"How to Sell to 99% of Your Visitors"

Why an irresistible offer is critical to your online success.

Here's a prediction that may shock you:

If you don't make a compelling offer to your Web site visitors the first time they visit, they will probably never come back!

And I can prove the truth of this to you in about 30 seconds.

Go to your browser bookmark file and count the number of sites there versus the number you've actually been back to. Be honest. I'll bet it's less than 10%.

And these are the sites you *bookmarked.* What about the sites you *didn't* make a note of? Out of sight and out of mind, perhaps forever.

No matter what you sell, you absolutely, positively *must* make your visitors an offer they can't refuse. You *must* get them to tell you who they are, and possibly what they're interested in, and you must get them to agree to let you contact them.

This is by far the best way to build a base of qualified prospects that you can market to again and again.

The best offer to make is for something free. The challenge is to create a high-perceived value for your freebie while keeping your fulfillment cost low.

An e-zine can work well for this, but its value usually takes time to develop -- as people read issues. One way to build value up front is to create teasers for your zine at the point of signup. Tell people what they'll get with each issue and how it will benefit them. Or better still, get some testimonials about how your zine benefited readers and link to them.

You might want to create a "starter" issue of your zine that people get via autoresponder as soon as they subscribe. You could create a "best of" or resource issue for this purpose. Doing this will give your subscribers immediate value while it reminds them of what to expect in the future. If you don't send something quickly, people may forget they signed up and not recognize your zine later on.

Depending on the nature of your site and your business, you might offer people a free classified ad, a free consultation, a free sample, or a free link to their site. If you do this, be sure to assign a realistic value to your offer. Let people know what they're getting for free.

Whatever you do, make sure your offer is prominently displayed near the top of your home page. You might want to create a small banner for this purpose.

Make sure you get as much appropriate information as you can about your visitors when they sign up for your offer. For an e-zine, that may be just a name and email address. But for offers that have a higher perceived value, you can ask a lot more questions, which most people will answer.

If you don't have a compelling, irresistible offer on your home page, I urge you to create one immediately. The sooner you do, the sooner you'll start generating a roster of qualified prospects you can cultivate into a garden of profits.