And without these 4 basic steps, you are sure to fail! So please read on?



My friend, I'm able to help show you the way today because I've spent 37 years in marketing. Creating numerous direct mail and catalog companies as well as showed numerous marketers how to make big money. Hundreds big name catalog companies have paid me big bucks to help them improve their response!

A number of years ago, when I started in Internet marketing, I already knew the marketing secrets, I knew how to make money.

When I see these hopeful entrepreneurs today trying to make money of their websites, I realize that so many of them are doomed to failure. Some of them may have snazzy, products, great ideas, lots of enthusiasm and the ability to create a powerful website, but there's more?

Before you even start marketing your website, make sure these 4 building blocks of websites are in place or you are libel to stumble. And please, don't leave a single one out!

Here goes?

Website building block #1:

PERCEIVED AVAILABILITY: You have to be the one they need to go to for this product you offer. They must feel that you are the best or only one that has it!

Thousand of websites may be offering this same product, but you must stand out. That's why I said ?Perceived? Availability. Reality doesn't count, it's what's in that prospective customers mind that really matters.

Now how to we make them feel that this product is more readily available from you than anyone else?

Somehow you must make your website and the product or product line seem like one. Don't just put together a snazzy looking website and then throw in some products. Your website has to appear to think, eat and breath that product.

What about your design? Your color scheme? Your writing style? Even your website name?

OK, let's say you are selling crates of Florida Oranges. I hope you don't have a blue or pink border around that website. Make it orange. Have a border of orange branches with big, luscious oranges hanging off those branches.

Make it look like you are Mr. Orange, not someone just reselling a few oranges off their computer in their New Hampshire apartment. We do this by showing the steps to harvesting and packing those oranges. And then theirs a shot of you holding up a big, juicy orange.

This is something that some of us more successful marketers learned many years ago, people like to buy from people. Today, you'll find so many cold websites. You don't even know who's behind it or even where they are at!

Show them who you are, tell them a little about you, talk to them! Yes, have a lot of friendly copy on your website that appears to be coming from you. Can't do that? OK, check out my website copywriting secrets.

OK, now you are talking like someone who really loves these oranges, your website makes them feel like they are right there in those orange groves.

Want to really cinch it? Really convince them that you are Mr. Orange? Have a sidebar with orange facts. Like the secrets it takes to growing great oranges. Don't know how to do that? Better check out my website copywriting secrets!

Now you can sprinkle some orange recipes throughout your website. Are there really such things as orange recipes? My mother used to make an orange and onion salad. But don't use that, my brother and I hated it. Let's stick to some orange smoothie or orange cocktail drink recipes.

Now that you look talk and act like oranges, why would they buy from someone else? Let's not chance it, let's go in for the kill.

The oranges you are selling have a special ingredient! What is it? Don't ask me, they are your oranges. I'm sure there is something special or different you can find to play up.

Years ago in the marketing business, I discovered that you could pull out a benefit or feature that was in the products everyone else was offering. And then play it up and it would appear (remember, we are talking about appearances not reality) that only your product had that benefit.

I remember when the FDA outlawed certain additives in chicken. And along came Tyson advertising that there chicken didn't have it. Of course all other chicken didn't have it either.

Of course Vitamin D is played up in advertising oranges. But what if your oranges had Vitamin D3? Wouldn't everyone want them then? You are the only one advertising it, it must be exclusive with your oranges! (I believe that the Vitamin D in oranges is Vitamin D since that's what we take in from the sun.)

Now that we have them sold (we hope) on our oranges, we must be sure they don't do some of that price comparison stuff that's so easy on the Internet. After all the work we've done, we don't want some price-cutter to steal our customer!

Do we lower our prices to compete? How are we going to make those big bucks if we give everything away? Why don't we throw in some extra stuff? Another bunch of oranges? A gift? Some kind of special orange slicing gizmo that they've never seen before?

One habit I developed is hating to mail out anything that doesn't have an offer in it and won't bring me in new orders. I like free gifts like orange recipe books. They can be cheap to produce plus you can be pitching your oranges with each one and have a special offer or discount coupons scattered in it!

Years ago there used to be a little 4 page newsletter format brochure called the ?Cheese Lover's Club? it was stuffed so full of marketing genius. They gave the owner a French name, Pierre something, actually he was from Brooklyn.

These were the days when you couldn't get the gourmet cheeses and your local market. Such as the Huntsman and all kinds of exciting cheeses. I loved it. Sure you probably paid a lot for that cheese, but you always thought you were getting a bargain because you got all those little free gifts. The more you spent, the more gifts you could choose. I loved all those cheese slicing knives and stuff like that. I ate a lot of cheese, spent a lot of money, but had a lot of fun.

See that's what I'm talking about! Market the hell out of them, make it fun and exciting and they'll keep coming back and thanking you for taking their money!

I wouldn't have even considered buying my cheese from anyone else. Can you build that into your website? If your website isn't all that it can be, better drop everything and check out my website critique offer!

Can't figure out how to create an image out of thin air for your website?

Here's another example:

Gevalia coffee. How many consumers pay inflated prices for that crap? (Ooops, can I say that in an articlel?) Come on, it comes out of Iowa. Did you think it really came from Sweden? They don't grow coffee anywhere near Sweden and I'm sure they don't ship it to Sweden for special roasting.

A number of years ago I sold a house I owned in Connecticut to General Foods? top coffee expert (General Foods must have paid him a lot to afford this house I sold him, it sat on top of a hill, had 7 bedrooms, 6 baths, offices, library, wine cellar and electric entrance gates).

Anyway, he was telling me about his hand in creating Gevalia and a little about quality of the coffee!

But there's an image created by Gevalia. You can drink that coffee and be taken back to a cozy kitchen table overlooking some foggy seaport in Stockholm. The merchandise such as coffee cups and canisters with the Gevalia logo help to promote the image.

OK, go ahead and create an image like Gevalia for your website.

Ooops, this turned out to be a long article and I only covered the first one out four necessary building blocks of a successful website.

Why don't you join me back at my website and we'll cover the other 3 steps. Go ahead, and there might even be some extra surprises for you!