Khoa Bui - The Online Entrepreneur

Lately I’ve been absorbing lots of material by an incredible and inspirational mentor named Joel Bauer. He is by far one of the best marketing geniuses and persuasive people I’ve seen present on stage. I can honestly say that only applying a few of his principals, I was able to add additional income to my businesses.


Joel Bauer is known as the man who knows how to persuade people, he’s written a book entitled “How To Persuade People, Who Don’t Want to Be Persuaded” and was generous enough to donate the sales of the book to various charity organisations. So a big pat on the back!


Many people have commented that he has a hypnotic ability that will get you hanging onto every word and keep you engaged. If you ever wish to be on the path as a successful professional speaker, I would highly recommend following the wise advice from mr Joel Bauer.


Here’s Joel Bauer in action:

Affiliate Marketing. Whether you’ve never heard of it before or you’re just starting out in this lucrative revenue stream online, affiliate marketing is a great source of generating extra sales to your bottom line.


So what is affiliate marketing anyway? First of all, lets say that you have a website that sells a particular product, for example, an eBook on training your dog. Your website currently has targeted traffic going to your website and your visitors are mainly interested in the realm of dog training. Therefore, the more traffic you get to your site, the more sales you will make from selling your eBook.


Let’s say that you sell your eBook for $27 and 10 people purchase your book a day, that’s $270 per day. So far, you have a few options to increase your sales from your website:

• Increase your conversion rate (the sales percentage of the total number of visitors)
• Increase your website traffic.
• Introduce Affiliate Marketing.

When you introduce Affiliate Marketing into your website, you’re really giving someone the opportunity to sell your product for a certain amount of commission. So, lets say that you offer to split a commission of 50% to your Affiliates (people who sell other people’s products). If your affiliate sells your book on their website, they get 50% and you get 50%, for example your eBook at $27, they get $13.50 and you get $13.50.


Those numbers may not make your pants catch on fire but if you look at it from a bigger perspective, lets say that your affiliate partner has a high traffic website that brings in over 500 visitors a day and they sell 20 of your eBooks. So your 10 eBook sales from your website combined with their 20 eBook affiliate sales is a total of $540.00. That’s only with one affiliate. Why not help another affiliate… and another… and another?


Of course, there are always pitfalls, sometimes affiliates can not sell your book because they may lack the marketing skills or traffic generation skills. So affiliate marketing is really depended on the affiliates marketing skills in order for you and them to make a profit. However, the great news is, how much does affiliate marketing cost you? $0


By simply placing a section on your website entitled “Affiliates” that contains your commission rate, links, photos of your product, additional information they may help them sell the product, you’re offering other people the opportunity to make money.


Affiliate Marketing is a great way to make those additional sales to your website and help you move closer to financial freedom.

For the past few days, I’ve had the flu, I’ve been coughing, having massive headaches and the sniffles and for some wierd reason, I feel as if I need to blog about Viral Marketing. To me, this is a very interesting topic. Firstly, what is viral marketing?
Let me ask you, have you ever received an email, whether it is an interesting article or joke and then you forwarded it to someone else? That is viral marketing! It’s something that has been created and passed on and on and on. It’s like the flu, it just keeps moving from one person to another.


So what does it take to get your product, website or service viral? I’m anaylsed various viral marketing campaigns and I must say, some of the powerful viral marketing elements are the use of:

• Sex (yep, that got your attention didn’t it)
• Shocking Content
• Damn right hillarious

Think about it. Have you ever watched the video of David Crocker on youTube telling everybody to “Leave Britney Alone!” To me that was quite shocking to watch… however, I just had to share it with my friends. There was also the Paris Hilton Sex Tape that was passed around online, I believe it costs her exactly $0 to market that to millions of people online. There was also various videos of the olympics, people trying to make the jump but they somehow miss and do a hillarious maneuvers.


Those are some of the ways in which you can make your business viral. The great thing about it, it’s completely automated, it runs forever and your name is attached to that viral piece! Thus your name gets spread worldwide!


*cough cough*

There are many different types of Internet Marketing Strategies available online and offline. Whether you are currently researching this area of Internet Marketing or you would like to become an Internet Marketer, then blogging is one of the most powerful ways to get your message out there and exposed to many people. In this article, I will only scratch the surface and delve in deeper in another article later on.

First of all, what is Internet Marketing? The term Internet Marketing refers to methods in which you can promote whatever it is you want to promote in order to achieve a result. That may sound a bit confusing so here is an example. A person wants to sell their eBook online, there are many ways in which he/she can achieve this:

• Setup an eCommerce shopping cart.
• Build a database list and sell the product through there.
• Setup a squeeze page which directs them to a product page to purchase the eBook.
• Setup a marketing campaign using Google Adwords.
• The use of autoresponders to automate sales.
• Setup a blog site, drive traffic to it and sell your product through it.
• And much much more!

I can probably go on and on about the various different types of Internet Marketing strategies so I won’t confuse you to much. I don’t want you to go through an information overload like I did when I went travelling all over Europe… culture overload!!

The point is, if you want a result to happen with something, there is a known “system” out there that increases your chances of success. There are business models out there that show you how to sell books, dvds, courses and information products online. They have been tried and tested and gives you a greater chance of achieving success.

Micheal Gerber in his fantastic book “E-Myth” which I highly recommend you to read if you would like to know more about systems for your business has had a profound influence on the way I approach my businesses. If you’re unsure about the reason why you should have a system, then this book is a must read.

One of the most common form of marketing on the Internet is to simply build a website, send traffic to it and sell your product through it using a various number of Internet Marketing Tools. As mentioned before, a great way to market your product and services is to generate traffic to your site using Blogs. Blogs are a great marketing tool to get your message out there and generate tons of traffic to your site. Of course, the more articles you write, the more traffic you will get.

If you would like to know more about Internet Marketing and the various strategies in which you can increase your income online, you can always download my free eBook entitled “8 Secret Internet Strategies Exposed” in my blog (www.khoabui.com.au) which reveals how I was able to make thousands of dollars online.

Writing web copy that sells your products and services is another vital skill you must acquire in order to produce suitable income from your website. When you write copy for your website, you must first consider who you are writing to. Whether you are writing to a target audience or a specific individual, you must understand the audience in which your writing your copy to.


In my previous article “How To Design Your Site For Online Success” I spoke about the importance of working out your goals before designing your website. The same principle also applies here, however, you are focusing on writing and talking to your target audience.


If your stuck in wondering how to write to your target audience, try to imagine sitting in front of the individual and not a mass audience. You will find that when you write content for an individual sitting right in front of you, your content will be worded differently as apposed to writing for an audience of 1,000 people. Remember, 98% of the time, it’s only one person who’s looking at your website at that moment and your website copy must speak to that one person. Also remember to keep your copy easy to read and understand. You’re writing copy for clarity and not to include complex terminology that confuses the reader (like some websites I’ve seen and won’t mention here). Also remember to check your speeling


If your in a situation where you don’t feel as confident writing your own website copy, there are many options you can take to get your web site copy written for your website. So far, your options are:

1. Hire a professional copywriter.
2. Outsource the work to job markets that contain many enthusiastic writers.
3. Learn to write copy yourself.
4. Get your web designer to do it for you but inform them what you want included in the copy.

With the first option, if you hire a professional and credible copywriter, your web copy will be as effective as a hiring your own online salesman. Copywriters are powerful and persuasive people who understand the psychology behind people making purchases online. Some copywriters I know make an absolute killing with their copywriting skills because they produce so many sales from their website. However, their skills are not so affordable and can range between $5,000 - $20,000. So if you have the cash, it may be an ideal investment.


The second option you can take is to outsource your web copy work. There are great websites out there such as elance.com and rentacoder.com which contains thousands of people willing to work for you. Many people on these websites are offering to complete whatever online project they can get there hand on. The websites are very secure and have a great communication management system so you can keep track of your work. As a bonus, most people who offer to complete your project are very affordable and efficient. If you were to post your job to the masses, you may be able to get 10 articles written for only $7 per hour which perhaps translate to $60 in total.


The third option would be to learn how to write the content yourself. Now there are many books out there that you can purchase in which you can learn to write your own web copy. You can simply make a small investment into this specialized knowledge but at the end of the day, the knowledge is yours and you can apply it to various other projects not just your website… but your own published books.


The final option would be to simply hand the work over to your web designer/developer. Depending on the situation, if your web designer/developer has writing skills, it’s worth hiring their services to take the job on. However, most designers/developers are focused on only their core skills which is either designing websites or programming websites so make sure you find out if they possess they skills.


Remember, you can also start a blog website and just practice writing your thoughts and ideas, eventually practice makes perfect and before you know it, your words will be translated to cash transfered to your bank account.

When you’re designing a website, there is a lot of things you must consider before taking that big step into the online world. Whether you’re building a website yourself or hiring a web designer to do it, you must first do some homework first.


It’s like building a house. Firstly, you must work out where your ideal location would be, how big the house would be, 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom, backyard, front yard etc. This also relates to building a website in order to be successful online.


The first step you make take is to ask yourself “What is the goal of my website?” Is it to demonstrate your services or products? Is it to simply get your business on the web so you can showcase it to your clients? Do you want to sell products through it? Do you want to use it as a backend to your businesses? Do you just want to make more money with your website? These are some of the questions you should be asking yourself when you’re starting to design a website.


Your answers may vary. When you begin to ask these questions, you get a clear understanding of what result you should expect when you finish building it.


For example, lets say that the goal of your website is to simply showcase your portfolio so people can get a better understanding of what you do. A great design for this website would include more focused information about you, about your attributes and photos about you. The next step is, picture your ideal visitor going to your website. What age group are they in? Are they married, single, corporate, unemployed, income ranging between 30k - 40k, 100k - 200k etc.


Once you figure out the goal of your website, you can match your website design to suit with the type of category of people you want to target. For example, your portfolio website would be showcasing you and you want to target the corporate market. Corporate markets are very business oriented and have stable incomes, they are exposed to alot of business terminology and also maintain a very professional standard.


So now you’re armed with better information and now you can begin designing your website. If you want to appeal to the corporate market, you will need to design a site that is professional looking, incorporating business elements, photos of people in suits, office environments and meeting rooms. Your website copy should incorporate professional language not slang or inappropriate phrases that may offend business oriented people. If you’re unsure of what the business oriented environment is like and you need to appeal to them, you will need to do further home work and research that type of environment.


Dan Kennedy calls this matching the right message to the right market using the right medium. Remember your not designing a website for you, you’re designing it for everyone else, what you think of your website is not important, it’s the visitors that are the ones who are going to be giving you the results you want.


With just a bit of due diligence and homework, your new home will be built on solid foundations and not on unstable ground.