This article will focus on the free traffic generation methods. Everyone likes free stuff but as mentioned in the last article, there are pros and cons to free traffic generation methods. The most important and crucial part about using free traffic generation methods is getting the right keywords. If you target wrong keywords, you are dead in the water even before starting. It’s that important.

So please review part 2 of this series to make sure you get your keywords right. In essence, right (or good) keywords are those which fulfill these criteria:

1. They are used by people (searchers in search engines) who want to buy something in your niche. Obviously, a keyword phrase with the word ‘free’ in it is not what you want to target.
2. They are precise in meaning. That’s why Internet Marketers go for long tail keywords (those that have at least three words in the phrase). Long tail keywords are very precise. You know exactly what the searcher is looking for and therefore can provide it to him.
3. They must be words that are connected to a compelling need. Everyone has needs but not every need is compelling. Compelling needs are those which have to do with relieving pain or enhancing pleasure. For example, ‘get rid of head lice’ is a good keyword phrase that is about a compelling need.
4. They must have a high search count and low SERP count (defined in part 2). How high and how low is a matter of choice. Obviously, the higher the search count and the lower the SERP count, the better the keyword.
5. Page 1 of Google for the keyword phrase must not have too many exact matches or be full of websites with a high page rank (PR). There are 10 results on page 1. If a majority of these are websites with exact matches in their descriptions or titles, that is a bad sign. Likewise, if a majority of the page 1 websites have a PR of 4 or higher, that’s a bad sign, too.

You can find out the page rank of any webpage by using Firefox’s page rank plugin.

Once you have a list of keywords that fulfill these 5 criteria, then it is possible to generate some massive traffic (depending on the niche). And the good thing is that all the traffic is free.

The next article will focus on the actual free traffic generation methods to use.

Despite the attractions of affiliate marketing, selling physical goods on the Internet is actually one of the easiest ways to actually turn a profit if you have the right kind of product.

Some people will make and sell their own products thru on online auctions – products such as clothes, fashion goods, jewelry and accessories, hand crafted cards, woodcraft items, toys, games, handy inventions and so on.  If you are already making a product and looking for a source for marketing it an Internet business will be one of the quickest and easiest ways for you to find an outlet for your products.

If you want to escape from your day job or simply want to earn some extra cash without having to leave the comfort of your home then setting up a home based business on the Internet might be the answer for you.

There are several options for setting up a home based Internet business. When you are just getting started it is probably wisest to choose just one option and work on it until you are making money from it. Once you are in profit, expand your field of activities by adding more products or by finding a different way to promote your business that will complement what you are already doing.

If you do not have a product of your own to sell, don’t despair. If you live in a place that has special or regional products unavailable elsewhere then you could offer those on the Internet. In this case, you would buy either from local shops or from the manufacturers and resell the goods online.

When you have something to sell, the quickest way to get it online is to offer it on an auction site such as EBay. This is also a useful way to test the market. If the item sells quickly and if you can make a good profit then you will want to repeat the process and also set up a website of your own to sell from.

Setting up a WordPress blog or website is not expensive nowadays. Web hosting costs less than $10 a month, and a domain name costs around $10 a year. With WordPress and the many free and premium themes such as ShoppersPress available that enable a techless person such as me to build a very professional site of their own.

Finally, set up an account with an online transaction service such as PayPal, AlertPay or MoneyBookers so that you will be able to add “Buy Now” buttons to your site.

The next step will be to start marketing your goods. The good news here is that on the Internet this can be done either free of charge or on a shoestring budget.

You can promote your website by setting up a blog and posting articles about your products and related topics on it. Write articles and post them to online article directories. A fast way to bring traffic to your website is to spend some money on Google’s Adwords program and set up some pay per click ads.

When orders start to come in you will of course have to fulfill them promptly. You may find yourself getting very busy as you will need to contact your customers to update them on their order status, pack and post the orders, and either make or purchase new stocks of items and packaging materials.

In short, you will have set up a successful home based business on the Internet. Good luck!

If you want to keep your Blog fresh and interesting, then you need to post often. You can create different types of posts to keep your readers interested. This will also keep you from getting bored with your own Blog. Whether blogging to make money directly from the Blog, or blogging to drive traffic to an Affiliate product, you should keep these five types of Blog posts in mind.

1. The Review Post

Review blog posts can help you to monetize your Blog. You will take a close look at a product and give a review of it. This can include an affiliate link to the product. When reviewing, be sure to mention BOTH positive and negative comments about the product. Even if you totally loved the product, keep your review balanced by mentioning a few things that could have been improved. Your readers will appreciate your honesty and be more likely to trust your recommendation.

2. The Quick Tip Post

In between your longer posts you can do a “quick tips” type of post. These are normally 150-250 words. Sometimes we have a lot of information about our niche that we want to share but it may not be worthy of a full length post. In that case, post a quick tip. This should be focused on ONE key area of the niche. For example, “How to Plant a Tulip Bulb” would be a quick tip article for a gardening Blog.

3. The List Post

Blog readers love lists! The most popular Blogs make good use of lists. You can create lists that fit with any topic imaginable. This is a great way to convey information online because it can be easily scanned by web readers who are “skimmers.” You can also create lists of different ways to accomplish a goal in your niche. “10 Ways To Prepare Your Soil For Planting” would be a great list for gardeners.

4. The Interview Post

Interviews will require some preparation, but they are very valuable to your Blog. Interview someone in your niche and then share the results of that interview with your readers. This will not only provide valuable content for your Blog, but will also bring more traffic. Most likely, the person you interview will also publicize the event on their Blog or Website, directing traffic to your Blog.

5. The Instruction Post

This is similar to Quick Tips as you are providing your readers with valuable information. However, these Instruction posts will go into much more detail on a certain topic. Sometimes your instructions can even be divided into two or three posts or courses. Look at comments and questions from your readers to find what topic would be most beneficial to your readers.

As you Blog, remember that your readers like variety. Do not always write the same type of post. Put a little variety in your Blog to keep it fresh.

However, some surfers complain that many of the sites they have visited contain only ads and very little content. Most sites sell products, and any information one can get will be about the goods being sold. Many are becoming frustrated; even if the Internet contains a lot of information, sometimes it is difficult to find the information you need. One way to mitigate this growing frustration is to build a large directory of web sites that your visitors might enjoy. For example, if you are targeting visitors who want information about back aches, you can then create a web site directory full of links to similar sites.

As I have told you in the past I am Techless Terry and always looking for ideas that work great with WordPress. Recently I found a free WordPress directory theme bDirectoryPress, created by a great guy by the name of Mark Fail, who is also the creator of ShopperPress and other great WordPress themes. Mark also has premium themes but the free themes are great too! Since discovering DirectoryPress I have started building a couple of directories and have upgrraded to the premium theme for some extra features.

Anyway, if you want to check the DirectoryPress theme just CLICK HERE and if you decide the purchase the premium theme this tired old man will make a couple of dollars to put into my grandsons college fund. If you take advantage of the free DirectoryPress theme I will still be happy for you have taken my advice and are trying something new.

What are the advantages of creating this web site directory using WordPress? Will, if you have been reading this blog you already know that WordPress is great but here are a few more advantages:

1. Your visitors will save time searching for web sites they will enjoy.

If you can write descriptions to the sites in your directory, your visitors will have an overview of the sites they plan to visit. That way, they can zero in on the sites they need much faster.

2. Your visitors will bookmark your web site instead of the individual site they will visit.

The list in our Bookmarks begins to get cluttered once we add more and more sites. If surfers can have a “jumping board” where they can go to other sites, they will be saving that site. This will mean surfers going to that site again and again.

Your web site directory can be that “jumping board” to a particular niche. You will then be getting traffic from users looking for information on your niche.

3. You can monetize your directory.

You can design your web site such that ads from AdSense will blend naturally with your site. You can also include affiliate links in your directory. However, ensure that you do not overdo this, as surfers might think your directory contains only advertisements. Provide good content, such as descriptions of the listed sites, as mentioned above, and your visitors will often return to your site.

By creating a directory of web sites you do not only help your visitors save time searching for information, you also have that opportunity to earn some money from your site.

There are many ways to make a living online. But no matter which route you choose, it all begins with market research. You have to find a group of buyers who have a common problem or need. Then all you need to do is sell them things that solve the problem or meet the need.

Market research can be divided into two parts – finding a profitable niche and finding long tail keywords within that niche. The good news is that there are many free tools available to do this. Some of the best tools are provided by Google itself. So the first thing to do is sign up for an account with Google. Once you have done that, go to Google’s search-based keyword tool at www.google.com/sktool. Type in the words ‘buy, purchase, order, get’ (without quotation marks) into the search field. The sktool will list out 800 words or terms that contain these buying keywords together with other useful data like level of competition, searches per month etc. All you have to do is choose the term that you feel is most suitable for yourself, preferably one that has at least 2,500 searches per month.

Next, click on the icon that looks like a magnifying glass next to the search term that you have chosen. This will take you to Google Insights for Search, another free tool from Google at www.google.com/insights. It will automatically search the term that you have chosen and produce the relevant data at Google insights. Scroll down to the bottom part of the page and you will see other related search terms. Take note of all the related search terms that you find.

Now you would have about 10 buying keyword terms in a particular niche. This basically indicates that there are people searching for information to solve a problem or meet a need in this niche. Next, you should investigate further into how big a market this niche is and get more keyword ideas.

Go to amazon.com, ebay.com, magazines.com and clickbank.com. Put the main keyword of the niche into the search field and see if there are products that are listed in these websites within this niche. Chances are you will find products in all these websites pertaining to your niche. Briefly review some of the products for ideas – both keyword ideas and product ideas. The next step is to find long tail keywords.

To do this, go to Google’s external keyword tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Type in your 10 keywords and it will generate a list of related keywords. Take note of the keyword phrases with at least 3 words in them (long tail keywords) and that produce at least 2,500 searches per month.

Now go to the Google search engine at www.google.com and type in the main keyword in quotation marks. As you are typing, Google will give you related search terms. Take note of the long tail keywords. Once you hit the search button, Google will list out all the websites related to your keyword (this is called the SERP or Search Engine Results Page). Take note of the number of websites listed (it is listed at the top right hand corner of the page). You are aiming for keywords with a maximum of 1,000,000 websites. If it is significantly higher than 1 million, then the keyword is too competitive. Do the same thing with each of the keywords that you have and choose those which have less than 1 million competing websites.

For each of the keywords you type into Google, look at the bottom of the SERP and you will find more suggested related keywords. Click on them and you will find even more keywords. Drill down into the keywords as deeply as you can until you find long tail keywords with less than 1 million competing websites.

If you have done your market research well enough, you will now have identified a niche with ready buyers and the long tail keywords (about 10 will do) they use to search in the search engine for information on a product to buy. The next step would be Product Research and Creation which will be covered in the next article.

WordPress can be found in three variations on the Internet; WordPress.com, WordPress.org and WordPress MU. WordPress.com is run on a multi-user platform hosted with WordPress MU which is the multi-user version of the software. WordPress.com is a hosted website operated my Automatic.com where many of the WordPress developers work. The focus of this article is on WordPress.org is the self-hosted version of the platform and the one that I personally use exclusively.

By 2007 WordPress was gaining a following by home based business users because of the free nature of the software, the ease of installation on a virtual server running the associated PHP script files along with MySQL database and the additional tools called plugins and widgets. This combination of simple installation and many add-on tools is one reason that WordPress is popular. Another is the built in SEO, or search engine optimization features of WordPress.

Everyone wants traffic to their website and WordPress bloggers are no different. The big advantage for those using WordPress is that it includes features that help the search engines “read” your website in the way that works best for them to build their databases of content. Search engines do not see your website with eyes like humans but thy read the content and index it.

Because WordPress includes SEO tools like; .htaccess, permalinks, blogrolling and content pinging, search engines can quickly identify the new and updated content on WordPress blogs. This non-static nature of WordPress blogs makes them a great website platform for online business owners. Text and images along with audio and video files can make up the total content of the WordPress website to make it attractive to humans and search engines alike.

Another key feature of WordPress that makes it great for online business is that it is easy to add content to without the need for a highly paid webmaster. Many business owners have paid for beautiful websites, sometimes paying hundreds or thousands of dollars, to find out later that the webmaster is slow to respond to posting changes or may become totally unreachable. It is very easy to add new posts or make page changes with WordPress. No locally installed software is needed to create the posts or pages as the entire website is server based.

Today, because of the system and tools available with WordPress, the ease of editing and updating content and the search engine optimization built into WordPress, it is an excellent platform for businesses large and small to build their online business on.

Google Analytics tracks visitors from all sources, including display ad campaigns, PPC (pay per click) campaigns, organic searches from search engines, email marketing, bookmarks, websites that have your inbound links, and other digital sources like URLs embedded in PDF files or Power Point slides. It designed for online marketers who want to track visitors to their sites for improving user experience and conversions.

Why do you want to use Google Analytics? There are several reasons for that.

You want to know if your marketing campaign is going in the right direction or not. For example, if you are doing article marketing to drive traffic to your site, you want to know the article directories that are the most effective in sending visitors to your website.

You don’t want to waste your time submitting articles to directories that are not sending you any traffic or a very low amount of traffic. You can write more articles and submit to only those directories that are sending you a good amount of traffic.

If you are using a pay per click (PPC) marketing campaign, you should use split testing to test the effectiveness of different ads. You want to know which ads are performing better than the others in terms of conversions. If you integrate Google Analytics with your AdWords PPC campaigns, you will be able to track the effectiveness of each ad you are using in your PPC campaigns.

Using data from Google Analytics, you will be able to find the pages that are getting the most traffic from search engines, bookmarks and inbound links. Knowing this information helps you spend time on optimizing only those pages that are getting the most traffic.

You can work on providing improved user experience of your site on those high traffic pages. Make it easy to navigate those pages from anywhere in your site. Place a “What is new” about your site on those pages.

If you’re selling ads on your site to advertisers directly, you need a visitors portfolio of your site. This portfolio contains information about the number of monthly unique visitors to your site, visitors’ geographic locations, the number of page views per visitor, the bounce rate of visitors, etc.

The more information about your visitors you can provide to your prospecting advertisers, the better is your chance of commanding a premium price for advertisement spots on your site. Google Analytics will help you develop a visitors portfolio of your site.

Even if you are not going to use visitors data immediately, you can still sign up for Google Analytics and let the tool start collecting visitors data about your site. When you need those data, you will have them in your Google Analytics account.

I live and operate my business in an area where cable and DSL high speed services are not available. Actually Qwest DSL stops a couple hundred yards from my house but they have tried but been unable to get a strong enough signal for it to work at my house. The cable company offers television programming in our area but they say that the lines are too old to offer high speed Internet service.  Without high speed service operating a consulting business and my internet business using WordPress or any other format would be very difficult.

For the almost 4 years now I have had Wildblue Satellite “high speed” service. You notice that I put “high speed” in quotes for while it is quicker than dial up when working it is much slower than DSL. With WildBlue or WildScrew which ever it is, I pay for one of their premium plans and not the basic.

One year ago I upgraded to an even more expensive plan when WildBlue cut back on the speed of my service for a month when the bandwidth was exceeded by backing up my computer to an offsite service. This exceeded what they refer to as their usage threshold. My instructions at that time were basically to grab the Vaseline and bend over. Now don’t get me wrong, the employees at WildBlue are very polite and very nice but unfortunately not in a position to do anything for you.

A couple of weeks ago my main computer had to be replaced. This required that I upload all of the information stored off site on to the new computer. The result was that I once again was required to grab the Vaseline and bend over.

Now here is another place WildBlue really screws you. If you do not decrease you Usage Total to 79% or less of the Usage Threshold within the following 30 days this is a second violation and the penalty continues for another month while the charge you the full price.

Here’s another kicker. For the first couple of years that I had the WildBlue service it was regularly down when it rained, snowed, cloudy or windy. I live in Oregon a green but wet state. Did they give me any credit for all the time that I was down? Hell no!!! They kept saying they would issue a credit after they got the satellite working properly.  The truth is they never do get it working and I am still waiting for that credit, so be warned.

When one of these so called high speed satellite companies screws you like this and your business depends on the Internet it makes it nearly impossible to operate.  Presently I am operating on dial up for it is quicker than the so-called “high speed” service of WildBlue. 

I have called Wildblue and told them that if they were unable to restore my service I would be changing companies as they were putting me out of business with this Fair Access Policy. The reaction of the WildBlue “no service department” was polite yet a firm “I am sorry there is nothing I can do about it.” I let them know that while they can do nothing about it I can and I would be looking for the service of another provider. 

I feel that I have received the royal screw and for me WildBlue is now WildScrew. If you are in the same position that I am in and unable to get DSL or cable I would suggest that you do the same thing I am in the process of doing and check out Hughes and the other providers first. You will also find that the other providers do have a Fair Access Policy the difference is that some of them are for a short period of time such as 24 hours.  While these policies can still be unfair for they do not credit you for all the months or years that you use a lot less than your allotted service or the times when their service did not work, they screw you when you do exceed the usage.

What are the Benefits of a Paid Membership Site Anyway?
First of all a paid membership site provides recurring income. A small amount paid monthly by every member can quickly add up to either valuable extra income or even a full-time work from home income. If you were to have several membership sites and if you have a higher priced membership fee, you can quickly earn a very substantial annual income.

Why Would a Person Use a Paid Membership Site?
People will buy information that they could probably find on the Internet themselves if they had time and knew where to look, but often there is a higher perceived value when they have paid for it.

How Do You Attract Members to a Paid Membership Site?
The challenge then is to find customers and then provide them with such good value that they will retain their membership month after month and hopefully also recommend your site to others because you pay them a generous affiliate fee.

There are four main criteria you need to consider to achieve this and they are:

1. Your site must be in an established membership type market.

2. You must provide excellent value content or service

3. You need to use software that will password-protect your site so that non-paying members cannot get the content for free.

4. A marketing system to attract new subscribers and retain them once they sign up.

Criteria 1 – Your Membership-Site Market

In assessing your potential membership-site market, consider both online and off-line habits. Ask yourself whether people with an interest in this subject would buy monthly magazines, belong to a club or organization about it and perhaps whether there are books on the subject on Amazon’s best popular seller lists. Online, check if there are eBooks that sell well, blogs, forums or other on-line communities about this subject.

The topic must be popular enough to have many potential subscribers or you will be wasting your time. It is worth offering some free material, perhaps an ebook on your subject to see how many people have an interest it it. Another strategy to test your market is to set up a simple survey, asking what issues people have. You can offer free membership to your new site as an incentive for people to reply; the answers you receive will guide you as to what kind of concerns people have on this subject.

The information most in demand on-line is that which solves someone’s immediate problem, so it is worth considering whether your content or service solves just a one-time problem or whether there could be an ongoing or related issues that you can address.

An example of a one-off problem would perhaps be a remedy for snoring and for an ongoing problem, think of new parents, who have many worries and sleepless nights when their baby cries, perhaps in the middle of the night and there is no-one they can ask for advice. A membership site that contains suggested solutions for the numerous problems new parents face would be a valuable resource for them.

Criteria 2 – Quality Content

The four main types of content are: written, audio, video and web-based software solutions. Naturally, the media type you use will depend on your site topic as some will be more relevant that others. Most sites will include a significant percentage of written material as this is still the primary method of sharing information on the Internet, but audio recordings are increasing popular because people can download them and listen when they are walking, driving, exercising or away from their computer for any other reason.

Video content is preferred when the information you are providing is instructional; “how-to” in pictures or a video can make a process very easy to understand compared with following a written list of instructions.

Another situation where pictures are helpful is showing symptoms of something. For example, for the new parent site mentioned above, there could be photos of the types of spots or rashes a small child might have on their body if they have caught any of the various common childhood complaints such as measles, chickenpox or have been bitten by an insect.

There are many sources of good content apart from writing your own if you are qualified to do so. Your own material is obviously the cheapest, but will take the longest to prepare and you need to know enough about your topic to keep providing fresh material on a regular basis.

Use other people’s material by utilizing royalty free articles from article directories such as ezinearticles.com and free content sites, free to use videos from YouTube, metacafe.com or ehow.com or good quality PLR (private label rights).

Outsourcing is another option that will be less time-consuming although you will have costs for the ghost-writer or freelancer you contract to produce your work. Apart from the well-known elance.com & rentacoder.com, there are hundreds of other sources as a simple web search on “outsourcing” will reveal. If you plan to outsource on a regular basis, it is worth the time and effort to find a freelancer and develop a relationship with them, rather than going through a ghost-writing service provider.

Interviews with experts are something you can do yourself with basic equipment. Prepare a list of open-ended questions before the interview and send a copy to the person you will be interviewing two or three days beforehand. Any sooner and they might forget about it and any later doesn’t give them time to prepare.

The following are some suggestions for interview questions that will give an expert the opportunity to give you excellent material for your membership site:
1. What is so good about ………?
2. How did you get involved in ………?
3. What do you consider the top 3 things someone should know about ……?
4. What would you suggest would be the best way to get started?
5. How long would it take to be proficient at ……….?

An hour is a good length for a value interview but you may want to go longer and edit the script later. This is easily done even with a free audio editor such as audacity.

Criteria 3 – membership site software to protect your subscriber’s investment and save you time

If you can, invest in a specialized memberships-site software package or script. There are quite a number of good choices of varying prices, for example Membergate, Memberspeed, & WordPress plugins like WordPress Wishlist, Digital Access Pass (DAP), YourMember & aMember. The advantages of using one of these is that so many of the member functions are done automatically, for example:

1. Membership levels
2. Membership types
3. RSS Feed encryption so that non-paying members cannot access your content through the RSS feed
4. Sequential delivery so that someone cannot sign up and download all the material & then unsubscribe – the longer a person is a member, the more content they have access to
5. Payment gateways – preferably more than just Paypal
6. Training and Support
7. A good strong guarantee

Criteria 4 – Strategies for Recruiting & retaining members

1. Instead of focusing on trying to sell memberships, focus on how how one particular article of your content can solve a specific problem a person might have so that you are providing a solution to that problem and also giving one month’s membership to the site for free.

2. Use free advertising by writing & submitting articles & reports, posting on blogs & forums, make squidoo lenses, hubs & other web pages.

3. Buy Pay per Click advertising and banner ads etc

4. List your membership site on Clickbank, Paydotcom etc

5. Email your list & if you don’t have one, form a joint venture partnership with someone who does & pay them a generous affiliate commission.

There are many other marketing tactics that have been written about at great length and can be found in a web search.

In summary, if you can address the four main criteria of using an established membership type market, providing premium value content, using appropriate membership software and attracting subscribers, a paid membership site can become a very profitable business model.

You can set up your website using catalog style e-commerce marketing or through direct response marketing. Catalog style e-commerce marketing involves putting a range of services or products with their specifications, functions and uses before the eyes of prospective buyers. Pretty easy. The buyer makes his choices based on the information he sees. But direct response marketing often involves selling only one product or service. The buyer has only two choices – to buy (or take some other form of action the seller wants) or leave. Not easy at all, but immensely rewarding if you can do it well.

In direct response Internet marketing, you must be able to move your reader to take action (often it is to buy your product) simply by communicating through the written word. Doing that successfully takes a very specific set of skills. You must be a master at writing eyeball-grabbing sales copy.

Here are three elements of great sales copy.

Firstly, your copy must have an attention-grabbing and captivating headline. It must stop the reader in his tracks so that he reads nothing else except your copy. There are two ways of doing that. Firstly, you write the main benefit of your product into your headline. Notice it’s benefit, not feature that you must highlight. Suppose you are selling an automated blog post making software. Writing, “Introducing the World’s Best Software that Makes Blog Posts to Your Blog Automatically” is writing about the feature. But writing, “Discover How You Can Update Your Blog on Autopilot and Never Have to Look at it again for One Entire Year”, is writing about benefit.

Features of your product are important, but not in the headline. The second way to make a captivating headline is by writing something in your headline that puts a question into the mind or your reader. This makes him think that the answer must be in the body of your copy and he will continue reading. If you read the headline above, your most natural question would be ‘How is this accomplished?’ and you will likely read on. Once you get your reader thinking like that, then your headline has done its job. Now comes the body of your copy.

The body of your sales copy must be riveting and engaging. Every word must be written for the sole purpose of getting your reader to read the next sentence. Here’s one simple technique to accomplish that.

Think about the old bucket system of dousing a fire. Each person in the line passes a bucket of water to the next person until it reaches the end of the line and the water is poured onto the fire. That is exactly what your sales copy must do. It must move the reader to read the next line and subsequently the next paragraph until he comes to the end.

To do that, your each sentence must lead on to something in the next sentence that your reader wants to know. And the last sentence of each paragraph must leave the reader with some missing piece of the puzzle such that he is compelled to read the next paragraph. Look at the last line of each paragraph of this article. They were designed to lead you to the next paragraph. Can you see how it is done?

Simple, by using certain words like ‘if’ or ‘…you must be a master at…’ (as in the first two paragraphs), you covertly challenge the reader to find out something he does not yet know. Another way is by stipulating a certain number of points beforehand (as in the fourth paragraph) then your paragraph does not cover all the points you said you would bring up. The reader then concludes there are more points in the following paragraph and reads on.

Another way to write like a ‘bucket system’ is by using the last line of a paragraph to ‘introduce’ what’s in the next paragraph (as in the 6th and 7th paragraphs). Yet another way is to pose a question in the last sentence (as in paragraph 9).

Finally, great sales copy must have a clear call to action at the end. Your call to action must be convincing and compelling enough for your reader to take the action you want of him (usually it is to buy your product). Your call to action can be made more convincing by answering your reader’s objection, favorably comparing the price of your product with another similar product or challenging him to make a change by buying your product instead of remaining the way he is.

A clear call to action is a big topic by itself which can be written about in a future article.