To promote herself and her business, JL wants to write a book.
But she isn’t quite sure how to get her book into print.
“It feels like getting a book published is challenging,” she writes. “Would it not be easier to self-publish?”
Others have asked me the same question over the years. “What’s better?” an interviewer asked me just the other day. “Self-publishing or traditional publishing?”
It’s the wrong question. (more…)
An inherent (in-HERE-unt) quality, attribute, or characteristic is one that is permanent — inseparably attached or connected. The word is derived from the Latin for “to stick.”
Example (as used by Bob Bly today): “Self-publishing is not inherently better than traditional publishing. Nor is the reverse true.”
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David Carradine. Ed McMahon. Farrah Fawcett. Michael Jackson. Billy Mays. Karl Malden. Steve McNair. The Grim Reaper is on a roll.
What might the deaths of these high-profile people have in common with the likes of Gary Hart, Gary Condit, Jim McGreevey, Mark Sanford, and John Edwards, among others?
Or how about Lyndon Johnson, Spiro Agnew, and Richard Nixon?
Or G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, Mark Fuhrman, Wayne (Dog) Chapman, and Don King?
Answer: Things change!
We do not live in a static universe. Nor do people or situations remain at a standstill on our little speck of cosmic dust. Mountains erode. Riverbeds dry up. Technology moves forward. The economy fluctuates. Even laws change.
Who could have predicted that the celebrities I listed in the first paragraph of this article would all be gone within a one-month period? (more…)
Limelight was an early type of lighting used to illuminate a stage. The light was created by using a flame to heat a cylinder of lime to incandescence, and then intensifying the light with a lens. These days, we use the word metaphorically to mean the center of attention.
Example (as used by Robert Ringer today): “Where would Oliver North and Mark Fuhrman be today had they not been thrust into the limelight through accidents of history?”
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The other day I saw an ad one of my clients had posted on the Internet.
The copy was weak. It lacked an “Aha!” idea. It was balanced on two rather than four legs. Its lead was wrongheaded, it had insufficient substantiation, and no social proof.
I mentioned this to my client’s marketing exec.
“I agree. It’s not very strong,” she said. “But it has been doing very well.”
“That’s interesting,” I replied. “Can I see the test results?”
“We didn’t test it,” she said. “But the numbers are better than those we usually get for this advertising slot.” (more…)
A whippersnapper (WIP-er-snap-per) — a colloquialism that can be traced back to 17th century England — is someone who is young, impertinent, and presumptuous, with an excess of ambition.
Example (as used by Michael Masterson today): “Those young whippersnappers don’t know the fundamentals. And what they don’t know, they can’t teach.”
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We want your feedback! Let us know your thoughts on today’s issue. Email us at: AskETR@ETRFeedback.com
What do you do if your prospect knows nothing about you, as is often the case? How can you sway or “nudge” their thinking about your business, products, or services?
You do it by including plenty of testimonials in your marketing materials.
Testimonials overcome a prospect’s skepticism (”Who the heck are you? And why should I listen to you anyway?”) by helping them connect emotionally to other people who’ve used and liked your products. Reading those true-life stories makes prospects more receptive to what you have to say. And sell. (more…)
In this column, I routinely use words that describe aspects of language. But these terms are often misunderstood and confused. Here’s a brief guide, followed by a few tips to improve your writing. (more…)
According to Dr. Jon D. Miller, Director of the Center for Biomedical Communications, the number of scientifically literate adults in the U.S. has doubled over the past 20 years.
The bad news? That only gets us up to 20 percent.
Only 48 percent of Americans know that humans didn’t live at the same time as dinosaurs. Less than half know that electrons are smaller than atoms. And few know what DNA is or can define a molecule.
We live in a world highly dependent on the fruits of science. Yet most of us have little scientific knowledge.
Does this matter? (more…)
Mistakes can be a good thing. They teach us what to avoid. The trick, though, is to learn by observing others make them.
With that goal in mind, here’s another roundup of misspellings, misunderstandings, and other misuses — all found via Internet search, but equally frequent in print:
“I just find it as ridiculous as any other hair-brained conspiracy theory.”
Whether hair-brained or hairbrained, it’s wrong. The correct word is harebrained — that is, the brain of a rabbit. It’s true that hare was once spelled hair, but that was 400 years ago. Don’t be harebrained; spell it correctly! (more…)
Something that’s counterintuitive (kown-ter-in-TOO-ih-tiv) is contrary to what intuition or common sense would lead you to believe.
Example (as used by Alex Green today): “Few scientific truths are self-evident. Many are counterintuitive. It is by no means obvious, for example, that empty space has structure or that everything is made of the same basic elements.”
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We want your feedback! Let us know your thoughts on today’s issue. Email us at: AskETR@ETRFeedback.com
If you’re an Internet marketer and you’re not taking advantage of autoresponders to accelerate your profits, listen up. (And if you are, listen up anyway. Because I have a few tricks up my sleeve for you.)
Fact is, a well-written follow-up e-mail series delivered to your prospects via autoresponder can make a huge difference …
It can bring boatloads of potential buyers back to your sales pages faster and easier than just about anything else.
I’ve seen conversion rates double … triple … even quadruple for some (more…)
An autoresponder is a program that automatically generates a reply to incoming e-mails. Some people use autoresponders to deliver “out of office” messages when they are away from their computers for any length of time. Internet marketers use them to follow up with customers who’ve made a purchase online and prospects who have signed up to receive information from them.
Example (as used by Jay White today): “If you’re an Internet marketer and you’re not taking advantage of autoresponders to accelerate your profits, listen up. (And if you are, listen up anyway. Because I have a few tricks up my sleeve for you.)
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We want your feedback! Let us know your thoughts on today’s issue. Email us at: AskETR@ETRFeedback.com
I was down at our new “getaway” digs over Labor Day. It’s a great place. Just outside of Atlanta and two hours from our North Carolina home.
We bought it a few months ago so we could spend more time with my two older kids and three grandkids. They live in Atlanta, less than an hour away.
My plan for the weekend was that we’d all be tear-assing around the lake on our Sea-Doos. Maybe we’d do a little early-morning fishing. In the evening, we’d grill our catch out on the deck, along with an assortment of steaks, burgers, and weenies.
You know. Typical, normal family stuff.
Instead, I found myself sitting there alone. And I was feeling more than a little alarmed — having come to the realization that I am the patriarch of a family of nerds.
My son-in-law and both sons were spending Friday night in Atlanta, preparing to attend Dragon*Con on Saturday.
Never heard of Dragon*Con? I hadn’t either. Until my just-turned-15-year-old son said he wanted tickets for his birthday.
Dragon*Con is where thousands of nerds dress up like fantasy, horror, superhero, and sci-fi characters — and then geek out over each other.
It was enough to make me want to throw on my leathers, fire up the Harley, cruise over to the nearest biker bar, and drown my sorrows in a gallon or three of Absolut.
Don’t feel sorry for me. I actually enjoyed the solitude. Gave me time to think.
What I was thinking about was the impact our fantasies and beliefs have on us.
I saw a documentary on a related subject the other night. Fascinating stuff. It made the point that we are complicit in every lie we’re ever told. Our desire to believe makes deceiving us easy.
Guess that’s why they’ve sold billions of pills that supposedly make your thingy bigger. Or grow hair on your bald spot. Or burn off that spare tire without exercise.
It must also be why Bernie Madoff was able to fleece so many sophisticated investors for so many years.
This simple fact of human nature is so powerful, it is dangerous. As a marketer, simply knowing it gives you the ability to become a superhero or a supervillain.
Superpowers, as any Dragon*Con attendee can tell you, can be used either for evil or good. Please use this one only for good — to promote products that truly benefit your prospective customers.
And the way to do that is to get inside their heads.
Know Thy Prospect
Libraries of books have been written on the importance of knowing your prospect. Most extol the virtues of understanding demographic facts about them.
They drone on about knowing the sex, age, income level, educational level, etc. of the people you’re asking to buy your product.
And they go further, lecturing on the need to ferret out their hobbies, interests, and buying preferences.
However, few suggest that anchoring your sales message to a commonly held belief can have an explosive impact on your response rate and sales.
Case in point:
In the 1970s, a new industry appeared to provide objective news, analysis, and advice to investors. There was a crying need for it. Until then, this information had been parsed out by Wall Street brokers. And because they sold the investments they were talking about, they had a massive conflict of interest.
In the 1990s, another industry emerged. This time to provide news and advice to people who were interested in alternatives to toxic drugs and life-threatening surgery.
Again, there was a crying need. Until then, health information was largely dispensed by drug companies and mainstream experts who were paid fortunes in kickbacks by the drug companies. Every one of them had a vested interest in convincing consumers to blindly follow their doctors’ orders.
The prospects for both of these huge new industries had one, clear belief in common: You CANNOT trust the establishment. Not with your money and certainly not with your life.
Not surprisingly, copywriters for the investment and health industries who began by looking at mere demographic facts about their prospects produced lukewarm results at best.
But every copywriter who used his headline and lead to connect to the anti-establishment belief his prospects shared hit it out of the park.
Like me, for instance. The “Forbidden Cures” promo I wrote to harness my prospects’ distrust of and disgust with the medical establishment mailed in the tens of millions. And I was paid a king’s ransom in royalties.
Time to put on the old thinking cap…
What fantasies are your prospects engaged in right now? What commonly held beliefs do they swear by?
How can you connect with those beliefs in a way that will produce maximum attention-getting power, readership, and response in your next marketing effort?
Food for thought…
P.S. Ready for a marketing and copywriting master class? At Early to Rise’s Info-Marketing Bootcamp in November, I will be making one of my few public appearances. I’ll tell you everything I’ve learned during my decades in the business — at least, as much as I can in three days. And I’ll be joined on stage by a dozen of the most cutting-edge Internet marketing experts working today. Find out more about Bootcamp here.
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We’re betting on your success at our Information Marketing Bootcamp this November. In fact, we’ll “see you and we’ll raise you!”
You see, we’ve put the 12 gurus we’ve invited “on the spot.”
If you don’t learn from them how you could make at least your first $10,000 with your online business by May 2010 … we’re going to give you back your entrance fee. AND we’ll give you another $1,000 for your trouble.
Check out all the details on your “sure thing” here.
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If I gave any credibility to what I read in the newspapers or see on talk shows, I’d believe that we are coming out of the Great Recession.
Every day, I hear news about how things are improving. Yet when I look around at the businesses I know, I can count on the fingers of one hand those that are not in trouble.
I am friendly with the owners of half a dozen restaurants in Delray Beach. They tell me sales are down between 30 percent and 70 percent. My brother-in-law is in the retail jewelry business. “It’s a complete disaster,” he says. “Most of the industry will be bankrupt by March,” he predicts.
My friend Mike wholesales furniture. His outlets are down 30 percent to 50 percent. At Joe’s cigar bar, we have plumbers and doctors and brokers — to name just a few trades. They are all crying the blues.
Is it me? Am I hanging out with the wrong people? Am I myopic?
All these hurting businesses mean rising bankruptcies and rising unemployment. And rising unemployment means more bankruptcies.
Yes, the bankers and brokers who have been “bailed out” are doing fine — or so they say. Their numbers are up because they are taking in all these freshly printed dollars. But that doesn’t mean their businesses are getting better. When the Obama administration finally turns off the spigot, we’ll see which of them will be standing. My guess is not many.
I’d like to hear from you. How are your friends and neighbors doing? How are you faring yourself? Let me know at AskMichael@ETRFeedback.com
David Cross copied me on an essay in The New York Times that I had missed.
It was by a woman who had spent 30 years in publishing. She explained how technology has changed the business.
In the beginning, she said, it was “primitive chaos,” with typewritten manuscripts, ringing phones, carbon paper, fountain pens, mimeograph machines, and the smell of cigarette smoke.
Then came electric typewriters, Filofaxes, and copy machines. The antique Royals and carbon paper were trashed.
Then voice mail replaced operators, word processors replaced Wite-Out, and e-mail replaced secretaries.
She ended by asking, “Is the screen the new paper? Will publishing houses go the way of old record stores? Is digital-delivery the new bookstore? Is Google the new library?”
“I can’t answer these questions,” she says. “I am no longer in book publishing”
But in the italics that follow her essay, we learn this about her: Jan Evans, a former book publisher, is now co-founder and CEO of wowOwow.com, a website for women.
If you are in print publishing now, you don’t have long to make the switch. Tomorrow is already here…
Women, and even men nowadays, spend a small fortune on creams and lotions to keep their skin youthful looking.
But there’s something you need to know, says Total Health Breakthroughs Editor Melanie Segala. And you won’t hear it from the billion-dollar skin care industry. Taking care of your skin from the inside with a healthy diet is far more important than using the most expensive anti-aging products.
Vitamin C, for example, helps build collagen, says Melanie. That’s the connective protein that makes up 75 percent of skin. And as you age, you lose collagen. That’s one way you get wrinkles. But you can help replenish lost collagen by eating vitamin C-rich foods. Strawberries, red peppers, citrus fruits, and tomatoes are just a few.
At the same time, you’ll be getting much needed antioxidants that prevent chronic disease. No high-priced skin cream can do all that.
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“I’ve been reading your newsletter for a good while now. Not all of it applies to me, but I read it all nonetheless.
“I’ve always been confident in my capabilities and those of my fabulous husband of 7 years…. 18 months ago, we left an uber-cushy expat job in Asia to partner in some new ventures in order to provide a legacy for our three kids, then all under 3.
“It’s tough going — the recession certainly didn’t help — but we’re not going to give up.
“Your nuggets of information and inspiration always seem to say just what we need to hear, to suggest a different way of considering things, of riding out the storm.
“So, thank you.”
Nadine
Adelaide, Australia
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E-Mail Trash or Treasure – Bob Bly wrote an e-mail in five minutes. It generated a $7,449 profit in a single week. Here’s what he said…
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Old-time copywriters like yours truly enjoy a walk down Memory Lane now and then. We do it for fun, but it can be profitable too.
I’m talking about rereading the best-known direct-marketing ads of the past. Copy written by such luminaries as Gene Schwartz, Claude Hopkins, and John E. Kennedy.
It’s fun to read through these old ads. Looking at them now — with their dated language and primitive graphics — you might think they could never work in today’s hypercompetitive market. (more…)
A gastronome (GAS-truh-nome) is a gourmet — a connoisseur of fine food and drink. The word is derived from the Greek for “stomach.”
Example (as used by Michael Masterson today): “If you are selling inexpensive domestic caviar, you could create a story about how a group of gastronomes ridiculed your product until they tasted it.”
“So far, my website is pretty much identical to the Early to Rise site,” PG told me.
PG is one of my coaching students. I had just asked him to tell me about the progress he was making.
He had a sign-up box on the top right-hand corner of every page of his website. It offered a free newsletter in exchange for a site visitor’s first name and e-mail address. He had a lot of quality content. And the site navigation was clean and easy to follow. He even had a search box and “refer a friend” option.
Was I upset by the striking similarity between his website and ours? Absolutely not. I was happy to see that he had copied so much. In fact, as his coach, that’s what I told him to do.
You see, it wasn’t our “intellectual property” that he was using. It was the structure of the website and the business model.
About a year and a half ago, a family friend started a business selling women’s active wear. She had no website — and no plans to create one.
She sold her goods by driving door to door, visiting every gym she could find. She was doing okay. But the time and effort — not to mention gas — she was putting into it was crazy.
Her products were great, and the people who purchased them were always happy to buy from her again. But her only follow-up with them was by phone. She worked out of her tiny two-bedroom house. And because she couldn’t afford to have someone else handle order fulfillment, there were so many boxes piled up that you could hardly walk through the house without tripping over one.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing a website’s visibility — and, thus, the amount of “organic” (free) traffic it gets — by making it search engine friendly. SEO techniques include choosing targeted keywords, arranging for inbound links from other relevant websites, and making sure the site’s content contains plenty of useful information.
Example (as used by Edwin Huertas today): “Because she had limited funds, the main business-building strategy I recommended was to drive free traffic to her site using search engine optimization (SEO).”
[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 Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Question: Are you passionate about what you do? Or just passionate about the money you make?
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: It’s a lot easier to make money when you’re passionate about what you’re doing.
How many people are locked into a job they can’t stand, only because they get a steady paycheck and benefits? I’m willing to bet there are quite a few.
You don’t have to be one of them.
Autonomy (aw-TON-uh-mee) — from the Greek for “self” + “law” — is freedom; independence.
Example (as used by Rich Schefren today): “When I made the decision to develop a business that would give me the autonomy to spend more time with my family and friends, I went with the one thing I knew I could ‘hang my hat on’ and pursue with a passion — helping others do the same.”
[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 Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Twenty years ago, if you had told me that one day I’d be able to reach millions of prospective customers without paying a penny in printing, postage, or lettershop fees … and without paying through the nose for print space or TV and radio time … I would have smiled and backed away from you v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.
I would have instantly pegged you as a lunatic. But I would have been wrong. Thanks to the Internet, we actually can do it. And that’s huge.
When I write a direct-mail package, I know my client is going to have to cough up an average of $550 to send it to every 1,000 prospects in his universe. That’s $55,000 for 100,000 potential customers. And $550,000 for 1 million.
On the Internet, you can post a website with your sales message for 500 bucks. And then blast a million e-mails to drive folks to your site for next to nothing!
So, yeah. The Internet is huge and cheap. Just like the hypesters say it is.
And, yes, marketing on the ‘Net can make you a bundle. I know lots of Internet marketers who make tens of millions — even a hundred million or more — every year.
But there is a bit more to it than that … (more…)
A lettershop is a business that handles large-volume mailings for direct-mail marketers. Its services include assembling and inserting package contents, addressing, sorting, and delivering the packages to the post office.
Example (as used by Clayton Makepeace today): “Twenty years ago, if you had told me that one day I’d be able to reach millions of prospective customers without paying a penny in printing, postage, or lettershop fees … and without paying through the nose for print space or TV and radio time … I would have smiled and backed away from you v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.”
[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 Words to the Wise CD Library.]
A man looks at his youth and says, “I wish I knew then what I know now.”
That’s what “Eric,” a pot dealer who spent four years in jail, said to me after he had become a multimillionaire.
Eric was talking about what he had learned about direct marketing. I gave him a job after he got out of jail. He was bright and hardworking and honest. (Honesty is an essential quality for a pot dealer.) And so I taught him what I knew.
It took Eric 10 years to accumulate a fortune dealing drugs. And all that money disappeared to lawyers and the government when he got busted. It took him only two years to become an expert at marketing. Two years later, he had his own multimillion-dollar business. He would have been much, much richer if he had learned what he learned from me earlier on.
This is not an essay about legal vs. illegal businesses. My purpose is to point out how valuable it is to have someone help you, like I helped Eric.
It can take a decade or more to become the successful person you want to be. But (more…)
To vet is to carefully examine or evaluate, checking for such things as accuracy, validity, and authenticity.
Example (as used by Michael Masterson today): “Luckily, [the Bentleys'] bank suggested that they have their business plan vetted. That’s how they met Allen Shapiro, a retired executive with more than 30 years of retail experience.”
[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 Words to the Wise CD Library.]
When you’re building an Internet business, it’s useful to step back and evaluate your progress every now and then.
You will be at one of the following levels …
Level One: The “getting ready to start” phase.
You are spending a lot of time and money buying and studying Internet marketing courses. But you aren’t selling anything yet.
Level Two: You dip your toe in the water.
You take some actions that let you generate a few sales online. The volume of these sales is small. It puts just a few extra dollars in your pocket each week.
Level Three: You start making a modest number of sales on a regular basis. Your online revenues are about $1,000 a month.
A conduit (KON-dwit) — from the Latin for “to lead together” — is a passageway through which something (usually fluids, wires, or cables) is conveyed, transmitted, or distributed.
Example (as used by Michael Masterson today): “Teachers are the conduits through which our children’s minds are shaped. They are the advice givers who provide the future with the wisdom of the past.”
[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 Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Every business is in sales.
But not everyone feels comfortable selling.
As someone who writes sales copy for a living, that’s worked out great for me. I get hired to craft the persuasive sales pieces that even crack entrepreneurs are sometimes afraid to touch.
But what do you do when you don’t have the luxury of getting someone else to put together your all-important sales messages?
And what about working with copywriters? Even a seasoned pro will do a better job selling your product when you’ve already worked out some of the details yourself.
Whichever situation you’re in, I have a focusing exercise that can help you generate one solid selling idea after another, even if you’ve never done it before.
Demographics (dem-uh-GRAF-iks) are statistical data that identify the characteristics of a segment of the population — things like age, income, and level of education. In marketing, demographics are used to identify a targeted group of consumers.
Example (as used by John Forde today): “Pile up a customer profile. Warm up with the general, aim for the specific. Use demographics and mailing lists. Surveys and focus groups.”
[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 Words to the Wise CD Library.]