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The answer is, yes! Getting customers can be a lot like herding cats.

Let’s define what herding is. Herding is trying to force someone or something to do what you want. Like cowboys herding cattle in the old west.

If you have ever dealt with cats you know that cats do what they want to do and if you try to force them into something they will probably just get mad, hiss and be done with you.

Customers are the same way. Don’t try to force them to do something. Just like cats if you try to force them to do something they will do exactly what they want and it probably won’t be what you want them to do.

For example, there are a lot of people that will tell you to put a squeeze page in front of your sales page. I know I am not alone in this but if you try to force me to go through a squeeze page just to see a sales page 99% of the time I won’t sign up to your list or buy your product and I definitely won’t promote your product if I have to send people to a squeeze page instead of an information page about your product.

The way I see this is, what are you hiding? Is your product so bad that you have to get me on your list because you know I won’t buy it? Why should I sign up to buy something? If your product and/or your sales page is any good you will get me as a customer and then I will be on your list as a qualified targeted buyer instead of someone that isn’t interested in your product but only signed up to see the sales page and unsubscribed with the first email you sent.

Yes, you can build your list by setting up this squeeze page but you really need to test this and see how many sales you might be loosing. I can guarantee that you are loosing sales because of this. Customers are just like cats and they don’t like to be herded.

Instead of trying to force people to do something you are much better off enticing them to do something. For example if I try to chase a bunch of cats in to a corner, how much success do you think I will have? Just imagine cat cats jumping over me and each other trying to go anywhere else than the corner I am trying to force them into.

Now tell me what happens if I take the same cats and open a can a cat food and place it in the corner. Guess what? I just got all the cats in the corner because that is where they wanted to be.

Customers are the same way. If I really need something and I have two sites to choose from one site has all the information readily available and at the other site and I have to sign up to get some information then guess which one will get my business? That’s right the one with the information and not the one with the squeeze page.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good uses for a squeeze page, if you are an affiliate marketer they are a must, but this situation you are trading information for the sign up, you are not forcing people to signup to see a product you are selling. If you are selling a product don’t try to force me to do anything before you give me some information on the product you are selling or I (and others) will be like those cats and jumping over people to get away from your site.

If you want to get me on your list then put an opt-in on your sales page or have it float in and offer me something of value to join your list but DON’T MAKE ME SIGN UP TO SEE A SALES PAGE! You will loose me as a customer and a joint venture partner and I am sure, I am not alone in this feeling.

That sounds simple, doesn’t it? But there are still some people out there that don’t seem to get it.

Question: Who knows what you should provide for your customers?

Answer: The experts on your customers, of course.

Your customers know what your customers want much more then you do. They are the leading experts for what you should be providing.

Question: How do you find out what your customers want?

Answer: You ask them. In other words you create a survey and see what they want.

Question: How do you run a survey?

Answer: You can run a survey as simple as sending out an email and asking them to respond or setting up a formal survey on a web page or you can mail out a physical survey.

Doesn’t that sound easy? In concept it is very easy, but in practical application there are a lot of things that you need to do to make your survey work for you.

When you ask a question you can lead the person reading the question to an answer. This can give you bad information from your survey. You have to be careful when you word your survey questions, if you lead a person to the answer that you want to hear you will end up with the information you want instead of the information you need to have when you create your product.

Remember, you can lead a person to the answer with not only the question but with the choice of answers, if it is a multiple choice answer. For example:

Question: Who do you think is the world’s most peaceful person?

1. Adolph Hitler
2. Osama Bin Laden
3. The Una-Bomber
4. Mike Tyson

As you can see that is a question that most people either wouldn’t answer or if they did answer they would be picking an answer that they didn’t really agree with. This is why it is very important to phrase your questions, answers and the way the questions are answered in your surveys.

Once you have your answers and you have analyzed the results you will know exactly what your customers want. If you are the one that provides the information or product that people want they will gladly pay you for it.

Michael Cheney has done a lot of surveys to learn what his customers want as a result of these surveys he has had a couple of products that have sold over $100,000 worth of product in a very short time. Wouldn’t you like similar results?

Even though setting up a survey sounds easy there are people that get paid thousands and thousands of dollars to create, run and analyze surveys for other people companies and some of the larger companies actually have a survey section of their marketing company.

Besides product development, surveys are also used to:

1. Generate qualified leads for your products
2. Refine your existing product
3. Streamline support issues
4. Check your customer satisfaction
5. To find out almost any information you want on how to make your business, product, customer support, etc., better.

Question: Why doesn’t everybody use surveys?

Answer: Who knows? I would assume a lot of the time it is because they don’t know how to run a survey or they don’t know what to ask or it could be they don’t know whom to ask.

If you are thinking about doing a survey I would recommend you do some research on it before you create. There is a bunch of information out there to be had but I can personally recommend Marketplace Detectives. This is by Marie Kane who made a good living doing surveys for other businesses.  In Marketplace Detectives she gives up all the tips, tools and information she used to become a expert in the survey field.

If you want to maximized your money, surveys are one of the most reliable ways to start and will provide you with the most bang for your buck. Don’t believe me? Ask!

I am a firm believer in continued education. This includes the Internet Marketing field BUT do you really need a coach or a mentor?

Before I answer that question let me first tell you that I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on coaching from people like Michael Cheney, Mark Hendricks, Sterling Valentine, Mike Filsaime, Alan Bechtold and a few others. So, I am speaking from experience.

In my case it was money well spent because I have earned a lot more back then I spent.

That doesn’t mean that coaching would be right for you. How much you get out of coaching will depend a lot on YOU!

• It depends on what your expectations are.
• What level of marketing you are at.
• How well you relate to your coach.
• How much you work at it.
• And believe it or not how much you BELIEVE in the program will make a big difference.

Your Expectations – Your expectations must match your level of knowledge. You can’t go into an advanced coaching program, not knowing anything, and expect to be profiting next week. Your coaching program needs to reflect your level of experience and move you on to the next level.

If you are a true beginner you need to find coaching that will take you by the hand and get you going. It isn’t going to do you any good to learn advance strategies until you know how to take the actions to implement them.

If you are just starting out I would recommend for coaching that you find a coaching program with a low price point that lasts 3 to 6 months. This will be long enough for you to learn a ton of information, but more importantly, to put it into action while you are still in the coaching program. By taking this action if you have any problems you should be able to ask your coach and by all means if you have a problem ask your coach, that is what they are there for.

Relating to Your Coach - Before you join any coaching program check out the person or people running it, sign up to their list(s), read their blog(s) and review their products and sites. Make sure that your prospective coach is some one that you can relate to, by this is should be someone that you respect, admire, has the same ethical view point as you and is further along in the process then you are.

Remember your coach doesn’t need to be a “Guru” but they do need to know enough to move you up to the next level.

How Much You Work At It – That’s right I said that dirty four letter word, “Work” there is no magic button that will take you from nothing to rich, you have to put in the time and effort to succeed at anything.

In your coaching program you will be given assignments or at least you should be given assignments and if you don’t do the assignments you will never learn. If you are given an assignment do just do it, over do it! If you are asked to create a squeeze page create 3 squeeze pages and decide which one fulfills the requirements of the assignment the best. Just like with most things in life the more you put into it the more you get back.

Believe – Your mental approach to coaching is more important than any other aspect. You must believe you are going to get the results that you set up in your expectations.

If you think you will earn $5,000 by the end of the coaching program then you need to BELIEVE that you will have $5,000 by the end of the coaching program and take all the steps to achieve it. If you don’t truly believe then you are better off not spending the money on that coaching.

This also applies to the hype that you hear from the coach when you are signing up. If the coach tells you that you will have a five figure income per month at the end of the coaching then you need to believe that. If you don’t believe what they are telling you, and I mean believe 100% of what they say, think twice before you spend the money on coaching.

It also helps if you understand what type of student you are.

The Natural
The naturals are people that can just read the book and have it all down pat and know everything in the book with just one reading. The naturals are usually self motivators and don’t need a lot of supervision or hand holding as long as the information is available. This is a very rare category but if you are in this category then a home study course is good for you and you don’t need the hand holding you get with a coach.

The Repeater
Repeaters are people that read the book but won’t absorb the information until they read the book again. If the repeaters are self motivated they will read the information again but a lot of them won’t do so unless they are motivated by some outside force, such as a coach or a teacher. If you are some one that needs to go over the material multiple times (like me) but won’t do it on your own then a coach is a good thing. If you will review the information until you understand it without any outside forces urging you to, then again a good home study course should get you started.

The Almost There
These are people that will read the book and understand most of the concept that is being presented but will need some kind of one on one interaction to get them to comprehend the entire process. The almost theres are trying to grasp the information to the best of their ability but either the way the information is presented or written leaves them missing one dot in the connect the dot drawing of success. By simply asking a question they have find that extra dot and comprehend the entire process. If you are an almost there you want to have a coach that you have access to.

The Know It All
Know it alls won’t read the book because they think they know it all already. They are either already wealthy people or they are going no where. This is where a very high price coaching program might, I will repeat might, get them motivated enough to study and take action. But a vast majority of them will say they already knew that and it doesn’t work. And they do this without ever learning the information or taking action on it. If you are a know it all don’t spend your money on coaching, but then you already knew that ?

The Co-Dependant
Co-dependant people won’t read the book until they have to. These are people that must have a structured system with a coach or teacher that will hold them accountable for learning the material.

There are a lot of people like this and it is actually fine if you realize that you fall into this category. If you do fall into this category and have a tendency to put everything off until the last minute you need to be in a program that will get you going. You could also get set up with an accountability partner as I described in the Make Money Online By Staying Focused post.

Now let’s talk about the possible coaching program.

Beginner Marketers
If you are a beginner I suggest a low cost coaching program that is mostly a home study course. One I can recommend is Mark Hendricks internet success system. It is low cost to get the course and it covers everything you need to know to get started. It is twelve courses that cover everything from mindset, copywriting, website mechanics, upsells, joint ventures and more. It comes in both pdf and audio formats for a one time price. If you have questions you can get them answered on the teleconference calls lunch with Mark Hendricks this is a great place to start if you are serious about learning what you need to know.

Intermediate Marketers
If you are an intermediate marketer you probably don’t need a high end coaching program yet. Let me give you my definition of an intermediate marketer. This is a person that has a website up and is making some money but not enough to live on.

In this situation you want to find a coach that can take you the next step and show you how to maximize your online income. In my case I was lucky enough to get in to a coaching program with Michael Cheney and Sterling Valentine but there are a lot of marketers out there that can help you get ahead by looking at what you know and giving you the one key element that you are missing.

The best place to find coaches like this is at events like JV Alert Live, Big Seminar and many, many more. These types of group coaching programs will usually be for a set period of time like three months and will usually cost you from $1500 to $5000 for the program or they might have a monthly program with a price range from $100 to $500 per month.

Advanced Marketers
Advanced marketers are marketers that are making enough money online to live comfortably. In this case you have a good grasp on the internet marketing systems but you might be able to use some help in expanding or applying advance techniques. This is where the high end coaching programs come in to play. These programs can cost you up to $10,000 per month but if you are in the right position you can definitely profit from this cost.

I, myself, have never been part of one of these programs, yet, but I do personally know a number of people who have gone through the programs and I have seen their income soar.

I have also seen beginner marketers fork over the bucks for this type of coaching and the only thing they got back from it was an emptier wallet. I not saying they didn’t learn anything but you have to progress in steps.

I seriously doubt there is anybody that thinks you can go from pedestrian to world class grand prix race driver in one step. The same is true for internet marketing, you have to take the steps and you have to be ready to take the next step instead of trying to leap to the end.

Always keep the end in sight but make sure you know the steps it takes to reach that goal and take those steps and only those steps that move you toward your goal.

This is response to a comment on the Tell Me What You Want post.

The main request was how to get the products that you already have on your hard drive on to the internet.

This takes a number of things such as:

• Unzipping the product
• Editing the sales page
• Accepting payments
• Providing the download links
• FTP the information to the site

And quite frankly to type out all this information is a fairly big job.

Instead what I did was create a video of me taking a master resale rights product and getting it online.

In the video I only used free tools for all the editing and other purposes, so that any one that watches the video can do exactly what I did.

You can watch as I take the product from the downloaded package to the final version on my site in almost real time (I did pause the recording while it uploaded and while I was sneezing) it took under 25 minutes to:

• Unzip the product
• Edit the sales page
• Edit the thank you page
• Create an encrypted payment button through PayPal
• FTP the information to the site

Yes, I am probably a little faster than someone that hasn’t done this before but still it is under a half an hour to get a product from download to finished sales page on my site. If it take you twice as long then you will only spend an hour at it.

Think about it how many products do you have on your hard drive that you could be selling right now?

I recorded this video at 800 x 600 pixels then I realized that it would be too big to fit into this area that I have on this blog so I changed it to 480 x 360 but I didn’t like the way that looked, it was too hard to read. So as a final compromise I published it at 640 x 480 and put it on a different page at here at the site.

You can see it by clicking the link below (it will open in a new window)

Resale Rights Online Video

Please remember that this video is unscripted and not a product quality video. It is just me taking a product, editing it, putting a payment button on it and uploading it to my site, while I talk to myself. It isn’t edited, except for a zoom in and it was paused during the FTP upload because my internet connection is not that fast. You will even hear me say a file is 20 Gig when it is only 20 Meg in size and you will hear me having trouble saying PDF Profitlock. But it does provide all the information you need to get a resale rights product or a master resale rights product on your site and for sale all in under 30 minutes.

This isn’t the best way to sell a product. There a numerous other things you should take into account when you put a product up for sale on the internet but this is a starting step that will hopefully get you to take some action and get your products out there.

Some of the extra things that you should do that aren’t done on the video are:

Repackage the download so that it tells them it came from your site. You can see my post, Using Your Products To Create Website Traffic that will give you a little more information on repackaging the product.

You should have some method of getting the customer on your list. You can do this by offering a newsletter that covers a related topic to the product.

You should be offering an upsell or affiliate products or your own products on the download page. These products should be related to the one that was purchased from you.

You should also think about actually getting a script to handle the payment processing and the download areas.

There are other things you need to get your product online like a website and if you need help with things like a domain name, hosting, etc. then I suggest you try my Marketing Beginners site. It is free to sign up and there are a ton of videos that will get you started.