Copyright 2006 Homer Farey

1. How well do your customers know you? You will get a better response from people who regard you as a friend than just someone they are doing business with. Have you published your photo on your website? Do you keep in touch by email with the offer of a freebie containing links back to your website, at least once a month?

2. How can they contact you? Do you list your email address on every letter that you send out? Your Phone number is the thing that generates the most confidence. If they ever have a problem they feel that they are only a phone call away from the answer. Do you have a short Bio at the bottom of all your outgoing emails showing your website address?

3. Do you publish a newsletter? This is one of the best ways of keeping in touch in a friendly way and maintaining their interest in you, your website and your products. People who are not yet your customers can agree to receive your newsletter and any freebies with links back to your website inside. Some of them will become customers eventually and in the meantime they will be giving your freebies with your links to their opt in list. Its one of the best and easiest methods of viral marketing. .

4. How many different ways can they pay you? Paypal is one of the most popular ways of transferring money between accounts. It is also easy for those who are not members of Paypal to pay you by credit card. When a non member of Paypal uses their services they are encouraged to become a member. If you have signed up as an affiliate with Paypal you will receive a small commission for recommending them.

4a. Stormpay is another well respected method of receiving payment for goods sold over the internet. They are not as well known as Paypal but they are very secure and they have a lot of members.

4b. Credit card. As I mentioned above customers can use their credit cards via Paypal but there are a lot of people who would rather pay by credit card directly from your sales page. You may lose some sales if you dont have this facility.

5. What guarantee do you offer? You do offer a guarantee, dont you. A money back guarantee of anything less than twenty eight days will not inspire confidence. Customers are used to three or even six months guarantees. Dont worry, provided your product does everything that you said it would you should get very few returns. Some companies are offering a full years guarantee, That is what I call inspiring confidence.

6. How many different methods of selling do you use? Sticking to just one method even if it is working is a bit short sighted. There may be other methods that work just as well or even better. Set aside a portion of your profits to experiment with different forms of advertising. You may find that you are contacting a different stream of potential customers from those who you are selling to now.

7. Have you considered Clickbank as a method of sales? Its cheap and easy to promote your product with Clickbank. Just a matter of filling in a simple form and a small start up fee. With Clickbank you can also run a profitable affiliate program where Clickbank do all the work and you get paid. With affiliates you need to offer in the region of 50% commission, You only receive half the price of the goods, But on the other hand it is money that you would not have had without the efforts of the affiliates. Clickbank only deals with downloadable products. Ebooks and anything that can be delivered electronically are O/K but nothing of a physical nature.

8. Take the time to find out how other, successful people run their businesses. Checkout their web-pages. How are they set-out? What impression does it convey? What kind of promotions are they using? Which payment systems are they using? All of these things go towards a profitable business.

Homer (Not the poet.)