Developing a product portfolio for your eBook business is not simply a matter of selecting a bunch of unrelated products. You are not running a bookstore! Your portfolio must be focused and systematic. The main reason why you have a funnel is so that you can systematically move your prospects through your sales cycle from lower commitment products to higher commitment products. This is how you build a strong business and make money on the internet.

As a result of this, you need to make sure that everything you do to market and promote your business has this thought process in mind. You want to have a number of lower priced products at the beginning of your funnel. You might sell a few eBooks here or there on different topics related to your niche. These will lead to middle priced training programs in the hundreds of dollar ranges. Eventually you will have a few higher priced products in the thousands of dollars as a price point.

When creating these products, you can actually create one product and make it three separate products because they are in different formats. You can have a physical book as a product, an eBook as a product and an audio CD as a completely separate product. I do this and all three sell very well for me.

An important part of your eBook business funnel is your email newsletter. This is the key to unlocking success in a real online business. The reason why is because your newsletter is your primary method of building rapport and increasing the trust level between you and your customers. Without it, it is difficult, if not impossible to move people through your funnel.

The other thing my marketing funnel does is it eventually allows me a platform of communication for my ultimate mission. My ultimate mission is to proclaim the name of Jesus Christ to everyone that I meet. By teaching families how to create an income from real home business opportunities, this allows them a vehicle for God to be a blessing in their lives. If it also allows me to make money in the process, that is just great as well!

As a real online business owner traffic is king. One of the best ways to get traffic to your web site and increase your sales is to get high search engine listings on Google, Yahoo or MSN. One concern many people who are starting a home-based business online have is about competing with larger web sites. They do not see how they can outrank the major web sites.

Here is what you may not realize. You can beat many websites in search engine rankings because there are a number of keywords and phrases these websites are not even trying to get ranked for. We offer a book for sale called “Thomas Jefferson Education.” There is only one other website on the first page for this keyword that sells this book as well. As a result, at the time of this writing, we are listed on the first page of Google for this keyword and phrase.

Do you realize the significance of this? It means most of the people searching for the book buy from us. Sometimes we have even received a higher ranking than the publisher of the book. Amazon ranks as well, but they only have used copies of the book, while we sell new copies.

One of the most common questions that I receive is “How do I know what Google looks for to determine my ranking?” The fact of the matter is Google keeps this information secret so that people cannot manipulate the search engines.

Because of this, it is very healthy to be skeptical to those who claim that they can teach you “all the secrets to getting high listings in the search engines.” The reason why is because they do not know all of the secrets unless they work on the algorithm team at Google.

Does that mean they do not know what they are talking about? No, you can always experiment and discover different things. However, it is always going to be speculation because Google guards their secret algorithm very closely.

So what is the key to getting high listings in the search engines? The key is to increase the amount of backward links you have to your website. A backward link is when another website links to your website. Google uses that to determine if your site is important.

The way Google uses back links is it looks at the incoming links to your website and the keywords used. If you have a link that says “From Caterpillar to Butterfly” and your web site has content about butterflies, Google will be able to determine that your website should be ranked for the keyword “butterfly.”

Here is the question “how do you get backward links to your website?”

1. Linkback exchanges: With a linkback exchange you offer to link to someone else’s website if they agree to link to your website.

2. Press release: With a press release, you write about newsworthy announcements regarding your business. You submit it to a press release website and it gets published all over the internet. When it gets published, as long as you have a link to your website, it will create a back link each time your press release is used by a different website. One press release submission service is http://www.free-press-release.com/.

3. Writing articles: Another excellent way to get back links is to write articles about the topic your website covers. When you write the article, you should submit it to what are called article directories. These are websites where ezine publishers and website owners looking for content go to. You get a back link from the article directory, which is usually a highly valued website in the eyes of Google. You also get a back link from any websites that use your article. One of the largest directories is located at http://ezinearticles.com/.  

I believe the easiest and fastest ways to get backward links is to go with the article option. A single article can create hundreds, even thousands of back links for your web site rather quickly. This will result in search engine traffic for your real online business as well as traffic from visitors that come across those articles as well.

______________________

Copyright Stephen Beck, 2009

You have permission to reprint this article, as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck shows families how to start an internet marketing business. Go grab his three free videos at http://www.8weekstoprofits.com so you can start today. 

I credit all my success in life to God. But if I had to choose one TOOL that has been responsible for my success online, it would be WEBINARS. Plain and simple.And I want to show you how to start using Webinars in your own business …both online and offline! 

You are invited to an absolutely free, live webinar I’m holding THIS Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 6:00pm (Pacific Time), especially for you, my customers and subscribers.

http://budurl.com/6vd9

On this groundbreaking free event, using the latest webinar technology, I will reveal the webinar models that have skyrocketed my online business exponentially …webinar models that you can take and use IMMEDIATELY after the webinar!

BUT, most importantly…I’ll reveal how you can use Webinars to EASILY and QUICKLY build a list, create a product, land a big joint venture partner and pre-qualify those you should concentrate your time and marketing dollars on!

Plus not only will you be able to HEAR us, but you’ll also SEE and WATCH it happening in real time on your computer screen, complete with real examples and case studies! (And it doesn’t matter what connection speed you have or even if you have a PC or Mac.)

Properly applied, the strategies revealed during this event will allow you to experience more freedom and income than you have ever dreamed possible! Webinars are the MOST EFFECTIVE way to sell products online …bar none!

We only have 400 spots for this event. So it’s a sure bet this webinar will FILL completely.

Claim your spot here while you can:

http://budurl.com/6vd9

P.S.S. - I have something VERY special cooked up for those who
attend the webinar LIVE. It will be worth your while to be on
this webinar, I guarantee it!

http://budurl.com/6vd9

The funnel concept is a great way to visualize your business when you sell your knowledge over the internet. Understanding it shows you the strategy to make money on the internet.

Have you ever seen a funnel before? If so, you know that it has a large opening at the top and a small opening at the bottom. You can fit a lot of items into the top of the funnel. However, only a small amount of items can fit into the bottom of the funnel. This is because the bottom is tighter and has a limited amount of space available.

When you are running a real online business your product portfolio should look the exact same way. At the top of your portfolio should be free offers that people can obtain with no strings attached. A perfect example is a free article you write on a blog. As you continue on through your portfolio, you should require more but offer better value. You might offer a free report in exchange for an email address. You then offer a $10 report, a $50 book, a $100 training program and so on.

By having a number of products at different price points, you give your customers high quality information that they can use. What this does is build trust in you and makes them more willing to spend even more money with you. As they progress through your marketing funnel, it becomes more difficult because the price point creates more friction and hesitance. A higher price point requires a deeper level of commitment.

As a result, it is important that you take the time to build confidence in you in the mind of your customers. You need to demonstrate to them through your marketing process when you sell your knowledge that you care about them and not just their money. The key to these online business opportunities is to build trust in the mind of your customers. This will help them to understand your message and they eventually become promoters of your message, which is how you find affiliates.

This is exactly how the funnel works in your internet marketing business. As you begin your real online business, your main focus is to find something to sell. If you can do that, you know you can make money. That being said, the business owners who recognize this process will make more money and will have more customers doing higher value transactions with them because of this. As the needs of their customer, they are able to meet those needs.

By focusing your efforts on providing value, you will build up the level of trust that your customers are willing to invest in you. Your product portfolio funnel should illustrate this by including escalating values of products with escalating price points. Now you should not expect to have this coming out of the gate. However, you do want to have this as something that you can shoot for and build towards, because it is absolutely essential if you want to build a big business when you sell your knowledge.

As a promoter of home based business opportunities, it can be difficult reaching your goals. One of the biggest reasons why many people struggle is because of lack of effective time management. Here are some great tips to assist you.

1. Write down everything you need to do
In order to manage your time you must identify what you need to do each day. You do not need to jot down the stuff you can delegate, just the stuff you have to do personally. Make sure you have access to it so you can constantly refer to it. Do not worry if you are not able to get everything done, you can always add it to tomorrows list.

By making a list and tracking your progress, you will get more done. List the most important to-do items first and prioritize accordingly. Just the act of doing this will make you more productive and if the unexpected occurs, you would have at least taken care of a lot of the high priority tasks.

2. Checking email can waste a lot of your time.
 One of the biggest mistakes you can make when you promote home-based business opportunities is checking email constantly. Constant email checking often results in hours of wasted time a day. You should have a designated time throughout the day that you check email, ideally after you complete some of your more important activities during the day.

One common misconception is that email is not distracting if you do not reply, only check. This is not true because even if you only read, it still takes some of your mindshare away from other activities that are more productive for building your business.

3. Do not Waste Time Surfing the Internet.
Monitoring your web surfing time can be a challenge. Many times you do not even realize how many hours you spend on non-productive web surfing activity. If the home-based business opportunities that you promote are your primary income, you may have to spend a significant amount of time on the computer. However, that does not mean you have to spend that time surfing the net. Instead, it should be spent working on activities that promote and develop your business.

4. The phone can waste a lot of time during the day. 
Depending on what type of home based business opportunities you are promoting, you may have to spend a lot of time on the phone. However, there is a difference between productive calls and unproductive calls. You should screen your incoming calls either through a personal assistant or a voice mail so you are not wasting your time. When you are working on your most important activities, avoid answering the phone during those times. Instead use that time to generate business by developing content and driving traffic to your web site.

Take some time to evaluate how you spend your day. Look at the time you spend on email, on the phone and surfing the internet. Apply some of these suggestions so you can improve your time management ability. 

______________________

Copyright Stephen Beck, 2009
You have permission to reprint this article, as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck shows families how to sell their knowledge to increase their customer base. Read more of his free articles at http://www.squidoo.com/ebooks-3. 

Kerry & I are sponsoring a transformation contest especially for our Gold Inner Circle members. I announced it in March and we have our registration forms ready. It doesn’t cost anything extra to enter our contest…just hard work & discipline to grow your business as much as you can in 90 days.

What do you win?

1st place wins a LAPTOP!
We’re also throwing in a 3 day/2night vacation
…and 4 months free Inner Circle Gold Access.

2nd place wins 3 day/2night vacation
2 months free Gold Inner Circle Access

3rd place wins 3day/2night vacation
1 month free Gold Inner Circle Access

How do you win?
1. Complete the Entrance Form here: http://tinyurl.com/goldcontest
2. Grow your list, Sell your info product, Make lots of money! We want to see how you transform your business
3. Submit your results on the Gold forum. This include before & after results as listed below and your 300 word essay as described below.

Contest Rules

- You must use 8 Weeks to Profits to achieve your results. You must be a Gold Inner Circle Member to compete in the contest.

- You must provide “Before and After” results via email or by posting them in the Forum of the Gold Inner Circle Membership site. Before & After results may include, but are not limited to size of email list, size of twitter list, number of sales, gross profit, ranking in search engines.

- All result entries must be received before Midnight, EST, June 30, 2009.

- It is highly recommended – for your success – to post your result on the Forum as you go.

- NOTE: Don’t forget, you get at least 2 months free access to the Gold Inner Circle Website and Forums when you order 8 Weeks to Profits.

- Recording your results will dramatically increase your chances of making money online and reaching your goals because of the power of social support found on the forums.

- In addition to providing Before & After results, each contestant must write a 300 word essay on their before and after success story. This can be posted on the forum or sent by email.

- The Transformation Contest will be judged by a panel of experts, including but not restricted to: Stephen Beck, Terry Wygal, Paul Evans.

- By entering this Contest, each winner of a contest prize consents to the use of his/her name, and/or photograph in any publicity carried out by the Contest Sponsor and its advertising and promotional agencies without further notice or compensation.

- All entries become the property of the Contest Sponsor and will not be returned.

The mini-course is an effective tool in the hands of an internet marketing business owner. Of course, it is only effective if you know all the different steps involved with actually setting one up.

The first step is to send your visitor the first email. This is part 1 of your mini-course and it welcomes them and provides the introductory lesson. This email is received immediately upon subscribing. Part 2 of the mini-course should be sent 2-3 days later on a different topic of the course. In the 3rd email, you may want to promote an affiliate program or product you want to sell. The 4th email should include part 3 of the mini-course. The key is the provide these emails in that 2-3 day period. 2-3 days is a good level of frequency.

Sometimes you may use a mini-course as part of your product launch strategy along with a teleseminar. If so, you can launch both the mini-course as well as the teleseminar concurrently. The main reason why you launch a mini-course is so you can have a perceived good reason for sending emails that frequently.

Once your visitor has received all of the parts to your mini-course, you should send emails featuring tips and strategies once every 7 days. This is like a newsletter for your internet marketing business. Both the mini-course and the newsletter should be loaded up into your autoresponder as follow up emails.

On top of the mini-course and newsletter, you can also send a message to your entire list at the same time. This is called a broadcast email. You would use broadcasts to promote upcoming events like teleseminars or webinars. You would also use a broadcast for any time sensitive information. For example, if you have an offer that expires at a certain time, you can send a reminder to your list to let them know this. When you send a broadcast email, your entire list receives it at the same time.

Hopefully, you now understand how to use a mini-course to drive repeat visitors back to your website. Implementing these strategies will result in more income from your internet marketing business. 

______________________

Copyright Stephen Beck, 2009

You have permission to reprint this article, as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck shows families how to create mini-courses to increase their customer base. Go grab his three free videos at http://www.8weekstoprofits.com so you can start today. 

Do you know how to get people back to your web site?

There are a lot of things you can do but one of the best things is to offer website visitors a mini-course on the first page of your web site. You do not want to distract your website visitors with an onslaught of options. Offer them a mini-course that hits a hot item for your prospects and they are very likely to want that course and come back to find out everything else that you have to offer.

What is great about a mini-course is the fact that the prospect has to provide valid information. If the prospect provides a fake email address, there is no way you can deliver the mini-course to the prospect. You can also request for the prospect to ask their biggest question so that you can build a list of topics of interest in your market niche. By using the mini-course to address a specific topic in your niche, this provides you a powerful way to build your list and continue to drive traffic back to your website.

A mini-course gives you the authority and the ability to send emails to your web site visitors more frequently than you would using other methods of list building. With most other methods you would typically only email your list once a week or once a month. With a mini-course you can do it every few days.

As an example, if you wrote a mini-course about direct mail you would split it up into several parts. In the 1st part you can cover the initial package that you send to your prospects. The 2nd part might cover how to split test your mail packages, etc.

With a mini-course you can recycle content so that you avoid wasting time coming up with new content. If you wrote articles for another purpose, you can use them again as part of your mini-course.

A mini-course is not designed to be a thesis. It should be broken down into different, smaller pieces. Otherwise if you try to provide too much information in one shot, the prospects simply will not want to read the rest of the course and they will unsubscribe from you.

The key with a mini-course is to provide one key takeaway for those who subscribe to it so that they will want more information from you. If you try to give them everything, they will not need to come back. That is the key for when you sell information products, keep them coming back for more!

______________________

Copyright Stephen Beck, 2009
You have permission to reprint this article, as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck teaches entrepreneurs how to increase their internet business opportunities. Read more of Steve’s free articles at http://www.squidoo.com/sellinformationwithebooks so you can learn how to sell information products today. 

 by Stephen Beck

I believe its a waste of time thinking all day about what you want to do. I would much rather go ahead and do it, mess it up a little bit and figure it out along the way. This would be perfect if I was “thick skinned” when it comes to criticism. However, I will admit it does get under my skin at times.

I am also not the type of person who likes to get in other peoples business. If they want to know what I think about something, I will let them know. If they need my advice on something, I will tell them but I do not give it unsolicited.

In the home internet business world you will encounter a lot of people who are more than willing to share their opinion with you. They will tell you everything you are doing wrong in your internet marketing business. Many times it will seem like they criticize your every move.

In fact, you will even discover as a home internet business owner that people will point out every mistake you make. God forbid if you should have a typo in one of your products from your eBook business. Then you have the conspiracy theory experts, the people that are constantly on the lookout for your “hidden agenda” behind every business move that you make.

It is amazing where people find the time to type up a 2-3-page email telling you why you are doing certain things in your business. They must be real online business prophets. It is too bad I do not possess their insight!

It all reminds me of a song that I enjoyed when I was a kid by Ricky Nelson. Ricky was the son of Ozzie and Harriet. For most of his career he wrote a lot of malt shop 50’s type songs, but in the 70’s he made a shift in his music. One time in October of 71, he performed at a Rock n Roll concert that was held at Madison Square Garden. He had a completely different hairstyle, different clothes and his music was different as well.

Unfortunately for Ricky, the crowd didnt appreciate these changes and halfway through the show he was literally booed off the stage. After the show, Ricky wrote down how he felt using the following lyrics:

“I went to a Garden Party, to reminisce with my old friends, a chance to share some memories, and play our songs again.

When I got to the Garden Party, they all knew my name, but no one heard the music- I didn’t look the same.

But it’s all right now. I learned my lesson well. You see you can’t please everyone so you gotta please yourself.”

Ricky later entitled these lyrics “Garden Party” and it became one of his best selling songs in his career. Even though he went against what the crowd felt he should be doing, he ended up being better for it in the end. Ricky correctly pointed out “you can’t please everyone, so you gotta please yourself.” I also believe you should add to this “you gotta please the Lord.”

Always remember in the words of Jean Sibelius “there has never been a statue built for critics.” If your critics had a real home internet business they would not have time to criticize you anyway! Do not let them get you down.

_________________________

Copyright Stephen Beck, 2009
You have permission to reprint this article, as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck teaches entrepreneurs how to start a home internet business. Go grab his three absolutely free videos at http://www.8weekstoprofits.com so you can start now.