This is the last part of my Internet Business Model Series. I’ve mentioned on how to set up the front end of your internet business, whereby you convert your visitor at your squeeze page to subscribers. Now at the back end of it, you can send out emails to build your relationship and trust with your subscribers.

There are 2 types of autoresponder e-mails:

Follow-up e-mails – Automatically dispensed on an interval to your subscriber until they are finished.

Broadcast e-mails - Can be sent instantly at anytime. This is perfect for time-sensitive offers.

You must have these 2 types of e-mails if you want to make sustainable income online. Why use follow-up emails? The first obvious reason is that you can automatically follow-up your prospects who didn’t buy your product on the first contact. Majority of your prospects would not buy your product on the first contact. So when they join your mailing list, you don’t want to be there all the time sending e-mails every day. Therefore, what you do is to have a series of follow-up e-mails and let your autoresponder dispense them on an interval.

For example if your subscriber joins in on the first day, he will get a welcome e-mail. And on Day 2, he will get another e-mail. And on Day 3, he gets yet another different e-mail altogether but all the e-mails have one thing in common: They all pre-sell your main product, which in effect will help you make your sale.

This is great too because you also prolong the life of your product. Did you know that a lot of Internet marketers have a problem where they have to keep creating new products all the time in order to make a good monthly income?

This is because they are very poor at selling the same product over and over again. They are unable to find new customers. So as a result, they try to create new products over and over again to make a month’s end.

Now by using follow-up e-mails, you can create a product just once and focus on getting traffic to build your mailing list. Therefore, no matter which period of time your prospects join your mailing list, he will end up seeing the same products you offer. This way, you will increase your chances of people buying your product over time and it prolongs the life span of your product. Don’t you think this is an ingenious concept?

Now what do you do when all else fails? You endorse other products. It doesn’t have to be your own products. It can even be your competitor’s products. You can join an affiliate program and promote for a commission. It is a clear that if your prospect does not want to buy your product, he may eventually buy from your competitors instead. So it makes sense to promote an affiliate product and get a commission in the process.

Notice that by putting up a series of follow-up e-mails and storing them into your autoresponder, you can promote various products at different periods of time. The longer your prospect’s stays on your mailing list, he will see a lot of different offers along the period of time until he cancels his subscription or until the follow-up e-mails are finished.

Here are other ways to make money.

You can sell other people’s products, which I was just talking about. You can sell other products of your own. If the prospect doesn’t buy your main product on first contact, you can sell him other products that you own.

You can also be an affiliate for other people’s products where you can promote for commissions. This is great because this means you don’t have to create the product, offer customer support and yet you earn a commission from the sale of that product.

Then, there is also selling advertising space. You can sell advertising space to interested advertisers who want to advertise their services or their product to your mailing list. Therefore, you can charge e-mail advertising space.

Now, there is this thing called ‘CPA’ (Cost-Per-Action) whereby you get paid for every action your subscribers take. It can be that of taking a survey, signing up to a mailing list or attending a seminar preview offline in any part of the world. This is what it calls a Cost-Per-Action or also known as Pay-Per-Lead. CPA is an exploding industry and it’s becoming exponentially profitable so I recommend you to try it out as well.

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In Part 2 of my Internet Business Model article series, I presented 4 easy steps on how to format and write your squeeze page which is essential in capturing your visitors and getting them to subscribe to your e-mails. Once that is done, you will need an autoresponder to manage your online business.

Basically, An autoresponder is a system that allows you to collect the list of emails you captured from your squeeze page and manage your leads by sending e-mails out to them. Therefore, having an autoresponder is essential. Having the right autoresponder is extremely important. There are only 2 autoresponders available today that I would recommend. They are:

1. GetResponse.com, which is very good and reliable
2. Aweber.com, which is also another popular choice

All in all, you can just get either one of them, it’s your choice. These are some of the top autoresponder services that top marketers are using today. They cost only about $20 a month or so. Or if you subscribe to a yearly plan, you can save even more. Now this is something you cannot afford not to invest. It is very important! I cannot emphasize the importance of having a good autoresponder enough. It is like the core engine of your Internet business.

An autoresponderone is essential because if you don’t have one, you won’t have a mailing list. You can’t build a profitable list without it. And if you don’t have a mailing list, you don’t have a business. If you want to be successful and build a solid 6-figures or 7-figures Internet business, you must have an autoresponder. This is where you expend your mailing list, manage your leads, send out e-mails to everyone in one place and build a trustworthy relationship with your subscribers. The truth is that simple. You cannot afford to go cheap on this and say you don’t need an autoresponder. Take my advice on this. You need one and I hope I made myself clear on that.

All this while, I have been talking about opt-ins. What are these opt-ins actually? There are 2 types of opt-ins:

1. Single opt-in
2. Double opt-in.

Single opt-in is quite simple. It is basically a process where your subscriber immediately enters your mailing list after filling in his details. In other words, when a visitor puts in his name and e-mail address, his subscription to your mailing list is confirmed right away and therefore, he is on your mailing list.

Then there’s the second type, which is called double opt-in. The process is a little bit complicated but a lot safer and you will get a more qualified leads. After signing up, your subscriber needs to check his inbox for a verification e-mail and he must click on the verification link to confirm his subscription. That is what the double opt-in does.

Some Internet Marketers prefer the double opt-in feature for their autoresponder because if they use a single opt-in, they might be getting a lot of traffic into their squeeze page but might also have people who are not serious. These people might put in fake e-mail addresses or trash e-mail addresses. These are the kind of leads you would rather not have in your list.

After a subscriber confirms his/her subscription to your mailing list, he/she will arrive at this confirmation ‘Thank You’ page. It’s a very simple ‘Thank You’ page where you acknowledge that your visitor is now officially subscribed to your mailing list. That’s because your subscribers need to know that they are already on your mailing list.

But did you know that you can also turn this page into a great virtual real estate for advertisements? A lot of average Internet marketers don’t do this and I think it’s a waste of precious space if you don’t monetize this Thank You page. You can put in your affiliate links or a sales letter to one of your products, it’s your choice. The most important thing is do not let this page go to waste. And since you own every web page you have in your website, you might as well make full use of them.

In my final part on “How to Set Up Your Internet Business Model”, I will discuss on sending follow up e-mails to your mailing list and why are these follow up emails important to the success of your Online Business.

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Unlike the sales letter whereby it converts visitors into customers, the sole purpose of a Squeeze Page is to convert visitors into subscribers. However like the sales letter, your Squeeze Page is also a simple one-page website. There is nothing else on it except an opt-in form and perhaps essential links – like your customer support, how to contact you, your earning’s disclaimer and your privacy policy pages. These are definitely essential.

So once your visitors fill in your opt-in form, you funnel them into your opt-in mailing list which in effect, this allows you to build your own mailing list of prospects that you can later turn into customers. This is the mission of the Squeeze Page: to convert visitors into subscribers.

Now, this is very important because you see, if you use a sales letter to convert visitors into customers, let’s just say your sales letter is doing very well. You are converting at let’s say, 10% which means for every 100 visitors, you are getting 10 customers. Now this is a good conversion.

But no matter how good your conversions are, there will always be a big percentage of people who do not buy your product on first contact. And if you are achieving at a 10% conversion rate, this means that the other 90% of the traffic is not buying your product.

So where does this traffic go?

It goes wasted if you do not attempt to monetize them or at least, collect their leads. And this is where the importance of a Squeeze Page falls in. As already mentioned earlier, not everybody buys on first contact. Buyers are naturally skeptical. So you have to build a big rapport and relationship with them before they can start to trust you first.

Next, you will want to know how to effectively format your squeeze page.

Believe it or not, formatting your Squeeze Page is actually very, very simple. In fact, that’s an understatement. It’s actually oversimplified. A Squeeze Page consists of 4 main components and that’s all. It’s called:

1. Headline
2. Sub-Headline
3. Benefits
4. Call-to-Action

The Headline

In the headline, it has to be very compelling and you must qualify your prospecting visitor. Why should he subscribe to your mailing list? This is why the headline is very important. If you want to study great headlines, just take a look at the newspaper or great ad copies. You will notice which headline has captured your attention in the newspaper or which advertisement captured your attention the most. Plus, you’ll notice that they always use some really convincing words like: “Guaranteed” “Secrets” “How to…” “Discover…” These are some of the very powerful words you can use in your headline.

Sub-headline

The sub-headline acts as a hook which captures the attention of your prospects and causes them to continue reading. So what you need to apply here are actually the same principles you apply in writing a sales letter.

Benefits

There must also be benefits for your subscribers. Just because subscribing to your mailing list is free, it doesn’t mean that people will just part away with their names and e-mail addresses just like that. You need to give them an extremely good reason to opt-in and this is where your benefits come in. You write your benefits in bullet points and convince the person why he or she should join your mailing list. You can come up with some examples like:

• “Free tips and tricks on how to do something”
• “Secrets to…that cannot be found anywhere else”
• “Quick solutions to big problems”

This is very important because you’d want to put foot in the door.

Call to Action

Last but not least, you’d want to have a call to action. In this case, the only call to action your Squeeze Page has to offer is to get the visitors to sign up to your mailing list by parting his name and e-mail address to you. Do not ask for more information as this would reduce the likelihood of someone opting in.

One extra tip: Using video in your squeeze page will increase your opt-in rate. You can incorporate those 4 components in the form of a video. Below is an example of my squeeze page.

Next thing you need to get is an autoresponder.  In my next post, I will explain what is an autoresponder, its function, and most importantly, its significant in your Internet Business.

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There are thousands of affiliate marketing programs out there. My advice would be, before spending any of your efforts, it is essential that you look into some important considerations before embarking into any marketing campaigns.

Step 1: Choose Your Niche

So the first step to take is to choose your niche you want to focus on and then gather a list of related products within the niche to promote. The idea of choosing the right niche is to find a niche of hungry buyers. This means targeting people who are ready to part with their money to buy a product from you. These are people who need to get their problem solved and demands a solution immediately. Thereafter, you would want to promote to this same group of people over and over again with related products within this niche.

Step 2: Be Picky About Products To Promote

The second step is to be picky with the product to promote. You would want to only market products that are high in demand, of high quality, fairly priced and have low refund rates. A good practice here is to go through the merchant’s sales offer. From there, gauge for yourself if you were a prospect, would you want to make a purchase from them or not. You would also want to know what the top selling products are and how satisfied are their customers with the products. It is good to find out some of the feedbacks from customers and also other affiliate marketers before you make a selection.

Step 3: Do The Math!

The third step is to do the math! Calculate how much the commission per sale is. Do not get overly excited with the percentage payout. No doubt some merchants offer a high commission payout of 75%. But ultimately, you’d want to crunch out the numbers in dollars and cents. You should also find out or forecast how well the product converts into sales. This way you can project how much you can spend on advertising or outsourcing and also how many sales you would need to make to reach your target profit.

Step 4: Research On Your Merchant

The last step is to research on your merchants. You’d want to get a good overview of the merchant’s reputation in the industry. Find out from customers reviews about the product and customer services offered. Also take notice what other affiliates are saying about the affiliate program and merchant. Make sure the merchant has good standing records, pays on time and provide sufficient affiliate tools and resources.

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Essentially, the affiliate marketing business model is also known as the third-party proprietor. It is one of the easiest and most effective methods to get started and make money online. In a nutshell, an affiliate marketer promotes other people’s products via referral and then gets paid a commission for their marketing efforts. This means that as an affiliate marketer, there’s no hassle of having a product of your own, managing payment processors or even handling customer service support.

How an affiliate marketer makes money online is simply by referring customers to the merchant’s sales offer. Another benefit of affiliate marketing is that you can reap a significant share of the profit on each sale, with less than half of the hassle. By a significant share, it ranges anything between 5% all the way up to 75%!

Affiliate marketing has also been growing in popularity in various industries in the recent years. The reason for this is because more and more business owners are realizing the power of affiliate marketing by leveraging on other people’s marketing skills. On the affiliate marketing end, it is so easy because affiliates avoid the trouble on product creation and customer support. Yet as an affiliate, they still get to practice all the essential marketing skills that will bring successes into any business.

The first thing you need to understand about affiliate marketing is that it is a “pay per action” model. Affiliate marketing works by having an arrangement between the merchant, also known as the product vendor, and the affiliate marketer. Only when an affiliate successfully sells a product or generates a lead, which is the action, then the merchant pays the affiliate a commission.

In other words, the affiliate marketer gets compensated based on either the visitors they referred make a purchase or fill out a form by providing their contact information. The affiliate then gets rewarded with commission, which can range between 5 – 75% of the product price.

This referral process works by using a unique link that allows tracking for both the merchant and the affiliate. Therefore, when an affiliate is doing their promotion, the sales will most definitely be accredited to the affiliate. The merchant on the other hand will notice which affiliate is performing well and in some cases, provide incentives or resources to assist in the affiliate marketing process.

Lets look at the process flow of the affiliate marketing model. We begin with the affiliate marketer.Very simply an affiliate marketer visits an affiliate network to find a merchant and a product to promote.Some of the examples of affiliate networks out there are ClickBank, Commission Junction, PayDotCom, and Link Share.

Basically, an affiliate network is a market place which brings affiliates and merchants together. The affiliate network company also handles all tracking and payment processes.When an affiliate identifies a product from the market place that could be profitable to promote, what the affiliate does is to set up a campaign and send targeted traffic to the merchant’s sales offer. This targeted traffic will be the merchant’s potential customers.Thereafter, when a sale or lead is successfully transacted, the merchant then pays the affiliate marketer the stipulated commission.

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Is building an online business worth it? Many people aspire to achieve financial freedom and having a 9 to 5 fix salary job will never get you there. Why? The reason is simple. In the system of employment, you will have to trade time and effort for money. This is also referred to as active income. The moment you stop working, your income stops as well. This means in the employment world, you need to continue working in order to continue getting paid. This type of income is always limited by time. Once you retire or stop working, you will have to rely on your savings and retirement funds which will eventually deplete. Hence, having a 9 to 5 job will only cost us to retire poor. To achieve financial freedom, we have to change our employment mindset and start building assets.

Building your own business is always one of the pillars of financial freedom. Here are some of the reasons why building an online business will help you achieve that:

1. Online Business have a Massive Market

The Internet is growing rapidly. In the year 2009, there are 1.7 billion Internet users worldwide. In terms of the Internet population, there is a growth of 380.3% since 2000 to 2009 and new user penetration of 25.6% in the year 2009. This indicates massive business opportunity online. Furthermore, the Internet is only approximately 20 years old and it still has a tremendous growth potential. Wouldn’t you want to do business with such a huge market that has an explosive potential of growth?

2. Online Business Generates Passive Income

An online business generates passive income, which is the key to achieving financial freedom. Passive income is basically money you receive without having to do much work. It is revenue generated from working once and the stream of income continues as long as your business continues to operate. It is different from earned income whereby you trade your time and effort for money. In building an online business you have to understand the basic principle of leverage. You don’t need to have your own products, an office location, hire your own staff or even keep costly inventory for the products you sell.

3. Ability to Work at Your Own Time

Next an online business allows you to work at your own time in the comforts of your home. You do not need to report to your boss or clock into your office. You are now a business owner. Creating passive income online will free up more time for you where you can enjoy more quality time with your family and friends.

4. You Will Never Get Rich Working for Someone Else

There are a group of people that wouldn’t mind working hard for a fix paycheck. I believe if you are reading this, you are not one of those people. By working for someone else, despite how hard you work; your income will remain the same! You will never get rich working for others. The only people that will be rich, in the expense of your hard work are your boss and the organization you work for. Building your own online business will reward you with unlimited passive income potential. The more effort you put in, the more you’ll earn. This sounds like a better deal isn’t it?

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