I.M. Success Strategies

Posts Tagged ‘selling’

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The simple answer is when it does not sell. Now while that may sound like a bit of a throwaway line it does not make it any less true.

The function of a sales letter is fairly basic but a basic letter will not get the job done think about the last time you walked into a store and after you told the assistant what you wanted, say a camera, if all you were told was “Here are the cameras, this is what they cost let me know when you pick one”. How likely do you think you would be to hand over your cash at the till?

Before I go into the differing areas of the letter with you there are two things to remember. The first being, as much if not more effort goes into writing the sales letter for a free item or service as goes into a paid one. The paid item already has a perceived value in your readers mind while with a free item you need to convince them of the value. The second thing to remember is that your aim is to get your reader to want the item, there is a saying in marketing circles that people buy what they want not what they need.

Right, now for the breakdown of your letter. Let’s say your product is called Joe’s Wonder Book.

First on your list is the headline/subject line. The headline is your shop window, it is there to grab the interest and make them read on or open the email. Instead of, Use Joe’s Wonder Book To Improve Your Business, you need to create a need in your reader to keep on reading so try something like 3 Simple Changes That Could Double Your Business In One Month. See the difference, already they can see in their mind what doubling their business would mean to them and if they can do it in one month just by doing 3 simple things it must be worth having a look at. Mission one completed.

Now that you have them reading you need to get them on your side and wanting to know more. The best way for this is to personalise the letter, by this I don’t mean having their name plastered all over it but by making it seem as though it has been written just to them.

One of the simplest ways is to open the letter with a few well chosen questions, but they do need to be worded in such a way that the answers are already known. Something like,

Want to stay one step ahead of your competition?

Do you feel that your business could grow quicker if only you knew how?

Another thing not to forget is the power of just the right amount of fear, fear that their competitors might know something they don’t or that they are not keeping up to date, so you could try,

Do you know how many businesses’s fail because they don’t grow quick enough?

Want to know the one thing that could make sure you are still in business this time next year?

You get the idea. You would of course word these to suit your product but the principles are the same no matter what you are offering. You now have them eager to know more as you have asked the questions that they want the answers to even if they have never asked themselves these question before, all backed up by the fear of not knowing the answers.

In part two we will cover the middle section, the all important closing and the one section that is either left out or even never used that is just as important, in fact could almost double your sales if done correctly.

Dont forget about my free letter writing course, get it HERE

See you then.

Gregg Montgomery

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eBay is the most famous Internet auction site and is becoming even more popular thanks to people wanting to use it to make money.

The site was founded in 1995 and was initially popular with people looking to clear out their homes. Nowadays though there are people who are using eBay to make a living. They are able to make a large amount of money with small amounts of effort.

Of course that doesn’t mean that it’s completely effortless. There are a number of things that you can do to sell on eBay and make a profit.

Competition

It’s very important to mention that there is a lot of competition on eBay. There are hundreds of other businesses which are potentially selling the same products as yourself. This means that you need to make your products stand out from the crowd. It’s very important that you show people why your products are different.

It’s very easy for your auction to get buried with all the thousands of other listings. You should make your auctions stand out. While you could consider using the additional features of eBay including second category and bold items however these are expensive. There is a much better and cheaper way to make your products jump out at people. Anyone learning how to sell on eBay should be aware of these methods.

Search

Around 80% of all eBay buyers will search for what they want using the site’s built in search function. It’s worth noting that the search function is very basic. The only information it will check by default is the title of the listing. Few people actually bother to click the “title and description” option when searching. This means that the words included in your title are very important.

You only have 80 characters to work with so you need to make every single one count. Make sure you type as much as you can and don’t just have a short title. That said don’t use @@@@ or “look” to highlight your auctions. People know that this happens and will avoid auctions where you try to do this. It also makes your auction look very unprofessional.

The title should be descriptive and contain the keywords which people would normally search for when looking to buy whatever you are selling. Put in the brand, what it is, and also the model number. This will ensure that anyone who reads your auction is targeted and may be interested in buying it.

The keywords that you choose to use are very important and need some careful consideration. Some keywords are over used while others return very few results. You can use eBay Pulse to find the most popular keywords that people are searching for.

Photos

When deciding how to sell on eBay you must take photos of your item. These need to be photos of the actual items that you are selling. Get yourself a cheap digital camera if you don’t already have one. It will make your products much more desirable and attractive.

Learning how to sell on eBay isn’t difficult, it’s just something that you need to spend time learning. There’s nothing really difficult and you shouldn’t have any problem selling products on eBay.

Thanks to Amanda O’Brien