The proof of the pudding... is in the e-mail

I received a couple of intriguing e-mails this week...

The first e-mail made me extremely curious simply because of its length - it was extremely short, but offered to 'make you one million pounds in only two months'.

Now, as you can imagine, I receive quite a few of these communications each and every week and I usually like a little more detail before I say either 'send me some more info' or 'no thanks, this isn’t something that I'll be offering to my members'.

But, because this was so short... I was prompted into a reply. I don’t know if this was deliberate or whether it was just lazy on the part of sender. Anyway, it worked... and I replied.

The next message amazed me, it simply said... again... 'I can make you one million pounds in 2 months, we have to meet'.

Well, by now I was extremely suspicious, and I haven't yet received a response to my e-mail which simply read 'Have you made this money yourself?'

Which brings me onto the point of proof...

Although I find some amazing ideas, if I can't make them work for myself... or in the time that people claim that it's possible, then I simply can’t go out to my members and say 'this works'.

Proof is an incredibly powerful marketing tool that simply must be included in order to succeed...

For example, I'm working with someone at the moment that has an amazing health product, and I've suggested to her that the headline of the website should be immediately followed by a testimonial, such as 'I was suffering with x, until I found y'.

Incredibly powerful, yet so simple.

I’m also working with someone that's in the process of setting up their own Private detective online business. Again, we are using proof at the entry point of the website.

Moving on...

The second e-mail that I'd like to talk about was someone questioning whether they could do this for themselves...

The e-mail was a series of questions that, to me, read like excuses... One of which was 'I don’t believe that I have the entrepreneurial skills required to do this, what do I need?'

I thought about this long and hard, as I didn't want to give a standard text-book response... I answered all of the initial questions with examples of people that I've worked with, or my own personal experience...

Then, I wrote the following:

An entrepreneur is someone that is prepared to invest £5 to make £20, knowing that worst-case he/she will get the £5 back...

Now, to explain this... I went on to say that if you hadn’t researched a particular market, or a product price, you’d be guessing - rather like the average gambler on horses on a Saturday.

However, if you knew all there was to know, and you’d run some tests of your own, you’d be pretty sure that your small investment was going to return you a profit.

And to continue with the analogy of a gambler, this time you'd be a professional gambler - that has spent all morning going through the form guide...

So, this week my online business tips are proof and preparation.

Take care and have a great week,

Chris Cobb