Once I joined the Info Marketers Zone by Jeff Smith, it was both exciting and humbling to realize the huge mistakes I’ve been making when it comes to selling products online. I had been taking lots of action with blogging, tweeting, creating content, but not seeing many results.

Some of the most fundamental errors that I have made are:

Not sending enough offers to my email list
If I sold something of mine or an affiliate on occasion I would be really happy not realizing that when we buy, we tend to buy a lot of other products in the same niche. You might buy lots of books, go to lots of seminars, and so on. So I started finding lots of affiliate offers on networks such as paydotcom, clickbank, commision junction, etc. You might not be into affiliate marketing but if you only have a few products you need a way to offer them more – this could be higher ticket items of yours, or affiliate products of others that you recommend.

Not building an email list properly in each niche
Collecting emails is often an afterthought, thrown up on a sidebar of your website. You need to convince people to sign up just like buying, by offering a free product of value to your customer. Create squeeze pages and send traffic to these pages. Get rid of any distracting menus, sidebars, etc. You need to focus the visitor on the action you want them to take.

Not researching keywords and competitors
Many of us have a passion and so we start creating content, writing blogs and articles about our topic. But we need to think about the keywords that will bring us the most profit (that lead to sales) by testing with Google adwords. Then we use these keywords in all of our content. By researching competitors (using spytools like compete.com) we can get lots of great keyword ideas (that bring traffic to them) and since the popular sites in our niche are popular for a reason, we can learn a lot from analyzing their sites.

Not focusing on benefits or the end result
We tend to emphasize the features and not the emotional benefits and desire that a customer has. I still do it unconsciously unless I edit my writing. So go over your website, make sure the call to action is clear, the benefits are clear and that you answer any possible objections your visitor might have.

One thing that was helpful is to go into your various accounts (paypal, affiliate networks, etc) and print off the reports for the month. Even if you only made $1 you should be proud that you made money online! And that this can be repeated and expanded with the right efforts.

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It basically says that digital copies of music are getting harder to sell, so musicians should ’sell the experience’ such as selling concert tickets, live video performances and so on.

What he and others are essentially saying is that the ‘perceived value’ of digital content such as mp3s are declining. Now we all know that just because an mp3 can be copied a million times that there wasn’t some serious effort and sometimes expense put into the recording. But the point is that you can’t fight the perceived value, whether it’s right or wrong. So we need to create something that has a higher perceived value – ie. something that can’t be copied and digitized. This ’something’ is access to you, the band or musician.

The problem with so many services out there whether it be for selling cds, mp3s, or posting your band’s profile is that you often get lost in the pure volume of bands that are out there. You also often give up a share of each sale for the privilege.

With the advances in technology, specifically recent internet developments you can now build your own private members area and sell access to this area for so much a month. Call it your ‘Backstage VIP Pass’, ‘Insiders Club’ or even teach people how to play an instrument or write songs. The point is you are now selling an experience of accessing your behind the scenes videos, photos, and stories or your unique way of teaching how to play a musical instrument.

You need to stop worrying about selling things that can be copied and work on creating an experience that has high perceived value and can’t be easily copied. These sites are known as ‘membership sites’.

It might be a good idea for you to learn how to build and market your own membership site.