"Starting Smart!"an online e-zine for newbies and semi-seasoned Internet marketers alike.

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Issue: August 18, 2003

"The Dire Need For Online Credibility; Is It All Smoke And Mirrors?"

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"Starting Smart"
The Ezine for the Online Marketing Newbie

August 18, 2003
Karl Augustine - Publisher

Subscribe Link:
http://startingsmart.9mistakes-online.com

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*Greetings...a quick thought, I hope all is well with you...
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Hello,

Welcome new subscribers, thanks for being here!

Welcome to this edition of "Starting Smart". I trust you had a great 2 weeks online.

It's been a busy 2 weeks, but I have had fun.

My wife's twin brothers came to visit, had a ball but it is nice to have a house that's quiet! I like to mix it up but I love my solitude also, I can get so much done when it is peaceful.

We're looking at new homes so the never ending emails displaying pictures of homes we should look at flood my Inbox...Heather keeps sending them to me! The price tags are amazingly high here in Seattle. A 3 bedroom 2 1/2 bath can go from 250K to 600K depending on where the house is located...ugh!

Highlight of the last 2 weeks: I went and saw a concert with a friend of mine, had a ball...it was outside and the weather was beautiful. AT&T Wireless' Seattle Summer Nights brought George Thourogood to town...old time rocker but it was pretty tame.

Low point of the last 3 weeks: Nothing to report, why focus on the negative, there's enough of that out there already.

I was thinking about an article I read and I got to thinking...lookout!

I belong to a few Yahoo! groups where publishers email their articles for publication. Of the myriad of articles that came through this week, I read one that dealt with sales letters and it got me thinking.

The author (who shall remain nameless) of the article was fed up with sales letters that were geared toward tricking people into buying a certain product...I mean, you could tell this publisher was not a happy camper. It seemed like he/she had gotten taken for a ride or bought something that didn't live up to the hype, sales words, 'feel of it all', whatever you want to call it.

As I read through the article, it was clear to me that emotion had gotten in the way of sane rationalization. After all, isn't that what sales letters are supposed to do, prompt people to buy? Otherwise they wouldn't call it a "sales letter" right? Anyway, while I do agree some product owners go absolutely overboard with words like "explode" and "riveting" and such, words have power and should be part of any sales campaign.

I'm sure you have read sales letters where you're thinking "C'mon, give me a break! What do you take me for a fool?" I know I certainly have read those letters and the only thing that keeps me from laughing aloud is knowing that I can just exit the browser. Like with television or radio, if you don't like what's on, change the channel or station.

But, at the end of the day (I like that phrase "at the end of the day"...as you probably can tell if you've listened to my audio recording on my main webpage) emotion can never take the place of intellect when reading sales letter.

There are certain things you should do when evaluating a product for purchase, no matter what the style of the sales copy (editorial or sales). I won't outline them all as I do in my book, but first and foremost, don't get caught up in it! Look at the benefits, long and short term and decide if the expenditure is worth it as it pertains to the stage your particular business is in. Don't buy something because you "may need it later".

Anyway, I thought the article was interesting, I guess it just goes to show that there really are lots of people out there who have at one time or another felt like they got slighted when they purchased something online.

Please, there's no need to ever feel buyer's remorse like the author of that article must have felt. In my book, I give you step by step fail safes that guarantee your purchases will be 'guilt-free'...

Also, I'm here all the time for you, just like you're there for me...If you have a question about a product, shoot me an email, I'll tell you what I think if I know, and I'll tell you straight out, I won't pull punches...mailto:karl@9mistakes-online.com

All the best online, enjoy this issue...

Karl Augustine
"The Regular Guy"

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In this edition...
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*The classic list building book I can't live without
*Featured Article: "The Dire Need For Online Credibility; Is It All Smoke And Mirrors?"
*In the news
*Get Interactive With the Publisher, me.
*Welcome New Subscribers! Help us grow...
*F*reebie of this issue, password below - "Starting Smart Community Chest!" *Copyright and Publisher Info

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*List theme - Products I can't live without...
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*One of the books that is truly a must have! Paul Myers' "Amazing List Machine", there's nothing else like it...

Get List Machine here!

*Push Button Leads: One of the best list building services around. Get paid to build your list.

Push Button Leads

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*Featured Article:
"The Dire Need For Online Credibility; Is It All Smoke And Mirrors?"

Yes and no.

With any business, credibility is a key element to building trust which should ultimately lead to making a sale.

This is never truer than in Internet marketing for these reasons:

People don't want to be sold to, they want information.

People mostly use the Internet to get information at no cost, not to purchase a good or service

People are skeptical about purchasing online for fear of being "taken"

The "would be" customer most likely has no idea who the seller is and isn't guaranteed any type of communication after the sale, no matter what the website may say about a "guarantee"

Internet marketing has been around long enough that savvy prospects have seen their share of scams, shoddy products, and outrageous promises and their defenses are heightened because of it

So what does the newcomer and mid-level marketer do to gain credibility amidst all this skepticism? Validate their USP (Unique Selling Proposition) by ensuring that their prospect's perception of who they are and what they have to offer is one of quality.

Until the sale is made and the "prospect turned customer" actually has the product in hand, the perception of quality is just that, merely perception. Once the product is in the hand of the new customer, the perception of quality is purely defined by the customer, not the seller. How the customer views the product after the sale is made determines his/her perception of quality of the product. However, before the sale is made, the perception of quality is largely determined by seller, and that's where sales are made or lost.

Why is the perception of quality determined by the seller? Because the prospect can't possibly validate a product's quality without owning it...the seller tells the prospect what makes the product have quality and how it will benefit them. The sales copy on the web site, the clarity of the graphics, the proposed benefits the product delivers, and the overall message that validates the USP that is relayed to the prospect, all define the perception of quality of the product as dictated by the seller. It is up to the prospect to decide whether he/she will believe the message that the seller is relaying to him/her.

Because of the prospect's skepticism, validating the USP and establishing credibility can be a chore for the newbie and intermediate Internet marketer regardless of the quality of the product itself. Since the newbie or intermediate marketer isn't a "household" Internet marketing name, action needs to be taken to establish online credibility.

How? Have other Internet marketers and "would be" customers help. Go to the well- known forums on the Internet and post messages asking for feedback in return for a copy of the product being sold. This is one of the most common methods to collect testimonials for products and services. Another effective way to gain credibility as it is perceived by the prospect, is to gather testimonials by giving the product to their list or a small portion of their list in exchange for a testimonial.

Yet another way to gain testimonials and thus credibility, is to approach well known experts within the product niche and ask for their impression of the product being sold with the caveat that, if the expert was in agreement that the product was quality, he/she would send you a testimonial. Experts won't endorse products if they aren't quality because they've spent far too long establishing themselves online and unwarranted testimonials for sub par products damage their credibility.

Ideally, the newcomer and intermediate Internet marketer will get "unsolicited" testimonials, but the tactics listed before are simply ways to add to credibility. The fact that some testimonials may be obtained through bartering, doesn't deter from the testimonial's credence. If the product is truly quality, how the testimonial was obtained is irrelevant to new prospects because to them, the testimonials' origin is unknown.

Another effective way to establish online credibility is to publish articles to various websites. The same principle holds true here as with the "expert testimonial" scenario. If an Internet marketer gets his/her articles published in newsletters that have sizable subscriber bases, that marketer's credibility is heightened. Many e-zine owners that have large subscriber bases will not publish sub-par articles, because doing so would damage the credibility of the publication. While getting articles published in other popular e-zines doesn't deliver specific benefits to prospects about the product being sold, it will add to general online credibility of the seller.

Whether the newbie or intermediate Internet marketer use testimonials or article publication to establish online credibility, the true measure is of credibility is in the product itself. Before the sale credibility is established by the seller through the overall USP and through testimonials. After the sale is made, online credibility is defined by the customer. The question at this point is: "Did the product live up to the sales message?" If so, online credibility with regards to customer-to-seller "one to one" relationship has been successfully established.

Be humble, work smart, keep it simple.

Karl Augustine
"The Regular Guy"

(c) Karl Augustine
http://www.9mistakes-online.com
http://startingsmart.9mistakes-online.com

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In the news...

Frauds, Scams, and Misinformation On The Web - good article!
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2227161

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Note to other online publishers, webmasters:

Feel free to use the article above on your website or in your publications. You are required to place the 'resource box' below after the article.

To get this article send an email to article5@9mistakes-onlne.com.

(c) Karl Augustine
http://www.9mistakes-online.com
http://startingsmart.9mistakes-online.com
"9 Deadly Mistakes To Avoid When Starting An Online Business". How much time and money have you wasted? For more time saving and money making tips, get your full copy here => http://www.9mistakes-online.com

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*Write About This!

NEW SECTION: If you have something you would like me to write about, send me an email and I'll choose the most common theme of the requests and write an article that will be published in upcoming editions of "Starting Smart"!

I will use your name and question in the addition unless you tell me otherwise. If you'd like to remain anonymous, I can do that too!

Send an email with your topic choice to: mailto:write-about-this@9mistakes-online.com

This issue's q & a from "Write About This!"...

From a subscriber in the UK: "Newbies don't understand HTML and FTP, can you help?"

Karl: Sure! It's easy once you know what it all means. You don't really need to know a whole lot about HTML but you do need to know how to manipulate or change it if you need to. HTML is the language of the web...all web pages are displayed via HTML which stands for "Hyper Text Markup Language".

When you look at a webpage, the URL in the browser bar starts with "http" which stands for "Hyper Text Transfer Protocol". The programming language that supports the way the info is transferred (the protocol) is Hyper Text Markup Language, the same name (hyper text) they use for the delivery mechanism (HTTP) of that language. HTTP delivers HTML among other languages enough.

Even if you don't understand the technical workings of the Net, knowing how to manipulate HTML can be useful. But here's the fun part...you don't really need to know HTML to create a web page, an HTML editing software program will do it for you.

If you go to Google and type in "HTML Editor" you'll most likely get lots of results. Choose one, buy it or download it (the HTML Editor-the software that can make HTML files) and play with it. It's easy to use like Word or Notepad but it is more powerful because you can add images and make the Internet browsers activate by using links.

One great thing about HTML editors is that you can type text and the HTML code will be automatically generated behind the text by the HTML editor itself. So, if you type something like "Hello" and you make it bold like this "Hello", the HTML code that actually will make that word bold when delivered over the Internet will look like this:

<strong>&quot;Hello&quot;</strong>

Basic HTML is easy...I suggest going to HTML GOODIES and taking a look around.

Once you build an HTML webpage in your HTML editor, you'll want to upload it to your site. In order to do this, you'll need software that will allow you to "log in" to your website over another protocol, or, transference mechanism. You want to transfer your HTML file that is saved on your hard drive that made in your HTML editor to your site over a certain transfer mechanism, that mechanism is FTP.

(Example of an HTML file: a file named "index.htm" or "index.html"...this page you are looking at right now is named "August15-Newsletter.htm" and it is saved on my hard drive...I made it in an HTML editor. I use Dreamweaver as my HTML editor but there are lots of less expensive options.)

How do you upload or transfer the html file? Use FTP software. FTP is "File Transfer Protocol". The FTP allows you to "upload" files to your site using FTP software.

Each FTP software will allow you to "log-in" to your site over the Internet by using your website's IP address which is the number that is associated with your site's "place" on the Internet. You'll get all this info., passwords, IP address, password to log-in, etc from your web host.

Go to Google and type in "FTP software" and you'll get lots of options. One software program that is cheap and works well is "CuteFTP". The FTP software I use is "FLashFXP" equally as good.

Once you set your "settings" in the FTP software, you can log in to your site in about 5 seconds if you are hooked to the Internet. All you do is highlight the file you want to upload, highlight the directory you want the file saved to, click the "upload" button, and the new file is 'published' to your website. (It would take lots of screen shots to explain this in a 'step-by-step' fashion here, but I assure you, if you can download an exe. eBook, you can save 'htm' files and use an FTP program to upload those files to your website!

From a new subscriber: "I am a new subscriber and just want to say I really enjoy your newsletter. Maybe you have written about this topic before, but I'd like to read something about when the phrase "just plug in this or plug in that" is used
in a sales letter...."

Karl: I know what you mean, it is a "buzz word" thing. What most people mean by "plug in" is they are giving you a template that requires you to put in some sort of information pertinent to your situation.

"Plug in" means that the framework around the given product (usually a website) is supposed to be effective enough that the person selling the "plug in" thinks you'll be able to make money by utilizing their template in your business. But, be careful, this is usually never the case...or, if the product itself happens to be true quality, it most likely will require some work on your part, especially with "ready made" websites. That "work" is driving traffic to the site and building a list.

More often than not, "plug-ins" are for people who have no product or want to get rolling fast. If you sign up for something that is a "plug into this already made website and start earning cash now" type of thing, it means you might have someone who will give you website templates, graphics, hosting, etc...something "ready made", you'd just need to put it on your domain and drive the traffic yourself. All in all, I wouldn't ever utilize such a service if it was a "plug in" site.

Why? Because when all is said and done, you are the one responsible for driving traffic to that site and you'll only be selling someone else's products.

However, if you are referring to a "plug in" template that will give you a good sales letter or article, that may be another story all together. Some templates are great and help the newbie successfully perform certain tasks, fast. Plug ins can be great short cuts! For instance, Yanik Silver has a great classic product that is really a template for writing great sales letters. It's called "Instant Sales Letters". The framework of a good sales letter is there, the user (you) just has to put in the right words to make it meaningful to your product. So far, Yanik's Instant Sales Letters is the only "plug-in" product I have found that works very well on the Net. I could be wrong, I am sure there's others, I just haven't seen any.

I have "templated" emails that I use for JV's, I just fill in what is relevant to the person I am approaching and I'm done. Quick and easy...that's an example of a "plug-in". (I give you my voice mail template in my book)

Bottom line: Be careful what you fall for in the "plug-in" product world. Chances are you'll be making someone else money unless it's a product that you can utilize for your business. Still, if you are a true newbie, plug-ins can be a start but will not get you where you want to be.

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*Welcome New Subscribers!

For those of you just joining, welcome!

Your time is valuable and I'll do my level best to make this "read" time well spent. I am just a regular guy, just like many of you out there...I stuck with it, and now am having a blast doing what I love to do. Keep a positive attitude and you can do just about anything....seems like old news, but it works and we all can use a little reminding now and then.

Please forward this e-zine in its entirety to any friends or colleagues who you think may find it useful. Or, refer someone by using the button at the bottom of the page.

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*Freebie of this issue

This issue's freebie can be found in the "Starting Smart Community Chest"

Click the following link and use this info to gain access:
*Username is "communitychest" without the quotation marks (" ")
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*Copyright and Publisher Info
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"Starting Smart" is copyright 2003 by Karl Augustine.
No part of this publication may be reproduced
without consent from the publisher.

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