Issue #2430
- WEALTHY: How to get 5 extra days to accomplish your goals (Suzanne Richardson)
- HEALTHY: The health benefits of one sweet bean (Kelley Herring)
- WISE: Margery Allingham on commanding attention
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- The primary task of any ad (Howie Jacobson)
- An entertaining and useful new book for speakers and writers (Don Hauptman)
- It’s Fun to Know… about the 8 new natural wonders of the world
- Add “stasis” to your vocabulary
“More valuable than my four-year college degree in marketing… covered more aspects of the reality we’re facing today.”
This is what Bobbi Snider of Denver, CO had to say about the Five Days in July event – where over 90 aspiring entrepreneurs – ranging in age from 16 to 76 – discovered how to use the “ETR / Agora Model” to create their own Internet money-making businesses…
“The biggest takeaway on the marketing side was how to building your list and aggressively be out there every day working to improve your product, your skills, and get your name known.
“The content covered has been more valuable than my four-year college degree in marketing. It’s definitely covered more aspects of the reality we’re facing today.
“The simplicity of using XSitePro for your website has been really valuable. I bet that in a couple of years I’ll be living in a little cabin in the mountains because this will have changed my life forever and given me the independence to live my dreams.”
– Bobbi Snider, Denver, CO
Now’s Your Chance to Get Ahead
You’ve heard Michael Masterson’s advice to cut TV watching out of your schedule. But most Americans just aren’t listening. According to a Nielsen Company survey, the average American watches a staggering 127 hours and 15 minutes of TV each month. That’s over five full days of couch-potato-dom.
And that gives you a big advantage…
Everyone has the exact same 24 hours in a day to accomplish their business and professional goals. So by limiting the amount of TV you watch, you can reach your own goals that much faster.
Imagine how much you could accomplish with the equivalent of five extra days a month – a full work week – to hone your business skills, attract new customers, create new products, and make your dreams come true.
What’s keeping you from getting started? Flip off the TV and get going.
[Ed. Note: Sometimes the only thing standing between you and success is that little extra push to get you going. You can get that push - plus 365 days of motivation, goal-setting techniques, and success tools - right here.]
Click to comment on this article.
”If one cannot command attention by one’s admirable qualities one can at least be a nuisance.”
Margery Allingham
Red for Attention
Every night when I go to bed, I write a to-do list for the following day. I put little things (”Iron and fold the underwear”) and big things (”Save the world”) on the list. I include errands (”Buy more of that cat food I’m almost out of”) and decisions (”Pay Visa bill or move to Siberia”). And the first item on the list is always the same: “Read the list.”
You get where I’m going, right? It turns out the most important thing about the list isn’t what’s on it, but that it gets read in the first place.
That’s true of this e-mail as well.
You, wise reader, are reading this e-mail. (Relax. I’m not psychic. It’s just a parlor trick.) But some other Early to Rise subscribers are not.
Why? Maybe the subject line didn’t appeal to them. Perhaps they haven’t emptied their inbox since 1997 and can’t bear to log in and see over a decade of junk. Maybe they chose to open the boss’s e-mail instead of this one. Whatever.
I could be writing the one secret that will change their life utterly and completely, and it doesn’t matter. Because they aren’t going to read this. Because I couldn’t get their attention.
The primary currency of marketing is attention. No eyes or ears, no sales. And attention is harder and harder to get these days. More stimuli, less time. More hype, less trust. More attention deficit disorder (ADD), less focus.
Speaking of ADD (I used to be a school teacher, so I’ve seen quite a bit of diagnosed attention deficits in my day), we’re all ADD online. The medium demands it.
How many windows are open on your desktop right now? How long are you willing to wait for a Web page to load?
Can you imagine calling a movie theater box office to find out the showtimes when you can just type “Movies” and your zip code into Google and get the complete listings for every local cinema, including reviews and trailers and online ticket sales, within three seconds? (I used to veg out so completely during those recordings that I’d have to listen to the message repeat three or four times to catch the showtimes for the movie I was interested in. Now I get to daydream all I want, and when I come back to earth, the Web page with the info I want is still waiting for me.)
The primary task of your ad is to compel attention. As the 11th-century Talmudic scholar Rashi might have said were he alive today, “No lookie, no clickie.”
Just as stop signs, online error messages, and immediate-attention triage tags are red, your ad must wave a red flag in front of your prospect that says, “Stop for a second and consider this.”
How do you get their attention? My marketing mentor Ken McCarthy has a handy three-word response that he strives for with his ads: “That’s for me!”
How can you get your prospects to glance at your ad and immediately think, “That’s for me”? By naming them, talking about things that matter to them, and making them hungry for more.
One of the best ways to get your prospect to sit up and take notice is with your headline. Here are three specific headline strategies for grabbing attention:
Attention-Grabbing Strategy #1: Name them.
- Considering a Unicycle?
- Mind Maps for Teachers
- Actor’s Disability Insurance
Attention-Grabbing Strategy #2: Mirror their itch.
- Suffering From Gout?
- Rotten-Egg Water Odors?
- Disorganized?
Attention-Grabbing Strategy #3: Arouse their curiosity.
- Are You Right-Brained?
- Are You a Slacker Mom?
- Copywriting Secret #19
Pique your prospect’s interest, and you have a higher chance of getting him to read what you have to say. And that’s the key to turning him into a full-fledged paying customer.
[Ed. Note: Get four more attention-grabbing headline strategies - and so much more! - in AdWords for Dummies by AdWords guru and best-selling author Howie Jacobson himself. Pick up your copy for less than 17 bucks right here.
Now that you've learned how to pique your prospects' interest, you need to keep their attention. Become a master of persuasion in your own right by learning dozens of selling secrets from a man who was directly responsible for over $2 BILLION in sales.]
Click to comment on this article.
The Truly Wealthy “Fish” in a Different “Lake”
These days, it seems everyone is out to make a quick buck. But they are all fishing in the same pond, so to speak. The real money is in a nearby lake… actually, more like an ocean of profits that almost no one knows about.
Take a walk with me and let me show how you can follow a few simple steps and lure more profits to you on a consistent basis than anything I’ve ever seen.
You’ve heard the old saying, “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day… Teach him how to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” Well, friend, this is that lifetime of profits available to you. Up to you how long you want to “fish” there. Personally, I’ll be there a long while… If you want to join me, click here… and learn how fast you can start making money.
Cocoa: Packed With Cancer Fighters
Are you a chocolate lover? Good news! Cornell food scientists recently found that cocoa is teeming with antioxidants that help prevent cancer.
In fact, according to their recent research published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, cocoa has nearly twice the antioxidants of red wine and up to three times the amount found in green tea.
But there is a caveat. You’ll do more harm than good if you start chowing down on sugar-laden chocolate. You’re best bet to benefit from the bean is to use organic, unsweetened, non-alkalized cocoa.
Stir it into coffee, whirl it into berry smoothies, or try delicious chocolate desserts made with the all-natural “Super Sweetener of the Future”: erythritol.
[Ed. Note: Now you can satisfy your sweet tooth with a slice (or two!) of the most luxuriously rich, irresistibly delicious, dark chocolate cake... without a care in the world as to how it might affect your health... or your waistline. Learn more here.
And for more on the latest breakthroughs in health and nutrition, sign up for ETR's free natural health newsletter.]
The Language Perfectionist: Quotable Metaphors
By Don Hauptman
An incisive quotation can often make your writing or speaking more effective.
But be sure that the one you choose is appropriate to your context and that your audience isn’t likely to have read or heard it before. In addition, a quotation should never just be dropped into your text. Explain its relevance to your theme. Or cite a real-life example or story that illustrates its point.
Many fine quotation resources exist. One that I recommend was just published. Mardy Grothe’s cleverly titled I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like is a collection of quotations, many unfamiliar, on numerous topics ranging from politics to sports to relationships and beyond. All employ metaphors, similes, and analogies. That makes the book a pleasure for lovers of language, too.
Here are a few quotable samples from the book:
- “Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.”
- Ray Bradbury
- “Absence lessens the minor passions and increases the great ones, as the wind douses a candle and kindles a fire.” - Francois de La Rochefoucauld
- “The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn.” - Thomas Babington Macaulay
- “Reading is a means of thinking with another person’s mind; it forces you to stretch your own.” - Charles Scribner Jr.
Equally valuable are the author’s comments, pointing out the significance of key quotations and linking them with others that share their themes.
With almost 2,000 entries at your fingertips, you’re bound to find dozens of provocative and inspiring thoughts you’ll want to cite – or post on your refrigerator, mirror, or office wall. This remarkable anthology contains so many gems that you may find yourself exclaiming, as I often did, “How did he find that one?”
Here’s an appropriate metaphorical quotation with which to conclude, lest this review become too long:
“A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.” - Samuel Johnson
[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book forthcoming from AWAI, that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into speaking, consulting, training, and critiquing.]
Click to comment on this article.
It’s Fun to Know: The 8 New Natural Wonders of the World
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has added eight new entries to its World Heritage List, which denotes cultural and natural sites that are deemed of value to humanity. The new entries join 878 sites in 145 countries.
1. Joggins Fossil Cliffs (Canada) – site of a plethora of fossilized animal and plant remains
2. Mount Sanqingshan National Park (China) – home of unusual granite formations
3. Lagoons of New Caledonia (France) – a system of reefs with tremendous coral and animal diversity
4. Surtsey (Iceland) – an island created by volcanic eruption in the 1960s
5. Saryarka (Kazakhstan) – a vast grassland that’s home to several endangered species
6. Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve (Mexico) – the winter home of this migrating insect
7. Swiss Tectonic Arena Sardona (Switzerland) – valued by scientists for its geologic features
8. Socotra Archipelago (Yemen) – known as the Galapagos Islands of the Indian Ocean for its plant and animal diversity
(Source: LiveScience)
Click to comment on this article.
There’s a New Gold Rush… and This Time It’s Sweeping the Internet – Those Who Know Where to “Pan” Are Getting Rich
It seems like everyone is dipping their hands in the Internet money-making river, and finding a few “gold nuggets” here and there… But a few people are extracting wagon loads of money from one secret spot.
And, as much as those “lucky few” are frantically scooping up their share, this secret spot keeps growing by leaps and bounds every year, and there’s no way they can keep up. Truth be told, there’s too much “gold” here to take home in several lifetimes – even if thousands of people find this spot. This could very well be the mother lode of online business profits.
Think I’m making this up? Try this number: $170 BILLION. That’s how much was ready to be scooped up last year. This year, the pot will only get bigger. Much bigger.
Word to the Wise: Stasis
“Stasis” (STAY-sis) – from the Greek for “standing still” – is a state of balance, equilibrium, or stagnation.
Example (as used by Jerry L. Mashaw in Greed, Chaos, and Governance): “The reality of governance was not stasis but change; institutions did not operate according to mechanical laws, they evolved organically.”
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008
Similar Articles:
- Red for Attention – Every night when I go to bed, I write a to-do list for the following day. I put little things (”Iron…
- Dear ETR: “I continue to have a problem finding a reputable e-mail list provider.” – "I continue to have a problem finding a reputable e-mail list provider. I read the ETR article …
- How to Pack Your Next Hour (With Progress) – Hey, I’m just like you. I get easily distracted. In fact, maybe more so than the average procr…
- A "Real Simple" Way to Get Your Customers’ Attention – If you have an online business, a highly effective (and free) way to attract your customers’ attenti…
- How to Get Your Offers to Celebrities – When I was getting ready to promote the 2008 International Sketch Comedy Competition, I needed a cel…
- Dear ETR: "No rented list can pass the permission test." – "I believe ETR’s response to the question about e-mail list brokers was misguided. Yes, on…
- A New Tool for Aspiring Online Marketers – Now, there’s a very easy way to get your online newsletter started. Yahoo has a component called “gr…