Selling on the Internet
21 May 2008Here are some things I’ve learned about selling on the Internet I’d like to share with
you. Perhaps these ideas will help you with your thinking and planning so you can
be more successful with your Internet selling efforts in the days ahead.
Back in the Great Depression, (1930’s) when I was seven or eight years old, I wanted
to learn to ride a bike and use it to make spending money. My parents could not
afford to buy a bike for me so I scrounged around and found enough old bicycle
parts to put together my own 2-wheeler. While learning to ride it, I fell many times,
crashed into trees, hit telephone poles and broke both my bike and a couple of
bones. Eventually, through trial and error, I did learn how to ride it. On my twelfth
birthday my folks gave me a brand new bike. You can imagine how proud and
excited I was over that new bike! I rode my shiny new bike everywhere. Later, I used
that bike while selling magazines to earn my own spending money.
It occurs to me now that selling on the Internet these days is in many ways like
learning to ride a bicycle. It is not easy at first. There are lots of things to think
about all at the same time. But once learned, you’ll never forget. Here’s what I’ve
had to learn to do.
Obviously, first of all, I had to learn to use my computer. Then, I had to figure out
what the Internet was all about. After that, I focused on finding as many ways as I
could to reach the one right market for my products. A major concern was that I had
to find low cost ways to get people who could buy my products to just take a look at
my website. I knew I would need a steady stream or flow of browsers both day and
night. I needed traffic. Over time, I found several ways to get traffic, but then
another problem appeared. I had to teach myself to write. In short, I had to learn to
write the kind of sales copy needed to convert the traffic from being mere browsers
or surfers, into customers. Not an easy job, to say the least.
My most successful technique in that respect, since I am not a good salesman, has
been to present myself to my website visitors as someone they could both trust and
at the same time think of as their personal: Assistant Buyer. By now, I have learned
to be a pretty good assistant purchasing agent. So, in that roll, I no longer try to
sell, I simply try to help people find and purchase (from me) what it is they want to
fill their needs.
As I said before, after I mastered balance and control of my first bike, I was able to
use it as a very efficient, easy to use tool to help me make the spending money I
needed back then.
In the same way, these days, your computer can be your “bike”, your “Internet
vehicle”. It can be your tool to discover some of the many ways you can successfully
show prospective buyers on the Internet what you have to fill their many
needs.
In this way, you too can find yourself successfully - selling on the Internet!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Terry L. Weber
www.craftyones.net/originalsbyweber
www.webermaskman.com
Terry Weber is a retired advertising/direct mail sales letter copywriter and
inventor of several useful items. Terry and his wife Doris are Habitat For
Humanity, RV Care-A- Vanners who, for the past eight years have volunteered to
help build more than 36 houses all over the USA. They travel to and from the 2-
week long builds in their RV. The money they make on their Crafty-Ones website
helps them pay their expenses to and from those volunteer Habitat builds.
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