Here’s one of the most unusual tactics we’ve come across to get sales - but one that, according to big-time booksellers Prentice Hall, is a way you could get 250% to 400% more orders!

A friend of ours met with some people from Prentice Hall at an American Bookseller Association Convention in Washington, D.C. One of Prentice Hall’s vice presidents told him that he would get between 250% and 400% more orders for his books if he was willing to sell them for no money down.

In other words, he would not require money with the order . . . the customers could order it, get it, and then send the money later!

Now, most of us marketers don’t do this. There’s several reasons for this. The good news is, you’ll double, triple, or even quadruple the responses and orders you get. But the bad news is, you’ll have to come up with an intricate billing system to keep everything straight, and there’s a lot of paperwork you’ll have to deal with.

The vice-president from Prentice Hall also told our friend that between 25% and 35% of the people who ordered never paid - NEVER. That means that one out of every three or four people didn’t ever pay for the books that were ordered.

Now granted, that’s a LOT of people when you take into consideration the number of people that start ordering when you start this offer - but compared to when you started out, it can still be a lot more money.

Why are some people afraid to set up their own affiliate programs?

We want to first point out that affiliate programs, the reason affiliate programs are so popular is because one of the best forms, especially if you are on a budget, of advertising that you can buy is per inquiry advertising.

Which means per purchase advertising where you pay based only on how many people are actually brought to your site, or better yet, how many sales you make. You pay per sale. There is no risk. There is no minimum. You make a sale before you pay for the advertising. So it is the best possible advertising.

The other thing we like, in talking about competition, is that this is the way to harness your competition and have them actually bringing those people to you - and being happy to do so because they make money when they do. This is why they are so popular on the Internet today.

We think some people are afraid of them because they envision it as having to feed the enemy - having to work with the competition. But they are not competition in this regards. And we have already talked about why there is no worry of that. You might want to avoid sites selling the exact same product. But sites that are selling similar products in your field are the ones you want to target. And if you can send them your business, be happy to if you are going to make money every time someone buys over there. Now they’re not competition, they are all partners.

They help you make money. You help them make money. It is a win, win deal.

Many companies make the mistake of believing that it is the front-end sales - sales gained from first time buyers - that are the most important. They spend their time always inventing new offers that they hope will make them rich - but they never really seem to bring in an increasing amount of profit.

They are operating their business drastically wrong. Real profits that will grow with your business and help you expand are, in fact, gained through back-end sales. Back-end sales are the sales that are made when you go back to customers that have bought from you before and make them offers for products or services that are closely related to the products or services they accepted from you in the past.

One of the best analogies for this is rolling a snowball down a snow covered mountain. At first it will be small. But, as it keeps rolling down, new snow is compacted into the snowball on top of the snow that is already there. As the snowball keeps rolling further and further down, it keeps picking up new snow, and as it keeps picking up new snow, it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger . . .

Now, look at profits and customers in this light. At first you will put out an initial offer - the front-end offer - that will attract prospects and get them to buy from you. Then you go back to those customers and offer them products and services that are closely related to the one that they have already accepted - this is a back-end offer.

As long as the item you provided the customer met with their satisfaction and they are pleased with you, your company, and your products or services, the chances are high that they will accept another offer from you, thereby giving you a sort of “profit foundation” for you to build up from.

While you are doing this, though, you still keep your front-end offers out there, attracting new customers so that you can make them repeat customers and increase the size of your snowball. You have the foundation profits, and you keep adding more and more to it with your front-end offers.

If you want your business to grow, prosper, and survive, you are obligated to sell as much as possible to each person most likely to buy from you. But, you also have to remember that you have to sell them what they want. How do you know what they want? It’s simple. Go with what you have learned through your earlier sales with them. What did they buy last time? What sorts of items do they regularly buy?

If they have bought from you before, then that means they are interested in the specific benefits that your product or service gave them. Therefore, to keep those customers buying more from you, offer them back-end products and services that are closely related to the ones they bought in the first place.

This is how to get your customers to keep sending you money for years and years! As long as you are able to offer them the types of products or services they want that supply them with the specific benefits they want, and as long as they are happy with everything they buy from you, they will be much more open and willing to keep buying from you over and over again!

Knowing what people want has the POWER to make you rich. Develop this strong knowledge. Create a list of 100 of the main things the people in your market want. Then, weave this information into all of your sales material.

Never forget: People do not want your product or service. It’s what it can do for them that makes it valuable. People buy the end results of whatever they think your product or service will do for them. They buy the perceived benefits. It’s up to you to tell them what these things are. Remember, people will always want to look better, feel better, be important, be loved, and be respected. These things will never change. People will always buy products and services that they feel will give them more power, make them more attractive to the opposite sex, etc. Find out what these “hot-buttons” are for the products and service you sell. This knowledge could make you rich.

There’s another variation of this concept, too. Let’s say you publish an online e-zine magazine or an online newsletter. You can get all the topics, all the different articles, and the news that is available on anything today on the Internet. Whether it is business, home business, health care, hunting and fishing - whatever it is. You can usually put together a monthly newsletter.

Now here’s the technique - offer your online newsletter to many great sites and tell them it is free. You will send it to them free, and to their customers, but you will still pay them a dollar for every person who comes for a free newsletter. Now it is easy to get people to respond to free!

Even though the connection of a dollar is not that exciting, it is a very powerful way, we think, to get them to promote your newsletter. They know a lot of people will sign up for it if they offer it free. Then, you pay them a dollar per sign up. You want their name and address, and their email address.

Is it worth it giving away a newsletter for a dollar that you are giving away free? You are going to lose money on the front end. Is it worth it? You bet it is!

We do a lot of two step marketing by mail order, and we are paying between $3 and $4 per lead for every lead we get when we advertise in card decks, or magazines, or whatever. So why shouldn’t we give a dollar, or maybe even $1.50, or $2 to get some great leads?

You have to stay in constant touch with these people. You have to compel them to want to come and make a bid. Tell them that it will go fast. Very specifically let them know that you have 347 other customers who are getting this special e-mail announcement. Or 347 other people are getting this postcard ... and what you have to offer will go fast ...

“Only one person will win, but 342 people will get this message (you have to give a specific number - it makes your claim more believable), and only one will win. You owe it to yourself to go look at this new item and bid on it.”

You have to write compelling advertising copy that makes people want to go and place a bid on it. We also believe that you have to do things to build a relationship with the people who are on this mailing list.

This is one of the biggest mistakes that is being made right now with people on the Internet auction. They are afraid to reveal themselves. They are afraid to show a picture of themselves, or talk a little bit about who they are. Maybe they don’t realize the value of that, but this is extremely important. Let people know a little bit about yourself. Don’t be afraid to do that.

Here’s another idea. Advertise your best products on a big auction site such as E-Bay. Then, when you stay in touch with your customers about these other products, find a smaller auction site to list those other products on.

You can then become a big fish in a small pond. By doing that, you can get your entire mailing list to go to this other auction site, where fewer products are listed, and you can have all your products there. It really gives you a chance to make a big impact on people.

Stay in touch with your prospects and customers. Build a bond with them. Make them want to see what you have available. Compel them to come back, and keep coming back. And if you’ll do that, you can get a ton of people to keep giving you huge bids for every single product that you list.

In this article, we’re going to discuss e-zines. They are very effective, and the secret I am going to reveal is how to turn just eighty-two cents a day into a potential income of $50,000.00 - $100,000.00 a year - or more - with the power of e-mail!

Eighty-two cents a day is less than the price of a candy bar and a can of pop per day. Plus, if you’re overweight, and you stop eating that candy bar and drinking that can of pop, then take this eighty-two cents and put it towards this marketing effort, not only is it going to make money, you’re going to lose weight! Talk about a double deal!

The secret I am going to reveal deals with using a list server. I don’t want to get too deeply into the technology side of this, because you don’t really need to know that much. A list server can actually handle your e-zine for you easily, quickly, and hands-off. It is a very powerful and effective piece of technology.

The good thing about these are the fact that, in most instances, when you get your web site set up (if you decide to set up a web site) and start an e-zine, I suggest you use it. Most web hosts can actually offer a list server which can manage your complete e-zine for about eighty-two cents a day. It is very inexpensive.

The great thing about using a list server is that it doesn’t have to be on your computer. It’s a piece of technology - software - that is part of your ISP’s (Internet Service Provider’s) site, and can be accessible to you. It is on their server, so it is nothing you have to install on your own computer and mess around with.

It is a great piece of technology for anybody wanting an e-zine that wants to make it big!

You can certainly start an e-zine thinking along these lines: “I am only going to have 50 or 100 people on the list, so I guess I’ll just use my e-mail software, like Eudora Pro, or Microsoft Outlook, or Netscape.” If you really want your e-zine list to grow, though, and you really want to make a lot of money with it, it is a good idea to get a list server that will manage it for you. It’s very simple. I’ll give you an example showing just how simple it is and how you can do it, basically hands off.

Let’s say, just for example, that you get a list server. It costs about eighty-two cents a day and you really market that e-zine to people. You give your e-zine a value. You really push people to get signed up, and you get about ten people subscribing to your e-zine every single day for 365 days.

After a year you have 3,650 people on your list. That’s not a huge number of people. Now, let’s say that you average just $20.00 profit for every person on your list. Just $20.00.

Of course, some people aren’t going to buy anything. Some people are going to buy a $100.00 package. Some people a $700.00 package. Once you average it all out, though, you find that you make $20.00 for every person signed up to receive your e-zine.

With 3,650 people on your list you would pocket $73,000.00 in cash!

Let’s say you double that. Let’s say you add just 20 people to your e-zine list every single day for a year and you average a $20.00 sale per person. That equals $146,000.00 using that e-zine list, if you’re averaging just a $20.00 sale per person!

Is having 3,000 people on your e-zine list unbelievable? Of course not! We’ve went and looked at companies. The average number of most e-zine lists is about 10,000 subscribers. There are companies with 90,000 people on their e-zine lists. There is one company with 300,000 people on their e-zine list.

These e-zine lists get large, especially if you’re targeting a niche market. Let’s say that you work hard and you only get 5,000 subscribers on your e-zine list. You send out an e-zine and you decide to make them an offer - a great product that sells for $200.00. You send out this sales message to your e-zine list, and you only get 2% of the people to order that package. That’s 100 sales at $200.00 each. That’s $20,000.00 from a very simple, inexpensive e-mailing to your e-zine list! Plus, that’s just one time, one sale. You can go back to your list again and again, and again. There is no limit!

How easy is it? Well let me give you a brief example of how a business associate of ours used it. He got a list server, and he had places for people to sign up for his e-zine all over his web site. The funny thing about it is, he didn’t realize people were signing up until he went into the list server and asked it to send him a complete list of all the people that had subscribed. It sent back a list of 300 people - after only a couple of weeks!

Three hundred people had gone to his site and decided to sign up for the e-zine. They never contacted him personally. They were doing it while he was asleep or while he was doing something else, but they were all signed up to get information about his company and his e-zine.

Our associate sat down at his computer and thought, “I’ve got 300 people. I’d better send them something.” So he sat down at the computer and, for the next 30 minutes, wrote out things off the top of his head.

He wrote down a few marketing ideas and some things he had noticed about the Internet, and in there he put an offer for a very inexpensive book - a $20.00 book.

It was just a test. He wanted to see what the response would be. After he got that e-zine done, he used the list server to send them out all at once. He didn’t have to send out a separate e-mail to all 300 people. All he had to do was send that one e-mail message to his list server and the list server automatically sent e-mails out to all 300 people. It was all done by that list server, and it only cost him eighty-two cents a day.

The amazing thing is, after 30 minutes of sitting there writing that e-zine message and having it sent to the list server, within two minutes he had his first order. That was exciting! It was his very first e-zine and his first order for $20.00!

The next message he received was a question from somebody who wanted to know a little bit more information. Then in came his next order...then another order, and another order, and another order!

They kept coming in very heavily for the next couple of hours. Over the night he got more orders, and he came in the next morning to find that there were even more orders in his e-mail box. He was so excited, because here was something that cost him virtually pennies a day! He could sit down, write a very quick message in 30 minutes, send it out to all these people, and within minutes start getting orders back in.

Don’t think that this has to be more difficult than it is, or takes more time than it should. There is a lot of technology out there you could purchase for virtually pennies a day and make the process very automatic. This can potentially pull profits in very quickly.

Whenever you are looking at starting your own e-zine, I encourage you to look at all the technology available. There is technology out there that makes your life easier in Internet marketing and e-mail marketing.

Do some research first. Find out what is going to make it easy for you, and utilize it in your own business.

There are a couple of other advantages to an affiliate program. A great analogy is shelf space. In a store the more shelf space you get, the better your sales. Like in the grocery industry they pay a premium to get more shelf space. More visibility. Sometimes they come up with more versions of the same product to get more space on that shelf.

When you have an affiliate program, you are essentially getting more shelf space. Your product is being seen more places than you could ever advertise by yourself. You get more visibility.

Another advantage of that is you get more brand identity. By providing all the banners and advertising pieces that people use on their web site, it is an ad for you every time someone goes to a web site where there is a banner for your product. Even if they’re not in the immediate market for your product, you’re making in the advertising business what is called an impression.

They are seeing your message and they are becoming aware of your product. You are getting a share of mine. Then, at some point in the future, when they have an interest or need for your product, it’s already the one they are looking for. Or, if someone else mentions that they have a need for a product, it is very logical that the person who is seeing a lot of your ads will say “Oh yeah, I know. There is a good product called such and such.” So you’re getting shelf space share of mine and more free advertising. And you’re not paying a penny for any of that.

An affiliate link is perceived as an endorsement at a site. It is almost as if you’re competitor is going “You know what, I don’t sell that. But this guy does over here and I recommend you go check it out from him.”

They’ve got a relationship already made with the person where they originated from and the web site they originally came from.

Third-party endorsements are powerful because what we say about our products or service people expect us to say about them. They just say, “Well, that’s your product or service and you’re going to promote it, and advertise it, and push it, and tell us how great it is.”

But when someone else says something about it, that is removed from you, it is more powerful. That’s why a write-up in a magazine editorial can often get more orders than an ad. Because the prospect thinks, “Wow, someone else is endorsing this. Someone else thinks this is great. This is not just the guy or gal who is pushing their wares, but here is an independent, or at least perceived to be somewhat independent person, or company, or magazine, or e-zine, or whatever, saying how great your product or service is.” Even the fact that they recommend it is just a big, big plus for you.

It works for you as an affiliate situation, as well. If you can get an affiliate to put a banner ad for you - if you can get an affiliate to do a small write-up on your product, or a recommendation on your product, with a click-through - it accomplishes the same thing for the affiliate, but it will get much higher results and make many more sales than placing an ad on the site.

We’re seeing so many banner ads now that people say “Well, someone probably paid for that.” They’re not so much of an independent endorsement anymore. But when they do a write-up for you, that is an independent endorsement.

So many people now have heard of affiliate programs ... there is all kinds of software now on the market because this thing is so popular.

A lot of the fear think goes back to competition. A lot of times, people are afraid that there is so much competition out there that they’re afraid to do it. A lot of people may just not really know how to do it. Sometimes people are afraid to get started because they are afraid of what they don’t know about. And so they’ll just sit there, and instead of actually going out and learning, they’ll just sit there and do nothing. That’s probably the biggest factor.

The other fear is competition. But the main one, maybe, is that they just don’t understand how they work. They’ve seen them, but they’re not real sure. They think it is complicated, and so they don’t do anything.

Just go out and find some programs and some web sites that are using affiliate programs and find what software they are using. If you don’t see it listed, all you have to do is ask them. Usually they’re more than happy to share it with you.

We’ve talked to some people who said, “You know, I’d love to have an affiliate program. You know, Amazon is making so much money with their affiliates, but I just couldn’t do that. Because programming that type of software would just be impossible.”

There used to be a time where you might have to get your own programmer to do it, but now affiliate programs are so popular that there are a lot of software packages out there that can be run even online so you don’t have to put it into your own computer. They’re easy to go through. They use a Windows type interface and they’ve made it simple so that virtually anybody, even without any programming experience at all, could start their own affiliate program. And the reason for that is, a lot of these companies that sell the software, in some cases, might take a little portion of each sale. In other cases, they just want to sell you this software, and they realize that the way to do that is to make it as simple and as easy to use as possible. So right now, we think, is the best time to get started with affiliate programs, because the software has become so simple and easy to use.

Link Exchange, which is a banner exchange program, has Revenue Avenue on their site where you can literally set up your own affiliate program for your web site. Announce how much you’re paying per purchase on your web site, or per inquiry that comes through. They will actually set up, and they take a percentage of each sale. They will actually set it up. You make a deposit to them against what is going to be paid out in commissions. They promote the commission structure that you’re offering. They promote your affiliate program on a list of categorized affiliate programs, and manage the entire project, and pay out the checks for you. You can just go to www.linkexchange.com.

Okay. No excuse anymore, folks. This is a company that will do it all for you. And here’s one of the benefits to having an affiliate program set up on your web site - it’s the simple fact that if you do a thorough study of the top five thousand companies in the United States (you know, you’ve heard of the Fortune 500, now I’m talking about the top 5,000 companies in the United States), you’ll see that a full seventy-five percent to eighty percent of those companies are all companies that sell business to business. They’re not selling to consumers. A full 75-80% business to business.

When your customers are people who are in business for themselves, you now have the potential to make huge sums of money. A business tends to be more loyal. They’ll stay with you longer. And they’ll do more business with you - more repeat business.

If you have an affiliate program, all your customers are other web site owners. The more money you help them make, the more they are going to come back and continue to do everything possible to drive more people to your web site. So they’ll start out with a simple link and then once they get those nice checks from you coming to them every single week, or two weeks, every month, or whatever, they’re going to do more, and more, and more to help promote your web site in order for them to get a larger check. It’s a win-win kind of partner-ship. And those are people that will stay with you for many years to come. You’ll be giving them something they desperately want.

The secret to successful marketing is getting customers to come back and buy from you more and more, but if your customers are other affiliate web sites, you naturally have that back end business just sown up. It’s a continual stream of on-going profits for you.

And that’s the key to success. We say it over, and over, and over again. You don’t want to sell them once, you want to sell them again and again. And you want to get people driven to you that you don’t have to pay a lot of money to get. It’s just really the way to go. Making money on the web is very, very difficult when you try to do it all by yourself, but once you get in these cooperative programs, and the banner ads, and the links, and the more you cooperate with other people that have sites that are similar to yours, it gets easier and easier.

When you just want to be the Lone Ranger without Tonto, you’re in trouble. It’s a vast, vast world wide web out there. And how do you attack it with your marketing plan? But when you start cooperating with other people, and then they start cooperating with you, things get much more easy, and much more profitable.

The number one way that people find your web site is through another web site. So, this makes affiliate programs a natural when it comes to developing a marketing plan that drives traffic to your site.

When you are an affiliate and bring people to amazon.com with a banner on your site, they pay you about five percent per sale. You can also give them specific products and information, and give them content about your product, which is a link back to your site to order the product.

Amazon.com lets you highlight a specific book, with information about the book, and you click on it, and it goes to amazon.com where they buy. They’ll pay you up to thirty percent on the sale when it comes through one of those. They encourage people to highlight the product and use the books as content. You can do the same thing with your products and your affiliate program.

Also remember on an affiliate program that you don’t have to - unless you want to - offer that commission on everything on your web site. Most affiliate programs have a lead product that they offer a good commission on and brings people to your web site. But then succeeding sales, very often, you don’t pay a commission on.

The demand out there is just absolutely incredible for people who have web sites, and now they desperately want to find more ways to make money with their web site. These affiliate programs are becoming widely accepted. You don’t have to sell people on this concept. They’ve already been sold on this concept. And, once you get a number of affiliates out there selling your products for you, you can potentially get extremely wealthy.

We think one of the fun things that people should do is take out a calculator, get a legal pad, get some pencils or some ink, some pens, and start scratching out. Ask yourself, “If I had a hundred affiliate programs, and they were selling just one product a week for me as “x” amount of money, how much would I make?” Then double that, and double it. Find out how much you would make if you had a thousand affiliate programs.

It can be this easy. Do something every single day. If every day you go out there and get three new affiliate partners, you’ve got almost a thousand in one year. And it can happen if you just do something every single day.

We want to talk about how autorespon-ders can make you money instantly and automatically 24 hours a day - even while you’re watching TV or sound asleep. And we know it can be done because we’re having it done right now even though I can’t even spell auto-responder. We have someone helping us do it.

So, what kind of things can auto-responders do? We have a friend who is offering a free sample of a $195 per year newsletter. It’s not too hard to give that away, and we think that’s the key.

If you tell people, “Hurry, go on the Internet, go on my web site, and hit that auto-responder so you can read my advertisement,” they’re going to say well, okay, I’ll drop everything. The baby’s crying, the dog’s barking, there’s somebody at the door, and the phone is ringing but your advertisement is going to take precedent over my whole life. I’m going to rush on there and sit in front of the screen, and read, read, read.” This just doesn’t happen.

What you do is contact every site that is in any way related to yours, directly or indirectly, and exchange links and ads.

You’ll find these people very receptive. We’ve had many people come to us recently that want to exchange advertising from site to site. Now you should take the initiative. You should get out there on the Internet and make as many deals as you can because this can double, or triple, or quadruple your profits by getting your ads, and your links, on all these different sites on the Internet.

In other words, exchanging advertising.

You’ll find you will be able to get some big sites that might have ten times as many people coming to them as you have, but they don’t necessarily know that and they’ll make deals with you.

It’s a great way to just exchange advertising and exchange links without spending any money.

Advertorials are a great way to make money - not just to exchange advertising where they put up your free ad and you put up their free ad, but if you really like their product and service, and you can convince them, maybe send them a sample that your product and service is good at other sites, you could exchange enhanced testimonials and articles, which become sort of advertorials. In other words, you’re promoting them in a very strong way.

We’ve discovered in mail order that what other people say about our products and services is often just as important, or more important, than what we say. People say, “Well sure, you’re going to ballyhoo your own product or service. But what other people say about it is really important.”

So, if other web sites have a nice article, call it an enhanced testimonial, advertorial, whatever word you want to use, telling how great your service or information product is or whatever, that really carries weight.

And, of course, to exchange this you’ll have to do the same for them. You’ll have to be convinced, of course, that they have something worth promoting, that you can give your good name to, and tell people it is great. We just think that is tremendous, whether you sell advertising on your site, whether you exchange advertising, or free advertising with many, many other sites. Dozens of sites, hundreds of sites!

Also think about this big endorsement that you’ll give some other site and their products if they’ll do the same for you. So, we think if you put all of those methods together, you’re going to make a lot of money with both paid advertising and free advertising.