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As the economic situation continues to get worse more and more people are influenced into thinking that they really do need to stop spending money and start hording it.

Of course, for marketers like us that's bad ... and just because we're selling sex and sex always sell doesn't really improve things for us. Of course sex always sells but the reality is that it sells less when people are scared to spend money.

So we need to really start focusing on the things we can do that will really encourage people to buy what we're selling. We need to find the triggers that get people into the buying mood ... and if we're running sites such as link lists and TGPs we need to discover the triggers that make people want to come back for more.

Ok ... so we need these triggers but what are they? Are there really things that we can do on our websites that will encourage people to buy even in these tough economic times?

Well ... yes there are and we'll look at two of them now. Don't be surprised if you find that these two are quite different to what you may have believed. We've never had to worry too much about these triggers before and we've often done the exact opposite to what I'm about to suggest

Choices
Let's start by looking at choices. A number of studies have shown over the years that people don't like too many choices even though they may think that they want to see everything you've got.

The fact is that when a person has to decide between too many choices they decide not to decide ... they're choice is not to make a choice.

One study placed six items on a table in a store and asked people to taste what was on display and buy one of those six items. According to the study 40 percent of people who walked by that display stopped and did the taste test and 30 percent of them actually made a purchase.

Then the people conducting the study replaced those six items with another display that included 24 items to taste and purchase. 60 percent of those passing the display stopped and did the taste test but only 3 percent made a purchase.

How does that affect us? Well if you're running a TGP or link list and you've got every conceivable sponsor's ad crammed in every spare pixel on your site then maybe try reducing the amount of advertising your displaying and see if your sales don't increase.

According to the study if you cut the number of choices you will see an increase in sales.

The power of faces
I've written about this before and it's worth talking about again. When people look at images the one part of the anatomy they always come back to is the face of the people in the image.

People are programmed to look at faces and there's even one part of the face that people look at more than all the others. People look at the eyes ... they want to see what's going on inside the head of the person in the photo.

Think about some of the porn action you've seen lately and you'll understand why the eyes are so important. Sure the girl or girls in the videos that you've seen might have been moaning and screaming as they got bonked but what's happening in their eyes?

Look at them and you'll see that quite a few of those girls aren't getting off on the fucking they're having ... they're not getting off on anything ... they are just doing it for the camera. Compare what's going on in the eyes of those girls to what you se, and the story your told, when you look into the eyes of a girl who is obviously getting blown away by the action.

The eyes don't lie and they can be a very powerful selling tool ... so let your surfers see faces. Concentrate on images that show faces looking into the camera and make sure that the eyes of the girl are telling the right story.

Sex will always attract people ... they just can't help but look at it. Sure, some of them may pretend to be horrified by what they're seeing but inside their skull their brain is telling them that they're really enjoying looking at sex.

So we've already got an advantage even in these tough times. Now all we have to do is work on those triggers that I mentioned so that the people we attract don't get away from us without spending some money first.