I walked into my favorite software store (chances are you've done this yourself) and I searched through the various titles for what I was wanting. There were two that stood out in particular. Both had the basic features that I wanted. Both were priced approximately the same. As I weighed the benefits of each, the products were similarly interesting to me.

Which one did I choose? I went with Product A. And here's why.

Product A was in a nice 8"X10" box, with lots of large printing and bright graphics. Product B was in a small CD case - no box - just a shrink-wrapped CD jewel case. Same price. Same benefits. Same features.

Different look.

One was PRESENTED in a much more physically attractive manner. One APPEARED to be more, simply because of PACKAGING.

Now, once I got home and opened the box, want to know what I found?

One small, shrink-wrapped CD jewel case.

There wasn't anything extra in that box. No special surprises. Nothing different than what I would have received by purchasing Product B.

With all factors considered, the only reason I made my purchase choice was because of appearance. Perceived value. The packaging made the difference.

Online, things aren't much different. You want the right package. And that means some kind of artwork that visually represents your product. Whether it is an eBook cover, a software box, ezine pic or some other artwork, you need something that increases your perceived value, simply because of its appearance.

"Thank You" Page. Every website has its share of "thank you" pages. "Thank you for your order." "Thank you for subscribing to our ezine." "Thank you for requesting our free report." These pages are a great way to present a backend offer.

"Welcome" Email. Whether it's a "welcome to our newsletter mailing list" or a "thank you for your order" or a "here is the information you requested" email, these are PERFECT opportunities to mention a backend offer.

Freebie. Remember those free reports and that eCourse and those other freebies we talked about earlier? Don't forget to have backend offers in place in each of them. You can use "sponsor" ads, product recommendations in the content themselves, P.S., and "sidebars" to upsell the customer to an additional order.

Future Follow-Ups. Whether it is an offer placed inside each daily lesson of an eCourse, or in a follow-up email saying "Did you have any questions about the free eBook you downloaded?", or in a solo mailing to the list of contacts you built, there should always be future follow-ups…and future offers.

The fact is, hiding in each article may be an idea for a niche product that you hadn’t even thought of — I'm not suggesting plagiarism though.

Let’s say you wanted to create an info-product on how to be a better putter. But when you start reading through some articles, you read a few about golf-specific exercises, and decide that fitness may be another niche to target within the larger niche market of golfers.

Who knows, maybe this product goes on to be your best-seller, and you never would have thought of it had you not read an article or two.

In some cases, you can reprint the articles in your own product.

Remember when we discussed how many experts will allow you to interview them totally free of charge? Well the same is true for people who write articles.

More times than not, if someone has published an article to a webpage, they’ll allow you to reprint it word-for-word in your info-product. Some people may want you to include a brief bio or a link back to their site, but who cares? It’s totally free content!

Just keep in mind that not everyone will allow you to reprint their content, so do your due diligence and get their permission BEFORE you add their copyrighted material to your product.

There are hundreds of different phobias that motivate people to make purchases. People buy life insurance because they fear dying prematurely and leaving their family financially strapped. We buy exercise equipment because we fear gaining weight or getting out of shape. We buy alarm systems because we fear we are going to be violated in some way.

Bottom line: We make a lot of purchases because of our fears, on things that are supposed to ease our fears. By encouraging fear from your prospects, you have a better chance of making them decide to buy from as well as helping them with your solution.

Choose A Better Subject

Wouldn't it be great if every writer could choose only the writing assignments pertaining to subject matters they enjoy?  Things they're interested in or have special knowledge of?  Unfortunately, not all writing projects are exciting and involve subjects that the writer absolutely loves.  In fact, many are based on subjects writers know absolutely nothing about or that are flat out boring. 

However, as an eBook author, you have the CHOICE OF SUBJECT.  One of the most important things you can ever do to overcome the struggle to write, is to choose things you are PASSIONATE about to write about. 

Think about it — you're at the dinner table, or you have friends over…what do you talk about?  What gets you excited?  What is it that you naturally start raising your voice in exuberance to share?  What is it that gets you up out of your seat to elaborate on?

Write about what you ENJOY.  It's hard for me to personally write about dog obedience.  I have no knowledge on the subject, no experience on the subject and no real desire for the subject.

But, I could write on the joys of golf all day long! :o)

Words naturally flow when you are PASSIONATE about the subject.

Look In Parallel

One successful way to get past Writer’s Block is to look at both the problem and solution in parallel.  Start relating the problem to a similar obstacle you've hurdled in the past.  What do they have in common?  Then, look at how the problem was solved and see if any or all of that solution can be used for the current problem.

A pastor at my church calls this "forgotten faith."  He talks about how when we face a new hurdle or obstacle in life, we become frustrated and frightened because we FORGET about how God pulled us through something similar in the past.  And we worry in vain.

The same thing applies to writer's block.  We find ourselves facing some kind of obstacle, some problem and we panic.  Instead, it's important to remember the past.  How did we get through it last time?  What worked to overcome the writer's block?

Draw on your experiences, which will help you meet and beat your new challenges in similar ways that  you beat your challenges from the past.

Listen To Music

Music is always inspiring.  If you are writing an eBook on dating or relationships or marriages, put on some nice, romantic music.  Allow the instruments and lyrics to create a mood that you can draw from.  Whatever type of writing you're working on, choose music that fits the subject and just allow your thoughts to start rolling in.

Whether the music is classical, opera, jazz, ballads, or rock and roll, each style has magic.  As a writer, you can connect with another artist and envision the setting for your book based on the music.  An example is Enya.  One of her first CD’s had a song that was romantic, mystical, and almost poetic.  As that song is played, a person can envision a Roman coliseum, filled with lions, chariots and gladiators.  It's very powerful music.  Allow your mind to open as you listen to the music and you'll soon be filling page after page of information.

You might be surprised at how inspired you become after listening to some music.

Use A Dictionary/Thesaurus.

Dictionaries and Thesaurus’ can be a writer's best friend.  These are great tools for Writer’s Block in that they offer words, phrases, meanings we haven't even considered.

No matter what the subject, a dictionary or thesaurus can open up and provide ideas completely missed.  When you become stuck, or your mind goes blank, take a word from your writing and start looking at the different meanings or comparisons.  You will be pleasantly surprised at how useful these are.

Use Quotations

A proven way to succeed in writing when ideas don't come easily is to use quotations.  Finding famous quotes from United States Presidents, Diplomats, Actors, Scientists, Inventors and the like, always makes for good reading and inspiration.

For example, American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once stated “Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.  Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage.  As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.”

Cool, huh?

Did you also notice that I actually USED A QUOTE in this tip as PART OF THE CONTENT. 

I'll let you ponder on that one for a bit. 

A free report is a great way to capture email addresses if you don't have time to publish an ezine on a regular basis. You can continue to generate new leads to your list with the same report. You can offer the same report for years and continue to do well with it. No added work. No publishing deadlines. It's all automated.

The thing about free reports is this: they are a dime a dozen. Everybody's got one. And everybody is trying to generate leads with them so they can build their contact list.

But people have become tired of handing out their email addresses for these free reports that tend to be of little value anyway, so you've got to do something different. You've got to have an attention-grabbing title to your report that virtually every targeted visitor to your site would be interested in.

So you gotta have a report title that grabs them from the get-go. And your report better deliver what it promises.

That sounds very logical and it does work — to some extent — but then many of the marketers who give away their products for free sometimes can't justify the time and effort spent in creating their products.

Well, they may be right about one thing. More people may read their product, but there is no guarantee for that — There are plenty of products that cost money that are seen by way more people than free products. 

A problem that these marketers encounter is that there are a lot of freebie seekers out there.  Sometimes many of those who downloaded the free products are exactly the kind of people who wouldn’t of been willing to pay for a product in the first place… so would they be willing to pay for the products that you’re promoting?

However, if your free product is distributed to an exceptionally large crowd (which is not the usual case), even though the purchase rate is low, you may still make good affiliate income from it. But then again, don't be mistaken and draw the wrong conclusion that free products equal more affiliate sales.

Make sure they have money to spend. This sounds simple, but you have to make sure that people are going to be willing to spend money, order to learn about their interest. You don’t want to target people who don’t have much disposable income.
 
Make sure that they are repeat buyers. If they have spent money in the past on products in their market, then they are willing to do it again. They are always looking to gain more knowledge and they have already proven that.

People who have a passion. You want people that eat, sleep and drink that market. They will do anything to pursue their interest in that market and are willing to pay top dollar for items that are related to their interest.

People who are insatiable when it comes to the market. They never get enough of that certain market. No matter what they buy and what they learn, they are always wanting more, more, more.

An available market that’s easy to reach. You need to have a market that is easy to find and easy to contact. Whether that is online or offline. You need to be able to easily advertise to that market. You need people that are readily available to you.

The trend right now in sales copy is the long sales letter. It has been around for awhile now and has been very successful for many, many internet marketers.

I wish that things didn’t change and that one way of doing things would work for the rest of my life. That way I could master a way of doing things and never have to learn a new way of doing thing. The problem is that things are always changing and the long sales letter will eventually go out of favor. I think that it’s going to be sooner rather than later. I think that it’s starting to get phased out right now.

I believe that there are many reasons for this. It’s usually always a number of things that go into changing a trend.

One reason is simple. Time. People have less time on their hands these days. They have work and then they have to deal with the kids then they have to have a life of their own. People want a solution to their problems immediately. The quicker that they can get a solution the better. If I have a cold and want to find herbal remedies to cure my cold. I’m not going to be in the mood to read a long sales letter.

Another reason is that people get tired of seeing the same thing over and over again. The vast majority of the people that buy products from sales pages online are repeat buyers. An example of this is people that buy money making e-books that deal with making money online. They start out not knowing anything so they buy an e-book about it. A lot of times applying what they’ve learned from the product doesn’t work for them, so they buy another and another.

People like this are always looking for more information. It doesn’t have to be the making money online market. It can be any other market or niche. Golfer’s are usually passionate about golf. They are always looking to gain more knowledge and make their game better. They aren’t going to stop at one product. The reason that I’m making this point is that these people are going to be looking at sales pages over and over again. They are going to get sick of reading this big long sales page and start scrolling down to see your price. That’s going to hurt you for a few reasons. One is that unless your price is bargain basement, then it’s going to hurt you. It’s also going to hurt you because these people are even bothering to read your sales letter. If they would of read your sales letter then you might of got a sale from them.

Another reason is that long sales letters are a lot of work. Who wants to work more than the have to? I certainly don’t. I would use that time to get more work done or use it to have fun.

Well you can always outsource work and I’m big fan of that if you can find good people to work for you. There are a couple problems with outsourcing you sales copy and hiring someone to write it for you. The first problem is finding a good copy writer. There are so many people out there that write sales copy that are not very good at it. So you’re paying for bad copy, not a good thing. When you find good copywriters they are so expensive that a lot of people simply can’t afford them. One of the reason’s that they are so expensive is because they write these big long sales pages.

What if you could hire the best copy writers and pay them a fraction of what they were asking? Well you could hire them to write short sales letters. I think that more and more people will start doing this.

What good does a big long sales letter do if it’s a bad sales letter, that is written poorly? It doesn’t do much good at all.

Another reason is that there are a lot of bad products out there. A person bought the product mainly because of the sales page and then when they got the product it was a lemon. Chances are that the product had a long sales letter. People are going to remember that and when they see this big long sales page again, they are going to think twice about buying it because they know that they were swindled into buying the product because they were convinced by the big long sales page.

Having a short sales page sends the message that this person is confident enough in the product that they don’t need to write a big long sales page. They don’t have to go out there and hire a professional copy writer.

1. Start your business with your eyes geared towards your long term success.
2. Set and maintain goals that can be accomplished with long term objectives.
3. Manage growth carefully, without hindering your long term benefits.
4. Understand your market and how you belong in it.
5. Be the trend setter, cautiously.
6. Learn from both the good and bad of your past.
7. Invest wisely, decide wisely too.
8. Grow wisely without waste.
9. Manage your funds wisely, tightly, frugally, carefully.
10. Learn to market your business correctly, effectively.