Image via Demi Brooke

Persuasion is a critical aspect of successful web-based marketing, in part because you and the site visitor aren’t actually conversing face-to-face. So, your site text has to be pretty convincing and targeted to persuade that visitor to (1) stay on site and (2) perform the most desired action (MDA).

Here are some tips that’ll persuade the most reluctant site visitor to convert. Use them on your site and watch your bounce rate plummet (a good thing) and your conversion rate soar (an even better thing).

1. Money, family and health.

There are 3 topics about which people want to know more: Money, Family & Themselves

How can I make more money, save more money, get more for the money I have?

How can I create a happy family life? How can I improve my relations with my kids or my spouse? How can I plan a fun family vacation?

How can I make myself feel better? How do I cure a wart? Why do I feel dizzy when I stand up quickly?

People want answers to these questions and a million other questions related to their finances, family and to their health and the health of their loved ones. Even better if you can combine two or more of these topics in your site text, i.e. How can I get my family to eat healthier food while I’m on a budget? Triple shot!

Regardless of what products or services you provide, slot them into one of these three categories to keep visitors on site longer. Consider this: the longer you keep a visitor on site, the more opportunity you have to persuade them to purchase your nutritional supplements, your guide to investing for college or how to prevent substance abuse from ruining your marriage.

2. Create compelling headlines.

You never know where a visitor is going to enter your site. It may be through the front door – the home page – or it may be through a side door – a landing page. Regardless, a compelling headline should spark curiosity or provide an answer to a specific question.

If you provide the answers in the headline, visitors are more likely to read further and, ultimately, be persuaded to make a purchase.

3. Information is persuasive.

Even a well-trained chimp can identify hype. That’s why those long-form sales letters are so 2002. Even a novice web surfer can smell this kind of hype a mile away.

Instead of selling a steaming pile of hype, provide good, useful information – something the prospect will appreciate. However, don’t give away the store. Craft your informational content in such a way that the reader understands the problem and maybe even the solution. However, provide just enough useful information for readers to realize that they need the solutions you provide.

For example, if you’re a certified financial planner, provide information on the importance of diversification in any financial portfolio. It’s good, accurate, conventional wisdom. Diversify assets. Just don’t tell them where to put their assets. They need your consultation to design the perfect portfolio to meet their financial objectives.

Stop selling. Start teaching. But teach just enough that the reader sees the value of your products or services.

4. Use action words.

Would you rather “Learn All About Anti-Oxidants” or “Discover the Power of Anti-Oxidants?”

Action words compel action on the part of the reader. Learning is boring – something you did when you were in school. Discovering has the hint of adventure, something new, something that’s been hidden away and you’re going to provide the road map to this wonderful new product, service or information.

Use these words to persuade site visitors that what you have to say is “state-of-the-art” or “ahead of the curve.”

5. The Call to Action.

The call to action comes at the end of your sell pages and it serves two critical purposes.

First, an example of a good call to action:

Discover the secrets of debt reduction. You’re just a click away from financial freedom. Learn more.

Now, the first purpose of a call to action is to motivate or persuade a site visitor to perform the most desired action. In the example of above, the call to action is short and sweet. It uses an action word (Discover rather than Learn) and it motivates the needs-driven buyer to take action to get out of debt.

The second purpose of a good call to action is to provide the reader with directions on how to perform the action. In this case, the “Learn more,” in blue text indicates a link to additional information – something regular computer users recognize immediately.

So, by clicking on the blue “learn more” link, you actually provide directions for the reader to follow, telling him or her how to perform the MDA. This is a critical piece of information that’s often missing from the call to action. It’s not enough to persuade a site visitor, you also have to tell that visitor how to do what you want them to do – engage your services, read your message or buy something.

6. Mark-downs.

We all like to save money. Place items on your home page and landing pages that are discounted. In some cases, sell the product at cost or even below your wholesale cost. These “sales” are called loss leaders and they have one purpose – to persuade the buyer to make the purchase.

Loss leaders also keep visitors shopping so you, the site owner, hope that buyers search your site for other good deals, but deals on which you make a profit. Give it away to keep visitors on site and make it up with additional sales.

7. Customer or client testimonials.

If a buyer is happy with your products or services, and they’re kind enough to send you an email thanking you for your prompt service or the quality of your goods, use these testimonials to persuade others to buy the same product or service.

Amazon.com, everybody’s favorite on-line shopping destination, encourages customer reviews of products. That takes guts. You’ll often see products that reviewers hate. They slam the product and actually push away potential buyers.

Conversely, these buyer reviews point out benefits of the product and the satisfaction of the buyer. Nothing persuades more strongly than a referral from a buyer who’s happy with his or her purchase. (Side note: Some Amazon reviewers actually have followings on the site. Simply by clicking on “Read All My Reviews” you can see the two hundred other reviews that buyer has posted to the site. If they’re all negative, the value of the review you just read should be taken with a grain of salt. Also, Intel’s employees were caught red-handed posting positive reviews for Intel products. Oops.)

Customer testimonials from John H., Las Vegas are pretty much worthless as far as persuading a buyer to perform the MDA. Who is John H.? How do you know the testimonial wasn’t written by a paid copy writer? That’s why the reviews posted on Amazon carry more weight. You read reviews from good folks, unhappy buyers and trolls, (a.k.a. haters) who post negative reviews on everything from your blog to Amazon’s buyer reviews.

8. Solve a problem – FREE.

Offer something that solves a problem for the site visitor and give it away. Think of an e-book download on how to “Ask for a Raise and Get It” positioned on your job board home page as bait. Visitors will thank you for the advice and may become loyal followers simply because you helped them with a problem.

Of course, be sure to point site visitors to the additional tools – the premium-priced tier – to recoup the cost of developing that free e-book download. The key to persuading a visitor to perform the MDA is to be helpful. That builds trust AND a stable customer base.

You may even get a few bookmarks for your free give-away. It may be bait, but it works.

9. Build trust.

The most effective means of doing this is to offer a money-back guarantee. “If you aren’t satisfied, we refund your full purchase price, including shipping and handling, no questions asked.” This “no-hassle” guarantee has made LL Bean a household name.

A money-back guarantee is one of the most persuasive tools the web site owner has in his or her arsenal. And it’s a pretty safe bet that most buyers will never return an item. Too much trouble. So, a money-back guarantee persuades the buyer to make the purchase, but even if that buyer isn’t 100% satisfied, chances are s/he won’t take the time to return the product. It just isn’t worth the time.

10. Provide customer/client support.

Tech support, billing support, order support – all of this information should appear throughout the site in prominent positions, i.e. above the fold on all product pages, on each page of the check-out sequence, on the home page.

Customers want to know that there are human beings behind the site’s presentation layer. Customer or client support – especially with a toll-free number – is extremely persuasive.

And, when customers use this support and get the satisfaction or reassurance they’re looking for, they remain loyal, repeat buyers.

The art of persuasion depends on several factors: honesty, transparency, truthfulness, quality service and constant reassurance. Build these persuasive features in to your site text and site architecture and you’ll see sales increase, customer care costs decrease and you might just might give Jeff Bezos (Amazon’s founder) a run for his money.

Persuasion is nothing more than meeting client or customer expectations. Do that and you’ll enjoy site success and profitability.

Time passed so fast & in the twinkling of an eye, I am 21 years old. Nothing much happened this year other than the decision I have taken to become a full time blogger.

LiewCF’s post back in 2005 which he mentioned he quit his job to become a full time blogger has inspired me a lot. Of course, not everyone can become a full time blogger, but I sincerely believe that one can achieve their dream by working harder & don’t take things for granted.

I don’t just put up a few posts & call myself a full time blogger. I followed Liew’s advice: Do part time blogging before jumping on the bandwagon of make money online. 2 years have passed & I am ready to take the challenge. By quitting my studies and focus solely on my blog, traffic have started to increase every month.

Of course, this decision aint easy to make. You have to take a lot of things into consideration: Money, family, social life, etc. By choosing this path you are all on your own; From content creation to monetizing, everything has to be done by yourself. Prepare to expect the unexpected.

I wont call myself “problogger“. I aint pro, I still have lot to learn. Darren Rowse, LiewCF, etc are those people that deserved to be called pro. They are the pioneers of making money online.

Highlight of the year:

Million thanks to Mr Lee for giving me the opportunity to contribute guest articles for Sin Chew Jit Poh! The series will be going on from early November till January, so please buy a copy of Sin Chew every Wednesday to show your support!

***Read the full article here***

Bought myself a Macbook Pro

- Gotta love the slick interface & faster processing of documents & web pages. I run Windows on my Mac as well, both of them are great OS, I do occasionally use Windows to make sure I wont forget how Windows looks like

If there’s anyone who’s reading this post, perhaps the best birthday gift you can give me is to become a loyal reader of EdwardKhoo.com or add me as a friend on Twitter. Thank you so much for supporting & I will do my best to write more useful articles in the future

There’re so many free applications available on the W3 – strong apps that rival the high-priced software that you don’t really need. Why bother spending few hundred bucks on an overrated app when you can get all of them without spending a dime? Here are five of my “must-have” favorites – all free, all useful and all just a click away.

1. Open Office

Open Office does most of what Microsoft’s Office Suite does, but it does it free. Open Office 3 is a robust bundle that includes a powerful word processor, a spreadsheet function, a presentations maker, a graphics controller and a fully-loaded d-base. Sound familiar?

If you want to pay $300 for Microsoft Office, be my guest. But why would you when Open Office delivers the same features at $0?

Open office docs are fully compatible with Microsoft formats. But Open Office is also cross-platform so it’ll configure on your Mac and frankly, I think Open Office has more to offer than Mac’s preinstalled suite (except the graphics tools, but that’s what makes Macs Macs – they’re ability to manipulate graphics.)

So unless you’re a graphic designer, Open Office delivers a full office suite, with a huge support network and even tech support. So, if you DON’T have an office suite, or you’re still running the original Microsoft Office from your collage days, a lot has changed, and you can upgrade free.

2. Snippy

Snippy is a cool little screen capture app. Let’s say you find an interesting article or picture or post. In the past, you might make a screen capture and attach the whole page to send to a friend for a read.

Snippy simplifies screen capture by allowing you to snip just the part of the page you want to save or send. In the age of SMS and mobi, this is one tool you want to keep on your desktop and your cell. Hey, there’s only so much bandwidth to go around so save some with Snippy.

3. Sticky Notes

I solved my time management problem with this little freebie app.

Sticky Notes let’s me create virtual sticky notes that I place on my computer screen to remind to do this or call her.

Sticky Notes also makes it easy to identify high-priority and low-priority tasks using different colored backgrounds. Notes can be updated, tasks crossed off. Totally flexible.

Even better, once I’ve reviewed my notes for the day (or the next two hours) I can hide the stickies with a click until I need to know what’s next.

A free fix for folks with a lot on their minds.

4. LogMeIn

LogMeIn delivers a bunch of features including remote access to your main system (a time save when you’re on the road a lot), home or small office networking (router required, but you can buy one for less than $30 that’ll cover your house or small office in the spare room), mobi connectivity to the home office and remote control of your system via cell, PDA or laptop.

Heck, you can log on from the client’s office to access his files for discussion – right on his computer. No more lugging a laptop around for tinny PowerPoint presentations. LogMeIn accesses files remotely so you always look good and sound good. This one’s a no-brainer for the sole proprietor who spends a lot of time in the studio or getting face time with local clients.

5. FileZilla

FileZilla is a free FTP (file transfer protocol) solution. So what’s it to you? Well, FTP services have a lot of uses for today’s techno-savvy user, and no, you don’t have to be a geek.

FTPs are most often used to transfer large files (graphics, video and audio, for example) quickly and safely. (Let’s face it, if you attach a 4 gig file to an AOL email the whole system will have a nervous breakdown.)

Using FTP systems, you can move multi-gig batches of data smoothly. But FTPs are useful for other reasons.

There great for offsite storage as long as they’re encrypted (sFTP) and FireZilla is hard-wired for security. It supports FTP, FTPSSL or TLS and SHH Transfer Protocol. In other words, all the safe and secure off-site storage free. Why are you paying Carbon Lock and these other cost-you-money sites for secure off-site storage when you can get it free. And secure.

Also, if you plan to use a free-standing blogging client like Bleezer or Flock, you’ll need web access. FTPs are ideal for hooking you in to the matrix without paying a web host.

I like FileZilla’s list of features, too: x-platform, drag and drop support, easy GUI, filename filters, a tonne of bookmarking options so you can find what you need fast.

Bottom line? If you make your living off your hard drive like a lot of us do, (me included) an FTP program like FileZilla is free insurance in case of catastrophic data loss, or the loss of your album of family pix. Using a free FTP client like FileZilla lets you sleep more soundly at night.

And you can send data by the tonne without a blip. Safely and securely.

I’m always on the lookout for free apps that make your web-based world a little simpler so stay tuned. I’m on the trail for free.

Image via Paladin 27

It’s a tough economy. Lay-offs, plant closings, higher taxes, higher costs for everything from food to fuel, and in most homes, two incomes are the norm. In fact, two incomes is almost a requirement these days.

However, not all couples have the time to work full-time jobs. Let’s face it, a lot of us want to stay home and raise our kids. NP. There’s plenty of web-based work if you’re willing to hustle for it and you’ve got some skills.

Typing, data entry, simple bookkeeping, concierge services, proof-reading – these are the kinds of things home-based business owners do in this outsourced world – and they can do it from anywhere for any company. And still keep an eye on the kids.

Here are some “must haves” for the budding, home-based business owner. Work at home, earn some cash and raise a family. In the age of outsourcing, you can build a profitable business in a matter of weeks without shelling out a lot for tools, or even job leads.

1. Skype

Skype is a popular VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) tool that hooks you up to anyone, anywhere via computer.

Calling another Skype user is free, and dialing a phone, even half-way around the world, is just pennies a minute. You can talk to your clients on the other side of the planet for 20 minutes. Total cost using Skype or some other VoIP system? A couple of bucks. Really.

Skype also has a messaging service, serves as an e-mail client and you can even hook up a video cam to show off the professional you. Today, your clients for outsourced virtual services can be anywhere. And staying in touch is part of your work-from-home job. And while there are other VoIP plans you can purchase through your cell phone provider or Skype owns the on-line VoIP market.

Cost: $5.00 to open an account.

That buys you $5.00 of Skype time so the service is a give-away. You can also set Skype on auto-pilot by giving your credit card number. Then, whenever you run short of Skype time, your card is charged automatically so you never get cut off mid-sentence.

This is a must-have app for the work-from-home start-up that doesn’t want to see profits gobbled up by phone charges. VoIP cuts costs down to nothing, or at least keeps communication expenses under control.

2. Zoho

Zoho delivers a strong menu of virtual office applications because, as a virtual business owner, you need a virtual office for everything from conferencing to customer support.