If there was a tournament online for marketers, like “The Masters” in golf, could you compete?

The Masters golf tournament is held in Augusta, Georgia, and only a few hours drive from Atlanta where I’ll be in a few weeks. I’ll be at Armand Morin’s Big Seminar with many, many Internet “Masters.” (“If you’re going, be sure to say Hello.”) The Big Seminar is one of many events where you can learn SO much and network with great contacts too.

Professional networking and development is crucial to your business’ growth and critical to increasing your bottom line profits too. Think about it. If you are golfing in the Masters you only play against a few competitors, relative to the billions of sites you’re competing against on the Internet. Your skills and the tools you use need to be applied and improved constantly.

At 1ShoppingCart, we and our Private Label Partners are proud to help you do just that. Improve. Look for the all new and freshly renovated www.ShoppingCartTraining.com. You’ll find tons and tons of multimedia based training and education to better your best on your way to becoming one of the Masters.

Milana Leshinsky is the founder of www.ACCPOW.com and a business and marketing advisor. She helps coaches, consultants and other solo professionals attract clients, build passive revenue and enjoy a unique quality of life.

She suggests that online merchants, “Accept payments from clients by phone as that always makes an excellent impression!” Milana runs her entire business in a single place. That’s literally her ENTIRE BUSINESS.

Milana’s ecommerce experience began with ClickBank and PayPal but as soon as she started working with bigger clients, she realized she was losing 7.5% when using someone else’s merchant account. Plus, she almost lost $2,000 when someone hacked into her PayPal account and sent 18 payments to themselves overnight! Luckily, their security department believed her and the fraudulent scam, so they returned all the money.
She is an expert user and states, “I use about 90% of the features available, including the Affiliate Program, broadcast, client database and searches, sales reports, and more.” However, Milana confesses, “I still need to get my feet wet in ad tracking and creating multiple affiliate programs (I remember this was a nightmare with 3rd party card payment systems).”

When pressed for her favorite benefit, she responded, “For me personally, it’s the recurring billing feature! I run 2 subscription services, and can’t imagine entering or keeping track of 10-20 transactions a day by hand.”

Her most significant business improvement has come from, “Being able to offer different affiliate commissions and custom affiliate ‘landing’ URLs. It’s allowed me to work with each Joint Venture partner in a much more effective way. I was not able to do this with any other service I ever used, since 2000!”

In closing, we’re happy to hear from Milana that, “This is the only system I recommend to anyone who is doing business on the Web (even though I’ve been approached by many other companies to promote them - just not the same caliber of features and of course, you’ve gotta love the live tech support!)”

Learn more about Milana and hear about her coaching products and services at: http://www.richcoachpoorcoach.com

How can I "save a sale" when prospect's credit card is declined?

You can save more sales with this feature that is unique to 1ShoppingCart powered systems. With this ‘offline’ option activated, if your prospects try to place an order and are declined by your gateway for any reason, they will be given two options:

1. They can either go back to try and fix any incorrect information or (if this still does not work)
2. they can choose to process the order offline.

Offline orders have NOT actually been processed through your gateway but your clients are given the impression that they will be successful. Now, you can contact these customers to try and figure out what went wrong or you can try to manually enter their information via your gateway’s virtual terminal.

The Offline Status feature is an option that you can turn off and on. The Offline Status option is set to ‘Yes’ by default within your account. It is designed to try and save sales that were not originally successful.

To set this option, go to the Cart Setup button on the left hand menu, after logging in. Then click on the ‘Advanced’ text link on the submenu that opens. Then, looking down the list of Advanced Options, you find the "Allow Offline Resubmit on Declined Transaction" option, with a pull down menu which allows you to select ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’

If you are able to successfully put the order through within your gateway, you likely want to update the orders status within your account on our system as well. To do this, first click on Orders on the left hand menu within your account. Then, just click on the client’s name from the ‘Regular Orders’ page, for the specific order you’d like to adjust.

This opens up the “Order Details’ page. In the left hand column, below the credit card information, you see a link that says ‘Change’ to the right of the ‘Charge Status’ field. Clicking on this opens up a small window where you will want to select the ‘Change to Approved’ option.

This updates the order from ‘Offline’ status, to ‘Approved M’ (‘M’ for Manually) and adjusts all of the reports within your system accordingly.

An assessment is one of the least expensive, and most powerful, ways to build website profits. Assessments are one-to-one communications that make it easy for you to learn a lot about your website visitors.

Assessments differ from surveys in that you are able to relate the information you learn to specific website visitors. You now only learn who they are, but you learn what they’re thinking and what they’re seeking.

Here are six categories of information you can learn:

1. Name and e-mail address
You learn the names and e-mail addresses of website visitors interested enough in your product or service to fill out a short online assessment. From assessment responses, you can create a special “hot list” of qualified visitors worthy of special follow-up.

2. Problems and goals
You find exactly what challenges your website visitors are facing. You learn the frustrations and problems they need to overcome and the goals they want to achieve. This helps you fine-tune your product and service offerings.

3. Previous solutions
You can find out what solutions your website visitors have tried in the past. You can learn what worked, and what didn't work, helping you avoid the expensive mistakes previous vendors made. This approach can also help you avoid “problem” clients who might have a track record of troublesome relations in the past.

4. Urgency
How urgently does your website visitor view the problem? Do they consider it a casual problem, or a serious problem? From their assessment, you can often ascertain their likely intention to buy. This helps you prioritize responses for qualified follow-up.

5. Beliefs
How congruent is the match between what your visitor thinks and what is actually true about their problem or your product or service? A simple assessment makes it easy for you to identify mistaken beliefs that may be keeping your visitor from buying your product or service?

Your product or service may actually be a) more effective, b) cheaper, c) easier to use than your market believes! Your “risk removal” guarantee may be stronger than they understand, or they may not realize the bonuses that come with your purchase.

Once you identify the obstacles to purchase, it becomes relatively easy to close more sales.

6. Desired follow-up
From your assessment, you can find out what step your website visitor wants to take next. Options include:

• Sign up for your free e-mail newsletter
• Schedule a free 30-minute telephone consultation
• Offer a free “test drive” or sample
• Do nothing

Website visitors will appreciate your letting them feel in control, increasing the likelihood of a purchase when they’re ready!

To learn more, visit www.assessmentgenerator.com.

Author bio
Over 1.6 million readers around the world own copies of the 35 books that Roger C. Parker has written. Click here to learn more, or visit OnePageNewsletters.com and
www.publishedandprofitable.com

A Picture is Worth a $1,000

Pictures create a feeling of emotion. They also generate sales!

When someone comes to the order page from your website, why not re-enforce that good feeling with a photo of your product?

I'm not talking about your company logo header graphic.

I'm talking about adding an image of the widget that your customer is about to purchase.

You can easily add product images to your order form in a 1ShoppingCart powered system. If you haven't noticed, there is a new area in the 'Cart Setup' section that allows you to put up to 5 MB of pictures. You just upload your graphics and the system will give you the exact code to insert on your order page.

Here is an example of an order page with product photos:

"Industrial Ego Sales" order from page

"Ten Weeks to Financial Awakening" order from page

BONUS Tip: Even if you’re selling a digital download, or other intangible products or services, create a ‘symbolic’ box or book cover. It’s been proven to dramatically increase online sales.

Submitted by Christina Hills from www.ShoppingCartQueen.com. Contact Christina for fast set up, training, and improvements to your ShoppingCart and online marketing.