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Here’s an experiment for you to try. If you don’t already, get a year’s worth of issues of any one magazine. If possible, make it a business magazine such as Entrepreneur. Now go through each issue of the magazine and see which full page and half page ads repeat month after month, and which ads are only there for one month before they disappear.

Notice the difference between the two types of ads. The ones that appear once and never appear again tend to be feature based and devoid of emotion. The ones that appear month after month are benefit and emotion based.

Why is that? Because ads that run month after month are working. Those that run once and never run again aren’t working. And ads that only highlight features without benefits or emotions do not work.

Now then, there are hundreds of different emotions and you can’t hit every one of them in your ad. So which are the very best to target? According to author Robert Imbriale, you can’t go wrong when you include as many of these 5 motivators as possible into your sales process:

Fear. Fear of missing out, fear of making a mistake, fear of loss, fear of failure – all of these things can work in your favor to get the sale. Show your prospect what will happen to them if they don’t buy your product. A life can completely change and take an entirely different course simply by making the right decision at the right time. Let them know how your product can make that difference, and then show them how awful it would be if they didn’t take that next step.

Every market has a set of fears that is shared by a large percentage of your prospects. If you have the solutions to those fears, or even to just one of those fears, you simply need to tap into the fear and use it to market your product.

For example, use news stories to tie your product in as the solution to a fear. You might use the story of a man who once had everything, got laid off and is now homeless. “Don’t let this be you. Buy our course on how to start your own business today and never worry about your future again.”

Love. Are you surprised? Real, genuine social contact is at an all-time low. Most people don’t even know who their neighbors are. Families are no longer living close to each other. Television and the Internet has become a poor substitute for human contact.

More than ever people need a sense of connection, and you can provide that connection in a myriad of ways. Have a video blog (vlog) where you speak directly to your audience. Host calls and interviews. Create a community around each product, through a Facebook page or forum. Do live calls where people can ask you questions. Become the expert in your niche that your prospects feel they KNOW, and you will get their business.

Example phrases to use:

• Join us
• Meet people just like you
• Be a part of
• Connect with others

Want to take it even further? You’ve heard it a million times – sex sells – and it does. Incorporate a sexy message into your marketing and sales will go up.

Words to use:

• Join us
• Meet people just like you
• Be a part of
• Connect with others

Free Things and Hot Sales. This one needs very little explanation – everyone loves to get a great deal. So for example, if you can offer your latest product on sale with an older product thrown in for free, you’re probably going to make a lot of sales.

Give something away to build your list. Give something else away to get referrals. Give away tidbits of good info. But don’t give away the store. Offer special deals that are time limited – if they snooze, they lose. Your customers will learn to buy quickly or miss out – a good way to combine hot sales with the #1 motivator above – fear.

And one of the most potent of all freebies – the free (or nearly free) trial. Let them try your $197 product for just $10, and then 3 easy payments of $67. Or your monthly membership for just $1, and then $39.99 a month starting in 30 days. Yes, you’ll get cancellations, but you’ll also get a great many sales, too, as more people get to experience your product and decide they want to keep it.

Easy Money. You’d think this powerful motivator couldn’t be applied to every business, but if you try, it’s nearly always possible. For example, if you’re selling a dating book for guys, you might talk about how much more confidence they’ll have when they’re able to date beautiful women – confidence that will greatly enhance all aspects of their lives, including their ability to make money, get a promotion, etc.

If you’re selling an organic gardening guide, you might mention that with their greatly increased yields they’ll have tons of produce to sell beyond what they need for themselves. And of course organic produce is in high demand, so it’s a money maker. If you’re selling a weight loss product, you might talk about how much more energy and confidence they’ll have, leading to more productivity and better opportunities, and so forth.

Be their fairy godmother and make wishes come true. Everyone has dreams. Everyone wants something. Show your prospects – better yet, prove to them that you can grant their wish when they purchase your product, and you’ve got the sale.

Don’t believe it? Think of the one thing you want more than anything else. Now imagine I can prove to you that you can have that very thing, and the way to get it is to simply purchase and use my product. What’s it worth to you to make your dream come true? Probably just about every cent you have.

Here’s your task: Find a way to incorporate four or all five of these motivators into your next sales piece, and watch your response soar!

Quickly now – why do people buy from you? “Find a need and fill it, and you’ll be rich,” right? Probably not. People rush to buy what they want, they often delay to buy what they need. Think about it…

Look at food – does anyone need spicy nacho corn chips? No. They need fruit, vegetables, grains and meats. They don’t need corn chips or snack cakes or cookies or candy. But what do they buy? Junk food. LOTS of junk food.

No one needs fast food, either. 5 minutes of planning in the morning and you can pack a nutritious lunch that’s actually GOOD for you. But what do millions of people do? They stand in line or sit in a drive-thru to buy a meal that is likely to make them feel bad, both after they eat it and again when they step on the scale, all because they WANTED the fast food. They didn’t need it. They would be better off without it. But that doesn’t stop them from going out of their way to get it because they WANT it.

Now then – are you selling to people’s wants, or their needs?

They need to brush their teeth, they want to have a sexy smile. They need to add gas to their car, they want to get to work without being stranded by the side of the road. They need to make money, they want to be rich without working. They need to lose 50 pounds, they want to have the energy to keep up with their kids during the day and still connect enthusiastically with their partner at night.

Are you in the Internet Marketing niche? Marketers need to get traffic, have products to sell and maintain an outstanding reputation online. But marketers WANT to make more money, have more time, worry less, work less, stress less, and be the envy of their ex-coworkers and a hero to their family.

See the difference?

Success is found when you sell what people WANT, not what they need.

You’re about to Skype into a potential JV partner, or talk to a big affiliate on the phone, or meet your fellow marketers at a conference. Making this connection is important – it can mean the difference between years of working together to build your businesses, or not. So, what can you say or do to make them trust you?

Should you try to impress them and wow them with your expertise? Should you be funny and outgoing? Or act like you’re extraordinarily successful?

Really, the answer is none of the above. That’s because the first step in getting people to trust you is to show them how interested you are in them.

Let’s say you’re about to speak to a business prospect. Decide in advance how you’re going to feel about this person. Before you even meet, choose to find them interesting, intriguing, loveable and kind. When you do, you’ll be making them feel as important as they are.

Ask to hear their story. “So tell me how you got to where you are.” Let it come across in your words. “That’s fascinating, tell me more about that.” “I love hearing your story, tell me what happened next.”

Make your energy and your words positive because no one likes to be around negative people.

Another example: When you see who’s calling on caller ID, get happy and think how fascinating they are before you answer the phone, especially if you’re initially annoyed at the interruption.

Creating a positive experience for the other person will naturally lead to the connection you seek.

Connection occurs in those moments when someone else feels understood by you. When they feel that you “get” them. You might use phrases such as, “Me too!” “I thought I was the only one!” “I didn’t realize you enjoy that, I like it too!”

In that “me too” moment, you help that person remember that they are not alone in this world, and that there is at least one other person that “gets” them.

The more “me too” moments you can create, the more points of connection you create.

Here are more tips for creating connections that get people to trust you:

Get permission before offering them your advice. They might be simply telling you their story and not looking for your feedback, so don’t assume. Invite them to consider whether they want you to participate. You might say, “That’s really interesting. I have an idea that might be helpful to you, would you like me to share it?”

In sales, the word “no” is seldom respected. So ask permission before making a presentation of any kind: “It will only take 5 minutes, if you don’t mind my taking that time to share this with you.” Asking permission shows respect and indicates that you think of them as an equal, not someone to be dominated.

Ask for feedback. When offering them information, ask what they think and how they feel about it. “I’d love your thoughts. “Can you tell me your opinion?” “I feel strongly about that, how do you feel?” “What would you do in a situation like that?” “Have you ever done something like this before?”

Be helpful, even if they’re not ready to buy right now or do a joint venture or promote your product right now. Share resources with them, introduce them to people who can help them, and find ways to be an asset to them, not a liability.

Using these methods you’ll build connections, trust, and you’ll grow your network exponentially, thus growing your business.

Do you have domain names sitting around idle? Maybe you bought them with the intention of doing something in particular, but you just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Here’s a cool idea: List them for sale on sedo.com and then forget about them until one of two things happen…

You decide to use them or…

… you get an email from Sedo from someone who is offering to buy one of your domain names.

You never know if or when this might happen, but why not at least give it a shot? One marketer I know of did this with his domains. Six months later, he got an email from Sedo saying someone was offering $100 for one of his domains. He wasn’t interested in taking such a low offer, so he countered with $2,000 just to see what would happen.

The buyer countered with $300, he countered with $1800, and several emails and counteroffers later he sold it for $950. Not bad for a $9 investment. Sedo took a cut and he got the rest.

And while he did have plans for that domain name, he figures he can just choose a different but similar name when the time comes – no big deal.

There’s no guarantee you’ll sell your domains this way, or that if you do, you’ll make a lot of money. But as you know, domains have sometimes sold for ridiculous amounts. There’s no harm or fee for listing your domains, so why not give it a shot and see what happens? You’ve got nothing to lose and potentially a nice fat return for trying it.

Plus, if you’re creative and do some market research on hot topics and keywords, you could potentially start registering new and marketable domains that have a high chance of selling when you list them in a domain marketplace like Sedo, and turn this strategy into a full-time business. Some people are already doing this now… Why not you too?

You might be thinking that you are not qualified to coach anybody on anything. After all, what kind of an expert are you to be telling others how to run their business or their life, right? Actually, the odds are you couldn’t be more wrong. I’ll show you WHY and HOW…

When we think of coaching, we think of it on a grand scale. For example, helping someone to turn their entire life around, or to start and run a brand new business from scratch.

But those are just two types of coaching and not what we’ll be talking about here.

When you get into online marketing, what is one of the first pieces of advice that you receive? To choose a particular niche, and then narrow that niche down to a profitable target market you can help.

Coaching can work the same way. Instead of trying to be all things to all people, or to teach someone every facet and nuance of starting a business from scratch, why not coach them on that one thing you are very, very good at?

Maybe you’re excellent at writing, or at getting ghost writing assignments. Maybe you are terrific at website building, or at SEO, or at getting traffic.

Or maybe your specialty has nothing to do with online marketing, but instead you are a master at meditation, or organizing your life, or at prioritizing or dealing with ADHD. There are infinite possibilities. And if you think about it for just a moment, you will realize that you are really, really good at a certain something that others want to learn.

It’s by getting so specific that you can become a very successful coach starting right now.

Maybe you are a master at deciphering a holy book. Or you are amazing at helping people over 50 lose weight and get fit. Maybe you’re terrific at helping people find their sense of direction in life and discovering what they are meant to do. Or perhaps you can help someone present their business in a way that makes it stand apart from all others. The list is endless.

What skills do you have? Do you want to share them with others? Would you enjoy honing those skills even more as you teach them? Because when you become a coach, a side benefit is you become even more skilled and proficient on your subject. You get better and better at teaching it. And thus you can charge more and more as you progress and as you get positive testimonials from your clients.

Getting back to the online marketing realm, forget about trying to coach a new marketer into building their 6 figure business and instead focus on just one aspect, such as adding 1,000 subscribers a week to their list, or on creating amazing content, or on using social media to become a star in their niche.

There are tremendous gaps in the coaching realm, and if you can fill one of those gaps you can get more clients than you can even handle.

To do: Once you have chosen your coaching niche, you might create a simple information product on the topic that sells for a low price of perhaps $10 or $25. Then offer your coaching as the upsell.

Write guest posts and do interviews to talk about your specialty. Give lots of good info, but make it clear that if they don’t want to go it alone, you can coach them, too. Spread the word and those folks who need your coaching will step up to claim a spot before they all disappear.

Since the actual coaching can be done through Skype and email, you can coach anyone anywhere in the world.

And once you get really good at teaching your specialty, then you can create a big ticket course that teaches everything you would teach a coaching client. You can then sell this course for $100 to $1,000 as a alternative to your coaching services.

Don’t dismiss this concept thinking that you have nothing to offer. Worse case scenario, you might need to bone up on your skill before you start coaching. But one week of concentrated study can make you more of an expert on your topic than 99.9% of the people on the planet.

You can do this. You can become a coach. And it’s as simple as doing what every good marketer does – finding your specialty that appeals to a small but zealous segment of the market who want what you offer.

Wouldn’t it be terrific if you could go from being Mr./Ms. Marketing Nobody to imediate “guru” status overnight? You’d enjoy instant authority in your niche and a high level of credibility with your potential customers as well as your potential JV partners. People would trust your opinion. You’d be quoted in blog posts and asked to do guest posts…

You could get interviewed. You could join lucrative joint ventures and mastermind groups. Your social media accounts would become magnets to followers and fans. Customers’ sales resistance would go down and your sales would go up, and so forth.

Becoming an ‘overnight’ authority in your niche shaves a few years off of your online marketing career path. You’re taking a quantum leap from being an unknown to being – well, KNOWN in your niche. And you receive all the benefits a known expert in your field gets, only without the years of work.

Sounds pretty good, don’t you think? Yeah, it’s cheating, but it’s not. Who ever said you have to take years and years to accomplish what can be done in a few days or weeks?

Here are 5 ways to do it:

1. Interview others. Oprah wasn’t an expert, she interviewed experts. And by doing so, she became associated with every expert she interviewed. In your case, you’ll want to go much more narrow and deep than Oprah, choosing your targeted niche carefully and then interviewing anyone and everyone in that single niche.

2. Buy named rights products and sell them. These are products sold by big name marketers that allow you to keep their name on the product when you sell it. You’re basically co-featuring with an established expert. At the bottom of the salesletter you can write something like, “From the desk of ‘your name’ and ‘guru’s name.’ Buyers will assume you have partnered with the guru in putting this product out. These types of resale rights generally aren’t cheap, but that plays in your favor as well, since it greatly limits any competition.

3. Create a product yourself, then let a big name marketer be the co-author and co-owner. This heightens your profile and generally brings in a lot of sales from that marketer’s list, as well as from affiliates who promote for that marketer.

4. Write/edit a book full of other people’s articles. Choose a topic and then find articles written by the experts on this topic. Ask their permission to place their articles in your book, giving them full credit and links back to their website. You do the editing, write the introduction, and also add notes at the beginning and end of each article if you choose. But the experts are still doing all the heavy lifting, while you get to associate your name with theirs. In fact, it looks like a collaboration between you and all these big names, with YOUR name on the front cover.

5. Do all 4, along with guest blogging and being active in social media. All of a sudden people will say that they see and hear you everywhere.

Some people take a lifetime to go from the mail room to the boardroom of a company. But this is your business, and YOU make the rules. Don’t wait years to become an expert in your niche – decide to become one today.

Getting traffic isn’t rocket science – it’s actually pretty easy when you know a few of the best tricks pro-bloggers are using every day to get more traffic to their blogs.

Create an not-so-secret inner circle of your best buddies.

Put together a list of your very best and most influential readers. These are the ones who regularly interact with you or post replies to your posts, share your posts with their followers, send you articles, buy your products and so forth.

Put these folks on your special inner circle list, and email them to let them know of their newly attained status. Let them know the benefits – they’ll get to see your posts before the general public and they’ll be apprised of any new offerings, updates and ideas before anyone else.

Solicit their feedback on your posts. This creates a sense of ownership for them and increases the odds they will go out of their way to share your content with their followers. Give them special benefits to thank them for their help, and offer to help them in return.

Make it brain dead easy to share your content.

If content is too difficult to share, your readers and inner circle are less likely to share it. So add the appropriate social sharing buttons for sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Write in-depth content that makes your readers look sexy-smart.

Here’s a little secret: People like to look super smart to their readers and friends. Okay, so maybe it’s not a secret. But the fact is, in-depth articles tend to get shared more because the people sharing them want their friends to think they read in-depth articles. Plus, when someone new lands on your in-depth article, they are more likely to subscribe to get even more info than if they land on a simple fluff piece.

Another secret: Posts with images, lists and videos will attract over 5 times more links than posts containing only plain text. So don’t stop at just the words – add things like images and graphs to make it share-worthy.

Cheat. Just a little.

This isn’t really cheating, but it sure feels like it. Look at your old content and find the pieces that are still relevant, whether they were written 3 months ago or a year ago. Now share them again via social media. This way you get new traffic without having to write new content – how awesome is that?

Write a mini-sales letter to promote each blog post.

Traditionally, when a blogger writes a new post she sends out the title and first paragraph to her list with an invite to click the link and read the rest. But the real meat of a blog post isn’t in that intro paragraph, which is why this method isn’t worth beans.

Instead, write a mini sales letter that gets the email reader curious and excited to know more. This doesn’t have to be long; 50 -100 of the right words is perfect. Build curiosity and show them what the big benefits / takeaways of reading your article will be, and your click-through rates could double if not triple.

That’s it – 5 simple tips to increase your blog traffic. Pick out your favorite and try it right now, then make a note to use the other 4 within the next 7 days and you’ll begin to see a real boost in your traffic within the month.

What a great daydream this is: You make a ton of money online and then go tell your boss to ‘have a nice day.’ This is the scenario you see in sales letters all the time. “Buy this product, put it to work and next week you can kiss your job goodbye, forever.”

Real life doesn’t always work like a sales letter. In fact, life continually gets in the way. You make some extra money but then it dries up. Or you have an emergency and the extra money bails you out of that crisis but you’re no further ahead.

Or – and this is the most common of all – you have the best of intentions but you never quite get around to making that fortune online. And so you are still at your job. Even though a year ago/two years ago/five years ago/ you swore you would be retired by now.

Whoops.

How do you eat an apple? Unless you’re a horse, you eat it one bite at a time. In my early years I found that building your online income and telling your boss to shove it works the same way – you go through the process of replacing your income one step at a time.

It’s a funny thing: You can make $5,000 a month online fairly easily, but only when you KNOW you can do it. Until you KNOW it, it seems just out of reach. And as long as the goal seems out of reach, your subconscious will sabotage you every step of the way to see to it that it never happens. If you can’t conceive it, there is no way you’re going to achieve it, no matter how hard you try.

It’s like getting a job. You can’t get the job without experience, but you can’t get experience without a job. Same way with making money online.

But right now, this instant, I’ll bet you know that you can make enough to cover just one of your bills, right?

So pick a monthly bill of yours, any bill. Now get enough income coming in each month to completely cover that bill. Maybe it’s your $100 water bill. Great. All you need to make is a consistent $100 a month, and it’s taken care of.

Don’t spend this new income on anything but paying that bill. Any money you make above what it takes to pay the bill is either reinvested into your business, or…

… you pick another bill and start covering that each month, too. And you just keep adding another bill and another bill into the mix until they are ALL covered, including your mortgage or rent, including your food, including everything.

But notice how you did it – not all at once, but simply one bill at a time. Your mind can wrap itself around this concept of taking it one step at a time. Your subconscious will stop fighting you and you’ll be surprised how easy the process becomes. It’s all about small steps that prove you can do it, that prove you can move on to the next level, and the next.

Once you’ve got all of your bills covered and then some, you can quit your day job with confidence, because now you KNOW you can make money online. There is no question. You’ve already proven you’ve got the confidence and the skills.

The magic is this: Instead of sitting down at your computer and thinking, “Okay, I’ve got to make enough money to cover all my expenses this month,” you simply tell yourself you’re going to make enough to cover one little bill.

You’re no longer trying to create an entire business, you’re simply taking the first steps. You’re enjoying numerous successes along the way that fuel you to keep going.

Get that first bill paid and you’ll be on your way to achieving total financial freedom, one step at a time.

Twitter can be one of the best tools in your marketing arsenal when you know how to leverage this social network to your maximum advantage. That’s why I’ve compiled some of the best tips and tricks for building your lists of followers and converting those people into sales. First, we’ll start with the tips which serve as a great review for seasoned users as well as an awesome guide to those new to Twitter. And then we’ll then move on to the more advanced tricks where you can really turn up the volume on your marketing.

Twitter Tips

Have a killer bio. Make it benefit oriented for the reader. Give a clear indication of what they can discover from following you. Add in a touch of humor, show that you’re human, add a bit of intrigue, and target it to the exact person you want to attract. Yes, it’s a tall order for a short bio, so work on it and then don’t be afraid to tweak it as you think of better ways to word what you want to say.

Tweet consistently – as in every day and even several times a day. Use a social media tool to schedule great content and even retweets to be dispersed at the best times throughout the day.

Make your tweets short enough that other people can retweet them, adding a short comment of their own. Generally 250 characters or less is good.

Reposting is cool if your content is great. In fact, it’s not only cool, it’s unfair to followers if you only post it once. What if they missed it?

Respond to everyone. Whether they’re retweeting you, mentioning you or favoriting your tweet, be sure to respond back. Think of it this way: If someone standing next to you at a party said to the group, “You’ve got to hear what this person just said,” and points to you – or if they ask you a question – wouldn’t you respond back? Of course you would. And imagine how they would feel if you just ignored them. Ouch.

Tip your hat often and liberally. When you link to someone’s content or share something from someone else, add an @AccountName mention. People love to get credit for their own stuff, and they should get credit for it, too.

Let everyone see your tweet – unless you don’t want them to. If you place a mention at the beginning of your tweet, only you, the person receiving your tweet and anyone who happens to follow both accounts will see the tweets in their streams. This is useful if you want to keep your exchange private, but not if you want everyone else to see the tweet, too.

Get your Twitter emails down to a manageable amount. Go to Twitter’s email notifications center and you’ll see that Twitter has over 20 different email settings you can turn on or off. Customize these settings to suit you so that you stay in the loop but don’t get overwhelmed.

Don’t try to read every Tweet, because you can’t. And even if you could, it takes too much time. Instead, carefully choose whose tweets you want to read. Then create a Twitter list of just these accounts.

In the beginning, follow a lot of people to maximize the growth of your own followers. Later – if you want – you can use one of the many tools available to weed out those who no longer use Twitter, don’t follow you back, don’t engage, etc.

Twitter Tricks

Whether you’re a new or a seasoned Twitter user, odds are there are at least a few Twitter tricks here you don’t know about yet.

Get every Tweet you ever made. Maybe you want to see what you were doing on March 10th, 2009. Or you want to glean all the great tips you’ve given throughout the years and put them in a book. Whatever your reason, you can get ALL of your tweets since the beginning of Twitter by following the instructions here: help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-download-your-twitter-archive

Use Twitter advanced search to find ANYTHING. Twitter advanced search is a powerful tool for finding tweets on any topic or tweets to or from particular people. Plus you can search geographically, search certain time periods, search for a key term coupled with a URL, search for particular attitudes on a topic and more. Here’s a list of search operators and how to use them: support.twitter.com/articles/71577-using-advanced-search

Use hashtags. A lot. When someone searches for a particular hashtag, your tweet will show up regardless of whether or not they follow you. Tweets with hashtags get more engagement, more new followers and put you more in the spotlight while improving your reputation. Those little hashtags pack a powerful punch.

Like shortcuts? Twitter has a BUNCH of them to save you time. For example, click ‘n’ for new tweet, ‘f’ for favorite, ‘r’ for reply and ‘t’ for retweet. To get the full list, type ‘?’ into Twitter.

Tweet during the work day on Eastern time, Monday through Thursday for the greatest engagement.

If you’re using Twitter for business, schedule it into your day. Be sure to check Twitter once or twice each day to respond to conversations.

Find out what lists you’re on. From your lists page, click on “member of.” You might get some interesting info from seeing the types of lists you’re on, as well as insight into how people perceive you.

Subscribe to lists. You can only subscribe to public lists, not private. Go to the person’s profile, click ‘lists,’ and choose what list you’d like to subscribe to. This is a great way to get info on a particular niche, as well as getting yourself acquainted with players in the field.

Use Favorites your favorite way. Favorites is a versatile tool. You can favorite because you like something, because you want to bookmark something for later or because you want to end a conversation. Some use it as an endorsement, such as when they want to privately back one side of a Twitter debate. Others favorite because they don’t want to spam their followers with a lot of tweets.

Use Favorites to entice someone to follow you. If you follow someone on Twitter and want to express approval for a tweet they sent while making them aware of your own presence, sometimes hitting the favorite button is the way to go.

Find your best followers. Using Social Rank (socialrank.com), you can find out which of your followers are the most engaged, which are the most valuable and which are overall the best. Social Rank looks at things like influence, follower count, content and engagement when making this determination, so you’ve got real info backing the choices and not just your gut instinct. From there you can choose which followers are a priority to build relationships with.

One more thing: Do you think Twitter is just for the young? Think again. The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55-64 year age bracket. In fact, this demographic has grown 79% since 2012. So if you’re marketing to this group, Twitter can reach them.

Another amazing fact: 25% of smartphone owners ages 18-44 say they can’t recall the last time their smartphone wasn’t next to them. In fact, 63% of smartphone owners keep their phone with them for all but an hour of their waking day. This gives you potential access to your prospects at all times of the day, every day of the week.

Bottom line: As with most marketing strategies, your best bet is to ALWAYS get prospects to your squeeze page and onto your list as fast as possible. Social media can be fickle – you may or may not get a particular message to your followers. But once you’ve got them on your list, they’re yours to market to anytime you like.

Standing apart from the crowd of other emails in your prospects’ inbox isn’t easy. There are gimmicky ways to do it – write subject lines that shock, use lots of funny characters in the subject line, use the latest “hot” subject line [for the past year this has been “Hey”] and so forth. But how do you get your recipients to become avid readers of your emails?

Sane Method #1 – Tell stories. There is a marketer who appears in my inbox about once a day. Gmail highlights this email, because Gmail knows I read his emails. Why? Because he entertains me with stories. I know when I click his email I’m going to get swept up into another world. And even if it’s just his world and just for a minute, it’s a great escape to my otherwise sometimes monotonous day. And yes, I buy his products, too.

There’s an added bonus to telling stories besides the fact that your emails get opened and read, and it’s this: Telling stories is fun. Instead of selling, selling and more selling, you’re now entertaining. You can embellish, you can be flamboyant, you can add your own personal touch, you can get creative and you can have a blast doing it.

Suddenly your day is just a little more exciting because every moment you’re watching for the next story to fall into your life. Even a routine trip to the store can become an exciting adventure. The newspaper holds new meaning and the websites you visit are a treasure trove of possible stories you can share.

Sane Method #2 – Be a coach. Think of your readers as your students. Love your subject and stick to your subject. Only build your list with people who want info on your particular subject, then teach them all you can about it. When it comes to recommending products, tell them the good and the bad. Give them lots of detail. Be their coach first and foremost and they will hang on your every word.

This method works especially well if you love your topic. If you find yourself spending hours on the Internet learning about this topic, hitting all the forums and websites, finding the best products and so forth, then this method is for you. Every new site you visit is an adventure because you are continually on the lookout for more information you can share with your students. And selling becomes easy because again, you are simply sharing your knowledge with your students.

The [Not-so] Crazy Method – Hide clues in your emails that lead to prizes. I haven’t yet tried this method but I’ve been tempted. What if every email you send out holds a clue to a valuable prize? Collect all the clues and you find the prize online. There’s little doubt this method will get your emails opened, but will they be read? In the right niche, yes. Imagine doing this in a gaming niche – what a killer technique. The viral effect alone could be huge.

So tell me – is this last method crazy, or a millionaire maker? I don’t know of anyone who’s doing it – yet. But no doubt someone will. And in the right hands, it could be powerful, indeed.