Remember that the miracle of cloning sheep has its drawbacks. The main one--dying young.

Don't let your business die young by following the herd. Instead, think of the natural ways you like to market.

Here are some marketing ideas that make big promises, and don't always deliver. And, when followed by investing a large amount of money and time, only a few who follow these expensive programs will get the results they hope for.

One. Make your book a #1 best seller on Amazon. This idea teaches authors that if they offer $1000's of bonus books, reports and the like, and tell all their email lists to buy the book on a particular day at Amazon, they will make extreme sales.

In many sales letters that give away $1000's more than the price of their book, it looks a little suspicious or gimmicky. "Killer copy" and other web sizzle language doesn't bring confidence to most business people. The programs sold are over $2500. An old saying came from Robert Allen something like: "You make much more money teaching people how to make money than they ever will implementing the skills."

Two. Optimize your web site standings in the search engines with ads placed in Google.com and through pay-per-click advertising.

For the pay-per-click program, after putting a lot of time into writing ad copy, paying an upfront consultant fee, and paying monthly costs of the key words, I'd say the results for my top four business books were near 0.

Yes, I heard of one author that didn't invest more than $400 a month to reap $4000 book sales, but her book was highly specialized. When another web master I know followed this tact, she invested thousands a month to yield 50% sales in the beginning months.. For $2500 investment for the first month, she made $1250. Once the competition caught on, her sales dropped way below 50% and no longer gave her a desired income.

Three. You pay around $1000 to get you book into a Print on Demand format and be listed on the POD web site. Sounds good? Maybe not. These printers do not promote your book, just as publishers don't. They take a big cut from your sales, and your book may be priced too high to make good sales. Most authors make no or little money from this adventure. With just a little education and professional bookcoaching, you can learn a much better way-far less expensive and still get your POD book out there.

Natural Marketing-Three Ideas

One. Like myself, if you are an author or small business, it will be easy and natural for you to write short articles and tips for top web sites and article directories in your field.This one action has kept me at #1 in Google for the phrase "bookcoaching." for five years and has placed my writings on over 129,000 sites, the number increasing 1000 each month. That means 3500 targeted visitors a day at my site. That means great sales.

Two. If you don't like to write much, maybe you'll like BLOGs. They bring similar results as the articles and your own ezine do. It's a mini web site, and an interactive process your visitors will like it because they see you more casually and personally. When I wrote a blog, it was question and answer format, also letting my humor and opinions out to show I'm human. You can also put your how to articles on your blog with a link towhere you sell your products or service.

Three. If you like to share yourself and your solutions with others publically, you may enjoy presenting to groups and have your product available at the back of the room. A similar venue would be joining a networking group. Bring your business card that features either your blog site URL or your ezine subscription information. When you collect these email addresses, you grow your lists of targeted potential buyers. .

Cloning isn't always healthy or profitable. Stay true to your own style of sharing yourself, your business, or book.

Judy Cullins 2006 All Rights Reserved.