A few days ago I got a question from a coaching student
of ours and I got her permission to post the answer on
my blog because I felt it can help you too:

(Note: we just completed our 4 week intensice coaching
program and we are getting ready to start the new one
on July 1st. More info about this here…)

Here is the email i got:

Dear Socrates,

It is very cool to meet internet marketers who are so
sincere in helping others.
You and Henry really know a lot about staying ahead of trends.

How do you do this? This is the secret to everything I suspect.
I love all of the knowledge I have gained. I am ready to kick this
into high gear, but not until school is finished.

Teaching is a dynamic, stressful enterprise and to do
anything well, I prefer working well, that means not
too much a day and still taking care of my health.
It is overwhelming when there is too much to do.

I know that in teaching, people actually study and come together
in groups similar to what you and Henry do.
What seminars do you attend? How do you stay a little bit ahead
of others? What page ranking numbers are best to maintain over
the long term ?

Some of the answers I have heard are that you watch your
competitors. That watching and efficiently managing internet
tasks perhaps better than others gives you tremendous advantages.

Henry and Gina really know how to drive traffic.
I have laid out my tasks and have prioritized how I will accomplish
my goals. I can not believe that I am not even a marketer yet and
my list of things to do is long. But I love the goal list.

I have a retirement future that looks extremely cool. I hope that
whatever happens with you in my classes that I am able to contact you,
Henry and Gina and share my successes.

You see I am near the end of my first plan, which is to retire
from teaching. This is plan one. Plan two is learn, understand,
implement internet campaigns. Yeah, this one is extremely exciting
to me because I will choose how I will use my time for my business,
health, and well being. When I grow up I would like to be like you,
Henry, and Gina. You are all such a passionate turn on.

Sincerely yours, Renate

=========================================
My reply:
========================================
Hello Renate

Socrates here,

I am very genuine when it comes to helping others,
however what makes me sad is that a lot of people
get excited, pumped up temporarily and then they
go back to their old selves without really doing
anything with the powerful information I share.

The difference between people that get success and
the people that watch the former get what they want, is
that they learn, and take action on what they learn,
continously pushing their way forward.

It is not how many seminars I attend or the ranking
numbers. It is all about learn -> plan -> execute.
It is all about momentum. People that want overnight
success have better chances of getting it by
playing the lottery.

There is an even worse group that wish they won
a million dollars in the lottery, but they dont
even play!

Success comes slowly (phase A) but grows rapidly (phase B)
through leverage and momentum. The secret is to be able to
keep pushing through phase A and get to phase B.
you can visualize this by thinking of the snowball effect.

A small baseball sized snowball is rolled down a freshly snowed
slope. It grows slowly as it rolls down the hill but
it REALLY grows massively AND faster as it gains momentum

one cent will become 2, 2 will become 4, 4 will become 8
after you double it 3 times.
If you double it 18 times you make $1,310.72 (still in phase A)
and it took hard work to double it 15 times.

If you double it 3 more times, you make $10,485.76 (getting
into phase B). Double it 7 more times and you are a millionaire

10 more times and you are a billionaire.

All started from one measly cent. In fact here is the progression:

1 $0.01
2 $0.02
3 $0.04
4 $0.08
5 $0.16
6 $0.32
7 $0.64
8 $1.28
9 $2.56
10 $5.12
11 $10.24
12 $20.48
13 $40.96
14 $81.92
15 $163.84
16 $327.68
17 $655.36
18 $1,310.72
19 $2,621.44
20 $5,242.88
21 $10,485.76
22 $20,971.52
23 $41,943.04
24 $83,886.08
25 $167,772.16
26 $335,544.32
27 $671,088.64
28 $1,342,177.28
29 $2,684,354.56
30 $5,368,709.12
31 $10,737,418.24
32 $21,474,836.48
33 $42,949,672.96
34 $85,899,345.92
35 $171,798,691.84
36 $343,597,383.68
37 $687,194,767.36
38 $1,374,389,534.72

This is a figurative example to show you how exponential
progression works. This is how success works too.

You most probably wont double your money every month.
But if every month you make a 10% impovement from the month before
$5000 become a million after 32 months and 2 million 7 months later.

A dayjob works in a LINEAR fashion. If you make 5,000/month,
after 32 months you will make $160,000 and 195,000 7 months later
at your dayjob.

I hope this helps you see things clearer and understand the
power of momentum.

Talk to you soon,

Partner to your success,
-Socrates Socratous
P.S. I would like to post this along with your email on my blog
if it ‘s ok with you.

To join our next 4 week intensive Coaching Program starting
on July 1st, Please Click here.

Dear Friend,

People ask me the same question over
and over again:

“Socrates,
How do I build a High-Converting Website
or Auction Listing to Sell my Product?”

Truth is my friend, you NEED a Professionally looking
sales page that is built using solid techniques
in order to succeed with any product or service
on the internet.

===============================================
—> In a Hurry? <----- More info here: http://www.specialurl.com/go.php?c=sales_secret
===============================================

However, if you ever tried to create your
own sales page using HTML or an HTML editor,
you know that it is not an easy task. In
fact it can be very time consuming and very confusing.

But that is just the looks of your sales letter.
It is important that you put each component
of the salespage on the right place otherwise
it will not be as effective.

For example, Prehead goes before the headline,
Subhead goes after the headline. Software box
or ebook cover should be placed at key places
of the website. Where to put testimonials,
where to put the optin form, the order box,
benefits, testimonials, images, etc.

Good News! You dont have to take a web
design class or a copywriting class to do all
of the above.

In fact any newbie without any experience whatsoever,
can start cranking out professionally looking sales
pages in less than 20 minutes… (Wanna bet?)

Here is the proof:

http://www.specialurl.com/go.php?c=sales_secret

Stay tuned, next time I will share a big secret
with you that can immediately use to kill your
competition even if you are selling resale rights
products.

Partner to Your Success,
-Socrates Socratous

P.S. We Just released this product and the low price on
the website will be going up after the introductory period
is over. Get your Copy here:

http://www.specialurl.com/go.php?c=sales_secret

Why do you expect people to take action?

Do you ever wonder why some people are
successful in selling online while others aren’t?

I used to wonder about the same thing some
years ago.

when I first started online I did what most
newbies would do. I put together a webpage
threw it on the internet waiting for people
to buy my software. I was actually able to
drive traffic to that website and after
a while I started thinking that nobody
needed my product since I wasnt making any
sales.

In fact, I was surpised because I thought
my website looked pretty good. I had those
flashy buttons, a picture of my software
box, a few bullet points with the main features
and a few links to support, about me,
mission statement and some more of the
“typical” stuff I was used to see on websites
everywhere.

I was expecting that the website would be
successful since it looked similar to
most other websites out there. But I got nothing!

Does this remind you of anyone you know?

How about someone you know intemately?

Ever since however, I learned a lot about
internet marketing, I turned
that same website around to make me 5-figures
every month all on autopilot.

Since you are reading my newsletters I would
say you are one of the lucky ones, because
I will share my knowledge with you and
if you apply what you learn, you will also
see your sales explode…

So lets start with the basics

I want you to ask yourself one question:

*If you have a product to sell online, What would
be the purpose of your website?

…that’s right! To sell your product!!!

Key word: “Sell”

First thing you need to understand is that
your website should be crafted in such way
to do that one task, and do it best.

You have about 5 seconds to get your website
visitor’s attention. If you fail to do that,
the visitor will click his favorite [x] button
at the top right corner of his browser to get out of
your site.

Now you ask, “How do I grab my visitor’s attention
quickly in order to spend more time to my site?”

That is called the “Headline”. You need to
have a headline at the top part of your site
that will “hook” your visitor into wanting to
read more.

Do you read newspapers? magazines?
In fact the most successful magazines on the
news-stand are the ones with the best headlines
on the cover. There is an ongoing “headline”
war between these magazine publishers.

You also want to remove any links or images
from the upper part of your site to avoid
confusing the visitor. Dont give more than one
choice to your visitor. That choice should be
the headline.

If you have a link above the headline, then
you just gave 2 options to your visitor.
a) click the link
b) read the headline

You dont want to do that. Just give them the
option you want them to pick.

The headline should be followed by a sub-headline.
Its purpose is to make the reader want to read
your sales letter below.

Yes! I said sales letter. You should use a
well written, compelling letter to sell to your
prospect. You have one chance to tell your
visitor what is that you are selling and
why they should buy it from you. Tell them
EVERYTHING they need to know about your product.

See one of the first mistakes I made, was that
I didnt have a sales letter. Contrary to selling
something people are already accustomed to, a
well known brand item for instance, your item
is probably unknown to them. The purpose of that
letter is to make them feel how life would be after
owning your product. You need to familiarize
them with the item, make them feel why they
need it. Then sell it to them. Actually
they will be happy to buy it since they already
crave the feeling of owning such product.

I am not going to go too deep into the art
of copywritting. I will leave that for
future newsletters.

One of the questions I usually get, is
how long should my sales letter be? well,
there is no fixed answer to that. Your letter
should be as long as it needs to be to
tell everything about your product without
getting the reader bored.

What I am trying to say here, is that in order
to start making a successful sales website, you
need to remove all distractions (such as links
and irrelevant information, like mission statements)
and have a nice flowing sales process starting
with the headline, going through the sales letter
and concluding with the call to action

Of course there is much more to creating successful
websites (Keep reading my letter to learn more)
but this general guide will help you get started

As I told you in a previous letter, I am in
the process of creating a software to automatically
generate sales letters for you with the click of
some buttons. I am actually fixing one bug we found
during our testing and we should be done.

Beginning next week, I will have the first
version out for you to get. You got to watch out
for next email though, because you are in for
a signifigant discount on this great new tool.

If you miss out on the next email, you may
have to get it at regular price.

That’s it for today,

Partner to Your Success,
-Socrates

Question:

Socrates, I have a question. Those 1 cent sales on eBay–most of those are to capture email addresses, yes? Many have to be prequalified to bid? Is that what I’m seeing on those? Does it work? Regards, Chris

Answer:

Hello Chris,

There are different reasons for the 1 cent auctions,
mainly to capture leads,but also to get feetback and
generate more traffic to their more expensive auctions.
Also, Prequalifying them just sends them to the store item
which costs less to list, while the main item stays active
for 7 or 10 days.

HINT: READ the above 5 more times to unserstand
it very well. it is VERY Powerful

Having said that, I wouldn’t use 1 cent auctions.
I would go for 99 cents or more.
Actions that are borderline questionable by
ebay should be avoided in my opinion.

We want to build businesses. Not quick schemes.

Best Regards,
-Socrates