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Are you like me?

A little over a year ago, I started my first internet marketing venture. I had a wonderful product ' specifically, an eBook - that I hard worked very hard on.

I bought my own domain name and web hosting, buying a huge package to handle all the credit-card-throwing visitors I thought I was going to get.

I then proceeded to write my sales letter. I actually spent hours on it, tweaking it, making sure there were no spelling mistakes, making sure it said exactly what I wanted it to say.

Finally, my website and my eBook were ready for the EXPLOSION of sales I thought I was going to get. I set up a pay-per-click advertising campaign to get visitors to my site.

I sat back, thinking all the online marketing was done ' I was just WAITING for the cash to come flowing in!

Guess what happened?

Nothing. Nobody bought my eBook!

What was the problem?! Part of the blame goes to my sales letter. Don't get me wrong, it was good ' but not good ENOUGH to get visitors to buy.

How can you avoid my mistake and write a better sales letter than what I had done? (Don't worry, I've gotten better ;) Follow these tips and you'll be off to a good start.

1) "What's in it for me?" This is the most important thing to keep in mind when you're writing your sales letter. Pretend to be a visitor to your website. Why should they buy YOUR product instead of XYZ Company's? What will it do for THEM? Will your product be worth their hard-earned money? This tip is extremely important.

2) "Make your headline INTERESTING." Your headline (big text at the top of the sales letter) is almost certainly the most important text on your sales letter. It MUST draw the reader in. If you don't grab the reader's attention in a few seconds, you've lost them forever. Make it interesting' for example, instead of "Buy Oranges Cheap," you should say "Taste Heavenly Sweet Florida Oranges for only $0.99!" Be creative.

3) Use testimonials. There's no greater tool to convincing the visitor of your product's value than testimonials. Some people's sales letters are mostly testimonials! The testimonials can sell your product for you. However, do NOT make fake testimonials. It only will hurt your business in the end. Give away some copies of your product away to people who agree to give a testimonial/review of it in exchange. Have some friends tell you what they think of it. Ask your current customers for their experience with your product.

4) Create fear and desire in the reader's mind. This is very powerful. Create a fear in the reader's mind that they will be worse off if they don't have your product. Create a desire feeling so that by the end of the sales letter, the reader is hungry to try your product.

5) Make it easy and safe to order. You must tell the visitor that it is completely safe to purchase your product through the secure payment servers, and so on. You MUST have a secure payment server or you might get in trouble with buyers' credit card information being stolen. Also, you should accept credit cards on your site. I recommend 1ShoppingCart (for physical and digital products) or ClickBank (digital products only). These are two of the well-known and trusted companies of the online payment world. They both are secure and accept credit cards.

To your success,

Keith Gilbert