© Jim Edwards – All Rights Reserved

One of the fastest ways to develop, build, and grow your own list of subscribers is to develop a “mini” course with an incredibly compelling promise.

I have personally used “mini” courses to build lists of several thousand subscribers in as little as a week.

A “mini” course is simply a series of e-mail’s where you teach people a specific skill, set of skills, or reveal other information they really want to know.

In the process of providing this focused, valuable information, you prove to your subscribers that you are THE expert in a particular area – and, you also encourage people to pay you to get even BETTER information from ebooks and information products you’ve either written or recommend.

An example of a “mini” course offer I’ve used with great success is the free mini course at www.7dayebook.com that appears in the exit pop up window when you leave the site.

The promise of this “mini” course is strong and compelling.

Here’s what it says…

FREE eBook Mini-Course
“How to Write and Profit from your own eBook…
while you’re still young enough to enjoy it!”

All the registration page asks for is first name and email address… and this mini-course has generated thousands of subscribers!

So here’s the basic formula in a nutshell:
Strong promise + low risk + high perceived reward = Subscribers

Now, if you’d like to build your own list of rabid subscribers, here are 5 sure-fire tips for creating a mini- course that truly kicks butt!

Tip #1 – The Promise

If you want to launch a successful mini-course, target an audience with a specific need and then make them the biggest possible promise you can deliver on.

People are pressed for time and rarely see as much value in something they get for free as opposed to something they pay a lot of money for.

Add to this the fact that the Internet gets more and more crowded everyday and you can see that the best offers are the ones that grab people’s attention by making a benefit- driven promise they can’t resist.

Even though you offer your mini-course for free, you still must SELL people on WHY they should pay you with their time and attention.

Example: If you want to do a mini-course on real estate investing, look for the biggest and best promise you can make for people.

Let’s look at these various promises for identical mini- course content:

Good: How to make a fortune in foreclosures.

Better: How to find and buy a profitable foreclosure within 2 weeks.

Best: How to find and buy a profitable foreclosure property in your area within 2 weeks – using none of your own money!

** The promise you make has everything to do with whether or not people sign up. IMPORTANT: After they sign up, make sure you deliver on the promise.

Tip #2 – Don’t reinvent the wheel

Look for existing content – your own or other people’s – you can adapt directly or indirectly into the mini-course.

Hey, I understand you’re busy… I’m busy too!

Why would you want to spend 2 days coming up with all the content for your mini-course if you already have past information you can adapt!?

If you don’t have any existing material, then find someone else who has written an article and use that for part of your mini-course – with their *permission* of course!

You’d be surprised at all the pieces of the puzzle that are out there independently which you could combine into a great mini-course without nearly the mountain of effort you might expect.

Tip #3 – Give yourself lots of chances to make money

One way to build more value into your mini-course and make sure people hang onto your messages instead of deleting them is to put lots of quality links into your mini-course.

This allows people to get additional information on specific aspects of the mini-course.

Some of those links can be to free resources, others to resources where you earn an affiliate commission, and still others to your own products and services.

The more links you have that actually contribute to your students learning the subject of your mini-course and fulfilling the promise you made to get them to sign up, the
better your chances of them clicking those links.

If you create lessons people save for future reference because they have great links in them, you’ll make more money!

For an example look no further than your “in-box”! Almost everybody has email messages they’ve saved from other people because they contain links to sites you want to use now or access in the future.

Tip #4 – Build anticipation for the next message

If you’re going to take the time to put together the mini- course, wouldn’t it be great of the majority of people who subscribed actually read your messages!?

If you want to launch a successful mini-course, you’ve got to rise ABOVE the noise of all the other email messages people receive every single day.

One way to do this is to always end each lesson with a small “ad” or excitement builder for the next message. You do this by really playing up a big benefit they’ll receive as a result of reading the next message you promise to send them.

Here’s an example:

“The next and final installment in this mini-course will give you five tips for how to get 10,000 visitors to your website without spending a dime on pay-per-click traffic! So stay tuned for the next lesson in 2 days…”

It’s a simple, yet very powerful way to build anticipation for the next message into EVERY message you send.

This simple step helps make them look forward to the next message so it gets read… not trashed!

Tip #5 – Tell them what they don’t know!

If you’re using the mini-course to promote a product that covers a much “bigger picture” of the topic as a whole, constantly remind people that the mini-course is just a “tiny piece” of the whole product.

Remind them of what else they need to know and tell them if they buy the product then they’ll get this benefit, and that benefit, and even more specific information.

Remember, you didn’t publish this mini-course to practice your typing skills! You are in this to make money, to get subscribers, and to make sales!

Once you deliver quality content that gives people a real taste of what’s in store when they actually purchase, then it’s time to close the sale… you deserve it!

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links…

Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? “Turn Words Into Traffic” reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate
links… without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

CPA stands for “cost-per-action” and is a model of performance-based affiliate advertising. In this model, advertisers don’t pay for clicks or impressions, they pay by the action requested, which can be to generate a lead or a sale. Even though CPA networks have less market share than typical affiliate programs, like pay-per-click models, they are slowly expanding that as both publishers and advertisers begin to understand the many benefits that CPA networks can offer them.

In a recession, people are less likely to have money in their pockets, so they may not be shopping. That means that the return on investment for ad campaigns has dropped. If they drop significantly, online companies cut their advertising budgets because they can’t determine from traditional models, whether they money spent is really giving them a good return on their investment. But, with CPA networks, they can pay for cost-per-action and so continue to create ad campaigns that work for them and for the publishers.

Benefits For Publishers

Publishers can a myriad of benefits too! With CPA networks they can:

Avoid Website Development – They don’t necessarily have to even have a website to implement the CPA network offer, although they can be a good intermediary for some third party sites.

Eliminate Designing Landing Pages – With or without a website, the need to create landing pages falls mainly with the affiliate advertiser. That’s because they are paying for an action carried out on their site, not for a click or an impression.

Reduced Learning Curve – Since you don’t have to have landing pages, websites, or even code a web page if you don’t want to, you have more time to devote to finding relevant CPA offers and generating strategies that make money.

Higher Commissions – Clicks can get you a few cents per visitor, but CPA offers range from $1 to $50 per lead or sale. With a much higher payout available, the potential to make money is easier.

Benefits For Advertisers

Pay For Performance – They don’t have to pay for clicks that may or may not lead to a sale or a lead. Instead, they pay for an action that will definitely develop a lead or a sale. This way, they can a quantifiable return on investment, unlike other models.

Easier To Budget – Since the model is based on performance, and that performance can be a sale, they can easily budget money for advertising and know they aren’t wasting it. They can figure out how much profit they make on a sale and how much their campaign costs to generate that sale, and then realize better and better ways to increase profits, with little to no risk of losing their principal investment with no return.

Fraud Prevention – CPA networks are not subject to click fraud like pay-per-click models. And, the members are vetted by CPA administrators intent on providing value to both publishers and affiliate advertisers. So, there is far less risk involved with established CPA networks.

Start CPA marketing NOW. www.cpamoneymagic.com

The answer, even though it sounds incredible, is yes. There are numerous ways that Internet marketers are finding to exploit the power of the Internet to make money without necessarily having to spend time buying domain names, getting a hosting company, picking out design templates, or writing content to drive traffic to the site. Instead, some ingenious Internet marketers have discovered the power of CPA networks and/or third party sites to make money.

There is a great benefit to only having to manage an advertising account to make money. It frees up creativity to brainstorm new ways to make money. It saves time in activities that don’t really add to the bottom line. And, it can be a lot of fun!

What Third Party Sites Can You Use?

Practically any site with a ton of traffic is going to work for CPA advertising, as long as it doesn’t violate the terms of the service agreement. Some Internet marketers are exploring Youtube, by paying to get links, screenshots, or promotions on popular videos. Any place there is a spot to put a link, and there is nothing in the service agreement that says you can’t put a promotion there, you can use.

Others seek out major search engines and try to leverage their advertising power with CPA networks. That way, they don’t drive traffic directly to their website, using a Google Adwords or Adsense campaign, instead they use a PPC-to-CPA strategy, that’s “pay-per-click to cost-per-action.” Yes, it does take some upfront money to start these types of campaigns, but it’s easy to evaluate the return on the investment fairly quickly too. This makes it ideal to change and tweak the campaigns, even while they’re ongoing!

Social Networking Sites Increasingly Being Explored

The newest members of the Internet community, social networking sites, provide a very interesting platform for targeted ads. Facebook sells Social Ads that can be targeted to finely tuned demographics. You can buy ads and send them to your CPA offer too, if it doesn’t violate the terms of service. Some people make a lot of money with Social Ads and they don’t even keep a profile in Facebook, they just buy ads! Of course, those ads are promoting offers that make them money in the long run, but it can be a quite ingenious model that doesn’t even need a website to perform well.

MySpace is another option that Internet marketers have researched and implemented. There are tons of different social networking sites, and it’s just a matter of figuring new strategies to hit the mother lode. With so many new possibilities, there’s bound to be some undiscovered technique that leads to treasure, regardless of whether you know a single line of HTML code or not. And, it’s all just waiting for you at the tip of your fingers for the smart Internet entrepreneur. And, all it takes is a little ingenuity and some knowledge of CPA networks.

Start CPA marketing NOW. www.cpamoneymagic.com

Every day, we are hearing more and more about box stores closing down in this sour economy. There’s seems to have been a fundamental shift in consumer buying behavior, but what is that shift? Is it that consumers have no more money to spend? Is it that they don’t want to drive their cars to retail stores and waste gas? Or, is it because there are alternatives that are proving to have more value for the buck?

It’s probably a combination of many factors, but even if there is less credit floating around, there will always be people with some money to spend. And, those people appear to be favoring the Internet right now, for it’s ability to comparison shop from the comfort of their own homes. This can be a big boon for Internet advertisers who are poised to take advantage of the power of the Internet from a rapidly growing segment of the population who have fewer retail options available to them.

The benefits to advertisers of Internet marketing include:

Easily Targeted Demographics – Niche sites make it easy to find the people who might be interested in your products and services.

No Need For Physical Inventory – You can offer quite a bit more variety, without actually having to house the physical product in inventory.

Affiliate Advertising – You can have an army of individuals eager to market your product for you in a variety of different models from pay-per-click (PPC) to cost-per-action (CPA).

Easier To Market The Long Tail – Since you don’t have the inventory requirements of a retail brick-and-mortar store, you can market the long tail much more easily, in particular offering search and agent capabilities that make it a highly custom shopping experience for your visitors.

Low Overhead – Many of the sales functions can be automated on an online store. You can even put in backend, cross sell, and upsell opportunities through using technology instead of hiring people. There is no heating, cooling, or building rents to have a website either.

Viral Marketing Strategies – Online word-of-mouth can spread far faster and quicker on the World Wide Web than in your local neighborhood. And, by getting this type of exposure, you can reap sales in far greater quantities than waiting for someone to enter a physical store.

No Gas Cost To Consumer – Shopping online avoids the heavy burden of rising gas costs, when they spiral out of control. Even though right now the price of gas is fairly low, in comparison to its all time high, many people who hopped on to the Internet to shop during those times, are still there. And, gas prices do increase sporadically.

There’s no question that society in general may be shifting from an approach where the customer goes to the vendor. Instead, the Internet has made it easier for the vendor to go to the customer, no matter where in the world that customer resides. Even in a recession, advertising is going to be the difference between those that make it during tough times and those that disappear, and for an advertising venue, nothing beats the Internet for its reach.

Start CPA marketing NOW. www.cpamoneymagic.com