If I was a fortune-teller and you just walked in my door I would tell you this:

"I see you still seek the dream of earning money in your sleep. Enough to give you the time and freedom to do what you want, when you want and without the restriction of having to choose second-best."

Don't worry, I can't read your mind. I can, however, manipulate how it controls you without you knowing it.

"No way" you say?

The fact that you're reading this line of text proves I just manipulated your behavior by provoking your subconscious. I pushed your emotional buttons and sucked you in to reading more. How many of your subconscious actions are controlled by someone else? Who knows, it depends on who you are. But we can all agree that this human ability to manipulate the behavior of others is the keystone of today's marketing.

You are being manipulated every waking minute of your day.

The advent of the Internet has connected us globally. Add to this, the hundreds of thousands of merchants who've adopted affiliate programs as a way of consigning an army of salespeople to actively headhunt new customers in exchange for commission earnings. So where does it end up? Right here: An all time record number of humans manipulating other humans. No wonder it's getting harder to sell stuff. From the second you wake up you're bombarded with attempts to sell you stuff.

People will do anything for money and so they do anything to get your attention. Taking of their clothes on national TV, proclaiming outrageous benefits, and acting out 'close to illegal' attention seeking publicity stunts are not uncommon tactics.

The inherent problem here is that it's no longer a matter of whether there are enough customers in the market. It is whether you can capture and keep a customer's attention for a few minutes of their 24-hour day. This is why the plethora of marketers opt to use hypnotic and manipulative communication to win your attention.

What if you could bypass all this manipulation?

Imagine if you could shut the door on the screaming, banner-waving crowd of competitive marketers. Sit your customer down in your office and present your product with their complete attention?

A new league of customer acquisition techniques that bypass the constant manipulation is rising from the chaos of today's marketing. One of which I am personally fond of is 'Customer Reciprocation'.

Customer Reciprocation takes a holistic view of Internet marketing, applying traditional win-win formulas to the modern way of doing commerce. If you remove all the hype of today, what you're left with is age-old commerce propositions. "Do you need something to solve your problem? Then buy this product", and "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine".

Customer Reciprocation bypasses the hype because each customer who purchases from the other only purchase the products that they had already intended to purchase. A fair and honest way to acquire customers for both affiliate marketers and merchants. General online shopping portals manipulate customers to shop at a limited list of merchants by offering discounts, rewards or other incentives. Customer Reciprocation delivers to you as a customer the freedom to shop anywhere online while still receiving a discount. The discount is in the form of a customer to you or your affiliated merchant generating you income.

Deep down we all like to sell stuff the honest way, and none of us like to be manipulated. So it is easy to see why Customer Reciprocation is growing in popularity. It may be a slow-and-steady customer acquisition strategy but it's one that is guaranteed to reap results for its users.

Copyright 2005 Michael Lever