10 Creative Online Business Opportunities

Maintaining a steady flow of revenues as a web worker is a major challenge. Whether you’re freelancing for an ever-changing group of clients or selling products to consumers, it can be tough to know whether you’re going to make ends meet month to month. Business comes in waves, so anything you can do to make your earnings more dependable will help you sleep better at night.

We’ve already shared lists of ways you can grow your income with creative online business opportunity ideas (check our posts from April and last January), and we’re happy to present a new list of ideas to help you on your journey for scoring more online gigs.

So much of what’s touted around the web as opportunities to make money online ends up with the opposite effect. We’ve done the hard part for you and checked out the reputations of these sites and business models for you. (We still recommend keeping your guard up and watching out for scammers interacting with users on these platforms, though.) Whether you want to offer your services using a niche online marketplace or monetize your existing assets, there’s plenty you can try!

1. Sell Your Own Swag

Are you an artist, designer, illustrator or doodler? Are you working with a brand that has a strong visual identity? Got ideas for clever imagery or witty words?

All you need is an image file with decent resolution, and you can easily make it available for purchase on the internet as a tee shirt, tote bag, mug, iPhone case or whatever else you can think of. CafePress is the most famous of the sites that’ll handle the printing, processing and shipping on your behalf, but there are plenty of others that have good reputations too, including MySoti, Printfection and Zazzle.

You don’t need to pay any fees at all to the platform you choose, since they only print when there’s an order – and you’ll earn commissions on every sale. So you can get creative and promote your products on your website, with a dedicated microsite, with ads on other sites, on social media, or wherever else you think you can generate sales.

2. Menial Clicks During Spare Time

Do you enjoy mindlessly scrolling, finding images, clicking, evaluating data, dragging, writing five-word descriptions or copy-pasting in your spare time? Businesses often need help with these types of tasks, and sometimes it’s cheaper or easier to crowdsource than to write bits of code to do the work.

That’s where marketplaces like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and ShortTask come into play. Here you can take on nano-jobs that pay out a few cents each but are highly scalable and generally don’t require too much attention. Each marketplace has its own stipulations, culture and lingo, though, so be prepared for a bit of a learning curve.

3. Virtual Tutelage

Are you an expert in a niche area of knowledge? Can you teach someone to play baroque concertos on the ukulele? If someone has questions about how to store their power tools, can you give good advice on the fly?

There are dedicated web platforms where you can offer your services as an authoritative coach or tutor in exchange for money. Google’s relatively new Helpoutsis a full-on marketplace with video conferencing with customers, while Ether allows you to book paid appointments for phone consultations, with marketing handled by you offsite.

4. Drop Shipping for Risk-Free eCommerce

Drop shipping is a much-praised hybrid business model somewhere between eCommerce and affiliate marketing. Essentially, it allows you to sell other people’s products on websites that you manage, but with none of the risk. The vendor handles the billing, service and order fulfillment – all you need to do is drive the orders and you make commissions.

If you’ve built your website with Wix, you can easily add the 365 DropShip Product Catalog app to your website. There are zero costs involved, and you can earn commissions by hosting a full-on eCommerce-style shop on your site with products from several manufacturers and categories.

5. Leverage Your Social Influence

If you’ve got lots of Twitter followers who click on links you post, you can leverage this asset to make money by sending out sponsored tweets.

There are now several marketplaces where advertisers can post offers, includingTweetPeddler, ChurpChurp and SponsoredTweets. There’s a lot of volume in these directories, so you should be able to find offers to promote products that are relevant to your community of followers and won’t kill your social media credibility.

6. Niche Tourist Services

If you live somewhere that tourists flock to, you might be able to profit from the greater economic ecosystem that comes along with a robust tourism industry. While most travelers purchase solutions for lodging, transportation, eats and guided tours from mainstream, big companies, there are growing numbers of them who prefer to do business with independent locals – it’s often cheaper and more authentic.

If you don’t need your car every day you can rent it out with RelayRides. If you do regularly use your car, then you can offer people rides for money using Sidecar. You can also rent out your home, or part of it, using Airbnb, or offer quirky special interest tours of your locale on Vayable.

7. Cook and Host Dinners

Along similar lines, there are plenty of people who are interested in eating out but have grown tired with the anonymous, polished corporate flavors of restaurants. If you can cook up delicious and friendly dining experiences in your own home, it’s easier than ever to reach customers interested in joining you.

Marketplaces for home-hosted meals include EatWith, Cookening and HomeDine.

8. Sell Your Collectibles

Are your baseball cards from the 80′s collecting dust in your attic in a box next to your childhood Star Wars action figures? Are you unlikely to ever play that Santana album you have on vinyl ever again? You may have a hard time letting go of this stuff, but your life will feel lighter once you do. You can make decent money selling it, too.

Just take some photos, determine fair asking prices, post on Craigslist or eBay, and the inquiries from interested shoppers ought to come pouring in.

9. Offline Tasks via Online Marketplaces

People are posting one-off jobs in droves on platforms like Redbeacon andTaskRabbit, which means you can make extra money by running errands or performing handyman tasks for people in your spare time.

To pick up these gigs, you’ll need to pass a background check, so get started with building your profile with plenty of notice.

10. Review People’s Apps

If you’re a gadget junkie, gamer, tech tool lover or an early adopter, you’re likely to get a kick out of SoftwareJudge. Here you can get paid to try out recently launched apps and write what you think of them.

Social proof is a powerful force when it comes to app marketing, so publishers are willing to pay top dollar for your opinions – a quality review can earn you up to $50.

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8 Home-Based Business Ideas That Pay

When starting your first business, it’s not always the smartest idea to dive in head first, especially if you don’t have the money or expertise (yet) to dominate a brand-new industry. Luckily, there are great home-based businesses not many people take advantage of early on in their careers that can provide the perfect launch pad. Why not start out small to make it big?

To learn more, we asked eight successful entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC):

Q. What’s one home-based business idea that aspiring entrepreneurs can use as a jumping-off point for something bigger?

Their best answers are below:

1. Start a Service-Based Business

Service-based businesses are a great jumping-off point for newer entrepreneurs. In college, I began a digital marketing company out of my apartment. It was a great business to start with because there was minimal overhead, and I used my network of independent contractors to expand my bandwidth and service offerings as needed. Use your business to generate revenue and build your network.
- Kevin Tighe II, WeBRAND

2. Sell Products on Etsy

If you’re crafty, make things at home and sell your handmade goods on Etsy. It’s free to set up an account and only costs $0.20 to list an item. If what you make is interesting, it can fetch a good price. It’s a great way to test the market for an item you make and want to turn into a real business. Clothes, jewelry, gifts and decorative items do particularly well.
- Matt Ehrlichman, Porch

MORE ALLBUSINESS: 

• The  Top 25 Home-Based Business Ideas
• 10 Web Sites Where You Should Have Your Company Profile Listed
• 25 Frequently Asked Questions on Starting a Business
• The 10 Most Creative New Business Ideas Out There

3. Build a Following

Start blogging, and build a following with your blog and social media networks. Having a blog not only makes you more influential as an entrepreneur, but it also makes it easier for you to establish yourself as a thought leader in the industry. Where is your passion: education, technology, startups, payments? Learn about that industry and write about it. Your idea might just come naturally!
- Sarah Ware, Markerly

4. Clean Homes With Green Techniques

If aspiring entrepreneurs want to target a more specific niche, they should try green home cleaning. This is a business that can literally be launched out of the trunk of a car without a huge amount of startup capital.
- Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

5. Produce an E-book

Tim Ferris’ “The 4-Hour Workweek” was the first to showcase information products to the mass market as a viable way to generate cash. Today, there are innumerable success stories (e.g., Nathan Barry and Sacha Greif, Pat Flynn’s blog and Chris Guillebeau’s “The $100 Startup”). It can be a very fruitful path, but for some reason remains unknown to many.
- Michael Simpson, DJZ.

6. Start an eBay Store

One home-based business idea that I think is great for aspiring entrepreneurs to use as a jumping-off point is starting an eBay store. The site is extremely intuitive, and the cost of entry is cheap. Start in an area you feel knowledgeable, and start looking for deals. For instance, if you know about boats, you should start buying and selling small accessories that you would buy for yourself.
- Jay Wu, A Forever Recovery

7. Help Friends Sell Their Products

I’ve seen this model work particularly well on Etsy, but it also works on most e-commerce platforms. Everyone has friends with cool projects that they aren’t prepared to monetize themselves. You can quickly learn how to set up an online store and manage it for your friends, acting as their representative for a percentage of the store’s income. You can run several stores easily.
- Thursday Bram, Hyper Modern Consulting

8. Find Niche Online Communities

It’s easy to say Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can help you find like-minded individuals and connect with your friends and acquaintances. But don’t you wish there was one place you could congregate with those same like-minded people who could get to know each other and have constructive conversations and build, share or do great stuff? That’s a killer idea worth pursuing.
- Danny Wong, Blank Label

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5 secrets to relationship-based selling online

Communicating online isn’t about technology. It’s about tapping into technology to connect with human beings.

With all the typing and tablets — and the absence of seeing a human face — it’s easy to forget that your online credibility is directly linked to relationship-based selling.

Don’t think numbers, think people.

Relationship-based selling is about helping people and organizations solve their business problems without the hard sales push that all of us loathe. It’s about truly putting the needs of others before your own.

This is the secret to building credibility in your social media circles. The digital landscape is vast, yet there is no room for selfish.

Yes, you have a mortgage to pay. Yes, your car needs an unexpected repair. Yes, your kids need new sneakers.

But when you’re able to put these challenges aside and not be driven by your own drama, you will come from a place of service and gratitude.  Conversely, when you chase numbers, you almost always fall short.

Remember that desperation is very unappealing in business.

How do you let followers, friends, and connections know that you care deeply about their success?

Consider these five social media tips to build your credibility and relationships: 

1. Listen to the conversations. Don’t throw yourself into an online chat or dialogue until you have a sense of the players and personalities. The benefits of this are two-fold. First, you will determine if this particular forum is appropriate and hits your target audience. Second, you will gain insights about the players and their interests, areas of expertise, and work.  When you do your homework, your posts, tweets and content clearly show readers that you “get it.”

2. Stay up-to-date. Pay attention to industry twists, turns and trends. By keeping your finger on the pulse of the HR and recruiting industries, you will quickly discover the hot topics and issues your prospects are paying attention to. To save time, subscribe to e-newsletters, RSS feeds, and Google Alerts thatfilter important information from the Web.        

3. Focus on solutions. Write for the reader and forget the sales pitch. It’s easy to outline problems, but people are looking for answers. Be willing to offer your knowledge without the expectation of receiving anything back. Your day will come. That’s the way the universe works.

4. Share good information from other people.  Forget ulterior motives. The content you provide can — and should — come from other people and sources. Your generosity will be noticed — and appreciated. This also takes the pressure off of you to be the sole creator of content.  To ensure your credibility is being boosted, check the link and content for accuracy before sharing.   

5. Be a guest. Offer to be a guest blogger on a popular website. Offer to be the guest expert on a Twitter chat or webinar. Put yourself out there with the single goal of openly sharing your expertise and insights.

When you position yourself as a credible expert in your field, people will want to buy from you. You won’t have to sell anything.

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Things you need to know about marketing (before starting a marketing campaign)

One of the core values I have is that I give the same advice to my clients as I would my best friend. So, here is some of my best advice.

1. You should only allocate a small amount of your budget on a web designer.

Let’s say you have allocated £2,500 for a new website build. You go to a web designer and tell them your budget and they build you a website for £2,500. What now? You expect orders to come in but that won’t happen. I have seen it hundreds of times.

A better option would be. Spend £1000 on getting your sales copy, web structure and architecture right first by a marketing specialist. Then, get the website built by a web designer for £300 (you can even get this bit outsourced offshore). Then spend the remaining £1200 on marketing and getting traffic to your website.

Once you start getting the traffic to your website you can gain traction and increase your revenue. You can start to split test your website to find out what appeals to your market best (all the most sophisticated companies test – you should be no different as I almost guarantee your competitors won’t be testing).

2. Concentrate on your point of difference

What is it the Dragons always ask on Dragons Den? Why are you different? Why should I invest in you? Why you?

What happens on X-factor when a woman dressed like Amy Winehouse comes onto the stage and sings Back to Black just as Amy would have done? She gets voted off even if she had an equal voice to Amy Winehouse.

One of the golden rules of business is that you need to be different. You don’t always need to be better – you just need a point of difference. This gives people the option of choosing (or not choosing) your services easier.

The worst mistake I see businesses make is getting a generic looking website with bland, uninspiring copy. Unfortunately, this is the case with most web design companies. Go to a web designer and they will try to please you with a design. They will ask you want you want and what you like. They will give you what you want NOT what you need.

Firstly, work on your point of difference and why people should use you. Then build your website built around that message. What you say is much more important than how you say it. What you say is much more important than how you say it (I said it twice because this is really, really important).

3. Your copy is king

A big mistake I see people make with their website is that they create their own content. This has become more of a problem now it is very easy to update your own website.

If your web designer gave you the job of ‘creating the copy’ then it can be a danger sign. After all, I wouldn’t feel confident in a car mechanic fixing my car and then telling me to perform the MOT test myself.

Copywriting will make or break your website. Your website should be a reflection of your best salesperson. Don’t do this yourself as you are too close to your services to be purely objective and copy writing is a skill. It is a very, very under valued skill and something most web designers leave out (getting you to do the copy increases profit margins).

4. If you want cheap – you will get cheap.

If you want a cheap website then go here (http://99designs.co.uk/web-design). It won’t generate you a return on investment and it will look like every other website out there but it will be cheap.

Don’t get me wrong. If you are a ‘run of the mill’ company then there are hundreds of ‘run of the mill’ web designers in every town in the UK. They will produce you a website you are happy with so you can tick the ‘get a website built’ box off your list. That is fine if that is what you are looking for.

If you are looking to grow your business then you need a more professional approach to your website. A better option is to get the experts in first to craft your sales message, website structure and point of difference and then use out sourced web designers (who are often better qualified but half the price of a UK designer).

5. Grab your visitors attention.

Do you remember the first time you saw a Volkswagen Beetle? How about a Concorde? How about an Ipad? All these things have one thing in common. They stood out and you remember them.

You need to stand out. You engage people through a website with copy, headlines and an easy to use website. These things don’t come about by accident. They are well thought and well crafted.

A well known marketing principle is the AIDA principle. This goes along the lines (in an over simplified way) of grabbing your visitors Attention, then engage their Interest and  buildingDesire through to finally asking them to take an Action (AIDA). This simple marketing principle can be applied with devastating effect on your website.

Use a marketing expert to consult and guide your web designer. Just like you would use an architect to consult builders on a building project.

Key takeaway point

Your prospective clients will judge you on your website whether you like it or not. They will determine what type of business you are, where you are positioned in the market and whether you are worth considering or not before they actually speak to you. Scary that isn’t it? But let’s be honest, we have all done it. You go to a website and you make a judgement call before you have even spoken to anybody in the company from the website.

Do not underestimate the power your website can have and chose your web team carefully.

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Should You Use a Curiosity Gap to Persuade Your Visitors to Click?

The “curiosity gap” is a powerful copywriting technique…

It’s so powerful, in fact, that using it recently led to a 927% increase in clicks on a Pricing page.

But before I show you how we got those incredible results, let’s answer the obvious questions: what the hell is a curiosity gap? And how can you use it to a) keep visitors engaged and b) compel them to move forward?

I spoke about the curiosity gap at Microconf 2013

The curiosity gap is the space between what we know and what we want or even need to know.

Your prospects want to fill the information gap. Your job, as a copywriter or marketer, is to delay the filling of the gap for as long as you can – without introducing too much discomfort – in order to keep your visitors engaged… To keep them hanging on, really.

What Else Could Have Compelled Eve to Bite the Apple?

Curiosity is a driving force that’s often stronger than fear of loss and desire for economic gain.

Think Pandora’s Box. Think Eve. Think Lot’s wife turning back to look, even though she knewthe punishment was death. Think of every cliffhanger since Scheherazade‘s 1,001 nights. Think of those Upworthy headlines everybody whines about now (but which I continue to love). Hell, think of that damn storage locker slamming shut on Storage Wars just as something’s about to be revealed… and just as we go to commercial…

Not knowing everything yet is intriguing for people.

We need to connect dots.

We need to bridge gaps.

Which means that clever copy hackers can lure prospects into our sales copy – or deeper into our funnel – with a little dose of strategically placed curiosity.

For marketers, using the curiosity gap generally means:

• Introducing something new that our existing knowledge or previous experiences can’t explain; similar to cognitive dissonance
• Starting a story, pausing at a climactic moment, and delaying the conclusion of it
• Withholding key information for a manageable period of time (but not too long, which can deflate curiosity)
• Introducing an idea, action or concept… and connecting it with an unexpected outcome or subject

What does the curiosity gap look like? Well, thanks to Upworthy, we’ve seen a lot headlines that use it, like so:

Note: I stopped to watch all these videos – and more – while writing this post.

But it’s not just good for headlines. The curiosity gap is a great tool to keep in your back pocket whenever you want anyone to a) read for a period of time – as on sales pages or in body copy – or b) watch your explainer video. It’s fantastic in emails, when you want to drive people to click to a landing page, and as subject lines, like these:

It’s also, as you’re about to see, a pretty compelling way to get people to take action…

The A/B Test:

Curiosity Brings in a 927% Lift in Clicks on a Plan,

with 100% Confidence

We recently ran an A/B/C test on the Pricing page for Mad Mimi, a very cool email marketing platform you should check out…

The test was supposed to be a simple pricing table test. We created 2 treatments:

1. Variation 1 – Reorder the plans to lead with the most expensive and see if, in keeping with primacy effect, we increase clicks to sign-up for the more expensive plans: Silver and Pro.* Subordinate hyper-expensive Gold plan. Optimize button copy.
2. Variation 2 – Optimize button copy.

Here’s the creative:

Variation 1

Variation 2

Primary goal: Decrease clicks to sign up for the low-priced Basic plan while increasing clicks on the higher-priced plans.

Secondary goal: Increase clicks to sign-up overall.

We haven’t reached a conclusion on the goal of increasing sign-ups for the Silver and Pro plans; in fact the test is still running for those goals…

…But we did see an incredible lift in clicks to sign up for the Gold Plan…

On Variation 1, Mad Mimi saw a lift of 927% in clicks to sign up for Gold. With 100% confidence. Variation 2 killed it on the other goals – like engagement and choosing Basic – but Variation 1 was a clear, untouchable winner for the Gold plan.

Now scroll back up to the Variation 1 screenshot and look for the Gold plan. That’ll show you why I’m mentioning this test in this post… See where Gold is listed on Variation 1? See what’s missing from it? You guessed it: the price.

In the absence of knowing the price for Gold, visitors clicked to find out. All those extra clicks on Variation 1′s Gold links were “curiosity clicks”…

So, Should You Use Curiosity to ‘Compel’ People to Click?

In the case of Mad Mimi, curiosity clicks didn’t lead to an increase in sign-ups for Gold plans. (That the Gold plan starts at $1049/mo might have something to do with the drop-off, though.) If Mad Mimi had a strategy to better position the price of the Gold plan on the landing page for that link, this curiosity gap could be quite good for business…

The question isn’t really whether you should use curiosity gaps or not. They’re powerful when done right and on-strategy.

The question we might want to ask first is this: Is clicking the best success metric?

Before you answer that, here’s a story: Back when I was at Intuit, the marketing team decided to challenge the creative team to prove our chops against an agency. (Oh, the joys of being in-house creative.) We were to write and design the emails for a boxed software solution – I think it was Quicken – and the group that created the winning email would be, like, crowned Most Awesome or something. So we went about our business. And when the test closed, the agency reigned supreme.

Why?

Because the success metric for the test was click-thrus. And while we’d oh-so-foolishly put the Quicken sale price in our email, the agency hadn’t, thus nearly doubling “curiosity clicks” to the landing page (i.e., to discover the sale price). Our paid conversions were higher, but only marginally, so that win paled in comparison to The Great Click-Thru Shaming, as it came to be known… 

Long story short: there are better ways to use the curiosity gap than to manipulate peeps to click. And be careful of what your “click thru” success metric might be masking…

3 Tips for Using the Curiosity Gap in Your Copy and UX

TIP 1: Keep information gaps manageable.
Very large and very small information gaps are not ideal for piquing curiosity. But a manageable information gap – one where bridging the gap is just challenging enough – can be stimulating and fantastic for engagement… For sales pages and emails, you don’t want to give the answer away right away. You want to lure the reader in, line by line, before you bridge the gap.

TIP 2: Anticipate their guesses.
To truly pique your readers’ curiosity, be sure that you quash their belief that they know the answer to your ‘riddle’. They need to be suspended in a state of curiosity for a short period for the curiosity gap to have any real impact…

TIP 3: Don’t abuse it.

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The Seven Biggest Online Marketing Mistakes

Something's wrong. There's a widening chasm between buyers and sellers.

I've been traveling more than my fair share recently to supporting our latest book, "Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?" (due out next week). It shouldn't surprise you to learn that no matter whom I talk to, no matter the company, product, or service , whether it's business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B), online marketers are running into similar challenges. So it goes without saying they're making some of the same mistakes over and over.

Trying to Manufacture Word of Mouth and Viral Effect

To lift brand exposure, marketers are resorting to some of the goofiest and phoniest campaigns. Although typically entertaining and sometimes even viral, these campaigns fall short in one of two areas: they either lack relevance to the customer to move beyond entertainment or lack a significant association with the brand or product. So if you aren't selling more or at least endearing customers to your brand, what's the point?

Does this really help Gillette sell more razors? Certainly not any more than Chihuahuas help sell tacos.

The only profitable way to harvest word of mouth is to provide customers with a product or service experience that's worth talking about.

Anything short of that is a cheap gimmick.

Getting the Right Answers, Taking the Wrong Path

We see this more and more. Many marketers are learning what information customers need to gain purchasing resolve. They write the content, create pages (we call these pages points of resolution), but they fail to properly link to that content so customers can actually find it on their natural path through the Web site.

Planning better persuasion scenarios solves this. You just needed to stand over my shoulder watching me try to buy a new lightweight laptop this week to fully understand this. Try finding a 5 pound or lighter laptop with a high-quality video card.

Expecting Customers to Behave Like They Did Before the Internet

It's still unsettling how little some companies have changed their marketing outlook in spite of the new media landscape. They mistake using new media for taking a new marketing approach. They misunderstand the nature of new media vehicles and how customers behave differently because of them.

Prospects have more control than ever: more choices and more information. Yet companies still attempt to spoon-feed the public a flavorless, neutral, old-time ad campaign. Then they're confused when people ignore it or spit it out.

The new marketing world order is about relevance, not about traffic, reach, or message posturing. It's not just getting your message out there. It's about being real and saying something true and meaningful in the most compelling way possible. Laura Reis of "The Origin of Brands Blog" shows us a great example of how Weber grills hit the relevance target.

Lacking Relevant Messaging Across All Customers Segments

Many marketers still seek that silver bullet message, the one message that resonates with the entire audience.

Give up. There is no silver bullet message.

Although you can find a big message that will resonate with a large segment of your customers, you'll always leave a significant portion of prospects cold or indifferent. Some may be perfect customers for you but need to buy and be sold to differently.

One advantage of the new media landscape is customers take different angles as they approach a product category. You can saturate these angles with relevant information for each different type of buyer. Persuading these segments could mean the difference between meeting marketing goals and not.

Unless, of course, you can afford to leave significant customers segments on the table. If you can't, try creating personas.

Approaching Best Practices as a Religion

Beware of best practices. Typically, they're born out of successes gained under very specific circumstances. Many of those circumstances may not apply to you or your marketing situation.

The online channel is still way too young to have established best practices. It's like studying medicine for 10 years then declaring you know all the answers.

Mistaking Traffic for Results

As I've been writing quite a bit recently, companies are still able to buy traffic and, in essence, buy themselves top-line business, but this is quickly becoming too expensive to maintain.

Average conversion rates are going down, and online traffic costs are moving skywards. Businesses must learn how to do more with the traffic they have and find ways to attract even more qualified traffic. The only way to do that is to better understand that each visit and click are a person with real needs and real motivations. How well does your marketing speak to each person? What brand impact does the experience have on these typical customer groups? How concerned are you with persuading them to your product? Or would you rather just have their attention? Why not both?

Settling for Incremental Improvements

Of all the things that frustrate our firm, the biggest is how comfortable the online industry is becoming with tremendously low conversion rates. The most recent Shop.org State of Online Retailing reports that in 2005 the average conversion rate dropped again from 2.6 percent to 2.4 percent. If we were in direct mail marketing, we'd celebrate a 2 percent return, but the online channel is night to direct mail's day.

Online, customers are in control; they're task oriented, and with every search term they type or hyperlink they click, they reveal more about their intent. We can literally watch as they pull themselves through the buying process, yet we're losing conversions.

Something's wrong. There's a widening chasm between buyers and sellers. And in this age of superior technology and unprecedented interconnectivity, that's criminal.

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