• Personality Plus

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    I have been selling to the gay market now for 5 years. And one trend I have noticed that works best in ANY marketing attempt is to make it personal as possible. Now this is true in any marketing venue; however, the same tactics of Personality I have used in the straight market were not enough for the gay market.

    The gay market is better served when the surfer BELIEVES, not just feels, you know him and know what he wants. This goes back to my previous comments on knowing your niche.

    I really believe that the “1 to 1 dialogue” you can have with your surfers is more important than just high traffic averages when making sales. Giving him the sense that he matters to you, a sense of community, a sense that you are here just for him is all accomplished by adding your own personality to your work.

    In many avenues I have said “talk to the surfer”. I have said it so much you are all probably sick of hearing it. But it WORKS. With many of my straight sites, I attempt to speak quickly and to the point, because while I know straight people I don’t know what is going to fly all the time. In those cases, though, instead of saying, “Click Here for Great Sex Sites” I will probably phrase it as “The best site on the net and Cheaper than a six pack of beer”. Am I being heterophobic with my lack of enthusiasm? Maybe. It is how I approach it and it does work.

    On my side of the fence, I would talk the talk, differently. While the basics remain the same, “talk to the surfer”, I approach it in a more personal manner… Again, instead of using “Click Here”, I would go with “Hmm, Hmm … I followed this yummy thing to Absolutely Male. I have to tell you, I had more fun here than anywhere else on the net. Made my toes curl and then some…” Enough of that now, huh? = )

    I do not stop at just the marketing. I do the same thing when it comes to the body of my sites. I will add statements that include a recent trip to the local gay watering hole, the men I saw on the beach, my own experience with a man in uniform, and so on depending on the theme of the site. And, yes since I’m not a total sex fiend, I do make things up as I go along ; )

    Recently, I have received letters from webmaster who have worked the personality approach. They have found a lot of success. However their bigger complaint was they now had a lot more bookmarkers than before. That’s great, as far as I’m concerned. This means they have been to glean a following of loyal surfers. And if you can work it, it is that loyalty that can make a HUGE difference. I think I will save how to work that loyalty factor for a future article or post.

    The gay adult net has gone full circle. In the beginning, personality was the KEY to success. Then we followed suit with most of the adult web and moved away from it to a “here’s some porn now buy something” attitude. Right now, when the going seems to be getting tough, our surfers are looking for the exact thing that made us different to begin personality and community.

    Article written by Gary-Alan

  • Building Your Own Opt In Mailing List

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Opt-in Mail | Response: 0

    Despite the constant launch of ‘new and improved’ email collection programs one of the more popular emails I receive each month ask how webmasters can actually start their own opt-in email list for surfers. Surprisingly enough, this is a fairly simple process and, should only realistically take a webmaster 10-15 minutes to have an opt-in email script installed.

    However, the second type of email I get from webmasters who have already installed one of these scripts is asking how they can ensure that surfers sign up to their lists this is what I will approach in this article.

    One of the easiest ways to make sure surfers join your opt0in list is to offer them a financial gain by doing so, I don’t mean you should literally pay them for their email address but, why not offer them something for free? A daily picture by email, free porn site access etc etc.

    The next biggest mistake I find are that webmasters simply place a collection box saying something like ‘enter your email address here for our newsletter’ and, lets be honest, it isn’t very enticing. Ideally you need to have a ‘headline’ that will catch the surfers attention and actually ‘make’ them want to join your list. Be specific yet be vague (bit hard I know) and you’ll soon see your list grow from one new subscriber a week to hundreds of them!

    The next thing you need to take into consideration is how quickly, not only your site, but the page with your collection box loads, if you are using a pop-up console, make sure it is heavy in text not graphics with the first words at the top not saying ‘free porn’ but a similar meaning text, everyone and their dog has seen the words ‘free porn’ on countless other porn sites. Yours NEEDS to stand out!

    You should use an effective title if you are going to be using pop-up windows for your email collection. in the title bar don’t have the window called ‘pop-up’ have it named appropriately for the niche you are trying to collect the surfers email address from. Make it relevant, make it concise.

    Balance the collection page, any type of page you build for your site should at least be appealing to the eye. Meaning that your fonts, colors and actual text need to contrast together perfectly. If you do use images on this page try to have them prominent yet not overbearing to the surfer.

    Offer a way to close a pop-up if this is what you are using to collect the emails after all, they (the surfer) may decide they don’t want to give you their email until they have seen what your site can offer. In the same way, make sure you have a link from your sites to your collection page so, if a surfer decides they do want to give you their email address they can do it without the need of closing your site and reloading it afresh.

    Overall however, the best rule you can follow is to keep to the point and keep it simple. This way you will gain the surfers attention quickly and easily and, the surfer will not be distracted from the main purpose of having them on your site – getting to your sponsor.

    Hopefully the information above will enable you to start having some more success with your traffic and, once you have the surfers email address make sure you treat it with the respect you would want your own to be treat with, an email address is a sacred thing to most surfers, if you Spam them daily they will leave your opt-in list quickly however, if you send them a ‘newsletter’ once a week / month filled with relevant information you will soon find your list growing exponentially.

    Article written by Lee.

  • Maximizing Your Profit Potential – Upsells

    Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Sponsors | Response: 0

    We all know the reason why pay sites have upsells inside them, to make more money so, the past few weeks I have been ‘experimenting’ with the same type of strategy the pay sites use and, to my surprise, actually found out you can make quite a nice amount of additional income by offering your surfers products or services other than porn!

    Now, this may come as a shock to many but, when you build a free site, TGP Gallery, AVS site etc you can use non adult products on them.

    I have found the following work well for the various different types of site:

    Free Sites.

    Dating Services such as http://www.oscardate.com , http://www.adultfriendfinder.com, etc etc.

    Video Stores such as http://www.mallcom.com and http://www.moviemountain.com.

    Sex Toys such as http://www.gayadultshopping.com and http://www.mallcom.com (Mallcom sells toys and videos)

    Also, to my surprise, search engines have done really well on our traffic. Where we would usually use a text link I SSI’d some files and included some text files going directly to a variety of niches earning me in excess of $0.40 per click in some instances!!

    AVS Sites.

    Dating Services like those mentioned above e have found have done reasonably well however, for some reason not as well as they did on the free sites, you would think that they should do better than on free sites so I guess it is something wrong with my marketing, either way, we just plugged a link to one of our dating affiliates and, sure enough made some $$$ from them.

    Penis Enlargement programs did VERY well inside our AVS sites again, all we did was place a simple text link with ‘enlarge your penis’ for the text and, surprisingly we made a few good sales from that.

    We also integrated our own little MallCom store front on its own domain and have been sending traffic to that and, again, the results have been reasonable.

    TGP Galleries.

    To my surprise, the most profitable thing that we have tested on our TGP Galleries is again, Penis Enlargement type programs, Viagra sales from http://www.kwikmed.com have been doing well the last few weeks and we even had a rebill already!

    One thing that I didn’t expect to work well that did was email collection, in fact, after just 10 days we already have 95 email addresses purely from our TGP Galleries. These emails will be used further in time to send out our newsletter and hopefully make some recurring sales from them.

    I guess the point of this was to let you know you can use alternatives to your adult orientated sponsors on any type of site you build and make a profit from them.

    Anyway, I’m off to do some more testing, I have found a nice casino sponsor imp going to send a few days of traffic to.

    Article written by Lee

  • Converting Italian Adult Traffic – The Niche Paysites That Work

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

    Continuing with our article series of country specific traffic and which niches work for the various global markets in this article we will take a look at some of the most complicated traffic to ‘work’ Italian Adult Surfers. The reason I say most complicated is for the simple reason that, to date there are very few Italian paysites this makes it harder for us as webmasters to tap into these markets especially if we ourselves, do not know what the Italian surfer is after. That said, lets get on with the article.

    Italian Traffic – Quick Analysis.

    As already mentioned surfers from Italy are hard to pre-qualify given that there are very few sites catering to this European market at the present time, this means that there are no sources of background information to look at or, statistical analysis’s available from other paysites.

    Italian Adult Surfers – The Niches.

    For one of the most affluent international markets going it comes as a surprise to see that there are almost no localized pay sites for the Italian market this made our initial filtering of the Italian traffic much harder opting for translated free sites over paysite tour pages to send the traffic to itself then, once they hit the free sites either choosing to send them back into our central hub or, to the US version pay site of the niche free site they were visiting. That said here are the results from the previous 3 (three) months of traffic that we observed.

    Ebony.

    The Ebony niche would appear to be the most consistent converting niche on Italian traffic however, given that almost all of the niches we used on the Italian surfers were quite evenly spread for sales (Ebony was only 5 sales in front) this, I am sure is not a good indicator and, likewise with the Japanese and Chinese traffic, this is an area of international adult marketing that should ideally be re-visited at a later day.

    For Women.

    Even more surprising than the fact there are very few localized paysites for Italy was the fact that the ‘For Women’ niche converted just as well as the other niches we used for our Italian traffic, of course, this at first would seem to indicate that the vast majority of surfers we had on our sites from Italy were female however, as we all know, the Straight male niche is big in gay so, there is a chance the sales we got from our Italian traffic to the For Women niche paysites we used were equally male and female.

    Softcore General.

    (Softcore Adult Tours) The other strange thing we noticed was that paysites we offered to our Italian surfers that were Hardcore in nature didn’t convert as well as the paysites that had softcore tours, this would lend itself to the fact that Italian porn surfers are not looking for hardcore – quite different to most other country traffic sources.

    Tranny.

    The transsexual niche paysites that we offered to the Italian surfers also had some good results again, this is strange given that almost every other countries surfer we sent to a tranny site didn’t convert. One other thing that comes up with this and, given the fact that the for women niche paysites we used had good results would be that perhaps the Italian surfers are interested in the more obscure niches available on the adult internet.

    Italian Adult Traffic – An Overview.

    All in all, as stated at the beginning of this article the Italian surfers would certainly appear at first glance to be more varied and obscure in their sexual preferences than other countries whom appear to have clear cut, well defined ‘types’ of site that interest them.

    I think as mentioned above Italian traffic needs to be looked at in more depth in a future article as, to my surprise the traffic didn’t work on the niches that previously converted well for the same amounts and quality of traffic.

    Article written by Lee

  • Marketing to Foreign Surfers

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    Marketing to Foreign Surfers.

    What would you do if I told you that there are 3 million plus new surfers last year that you did not market too? You probably marketed your product or adult site to those that could read English well enough to be searching with English terms. How about the growing numbers of surfers with English as their second language?

    According to Nielsen/Net Ratings, from September 2000 to 2001, Italy’s online population grew by 3,540,970 users: about one new user every ten seconds. Italy is just one of the non-English speaking countries that is coming online at lightening fast speed.

    Are you relying on these surfers searching for your English keywords? Are you thinking that every language uses the words “porn and hardcore” and what about the finer niches like “bisexual and titties”? The best conversion is with newbie surfers just online for the first time and wanting to see adult sites and products. Those that have been around a while find out about the plethora of free porn. This means that websites do their best marketing with search engine placements of their main sites or feeder sites. If you are on your money, you are trying to work every engine for every related keyword. Now think of the keywords that you could be going for in all the worlds’ languages!

    Do a bit of research in some of the common languages. If I was Italian and new to the net, the first place I would be searching is in an Italian search engine. Go to http://arianna.iol.it/ and search using the word porn and you will find 10 listings come up all in Italian. Not one is English. Even http://it.yahoo.com/ Yahoo Italia does NOT serve up your English porn site in its results.

    So how do you get a piece of this pizza pie? You need at least a doorway written in Italian. You need to visit a site like http://www.adult-site-translation.com/ and find out how affordable it is for a doorway page that is put together by a foreign translator. Not only is the text for your doorway sites or even complete tours with the proper keywords but the graphics are redone where necessary. You really cannot rely on a text translator. We all have been on a site where it was obvious that the webmasters first language was NOT English and felt bad for their awkward use of words. This is not how to make a sale.

    You need to be careful that you choose a professional service for your translating needs. You need to know that the translators are top notch and can not only translate your existing page/site keeping your marketing angles but they can also advise you on such things as proper wording and what a surfer from that culture would find erotic. Languages do not translate word for word. A service like Adult Site Translation has hired translators who also know how to market adult sites. They will tell you the search terms your page should be listed under and can assist you with foreign search engine optimization.

    Remember the days where you were the only site in a category or niche? It was like being a pioneer and it was very lucrative. Do you want to be first to market to these growing pockets of millions of new surfers? There are new frontiers out there and finally sites like Adult Site Translation can assist you to conquer them successfully!

    Article written by Susanna

  • Viral Marketing – Catching The Marketing Bug

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Viral Marketing | Response: 0

    The term viral marketing is offensive. Call yourself a viral marketer and, people will often take two steps back. I know I would do. It is a sinister thing, the simple virus is fraught with doom, not quite dead yet not fully alive, it exists in that nether region somewhere between horror movies and disaster films.

    That said however, you have to admire the skills of the viral marketer. They have a way of winning by sheer weight of numbers alone. They piggy back on everyone else and use their resources to grow their own. In the right circumstances the viral marketer can grow exponentially. A virus doesn’t have to mate, it just replicates itself again and, again and, again increasing its power, doubling its effect with each replication.

    I
    I I
    I I I I
    I I I I I I
    I I I I I I I I

    In a few short generations, a viral marketing population can boom as seen in the diagram above.

    Viral marketing defined.

    What does a virus have to do with viral marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for mass growth in the messages exposure and influence.

    Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to hundreds, even thousands in a relatively short period of time.

    Before the advent of the internet viral marketing was often referred to as ‘word of mouth’. However, for better or for worse, the term viral marketing has infected.

    One classic example of this marketing technique is Hotmail.com one of the first free web based email services. Their strategy was simple.

    Give away free email addresses and services.
    Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out.
    Watch people email their friends, colleagues and family.
    Watch these same friends colleagues and family join up to their service.
    See the message propelled to an ever increasing audience, all for free.

    In closing viral marketing is like watching the tiny ripples of a single pebble dropped pond, one small splash can create ever increasing circles which in turn could create ever increasing revenues.

    Article Written By Lee

  • What On Earth Is CGI?

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    Let’s unlock a little bit of the mystery about something called CGI. If it helps any, CGI means Common Gateway Interface.

    This is a method which is used to swap data between the server (the hardware and software that actually allows you to get to your web site) and a web client (your browser). CGI is actually a set of standards where a program or script (a series of commands) can send data back to the web server where it can be processed.

    Typically, you use standard HTML tags to get data from a person, then pass that data to a CGI routine. The CGI routine then performs some action with the data.

    Some of the more common uses of CGI include:

    Guest books – The CGI routine is responsible for accepting the data, ensuring it is valid, sending an email acknowledgement back to the writer, perhaps sending an email to the webmaster, and creating the guest book entry itself.

    Email Forms – A simple CGI forms routine just formats the data into an email and sends it back to the webmaster. More complicated routines can maintain a database, send an acknowledgement and validate data.

    Mailing List Maintenance – These routines allow visitors to subscribe and unsubscribe from a mailing list. In this case, the CGI routine maintains a database of email addresses, and the better ones send acknowledgements back to the visitor and webmaster.

    A CGI routine can be anything which understands the CGI standard. A popular CGI language is called PERL, which is simple to understand and use (well, compared to other languages). PERL is a scripting language, which means each time a PERL routine is executed the web server must examine the PERL commands to determine what to do. In contrast, a compiled language such as C++ or Visual Basic can be directly executed, which is faster and more efficient.

    Okay, in a nutshell (and greatly simplified), here’s how it works:

    1) You (the webmaster) specify a form tag which includes the name of the CGI routine.

    2) You create HTML tags which retrieves data from your visitors.

    3) Each of the input tags includes a variable name. The data which is retrieved from the visitor (or directly set if the tag includes the “hidden” qualifier) is placed in the variable name.

    4) When the visitor presses the “submit” button, the CGI routine which was specified in the form tag is executed. At this time, the CGI routine “takes control”, meaning the browser essentially is waiting for it to complete.

    5) This CGI routine can get data from variable names. It retrieves the data and does whatever action is required.

    6) When the CGI routine finishes, it returns control back to the browser.

    Some important things to remember about CGI routines:

    You can install CGI routines on your own site if your host allows it http://www.webair.com is an example of a web host which allows for CGI routines. Some web hosts do not allow you to install your own routines but do provide some pre-written ones to you. If these are not sufficient for your needs, you can find a remote hosting service to provide the necessary functions.

    Generally, if you install your own routines they must be installed in the cgi-bin directory of your site. This is a special location which allows scripts and programs to be executed.

    CGI routines work best on Apache-style servers. Windows NT and Windows 2000 does support CGI, but it tends to be slow and problematic.

    If you use a remote hosting service, you must remember that although they appear to be giving you this for free, you are actually paying a price. Usually they want to display advertisements, although some of them actually take visitors away from your site.

    When you write a CGI routine, you have the choice of a scripting language like PERL or a compiled language such as C++ or Visual Basic. Anything which can execute on the web server is acceptable.

    I hope this short introduction to CGI has cleared up some of the mystery.

    Article written by Lee

  • Domain Name Extensions + SEO

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Search Engine Optimization, WebDesign | Response: 0

    With a slew of new TLD (Top Level Domain) extensions being launched in the first quarter of 2004 in addition to the hundreds already available how many of us actually take time to consider that when we register a .com, .net or, .org domain how will these sites help or hinder us with our search engine work? This is what we will take a closer look at in this article.

    Domain Name Extensions – What Are They?

    First of all, before we look at how the extensions of our domain names can assist us in running our search engine optimization methods we need to understand what the TLD’s themselves are actually for. Domain name extensions are essentially a way to recognize specific locales via the usage of domain names so for example, the domain name extension .com were primarily set up as commercial domain names however, with the commercial use of this extension it has also become, without a doubt the most popular extension for individuals or companies registering new domain names. In addition to the TLD extensions there are also a selection of domains extensions ranging from industry specific extensions such as .aero to country specific extensions such as .co.uk.

    Domain Name Extensions And Search Engines.

    Now we understand what the domain name extensions were put in place for we can now start to look at how they may benefit us in terms of SEO (search engine optimization) for example, head across to http://www.google.com and do a search on something such as ‘penis pills’ you can see from the results shown (01/01/04) that the first 10 results are evenly spread across a range of domain name extensions ranging from .com to .net and also some smaller .go.ro domain extensions. This would lead us to assume that at the current time, Google specifically is not paying to much attention to the extensions of the domain names we are using however, given the recent updates of the last month or two across Google this has also cleaned up a lot of the results that were present 2 months prior to this search in which the .biz extension was highly populated in the rankings.

    Domain Name Extension Abuse + Spam.

    With this slew of new domain name extensions being launched what seems like yearly this also opens up a whole lot of new problems for the webmaster primarily that of the domain name spam. Because domain names can be registered for as little as $5 per year many webmasters have taken to purchasing them, using them to spam the search engines and then, once the search engines discover the spam and remove the offending domains, the webmaster then moves on to new domains in effect, making domain names a disposable commodity to them. Whilst this method will certainly garner traffic for the search engine spammer it will also in turn mean that the traffic that honest webmasters receive from the search engines will be lower.

    Domain Name Extensions And Optimization.

    Hopefully this brief article has given you a little insight into how domain name extensions can both benefit and also detriment your business, by choosing your domain name extensions carefully and, making sure you do your best not to spam the search engines you can make some serious income from pure search engine traffic however, once you start to buy domain names with lesser known extensions to purely spam the search engines you are not only wasting your own money but, are also potentially wasting other hard working webmasters money too.

    Article written by Lee

  • Utilizing All The Content You Use On TGP Galleries!

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: TGP | Response: 0

    Utilizing All The Content You Use On TGP Galleries!

    For the last few months i have been experimenting with a few new (but old, if ya see what i mean) ideas.

    Basically i have adapted Voltars 3x3x3 project slightly and incorporated it into the TGP/TGP2 game.

    The results have given me some of the best sales ratios ever! We’re talking under 1:60 almost consistently across all sponsors!!

    What you did is thus….

    Design a NICE 15 pic tgp gallery in a table preferably four rows high and 5 columns across.

    In the first row place one thumb in each cell (5 pics).
    In the second row place one odd sized banner in the first cell and merge cells 2,3 , 4 and, 5.
    In the cells you have merged place some descriptive text about the pics you are using in under two paragraphs and include a line of text where you MENTION the sponsors site name.
    In row 3 place one thumb in each cell (5 pics).
    in row 4 place on thumb in each cell (5 pics).
    under the table place a juicy text link.
    below this juicy text link leave a line or two and add a money bar (one row by three columns using a contrasting color to the background of your gallery page).
    ALL pics go on html pages using the same layout as your main TGP page but, without the table included.
    Repeat this process 4 times once for four different niches, saving each niche in their own sub folder for the main site i.e:

    url/sub folder/niche 1
    url/sub folder/niche 2
    url/sub folder/niche 3
    url/sub folder/niche 4

    You should now have 4 TGP galleries using 15 pics on each in four niches (60 pics in total).

    At the top of each of these main pages place a three cell one row table.

    in this table use text links to describe each niche i.e:

    Teen
    Gay
    Lesbian
    Mature

    in the template for the teen niche you use text for the gay, lesbian and, mature templates and link these to the appropriate TGP template.

    This is where the fun begins…..

    Take all four TGP niche galleries you have just made and do the following….

    Delete the first row of cells (including pics) on all TGP galleries and save the new page layout in another folder using the same navigation structure as the original ie:

    url/sub folder 2/niche1
    url/sub folder 2/niche2
    etc
    etc

    You should now have the following:

    four TGP templates consisting of 15 pics each.
    four TGP templates consisting of 10 pics each.

    Again, link these new 10 pic templates to each other in the same way as you did the 15 pic templates.

    Repeat this procedure to make the 10 pic TGP page using the original TGP page BUT, this time, delete the bottom row of cells.

    You now have the following:

    4 niche 15 pic TGP pages
    4 niche 10 pic TGP pages
    ANOTHER 4 niche 10 pic TGP pages

    Still with me?

    Its gets better….

    Take your original 15 pic TGP template and do the following…

    Delete the first and the third row of cells including all the pics and save them in ANOTHER folder using the same structure as before i.e:

    url/sub folder 3/niche 1
    url/ sub folder 3/niche 2
    etc
    etc

    Again link these in the same way as before using the text links at the top of the pages.

    What do you have now?

    4 TGP pages using 15 pics
    8 TGP pages using 10 pics
    4 TGP2 pages using 5 pics

    Can you guess what’s next?

    Take that original template again and…

    Remove the first and fourth row of cells do the same when you save it as you have done above…

    What do you have?

    4 TGP pages using 15 pics
    8 TGP pages using 10 pics
    8 TGP2 pages using 5 pics

    Do it once more using the original templates but removing the final set of 2 rows of cells you now have…

    4 TGP pages using 15 pics
    8 TGP pages using 10 pics
    16 TGP2 pages using 5 pics

    In the root of the domain where you are going to upload these pages do the following…

    Create a simplistic warning page… link this to a multi site FPA… this multi site FPA links to each of the niche (15 pic) TGP templates you have made.

    On this same fpa place an email erotica collection box, banner exchange code and a toplist counter code along with an exit console going to a MC POTD program.

    Now, what you need to do is start submitting these pages to the TGP/TGP2’s submit one a day or as many as you can until you have submitted them all.

    Ok still here?

    Next you have to duplicate ALL of the above again.

    Place the duplicate of the above into a separate set of folders/sub domains etc.

    On the new root you have created, link to another multi site FPA AND the first root index.html page.

    You now have the makings of an EXCLUSIVE 3x3x3 TGP hub which, you can leave alone and submit all of the pages intermittently to any TGP/TGP2 you wish for LIFE!!

    All the time you are adding new sections to it and building your link pop in the search engines because you are continually interlinking to each of the separate niche and relevant sub niche folders.

    Of course, you NEED to get the meta’s sorted on the first main template for this to work but, if you change all subsequent meta descriptions etc you’ll have a very reasonable listing in Google for the relevant search terms :)

    Article written by Lee

  • Cross Selling – Offer Your Surfers An Alternative

    Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    As webmasters our primary goal is to make money from our surfers in order to be successful at business, however, in order to make money from our surfers we need to constantly change the way in which we sell products and services to them.

    One such method of selling products to surfers is by using cross selling or, up selling as it is sometimes referred to in the industry. So what exactly is cross selling and, more importantly, what benefit does it give your business model? This is what we shall take a look at in this article.

    Cross Selling – The Basics.

    Cross selling is a method used by marketers to make the maximum amount of money out of a single sales lead at any given time regardless of whether you are working online or, in a bricks and mortar store cross selling is something that almost every sales person does from offering an extended warranty on a new television purchase to offering an affiliate product from inside your sites secure area.

    Cross Selling – How To.

    One of the easiest ways to initiate the cross selling process is simple to provide your site visitors with a selection of links going to a multitude of individual products, this may be a dating site, a software package or, something else, either way, by placing a selection of links on your main selling pages you have already initiated the cross selling process and, by doing so, have already increased your chance at making a sale.

    Cross Selling – New Customers.

    One method of cross selling that is becoming more and more prevalent on the internet is that of cross selling or, up-selling new customers immediately after they have made a purchase, this in itself is not a bad thing after all, you know they have money to spend so, why not use this fact to garner additional sales.

    One good way of offering cross sales to new customers is to give the an option on the actual shopping cart page immediately when they hit it, this may be for a site that complements the product they are making a purchase to already or, something completely different either way, by having this already on the order page waiting for your customer you might just make additional money from them.

    Cross Selling – Old Customers.

    So what happens when a customer leaves your site after making a purchase? Well there are two routes you can take with thee customers, one, is to leave them alone and hope that they return to buy from your site again whilst, the other, my personal preference, is to send these customers a regular follow up letter offering them a product they may be interested in based on their initial purchase after all, if they purchased a copy of Adobe Photoshop, the chances are they may also be interested in something such as Paint Shop Pro, why not give the surfer this as an option by placing a link in the follow up letter taking them to that specific area on your site.

    Cross Selling – Overview.

    When all is said and done, cross selling whether you agree with it or not is a very powerful sales tool, not only can it increase the revenue potentials from new clients but, can also enable any business a method of gaining further incomes from older customers, the one thing that you should all be doing on a regular basis is ensuring that you have a good cross selling strategy in place, regardless of whether you actually are selling memberships to sites, warranties on televisions or, mouse pads for new pc owners.

    Article written by Lee

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