Unfortunately, purchasing a product on the Internet can sometimes be risky, and when your only point of contact is a web site, it can be scary for people to hand you their credit card information even if they want your product.

It is important to eliminate as many doubts as you can.

In addition to using SalesBully to motivate your visitors to take action on their first visit, risk reversal techniques reduce the fear people have when dealing with your company by increasing trust and credibility in you, your product and your company. Combining them can have a dramatic result.

Display contact information
Can people contact someone if they have a problem? Just displaying a phone number can increase sales, even if the people buying never phone the number. Also include your mailing address.

Display testimonials and reviews
Showing links to independent reviews, and displaying testimonials further increase the social proof motivator.

Offer a guarantee and use other risk reversal terms
Displaying text like “100% satisfaction guaranteed” and “hassle free returns” decrease the fear that people will be stuck with a product that doesn’t work. Use a hand-written signature on the guarantee.

Tell people about availability
Let them know when they are going to get the product and how it will arrive. For example, it may be obvious to you that an e-book isn’t a physical product and that it is instant on-line delivery, but it won’t be to everyone.

What happens if there is problem?
Make sure it is very clear what you will do if there is a problem. Let them know what your support system is like and what kind of response times they can expect. How long will they be able to get support after they purchase? Is it free, or do you charge extra for support?

Add other ways to order
Even in this day in age, adding in phone, mail and even fax orders will increase your conversions.

Who are you?
Let people know that real people work here by using your name, pictures, voice and video.

Use trust symbols
Put recognized logos on your site.

a) Put your secure server symbol like the Verisign seal on your order pages if you are taking credit card orders yourself. Spend the extra money to get the logo that has your company name embedded in it.

b) Also put the logos of the credit cards you accept, as well as other payment methods you accept, like PayPal, even if you are not processing credit cards yourself.

c) Put a HackerSafe logo at the top of every page in your site. They have run split-tests on over 500 web sites with and without the logo and have an average conversion increase of 14%, just by adding their logo. This link gets you 20% off of HackerSafe.

d) Become a member of the Better Business Bureau and put their logo on your site, next to the HackerSafe logo.

e) Consider adding other logos like TrustE’s web seals association logos, and logos for any awards you have won.

Add value
Offer free shipping and bonus gifts, training, related products etc.

Product shots
Display pictures, screen shots and videos of the product so people can visualize what they are getting, which also creates an emotional attachement.

Reduce steps to purchase
Every step between someone arriving on your page and buying your product decreases conversions. Only use a squeeze page if you get more value out of the list than the customers you are losing by using a squeeze page, or if the squeeze page helps you customize the sales page enough to increase conversions.

Streamline your order process
Don’t collect unnecessary information in your order process and use a one-page order form if possible. If you aren’t shipping a product and don’t plan to mail physical promotions to people, then you don’t really need their address.

Remind people on the checkout form
Put a short reminder of what the person is getting on the checkout form.

Put a customer link on your home page
Not only does this help your existing customers feel at home, but it also lets your prospects know that they will be able to easily find where to go once they become customers and that you are interested in your customers beyond the initial transactions.

Display policies when taking action
Wherever you ask for an email (including in your order form) let people know what you will do with it. Also, show your billing, return, shipping, affiliate, acceptable use policies etc, as appropriate, and in context.

Add additional languages
China has a population of 1,321,851,888 and grew by 18% in 2005 and 2006, and 23% in 2006. It is projected to overtake the U.S. in total number of Internet users in a few years. Few marketers target other cultures, which means there isn’t much competition, however cultural and political problems can make it more difficult. As well, can you offer support in other languages as well as translating your site.

Split-test everything you can
You never know what really increases or decreases conversions unless you run A/B split-tests. For instance, perhaps adding an address into your order form actually will increase conversions because it makes it look like you are interested in a longer-term relationship with the customer. Or perhaps it will reduce them because people don’t like to give up that extra information. The only way to know is to split-test, keeping in mind the results may be different for every site.

I hope you found this helpful. We are aiming to put most of these techniques at work on all our sites.

If you have other ideas to share, or comments on the above ideas, please add your comments below.

Thank you!

John Reel.
President of Green Web Services Inc.

1 Comment »

I have just uploaded an interview with a guy who took action.

Within 3 days of getting SalesBully, Dave Gagne from Ottawa did a quick test to see if it works as advertised, and made $11,766 and counting selling a $67 product.

Here’s the kicker: He was marketing to a small list, over a holiday weekend. They had seen his offer many times before over the last two years and had been pretty unresponsive. He told me he’s never seen anything like what happened.

Listen to the interview to find out what he did.

His site is http://www.TradingMasterPlan.com.

Right now he is using SalesBully to redirect visitors to the sold out page, which is great to see. If he changes the home page, you might be able to get to the sold out page using this link:

http://www.tradingmasterplan.com/summer-sale/sold-out.php

John.

No Comments »

Hi. 

I need your help.

Everyone who posts to this blog with good feedback telling us why they did or didn’t buy SalesBully gets full access to a video where marketer Jeff Dedrik tells us the exact process they used in a very successful launch, how he quickly generated a huge list and how he then went on to make a small fortune every month from affiliate sales.

If you are one of the 300+ people who have bought SalesBully so far, please add a comment below and tell me why you bought it and what your initial plan was (or is) for using it, and also what you thought of the sales letter and emails so far.

If you haven’t bought SalesBully yet, please tell me why not, and I would really like to read what you thought of the sales letter, the product and the marketing as well.

Good or bad, I would like your feedback so that we can learn and improve our ability to get our products into the hands of people who will benefit from them.

I’ll be emailing everyone the link to the video individually, so please give me a few working days to get that email out to you.  This is a great video that sent me running for a notebook the moment it was over. 

Thank you very much,
John.

37 Comments »

On Tuesday, a guy named Ken Reno bought SalesBully.  That same day, he put it on his site and got over 200 sales, more than paying for the software, which he got at a discount to boot!

When we talked on the phone he said he had never experienced those kinds of numbers before, and that he’ll be telling everyone about SalesBully.

As I write this, 330 copies are gone.  (We didn’t include the first 250 on the home page, and should update that soon.)  Copies are still available at a discount, for a limited time at www.SalesBully.com.

If you don’t get what SalesBully does, watch the video at
http://www.SalesBully.com/videos/Overview

If you have questions or comments about SalesBully, please post them here.  I’d love to hear from you.

Thank you,
John.

No Comments »

Hi.

I’ve created a second video.  It’s only 5 minutes long, and in it we blast through several of the ways you can squeeze more money out of your web site.

Watch the video here 
(Press Play when it loads.  I have it set not to autoplay.)

I welcome your comments!

Thank you,
John.

No Comments »

The reason we pre-launched SalesBully yesterday to our list was to test things before we did a full-scale launch.  
 
Here’s the results and the secret bit I couldn’t tell you until now.
 
We did the math.  Based on open-rates on emails, the size of our list and figuring for above-average conversion rates, we wouldn’t even sell 100 copies.
 
And yet, I made 250 copies available to make sure that everyone who wanted to could get the chance to pre-order SalesBully.
 
As I write this, there are only 1,114 people on the SalesBully email list who got the secret order link.
 
We were not expecting to or planning on selling out. 
 
To do so, a whopping 22% of those people would have to open the email, visit the site, read the sales letter and buy.
 
With many people happy to get a conversion rate of 2% AFTER people arrived at their site, selling 250 copies of anything to an email list of 1,114 is not only unrealistic, it is darn near impossible.
 
And things did not go as well as planned.
 
Despite my perfectionist ways, there was a typo that sent everyone to a misspelled domain.  That didn’t make us look good. 
 
Then, those who did come back went into an endless loop, each of them hitting our server dozens of times and ending up on the wrong page after.  During this, we couldn’t even connect to the server to fix it.
 
That made us look worse.
 
(This is exactly why we pre-tested the site before letting affiliates send mass traffic.)
 
When the more persistent and forgiving of those people finally got to the site, we learned that people weren’t quite getting what SalesBully did. 
 
We got several comments where people only thought it was useful for large launches.  They focused on one single feature because I didn’t get across to them well enough that SalesBully also improves your sales funnel so that you can make more money per visitor, even if you have very low traffic.
 
So, with all that going against us, what were the results?
 
We let one affiliate promote to a small list to test that aspect too.  That person was Tim Erway who, along with his partner Jesse Jameson, helped us with SalesBully.
 
I just got off the phone with Tim.  His own numbers show that 25% of the people who clicked the link in the email he sent out, opted in to our list, read the sales page and bought the product.
 
This is an unbelievably high number, far higher than our record-setting GoTryTHIS launch… and he emailed out just before the launch, so I didn’t have a chance to “pre-sell” them at all.
 
Those results show how well SalesBully works.  Even with small numbers, glitches in the sales process, a sales letter with no testimonials and pre-ordering a product that they won’t get for a week, using these techniques resulted in astounding sales.

No, we didn’t sell out.  There are currently 82 copies left and 4 sold while writing this letter.
 
However, we surpassed our expected sales by far.  We also learned what we needed to and gave everyone ample opportunity to get the discount.
 
So, even if there are still copies left, tonight I’m going stop sales and switch the site to the pre-launch state so that I can start sending out affiliate links tomorrow without confusing their lists with talk of pre-release discounts.
 
Thank you for everyone who participated.  I would very much like to hear your feedback about the sales process and the information I sent by email.  If you have something to share, please post it at as a comment here.  I read every comment.
 
And if SalesBully wasn’t for you, I hope you’ll stick with us as we continue to innovate and come out with new software products to help you make more money in Internet Marketing.
 
If you haven’t and want to check things out, you can still visit www.SalesBully.com (and even buy it) until later tonight.
 
Take care,
John.
 
P.S.  Totally unrelated: Tonight, after a four or five year year break, I’m starting to teach martial arts again.  A new Yoshinkan Aikido dojo has opened up here and I’m the big kahuna. 

24 Comments »

Watch me transform an ordinary site into a motivating SalesBully empowered site in just 10 minutes, including explaining the psychology behind why I’m making these changes.

Watch The Video Here

(This video looks at a few of SalesBully’s features designed for launches.  SalesBully also helps you improve your sales funnel for ongoing sales so you get more value per visitor.)

Also, remember that pre-launch starts today at Noon EST at http://www.SalesBully.com/pre_order.php.  Go there to get your disount.

John.

19 Comments »

Before I get into the technology behind SalesBully, I want to talk about some mind-set mistakes almost all marketers make that really holds them back:

They want everyone to like them.

Well no matter what you do, it ain’t going to happen and the sooner you get over it, the sooner you can make more money.  You’re simply not going to please everyone ever.

Now, I may have offended someone just by saying that.  I hope you’ll keep reading anyway because you simply will always have critics.  Even if 99% of the people love you, some won’t.

Here’s the secret: 

The better you do in anything, the more critics you’ll have, and as the saying goes, “There is no such thing as bad publicity!”

I used to be crippled by the critics.  I would get loads and loads of praise and happy customers and then let one single complaint get me down.  I suppose this turned me into the perfectionist that I am, which is a good thing for you… but it really was stupid of me to empower the odd person who didn’t like me by trying to change to make him or her happy too.  Accept that those people always will be there or drive yourself nuts trying to please them at the expense of everyone else and your bottom line.

A related mistake that a lot of smart people make is that they think their market includes everyone.  There isn’t a single market that includes everyone.  There never has been and never will. 

Wait you say, what about the basics like water?  Well, if you sell bottled water in the desert, I will bet you that there will still be prepared nomads who have their own and don’t want to carry around plastic bottles and snub their noses at it… or they don’t like the temperature, or the taste, or the price or the name of the product!  You can’t win with everyone.

No matter what your product is, it won’t appeal to everyone.  No matter what your marketing style is, it won’t appeal to everyone.   Some people will see a black hat with devil horns at the bottom of our page and run screaming for the hills. 

You know what’s even worse than having those few people not like you?  Having nobody care, which is exactly what will happen if you try and remove all marketing from your marketing.

Now, in marketing a product called SalesBully and outright telling you that I am using these techniques on you in this sales process is another story.  I’m creating for myself a very unique situation that few marketers will ever have to face.

There are bound to be some people who don’t like this and don’t like the fact that you are going to be able to do the fancy stuff that very few marketers are able to do.  If you read the comments you’ll see the occasional negative comment.  (There is one so far.)  And you’ll also read a lot of other comments supporting this and telling you how powerful these techniques are, simply because it is.

The simple truth is that the SalesBully techniques make more money and I used them in the launch of GoTryTHIS and didn’t receive a single complaint.  Not one.  Even after telling people that I used them, nobody complained.  Of course, they were very happy with their purchase because it was a quality product that lived up to the marketing.

So, you have a choice.  You can be crippled by listening to and empowering the odd person who doesn’t agree with using these techniques, or you can listen to the experience of the people who have used these kinds of techniques with amazing success, as I have.

Really, what I think doesn’t matter in the least.  What matters is the bottom line.  E-commerce is driven by emotion and SalesBully connects with emotion.  If you don’t believe me, put it to the test.

John.

6 Comments »

Hey there!

After talking about fear-of-loss in the last post I teased you by saying that in this post I would talk about how SalesBully gets right into your visitors sub-conscious to remove the price barrier.

This is massively important!

By using this technique, the majority of selling to your visitors is finished the second they arrive at the squeeze page, before they have a chance to actually read what it says. 

It has been shown to drastically increase opt-ins and sales.

It starts with social proof.

Has this ever happened to you?  As a kid, every time I came home after doing something stupid with my friends, my Mom actually fired off the cliche question, “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?”

Well, yeah, probably.  (Mom, if you’re reading this… sorry!)

We have a strong desire to belong and to do what our peers are doing.  We look to them for assurance that our decisions are sound and when a number of people are doing something it becomes more normalized and easier for us to justify doing ourselves.  This is social-proof at work.

Social-proof is so powerful it can kill you.

Did you know that every time a newspaper publishes a front page story about a suicide that the suicide rates jump for a week?  Publishing this permanent solution to a temporary problem suddenly makes it a more acceptable solution to other people.  People who would not have otherwise killed themselves find it easier to justify the decision. 

(This is actually a pet-peeve of mine to put in mildly.  The connection between a suicide story and the rise in suicides is well documented, yet the media keeps publishing stories that normalize and sensationalize BAD things, like suicides and shootings in schools.  It does make the world a worse place because normalizing bad things makes bad things more likely to happen again and again.  Oh, if only the majority of the media’s content was focused on good things.)

Sorry for the rant, but if social-proof can cause those kinds of action, think of what it can do for you when used for good… like to help people in their decision to buy your most wonderful product that is actually going to make a positive difference in their lives… just like SalesBully can.

Take a moment and think about the products you are selling and how the visitor experiences it.  They arrive at your page and on some level they are asking themselves questions like this:

- Is this a good product?
- Is anyone else buying this thing?
- If I buy this, will I feel like a chump later for being the only one?
- Is this thing really valid or a scam?

Do you address these questions, and if so how?  No matter what you say in your sales copy, it’s just what you say.  Let your visitor’s group actions speak for you and much louder than your own words.

When we launched our last product, the big red header on the squeeze page said something like, “1250 Smart Marketers Have Already…”, and that number was accurate when they arrived on the page.  Every time the page was loaded it connected to our shopping cart software and displayed the number of sales that had taken place so far.

Before people even read the sentence or read the rest of the page, the point of that heading would have already been taken in at some level and have done its job.

You might be amazed at the results:

1) As soon as they arrived at the site, they instantly knew that this was a hot product that other people were buying, which removes a lot of barriers to the visitor allowing themselves to want the product as well.

2) They sub-consciously registered that all those visitors were willing to pay whatever the price was that we were asking of them, which made it very easy for them to justify the price to themselves.

They were mostly sold the moment they arrived at the page and glimpsed the headline… and they didn’t even know what the product was yet or how much it costs!

Now, back then, we were testing a concept, and it worked like magic.

When you get SalesBully, you’ll be able to easily do this and the social-proof will be much more powerful because the quantity sold changes live without refreshing the page.  They will actually see it changing with every purchase, which increases demand, which speeds up sales, which increases demand, which speeds up sales etc.

Or better yet, they can see the quantity going down using scarcity and fear-of-loss along with social proof to dramatically speed up sales.

As the guy telling you about SalesBully, I’m in a very unique situation.  I’m not holding back about what it does or how much it can help you.  We are using the technique I just told you about throughout our sales process when we launch. 

When you use these techniques, you won’t be telling anyone what or why your are doing it.  You certainly won’t be telling them the desired effect of using these techniques.  Since your prospects aren’t expecting it, it should make it even more powerful for you than it will be for me during this launch.

In the next post I’ll introduce some of the technology supporting SalesBully that makes it really easy for you to get going with it.  We spent a lot of time making it so that any numskull can add SalesBully techniques to their site very quickly, so a smart marketer like you should have no problem. 

Take care,
John.

3 Comments »

Hi again.

In my last post, I talked at length about using fear-of-loss to motivate your visitors to buy your products, examining it from the point of writing sales copy and the mind-set of selling. 

At the time, I only teased at how SalesBully can enhance the feeling by linking it to your prospect’s desire for your product.

Let’s take a look at how SalesBully uses fear-of-loss and the reasons it works.

SalesBully uses fear-of-loss by sending your visitors packing if they don’t act fast enough.  This can be when you run out of quantity, if they spend too long on the page, at a pre-set date and time or even if they arrive at a page too soon, like before your launch starts.

All of these options have various live count-downs to really drive the point home.  This means that the numbers will change as the user is watching the page instead of having to refresh.

Where you send people is up to you, and SalesBully’s flexibility allows for some creative uses.

Now… it may sound scary at first, but giving your prospects the boot has been shown to increase sales over and over again.

There are several reasons behind this:

1. If someone sees the golden opportunity you are offering rapidly slipping through their fingers, they are more likely to buy now, rather than lose out forever.

   (Since I’m being totally up-front about how we are selling SalesBully, I’ll let you know right now that we are using this technique in the sales process.  There are only 250 copies of SalesBully being sold at the pre-launch discounted price, and once they are gone they are gone.  When we start selling, you’ll see the copies, and the opportunity to get the discount, vanishing before your eyes.)

2. If they wait too long and then find that they can’t get that offer at the same price or at all, then they learn that you mean business.  The next time you use SalesBully techniques on them, they will know they have to act much more quickly.
3. Just after your visitors realize that they lost out, you can present them with a “second chance offer”.  Very few marketers do this, which means that they are losing a lot of sales. Unlike them, with SalesBully you will capture those missed sales, and at a slightly higher price by giving them a second chance and bundling in a bonus so that they feel justified in paying more.  Your visitors, just crushed from missing your fabulous offer, should jump to take you up on your generosity!

   (Now, since I just told you about that secret technique, I should let you know that we’re not doing that in the SalesBully launch, so don’t miss out on the discounted price.)

Fear-of-loss is only one of the psychological motivators that SalesBully uses to increase your conversions, and increasing conversions is only one of the things SalesBully does. 

In the next post I’ll talk about how SalesBully gets right into your visitors sub-conscious to remove the price barrier.  Properly used, your visitors will be sold the moment they arrive on your squeeze page, before they even know what the product is or costs.

2 Comments »

Hi.

I promised that I would reveal my best secrets of selling.

Here is the first of several letters where I will talk about the psychology of your prospective buyers.  If you don’t understand that, then you are seriously up a creek without a paddle.

By the way, I’m writing these pretty fast, as I have a lot to do before the launch.  My aim is to help you get quickly into a different mind set so that you can make the most out of SalesBully. 

So, please forgive me if these aren’t very polished.

Now, what motivates people to buy your product?
- Will it make them money?
- Does it make their life easier or better?
- Will it get them more people in the sack?

These are all strong motivators that we see all the time in advertising and the fact is that they aren’t nearly as powerful as you might think.

These are all benefits based upon desire-for-gain and using only that motivator means you’ll only be a fraction of the success you could be.

Most people are much more motivated by fear-of-loss, or more simply put, people have a very strong desire to NOT have bad things happen to them.

For many of you, this is not a great revelation.  It is well-known and documented that fear-of-loss is a stronger motivator than desire-for-gain.  Various tests have proved it to be up to five times more effective.

Even so, it is rarely used in Internet marketing.  We tend to create benefit-oriented sales letters based entirely on how wonderful your life will be after you buy the product.

Don’t get me wrong, desire for gain IS a motivator and should be used.

For example, I could tell you about when I started testing the concepts used in SalesBully in the GoTryTHIS launch.

Testing those techniques resulted in huge conversion rates.  I had a 12% click-to-sales ratio, which means that 12% of the people who landed on my squeeze page continued through the sales process and bought the product.  (Actually, one in four people who read the sales letter bought GoTryTHIS.)

Those weren’t the gains.  Those were the means to the gains.  The real gains for me was that I established myself as an expert in this industry, with my clients and, of course, I established myself financially.

The software I was selling wouldn’t have accomplished those gains without the strong motivational techniques that drove sales like a winning Nascar contender.

Those were nice gains.  Gains are good.  And just like the people who sent in the hundred or so success stories from using GoTryTHIS, I expect you to be sending me your success stories from using SalesBully… and soon.

There is nothing wrong with pointing out gains.  You should.  But, if you only focus on gains, you’re not motivating your users to buy your product nearly as much as you can.

Read the following two paragraphs and try to feel in your gut which one has more emotional impact:

1: “SalesBully will help you increase your conversions and improve your sales funnel so that you can make much more money from the same number of visitors, faster than ever before.”

2: “Your competitors with SalesBully will make more money per visitor than you do, allowing them steal away your affiliates by offering higher commissions than you can afford.  In the new marketplace you will have to work harder and spend more money just to earn what you used to, if you can manage to stay in business at all.”

I’m betting the second statement resonated with you a lot more than the first one.  Maybe the idea of having to spend all that extra money and time to compete sent a shiver up your spine.

Put it this way: It is simply more important for people to protect the tangible things they already have than to get one of the thousands of items we are exposed to each and every day that is supposed to make our lives better!

Once again, most marketers only tell their prospects about the desire-for-gain benefits and, to their own detriment, they ignore totally the much more powerful fear-of-loss motivator, which SalesBully unleashes to kick ass.

Unlike those marketers, I use BOTH motivators AND SalesBully techniques. This is the primary reason my products sell as well as they do, though the incredibly high quality doesn’t hurt either. 

SalesBully uses a number of fear-of-loss techniques to get your visitors motivated now.  It strongly enhances the desire to get your product by overtly linking it with the fear of losing the opportunity to do so forever.

Of course, it also uses other techniques at the same time, making the urge to buy almost unbearable.

So, even if you are one of the few who were more charged up by the desire-for-gain statement in my test above, I still win. 

I’ll talk about all those techniques in other posts.

Thanks for reading.  Please leave your comments below.

John.

3 Comments »

Hi.

We’ve got a lot of great feedback already in my personal blog, emails and a few calls and instant messages.  Hundreds more people signed up than we were hoping for.  It’s been a good day and it hasn’t even been 24 hours since I sent the advanced notice email out. 

I’ve put up this blog to hold the emails that I’ll be sending out in case any late joining people missed any important information, like this post.  Please post your feedback here.  I appreciate it.  I’ve also copied over all the comments posted on my personal blog that had to do with SalesBully.

This pre-launch is being held to test our updated sales software and you will get SalesBully about one week after you pre-order.  We’re only offering this heavily discounted pre-release opportunity to people like you who have already signed up with us for something else.  The discount is our way of thanking you.

We’re aiming for the pre-launch to be on Thursday.  It more likely will be next week, and if it does happen Thursday, at least you have been given notice. 

I’ll be writing more today, giving away some of the secrets that have allowed me to have a successful launch when many others can’t.

Thanks for your time,
John

No Comments »

It costs a lot to get a potential customer to come to your site.  SalesBully uses overwhelming psychological persuasion techniques to influence more of your visitors to buy your products on their first visit, before they are gone for good.

Find out more at http://www.SalesBully.com.

SalesBully includes many of the new back-end technologies built for GoTryTHIS 2.

This includes using our SetupBot technology to install it and adding the ability to auto-upgrade the software when we release new versions or even small improvements so your software is always up to date.

It also includes a brand new help system. We want to improve your ability to quickly get answers to questions without bogging us down with answering the same questions over and over again.

This new system has a lot of benefits that will increase how much value you get out of our software solutions.

10 Comments »