Special Article from a Colleague

Dear Info Marketers,

My good friend and colleague Mathew Lecompte has just put out a new article and will likely be invaluable to you building your information marketing business. Mathew is a seasoned copywriter and the developer of the Stay at Home and Get Rich package for IMI.

Have a look - you'll be glad you did.

Oh, and don't forget to come by the site too. We've added some new features and articles too:

http://www.info-marketing-institute.com/sign_up.html

Have a good weekend,

J.


Wednesday, February 4, 2009

THE INFORMATION MARKETING INSTITUTE'SINFO MARKETING E-HOTLINE

** Content Is King When Trying to Promote Online

By Mathew LeCompte, Editorial Director of the IMI

The world is starving for information. Every day, billions of people search the Internet, listen to their radios, watch TV, and read books, newspapers, newsletters and magazines. All for the goal of gaining more information.

The demand is huge. However, the supply is limited. And that's where you come in.

There are hundreds of millions of information-based mediums out there that are starving for content. They just can't keep up with the demand and, unfortunately, they sometimes are stuck and will either recycle old and out-of-date content, or just not bother updating their stuff at all.
But you, as a successful infopreneur, can contact these information sources and supply them with written content. Not only that, but because you'll be offering it to them for free (I'll explain why in a second), they'll virtually have no choice but to say yes.

And all of this will lead to more exposure for you, which in turn could result in more sales. Here's what to do:

1. Determine the Universe. Basically, search out web sites or publications similar to your expertise. For example, if you've got a product that shows how to eliminate your golf slice, go to golf news web sites, magazines, golf courses, golf shops, etc.
See if they have a newsletter or any other publication. If they do, then...

2) Contact them. Simply give them a phone call or fire off an e-mail. Explain who you are and what your product is about. Tell them you'd love to write some content for their web site or publication for free. In return, all you want is some exposure to help sell your information product.

3) When they say yes, get them your content as quickly as possible. Don't procrastinate; the quicker you get your stuff to them, the better.

Some important tips to remember:

-- Read their stuff. The last thing you want to do is to send them an article that basically matches an article they published the day before. It immediately puts a bad taste in their mouth and they might not give you a second chance to redeem yourself.

-- Find out their rules. They might have a limit on the word count of your content. If you have to edit your article down to fit their parameters, gladly do it. On the flip side, if you have to add words to make their word count, you'll have to do that, too.

-- Don't sell in your article. When writing your content, don't try and sell your info product. The key of the article is to get exposure for yourself. Linking them to your web site or mentioning that you're the author of a similar themed report is fine. But don't put on a sales push, unless you...

-- Find out if you're allowed to sell. Some web sites will allow you to put a sales push as an article. It's virtually guaranteed that they won't until a relationship has been established. But let's say you've been writing content for a web site for a month, you might be asked if you want to promote your product for sale. However, chances are you'll have to split the revenue down the middle. As long as you're still making money, I would take that deal.

-- Track your sales. The last thing you want to do is to be writing a lot for a publication that isn't getting you any sales or even exposure. Online, it's easy to track who visits your site and where they linked in from. Offline, don't be afraid to ask a customer where they heard about you. If a site isn't generating exposure for you, stop wasting your time and efforts with them and focus on the ones that are getting you sales.