In my consulting business, I'm often asked for ideas to get more customers i.e.;money) into their business. There are hundreds of ways to do this, but let's go back a step and look at basics of what that is, before we get crazy with all kinds of ideas. Long-term growth and profits can only come by increasing money flow into your business and there's really only three ways to do it.

1. Get more new customers. 2. Increase average dollar amount each customer spends. 3. Get your customer to buy more often.

That's it. #1 is pretty obvious. It's what I'm requested to do for my clients all time;get them more customers. However, reality of situation is that what they really want is more money and getting new customers is certainly one way to do it.

You can do this in two ways. Raising prices is one. But, and I know this could be a sensitive area, can you reasonably increase your price points? The only proven way to know if this will work is to check your competitors prices or industry average. Now, if you offer exceptional additions or services than your competitor, you can charge more. But every advertising and image message you send must say WHY you are worth price and point out advantages over other products or services. The cheapest is almost always not best. You'd be surprised at impact a small increase can have on your gross profits by only 5% or 10%.

Ponder these figures:

Let's say you have one product that you sell for 50.00. You raise price of product by only 5% to $52.50. Your average customer purchases this product 4 times a year, so that's $10 extra per year, per customer. You get about 500 customers per year(500 customers x $10 extra dollars per customer per year) =$5,000. I don't know many people who would turn down an extra $5,000.

Then one day it happens...you get out of bed and thought of getting near computer makes your stomach queasy. You begin thinking maybe you should get that root canal your dentist has been bugging you about for last six months. Gee, wasn’t my carpet beige at one time, not gray? Maybe I should clean house; mow yard; do my 2000 taxes. Anything...anything...but get on computer.

My friend, you’ve fallen into "Black Hole" of Internet marketing. It’s a place where you are totally apathetic about online promotion; you just don’t want to have anything to do with it.

The first time it happened to me, I had just returned from a tranquil week in mountains of Tennessee. I thought I would return to my computer with a huge appetite for marketing. To my surprise and dismay, I just didn’t want to get back on computer and my routine of spending 10-12 hours a day doing all things we do.

I came out of that period realizing that I needed to moderate my time on computer and to do that; I would need to start working smarter, not harder. So "Black Hole" episode wasn’t a bad thing. I learned from it.

I think anyone who is passionate (obsessive?) about Net marketing goes through this in varying degrees. And everyone deals with it differently. Some are able to "bully" their way through these episodes. That doesn’t work for me because then marketing becomes something I HAVE to do instead of something I WANT to do.

I have fallen into "Black Hole" a few more times and have no doubt I will again in future. This is how I have learned to get through it:

1. I subscribe to 125+ ezines. I receive majority of them in several different HotMail accounts so I don’t overload my main email account. I will set my HotMail accounts up not to receive and automatically delete any incoming mail. This prevents bouncebacks and I won’t lose my subscriptions. I know I’m going through a temporary phase and when I get through it, I can open my accounts back up.

2. I go to library and check out a bunch of books. For me, more Stephen King and John Grisham, better. I spend my afternoons with my butt firmly planted on couch (one cat on my chest and one on my legs) with a bag of potato chips within easy reach.