How to sell online? It’s a simple question, it seems, but I’m asking it very consciously. It seems that we as marketers know the very basics, how to sell stuff. But do we really? Don’t we often fall off the course and forget sales over traffic? Don’t we often forget that getting traffic is not enough to make money?

That’s what Mike Hill reminds in his CPA Tsunami, which is a very comprehensive course on how to make sales online, how to turn visitors into buyers, and he doesn’t forget the traffic too. There’s a lot of emphasis in using CPA networks in it, but it doesn’t stop there. I think it’s really worth checking out.

With an interesting and powerful name, Google Terminator offers a very easy way for beginners to make some money online. Even if you’re experienced, if you don’t know this particular marketing method, you can easily add another stream of income.

The marketing method that this program talks about is promoting new product launches, in particular in the Internet marketing niche. Though I think it would work even better in other niches too. This method is easy because new products have no history and no competition, everyone starts from 0 when the products launch.

This is when you come in with the correct knowledge and rake in your piece of pie. Check it out if I got you interested.

So you get the traffic somehow and you want to sell some stuff to people. For many marketers this comes unexpected. You see, they focus only on traffic, since they think it’s hard to get. And they think the traffic is all they need – the rest comes by itself. It can’t be further from truth.

People don’t just buy stuff. If you focus on traffic, your best bet is to place Adsense on your sites and expect people to click on ads. That’s an easy way out, but definitely not the most profitable.

The right way to sell is to build trust. People don’t buy from you for two reasons – either they don’t trust you or they think what you sell is not worth their money. If you address those two issues, you have a good chance to sell something.

The second problem is simple to solve – it’s all about the perceived value. All you have to do is to identify their problem and tell them if the product solves it. If it does – you almost got them.

The trust is harder to gain and there are several variables. But you can start off from your website. A professionally looking website will always imply trust, while a crappy looking one will hardly sell a thing. Next you can create a sense of community – blogs are great for that. Encourage people to leave comments (simply ask) and they will create that sense. One is more likely to buy seeing feedback of other users like them. The rest comes with time as you build your readership.

You can add some extra “tricks” to immediately add trust to your site, though most of them cost money. For example, web security seals are known to improve conversions by up to 20%. So are the toll free numbers in the header of your site. Though, these elements are more likely to be found on merchant sites, you can stand unique among other affiliates by implementing them.

I don’t have to tell you that you need traffic – people to visit your site. But how do you get them to find you? You can’t just put up a site and expect everyone to find it. There are millions of sites out there and it’s pure luck that your site will be discovered unless you invite people. You have to find a way to tell them, “come visit my site”.

So how do you do that? Well, you have to know where those people already hang out and visit the same places to invite them. Think of it as placing a billboard before everyone’s eyes. Or maybe just a simple ad on a post. Either way you have to spread the message around.

One of the ways to do that is forums. Surprisingly they are very underrated. However, becoming a part of community in your niche and have your signature file with your posts can be very effective. People that are already interested in what your site is about read the forums and they see your link. They obviously will follow through to your site.

The drawback of this method is that it can get very time consuming. To participate in several forums takes a lot of time and effort. But it’s still very much worth the consideration.

Internet marketing is not a difficult science, but it should be consider as one. Far too often people think there’s some magic behind it that pops money when saying the right words. That is not, however, true.

The success in Internet marketing is a result of scaling – a repetition of a system. You can say that’s the secret formula. Take any conventional business and remove all obstacles of scaling and you have Internet business. That’s why some people are able to make millions, they repeat their simple business many times over. Therefore, anyone who is able to create a conventional business, should have no problems with online business.

Note also that I use terms Internet marketing and online business interchangeably. That’s only because Internet marketing what makes doing business online unique and describes it unambiguously.

When it comes to marketing itself, there are only 3 things you need to get done, and you don’t have to be perfect at it. It’s traffic, website and conversions. On top of that, you can build a client base that would help with all three – that’s where the real power lies.

Once you have those three, it’s all about repeating them until you get where you want. You can also automate the repetition, but that’s a topic for another post.