Internet Business

If you’re selling a product or service on the Internet, one of the best ways to increase your sales is by offering a free trial, also know as a teaser, demo or limited version. By enabling your potential customers to review your product and providing them with an easy ordering process, you can increase your sales immensely.

Free trials are not exclusive to software programs. There are many ways you can offer a free trial no matter what product or service you’re offering. For example, if you’ve written a book, consider offering it in an electronic version, better know as an eBook. You can include your entire book
within the eBook and choose to lock out certain chapters.

In order for your potential customer to gain access to these chapters they will be required to purchase the full version. You can include an order form and instantly take orders, right through your free trial Ebook. When you receive an order, you simply send your customer a predefined user ID and password that you set up when you create it.

A good program to assist you in creating an Ebook is Ebook Edit Pro. http://www.web-source.net This program will compress your HTML documents into a self-contained “executable” file. This HTML may be a web site you’ve created or HTML you’ve specifically prepared to be compiled into a downloadable .exe file for distribution. This .exe file is a completely freestanding program and requires no installation. When clicked on, the program instantly opens your book on your client’s desktop. In addition, WebCompiler will enable you to lock out certain pages of your Ebook or an entire directory.

The key to using a free trial version is to offer your product for download from your website and allow it to be freely distributed. Provide some valuable free information, but save your most important information for the unlocked version. Make your locked chapters sound very intriguing and create curiosity. Tell your potential customers what they will receive by purchasing the full version, provide a complete list of all the benefits, and provide them with an easy ordering process.

To further increase your sales, provide your potential customers with instant gratification. You can completely automate your entire ordering process simply by using a CGI script. There are scripts online that will allow you to make your product available for download, take the customers order, approve it right online, send your customer a password and send you a confirmation of the
order, all completely automatic.

- CGI Resource Index - http://cgi.resourceindex.com/

After you’ve created your product, consider setting up an affiliate program for massive distribution. There are many affiliate CGI scripts available to assist you in running your own affiliate program.

- The Affiliate Program - http://theaffiliateprogram.com/
- ProTrack - http://www.affiliatesoftware.net/

If you’re selling a service on the Internet, you can offer your potential customers a free trial as well. For example, if you offer a search engine submission service, you can provide your customers with a limited free submission to the search engines.

To entice your customers to purchase your full service you can, not only submit their site to your full list of search engines, but you can create doorway pages, insure their pages are optimized for the search engines and provide a resubmission service every month for a year. In addition, provide your clients with a free report of each submission process.

Prior to doing your customers last submission, contact them and inform them that their submission contract will soon be expiring. Tell them how they can renew their submission process and offer another enticing freebie such as, “If you renew your submission contract before (date) we will also submit your site to over 1000 Free For All Sites.”

This type of free trial will not only increase your current sales, but it will promote future sales as well.

The possibilities are endless. By offering your potential customers something of value for free, providing instant gratification, and an easy ordering process, you can dramatically increase your sales.

Copyright © Shelley Lowery

About the Author:

Shelley Lowery is the author of the acclaimed web design course, “Web Design Mastery” (www.webdesignmastery.com) and “eBook Starter - Give Your eBooks the look and feel of a REAL book” (www.ebookstarter.com)

Visit www.Web-Source.net to sign up for a complimentary subscription to eTips and receive a copy of Shelley’s acclaimed ebook, “Killer Internet Marketing Strategies.”

You have permission to publish this article electronically, in print, in your ebook, or on your web site, free of charge, as long as the author bylines are included.

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Just like the infamous thank you page that a buyer is forwarded to before an actual purchase made popular by none other than Mike Filsaime, the same goes for upselling. What is upselling?

Upselling is the technique used to bolster sales after the initial purchase. The buyer is forwarded to another page before completion of the sale where they are introduced to similar products for less than the original purchase…

For instance, “Would you like to include this product also with your purchase today?”… “This makes a great addition to your purchase today!” … “This is a MUST SEE!”

A one time purchase or purchases for less than the original priced product should be included during the original sale to bolster profits. It is your time with the customer and you should make every effort to educate your customer on your other products and services as well.

Things like… E books, Reports, etc… Get the idea?

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you will kill the sale if you decide to upsell, instead you’ll be quite surprised at the reaction to your suggestions and may gain a loyal customer because of your attention to their needs.

Make the purchaser a deal he or she cannot refuse. It works and it’s proven to increase sales and your customers may thank you for educating them on products that they knew nothing about. Put it to good use and watch your profit margin expand.

Anthony Tomei is a professional internet marketer and CEO of Tomei Enterprises Corp. You can visit his website below…

http://www.tomeimarketing.com

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You may publish this article so long as all the links stay intact. You have free giveaway and publishing rights to this article. Tomei Enterprises Corp Copyright 2005

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Did you know you can list for Free in Google with Wordpress? Not too long ago, Google came up with a new concept called “Google Sitemaps”.

With Google Sitemaps, you can generate an ‘xml’ file of your entire site, and submit it to Google using your Google Account.

One of the main objectives of Google Sitemaps is to help update Google’s search engine of any changes or updates to your site.

Once Google has received your Sitemap file, it will be able to keep track of changes to your site. It’s actuall a win-win for both parties.

So how does Wordpress come into the picture?

If you didn’t know, Wordpress is a very popular free blogging software for building and running blogs.

And because of it’s popularity, Wordpress users has developed a ton of plugins to be used with Wordpress.

One of these is actually a Google Sitemap plugin for Wordpress. Once installed, you just need to activate it and it automatically generates a Google compliant sitemap for
you.

Only thing left to do is to submit this sitemap file to Google…and you’ve gotten yourself a free listing in Google.

If you’re new to Wordpress, do check out my “Wordpress Videos” course. With over 40 video tutorials, I’ll show you how to get a free listing in Google and unleash the power of your Wordpress blogs.

http://www.wordpressvideos.com

Brandon Hong is the author of a series of best selling courses on Blogs, Rss, Wordpress and Podcasts.
http://www.wordpressvideos.com

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