"Testing Sentences That Sell" is the title of a marketing classic written by Elmer Wheeler, who was a salesman back in the 1940's.

In Testing Sentences That Sell Wheeler put forward five keys to increasing sales, which he called "Wheelerpoints".

Here they are:

Wheelerpoint #1. "Don't sell the steak - sell the sizzle."

Wheelerpoint #2. "Don't write - telegraph!" - Make every word count.

Wheelerpoint #3. "Say it with flowers." - It's not enough to say that something is so. You have to prove it.

Wheelerpoint #4. "Don't ask if - ask which." Don't give your prospects a choice of something or nothing, but something and something else!

Wheelerpoint #5. "Watch your bark!" - It's not what you say it's the way that you say it!

Talking about one of Elmer Wheeler's techniques, copy writing expert Craig Garber writes,

"Here's a proven, and truly easy way to start increasing your sales, immediately.

"All you need to do is add these 2 words to your selling system, and you're good to go.

"In fact, this trick's so good, I wish I could take credit for coming up with it, but the truth is, it comes from a little-known marketing legend..." Click here for the rest of the article.

David Hurley
Work From Home Opportunities

Labels: copy writing, Craig Garber, Elmer Wheeler, sales techniques

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I just added an excellent article by Titus Hoskins to my articles directory. Titus Hoskins discusses how to get more backlinks using a technique that I doubt many online marketers are exploiting, namely Google Alerts.

Also, check out the free resource, CommentKahuna
that Titus mentions about half way through...

Here's a taster...

How To Build Backlinks via Google Alerts
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008

Building backlinks is an essential, yet tedious job for most
webmasters. Here are a few tools and tips to make that job just
a little bit easier...

I am a member of many online forums. Most of these forums have
to do with online marketing and site promotion. Recently, I
came across a post on Ken Evoy's SBI forum that truly caught my
attention.

It basically described how to use Google Alerts to build your
backlinks. Now for those not familiar with Google Alerts a little
explanation is probably needed.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a free program run by Google that allows you to
keep track of any topic on the web. You select your "keywords"
or "urls" and Google will alert you via email whenever links/
content containing your selected topics appear anywhere on the
web.

It is an excellent way to keep informed about your own domain or
name. It is also perfect for keeping up-to-date on the latest
information in your market niche or niches. It's also a great
way to find out what other people are saying about you or your
site.

For example: if you have a site on "antique cars" then you would
create a Google Alert for those keywords. Google will alert you
by email whenever a new link/content related to those keywords
appears on the web.

This is a great way to stay informed in your niche, but it is
also a valuable source of potential linking partners. Many of
those links are blogs that will allow comments with a link back
to your site.

... read more...

Labels: free backlinks, get more backlinks, google alerts

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The difference between them what succeed like, and them what don't's simple innit? It's just that them what do don't do what them what don't do do, which is what I mean to say, like, when I says that them what says they can't, can't not nohow, so they don't, but on t'other hand, like, there's them what says they can so they's blooming well goin' to make sure they do and I be beggared if they don't turn around and do just that just 'cos like I says they says they thinks they can.

Know what I mean?

David Hurley
http://grasp-the-nettle.com

Labels: mentoring lesson, positive thinking, success mentoring tip

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There was this geezer called Dave who started an internet marketing business. He spent hours working on his site but didn't actually do much marketing.

Guess what!

Bingo!

He didn't sell anything!!

Then, just when he was about to throw in the towel, he joined an online business mentoring program.

Dave followed the mentoring lesson plans to the letter and began to see an improvement in his traffic and his site ranking.

To his amazement he even began to sell some stuff.

I mean, he'd come to the conclusion that nobody ever bought anything on the Internet!!

Then one of Dave's mentors emailed him with a suggestion, but Dave turned round and said (via email of course):

"I don't think I can do it. It's a bit too difficult. I've never done it before."

Dave's mentor's response changed everything for Dave. He wrote:

"Dave, whether you think you can or can't you're probably right."

The mentor's words struck a chord with Dave. He now avoids negative thinking and seeks positive solutions reinforced by positive dynamic thoughts. He finds the results encouraging and feels a new positive energy manifesting itself in his life, "for as he thinketh in his heart, so is he."

David Hurley
http://grasp-the-nettle.com

Labels: as a man thinketh, internet marketing business, mentoring lesson plans

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A few days ago I wrote about how Success University had introduced me to top motivational speaker and three-times Olympian Ruben Gonzalez.

Ruben is both a success mentoring expert and a great example of how success-minded people live their lives.

Earlier this month Ruben went to Spain to run with the bulls in the Pamplona bull running festival.

On his success secrets blog he explains how he prepared for the event by reading three books and contacting one of the authors to discuss how to run with the bulls and at the same time reduce the risk of getting injured.

So what does Ruben's holiday story have to so with "success"?

Everything!

As Ruben explains:

"Whenever you are about to try anything new, something that looks too hard and too risky to be worthwhile, do what high achievers everywhere do. Don't try to figure it out on your own. You don't know what you don't know and what you don't know can hurt you.

"Rather, find the experts. Learn from the best. Then give yourself a couple of years to learn the basic skills by taking consistent and persistent action. By doing that, in time you will become the expert others turn to for advice. By pursuing excellence in everything you do you will make your life a masterpiece."

David Hurley
http://grasp-the-nettle.com

Labels: Pamplona, Ruben Gonzalez, success mentoring, Success University

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Friend of Caesar and historian of Rome, Gaius Sallustius Crispus, aka Sallust, is said to have first coined the saying,

"Faber est suae quisque fortunae",

which is to say, being interpreted,

"Every man is the maker of his own fortune".

In a way that is as true for those who "make" or "do" nothing as for those who take action.

It has been observed that there are those people that make things happen, those people that hope things happen and lastly those people who wondered what happened.

Yet, each group of people whether they take action or remain passive, will see results according to its kind.

However, people who make things happen are of course more likely to create the life they desire by focusing on what they want and taking the steps required to achieve their objectives.

In this sense it is they who are truly the makers of their own fortune, while the others might be said to have undone themselves, or done themselves out of good fortune by failing to act with decision.

Making things happen is all about taking action and doing so with vim and vigor.

As Machiavelli observed, it is often better to take a risk and act decisively than proceed cautiously, for, "Fortune is a woman" who is apt to change and one must move swiftly to find favour with her.

Too often we spend too much time in careful preparation and tedious planning, trying to tweak everything until it is just right. But this can cause untold delays and even bring about the paralysis of overmuch analysis.

It is therefore usually much better to plunge into a project even though it is not completely ready to be launched.

You have to be brave enough to just "do it now" - and make adjustments as you go!

As long as you have a clear goal in mind, the mere fact of starting the project will provide the forward momentum that you need to motivate you to focus on the important and urgent action points and not worry about all the finer points that we sometimes waste time on.

By taking action you will also discover a key success secret...

... namely...

On the other hand, merely "thinking about it" would not have made these people and resources available to you.

Do you see?

And what's more, by taking action you will generate some valuable feedback, as for example, the market response (or lack thereof) if you are launching a business project, which you can take on board and use to make adjustments and fine tune your progress.

So it makes sense to save the fine-tuning till after you have launched your project.

The simplicity of this technique should not be discounted as it is a sound and powerful method of accelerating your progress.

How often have you hesitated to commence a project just because it seemed a little too big or complex? And then, once you finally took the first step and got started, how much easier did it seem now that you'd got moving?

I would hazard a guess that as soon as you took action you would have felt better about your chances of achieving your goals.

That is no surprise.

Success breeds success. As you discover how to succeed with one part of your project, the feedback loop goes into action and you discover, step by bigger step how to succeed with the whole thing, for "the art of discovery grows with discovery" and with it the art of success grows as you discover how to succeed.

Or, as Machiavelli would have put it,

"Fortune is a woman who... lets herself be overcome by the bold."

Quite so, Niccolo.

David Hurley
http://grasp-the-nettle.com/Success-Secrets.html

Labels: Fortune, fortune is a woman, Machiavelli, Sallust, success mentoring

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I was chuffed when I saw that "Level Two" on the Pips Power Group success mentoring forum for Plug In Profit Site members was about niche marketing because I'm already set up with a nice little earner on that front, supplying Japanese games worldwide direct from Japan!

Labels: niche marketing, niche site, Pips Power Group, Plug In Profit Site, selling on eBay, success mentoring, unique selling proposition

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There are a lot of people out there who are worried about the current economic situation, high oil prices and the looming recession.

Are you one of them?

Many people in that situation are looking for a viable alternative such as working from home on the Internet. They are not concerned about whether they do a paid online job or build an Internet marketing start-up business.

They just want to make some money on the Internet without having to paying anything to get started.

So, let's look at a few work at home ideas that anybody can do. The great thing about working at home on the Internet is that it just doesn't matter...

Labels: internet marketing start-up, paid online job, work at home, work at home ideas, working at home on the internet, working from home

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Here are six things you can do to promote your site free of charge , or on a small budget.

1. Article marketing: This is one of the best methods for promoting your site. You can write your own articles and submit them manually. Personally, I recommend that you use SubmitYourArticle. They offer a service that allows you to automatically rewrite and post different versions of your articles to each article directory on their list.

2. Forum participation: Sign up to as many forums as possible that are related to your niche and post regularly in them. Don't forget to add a signature link to your website! Be sure to post valuable content.

3. Blogging: Write, ping and bookmark 1 x blog article per day.

4. Comment on blogs: Find blogs that allow comments that link back to your site and comment on the posts. Be sure to post valuable content.

5. Website directories: Register your website on as many directories as possible.

6. Social Bookmarking: Organize a cooperative in which each of you bookmarks each other's blogs, articles and fresh website content.

David Hurley
http://grasp-the-nettle.com

Labels: article marketing, free website promotion

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If you have been building an Internet marketing start-up for any length of time you will be acutely aware of the importance that is placed on building your list of opt-in subscribers.

The oft-repeated mantra that "the money is in the list" is now something of a cliche, but no less true for that.

A cliche is a truth that is mentioned so often that it loses its bite. Most seasoned Internet marketers are aware that the same seems to be true of their mailing campaigns.

New subscribers start off curious, or even eager to receive your mail, but gradually the repeated mailings grow stale, sere and tedious. Eventually, to cite another cliche, the last straw breaks the camel's back and the subscriber clicks the "unsubscribe" link and is gone!

But how often is "every time" and is there a limit as to how often that should be? Of course, it needn't be like that. There are several newsletters that I am pleased to see land in my inbox EVERY TIME! They offer excellent, stimulating, insightful content almost every time... That is the subject of today's guest article, by Bob Bly. Bob Bly is an independent copywriter and consultant specializing in business-to-business and direct marketing. He has been a consultant by such companies as Sony, Chemical Bank, J. Walter Thompson, Westinghouse, and Prentice-Hall. He is also the author of more than 50 books including The Complete Idiot's Guide to Direct Marketing, and Keeping Clients Satisfied. So, without further ado, over to Bob Bly...

"If a fellow wants to be a nobody in the business world, let him neglect sending the mail man to somebody on his behalf."

Charles F. Kettering

By Bob Bly

The other day, one of my online subscribers, CR, complained about a famous Internet marketer. "I unsubscribed from his list," she told me haughtily. "As soon as I joined, I got e-mails from him once or twice every day - and there's no one I (or anybody else) need to hear from that much."

This begs the question: How frequently can you e-mail your online subscribers? Or, said another way: How much e-mail is too much? People have lots of opinions about this issue, which they support with arguments that are both passionate and logical. The problem is: Their opinions are wholly subjective. The fact is: There's an easy way to objectively and accurately determine the optimal e-mail frequency for your online subscribers. How does it work? Well, every time you send another e-mail blast to your list, a small portion of your subscribers will opt out. Why?

They decide that your content is no longer of value to them... or you are doing too much selling... or they don't like your style... or you are e-mailing them too often.

The "opt-out rate" - the percentage of online subscribers who unsubscribe from your list per e-mail blast - is a Web metric that you can measure. A 0.1 percent opt-out rate means that if you have 10,000 online subscribers, 10 unsubscribed after getting your most recent e-mail.

When your opt-out rate is around 0.1 percent or less, you can rest assured that you are not sending too many e-mails to your list too often. If you were, the opt-out rate would be higher.

But when your opt-out rate gets above 0.2 to 0.4 percent, you are losing subscribers at too rapid a rate. For instance, if you have 10,000 subscribers and you're losing 100 subscribers every time you send an e-mail to your list, you have an opt-out rate of 1.0 percent. That's much too high.

You should measure and keep track of your opt-out rates with every e-mail you send.

Adjust your e-mail frequency, ratio of sales pitches to content, message length, and topics until your opt-out rate hovers around 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent or less.

Then watch what happens if you increase the frequency of your e-mails - if, for instance, you go from one e-mail per week to two.

If you get a sharp upward spike in the opt-out rate - double or more - your subscribers are telling you they don't want to hear from you that often. And you should probably drop the extra e-mail.

On the other hand, if you add an extra e-mail per week and the opt-out rate does not rise significantly, you are safe in continuing at the higher frequency.

But should you?

Yes.

We have lots of preconceived notions about what our market wants - and doesn’t want. And one of those preconceived notions is that people don’t want too much e-mail. But when the opt-out rate is low, your subscribers are telling you they DO want to hear from you often via e-mail.

That's important, because the more times you can reach out to your list with a valuable offer, the more money you make online.

My colleague Amy Africa, a top consultant in business-to-business (B2B) e-marketing, says that one of the most common online marketing mistakes is not e-mailing your list frequently enough.

And if you are making that mistake... you are leaving money on the table.

[Ed. Note: You can make sure that you're giving your customers exactly what they need AND that you're making the most money you can. The best way to do it? Master one vital skill. Learn how from two experts.

And be sure to sign up for author and copywriting master Bob Bly's Direct Response Letter. Do so today and get over $100 in free bonuses.]

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

===
David Hurley
http://grasp-the-nettle.com

Labels: e-mail marketing, email subscriber list, mail frequency, mailing online subscribers, opt-in list, opt-in list marketing

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