technorati’s Top Blogs,Radio Userland, or get your free Blog at JoeUser. Check out the small business blog center from allbusiness. Corporate examples (List of European Corporate Blogs, Ford, GM, Maytag Skybox, Jupiter Research), also some unofficial examples (Aston-Martin, Google, xBox, Dreamhost, and even John Kerry). Place ads on blogs with BlogAds, CripsAds or read the bloggers blog about it. RSS is a way to easily share your blog content with the world. Read about RSS at XML.

3. Establish a free online Newsletter Package content that is of value and distribute it on a periodic basis.
You can build trust and spread the word. Also a good way to gather e-mail addresses that you can market to. Announce everywhere you can.

4. Optimize Your Site Be Positioning in the Search Engines
If your potential customer types in the key word or key phrase that describes your services, you want to make sure that your site is within the first two pages that show up.

5. Podcasting
Podcasting is the fastest growing Internet marketing trend and will most likely jump into one of the top 3 positions in the next year. Read about podcasting at Wikipedia. Check out these directories: iPodder.org, Podcast.net, Podcastingnews, including the father of podding, itunes. Check out how various businesses are using podcasting (Deloitte, IBM On Demand Business, Fidelity, Project Management Podcast, Internet Business Mastery) Also check out some resources including: Yahoo!’s podding service, Podcasting-Tools, Podcasting, web20show.com, Career Builders Monkey Mail, Odeo, Byoaudio, Gcast

6. Find and Fuel Evangelists (Viral Marketing)
Whether it’s an internal employee or an excited partner, empower your evangelists with the tools they can use to help market you in the on-line world. Essentially, find the best way to get word of mouth excitement about your product or service. Alladvantage.com (no longer around), for example, grow to over 250,000 members in it’s first 21 days at 2,000,000 members in 120 days by getting evangelists to push their concept of paying users to surf the net. Create a tell-a-friend program with tell-afriend- wizard or build your own. Combining PPC and viral marketing, many younger entrepreneurs are making money with Google arbitrage. Flash course on making this happen.

7.Establish and Affiliate Program
Allow other sites to sell your products or distribute your value-added content. Lists containing affiliate programs: Adbility, refer-it.com, associateprograms.com, affiliateshowcase.com, sitecash.com, commission-junction.com, clickquick.com. linkshare, 2-tier, affiliatematch, SponsorDirectory. Reference Guide: associateprograms, 10 Do’s and Dont’s, and Information Outlet Running your own program: commissionjunction, linkshare.

8.Email Marketing
You should be collecting e-mail addresses at every opportunity. E-mail people with info they’ve asked for. Annuncio, Microsoft Small Business Center, Bluemartini, Constant Contact, HTML-Email-marketing, YesMAIL, & Vertical Response are interesting services that might be used. Potentially tie in with incentives from companies like: ECentives, ERewards. Build traffic with WebHitsDirect. You can also use MarketersChoice which bundles in e-mail marketing with their shopping cart service.

9. Use White Paper Sites for Lead Generation
Write and publish white papers and collect contact info (e.g. e-mail) from those that pick them up. Can host on your site or use a white paper lead generation site: Tradepub, Bitpipe, or KnowledgeStorm

10. Publish Articles, Books and/or get mentioned in News Stories
Use article distribution sites like Article Dashboard, Article Marketer, Article Sender,Phantom Writers, or Submit Your Article or article submission software like Artemis Pro. Write and publish a tradebook, eBook or Podbook with the book publisher Happy About or have them write and publish one for you. Easily publish eBooks with Fastebooks or use eBookBroadcast. Visit Dan Poynter’s Book Promotion Tips. Speak at conferences and learn more on speaking from speaker net news. Write and publish articles of value. Include your URL in your bio. Contact news people who write about your area of expertise. Check out: MediaMap, Bacons, LexisNexis or News Voyager, Biz Journals, Radio and Records Directory, Web Radio Directory, and the National Association of Broadcasters.

11. Run Webinars
Use tools like Centra, Interwise, Raindance, Polycom, PresentationPro, and Webex.

12. Online Press Releases
Write and distribute press releases pointing back to your site. Check out PRnewswire, BusinessWire, MarketWire, Internet Newsbureau, PRweb, 24-7PressRelease, PressReleaseWriting, PressReleaseNetworking, ExtraPR, GlobalPRMedia, Eworldwire, ProfNet.org/press.html, Pressbox.co.uk,
PrudentPressAgency, Pressreleasenetwork, Urlwire, Webwire, XpressPress. Press release writing tips at press-release-writing.com.

13. Participate in Social Business Networking
Have employees in your company participate in the various social business networks such as: Linkedln, OpenBC, Ecademy, Spoke, EveryonesConnected, Ryze, Tribe, Visible Path, Facebook.

14. Determine On-line Communities to Participate in
Use these services to find: user groups Google Groups (deja), mailing lists liszt, and discussion groups forumone of interest. Check out Intersync’s forum list and reference

15. Establish and Lead an On-line Forum / Community
If you can find the time, leading an on-line forum or running an on-line community is a great way to establish an aHinity group and build credibility. Try myfamily, Yahoo Groups for a host of on-line community services.

16. Put a Woo on your site
Wiki’s allows your site visitors to update the Web content themselves. The most extensive Wiki experiment is Wikipedia. This is certainly a technology worth experimenting with. Use tools from: WordPress, WikiWikiWeb, JotSpot, Social Text, or Confluence or look at Protopage

17. Establish a Reciprocal Web Linking Program
Approach appropriate sites in your industry and closely aligned industries to link to your site. Create a link2us page to make it easy. Check out ecnow.com/link2us.htm. Use Link-Builder, LinkLeads, InfoPack’s Alink, LinkAutomatic or SEOlinkExchange. Check your link popularity at Linkpopularity, LinkPopularityCheck, or MarketLeap. Join or start a Webring might work for your site.

18. Use E-mail Autoresponders
If you have key information that you want to share, consider using an autoresponder. This is a good way to gather e-mail addresses for future marketing. Can be used for: Promotional Material, Product/Service Information, Training/Hiring Help, Article/White Paper Distribution.

19. Conduct Surveys
Check out Yahoo’s or try Addaform, Survey, SuperSurvey, SurveyMonkey, Create Survey, or Zoomerang. Writeup your results and distribute them with the tools above in articles, books, blog postings and press releases!

20. Actively Monitor and Participate in On-line Community
Either manually or via on-line services, actively monitor and participate in user groups, mailing lists and discussion groups. Here are some services that can do this for you moreover, cyveillance, ewatch, and CyberAlet. Monitor TV news with NewslQ.

21. Run an Auction
Partner with a software company to run an auction at your site ebay, moai, Andale, amazon. Check out Tucows for Auction Tools.

22. Run Contests, Give-aways
Contests and give-aways are great ways to generate traffic. Just look at iWon. Check out these sites to help you advertise: Contestguide, Contestworld.

23. Give Away On-line Coupons
Here are coupon companies that could help: Coolsavings, Coupons, HotCoupons, RebatePlace, QuickToClick.

24. Participate in a Charitable Web Site
As an example, go to the Hunger Site at the UN, click a button and somewhere in the world a hungry person gets a meal to eat, at no cost to you TheHungerSite (paid by the sponsors). Cisco did a phenomenal tie-in with NetAid.org. Also try: igive, schoolpop.

25. Links in Internet Malls / Portals
Posting links in high-traffic malls / portals is a trend some are trying. Use your best judgment, some are great, some are a waste of money. Absolutely put a link in Yahoo (#7).

26. Participate in Paid-for and Free Banner Advertising
The best sites for paid-for banner advertising are those with traffic. Try any of the search engine companies that offer targeted dvertising. For free banner exchange programs, check out: 123banners, bannerswap or cyberlinkexchange. usww. Paid for service Microsoft Small Business Center, Doubleclick, iNet-Traffic.Have your banner created at Banner4u.net, Flicker.

27. Place Paid-for and Free Classified Ads
Place classified ads: Yahoo!, BestMall, Post automatically with the ClassifiedClub.

28. Host Classified Ads
Host classified ads at your site Excite Classifieds.

29. Apply for and Win Awards
If you have a site worth talking about, apply for, win, and post your awards. Check out: award-me.com

30. Create a free-for-all page
Sites to submit to free-for-all pages: FFAnet, Linkomatic, Submitad. Locations to download software for your own free-for-all page: Linkomatic. Services that will host free-for-all pages for you: FFA.net

What exactly is dropshipping ? Those who wish to start there own work from home business are often only given the very basics but is there more to it?

What is it?

Basically dropshipping is like running your own online retail shop. You sell small quantities of items to the public but you, the retailer, buy in larger numbers from wholesalers. The difference with dropshipping is that instead of the goods been sent to you to store and deliver the wholesaler will deliver the goods directly to your customers.

Online auctions

People who don’t wish to own a website or don’t feel they have the time to keep them updated will use auction sites such as eBay for their dropshipping business. The item will be delivered straight to the winning bidder from the wholesaler. The money you make will be the difference between the wholesale price and the price the bidder paid. Also auction sites will take a fee so you won’t make quite as much as from your own site but your products will get spotted easier.

Advantages

The biggest advantage is that you never have to stock the goods yourself so you have no worries about storage space. Also the way most wholesalers work mean you will never be in debt. You are paid buy the buyer as soon as the purchase is made but you will normally pay the wholesaler through a credit card or other credit method, this means that for a period of time you will have the customers money but not yet have paid your wholesaler.

Disadvantages

There are risks just as they would be in any business venture dropshipping is no different in that respect.
There may be times when you sell a product that the wholesaler currently is out of stock. This may mean the buyer has to wait longer for their goods and this in turn reflects badly on you as a retailer. Wholesalers that are good do tend to keep you informed about their stock levels but ultimately it is your responsibility. This is where it may come in useful to purchase a good wholesaler list before you get started.

Scams

Be warned you really should purchase or obtain a safe wholesaler list before starting your venture into dropshipping. In recent times because of its popularity dropshipping has also become very popular for work at home scam artist. Many will just direct you to a middleman who will then charge you another fee for finding you wholesalers, the middlemen have no actual products of their own to sell. They also charge a regular fee rather than a one off fee meaning you will make very little profit if any.

So there you have an explanation of what dropshipping is all about. It can be very lucrative but be sure to get a trustworthy wholesaler first.

Find out more about wholesalers and dropshipping here.

Albert