P.S. Incidentally, when you subscribe to Joe's Ezine you'll also get my BONUS report entitled "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Widgets But Were Afraid to Ask". This report is valued at $47, but is yours for free as a thank you for subscribing.

See? Now freebie has some value. Since your customer has (hopefully) already decided they want what you have to offer, freebie comes across as a true extra. That's value. And that's how you turn a larger percentage of your prospects into paying customers.

Using freebie as bait up-front for something that's already free is not smart business. When you do this you're instantly decreasing your chances for making sales. This is because that powerful word "free" will automatically attract people with a "freebie" mentality. You may get big numbers of prospects but they'll be predisposed not to buy from you. You trigger that mindset when you dangle freebie in front of their noses right off bat.

Once people get into that freebie mindset it's difficult, if not impossible, to get them out of it. They will sign up to get freebie and then keep waiting for more freebies. When they see that they're not going to get any more they'll move on. If they do end up buying from somebody it probably won't be you.

YOUR BONUS IS A SAMPLE OF YOUR LARGER PRODUCT

Another key to using freebies is to make sure that what you are offering is a sample of something larger. If you offer a free email course, for example, it should be designed to draw your prospect into one of your affiliate programs, or to sell them something through a referral, or else to pitch your ebook or some other product you have rights to sell.

In similar fashion, if you offer a free report then report could be a sample of your work, again to sell your ebook or other product.

Offering a free ezine is one of most popular and best ways to get out a sample of your work, provided you have original content. Then you can package up your original content with a few extras into a larger package like an ebook and offer it for sale.

If you don't have original material, then you'll need to be patient and use your ezine as a way of establishing and building trust with a list of subscribers/prospects. This can take quite a while. But it's well worth it in long run, especially if you enjoy publishing an ezine.

Whichever type of bonus you do decide to use, just make sure that it's a sample designed to lead toward something larger - sale of an actual product.

And don't try to sell huge $500 marketing course first. Start out by selling something inexpensive. The $20 - $50 range is what most marketers look at for first sale. After that you can sell bigger ones through follow-ups leading to "backend" sales. Oftentimes really big sales don't come for a long time, unless you have a well-established name and reputation.

So now you have an easy to remember address, your business site has ample space and bandwidth to make sure it's always available, what else could you do to improve it?

Well how does it look when it opens in your browser?

There are some terrible examples of business sites around, but yours needn't be one of them.

Here is a basic checklist for your website.

Does your site resemble a Banner farm? Let me clarify that a bit, do you have too many banners either selling other products, or to try to create traffic through banner exchanges? Either way they will slow down your site, and distract your visitors. Lose banners, and add some content about your products and look for traffic from other sources. Are words Poorly spelt? It's up to you to proofread your website copy, and even pros can make mistakes. If your website has spelling mistakes your customers are going to think you don't care or worse aren't smart enough to be able to advise them properly.

Does it all make sense? Sometimes, a comma, or other punctuation can change whole context of your sentence. Make sure you read every line back, and that it all reads as you want it to. Then get someone else to check it again. My own proofreader is my wife, and she spots plenty of mistakes before I publish, and make a fool of myself.

Lastly, how do you tie it all together into a nice good looking package? If you are like most small businesses, you won't be able to afford high prices of web designers big boys use. It is however still possible to have a an eyecatching webdesign for little cost by using templates.

A great source of low cost professional looking templates can be found at http://www.cashinonline.info/info/sitetemplates.htm If you don't know about website building and html, it's worthwhile learning basics and/or using a free wysiwig editor with template you buy. If you don't want to do that, you can always find someone who is doing a course on website design at a college who may do it for low cost or even free as part of their coursework, or portfolio for when they're looking for a job afterwards.

So go take a look now and see what your website is saying about your business, and use this article as your guideline to a better looking online presence. It doesn't have to be expensive to look professional, and it will make your potential customers more likely to do business with you.