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December 31, 2006
What is Dropshipping?
by Chris Malta
Understanding Product Distribution
People have been distributing products since before the first mastodon skinner traded a fur coat for a flint axe. Here’s how it works...
Let’s say ABC Manufacturers makes a product called Mom’s Ankle Wax. We’ll say that Mom’s Ankle Wax has been around for years. It’s a very well known brand name product. It will without a doubt give you the shiniest ankles on your block, and everybody wants some.
ABC Manufacturers makes Mom’s Ankle Wax, but they don’t sell it directly to the public. They’re a manufacturing operation. They’re far too busy melting paraffin and waxing test ankles to go around building stores all over the place. They need distributors; companies who will take their product and distribute it to the places that will sell it.
For years, ABC Manufacturers has sold Mom’s Ankle Wax to a company called DEF Distributors. The founder of DEF Distributors knew Mom herself, back in the old days when she made her Ankle Wax by hand, out in the turkey barn.
Today, DEF Distributors buys Mom’s Ankle Wax by the truckload. They pay $5.00 a case for it, which is a very good price. It’s such a good price, it has it’s own name: the Manufacturer’s Wholesale Price.
However, DEF Distributors does not sell it to the general public either. They are a distributor. They distribute Mom’s Ankle Wax.
DEF Distributors works with a chain of retail stores called Wax R Us. This place was founded by a retail business visionary who saw the incredible potential of Mom’s Ankle Wax a long time ago. Today there are Wax R Us retail stores on every street corner in every major city in the country. Wax R Us buys truckloads of Mom’s Ankle Wax from DEF Distributors for $10.00 a case.
So, DEF Distributors makes $5.00 on every case of Mom’s Ankle Wax they sell to Wax R Us retail stores. This makes DEF Distributors very happy.
Cases and cases of Mom’s Ankle Wax arrive in the stockrooms of Wax R Us stores everywhere. The Wax R Us employees open those cases, and pull 12 cans of Mom’s Ankle Wax out of each case. With their pricing guns, they stick a price of $4.50 on each and every can.
Wax R Us stores make a total of $44.00 on each case of Mom’s Ankle Wax. (12 cans x 4.50 per can = 54.00, minus the 10.00 they paid for the case = 44.00).
Wax R Us is even happier than DEF Distributors.
However, the happiest people of all are the people who can stroll into Wax R Us and purchase a can of Mom’s Ankle Wax for only $4.50. They think this is a great price, and they’re walking around with the shiniest ankles in town.
Well, that’s it…basic product distribution. The manufacturer sells to the distributor, the distributor sells to the retailer, and the retailer sells to the end user (the customer). The manufacturer, the distributor and the retailer all make money because the customer is willing to spend money for the product.
Drop Shipping has been around for a long time, too. Probably as long as mail order catalogs; maybe longer. If you want to use a buzzword to impress a corporate type, call it “second party addressing”.
Above, we talked about the manufacturer-distributor-retailer relationship. When you use drop shipping to sell products on the Internet, (or anywhere else), YOU become the RETAILER in that relationship.
It should be noted here, if only to keep the Punctuation Police happy, that if you use the method of drop shipping in your business, YOU are not the “drop shipper”. The company(s) who supply the products to your customers for you is the drop shipper. YOU become a “Stockless Retailer”.
How Drop Shipping Works
1.) You open an Internet Store, with a shopping cart and the ability to accept credit cards.
2.) You find a distributor who is willing to DROP SHIP the products you want to sell. The best place on the Internet for this is www.WorldwideBrands.com. This is our website, the home of OneSource, recognized as the best source for legitimate Wholesale Suppliers on the Internet.
3.) You establish an account as a retailer with the Drop Ship Wholesale Supplier.
4.) You receive images and descriptions of the products you want to sell from the Drop Shipper and post them on your Internet Store.
5.) A customer surfs into your Internet Store, and falls in love with a product that you have priced at, say, $80. They purchase the item with their credit card. Your Store charges their credit card $80 plus your shipping fee.
6.) You turn around and email the order to your Drop Shipper, along with the customer’s name and address.
7.) The Drop Shipper sends the product directly to your customer, with YOUR Store’s name on the package.
8.) The Drop Shipper charges you the wholesale price of, say, $45.00, plus shipping.
9.) Your customer gets a cool product from your store shipped to their door, and they tell all their friends about you, and you make even more money.
There you have it. You just made a $35.00 profit on one item. You didn’t have to buy a whole bunch of the product and keep it in your warehouse, hoping you would sell it. You didn’t have to pay to have it shipped to you, and then pay to ship it to your customer. All you did was send an email to your Drop Ship Wholesale Supplier.
That’s the drop shipping process in a nutshell!
Get Chris Malta's Free Book: Start Your Internet Business Right
Posted by billenross at 01:03 AM | Comments (0)
December 27, 2006
How to Avoid Internet Marketing Ad Overload
You have come up with an idea for a way to make money on the net or you have decided which program you would like to promote online. You have built a terrific website that is informative and entertaining. Do you know what will be the biggest obstacle to your online success? It happens every day to millions of marketers online and no one is saying anything about how detrimental this problem can be to your marketing efforts.
Has this happened to you? You've joined a program or built a site and you know that your most important task every day is to drive traffic to that site. Even though you know that you must drive traffic to that site, that the very survival of your enterprise depends on that traffic; you waste countless hours every week opening the offers that flood your inbox every day instead of promoting your own site or program. Come on admit it. Everyone does it, but the really successful marketers are able to focus their energy like a laser on their single most important marketing task.
It's hard to not look at all the offers that you receive every day. After all, marketers everywhere continue to use email to get their message out and some of them are very creative people. The subject lines in your inbox are screaming, "Open Me" as loud as possible. As an intelligent person you are naturally curious to find out what's inside that message. Don't do it!
As enticing as those subject lines are, don't waste your time opening them up. You have already built your site or chosen your program. You need to be promoting only that site or program. The time that you waste looking at someone else's offer can never be recovered. Each of us only gets 24 hours per day. You need to spend as many of those 24 hours promoting your site or chosen program. Until your site ranks high enough to get natural traffic from the search engines, your primary task is to drive traffic to your site - nothing else.
One way to stay focused on your online enterprise is to protect the email addresses that are linked to your offer. Never use these addresses to join lists or subscribe to newsletters. If you do, in no time the mailboxes will be filled with offers instead of messages pertinent to your enterprise. For example, use sales@yourdomain.com, support@yourdomain.com and info@yourdomain.com for the payment, customer support and general information requirements of your site and never use them for anything else. That way you can get through your daily email chores quickly and have more time for traffic generation.
Posted by billenross at 09:54 PM | Comments (0)
December 22, 2006
How to Stay in Your Customer's Mind
Imagine the following scenario: six months ago you paid someone to come and do your gardening. You'd like to use them again but you can't remember their name and have lost their business card. You end up going to another gardener, which means that the first gardener has probably lost a customer for life.
How easy would it have been for that gardener to stay in touch with you by sending you a newsletter with gardening tips and product recommendations? If you're running your own business, you can't afford not to have a newsletter. Sure, it seems that every business sends out one nowadays but that is no reason to avoid using this invaluable marketing tool. It's an excellent way to build ongoing customer relationships, establish trust and build credibility.
The most cost effective way to send out a newsletter is by email. That way you avoid printing and mailing costs, and it's so much more immediate.
Here are 5 tips to using email newsletters as a way of staying in touch with your customer base:
1. Use the 80% 20% Rule
One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is talking only about themselves in their newsletters. Think about the newsletters that you delete and the ones that you make the effort to read. Usually the most interesting ones contain solid information and tips that benefit you in some way. Think about what would really interest and help your readers and write articles on those topics accordingly. 80% of your newsletter content should directly benefit your reader. Only allow 20% of your content to promote your business.
2. Choose a schedule and stick to it
Consistency is the key when sending out newsletters. Whether you decide on a monthly or fortnightly newsletter, make a commitment to yourself to keep to this schedule. If your newsletter is good, your customers will start to look forward to hearing from you and you don't want to disappoint them, do you?
3. Pick a quality newsletter provider
A service like Aweber will provide you with the best in service at a very reasonable price. As part of signing up, you get free templates to use. Customize these with your logo and photo to add that personal touch. Aweber also manages people wanting to unsubscribe from your list automatically, which is a great time saver.
4. Plan your content
Instead of inwardly groaning when suddenly it's time to send out your newsletter again, why not brainstorm and work on some article ideas in advance? Think of your newsletter as an ongoing, fun project and it will be.
5. Put your sign-up box on your website
Make it easy for people to sign up for your newsletter by putting a sign-up box prominently on your website. Also invite people to sign up by putting a sentence at the end of your email signature, saying something like 'Sign up for my newsletter with the latest articles, news, tips and stories at '
The time and effort that you put into your newsletter will pay off dividends by increasing repeat business, and bringing in new business.
Posted by billenross at 07:56 AM | Comments (0)
December 21, 2006
Giving Your Online Business Powerful Domain Presence
What's the one make-it-or-break-it item that your online business needs to stand out from the crowd and become a huge success?
The right domain name!
The domain name is what people type in when they want to get to your site the part that comes after the http:// or the www. It's your virtual real estate address. Having something they can remember without looking it up each time or keeping it in their bookmarks to be lost among the others is the best thing you can do to get repeat visitors and word-of-mouth free traffic.
People say that all the good names are gone, but that's about as far from the truth as you can get. Here are some simple guidelines that will make your domain name -- and your business -- popular and memorable web destinations.
1. Choose a Dot-Com
The number one rule is, go for the dot-com ending, which is typed as .com. This is the Main St. of the virtual real estate world, and the one that most people will type in regardless of what your domain extension actually is. While .net and .org were popular for awhile, and then .us, .biz and .name took the stage, people always revert back to .com -- no matter how many fancy country code top level domains are launched into the mainstream, like .cc, .ws, .to, .cn and others.
2. Choose something memorable
You want your business name to be your domain name too, if possible. So if your flower shop is called Suzette's Flowers, you want to get suzettesflowers.com, assuming it's available. If not, try adding a dash, like suzettes-flowers.com or a secondary descriptive word like suzettesflowersonline.com or prettysuzettesflowers.com. If you're creative, you'll definitely be able to come up with something that works with your business name and is memorable for your customer.
Keep in mind that if you use a dash in your domain name, which some Search Engine Optimization experts say attracts more free traffic to your site, you have to say the dashes if you use your domain name in an audio product or commercial; so it would be "suzettes dash flowers dot com".
Most people typing in your domain name later will not type the dashes.
3. Get another variation
If you're lucky enough to grab a great domain name without the dashes, then you might want to get the same name with dashes between the words as well. You can put both of them up on your server as mirror sites to get the benefits of SEO as well as the ease of typing without the dashes.
You may also want to consider getting the .net or .org or even another extension to use as a sister site for your main dot com site... perhaps you put your forum on the .net, or use your .com for your main product and .net for your business background information site.
Even if you're looking for a domain name that you don't really think will be available, using your creativity and trying a variety of combinations should allow you to lock down a memorable domain name that will attract people to your website.
Posted by billenross at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)
December 18, 2006
Suffering from Information Overload?
The age that we live in is called the information age. And it's said that the Internet is the information superhighway.
If you're an e-business owner, it's possible that you've been run over on the information superhighway. Unfortunately, the traffic is so heavy that it's difficult to get up! The information just keeps coming and coming and coming.
What can be done about all of the information coming at us all at once? What strategies can be used to manage the flow of information so that you only have to deal with the important stuff?
First, let's look at what information you've got coming at you:
If you're online all day long, there's a good chance that a lot of it is from browsing around the Internet, looking for information that you can use to build your business. Perhaps you get emails from people (as well as spam)...including vendors, customers, and partners. You probably get reports from your advertising efforts, like Google Adwords, and there may be times (like when you own several websites) that you have to manage such information as domain registrars.
The first thing you want to do is deal with the flow coming in:
Before reading any information, give it a quick glance and decide if it is critical to your business efforts or not and if it is, save it. If it isn't, delete it.
- Resist the urge to review everything with a fine-tooth comb and resist the urge to respond to emails as soon as they come in.
- Decide whether you need to spend two hours gathering marketing information or only one hour.
- Prioritize information coming in so that you only deal with the most important information and can simply glance at and correctly file the less important information.
Review and prioritize to first reduce the flow.
The second thing you want to do is manage the flow that you're allowing through:
To do this, you'll want to create systems and use databases so you can keep track of everything. Not everything needs all of your attention right away. You can use information managers and task managers to help you manage the flow of information coming in to you.
What's the end result? You'll have less information to deal with...so you'll have more time to spend on critical business activities like marketing...so you'll generate more customers...so you'll generate more sales...so you'll generate more profit!
Posted by billenross at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2006
Long Tail Marketing... What Does it Mean?
Recently there is a huge stir around the phrase “long tail marketing.” It primarily deals with retailing online and makes some real interesting points you should consider. The concept is by Chris Anderson and you can get his book at Amazon.
But what does it all mean? It means get busy with keywords and content to get all the searches possible to your site. People do search differently so you must consider all keywords that relate to you.
An example is a hobby site. Imagine the "length of the tail" in how many keywords that could be. Everything from backyards to zebras. It's the length of the tail when all of those keywords are connected that can bring you more business. Think about a big tail on a huge animal, it covers a lot of ground and gets your attention when connected to an alligator!
So to coin a phrase, "get your tail moving" and leave no rocks unturned. Some search for refrigerators and for some it is an ice box or the fridge. Think about what people name things in other parts of the world that are the same thing in your world.
In keyword research it is easy to spot and grow niches. Low search counts at the top 3 search engines can mean business for you when there is no competition. Use Wordtracker to find out what these less used search engine searches can do for you. So what if there are only 6 searches a month for an item; if you happen to sell that item and no one else does, you want that business.
The long tail of search phrases will build traffic. You can not count on 80% of your traffic coming from 20% of your top used keywords based on readings at Google. Because competition for highly used words is so big, long tail marketing makes perfect sense.
If you are an Adsense publisher, imagine how many more relative ads you could display on all of those new low competition keyword pages. It is the total searches from all of those less used words that make using them worthwhile.
Create your content with a broader base of keywords to see the effect. Watch your site stats and be amazed at all of the new search terms you'll be found with. Many will tell you more content or more products would be easy to market.
With search engines today it is all about content and keywords, and Google flat out says so in their webmaster guidelines. Long tail marketing is real easy with search engines. All you have to do is know the words people use.
Posted by billenross at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2006
Who is Behind that Website? Ask Whois!
Who, exactly, stands behind that website on your screen? Does that web page really belong to the company it claims to represent?
A handy little applet, known as a "Whois", can tell you who is behind a web page before you make that final click or download that free offer.
What is a Whois?
A Whois is a software utility, or applet, that looks up information about individual websites. A Whois will reveal whatever information is currently available for any website.
A Whois will find the Domain Name and the IP Address so you will at least know the identity of the registered owner of the domain (website).
The exception is when an owner of a website lists it as "private". In that case, the only information available is whether the website really exists.
How much, or how little, information available for a Whois query depends on what the owner of the Domain Name decides to make public. Thankfully, most serious businesses provide ample information.
Companies usually want to make it easy for customers to get in touch; they list every possible way to reach them. They list telephone and fax numbers, physical (street) and postal addresses, and of course email contacts, in order to attract prospective customers.
A personal website owner, though, might be wiser to list only the minimum required data, or even register as "private". That way, she could avoid attracting unwanted sales pitches, spammers, or perhaps even worse.
Someone with a day job would not be at home during office hours, anyway. As well, who needs strangers from distant time zones phoning in the middle of the night? So he may not list his phone number.
How does a Whois work?
Not all Whois applications search ALL domains. Each Domain Registrar is responsible for maintaining a Whois over those domains (websites) registered with him. When the internet was in its infancy, each Whois was designated to search only one type of domain; there was one Whois for ".COM", another for ".ORG", and so on.
Even today, many Whois utilities are still dedicated to one domain type or to one Registrar (the agency where you have registered your Domain Name). To facilitate searching, we now have publicly accessible Whois software that can search all Domain Registrars plus all Hosting Servers for any type of domain.
We will consider two categories of Whois software:
a) Free Whois software
b) Affordable, commercial Whois software that you pay to use
Which type Whois is best for me?
Naturally, that depends on how you are going to use a Whois, something you will only know after having tried a few different Whois services.
While learning how to use a Whois, the free ones are easy on your pocketbook and deliver results that are just as accurate as any other model. They all search the same data bases, after all!
When using a free, no-frills, Whois you may have to Cut-and-Paste the URL (web address) from your browser address bar to the Whois search box manually.
The free Whois will then probably present the information in a more primitive format -- that is, in a long text-based list of line after line of data. This requires more work, as it is more difficult to glean the information that you need.
For infrequent use, a free Whois will do. It makes sense to start with free software until you know enough to decide whether to spend money on an easier program. It is quite likely that you may never need to buy a Whois program at all.
If you decide to buy faster, easier commercial Whois software, it can be had for $25 or so.
Any commercial program should install an icon in your browser toolbar so all you need do is click on the icon. Then the application reads the URL of the website currently in your browser window and looks it up automatically. No Cut-and-Paste contortions.
Finally, it should open a new, graphical "results" window where it displays the information in a neat, perceptible manner. You get all the data without the clutter of a text-based display.
What can a Whois tell you about a website?
Suppose you are searching the internet and you find an appealing site: "HONEST-SITE.COM". First, you want to see who they really are. A Whois search usually tells you:
i) The true Domain Name, hopefully, HONEST-SITE.COM in this instance.
ii) The IP Address of the website, e.g., 123.45.0.234 (four groups of numbers from 0-255, separated from one another by periods (dots). Try typing those numbers into your browser address bar -- it should bring up the same website again.
iii) Any other contact information available.
As well, you can expect to find information about who hosts the website (supplies the Web Server):
iv) The name of the Hosting Company (Domain Name Server or Web Server), e.g., "WORLDSBESTDOMAINSHOP.COM"
v) The IP Address of that Web Server, including contact email addresses and phone numbers
vi) The email addresses for their Administrator (ADMIN) and Webmaster (TECH).
A Whois reveals whatever information is available for any website, so you can see who stands behind it. And yes, as you have guessed by now, a Whois is a quick and ideal way to unmask faked (phishing) websites.
Posted by billenross at 09:11 AM | Comments (0)
December 14, 2006
Tips for Increasing Your Website Traffic
Marketing Your Blog
Every online publisher needs traffic to their site, but how do you get a steady increase of traffic each month? How do you even get traffic started coming to your site?
Blogs automatically get traffic coming as soon as you make your first post. With a good ping list, each time you make a post to your blog dozens of sites are notified and traffic starts coming in. Therefore the first step in getting traffic to your blog is to post regularly. Posting once or twice a day is fantastic.
Article Syndication
Writing articles and syndicating them to article directories is a powerful technique to grow your traffic. Try to write at least one article a week (or have a unique article written for you), post it to your site, wait a week for the search engines to index it, and then submit the article to article directories. For a nominal fee SubmitYourArticle.com will submit it to hundreds of article directories, saving you a lot of time and effort.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is another very powerful tool. It takes less than a minute to submit your article to OnlyWire.com. Once submitted they take it and submit it to about fifteen other social bookmarking sites.
Imagine if you bookmarked one article a day and submitted each to fifteen social bookmarking sites for one year. That would add up to over 15,000 backlinks for your one site! Incredible! But there's even more you can do.
Pay Pay Click and More
Pay per click, email marketing, viral marketing, and commenting in forums are all great ways to get more traffic. For instance, Answers.Yahoo.com is a site where people post questions and wait for an answer.
For instance, if you have a site about dogs and someone asks about what to feed their puppy, you can post an answer and include your URL in the signature. As people read the question and your answer, some will click on your URL to see what else you might say about taking care of dogs.
Tracking and Statistics
Track the visitors to your site by using tools such as MyBlogLong.com, Google Analytics, and the tracking tools found in your site's cpanel under Stats. Google Analytics is a plugin for Wordpress. It takes a minute to set up and gives you vital information to help you focus on what your visitors want.
By looking at your stats a few minutes a week you can see what articles are most popular, what topics are most popular, how long people are staying at the site, and what links they click on to leave the site. You can use this information to make changes to your site, increase the number of posts you make on popular topics, and anything else that will encourage people to stay longer and to come back.
It is not hard to get traffic to a blog. Set aside some time each day to write an article or to post to your blog, submit it to the social bookmarking sites, and submit your articles to article directories. Follow these basic tips and traffic to your site should increase significantly each month.
Posted by billenross at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2006
Why Provide Good Customer Service
Have you heard people say that if not for customers, work will be a lot smoother? They ask questions for which the answers are so obvious. Or they can find the answers if they will just read the instructions that are provided with the product. They just have to call and ask all kinds of questions and sometimes you are not even the person who is supposed to handle such questions. Are you looking for good reasons that will help you feel better about this?
First thing is if there are no customers, then there is no business. If there is no business then you do not have a job. Does not even matter if yours is not a customer-facing job. Customers are needed. Question now is how you can look at the situation differently so that providing good service to the customers is something that you can be happy doing.
Basic reason, of course, is that you get paid to do the job and providing good customer service is part and parcel of the job. It does help to remind yourself that the organization promptly pays you and it is only fair to deliver your responsibility.
Next reason is that good customer service is the best pre-sales effort for the next purchase by the customer. People go all the way out to run promotions and write great copy to entice customers to buy their products. Nothing though can beat good customer service. There are customers who will repeatedly buy from the same company because they are happy with the service provided.
Good customer service is not about falling over yourself providing everything the customer asks for, but it is providing the customer what they rightfully should get for having bought a product from your company.
There is also a completely personal angle that you can look at where service is concerned. Most people nowadays are conscious of their social responsibilities and like to donate or make contributions to worthy causes. Why not make good customer service as such a contribution? In this case, you also get paid for it. In the words of N. Eldon Tanner, "Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth". The moment you can start thinking that service is something that you want to do, then every customer request will be much easier to respond to.
Is it going to be easy? Not all the time. There will be difficult situations but there will also be customers who will be very appreciative of the service that you provide. For those difficult situations, say to yourself that this is why you are paid a salary and just do it. The moment you stop fighting it, handling the situation gets less difficult.
Now, how do you handle difficult situations so that they do not upset you? The best way to handle this is to calmly listen to the customer. Many a time service representatives have a solution even before the problem has been described. Stop to listen first. Then ask clarification questions if necessary before providing the resolution.
Theodore Roosevelt said, "Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care". It will do well to remember these words. If you can listen with a sincere desire to help and be happy to help the customer, you will feel good providing service. Some people even enjoy it. In addition, your whole attitude and listening with care will come through and even the customer's demeanor will change.
Good customer service is not about having a good customer service week once a year. It is about providing good service every day. As you start work daily, if you can accept that your purpose for being there is to respond to customer needs with concern and a desire to help, it will be a lot easier to get through work. You can even start enjoying it.
Remember at a minimum you are getting paid to respond to customer requests. You are also helping to drive more sales from customers because of the excellent service you help provide. Besides this, from a purely personal perspective, you get an opportunity to be of service even without getting out of your normal routine.
Start having a different outlook to providing good customer service. It will make a great difference to how you support your customers and importantly to how good you feel deep inside you.
Posted by billenross at 09:11 AM | Comments (0)
December 07, 2006
Using 'Guarantees' in Your Sales Letters to Increase Sales
Imagine that you're someone who has just purchased a product or service after reading a well-written and persuasive sales letter. You pay the price of the product or service and eagerly await the product's arrival or to speak with a representative about using the service. Finally, the product arrives, or you're used up your service hours and you have not reaped any of the benefits touted in the flashy sales letter. Even worse, the product you purchased was broken or not satisfactory when it arrived and now it's going to be a hassle to replace it or get a refund. If this were you, how would you feel?
Potential customers are often wary about purchasing a product or service based only on a sales letter because there are no implied guarantees. The product can be damaged upon arrival, the service can provide little help, or the product or service is just not worth the price the customer might pay. There is one trick you can use to reduce these fears on the part of the potential customer. Use a guarantee in your sales letters that allows customers to shed the risk they would normally assume when making such a purchase.
A guarantee can be in several forms. You can guarantee free replacement if a product is defective, additional free services if a client is unsatisfied with the service you have provided, or even offer to refund the entire purchase price of the product or service if the customer is not completely satisfied. When you offer a guarantee, you are creating goodwill and confidence in your product or service. Many potential customers think, "Why would they guarantee their product or service if it didn't work as well as advertised?"
When you offer a guarantee in your sales letters, make sure the guarantee is risk-free. This means that you should not attach any strings to the guarantee. Some companies require that a product be returned unopened or in its original packaging in order to receive a full refund. If you've had the product for a month or two, and you've already thrown out the packaging, this can present a problem. Then you're stuck with a shoddy product and an emptier wallet. Making your guarantee risk-free means that you don't require customers to meet any conditions in order to receive the refund, replacement, or free services.
This is a marketing tactic that can create quite a lot of goodwill from customers. People are more likely to buy from businesses that stand behind their products and services than from businesses that are hard to deal with and inflexible if a product is damaged or a service has not benefited the customer. By offering a risk-free guarantee, you are telling your customers that you care about their experience with your company. You are also giving customers an easy way to solve problems, rather than making them go through a difficult process. This can even create repeat business from satisfied customers.
Once you've mastered the art of using risk-free guarantees in your sales letters, you may see an increase in the number of inquiries generated by a particular sales letter or even in the number of sales that result from a direct mail campaign. If you see results, it only makes sense to keep this tip in the front of your mind as you develop sales letters in the future.
Posted by billenross at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)
