Thursday, May 03, 2007

How to make money from the middle of nowhere - with less than a shoestring

The problem (and fortune) of being set in the Midwest is that you are miles from everything and so a lot of things (like decent bandwidth) are very expensive. On top of this, most rural areas are "economically disadvantaged" - meaning that since it costs less to live out here, companies pay less to the people who live here.

But to get your stuff marketed, you either have to pay someone to do it, or get rich and famous enough that people will do it for you for a piece of your action.

You can see the catch here - you have to make it first before people come knocking at your door to do it for you...

I've been studying along about marketing, since I've published many books on Lulu - but the sales haven't taken off (because no one knows they're there). So this lead to modern (cheap) marketing techniques as part of my research.

I just posted a couple of books on Autoresponders. You may be saying "Auto - What?" Yet if you do know about these marvelous inventions, you probably are saying - "Well, I hope they're good ones."

You see, the plain and simple way marketing is shifting on the Internet is away from being bombarded with inane and ridiculous expensive advertising promoting some new aftershave, car, insurance company, or law firm. Even banner ads and various multimedia, bandwidth-hogging video clips are disappearing - as soon as people find out how to block them.

What is replacing these is known as "permission marketing" or "opt-in marketing". For these, you get people to sign up for a free service which then softly sells that person the benefits of your solution to their problem. You are treating your customer like you would like to be treated - and you have her permission to do so!

But that is just the beginning of the subject.

You don't have time to send and answer every potential customer to your site about how they feel and how would they like some more information about your product, and so on.

An autoresponder (actually called a sequential autoresponder) will do this for you - on a semi-automatic basis. This means you can set it up once, tweak it a few times, and then concentrate on working up some more products to sell. Your friend, the autoresponder script, will work around the clock, on any schedule, to ensure that you get your messages out to people who want to hear from you about what you are specifically selling.

You can spend your free time writing more books, being interviewed by the press, or simply counting and re-investing all the money you are getting.

Now, personally, I'm still at work writing a book on this subject. But I had the brainstorm to publish some of the references I've run across which have really been created just for you - to help you improve your marketing and save your time.

So I rounded up four of the best whose authors would allow me to make them available for you.

The value of these books individually far outweighs the price I'm offering them at. The first book alone is valued by the authors at more than $980! Yet, they told me not to sell them too cheap, either. You can read about it in their books - which are republished in:

Autoresponder Magic & Million Dollar Emails

- and -

Autoresponder Secrets Exposed! and the TrafficJam Formula.

You may have noticed that this is a seeming far cry from the usual self-help classics which I have been publishing lately. However, as many people have observed, writing philosophy doesn't pay that well - unless you make it pay well.

That is where marketing comes in. Lulu does a great job of making publishing easy. And it's cheap because they don't invest in your design or marketing. But unless you get into marketing, you won't make much money doing what you love.

The reason I'm writing a book on this is so that I can learn how to do this. And books like those above are the reason I can figure out how to market cheaply and efficiently.

Check them out. And don't forget that you can take the download formats and offer them on your own site - and get people to pay you for re-selling them!

Luck to us all...

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