THE 10 PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE COPY WRITING FOR THE NET:

1. Know Your Product

This is the cornerstone of good copy writing. Know your product and be passionate about it. Believe in it. If you don't, you shouldn't be selling it. It is not only unethical to sell something you wouldn't buy yourself, but also difficult and unpleasant.

If you have a product that you *know* will change your customer's life for the better, then copy writing becomes much easier. You're doing her a favor - offering this product at this price - believe that yourself first.

After that, killer copy comes naturally.

2. Know Your Customer

Before you write the first word, create a profile customer.

• Is it a techno-peasant housewife or an IT company executive?
• Income range?
• Age?
• Sex?
• In a hurry?

Select your words and page length to suit your reader - not yourself.

Then, once your web site is tailor made for her unique needs, it is time to test... Find about 3 people who more or less fit your profile customer's specs and let them loose on the site. Give them tasks like finding your e-mail address, getting to the order page, finding information on a specific product etc.

See how easily they find it and ask for general comments as they go.

Testing is absolutely vital.

My own sales copy always looks good to me - but I wrote it, so I know exactly how it's structured. Someone else might find it tedious or even confusing.

Confusing web sites is the NUMBER ONE reason people leave.

Swear at them if you must, but don't confuse them.

That is why you have to test.

3. Stress Benefits

Whatever you do, DON'T put you mission statement on your homepage.

We just don't care.

We want benefits! What can your product do for me? Right now!

• Can it make me rich?
• Can it save me time?
• Can it entertain me?
• Can it make me feel better about myself?

That's what people want.

Your product's greatest benefit should be right in the top header in bold red letters. Your first three or four words should hit them between the eyes.

You never read everything on every page you visit. You scan - you look for something that seems interesting.

Statistics show that you have 10 seconds to grab your visitor's attention. If you don't, she'll move on. No sentence starting with "Our goal is to..." has ever grabbed my attention. I don't care about you. I care about me. What does your site/product do for me? Right now!

I know this seems harsh, but you'd do well to take it seriously. It's been proven many times. E-consumers are very back-button-happy. It's a big web with lots to see. You HAVE TO give them a reason to stay on your site.

4. Establish Trus

On the Net you don't have the advantage of speaking face to face with your customer, so you have to load as much credibility into your words as possible.

How?

Offer a free trial, a money-back guarantee, testimonials, put your e-mail address, physical address and phone number at the bottom of every page, show a (small) photograph of yourself etc.

Most important: Speak to your visitor. Don't ramble about technical specs of your products. Imagine sitting down with a friend and telling her about something that can really enhance her life.

5. Use Headings Like This One

Break it up.

Short paragraphs.

Few people will read your entire page. Make it scannable.

Each heading should do 2 things:

• Grab her attention
• Give her clues about the content of the next two or three paragraphs.

Remember that reading from the screen puts extra strain on the eyes. Make the read easy, quick and informative.

6. Words (not) To Use

Good words:
Free; proven; discover; breakthrough; learn; you/your; benefit; first; complete; exclusive etc.

Bad words:
If; but; should; could; etc.

Powerful words:
Why say "If you want to get to the top of the Search Engines..." when you could say "Nail the search engines in five easy steps. Read on... ".

As a rule of thumb, assume that your visitor couldn't care less about you. Don't use "I" or "me" more than "you".

7. Keep It Short

I mentioned page-length up there at #2. The key is to keep it as short as you can. When you're done writing your killer copy, see if you can say it in half the words. Don't sacrifice quality though. Make it as long as it needs to be without dragging it out.

8. Create Urgency

Throw in something special for the first 100 subscribers or make it "this month only". Your word selection is important here. Don't say "Subscribe now!". Put a specific time limit to it - "Subscribe during July and I'll give you... ".

Try to get them to buy on their first visit, because chances of them returning later are slim. Also see the next rule & my article on increasing your conversion ratio for additional tips.

9. Get A Response

Hook'em the first time.

If they don't bookmark you, they probably won't find you again. Have a back-up response ready.

For example:
Let's say that you have a visitor that just can't make up her mind. With a bit more convincing, you'll hook her, but she's at the end of the page and thinking about the dreaded back-button.

So give her something - like a free subscription to your newsletter or a trial download. That way you survive in her memory and you get another opportunity to persuade her.

10. Spelling, Grammar and Formatting

I won't tell you that a typo will kill your sales effort. The same applies to grammatical errors. Use a spellchecker of some sort. I make a habit of pasting my text in MS Word and running a spell-check. It saves a lot of time later.

EASY ON THOSE CAPS AND EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!

They look unprofessional. Use bold text and color to highlight important points.

Product Review - 1st Step To Be Affiliate Marketeers

No1.CommissionBluePrints
QUALITY SCORE:10/10
VALUE:10/10

Profitability: This system is focused on providing you with very straight to the point yet effective internet marketing strategies, and it really made us think out of the box when it came to devising new ways to stand out from the crowd. Once you start learning and putting to work the Commission Blueprint techniques, you will most likely become a few thousand dollars wealthier within a very short period of time (this varied among the members of our group). Moreover, for the ones of us with an already into Ewen Chia's Autopilot Profits, this came as an unexpected boost to an already profitable online business operation.

Cost vs. benefit ratio: The Commission Blueprint has a great cost vs. benefit ratio, because even though its priced higher that Ewen Chia's Autopilot Profits, it will actually help the beginner as well as the expert marketer increase their profits significantly. We think of this course as a masters degree in affiliate marketing that allows you to profit from very advanced yet simple strategies, and to us it really qualifies as a premium educational product. In fact, the Commission Blueprint is endorsed by Ewen Chia himself (see Ewen testimonial in the Commission Blueprint's website). After testing this system, there is no doubt that its serious business and a very good value.

User friendliness: This system is definitely easy to understand, if it wasn't we would not even be considering it. However, although we think anyone can put the Commission Blueprint to work like magic very fast, mastering all its techniques will require a bit -not much- of previous familiarity with affiliate marketing. A few of our members tested this system prior to any other internet marketing experience and all of them did very well very quickly, so even though we think it is not the friendlier of the pack, it still stands as very friendly premium educational product.

Guarantees and support: This system is also backed by an 60 day money back guarantee, so this investment will be risk free as well. As for support, there is a helpdesk available for the Commission Blueprint's users that we found to be responsive and useful, however, it might take a few days for them address your inquiries due to the great demand this program has had since its launch.

Ease of execution: As stated above, the "hard" part of this system is having to learn and master all the strategies and techniques provided in the course (which is not that hard at all, it just demands a little dedication), but the sweet part is that once you are past that, the execution will come fast and easy along with the results you are expecting. You might also need to invest some money in PPC, as this is an important part of some of the strategies you will be implementing. This is a very powerful system, but as we all have learned the hard way, there are no real shortcuts, just smart work and honest dedication in order to achieve success. This program is no exception to that rule, but we can assure you that putting it to use will help you create a huge and lasting source of income.

Profitablity
Cost vs. Benefit
User friendliness
Guaranteed and Support
Ease of execution

How to Find Hungry Buyers For Niche Affiliate Marketing

A lot of people realize that niche affiliate marketing is the best way for the "Average Joe" to make a decent online income.

Not everyone wants to make 30k/month with their online business and there are many people who just want to work quietly behind the scenes to make a simple extra 500/month extra.

Well, one of the secret to world-wide marketing is to sell things that people want to buy, and that means finding the right niche for your affiliate marketing endeavors.

Once you find the rich niche, then you need to need to find out exactly what they want and just give it to them.

This may sound over-simplified but many people think it's harder than this, but it really isn't.

However, finding hungry buyers for niche affiliate marketing is something that requires a lot of research and thought.

There are a lot of ways to do niche and keyword research, but the main issue will always be whether or not the buyers are hungry.

You can have a hot niche that is gaining in popularity, but those niches aren't hot if there are no buyers in that niche waiting to whip open their wallets to get your offering.

Some of the more pressing concerns people have with niche affiliate marketing are:

• How to get traffic and eyeballs to see my offering
• How to get people to visit my site repeatedly?
• How do I build a list in this niche?
• What kind of site do I build and how?
• What should my site design be like?

All of these are good questions, but the correct question to be asking is where do you find the hungry buyers?

How To Find A "Hungry Market" Of Buyers Wanting To Throw Money At You.

Make no mistake; there are literally thousands of potential tightly niched "hungry markets" out there. Markets abound! People are ready and waiting to throw money at you.

Your first job is to find a "hungry market" - and discover what it is the market wants. Then, and only then, do you consider what kind of products or services you might be able to supply to that market.

A quick tip! We all want things that are quicker and easier. We all want solutions to problems. Maybe you could start by helping people to save
time and money. Help them avoid learning something the hard way. How? You do the research and sell the results. The more helpful the information, the higher the price you command.

Here are some good places to start your market research.

Firstly, find out what are the best selling non-fiction book titles at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/lists/best/paperback-nonfiction.html

This should be a good pointer to what's hot and what's not. People are paying money to buy these books, so maybe you could tap into one of these tightly niched markets.

Another idea is to use the keyword suggestion tool from overture.com - it’s the most popular pay-per-click search engine on the net...
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Simply enter a keyword relating to the ideas you have in mind. In one easy click, the search term suggestion tool will tell you how many times that keyword was searched on. It will also reveal the number of times related keywords were searched on.

Or you could go to http://www.wordspot.com and have a Top 200 keywords report sent to you.

Why bother doing this? Because, the popularity of keywords could be a good market indicator for you. If you discover a few thousand or more combined monthly searches on keywords, it could signify intense (possibly unfulfilled) interest in a subject. If this is directly related to what you plan to sell, then you may have discovered your "hungry market."

Next, using your favorite search engine, check out some of those same keywords. Visit the sites that appear to be selling related products/services, or offering related advice.

Do a bit of detective work - maybe start by emailing the website owners to ask some simple questions. Gather every fact, statistic, every article, every successful ad created by someone else selling to your market.

Also go to http://www.liszt.com where you can subscribe to some discussion lists relating to your chosen subject. Keep a watch to see what people are constantly asking questions about. Ask your own questions to find out their needs, wants, frustrations and desires.

The key then, is to develop a 'oneness' for your market. Only then, can you satisfy the market’s most urgent, most emotive, most ardent needs, wants and desires. Only then can you create a product to be a cure for someones pain.

Guess what? Suddenly the question of product becomes easy when you start with the needs, wants, desires and frustrations of a "hungry market."

Good hunting!

Tired of the Internet Marketing Roller Coaster?

Up and Down, Up and Down, Up and Down…

Does this sound like your Internet marketing journey thus far?

If it does, then this post is going to offer you insight into why you are following this continues roller coaster. We are going to discuss how to make sales more consistent, more sustainable and how to avoid economic and seasonal trends reflecting the overall success of your campaigns.

The great part about Internet income is that it CAN BE year round. There are no days off, no hours off…24 hours per day, 365 days per year. However, the road to having campaigns that run in autopilot and generate cash for the entirety of the year can be bumpy at the best of times.

It may look a little something like this:

Make money, lose money, try something else, Make a bit more, lose….

This is the vicious cycle that you do not want to follow. Have you every heard of “writer’s block”? It is a phenomenon involving temporary loss of ability to begin or continue writing. In the above scenario, we like to refer to this as “marketers block”…the loss of ability to begin a successful campaign because of too many outside distractions!

Here is what you want your Internet marketing journey to look like:

Make money, lose money, find out why you lost money, refine campaign, make more money, continue building campaign…

Notice the differences.

(1) Find out why you are losing money (KEY)
In order to improve what you are doing, you need to understand where and why your campaign is not succeeding. This can be done through campaign analysis along with various forms of testing. Some tests can include ad CTR, landing page, and conversion tests. Testing results in campaign modifications…which are forced improvements of a campaign. Again, anything that can be measured can be improved up.

(2) Refine campaign based on findings (KEY)
This is the stage where you take your test results, and you make refinements to your campaigns based on your date. You may change your landing page flow, the headline, or even make the images more relevant. It could also include the modification of ads, breaking up of ad groups, or testing new products to promote. You could iterate through the refining stage many times within the same campaign.

(3) Make more money as a result
That is right! No campaign is every fully monetized…or “tapped” out. There are always ways to stretch the income out of a campaign, even if it is already highly successful. In the beginning stages it will be modifications derived from testing, whereas later on in the campaign lifecycle, further monetization will be the result of email campaigns, join ventures, add-on income streams and bonus structures.

The roller coaster will continue for you if you take the “Try Something Else” (TSE) attitude. Jumping around from industry to industry and technique to technique will only set you back. You are gaining no specialized expertise by doing this! Being a generalist has never helped an Internet marketer become a success.

Here are a couple things you can do to curb the TSE attitude:

(1) Stop buying every marketing book and product that comes out. Not all of them will help and you are digging into money that could be spent on your campaigns by doing this.
(2) Stick with ONE niche when starting out
(3) Don’t quit a niche just because you have failed, learn from it and improve.
(4) Specialize. Start with one marketing technique and become good at it. Do not try to be the jack of all trades.

We hope that you take in some of this info and break your own “roller coaster” cycle. Even we go through “roller coaster” cycles sometimes where we have to go back to the drawing board and really dig deep into the campaign’s fundamentals.

How to Finding Niche ?

Finding a niche is a big part of any successful campaign, but can also be an unnecessary setback for new Internet marketers.

There are many different avenues you can go down to find a niche, and today we are going to uncover one that is not only very powerful, but it can be done with minimal work (and is fun!).

This is something we like to call the “how” technique.

Have you ever had a problem or an issue that you were looking to fix? Chances are you have. We run into problems on a day to day basis, whether it is job-related, health related, technology or something related to your personal life.

As an Internet marketer, you can leverage this. Any problem usually has a solution. People are willing to pay for these solutions and as an online marketer you can take advantage of this.

Think about some common problems that people face:

Losing Weight
Getting Rid of Stress
Quitting Smoking
Fixing a slow computer
Learning How to Use Their New mp3 Player
Getting Dog to Stop Barking
Getting Rid of Athletes Foot
Learning How to Make Money Online
Getting rid of wrinkles
Clearing up acne
Rebuilding a dirt bike’s engine
Making vehicle more fuel efficient

These are just a few. The list could go on and on.

People run into issues every day. Whether it is their slow computer dragging them down, they have “debt” piling up, or they need a solution to a health issue they are having, where there is a problem, there is money to be made.

So how do you go about leveraging this as a marketer?

One of the best ways to research problems is to use a question and answer site. There are now several of them out there, but the best ones are:

http://answers.yahoo.com
http://wikihow.com
http://ehow.com

Here is the process for researching:

(1) Type in a keyword related to the industry you are searching
(2) Create a list of all the questions people are asking within that topic
(3) Probe to find the hot button (people search for a how, but behind all of this there is a “why” …why does this person want to lose weight
(4) Formulate a campaign from your findings

Now, how do you actually apply this? We are going to give you an example of how you would research something. For this, we are going to look into something that many people are struggling with right now, “unemployment”.

Step 1: We typed the search term “unemployment” into wikiHow, eHow, and Yahoo Answers.

Step 2: We recorded a list of all the questions related. Here they are (in no particular order).

How to cope with unemployment?
How to relocate a business?
How to get more job security?
How to cope with being fired?
How to survive job layoffs?
How to get out of debt legally?
How to file an unemployment claim?
How to apply for unemployment benefits?
How to calculate unemployment?
How to prepare for unemployment?
How to overcome unemployment?
How to collect unemployment in [state/city/country]?
What happens to unemployment if you become pregnant?
Can I collect unemployment if I work for a non-profit?
Does my unemployment income count when applying for a home loan?
How do I report my unemployment benefits?

..and this was just the start? We could have literally come up with 100’s of more questions, but for the sake of this example we have kept it to 16.

Step 3: Now that you have all of these examples, you need to search for the why? People are asking these questions “why”?

The most obvious one is that they are asking it because they are losing their jobs or have already lost their job (in most cases) and are looking for assistance. One thing you quickly understand when reading their questions in full is that they are in a financial bind?

Your job as a marketer is not only to help these people by “informing” them, but also to give them a solution to the root of their problem. In this case, the root of their problem is being unemployed…and the resolution to their problem will vary from question to question slightly, but the consensus is that these people want to make more money.

Step 4: Now it is time to build a campaign around your findings. You understand people are looking for unemployment, but now you need to inform them via your web page and offer some advice and insight as to how to resolve the problem.

These are a couple of resolutions to this problem (these ideas were taken from the responses):

-get employment assistance (unemployment)
-find a new job
-make money leveraging new avenues (like the Internet)
-register details with a temp agency
-strategies for saving money
-apply for welfare

Then you could probe this industry even further. This was just a simple and broad search under the search term “unemployment”. What if you took terms relevant to this like “find job”, “fired”, “lay off”, “employment” and applied the same strategy? You search would expand, your understanding of the niche would expand, and the insight would allow you to create a much more profitable campaign.

we are going to take this one step further and show you how to advance these research skills by leveraging something that is common to all of us.

The THESAURUS!

http://thesaurus.reference.com/

In part one, we took the example of using “unemployment” to find information as to what problems people are looking to resolve in relation to the search term “unemployment”.

As you and I both know, there are many different terms out there that have the same meaning as the root word, employment.

In this situation, we are going to use a different example however, showing you the exact process.

Let’s take a phrase, say “more money”. Using the thesaurus, we can find a bunch of terms that mean the exact same thing.

We plugged “money” into the thesaurus. Here was the result:

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/money

Now you add:

more + money_synonym

…to create your list of phrases (that you will then use with the 3 “how” sites).

Here is what we came up with:

“more money”

“more cash”

“more dollars”

“more loot”

“more green back”

“more coin”

“more bucks”

“more wage”

“more wealth”

“more riches”

“more salary”

“more dough”

“more pesos”

Now we follow the same process as before, using our generated list of “same meaning” search terms. Plug a few of these into the sites below and you will get a much more diverse set of results.

http://answers.yahoo.com
http://wikihow.com
http://ehow.com

Again, here is the process for researching:

(1) Type in a keyword related to the industry you are searching

(2) Create a list of all the questions people are asking within that topic

(3) Probe to find the hot button (people search for a how, but behind all of this there is a “why” …why does this person want to lose weight

(4) Formulate a campaign from your findings

Now instead of just one keyword, you have 13 search terms to type in that are all similar and will give you much greater insight into an industry and the problems that people are looking to resolve.

Q & A Sites + Thesaurus = POWERFUL NICHE RESEARCH

Hope this gives everyone a new tool in the arsenal. We are going to expand on this within our next blog post and show how you can incorporate some free online resources to expand on your “how to” research.

Until then, take care.

A “Buyers” Strategy…

What is the whole point of Internet marketing, or for that matter, marketing in general?

The goal is to turn a potential buyer into an active buyer.

The great thing about Internet advertising is that it is much more measurable than offline channels like TV commercials, magazine ads, and newspaper ads.

It looks like this:

Offline is not as predictable:

Traffic –> Product Awareness/Branding –> Website Traffic (??)  Conversion (where did it come from) –> Campaign ROI (not sure)

Where as the Internet provides much more decisive and predictable results:

Traffic –> Landing Page –> Conversion (YES/NO) –> Overall ROI

You know exactly which campaign and more times than not, which keywords are producing the sales within your campaign. This is powerful because anything that is measurable can be improved upon.

And…

Anything that can be improved upon, can increase your overall profits! Powerful stuff!

So, back to the core message of this post…

There are ways to expedite the process of turning a potential customer into a customer. Often times people do not even know they are a potential customer because they have not found the product they are looking for yet.

And sometimes people will never become “buyers” because they are either looking for “freebies” or they are much too early in the buying lifecycle, the information phase.

So how do you catch people late in the buying lifecycle? These are the people that already have their credit cards out on the table and are waiting to buy, or those people who are in the product review process and just need to find the “best fit” to what they are looking for.

I pretty much answered the question in the last sentence.

(1) People with their credit cards on the table

These are people that are probably the most serious buyers. These people are hungry to buy something, almost like buyers on Boxing Day, Black Friday, or Cyber Monday (three of the best online sales days of the year).

How do you trigger these people?

The easiest route to buyers is to target the “buy”, “purchase” and “order” keywords. For example, you could target the broader source of the keyword, like:

“buy 42” plasma TV”

Or you could be much more precise (and deliver a much more precise result):

“buy Panasonic TH 42” Widescreen Plasma”

Either way, your keywords will be attracting buyers. If you can deliver a product that fits their search, then you will be leveraging people late in the buy cycle. Note that the more relevant you are, the easier it is to convert.

What about starting your keyword research with buy type keywords? Let’s plug a few keywords into the free Google keyword tool and see what we get.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Typing in the term “buy”, these are a few of the results:

-buy prescription drugs
-buy songs
-buy vista
-buy used car
-buy a psp
-buy a Nintendo wii
-buy software
-buy contacts
-buy pictures
-buy flash
-buy a tv
-buy life insurance
-buy Mario cart
-buy bicycle

You could then elaborate on this search, but typing “buy bicycle” or “buy a psp” into the search. The more niche specific you get, the easier it will be to deliver the most relevant product, thus leading to higher conversions. You could also use this with the “order” and “purchase” and even “sale” or “cheap” keywords.

(2) People in the review “state” of the buying cycle

As consumers get smarter, the research they put into each and every purchase tends to increase. There are an abundance of reviews, ranking sites, forums, and blogs out there that discuss products and give overall product information.

Attracting people in the “review” state is also a great way to catch people further along in the buying lifecycle. People tend to get informed, review and then buy. If you can offer someone a quality product review or recommend another product and give the reasons why, you will likely be able to achieve a much easier SELL.

The types of keyword phrases that people search for in this phase are as follows:

PRODUCT A review
Compare PRODUCT A
Does PRODUCT A work
Review of PRODUCT A
PRODUCT A Scam
PRODUCT A Rating

Replace PRODUCT A with any product and you have yourself some great keyword phrases that will target people in the “review” state. These people convert and usually do not need too much more convincing before they buy.

For example:

Wealthy Affiliate Review
Compare Wealthy Affiliate
Does Wealthy Affiliate Work
Review of Wealthy Affiliate
Wealthy Affiliate Scam
Wealthy Affiliate Rating

Or you can work in the reverse to come up with some “niche” ideas. Use the Google Keyword tool again for this.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

I typed in “review of” into the search and here is what I came up with:

-review of digital cameras
-review of 21
-review of Nikon coolpix
-review of Twilight
-review of vista
-review of refrigerators
-review of mattresses
-review of gas grills
-review of finance
-review of Bluetooth

These are just a few. You could then elaborate on this research by isolating one of the searches like “review of digital camera”.

Here were the corresponding results:

-compact digital camera review
-review of canon digital camera
-review of Panasonic digit camera
-review of sonic camera
-review of beach camera
-review of best digital camera
-etc.

That alone is the start of a highly relevant, high converting campaign. You could do this with pretty much an topic you want “review of anti-spyware”, “review of ppc ebooks”, “review of tractors”…ANYTHING!

So, in order to look for buyers, you need to know where they are “hiding”. We have given you the two best ways to find and capitalize off of consumers whom are late in their buying lifecycle.

Now go try it for yourself (I think you will like the results).

Niche & Marketing

You will hear over and over that the quickest way to find success on the net is niche marketing. I second this advice. So, what is niche marketing?

What Is Niche Marketing

Niche Marketing can refer to both marketing and business choice. In and of itself, niche marketing refers to finding a segment of the general market for a service or product line. One then develops a solution for the needs of that segment and then markets to it to get the word out. Let’s take a look at an example using one of the biggest companies in the world.

Toyota is a huge multinational company. At first glance, it appears that Toyota focuses on the auto business as a whole both from a marketing and production standpoint. This view is correct. Notwithstanding this fact, Toyota is excellent when it comes to niche marketing.

Toyota will search for niches for which it can supply a product in need. Toyota was one of the first companies to realize there was a group of car buyers who would be very interested in environmentally friendly cars. To answer this need, it came up with the legendary Prius. The Prius is the first mass production hybrid car. Where other car manufacturers saw Toyota taking a huge risk, Toyota saw it as an opportunity to identify a new niche and establish its brand in that niche. In marketing, it is often the first brand on the scene that takes the day.

Once Toyota took the plunge, it pursued an effective niche marketing plan. It didn’t promote the Prius in just any media. It focused on media outlets that were watched, read or listened to by people concerned about the environment. For example, it heavily promoted the car through environmental groups and their publications. As the only game in town at that time, Toyota not only dominated the niche – it was the niche.

Niche marketing translates just as well to the Internet. In fact, your first sites should be focused on identifying niches and providing products or services to accommodate the need of those prospects. One of the biggest mistakes made by new businesses on the web is biting off more than they can chew. You are not going to compete against Amazon for general book sales. On the other hand, you might be able to pound Amazon into the ground in the rare book market or in a specific niche such as home improvement periodicals. The point is to try to focus both your site and marketing on a segment of the market that is not already dominated.

What is niche marketing? The best way to make a lot of money on or off the web.