Free Giveaways or Bonus Gifts (”ethical bribes”, as Alex Mandossian would call them) are almost a necessity these days for anyone looking to increase the number of people (prospective customers, donors, customers, clients) to opt in to their lists.

Everyone likes getting stuff for free if they perceive some value in it. Free is such a powerful force in innovation, especially online.

One innovation that sprung from the idea of individual “gifts” is “giveaway events” and they have now taken the internet by storm.

What is a Giveaway Event?

When several to hundreds of people or entities contribute products or services as free gifts for other people who visit a website that might be promoting a product launch, a new service, a particular promotion, then it’s considered a giveaway event.  

For people to receive each giveaway item, they must subscribe to the contributor’s mailing list. Done correctly and depending on the quality or perceived value of the gifts they offer, the contributors can build their lists exponentially in a much faster period of time than if they were to do it on their own.

That’s why Giveaway Events are such a GREAT idea for those just starting out!

Although giveaway events greatly benefit “newbies”, ANYONE can benefit from them, all the way up to multibillion dollar corporations or international non-profits.

Each contributor agrees to send traffic to the event website site so every contributor benefits from the mailing list of each other contributors (also known as Joint Venture Partners or JV Partners). The gifts you give can either be your own product or service or it can be a gift you own the rights to give away for free.

The event organizers send you instructions and promotion materials such as sample email messages, endorsement letters and sponsored ads to use in endorsing this give away event to your subscribers who are already subscribed to your mailing list. Again, if your list is small, you can always team up with a colleague or a mastermind group of people you like and trust and present a united front…VERY POWERFUL!

That’s exactly what I did when I received an email from Chet Holmes International informing me of their MASSIVE Giveaway Event that kicks off TOMORROW, June 4th

After experiencing first-hand the power of their big event last year, I knew I’d be crazy not to take part once again. As I thought about whom I could partner with, it occurred to me that this event would tie in nicely with my 2008 goal of raising the visibility of women, their businesses, products, services or causes on the Internet.

So I put out a call for women who were interested in joining me and it’s an AMAZING group of women from all over the world who are movers and shakers who have INCREDIBLE gifts to give!

We’re calling it the GutZy Women International Mastermind Alliance and we invite you to take part in this EVE-olution by checking out the Event website. It will fill you in on all the details.

CLICK HERE to read the rest of the article & follow the rest of the story:

Once you have a product ready to sell online, you have to create the words and drive the traffic to make it happen. But, before you start marketing, you’ll need a sales page. Your sales page—even more than your product—will determine your success.

A great sales page with a mediocre product will far outsell a poor sales page with an excellent product.

Writing a sales page, then, is one of the most important steps of the process. It’s not hard but will take good planning and a lot of thought. Your sales page will not only need to grab your potential customer’s attention, it will have to make an honest case for your product and invite the reader to buy.

Most professional Internet marketers would agree that your headline is the most important part of your sales page.

Benefits sell, features tell. You’ll have to dig through your product and find a single, compelling benefit. Remember, you’re trying to find that one emotional benefit that will appeal to the buyer you’re trying to reach as quickly as possible.

Many newcomers make the mistake of trying to appeal to every visitor that comes to their site. If you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll end up with a vague, hype filled headline. You don’t need dramatic and worn out adjectives to create an effective headline.

Compare these examples: “Stop smoking in 30 days” versus “Throw your cigarettes out the window and kiss them goodbye forever”. The shorter, former, example does the job quickly without the hype.

Finally, frame your headline in quotes. Research has shown that putting a headline in quotes enhances credibility. Although this may not be as legitimate today, it’s become a standard convention. Not using it might make your headline seem like it’s missing something.

Once you’ve grabbed the reader’s attention with your headline, you now have one goal—to get the reader to buy.

Three more components of a great sales page can be read in whole here.

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In part 2 of a series of videos where Debbie Ducic of GutZy Women interviews David Skul and Frank Klein of Relativity, the question is… “What is Web 2.0, how is it different than Web 1.0 and why should businesses, educational and government entities pay attention to what is happening in Internet and multi media?

There’s so much BUZZ going on about Web 2.0, that Debbie, Frank & David hope to educate people as to what are the benefits of Web 2.0 versus web 1.0 and how can they use web 2.0 platforms and strategies to create more success in businesses or education.

This series of articles can be used to glean knowledge and know how from two very qualified and experienced technology guys. In part 2, David Skull, who has been a successful internet entrepreneur, author, teacher, business consultant and GEEK, talks about how Web 2.0 affects and benefits business owners and large corporations.

If you sell a product or a service, there’s no cheaper or easier way to market yourself than venturing online. It doesn’t matter if you sell exclusively online or from a retail location, Internet marketing offers the best way to reach the largest number of potential customers.

This isn’t discounting the more traditional marketing methods. Press releases and direct mail marketing can still be successful, especially for offline businesses, but they’ll take more time and money.

Internet marketing can be as simple and inexpensive as you want it to be. It’s true that some larger companies pour millions into online marketing. However, a small business owner can start on a smaller scale and move on to more sophisticated marketing techniques as sales progress.

Many traditional advertising methods don’t offer inexpensive, beginner options. Newspaper advertising, direct mail, and television advertising can sometimes require hefty, up-front payments with no success guarantee.

As an online marketer, you can shift your marketing dollars, and time, to those methods which give you the best return on your investment.

Find out how here:

In October I rented a booth at the Women’s Living Expo in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and invited my professional video team, Barbara Jabaily and MJ Mauro of Dream Teller Video to network with all the small business owners who had booths at this BIG event geared toward women. As we were walking around to meet them, we captured  them on video talking about their businesses in a very informal way.

We then took snippets of the videos and uploaded them to Youtube and then to the GutzyWomen.com website as well as Dream Teller Video’s Youtube channel. I then notified the business owners that they were ONLINE with  links to visit our sites to take a look at themselves. I promised to get back with them to talk about how they could use these videos FREE to promote themselves and their businesses to the online world.

Many of these people LOVED the fact that they got free exposure, hated the way they looked on camera, and had not a clue about what to do with them. Not that they were negative or ignorant, but because video is such a new tool to use online, especially for those with “brick and morter” businesses, some basic education and training is necessary for them to understand how VALUABLE , EASY and INEXPENSIVE it is to use video in getting the word out about their products and services.

That’s where Gutzy Women comes in.

However, a few of them ran with it without prodding and I’m going to give you a few real live example of what they did to get some pretty good exposure! Then I’m going to give you an example of the owners doing NOTHING with them, but by the nature of the internet, ended up getting exposure anyway! SO COOL!

Go here to find out what happened with their videos and how you can do the same!