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How Does A Successful Information Business Really Work?

by John Metcalfe

The key to running a successful information business really hinges on a few major key points which I hope to explain to you today!

The first and most important key point is to build your own opt-in e-mail list and really work it, in both of it's major forms. In fact, you should have 2 opt-in lists. One list for prospects who haven't purchased yet, and another for "customers" who have already raised their hand and bought something from you...

Your customer only opt-in list is 100 times more valuable than your prospect list. You should send Customer-Only special offers to your customer only list. A good percentage of your customers will continually buy from you, when you introduce them to other products or services...

Start Small and Dig Your Goldmine

The small profit your earning today can be easily turned into a much larger profit, once you realise that your first sale to a customer is only the start of your relationship. If they have had a good experience buying from you the first time, they are much more likely to purchase higher ticket items from you in the future...

For instance. Lets take an average affiliate. They sign up for a free affiliate program and place an ad in an e-zine costing $100. It does really well and generates $300 worth of sales. Their profit after deducting the e-zine ad costs and the product creators share is $50. The first thought in their heads is "I only made $50 today, perhaps the ad didn't work very well."

He then places another e-zine ad, and the same thing happens again. They think to themselves, "Why aren't I getting rich in 30 days like the Internet Guru told me?" The whole process seems too difficult and they give up.

This is why it is so important to build your own opt-in e-mail list. You place e-zine ads using a lead generation product, usually under $50, and simply send the prospects to the products salesletter. Using a popup-on-entry or exit, you invite them to join your opt-in e-mail list. This could either be a subscription to your newsletter or to request a free report.

You could use a free e-book or a free special report to entice them to give you their e-mail address.

This is where so many people are missing out. The most important part of any promotion should be to capture the e-mail addresses of the visitors.

The majority of visitors that go to your salesletter will not buy the product or service, but you should be able to capture 25–50% of their e-mail addresses for your opt-in list. Then you can offer them other products and services in the future for free...

The whole purpose of this lead generation product is to build your opt-in e-mail list, while breaking even using advertising. For instance, if the product that you are promoting has a profit margin of $37 and you place an e-zine ad for $25, you then only need to sell one of them to earn a profit. You also get some of the visitors e-mail addresses to promote to again and again for free...

So instead of saying to yourself, I only made $12 profit from the e-zine ad, you will be able to say I made $12 profit while adding an extra 150 subscribers to my newsletter!

Can you see where some people are missing the point of e-zine advertising?

The real big money comes from promoting higher ticket products or services to the e-mail leads you generated from your lead generation product advertising...

Here are some examples of Information products in different price ranges:

Entry Level Products $5–$50

Products under $50 are usually used for lead generation purposes as explained above. It's important for you to know that this is NOT the primary income generator for the information business. Products in this range would be e-books, books and single audio tapes...

Medium Level Products $50–$500

In the medium ticket products level you will find CD-Roms, Audio Tape Sets, Video Tapes and some Teleseminars.

High Ticket Product $500+

In the high ticket product level you will find, Seminars, Consulting Packages, Reprint Rights and other specialized products and services...

Well, there you have it. An overview of how a successful information business REALLY WORKS!

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