It’s amazing how the world has evolved during the last 20 years.

More than just the shifts of power across countries… more than just the life changing events like hurricanes, earth quakes and terrorist attacks… the advancement of technology has completely changed the way that we view the world.

YouTube has virtually replaced television. Blogs tend to break important news faster than the actual news stations. And people are meeting their friends and significant others through social networks like Facebook and eHarmony.

And probably the most significant change has been the way that businesses market themselves.

If you go to YouTube and search for “Dollar Shave Club” you’ll find a minute-long video that a guy made in his warehouse that ended up getting over 15 million views… for FREE. The purpose of the video is to get people to go to his website and subscribe to a monthly program where they send you a high quality razor every month for a dollar.

Now, imagine for a second… if just 10% of those views convert into sales for him, he just generated sales of over $1.5 million per month… for FREE.

If you wanted to get 15 million views from a TV commercial, you would have to pay thousands of dollars, if not tens of thousands… AT LEAST.

In another simple example… if you wanted to deliver a 15 page sales letter to 1000 people, and you were going to do it through direct mail, you would have to cough up at least $5,000 to send those letters out. And unless you hired a professional copywriter to write your letter for you, for all you know, you could have very well wasted your $5,000.

Now, if you put that same sales letter on a website and drove pay per click traffic to it, you would most likely pay anywhere from $250 – $1,000 (dependent on the industry you’re in). And the beautiful thing is, you can track everything. You get to see how many people saw your ad, and what percentage clicked on the ad.

You can also compare ads to see which one gets more clicks and you get these numbers in real time. If you wanted to compare two different ads through direct mail, you would have to wait weeks before you got any response and your tests would be relatively hard to track.

There are countless more scenarios in which it is advantageous to deliver your message through online mediums versus offline, however, this doesn’t mean that offline marketing doesn’t work anymore.

The most successful business people that I know use both online AND offline marketing tactics. They intermingle the two mediums to deliver their message.

And probably THE MOST POWERFUL resource that comes with online marketing is the creation of the auto-responder. In its most basic form, an auto-responder is just that… an automated responding mechanism that follows up with your prospects automatically.

As a basic feature of the auto-responder, you can send newsletters to your prospect list. If you had a list of 1000 people, you could email them on a daily basis at no extra cost to you. However, if you wanted to send a newsletter to 1000 people via direct mail, you would be paying AT LEAST $1,000 per day!

It’s THE most revolutionary invention in the world of marketing and business.

In future articles, I will go into the finer details of each of the concepts that we talked about and will give you instructions on how to use them effectively.

Launching your business online is just the first step, but getting your site located in search results should be your biggest concern, as it will ultimately determine the overall success or failure of your business worldwide. It is quite challenging to get the desired traffic in the initial stages, and as many biz owners have seen:

No traffic –> No Sales –> No Income –> Ultimately End of Business

How to attract traffic?

Below you will find two apt solutions for directing online traffic towards your business website.

Get organic traffic

You can get organic traffic for free when you use effective and genuine SEO techniques. Patience is crucial: properly optimizing your site takes time, and nothing can be accomplished overnight.

The first step you take is creating valuable content, and then customizing it for search engines. To do this, you have to pick the right keywords that accurately describe your business’ niche. Then, you’ll begin the ongoing process of improving and maintaining other aspects of the website, like website authority, author rank, original back-links and more. Improving these elements will help you maximize traffic to your website and help it perform better in searches.

The process is lengthy and requires dedication. Once you start implementing SEO into your business, you’ll want to keep track of any Google algorithm updates, which could cause delays.

Choose a Blog Marketing Company

The current trend is promoting services and products in the market through blogging. Most businesses look to hire the best blog marketing services to maintain their ranking on search engines. In order for you to do this, you will need to choose experienced bloggers who will create content related to your business.

Implementing an effective blog marketing strategy is the best way to direct traffic to your website. Customer centric techniques are used to direct visitors to your site. Being customer centric means aligning technologies and processes to propel customer engagement. Ways to do this involve advertising with image links, text links, pre-sell pages and sponsored posts.

Use Experienced Providers

The service providers are experienced in their field and know what will work for you and your company. Professional service providers will:

• Be familiar with how online businesses work

• Know how to create content that attracts your target audience

• Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms

Manage your blog posts

Once your blogs are uploaded on different digital article directories, you will need to start monitoring statistics such as how many people read, like, and comment on it. You will also need to continue performing the following tasks:

• Post updates regularly

• Respond to your audience queries

• Conduct researches for top keywords

• Use the keywords appropriately

• Keep track of how customers share information

Keeping your blog visible requires all of the above and more. Maintaining all of this is certainly time-consuming, and you still have your business to run! Therefore, hiring a blog marketing company will allow you to stay focused, while achieving your goals in a timely manner.

Enhance blog visibility

The Internet is flooded with blogs, many of which are outdated. This can cause top quality blogs to become invisible, because they’re hidden by outdated blogs. The advantage of hiring a blog marketing company is receiving assurance that your website will gain the visibility that your business blog need. This builds brand identity, which in turn yields more recognition. Follow these steps, and your business credibility will grow substantially.

Why haven’t you been successful at your online marketing business?

It’s all about your “WHY”. Why would you want to do this? My personal “WHY” goes a little something like this. I am 27 years old, I’m marrying the love of my life next week, and I want to give her the absolute very best life she could ever dream of living! Beginning with a wonderful home of our own and starting a family.

I have spent the last 6 years in the oilfield and not on the high paying side either. 14 hour days on hard rock locations dressed in long sleeve flame retardant clothing in the middle of a Houston, Texas, summer with temperatures reaching 100+ degrees and humidity surpassing the 60% mark. No dream life here and my dream of providing my wife with hers seemed pretty farfetched.

A friend of mine introduced me to Ambit Energy. Ambit Energy provides electricity and natural gas services in deregulated markets across the United States, primarily marketed through a direct sales channel of more than 250,000 Independent Consultants. In 2010, Ambit was named #1 Fastest-Growing Private Company in America by Inc. magazine. I did my research and the company seemed pretty legit and as of 2013 they had 1.1 million customers and 1.2 billion in revenue. Being an electrician, I know how important electricity is to people and I could not think of 1 person who did not use it at some point. So I was ready to start my very own business!

Excited and hyped up about an opportunity to reach that free living state of mind, I quickly burned through my friends, family, and everyone I knew on Facebook. Not one single conversion, customer or consultant. POOF! My dream escaped me once again. Bound and determined, I didn’t let that stop me. I started searching about internet marketing. So I got a website and a domain and I slapped some stuff together that was going to make me a ton of conversions (because every oilfield worker is a whizz and natural at web design, copywriting, and auto responders. And everyone wants to buy a service or be partnered with a no name business marketer… Wrong again sir!).

Just like my first attempt, I realized this really is not that easy and I was going to have to have an actual business mindset to accomplish anything. I researched and tried to learn and like most newbies, I got had by the so called “gurus” and sweet deals promising success and that it would turn my marketing around. Then I just quit… I got so overwhelmed with failure and how far away success appeared to be, that I just couldn’t take it anymore. I stayed away for a few months but Ambit, my determination, and my dream wouldn’t let it rest.

I began researching more to build my knowledge around network marketing and that’s when I found an online marketer’s forum. I remember it like it was yesterday, I made that single post looking for someone to give me some direction. I got a lot of bits and pieces, but none the less enough to keep me going. When I got that first conversion… Man it was like a breath of fresh air! Confidence, success, and momentum to keep moving forward exploded from my mind.

However a though kept filling my mind… Does every newbie go through this struggle? Wouldn’t it be easier if all of this information was provided upfront? Is there other hardworking people out there wanting to make a life changing decision like I did?

Getting a very strong and firm “WHY” keeps you going through the rough times and helps you to stay motivated. Finding someone to teach you and give you the information you need to be successful is the most powerful part of becoming a success once you have your “WHY” established and close to heart. A mentor will get you going in the right direction and learning what you need to learn and then you can develop your own system that can be duplicated by your downline. I learned the hard way, but if you read this article I hope it saves you time and money and gives you a little insight towards the kind of mentor and upline you should be looking for.

Becoming a direct response copywriter is something everyone in the profession aims for. The simple reason is that direct response copywriters get the most rewarding projects, both in terms of pay and job satisfaction. This is because, unlike writing a brochure or website, the success of your writing is measured. Through tracking how many sales a copywriting message generates, businesses can see in cold hard figures that hiring a highly skilled copywriter is worth the investment.

So how can you become a direct response copywriter? There are a few ways of improving your copywriting abilities to the level that direct response copywriting demands.

To begin with, read all the books by the world’s finest copywriters. This includes books by David Ogilvy, Joe Sugarman, Eugene Schwartz and John Caples. The advice contained in their books continues to be as valid today as when they were written many decades ago.

The second thing to do is to start collecting samples of successful direct response sales copy. It’s easy to find examples online with some quick searches in Yahoo and Google. You can also look in Google images for PDFs of famous adverts and sales letters. After building a swipe file, analyze every sales letter and advert and write down the copywriting tactics used and why the advert was profitable.

Finally, practice makes perfect. Write out successful sales letters and adverts by hand. This helps you to understand the thought process going through the copywriter’s mind when he or she wrote it. After doing that, try writing your own sales letters and adverts utilizing everything you have learned so far.

There are many types of direct response copywriting. What they all have in common is that responses are counted and linked directly to leads and sales. Types of direct response copywriting include:

Direct mail – These are the letters and postcards you get in the post that promote time shares, magazine subscriptions and other promotional deals. In each case, their purpose is to persuade you to react and confirm your interest in the offer, whether done by phone, email or by posting a reply card. While the writing used in direct mail might seem simple, every sentence and word is carefully chosen to get attention and build interest. People receive lots of direct mail each day, so your message must sound appealing to get people to read and reply.

Email – When done badly, email is no better than junk mail. But email marketing can be an effective way of producing revenue if you make the right offer. Writing direct response emails might also look uncomplicated, but being able to produce a punchy, concise email that gets a reply requires a great deal of copywriting expertise.

Sales letter writing – Direct response copywriters are employed to write the very long web pages used to sell training courses, eBooks and other online products as well as for traditional sales letters. Offline sales letters are often shipped with brochures as an introduction and to develop curiosity in the product. These can be just a single page or 10 pages or more, particularly when selling an expensive item. Writing long sales letters that are appealing to read and effective at getting readers to react and buy the product demands a level of writing ability.

Advertorial writing – You may have seen these and thought they were regular articles in a newspaper or magazine. This is because they are designed to look like normal editorial, rather than an advert. The article’s true purpose is revealed, however, with a slick switch to a sales pitch towards the end. A telephone number or response form is another giveaway that what you are reading is, in fact, sales copy.

As these examples of direct response copywriting show, you are going to have to practice and learn a lot to be successful at writing the sales collateral direct response copywriters provide. The hard work pays off though, both financially and with the sense of accomplishment when you make a lot of sales for a client.