Today was Black Friday. For those of you outside the USA, this is the day after Thanksgiving, when stores offer huge discounts, usually on a limited number of items. They'll offer deals on the first 25 of one thing or the first 250 of another - things like that. People camp out overnight to be first in line at some of these stores.

Over the last few years, a lot of web-based retailers have got into the game as well. Websites like Amazon.com and even Apple.com offer discounts on various products they sell.

If you're selling your own products on the internet, I hope you took advantage of it as well.

There are plenty of ways you could do that. Pair up two of your products that are related and offer them at a discount. Partner up with someone else in the same market who has a complementary product and do a joint venture, offering a special deal to both of your lists.

You can even take a product that hasn't been selling very well and offer a special one-day discount.

I did this with several ebooks I sell. I don't promote them at all and they only sell once in a while. More by chance than by design.

I dropped their prices and emailed the lists, some of whom haven't seen an email from me in months.

And you know what? I made quite a few sales today.

I didn't really lose anything. Those people have been on my lists for months in many cases and never bought the products before, so it's not like I was losing out on money by discounting them. But now I know these people are buyers and can start making backend offers.

Don't miss out on these kind of opportunities to promote your products.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Boxing Day (for my Canadian friends) - they're all known as shopping & discount days.

But what about "The 12 Days Before Christmas Sale" or maybe the "Greenish-Blue Wednesday Discount"?

Who says you can't make up a reason to send an offer to your list?

Don't write off the "bricks & mortar" world just yet. They've been selling to consumers for a long time, and they've got some pretty good ideas. After all, they created the day known as "Black Friday".

Watch what they do and see what you can duplicate in your online business. You might not have read about these tricks in the latest Internet Marketing Guru Manual, but they work and with a little creativity, you'll be able to do things in your online marketing that 90% of your competition wouldn't even think of.