| |
| |
|
Affiliate Revenue Information |
|
|
|
22 Questions to Ask Before You Use Any Shopping Cart System
Many seasoned professional speakers agree that you can make more money selling your knowledge in the form of products than you can speaking. You can use traditional methods to sell products such as direct mail, catalogs and advertising. However, if you have a great online presence, the entire world is your marketplace at a fraction of the cost of most traditional methods. To easily sell to this worldwide marketplace, you need a great shopping cart system. Choosing a shopping cart system is perhaps the most important single decision you'll make in your online marketing career. This is because: You're stuck with the decision for a long time. If you buy into a system that isn't adequate, it can cost you money--big money- because it won't maximize the amount of money spent by each visitor. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of off-the-shelf, free and alternative products out there vying for your money, time or both. And most of them are junk. Don't suffer like I did I learned the hard way. When I started on the Internet I couldn't find a decent shopping cart program, so I took one that was highly recommended by my ISP (I now know the only reason they suggested it was because it made them the most money. They didn't care if it was the best one for me or not). What a headache! The system wouldn't do anything but take the order, but you had to have a PhD in computer science to work on it. Here are 21 questions you absolutely, unfailingly must ask anyone trying to sell you a shopping cart. If you don't hear positive answers to the majority of these questions, put your wallet back into your pocket and evaluate the next option. Don't get stuck with a crappy shopping cart, even if they give it to you free. If you have a poor shopping cart, get rid of it. I know that hurts, because you may have spent lots of time and money getting it going, but a bad one will cost you many thousands of dollars by waiting to replace it later rather than sooner. Oh, and one more thing: if you hear the shopping cart programmer answer one of the questions below by saying, "Well, we could make it do that," run away even faster, because you're going to get stuck with a big custom programming bill with no guarantees that the cart is going to work the way you expected. Every question below is very important when it comes to having a quality shopping cart system that gets more money out of the same number of visitors. 1. Will it calculate shipping and tax? 2. Does it handle specialized shipping like FedEx and UPS? 3. Will it automatically deliver hard goods and soft goods (e- books and other digital products) in the same transaction? 4. Does it offer customizable "Return to Shopping" pages without needing custom programming? This is important so you can send your customers to the most likely product they will buy next. Standard carts just send customers back to the main catalog, which forces them to search for related products. This is both irritating and time-consuming. Any delays in finding what they want could mean a lost sale, when they finally throw their hands up in disgust and move on to your competitor's site. 5. Does it offer customizable "Thank You" pages based on what the customer just bought? These are pages where savvy marketers put affiliate links and other offers specifically related to the customer's interests. When a customer clicks on one of these links and buys something from someone else, you get a commission. 6. Does it deliver receipt and confirmation e-mails automatically? The customer wants to know immediately that the order went through. If he or she is unsure, you are going to have to field many wasted e-mails and phone calls letting the customer know everything is OK. 7. Does it allow multiple order and dropship e-mails? In many cases, several different people in your organization and/or outside your organization need notice of an order. Again, you don't want to have to do this manually. 8. Does it have a Web-based administration page so you can work on your cart from any computer that has Internet access? 9. Does it include encryption technology and a secure server? Many companies make a fortune by sucking you in with a cheap or free cart and then make money on selling you an overpriced secure server. 10. Does it deliver easy output to your accounting software? You want to be able to import and export data easily between the cart and whatever programs you have that need to share the customer and sales information. 11. Does it have its own associate/affiliate program or is it easily compatible with other major brands of associate software? An affiliate program lets other people promote and sell your products on their Web sites. You don't pay them unless they sell something. When I tried to get an associate/affiliate program to work with my old cart, it cost me six months of down time and untold amounts of money lost because it wouldn't work. The associate program people blamed the shopping cart people and vice versa. But ultimately I was left holding the bag. 12. Does it have integrated up-sell modules? The ability to offer more related products to customers making a purchase makes me a small fortune each month. We call it, "Do you want fries with that?" If you don't have this ability, you are leaving many thousands of dollars on the table from people who would have spent more if your cart just gave them the chance. 13. Does it have an integrated sales and prospect database? In the old days I would have to print out orders and then retype them into ACT or some other database program. A good shopping cart system eliminates all this hassle and potential for error and gives you instant access to your sales reports and clients. 14. Does it have broadcast e-mail capability? Good shopping cart systems are able to manipulate your customer database instantly and send e-mails to any segment or sub-segment of your clients and handle unlimited e-mail magazines. Again, in the old days I would have to be genius enough to pick out segments of the database, export them to a file, import them into a mail program and then an hour later send the darn e-mail. Now this is all done in a few seconds. 15. Does it have mail merge capability? The e-mails sent are personalized to the recipients in any number of ways. Their names can be popped in to the subject line and in various portions of the body of the e-mail. You can merge "what they bought," "when they bought," "where they live" or just about anything that will make them feel the e-mail was just for them. Virtually all studies show that mail merge gets a much higher response than plain broadcast e-mail. 16. Can it handle coupons and other discounts? You can make a deal with Joe Blow that everyone coming from his Web site gets an automatic discount -- either a percentage or dollar amount. This makes Joe look great to his visitors and makes more sales for you. Here's a secret: Joe is your affiliate and makes money on the sale too, so he's got a great incentive to keep your discounts and coupons in front of his visitors. Good shopping cart systems can automate all of this and also handle any quantity discounts you offer. 17. Can it work for multiple Web sites with no extra fees? When I first started I had to get a separate (and expensive) license for each site and a separate merchant account too. Not only was this a great deal of expense, the hassle with installation every time you wanted a new site to go up was enormous. Modern carts can sell bras on one site and bibles on another, and no one knows the difference. The carts run on their own servers so there is no expensive installation and set-up is immediate. 18. Does it have unlimited and fully integrated "sequential" autoresponders? This is one of the most powerful features when it comes to Internet marketing. This feature follows up automatically over and over again to your clients and prospects to provide them customer care and to sell them more products and services. You can even provide free or paid e-mail courses, and each part of the course is delivered automatically. 19. Does it have ad tracking tied into actual sales? Simple ad tracking can be had all over the 'Net, but it is pretty much worthless unless it is tied to actual sales. This is called the "conversion ratio." Your cart system should be able to tell you how many people clicked on a particular promotion and how many people bought. This is the only way you can determine if an ad paid off. Good carts will also automatically split test one of your sales pages against another and tell you which page sells more. You keep the page that sells more and get rid of the page that sells less. 20. Does it have a pop-up box builder? Even though many people hate popup boxes, they work. I use them judiciously to make all kinds of offers, and I have the sales figures to prove they get more money out of the same number of people. If you know how to use them properly, no one gets upset. 21. Does it have a printable off-line order form? Believe it or not, many people are still afraid to put their credit card numbers into a Web site. I still get lots of fax orders and phone orders. If you want to maximize your sales, your cart must take these kinds of orders easily. 22. Does it provide free training? You'll need training in both the basic set up of using your shopping cart and determining your online sales strategy, so that you maximize the amount of money spent by each customer. You may not understand what all the above questions mean right now, but I can assure you they are important in putting more money into your bank account. If you want to know even more about this subject, you can download a free e-book, How to Pick a Shopping Cart System That Makes You Money at www.public- speaking.org/ebook.htm. What shopping cart system do I use? I have my own private label called www.KickStartCart.com. www.netaim.info http://www.netaim.info/bios/tom.htm
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Affiliate! Discover Why You Are Losing $600 Each and Every Month! Link bypassing is the number one trap affiliates fall into online. Also known as the "affiliate links theft". In Mourning for the Google Cash System Do you remember when you could pick an affiliate program, hustle up a few hundred keywords toss it all into your Adwords account & wait for the commissions. No me neither! I was busy doing something else during those glory days. A Wake Up Call To Always Remember I received two emails this weekend. Both were as a result of autoresponder follow ups these people were receiving from my business. Affiliate Surprise I can't believe it! I open up my mail today, and what do I receive? A statement from one of my affiliates saying that I've earned a pretty good amount of money for the last quarter. Wow! How'd that happen? Since my web site is only a couple of months old, I couldn't believe that I'd already earned that much from this affiliate. How to Make Your Affiliate Sales Take Off in a Hurry Affiliate programs are probably the easiest and simplest way to achieve business success online. Indeed there are many online entrepreneurs from all over the world making a very comfortable income from various affiliate programs. JV and Grow Rich To illustrate the concept of arranging simple joint ventures that can lead to exciting new business opportunites, I am including a short story and correspondence that led me down a grand path to a very successful deal that involves one of the most successful personal and financial achievement books ever written, not to mention partnering with a living legend.To start things off, in early July of 2002 I read "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill for the first time in my 36 years of existance on this spinning orb of madness. A Successful Satellite TV Affiliate Website Satellite TV has exploded on the scene during the last decade, providing expanded channel offerings and new technologies that were not previously available from regular television. When the "mini-dishes" were developed and the satellites put in place by Dish Network and Direct TV, satellite TV became available to almost everyone. How To Use Articles To Build Your Affiliate Program Articles are the perfect promotional tool for your affiliates - they bring in more sales than banners, book covers, and ezine ads. Your affiliates can post them on their website, use them in their newsletter, or turn them into a free eBook. Adsense: How to Make Money With Ads by Google The chances are that you've seen "Ads by Google" on a variety of websites and perhaps wondered what they were all about. The fact is that you can probably get "Ads by Google" on your own site and if you do, you can look forward to getting paid by Google. Instant Success - Yeh Right. Join our affiliate-program and make your fortune overnight.Sound familiar ?How many times have you received email to say that by joining company X you will have instant success. Ten Ways Affiliates Sabotage Themselves If affiliate marketing is so lucrative, then why do so few ever turn a profit? Read on, and I'll tell you why.1. Common Decency......Lets Keep it Alive! I recently had an experience with one of the affiliate programs I *was* involved with. This experience did not surprise me, but did however, disappoint me. How To Build Your Sales You may have heard of joint venture marketing, It's used frequently by savvy entrepreneurs to increase profits and add loads of prospects to their customer list.So what is joint venture marketing (or j/v)?Speaking at the Information Marketing Boot Camp (http://www. Generate More Sales in ANY Affiliate Program - Part Three Thinking Outside the square is where we last left off. So to carry on from this topic let me introduce you to M. 8 Reasons To Be An Affiliate Marketer When I began affiliate marketing I knew only half of these things but, in hindsight, if I had have known these things then it would have made the decisions I made so much easier. Such is the intention of this article, to contribute towards the success of affiliate marketing newcomers. How Joint Ventures Can Catapult You to Success Substantial opportunities for increased sales and profits are missed by not seeking out and implementing joint ventures.Strategic alliances also create value for the customer and save money and build future relationships for the partners. 6 Things to Increase Your Affiliate Income So you've signed up for affiliate programs, posted links around thenet but you're still only making pocket change? Wonder what others aredoing that you aren't? Below you will find 6 things that everyaffiliate marketer needs to increase their income.#1 - Your own Website:Build a website to promote the product. Making Money with Affiliate Programs - Part III Whether you are a newbie to Internet or a proud owner of a website, affiliate programs are great opportunities for you to make money online. It is an interesting concept that allows affiliates to develop a source of income and the program owners to sell their products more effectively. Big Ticket Items - 6 More BIG Benefits To Selling As An Affiliate Today, we're going to cover 6 More BIG Benefits to selling Big Ticket items as an AFFILIATE.First, we had better define both Big Ticket Item and Affiliate. Why Top-earning Affiliates Have Their Own Domains And Websites Many affiliate programs usually provide special web pages for their affiliates. This is one of the reasons why it may appear very strange, at first, that most top affiliates and the high earners from affiliate programs will most certainly always have their own websites, complete with their own domains specifically for promoting a certain affiliate program that they are involved in.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2007 |
