That’s why so many people get overwhelmed at the thought of sitting down and writing a coherent and persuasive message. Juggling all of those details can be difficult, and often leads to heavy, boring sales copy.

To combat that, I have two quotations on my wall that have proven to be very useful (and profitable!) over the years:

“You can’t bore people into buying your product.” – David Ogilvy

“People will read what’s interesting to them, and sometimes it’s advertising.” – Howard Gossage

Now that you have a goal when you begin to write… to be interesting for your prospects… it’s much easier to control all of those details and have them contribute to your sales message instead of dominating it.

A quick and easy way to generate interest in your readers is to tell your own story. To do this, you simply explain to your readers why you’re in the situation you’re in. Here are a few examples of the type of story you can write:

How and why you created the product or service you’re offering

Hi, my name is Jane Doe. Two years ago I was going through the darkest period of my life. It was more difficult than anything I could ever imagine… so bad that I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

In a moment I’m going to share with you how I was able to escape that terrible situation. More importantly, I’ll also share how my experience can help anyone transform their lives from the misery of pitch black to a life of happiness, light, and fulfillment.

How the product or service you’re offering has changed your life

I’m Bill Smith, creator of Product X. In just a few moments, I’m going to show you how I was able to go from a complete woodworking novice, to a respected expert craftsman in just one short year.

Why you’re making the product or service available at such a tremendous value

Hello, my name is John Doe, President and CEO of Company A. I’m writing to you today with a very special opportunity that my company has never made available before. Pure and simply… the reason we’re able to offer this to you at this time is because the economy is in the toilet.

With these simple “tell your story” templates, you’ll be able to catch the interest of your prospects – and also make the task of writing your sales letter much easier!

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Mike Denison is a freelance copywriter with over 20 years experience in direct response marketing, including print advertising, direct mail, online sales letters, and email campaigns. More info at www.logikmarketing.com

Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.

You might have noticed on our site that we recently added a pop-over box inviting people to join our e-mail list to get our very well received audio program.

You may have even noticed pop-over box when you tried to read this post.

It’s something we’ve wanted to test for years.  We finally decided not to think about it too much and told our VA just to do it.

Rather than spend time thinking too much about the design and how exactly it should work, we told her just to use the Aweber form wizard to get one up fast.

Then the complaints hit.

Did we screw up?

I started wondering whether the pop over was a bad idea all around.

Thankfully I looked at the numbers as well and discovered that the number of e-mail opt-ins had doubled.

I’m no math wiz, but even I can see what that could mean for our business.

But what about the complaints? Well, we finally discovered the one bit that we did mess up on.

The pop over was coming up on every page, every single time someone click to a new page.

I would be annoyed, too!

So we fixed that and now it only comes up once.

We apologize for the few days of annoyance that this caused. But, hey, we’re always trying new things so we can come back and share the results with you.

You might be thinking you want to add a pop over to your site now, too.

Before you do that, there are a few important lessons that we can draw from this experience.

#1 Action!

FIRST, sometimes you just need to “ready, fire, aim.”

Why didn’t we try this to years ago?! We were over-thinking it to the point of inaction.

Really, it only took a five-minute e-mail to our VA to get it done.

#2 Listen and Fix!

SECOND, listen to your community. But balance what they are saying against the numbers.

We definitely screwed up with the pop-over frequency. It was an oversight.

We’re glad our community pointed out something that clearly needed to be fixed.

#3 Test!

THIRD, always be testing.

You should always test and track new ideas.One change could boost your business.

We plan to keep our eye on this test and will then probably follow it up with something else.

If the results still hold, the next step is too try a nicer design and see how that performs.

So, is a pop over opt-in box the right move for you?

Only testing can tell.

QUESTION: Have you tried a pop-over and what was the result?

Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.

And here it is for you to enjoy!

Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.

You can find the first three installments in this series at the following links:

1. 4 Surefire Ways to Make Money Online
2. 5 Ways to Boost Web Traffic
3. Boost Web Site Conversion, Boost Your Income

Increasing the Lifetime Value of Your Customers

Increasing customer retention is really about increasing the Lifetime Value (LTV) of each customer. In other words, how much money do you make, on average, from each customer over the time they are a paying customer.

This is calculated by adding up the purchases that each customer makes and dividing it out to get an average. LTV is a critical stat to know since it tells you how much money you can spend acquiring each new customer.  If each customer is worth $200 to you, then even spending $100 to advertise and acquire that customer will still generate a profit.

That’s why so many businesses are willing to cut even on the first purchase made by a customer, because in the end they know that the total LTV leads to a healthy profit.

4 Ways to Increase Retention and LTV

1. Maintain the Relationship

I love music. I love finding and following new bands. When I like a band I subscribe to their e-mail newsletter. Sadly, most bands totally misuse their list. The only time you hear from them is when they want you to buy their new album or attend a show. What about in between albums and shows?

Because they failed to maintain the personal connection, I forgotten about them. They are no longer at the top of my mind. And if all I get from them are sales messages, then the relationship is broken.

Regular engagement with your prospects and current customers is important for ongoing sales. The best way to do this is to frequently produce relevant content that they can’t live without. Our online radio show is an relationship-building and maintaining tool for us.

Build a list. Communicate with them regularly. Give them stellar content on a regular basis.

2. Don’t Overwhelm Your Customers

One of the most common reasons that you’ll lose members from a membership site or get refunds on a coaching course is that people get overwhelmed. In the past I thought that the best thing I could do is deliver so much value and content that the customer felt they got a way more than they paid for.

Sadly, this can quickly lead the customer to feel like they are just falling behind. They feel guilty. They don’t blame you, they blame themselves. And then they ask for their money back. That means you don’t make money and they don’t accomplish the goal they set out for.

I laugh to think that in my very first ever podcasting coaching course I taught all the ins and outs of digital audio, sampling rates, bit depths, audio compression and more. The students eyes glazed over. They just didn’t need to know that to get started. They just wanted to know what buttons to click to record and create an MP3.

Keep your content streamlined and limit it to only what they need to know to take action and get results right now. This was one of the most important criteria for us in developing the new content for Academy 2.0.

3. Back End Sales Funnel

If you only sell to your customers once, then you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. The vast majority of your income will likely come from the second, third and fourth sale. You’ll begin to notice that the same customers by over and over again.

As soon as you can find other things that you can sell to them, even if it is just an affiliate product. Fortunately I learned this lesson just before my first ever seminar. I singed up for a license to Dan Kennedy’s top courses. The license cost me $1200, but I was able to sell $3000 worth of products at the end of the seminar. My profit went up by $1800 by having a plan for a back end.

It’s just as important, or even more important, to sell to your current customers as it is to sell to new ones.

4. Deliver Incredible Content and Service

Always take care of your customers. Give them an amazing experience. Respond to their feedback and needs. Over-deliver when it comes to service.

Make sure your content is top notch. Yes, you want to avoid overwhelming them. But make sure the quality is above and beyond. Also, be dependable and do what you say you will do.

Conclusion

Choose one thing that you can do now to increase your customer retention and LTV. If nothing else, add a simple affiliate product to your auto-responder series or e-mail your customer list this week with a back end affiliate offer.

What other ideas or questions do you have about customer retention? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.

You can find the first two installments in this series at the following links:

1. 4 Surefire Ways to Make Money Online
2. 5 Ways to Boost Web Traffic

Boosting Income with Web Site Conversion

Making money online is about moving your site visitors through a simple process of getting to know and trust you so that they are prepared to buy.

At every step of this process, there is the chance that any given person will take action and continue to the next step (e.g. sign up for your e-mail list, open a sales e-mail, click the link, etc.) or not take action.

A 5% increase in e-mail opt-ins puts more prospects into your sales process leading to more money on the other end.

So a sure way to incrementally boost your income is to increase the percentage of people that do take action at any of these points in the process. This is done by split-testing.

Split Testing: The Key to Increasing Your Income

Getting people to take action and move forward in your sales process is affected by a number of factors. These can include things like your headline, the price of your product or even the colors on your site.

You can make educated guesses about what your audience will react to the best, but in the end the only way to know for sure is to test one option against another (i.e. do they buy more when they see the blue headline or the red headline).

This is done with split testing. You let half of your audience see one thing and the other half see the other. By looking at the numbers, you get proof of which option works best. So what should you test?

4 Split Tests for More Profit

Here are four things that are important to test. You don’t have to test all of them at the same time, but any of them can lead to significantly more money for your business.

1. Opt-in Incentive Headline

The one things that will likely increase your opt-in conversions is the title of the incentive that you offer them (i.e. “Sign up now to get our free report titled ___________________). Try different titles to see which converts best.

2. Sales Page Headline

The headline is the most important thing on any sales page. It determines whether or not the visitor sticks around to get more info about the product. Try different headlines to find the one that works best.

3. Sales Page vs. Sales Video

Sales videos have performed well on the Internet lately. People are trained by TV to watch and pay attention. Many people prefer video to a long page that they have to read.

But that doesn’t mean your audience will like video better. The best way to know is to try both and test to see which produces more sales.

4. Pricing

Choosing a price for your product can be tricky. At first you have to make your best guess about what price will produce the most profit. In the end, the only way to know for sure is to let people vote with their wallet. Try different prices and let the numbers reveal which one is best.

Tools for Boosting Web Site Conversion

Here are several of the tool that we use for split testing

• Aweber – they offer great stats for testing different e-mail subject lines as well as opt-in form performance
• Crazy Egg – this is an amazing tool that provides a visual heat map of where visitors click on your site
• Google Analytics – a free stats solution for your site
• Google Site Optimizer – a feature within Google Analytics that allows you to split test web page performance
• Web Site Visual Optimizer – a paid solution for testing web pages that offers many more features than Google Site Optimizer

What other tools do you use for boosting web site conversion? What other ideas or questions do you have about web site conversion? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.

Go here now to watch the video.

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Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.

In this special edition episode of Internet Business Mastery, we’re going to share 5 tips for increasing affiliate sales for any affiliate product. If you are just starting to build a list or you have a business up as going you will want to sell to your customers time and time again and affiliate sales is one fantastic way to do so. Just one of Sterling’s business makes nearly 50% of all income from affiliate sales!

We also give you the opportunity to join an affiliate program that offers nearly $600 to affiliates on one product! Check out: http://www.internet-based-business-mastery.com/affiliate/

Items mentioned in this episode:

• Make Money Right Away: http://www.internet-based-business-mastery.com/affiliate/
• Here are the two other affiliate companies we work with
  • TOP PICK: http://www.internet-based-business-mastery.com/affiliatecompany/
  • PICK #2: http://www.cj.com/

Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.