The entire point of attracting prospects is to turn them into paying clients. If you have a prospect, it's important that you start this process straight away. As a solopreneur, having clients is the way you make money, and therefore you should always be working on gaining the next client, even when your client roster is full.

Ideally, you want a waiting list of potential clients. That's why you continuously build a list of prospects, but don't wait until you need a new client to start converting your prospects.

Start from the moment they sign up for your mailing list. If you do, when a spot comes open, you'll have your choice of ideal clients from which to choose. You'll never be without the exact clients you want at the exact right time.

Psychology has a lot to teach us about marketing.

That only makes sense, as successful marketing of your products or services really boils down to a very simple, all-too-human act: the act of persuading a person to move from one state (not-a-client) to another (client).

That movement is called a "conversion" in online marketing. In any kind of marketing, it's called a sale! And psychology can help you increase yours.

Here are four psychological principles that play a big role in making the sale.

Principle #1: The Fear of Being Left Out

What It Is: People are afraid, to varying degrees, of being left out or of not fitting in where they perceive themselves as “belonging.”

What It Means: If you can persuade your prospects through your copy and design elements that they belong in your "tribe," or circle, they're more likely to convert to a subscriber or paid client/customer.

How to Use It: Look for ways to establish social proof in your online marketing. Facebook elements such as the number of likes (and especially the identity of those “likes” when your prospect is connected to them) are a powerful way to accomplish this.

Identifying your unique selling proposition (USP) is a proven and effective tool to help you promote (and increase sales for) your product, program or service. It's not just for large companies with marketing departments, but an important distinction for any independent business owner or service provider.

But what IS a USP? Simply put, it's an attempt to show how your business is unique. What makes it stand out from others who do what you do? For example, your product may use all-organic ingredients.

Look at any television commercial and you'll see how USPs distinguish one company from its competitors. An example of an effective USP worked into a slogan is M&Ms. The company touts that M&Ms, “Melt in your mouth, not in your hands."

The USP for an all-female-surgeon plastic surgery practice might be that they have keener insight into their patients. For a business coach who works with lawyers, the USP could be that the coach IS an attorney and ran a 7-figure law practice for 10 years.

Having a good checkout process can be the difference between making a sale and NOT. You've done all that work to get the customer to click the order button. So the last thing you want to do is have a checkout process that causes either confusion or mistrust.

The old adage that a confused mind never buys is still just as true today. If it's not clear what the next step is in the buying process, customers will leave.

They will also leave (or, in e-commerce lingo, "abandon cart") if the shopping cart has too many steps involved. Customers are not willing to jump through a lot of hoops to buy your product. You want to make everything as easy as possible.

Lastly, if potential customers don't feel that they can trust your site, they will leave without buying.

There's a general cycle to internet business, a series of phases. The first phase is generally to drive traffic, increase awareness and build your subscriber or opt-in list.

The second phase is to motivate subscribers to become customers, which is generally accomplished by offering entry-level products such as low-cost reports and ebooks.

However, once you have customers, how do you continue to increase sales and motivate purchases? What's the next step?

Motivating customers into action involves a few different strategies working cohesively together. Here are five ways to move potential clients to become actual clients.

Build and nurture a relationship with your email list. Spend your time building relationships (and selling to) your target market. To find your target market, you will want to use outlets like the social media websites and message board forums that relate to your business site's topic. Then you need an opt-in email address sign up list, so they can regularly receive information on your business through newsletters, etc., via their inbox. People will sign up for this list ONLY if you offer a valuable free gift for signing up.

The number of sales you receive divided by the number of people seeing the sales message. That's the simple definition of "conversion rate." So improving your conversion can lead to substantially higher sales.

Getting high conversion rates is often an incremental process. You start with a sales page -- or webinar or other form of sales presentation -- that converts at just 0.2%; then through incremental adjustments, experimentation and testing you gradually inch that up to 1%, 2%, 5% even 10%.

Here are a few strategies you can use to increase your conversion rate.

Experiment with Multimedia

There are a few forms of multimedia that have a very good shot of increasing your conversion.

First is the sales video. In general, having a video play automatically when they land on your page will increase conversions, provided the video is a good one.

Determining the appropriate price for the products and services you provide in your business is part art and part science. There is no one formula that works for all businesses or all markets. It is just impossible to know how your market will respond ahead of time. Even the biggest companies run experiments when they set prices.

That being said, here are some considerations that will help you set your rates.

Terms

Let's start with a common understanding of terms:

• The COST of your product (or service) is the dollar amount it takes to produce it.
• The PRICE is the dollar amount that you charge for it.
• The VALUE is the dollar amount your target market believes the product is worth to them.