Online Business Success by Jacob Gan, PhD

What Do You Try to Sell to Your Readers?

2008-07-21T15:23:00.000-07:00

It is vital to realize that the features of a product do not sell as well as the benefits of those features. It is not difficult to deduce why this is so.

Why do people buy a product? They buy because they believe the product will benefit them.

Some may argue that there are buyers who buy based on the features of a product. This is so because the prospective buyers are already associating the features with the benefits.

For example, I bought a 24-inch LCD monitor for my computer. I bought it because the LCD monitor is 24-inch. In this case, I had already associated the 24-inch feature with the benefit of productivity because it enables me to view a few windows without having to pop one above the others. So, in this case, feature alone may work with me. However, most people do not buy 24-inch LCD monitors because they are not sold the benefits of a bigger LCD monitor.

Now, let’s suppose you specialize in 24-inch LCD monitors. If you emphasize that your LCD monitors are 24-inch, it works only with people like me – the prospective buyers who are already “converted”. It will not work with the majority of prospective customers. In this case, you need to sell the benefits of a 24-inch LCD monitor such as increased productivity, good for the eyes, can see pictures in greater definition, less strain to the neck, and so on. Now that I have high-lighted some benefits of a 24-inch computer monitor, ask yourself whether you are now more willing to consider buying a 24-inch LCD monitor.

Let me stress that even a convert needs reinforcement of his beliefs. Emphasizing the benefits will strengthen the resolve for a convinced customer to buy. I already had a 19-inch monitor, and so I need to justify buying a 24-inch LCD monitor to replace the 19-inch LCD monitor. The benefits provided the justification to my self and to my wife.

Conversely, we should not just emphasize the benefits but do not explain why the benefits exist. You need to explain how the product features make these benefits possible to provide credibility behind your benefit statements. Otherwise, the benefit claims sound like unjustified hype.

Jacob Gan

Steps in Writing a Good Copy

2008-07-19T22:33:00.000-07:00

A very critical ingredient for successful selling in the internet is copy-writing because a good copy sells well whereas a poor copy seldom sells. How then can we write good copies?

To be good in copy-writing takes a lot of training and exercises. Here, I shall present the 10 steps in the writing of a copy as proposed by the internet copy-writing guru Alex Mondossian. Remember, these are sequential steps, i.e. you perform the earlier steps before you perform the subsequent steps. These steps are:

Write FAQ – Work out Consumption Matrix – Work out Upsell Offers – List Benefits – Decide on Bonus – Write Guarantee – Get Testimonials – Perform Spying – Write Landing Page – Write Order Page.

I shall briefly touch on each of these steps.

Write FAQ – This is to cater to the questions visitors may have when they visit your site.

Work out Consumption Matrix – This is a step that will help you to plan your strategy.

Work out Upsell Offers – You need to work out the upsell offers or opportunities as upsell will bring in not only additional income, but very often much better income as well.

List Benefits - List the benefits your product or service provide

Decide on Bonus – You need to provide bonus that the prospective buyers want or conceive to have a good value.

Write Guarantee – You need to provide good guarantee that assures the prospective buyers of full and genuine protection.

Get Testimonials – Good testimonials from other authorities and clients.

Perform Spying – From out how well or how poor your competitors are pitching their sale.

Write Landing Page – You already have everything you need to write a good copy through the earlier steps. You string all of them together so that they will click on the order page.

Write Order Page – Now, write the page that the reader is already ready to do the purchase.

To find out the details of the 10 steps go to 10 Steps to Killer Web Copy.

Ethical Marketing

2008-07-09T03:12:00.000-07:00

When we attend an internet marketing training course, seminar or talk, or even reading about internet marketing, we are often told to apply the tactic of time urgency to influence our prospects to buy from us.

This advice comes from the fact that if the prospects do not buy immediately, the chances are they may not buy later. Therefore, this trick is to create the pressure on them to buy from you now, or they will miss the special offer.

Here are some examples of marketing pitches that use such limited time or limited quantity tricks. Note that in all the examples below, the products are all digital products.

“Click the Buy Now Button Now Below, Get it for $19.95 Before this Special Offer is Over”

“I am giving this bonus to the first 50 people who take action as a reward for fast response.”

“This special limited offer we are proud to present the introduction of our journals. We offer you: …”

“Only Today: 5 bonuses completely FREE to you!”

It is not difficult for one to realize the dishonesty in what the marketers claim. Perhaps, only the very inexperienced and the more gullible may fall prey to such trickery.

My belief is to stay clear of such unethical practice. Instead, focus on the benefits of your products and how they can help solve your prospects' problems. A good marketer is one who sells solutions to prospects whose problems your products solve and not selling products to people that do not really need them.

Hosting of Your Domain (Site)

2007-06-10T08:19:00.000-07:00

Now that you have registered your domain name, the next step is for it to be "hosted".

If you are familiar with computer system you can set up your own computer to host your domain. What you need to do is to get a computer (called server) and set it up so that it can store programs and data and allow other computers in the internet to access what are stored in your server. Doing it yourself in hosting your own site has many disadvantages:

1. You need to perform the necessary system operations like maintenance, secondary storage (backup), administration and update of system.
2. You need to keep your server running 24/7 if you want it to be available to your visitors 24/7.
3. Your server needs to be secure (prevent hacking, virus and other unauthorized activities by others) and reliable (you have to keep it running most of the time). 4. In addition to providing excellent cooling to prevent overheating you may even need to have another server running concurrently as a "mirror". In this way, in case one goes down, the other can take over.
5. You may have to pay extra to your internet service provider (ISP) more.

It is therefore very time consuming and costly to perform the hosting function. Most people and companies therefore outsource the hosting function to hosting service providers. Most domain name registrars provide hosting services too. The other way around is also true. The three domain registrars (Yahoo!, IX WebHosting, StartLogic) in the previous posting, provide hosting services too.

Jacob Gan

Domain Registration

2007-06-10T01:40:00.000-07:00

In this posting, I shall discuss how you can register for a domain name.

I shall briefly introduce the domain name system (DNS). Every computer in the internet has a unique numerical address (consist of a string of numbers and dots called IP address) so that two computers know the identity of the other. For humans, a string of numerical numbers may not make much sense. The DNS was therefore invented to correlate the numerical address to a word (which we call domain name). The domain name must therefore also be unique, otherwise given a domain name the unique computer cannot be identified.

In the human world, there is more than one "Jacob Gan". When a system tries to communicate with "Jacob Gan", more than 100 persons may be pointed to. It has no way of knowing which the correct "Jacob Gan" is, unless other qualifiers are added to identify the correct "Jacob Gan". This is one reason why the human world is so much more complicated and confusing, but in some ways more interesting as a result. DNS prevents this confusion from happening in the internet.

Since the domain names are unique, when you try to register for a domain name, it must not already been registered by another party. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet's system of unique identifiers. This function was originally performed under U.S. Government contract by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

The registrar that you try to register your domain name is therefore an agent of ICANN. The better known registrars include

1. Yahoo!

2. IX WebHosting

3. StartLogic

You have the option of registering your domain name for 1 year, or 2 years, or even 5 years. You can continue the registration. However, you have to pay the new registration fee before the expiry of the current registration if you do not want your domain name deregistered. The registration fee varies from registrar to registrar and most of them are in the region of $5 to $20 per year.

The next posting will be on hosting of your site, by yourself or by another.

Jacob Gan

Start of Online Business Blogging

2007-06-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

I have been delaying commencing my blogging here for fear that it would consume too much of my time and energy.

Now that I have overcome that fear, hope you will not only enjoy, but benefit from my writings as well. My postings will mainly be in the form of articles on various aspects of online business. Why bother to write on such a popular topic when there is already an abundance of such materials? There are selfish as well as altruist reasons.

The selfish reasons are many. Since I am into online business education I need to gain recognition as an authority in accordance with the adage "publish or perish". An educator needs to live by example, or walk-the-talk. As online business is a practical business, to gain credibility, I need to be in it and ensure that my online business succeeds. I also need to learn.

Blogging and other online publishing provide excellent platforms for folks who need or want to publish quickly. There are therefore the dangers of abuse, exaggeration and errors.

For the sake of both altruism and my selfishness, please therefore comment on any of my blogs whenever you feel you can contribute.

Jacob Gan

Some of My Web Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5