You SAY you want to achieve online success, right? But, with all due respect, how do you expect to pull this off when you're making so many mistakes? I mean, this is real life, folks, not just another edition of "Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour"!

So, let's get SERIOUS, shall we?

You're Trying To Make Money Online W/ THAT Website?

The number of self-defeating websites is staggering. What's really pathetic is that real people are trying to make real money with them. They never will, of course, and will no doubt blame the Internet for failing them when it's their own darned fault no one's knockin' at the door.

Now go to http://www.trafficcenter.com/properties

These are professionally designed sites which are ready for you to move into NOW -- NO WAITING!

Then look again, closely, at your site.

Here are some of the things you're very likely to see that are dragging you down:

1) your site isn't trying as hard as possible to capture the prospect's follow-up information, including the all-important e-mail address

2) your site doesn't start out with a strong, in-your- face flash graphics presentation that puts you in immediate contact with your prospect.

3) your site doesn't make motivating offers.

4) your site is jumbled, without clear focus; you're not guiding the prospect to do what you want her to do.

These are all problems which destroy your ability to profit online.

You're Trying To Make Money Online Selling THAT?

Take a look at what you're selling. Is there any VALUE to it? As I write, we're in a period of massive economic uncertainty and confusion in all the world's leading economies, including Europe, Japan, and the United States.

What do people do in such conditions? THEY GET VERY, VERY CAUTIOUS.

Thus, if you want to profit in a downturn, you'd damn well better focus on presenting VALUE.

People always want VALUE, of course, but when times are good, they get slack. They buy whatever takes their fancy; they're less questioning, less critical, more laid back.

However, when times are troubling, they start asking tougher questions which all emanate from one central question: is it worth the money?

By this standard, a significant percentage of online "businesses" are a joke. Look at one site after another and ask yourself one question, "Where's the VALUE here?"

Sites packed with cheap affiliate and MLM programs are doomed! Sites focusing on low priced products and services for the "little guys" will crash! Sites that feel (and look) like "get rich quick" schemes never make it.

If you do not sell VALUE, you're just asking to flush your business down the toilet.

You're Trying To Achieve Online Success With THAT?

To succeed online, you need certain tools, including

* your own domain * a listserver, so you can reach all your prospects, customers, and subscribers with the touch of one button * a sales manager, so you can automatically, personally follow up every single prospect you've got * professional website design, because the way you present what you're selling is too important to be left to amateurs * guaranteed traffic.

How many of these tools do YOU have? Yeah, I thought so. You're trying to build the Hoover Dam with a teaspoon and a rake. Get serious!

Now go back to http://www.trafficcenter.com/properties

Each and every one of the e-properties you're looking at has all the tools you need to succeed online.

You are not going to succeed online without the right tools. Every day you try to make it without them you're just fooling yourself. It can't be done. If you keep trying to succeed online without the tools you need, you're just proving that you're a fool.

You're Trying To Succeed Online With THAT "marketing"?

The Internet is a marketer's paradise -- but only if you know how to market.

Millions of people are discovering, to their chagrin and disappointment, that marketing means more than posting a site, running a few free classified ads, trading some free links, and waiting to hire the Brink's truck to run their millions to the bank.

In fact, this Great Age of Marketing, is proving to be the Biggest Age of Marketing Disappointment to the vast majority of people online.

I, for one, am NOT sympathetic to this problem.

People like you go online without any copywriting skills and try to write copy. It fails, miserably -- but predictably. Copywriting is a profession. You have to study what it takes to succeed. Yet the vast majority of online "marketers," suffering from that fatal mixture of hubris and stupidity go merrily forward, only to fall flat. Humbly, I suggest they study my best-selling book "Cash Copy: How To Offer Your Products And Services So Your Prospects Buy Them... NOW!" (Go to http://www.jeffreylant.com for further details on this and other materials that'll turn you into a better -- that is to say, profit-making -- marketer!)

People like you expect to profit without knowing the BENEFITS of what you're offering and bringing them to your prospects' attention over and over and over and over and over again.

Your prospects -- like mine -- are being overwhelmed with marketing offers. You can't just send a single offer and lean back, pleased with yourself, expecting riches to follow. But millions do.

What's fabulous about the Internet is its incredible marketing economies. You can contact far more people far less expensively than you ever could in "real life." Yet the sad truth is, most online "marketers" don't understand this environment and certainly aren't profiting from it. I'm talking about YOU!

You're Trying To Profit Online With THAT Attitude About People?

You want to profit online? Then you are going to have to mix it up with a lot of people. Not just a hundred, or a thousand, but TENS OF THOUSANDS of people!

One dirty little secret of the 'net is the fact that lots of people doing business on it detest PEOPLE. They recognize that since people have the money they want, they're going to have to communicate with them. But they want that communication to be as antiseptic and arms length as possible. TALK to people? WORK with people? YIKES! Those are concepts that make tons of e-marketers shiver and get real, real nervous.

The truth is, the higher the cost of what you sell, the more you are going to have to TALK to and WORK with your prospects.

This thought may well disconcert you. You're probably one of the "marketers" who thought that all you'd have to do is "post it and they will buy." That's one of the biggest jokes around. "Post it and they will buy" is like taking e-poison and killing yourself and all your hopes for online success.

If you want to succeed online, you've got to contact your prospects regularly with valuable information (including information about the benefits delivered by what you're selling). You need to use email, of course, but you also need to use the TELEPHONE! Get used to the idea that the higher the cost of what you're selling, the more contact with your prospect is necessary, including TELEPHONE contact! If you're not going to do this, don't delude yourself into thinking you're going to profit online. All you'll do is just waste your time online, wondering where the money went. Friend, without constant client-centered contact, you're just fooling yourself.

Last Words

The Internet is changing -- again. Just since 1999 we've gone from the days when people thought you could put ANYTHING on line and profit to the crash that started in 2000 and is still going on in 2001. The good news is that the next phase has already begun. This is the phase when smart people will run value-centered businesses, taking advantage of the mind-boggling business economies and speed which are only found online.

These people will be the consummate realists. They will not merely expect to "post it and they will come." They certainly won't think they can build a profitable business without the necessary tools. And they won't be daft enough to keep their prospects and customers at arm's length, because they really don't want to be bothered by them.

In short, remembering the English poet Robert Browning, "The best IS yet to come" on the 'net.

I, for one, who have lived through every single Internet incarnation since 1994, am ready for it. Indeed, I'm as eager as eager could be. But then I've done my homework; I'm already doing what needs to be done for maximum online success.

What about you? Are YOU ready, really ready? Or are you just going to keep on fooling yourself, thinking you can get rich off a self-replicating website and some free links and ads?