“A good swipe file is better than a college education,” says my old direct-marketing “professor,” master copywriter Milt Pierce.

The swipe file provides inspiration and ideas that you may be able to use in your own promotions. With a swipe file, you can overcome writer’s block and write copy better and faster.

Lots of copywriters keep swipe files of promotions in their industry. Milt, however, always preferred using promotions for products other than the ones he was writing about. If, for example, a client who was selling insurance asked him to create a direct-mail package, he would look in his swipe file for ideas — but not in the section where he filed insurance packages.

Why?

The reason is simple. “If you create an insurance package that looks like every other insurance package, you’re just being a copycat,” says Milt. “However, if you check through other types of packages, you’re likely to come up with an original approach.”

A good example is a recent ad I saw for a Stauer watch.

The ad shows a photo of the watch. The headline above it reads:

“We Apologize That It Loses 1 Second Every 20 Million Years.”

The style and approach seem to be inspired by David Ogilvy’s famous Rolls-Royce ad. The headline for that ad was:

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.”

If the Stauer ad were for a car, it would seem derivative. But by adapting Ogilvy’s fact-based approach to a watch, the copywriter created something new.

It’s an approach not typically used for watches… so it supports Milt’s claim that applying ideas used in one industry to another can have interesting and effective results.

One interesting footnote to the story…

David Ogilvy has been accused of stealing his Rolls-Royce headline from another copywriter. I have also heard that he found the fact about the Rolls-Royce clock in an automotive trade journal. Others now say he took it from an ad for another car: the Pierce-Arrow. And the Pierce-Arrow headline, published years before Ogilvy’s Rolls ad, is remarkably similar:

“The only sound one can hear in the new Pierce-Arrows is the ticking of the electric clock.”

Today that ad is forgotten — but Ogilvy’s is one of the classics.

The best results I’ve seen from using swipe files have come from the cross-pollination of ideas between industries.

For instance, I was looking for ideas to sell trading software.

I started with my file of options trading promotions. Nothing. So I flipped through my other swipe files. In my health swipe file, I came across a promotion for a vision supplement.

The headline: “Why bilberry and lutein don’t work.”

I knocked off the headline — and tripled my client’s previous response rate.

My headline: “Why most trading software doesn’t work… and never will.”

A non-profit organization sent a free paperback book to potential donors. The “book” was actually a promotion written to solicit donations, and it did gangbusters.

A major financial publisher copied the format (now known as a “bookalog”) to sell an investment newsletter. Their book, titled “The Plague of the Black Debt,” was one of the most successful promotions of all time.

When you swipe from another industry instead of your own, you steer clear of copycatting charges — and you are credited as brilliantly original when your ad works.

P.S. Using a swipe file is just one of the “tricks of the trade” I teach in the Internet Cash Generator program. It’s a top-to-bottom guide to starting and growing your own part-time-work / full-time-income Internet business. Find out more about here.

[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 70 books. To subscribe to his free e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and claim your free gift worth $116, click here now: www.bly.com/reports.]

———————————————Highly Recommended ——————————————–

A Few Hundred Bucks a Week – Everybody wants to make millions online. But would you settle for $200 to $400 a week? You set up your business once. Then it’s fully automated. You look in your bank account, and the money is there. That’s a car payment… your rent or mortgage… whatever you want, taken care of. Read on to find out more…

“Where should I begin?” KJ asked in her e-mail. “What was your tipping point to online success?”

My answer: “The tipping point in Internet marketing success is to stop reading about it and stop talking about it and actually start DOING it.”

I’m not saying you shouldn’t learn something about Internet marketing before you start. I AM saying you do not need to learn EVERYTHING.

It’s simply Michael Masterson’s “Ready, Fire, Aim” principle in action. And it’s especially true in Internet marketing.

There is an oppressive mountain of courses… seminars… coaching programs… DVDs… websites… audio CDs… e-books… reports… and other “how to get rich on the Internet” material out there.

Aspiring Internet marketers quite sensibly buy and study this material in preparation for the day when they’ll start their own business.

Unfortunately, for the vast majority, that day never comes.

They get so caught up in reading and talking about Internet marketing that they forget to actually DO Internet marketing. And so they never graduate beyond the student phase and move into the real world. Their knowledge remains theoretical and never gets applied… and, they never make a dime from it.

To be sure, many people really enjoy reading how-to business books and studying marketing.

If you’re in that group… and all you want is a pleasant, intellectually stimulating hobby to pass the time… well, nothing wrong with that.

But I’m guessing you (like KJ) want something more than just entertainment.

Specifically, you want to start and build a home-based Internet marketing business. And by doing so, earn thousands of dollars a year in extra income.

To do that, you have to stop just studying Internet marketing… and start doing Internet marketing.

Every day, I hear something like this from one of my readers:

“I’m almost ready to start my online business. I just have to finish reading Mr. X’s book and taking Mr. Y’s coaching program.”

My advice to them is to forget about Mr. X and Mr. Y.

More than likely, you’ve already bought and read a ton of material on Internet marketing. At this point, you will learn much more through real-life trial and error by than by buying more education.

KJ told me that another thing holding her back is that she is a “rookie with no capital.”

I have news for KJ.

Everyone who is successful in Internet marketing today was a rookie no farther back than 10 years ago… and many (including me) much more recently.

So being a rookie doesn’t stop you.

As for “no capital” being a disadvantage — it simply isn’t.

Internet marketing is one of the least capital-intensive business opportunities on the planet. You can create and launch your first product for a few hundred dollars.

And if you don’t have even a few hundred dollars, you can start by selling someone else’s product for an affiliate commission.

KJ also told me that she knows “a little bit about everything in Internet marketing.”

It’s good to be so well-versed. But most of us aren’t.

There are dozens of techniques for selling products and services online. But you don’t have to know all of them — or even most of them — to get started.

In fact, you need only three things:

1. People to sell to — either visitors to your website, your e-list of online subscribers, or e-lists owned by joint venture (JV) partners.

2. A product to sell to them — either your own or one produced by a JV partner.

3. A way to sell it to them — usually e-mail marketing messages driving them to a dedicated landing page or micro-site.

So when is the best time to start your new Internet marketing business?

Quite simply, it’s today. And here’s how…

First, make a commitment to work on your new business at least five days a week, at least an hour a day.

Second, make a list of 10 things you need to do to get the business off the ground. (Not including any reading you still think you need to do.)

When your hour to work on your business arrives today, start with item #1 on your list.

Work on item #1 until it is done. If you run out of time, finish it tomorrow. Or the next day.

Then move to item #2. And keep going until all 10 items on your list are done.

By that time, you’ll be in business!

Yes, there’s always more to learn. But you’ll learn it as you go along. And because you’ll be doing Internet marketing and not just reading about it, the lessons will stick better and will be more meaningful.

Not to mention much more profitable.

[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and marketing expert and the author of more than 70 books. His Internet Cash Generator program is the only one you need to start your own profitable Internet business. Take action today and learn everything from search engine optimization to e-mail list building to copywriting.]

—————————————————–Highly Recommended —————————————————–

$394,510,000 in Useable Techniques You Can Take Home and Profit From

“ETR’s Bootcamp is one of the best experiences we’ve had!” said attendee Lou Betancourt.

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• Mike Koenigs’s “global reach” strategy that can give you access to over 4.5 billion customers worldwide…

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• Joe Polish’s $5,000-a-day secret to creating practically automatic sales…

And that’s just a small sampling! Our world-class expert panel has compiled $394,510,000 in useable techniques that you can profit from. (And you can put at least one of them into action before you leave!)

It starts in less than two weeks.

Haven’t signed up yet? Do so immediately.

That means you must check to see that Internet users are actually searching for information on your product by using the same keywords you assumed they would use.

When I tell this to people, they often pooh-pooh it. “It’s not necessary for us to do keyword research,” they tell me. “We know our industry. We know our products. And we know what words our customers would search on.”

To which I say: Oh, really?

With the Internet, there is no need to guess whether you’re using the right keywords. There are software tools that can tell you exactly how many searches were performed on them.

Often, the keywords used most are not the ones you picked. In addition, small variations in keywords can make a big difference in results.

Let’s say I want to optimize a website for people looking to buy aquariums.

It seems obvious that I should optimize the home page copy for the keyword “aquarium,” right?

And when I use spacky.com to check, sure enough there were 823,000 searches on “aquarium” on Google this month.

But there were 11.1 million searches on Google this month on “aquariums.”

This tells me that I should optimize the home page copy for “aquariums” and not “aquarium.”

I would never have known that had I not done my due diligence.

My favorite keyword due diligence tool is spacky.com. It’s free. And when you enter a keyword, it shows the monthly search volume for that term on Google, Overture/Yahoo, and Microsoft Network.

In addition, spacky.com displays a long list of related terms and their search volumes, so you can choose the keywords that are searched most frequently.

I can think of at least three online marketing activities that can benefit from keyword research.

The first, as already noted, is search engine optimization. Each page on your website should be optimized for at least one keyword related to what you’re selling.

The second is pay-per-click advertising. Even a good PPC ad will generate mediocre results if you bid on the wrong keywords.

The third is determining the feasibility of new products.

Example: You decide to write and sell an e-book on how to set up an aquarium. You think fish-keeping is a very popular hobby, but you aren’t sure.

But even if you were sure that fish-keeping is popular, that doesn’t mean the book will sell. Remember, we are not selling in bookstores. We are selling on the Internet. And for a product to be successful online, potential buyers must be searching the Internet for information related to it.

My rule of thumb is that the keyword must have at least 100,000 searches a month on Google to be successful online. “Aquariums” with 11.1 million and “aquarium” with 823,000 both pass with flying colors.

There’s another way to do keyword due diligence. It’s to spy on your competitors and see what keywords they’re using to optimize their websites. (Don’t worry. It’s perfectly legal.)

You can see what keywords your competitors are using by reading the source codes on their websites. “Source code” is the programming language used to build a website. And in optimized websites, the source codes for the pages include keyword lists called meta tags. The most important meta tags to check are the title tag, description tag, and keywords tag.

To find the keywords in a competitor’s meta tags, go to his home page. Click “view” and then choose “source.” A window will appear displaying the page’s source code with the meta tags clearly labeled as title, description, and keywords. The keywords appear between symbols like these:

In minutes, you will know all the keywords your competitor has optimized his site for. You can then use spacky.com or another keyword research and discovery tool like wordtracker.com.

P.S. Using keyword research to optimize your website and pay-per-click ad campaigns is just one of the tactics I teach in my Internet Cash Generator program. It’s full of the same techniques I used to generate $16,000 a month — just six months after starting my first online venture. Go here to learn more about this complete guide to starting and running your own Internet business.

[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 70 books. To subscribe to his free e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and claim your free gift worth $116, click here now: www.bly.com/reports.]

———————————————-Highly Recommended —————————————————

“This year I claimed $134,408 on my income tax return — all from copywriting!” – What do a retired engineer, a ballroom dance instructor, and a grocery store clerk have in common? They made more money than they ever had within months of finding out they could write sales letters. And they did it while working less than they ever had before. Hear their amazing stories here…

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“Now I get it.”

“I’m writing to thank Michael Masterson for his recent article on the importance of working with a mentor. I run a successful and fast-growing medical education company. After reading Michael’s article, I realized that I know a person who has grown two companies in the medical field to about $90 million of annual revenue each.

“Duh!

“So I approached this person and asked him to mentor me. I offered to pay him, and he — thankfully — accepted. I say thankfully, because it makes the relationship more fair and secure, and I will make much better use of it.

“So thank you for reminding me of something I knew but never did. It goes to show that we need mentoring not only to learn new things but to be reminded of things we’ve forgotten or never made use of. Now I get it — I will never start a new venture without seeking out a mentor first.”

Jack Krasuski

———————————————- Highly Recommended —————————————————

Internet Marketing Genius Turned Chicken Farmer – When you do business online — and do it well — you have the freedom to spend most of your time doing whatever you want to do. One Internet marketing genius we know helped build a $275 million Internet empire. And he used his newfound freedom to raise chickens on his own organic farm. You may think this guy is crazy. But surely you’ll want to know how he made his money.

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It is the “evaporation rate.”

The evaporation rate measures how many names you lose from your subscriber list — by the week, month, or year.

How do names evaporate from your list?

It’s simple.

Every time you send an e-newsletter — or an e-mail marketing message — some of your subscribers are going to decide they are no longer interested in hearing from you. And they will unsubscribe or “opt out” from your list.

The percentage of subscribers who opt out per e-mail blast is your “opt-out” rate.

My opt-out rate is typically a little less than 0.1 percent. I have more than 50,000 subscribers. That means every time I send an e-mail to my list, I lose around 50 of them.

However, that loss is offset by the number of new subscribers who opt into my e-list.

In my opt-in number, I exclude sign-ups from such things as joint ventures. I include only those who opt in “over the transom” — people who stumbled across my website.

They may have found it through organic search.

They may have read an article by or about me on another site and clicked on my link in that article.

Or perhaps they were reading one of my books and decided to check out my site.

The number of over-the-transom new subscribers is your “organic opt-in rate.”

Evaporation rate is calculated as follows:

Evaporation rate = organic opt-in rate minus opt-out rate

Let’s say you get 100 new subscribers each week who opt in organically.

And let’s say you send two e-mail marketing messages per week, which generate a total of 100 unsubscribe requests.

Your evaporation rate would be:

ER = 100 minus 100 = 0

A zero evaporation rate means you have no net gain or loss of subscribers.

Your list did not grow that week. But neither did it shrink.

Most online marketers have a negative evaporation rate. They lose more subscribers than they gain.

And that’s a big problem.

Even if your weekly evaporation rate is small, it can add up to huge losses over the course of a year.

In his special report “Taking Names,” Ken Magill says the average business can expect to lose 30 percent of its e-mail file a year due to evaporation.

For the entrepreneurial e-mail marketer, your revenues are directly proportional to the size of your list. So the smaller your list, the less money you make.

If you are making $100,000 a year with your list and you lose 30 percent of your subscribers without replacing them, next year you will be on target to make only $70,000.

Therefore, you need to reduce your evaporation rate to zero. Or, even better, turn it into a positive number… so your list gets bigger all the time rather than smaller.

You can build your list in two ways, and you should do both.

The first is with specific list-building initiatives that can add hundreds or thousands of new names to your list in a very short period of time. These can include cross promotions with other Internet marketers in your niche, pay-per-click ad campaigns, co-registration deals, and affiliate marketing.

The second thing you can do is boost your organic opt-in rate. And there are two steps involved in that.

Step one is to optimize your main website for search engines. A search engine optimized (SEO) site will almost always generate much more organic traffic than a site that is not optimized.

Step two is to have mechanisms for converting a greater percentage of your site visitors to new subscribers. At minimum, you should move the sign-up box for your free e-newsletter to the upper right-hand corner of the home page. The upper right corner is prime real estate. Whatever appears there gets the most attention.

Building your list is a huge topic. There’s so much to say about it that I can’t begin to adequately address it in this ETR column.

However, you can find much more information in my ETR “Internet Cash Generator” home-study program:

[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 70 books. To subscribe to his free e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and claim your free gift worth $116, click here now: www.bly.com/reports.]

———————————————-Highly Recommended —————————————————

What Would You Do With Financial Freedom? - The “dream” of many new Internet entrepreneurs is to sleep late, jet off to tropical destinations, work from the beach, etc. But I know one guy whose dream lifestyle means spending most of his time feeding chickens. And he still helps bring in millions for his clients every year. Find out all about this “off the grid” marketing genius here…

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More wealth, health, and wisdom from Masterson…

Some see the start of economic recovery just over the next hill. It doesn’t look that way to me. Still, I’m certain that now is the best time ever to build wealth.

Why? Because now is always the best time.

Now is always the best time to start something good. Good things take time, and time is the one thing that is definitely limited. The sooner you begin, the faster you’ll get where you want to be.

This is universally true, but it’s especially true when the goal is to build wealth. You can’t control the economy. You can’t predict the markets. You can’t ultimately protect yourself from disaster. But you can make yourself richer tomorrow than you are today.

You get richer by making a little more and spending a little less. You can do that — and you can do it today, can’t you?

There’s always a way. Work an extra hour. Sell an extra widget. Start a partnership. Cook up a moneymaking idea.

I have a friend who is very good at coming up with reasons why he should put off starting any new venture. Lately, he’s been telling me that he needs to wait for the economy to recover, for his visiting relatives to go back north, for his house to get more organized, etc.

He can find an unlimited number of reasons. But, like you, he has a diminishing amount of time.

Every day that passes is 24 hours of opportunity you won’t have again. Why not put a bit of that time to work for you right now?

When you agreed to do it, it seemed like an exciting challenge. Now, your deadline is fast approaching and you haven’t even started. You made it a priority to get the job done, yet it hasn’t happened. It stays there on your daily task list — highlighted for attention but never attended to.

Why does a great opportunity turn into an overwhelming chore that threatens to remain forever undone?

There are all sorts of causes — but only one solution that consistently works for me. Here it is:

1. If you have been stuck for more than three days, admit it. Stand in front of the mirror and repeat: “I shot my mouth off. I’m stuck.” You have been waiting for inspiration to save you, but it hasn’t appeared. Stop waiting.

2. Don’t even think of attacking the whole mess at once. Break it up into small pieces. If it’s a 40-page report you have to write, work on it page by page. If it’s a bunch of people you have to talk to, approach each conversation as a separate task.

3. Make a commitment to spend 15 minutes a day on it — doing one mini-task at a time. It is such a small amount of work that you won’t have any trouble doing it. This will get the ball rolling, even if it doesn’t seem to be rolling in the right direction.

4. Keep at it until you break through the psychological barrier you’ve been up against. Sooner or later — and this is guaranteed — you will get the inspiration you had been waiting for while you were stuck. And when that happens, you’ll whiz through to the end.

———————————————- Highly Recommended —————————————————

A Perfect Day at the Beach (Floppy Hats and Umbrellas NOT Required)

I always feel fantastic after a day at the beach. My skin looks radiant, my mood is alive, and I’m content, knowing I’m going to sleep like a baby. But for years I felt guilty about my time in the sun. I would hide the fact that I didn’t use sun screen, because “everyone knows the sun causes cancer.”

But I don’t hide anymore, because I learned a secret that changed everything for me. Thanks to Dr. Herbert M. Shelton, I found out that everything I’d been told about the “dangers of the sun” is a LIE. And thousands (yes, thousands!) of peer-reviewed medical studies prove it’s a lie.

Click here to discover the truth about sunlight – information most doctors don’t know… and the drug companies wish you didn’t.

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More reader feedback on “Those who can, do”…

“I have met a many college professor who ended up in academia because they were unable to carve out a niche for themselves in the world of business, writing, or film/theater.

“On the other hand there are a tremendous amount of professors who are highly skilled and have been successful, who see it as their opportunity to give back.”

**

“I’d ask that man where he’d be today if he’d had no teachers. Teachers open us up to the world and good ones inspire us to continue learning. You can’t put a price on a great teacher. Too bad the good ones don’t get compensated enough for what they do.”

**

“Without education, each new generation would be limited to whatever it could learn in its lifetime and the next generation would have to begin learning everything all over from scratch. Without education we would all be ignorant, unprotected, hungry and sick.”

**

“Those who can, do: and if they’re lucky they also get to teach.”

“I spent many a year in the Steam and Power Plant business. Along the way I was involved in some fascinating projects that turned out very well.

“Fifteen years ago I started traveling the country conducting training seminars. It was after one of those sessions that I received the most moving compliment of my life. A young fellow said ‘I wish you had been my teacher all of my life.’

“At that moment, the student became the teacher. My first response, of course, was to swell up with pride. (Ah, Vanity — my favorite vice!) But then what he said really sank in. I knew that what I had done was to simply pass on to him that which I had received from my teachers, and that he was going to pass it on down the line. The sense of being part of this immortal chain was at once humbling and spiritually gratifying. Now that’s a kick in the pants!”

———————————————- Highly Recommended —————————————————

How to Get Some Cash Flowing INTO Your Bank Account Instead of Out of It

Instead of spending money 4, 5, even 10 times a day… imagine if you could start collecting cash that often.

I know a way for you to…

• Pick up as much as $75,000 to buy a home or make home improvements…

• Snag $1,200 a month to get a higher paying job (This is not a loan!)…

• Get $1,000+ every time you go on vacation (at the world’s top resorts)

Can you say, “Ka-Ching!”??? It is ETR’s newest publication — and every month it will give you dozens of practical ways to bring cash into your life, hour after hour after hour.

Get all the cash-generating details right here.

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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.

Self-publishing is not inherently better than traditional publishing. Nor is the reverse true.

Actually, there are three basic options: traditional publishing, self-publishing, and electronic publishing. And the choice of which is right for you depends on your reasons for writing a book in the first place.

Option #1. Traditional publishing

Of the three options, selling your book to a mainstream publisher is the most prestigious. So when you want to write a book to help establish yourself as an expert in your field, that is often the best option.

Most stock market newsletter editors, for example, write at least one book for a mainstream publishing house.

Reason: It adds to their credibility, helping them sell subscriptions.

The drawbacks of going with a mainstream publisher are twofold.

First, book publishers are notoriously lousy at marketing, so your book may not sell very many copies.

Second, you earn only a small royalty — on average, 10 percent or less — for each copy sold.

Option 2. Self-publishing a physical book

Self-publishing your book as a paperback or hardcover makes sense when you want to use it as a marketing tool. As information marketing pioneer Jeffrey Lant says, “A book is a brochure that will never be thrown away.”

Professional speakers, for example, typically send a free copy of their book, along with their sales materials, to every potential client.

The more professionally written, designed, and printed it is, the more impressed your prospects will be. Ideally, your self-published book should look no different than hardcovers or trade paperbacks from major publishers.

When you buy your own book from a traditional publisher, you get a 50 percent author’s discount. With self-publishing, your cost per copy is much less. As a result, authors who give away a lot of their books can save a lot of money with self-publishing.

Option 3. Self-publishing your book as an e-book

Self-publishing your book as a downloadable PDF file — an “e-book” — is the clear choice when you want to (a) sell your book on the Internet and (b) maximize your profits.

Why are e-books so profitable?

For one thing, you can charge more money for less content than you can with a regular book.

Most traditionally published business books are at least 200 pages — around 80,000 words. They sell for at least $15 in paperback or $20 in hardcover.

For an e-book, you can charge anywhere from $29 to $49 per copy. More if it is on a specialized topic. And although length varies, a $29 e-book can be only 50 pages — about 15,000 words. That means it costs as much as — or more than — a paperback or hardcover containing only one-fifth the text.

Plus, you deliver an e-book to the buyer over the Internet as a PDF file. There are no printing, storage, fulfillment, or shipping costs, so your profit margin on each sale is extremely high.

By comparison, authors who publish with mainstream publishers get a royalty averaging 10 percent of the book’s cover price. The margin in self-publishing physical books is usually about 50 percent. But with e-books, the margin can be close to 100 percent.

Option 4. Traditional publishing/self-publishing

Some online marketers, including Michael Masterson, take advantage of a fourth option.

They sell their books to a mainstream publishing house for bookstore distribution. But they retain the right to sell the content as physical books or e-books — or both — to their own customer lists.

“In golf, there’s an old saying,” says Michael. “You drive for show and putt for dough. Trade book publishing is driving. Direct marketing to your list is putting.”

In my ETR home study course, the Internet Cash Generator, I share a simple yet proven process for publishing and selling e-books online.

It has worked for me, generating a passive Internet income of more than a thousand dollars a day.

For more information, click here now

[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 70 books. To subscribe to his free e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and claim your free gift worth $116, click here now: www.bly.com/reports]

———————————————-Highly Recommended —————————————————

Luxury Vacations “on the House” – Okay, so you still have to pay for the flight. But you could stay at a beachfront mansion in Maui that usually rents for $1,500+ a week … for $0. That’s right. Zero, zip, nada, FREE! Stay a week. A month. Or a year (or more). Ka-Ching Editor Matthew Adams can show you how…

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More wealth, health, and wisdom from Masterson…

Ever since “Cash for Clunkers” was announced, I’ve said it wouldn’t work. And when the government said it was a success (and the mainstream media parroted that view), I didn’t change my mind.

Yes, auto sales jumped during the program. But that reduces future demand for new cars. Time will tell how much.

The immediate concern, says Investor’s Daily Edge Investment Director Bob Irish, is the effect it’s had on dealers. Turns out 60,000 or 70,000 rebates have been rejected. The $3,500 to $4,500 credits were already knocked off the sales price, but the claims were denied by the Fed.

Denials caused by simple clerical errors can be fixed. But if a denial is upheld, the dealer will have to absorb the loss. For businesses already operating on the edge, too many denials could shut them down.

Here’s something to keep in mind when you meet with a professional — an attorney, accountant, broker, doctor, etc. The practicing professional, like all businesspeople, has two jobs:

1. To provide a service
2. To sell that service

Your job, as a consumer, is twofold:

• To evaluate how good his service will be
• To make a buying decision that is best for you, not him

To accomplish your goal, go into introductory meetings with specific objectives in mind. To evaluate the quality of his services, bring a list of questions to ask him. Prepare that list by talking to friends and colleagues and by researching articles about what to expect. If the meeting will be an hour long, spend two hours preparing for it.

If the professional is really good at what he does, his answers will impress you. But resist the urge to make an immediate decision. At the end of the meeting, thank him for his time and tell him that you will be sending him a memo responding to what he has told you.

Go home and review your notes. (Did I mention that you should take notes?) If you are happy with his answers and suggestions — and you have a good gut feeling about his character — write a memo outlining the benefits and services you want him to provide. Be specific. And tell him what you don’t want, too. At the end of the memo, ask for a written proposal. (When you receive his proposal, you can call or write him back to negotiate a better rate.)

Send the memo within 48 hours, while the details of the meeting are fresh in your mind.

Don’t try to make him like you. Don’t try to be his friend. Don’t allow him to use his expertise to humble you. He is going to be working for you. You are in charge of the relationship, not him.

Prescription anti-depressants have been linked to birth defects, suicide, and violence. “So why take the chance?” asks Total Health Breakthrough’s Melanie Segala. Especially when there are so many natural therapies that can help.

Take acupuncture. In a review of 35 studies, researchers from the University of Hong Kong found:

• Acupuncture was just as effective as anti-depressants in improving the symptoms of major depression.
• In people with post-stroke depression, acupuncture was better at improving symptoms.
• With acupuncture, the incidence of adverse events was much lower than with anti-depressants.

Pretty convincing evidence, in my opinion. So if your doctor tries to give you pills, try acupuncture instead.

There is a way to get the same results as acupuncture — without the needles. In fact, you can do it yourself, relieving pain and stress while improving your well-being. Check it out here.

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“You are right on.”

“Thank you for the good basic information in [Rich Schefren's article]. It is one thing to be a hard worker, but another to be working hard and passionately!

“I love your information, and think you are right on.”

Marilyn Sindelar

———————————————- Highly Recommended —————————————————

Increase Your Wealth by Managing Risk Like the Pros Do - You can’t take all the risk out of investing. But you can take much of it away. More important, you can remove the worst aspects of risk — the ones that cause fear and result in bad investment decisions. ETR’S own Charles Newcastle has developed a quick and simple four-step “risk removal” system that could bring you 132%+ gains in a matter of weeks.

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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.

You’re not getting rich at this level. But for most of us, an extra $12,000 a year isn’t chickenfeed. In essence, you have a highly profitable hobby. You are having fun by making money in your spare time.

Level Four: You start making about $1,000 a week.

That translates to around $50,000 a year — a significant, though not life-changing, amount of money. At Level Four, you are earning more than the average American makes at a full-time job. And you’re doing it in just an hour or two a day.

Level Five: You start making $1,000 a day.

At Level Five, your Internet business is making you well over $300,000 a year in passive income. That’s in the ballpark of what the President of the United States makes.

You have reached the enviable position of being able to quit your day job if you so desire. You are making enough money online to support your family in a comfortable lifestyle.

Level Six: Your Internet marketing business grosses $1,000,000 a year or more.

Now, you are starting to become rich, not just “comfortable.”

The reason most people never end up making that kind of money on the Internet is that they get “stuck” at Level One for way too long. They buy every Internet marketing course they see advertised — and spend much of their spare time absorbing the material.

— Highly Recommended —

ETR Reader Challenges Us to “Put Up or Shut Up” – We just got a note from longtime reader Peter Genot. He’s taken the home-study courses and worked hard at building his Internet business. But, he says, it’s still just limping along. He’s ready for a real online income — a raging river of cash is more like it. Here’s what we told him …

—

They become the type of person who’d rather be reading about starting a home business than actually doing it.

To overcome inertia and break through to the next level, you need to stop reading and studying … and do something.

So take action now!

If you’re at Level One, begin small. Reserve a domain name. Then set a deadline for creating your first info product. And start writing your landing page copy.

You get the idea.

Do a little bit every day and within a few months you’ll have your first product. As soon as your landing page is up, you’ll start getting orders (mostly from organic search results if you haven’t yet done any other marketing).

At Level Two, making money on the Internet becomes a reality, not an abstract concept. Once you get those first orders in your shopping cart, you’ll taste blood. You’ll be hooked. You’ll be a real Internet marketer, not just a wannabe.

Once you reach Level Five — with $1,000 of online income a day — you will enjoy a degree of financial security and freedom that most folks only dream about. You won’t be super-rich. But you’ll have the money to buy most of the things you want — and quit your day job, if that was your goal.

When you are at Level Five, you have to decide whether you want to take the next step — and grow to Level Six.

You might not.

Reason: Most Internet entrepreneurs who reach Level Six have to make the transition from a small one-person business to a “real” company.

They get office and warehouse space … set up a studio for video production … hire salaried employees … get insurance plans for them … have company picnics. In short, they become managers.

For me, the best part of being an Internet marketer at Level Five is the serenity. No meetings. No whining employees. No red tape, office politics, or management hierarchy.

Level Five allows you to lead a simple, quiet life, earning a handsome six-figure income working at home — without a boss.

For me, that completes the dream. I am content. I would not give up my Internet marketing lifestyle — not even for a million dollars. It’s just like being retired — with steady money coming in from an annuity, while you are free to spend your days as you please.

P.S. With my help, you can transform from an Internet dreamer to a doer actively marketing and selling products online. With the Internet Cash Generator program, you’ll discover the same tactics and techniques I use in my own part-time, $25,000-a-month Internet business.

[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 70 books. To subscribe to his free e-zine, "The Direct Response Letter," and claim your free gift worth $116, click here now.]

— Highly Recommended —

Fire Your Cell Phone Company – A recent study has found that Americans pay $500 more per year on cell phone service than Europeans. We pay more. And we deal with old technology and shoddy service. But with the help of Ka-Ching Editor Matthew Adams, you could save as much as $1,500 a year. All you have to do is switch to a certain provider. No signing up for a new plan. No contracts. No extra fees. Read more …

—

More from Masterson…

Build It and They Will Come … and Other Insane Ideas

Doing what you love is not always the smartest way to start a new business. So says Brian Edmondson, Director of ETR’s new Internet Power Coaching program.

I’ve made the same point many times. Some love affairs can be turned into money-making enterprises. Others are best enjoyed as hobbies.

How can you tell if yours can work as a business?

That’s easy, says Brian:

• Start by brainstorming. Ask yourself, “If I had all the money in the world, what would I most enjoy doing?”
• Make a list of five such “fantasy” occupations.
• Then go online and do some research.

There are many simple-to-use online programs that will help you determine if your passion can be profitable, Brian says. You can find out everything you need to know by using a combination of these tools. For example, you can discover:

• How big the market is
• How active it is
• The products that are hot
• The type of advertising that’s working
• The sort of people who are responding
• How much they are spending

To find out more about the Internet Power Coaching program keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow for a message from ETR with all the details.

Slow-Motion Martial Arts

I’ve never tried tai chi. But after speaking with Total Health Breakthroughs Editor Melanie Segala, I think I will.

She cites a Harvard study which shows that this ancient Chinese art does more than calm mind and body. (Although that’s a big one, because the Centers for Disease Control says 90 percent of doctor visits are stress-related.) It has benefits for those with a host of health problems — including arthritis, heart disease, high blood pressure, Parkinson’s, and low bone density.

What’s great about tai chi is that it’s such a gentle physical exercise. You flow from one martial-arts-like position to the next. You don’t have to be in great shape to do it. It’s almost like meditation with stretching and movement.

Tai chi has gone mainstream. So you won’t have any trouble finding a teacher in your community. Check adult ed classes, your gym, or a local recreation center.

— Highly Recommended —

Internet Marketing Genius Turned Chicken Farmer – When you do business online — and do it well — you have the freedom to spend most of your time doing whatever you want to do. One Internet marketing genius we know helped build a $275 million Internet empire. And he used his newfound freedom to raise chickens on his own organic farm. You may think this guy is crazy. But surely you’ll want to know how he made his money…

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It does to GL, one of my subscribers. But she is hesitating about whether to even start.

GL is worried that there are already more than enough people hawking e-books, DVDs, and courses on the Internet.

“Isn’t the Internet already overcrowded with a million info marketers selling look-alike products on everything from dating to real estate?” GL asked me the other week. “Aren’t I getting into the game too late to carve out a piece of the Internet profit pie for myself?”

Fair questions.

Yes, you are getting into the game a little later than some of your peers.

But so what?

The old saying — better late than never — is true.

And, in fact, there is still a huge opportunity to make your fortune online.

Newbie Internet marketers despair that there is too much competition on the Web — and, therefore, no room for them. What they do not understand is that the information business is not competitive in the way most other businesses are.

A consumer shops and makes a decision to buy, say, a certain model washing machine when her old machine breaks down (as my wife did a few weeks ago). If the consumer chooses your brand — or buys from your store — you have her money. And all the other wash machine manufacturers and retailers have lost that chance to sell to her.

After all, she needs only one washing machine. And new machines typically last at least 10 years.

With information products, it is a bit different. It’s more like the video game market than the appliance market.

— Highly Recommended—

Become the Next Depression Millionaire - The only condition we put on using the “Multiplier Effect” is to ask you to limit your profits to $10,000 a week. We don’t want the “good old boys” to get wise and change the rules again. Read more …

—

Kids don’t buy and play one video game. They buy game after game. They are video game junkies. And they’ll spend a small fortune feeding their “habit.”

It’s the same with buyers of information products.

They are “information junkies.” They buy many “how to” products — e-books … DVDs … tele-seminars … and e-courses — on their favorite topics.

That means they will buy your info products in addition to your competitions’ — not instead of.

The first thing you should do if you are thinking of selling info products online is to Google your subject.

If no one else is selling info products on the same subject, you have no competition.

But that’s bad. It probably means others have tried and found no demand.

On the other hand, when you Google some subjects, it seems like there is an almost infinite number of sources for information … and you despair of being able to break through the clutter.

The way to do it is to narrow your focus. Find a niche within that broad topic — a subtopic (a) that people want to study and (b) about which there is a scarcity of good content.

For instance, “Make money on the Internet” is an overcrowded topic — one I would not recommend going into. But there is plenty of room for niche products centered around making money on the Internet.

I saw one recently about how to market on Facebook. If you are an Internet marketer, doesn’t that sound like something you should learn?

Let’s say you come up with a narrow niche topic that doesn’t appear to be overcrowded. Use a free keyword research and discovery tool like www.spacky.com to make sure Internet users are searching for that information. Check keyword phrases related to your topic (e.g., “marketing on Facebook”). Then see how many people are searching those keywords on Google.

Once you’ve determined that there’s a market for your niche topic, you can go ahead and develop an info product to sell.

And don’t let the idea of creating your own info product intimidate you.

It’s not all that hard. Trust me.

P.S. It takes only a few simple steps to create your own information products from scratch. And with the help of my Internet Cash Generator program, you can learn to effectively market and sell those products — using the same tactics and techniques I use in my own part-time $25,000-a-month Internet business.

— Highly Recommended—

Since When Does $14.95 a Month = Free? – Credit monitoring companies are just as shady as identity thieves. They could even be in your bank account right now. Ka-Ching Editor Matthew Adams shows you how to stop them.

—

More from Masterson…

What Investors Can Learn From Traders

Both traders and investors can make money in the market. However, they tend to do it differently. Traders look at the stock. Investors look at the company.

A trader typically moves in and out of a stock quickly, trying to take advantage of short-term price momentum. An investor looks at a company’s fundamentals.

But long-term investors can learn a few things from their more active brethren, says IDE’s Bob Irish. Not by constantly buying and selling but by employing a well-defined sell discipline. Since investors “buy and hold” for the long term, they tend to “buy and forget.”

Never forget your original reason for owning a company. Write it down. Revisit your rationale regularly. Ask the question “Would I buy this today?” If the answer is no, it’s probably time to sell. If the answer is yes and the price is lower than the price you paid, it probably makes sense to add to your position.

And whenever you buy a company, establish a target sell price. Even quality companies can become overvalued. This “stop loss” tactic, a favorite of traders, will ensure you don’t lose your shirt if the stock drops.

Protecting Yourself From the Harmful Effects of … Sunscreen

Skin cancer and premature aging are serious effects of overexposure to the sun. But, as Total Health Breakthroughs Editor Melanie Segala points out, sunscreen is not the solution.

Sunscreen is chock full of industrial chemicals that can cause Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s when inhaled. Melanie says a three-year study is planned to find out if they cause the same brain damage when absorbed by the skin. But I don’t plan to wait for the results. And neither should you.

Follow the advice of Dr. Sears and Jon Herring. In their book Your Best Health Under the Sun, they recommend using natural “sun blocks” — shade, clothing, and umbrellas. If you need more protection, go with zinc oxide. It blocks the sun physically instead of chemically.

— Highly Recommended—

Don’t Make a Trade Until the Market “Tells” You – His software applications and trading books are required tools on Wall Street. And now his new program for private investors has just been released. It detects “hidden” market signals. One of the first people to use this method recently made $37,948 in just a few days. And he’s got only 89 spots left.

I find the rule for start-up money to be the same for an Internet business as it is for many home-based businesses. It’s a “time or money” equation. (Michael Masterson has written about it many times.) 

The “time or money” rule dictates that you need either time or money to succeed. 

If you have little money, you must put a lot of your time into the start-up. That’s what’s known as “sweat equity.” 

If you have little time but plenty of cash, you can pay others to do a lot of the work.

Time or money. Either one will do. 

It is extremely difficult to start a home business if you have no money and no spare time. 

However, with an Internet business, we have a big advantage.

You can’t run an Internet business with zero dollars. You need to buy domain names, pay for hosting, have Web pages designed, and so on. But it is much easier — and far less expensive — than an offline business. 

It’s also far less risky. 

As Gary Scott said at an American Writers & Artists Bootcamp, “The Internet is very forgiving of mistakes.”

For instance, if an e-mail marketing campaign to your subscribers bombs, you don’t make much money that day. But sending an e-mail promotion, even to thousands of subscribers, is so inexpensive, you don’t lose much either.

On the other hand, running a business offline … especially one selling a physical product … can cost a small fortune. And all of it is risk capital.

Take, for example, the business magazine — Portfolio. It was launched by Conde Nast in April 2007. Two years later, it was gone. According to the New York Post, the total loss for the publication’s two years of operation was $120 million.

In my little Internet information marketing business, I never spend much more than $1,000 to develop and test a product. Usually, I spend considerably less. My first product, an e-book, cost me a total of $263.

Since most of us have grand plans, ambitious dreams, and big ideas, but not much money, I suggest you start your Internet business with your own labor rather than begged or borrowed capital. 

Especially at the beginning, you’ll have to put in a lot of time. But that will give you an edge over your competitors. Most of them simply will not make the effort. 

“If you work more hours than somebody else, during those hours you learn more about your craft,” writes Randy Pausch in his book The Last Lecture. “That can make you more efficient, more able, even happier. Hard work is like compounded interest in the bank. The rewards build faster.” 

It takes a lot of hard work to start and build a profitable online business … much more than many “get rich quick on the Internet” promoters would lead you to believe. But once you get going, Internet marketing can generate a steady stream of passive income. That’s the “compound interest” part of it. You create a product once, and then sell it again and again. 

That’s not the case with a service business, such as freelance copywriting, coaching, consulting, or speaking. 

In a service business, the start-up is simpler. You just start advertising. But service businesses generate mostly active income. You have to keep working, with a high level of activity, to make a high level of income. 

A business that generates passive income pays bigger dividends down the line. And, as I said, you can start an Internet information marketing business with very little money. But not zero. 

Exactly how much do you need, then? 

If you do most of the work yourself at the beginning, you can get started with less than $1,000. 

Take a look at my budget for my first product on the Internet, an e-book titled “Write and Grow Rich”: 

• Writing the e-book — zero (I assembled it from previously published articles.) 
• Hiring a designer to put my Word file into a PDF format — $75
• Registering my domain name — $9
• Creating the landing page copy — zero (I wrote it myself.)
• Paying a company to design the landing page — $175 (I outsourced to an overseas firm.)
• Monthly shopping cart software subscription fee — $4 (The company I use — automateyouronlinebusinessnow.com — charges $49 to $99 a month, depending on the software you select. But they offered a one month trial for only four bucks. I started with that.)
• E-mail distribution — zero (I was already paying a flat monthly fee to have the e-zine I send to my copywriting clients distributed, and I never came close to the maximum number of e-mails I can send for that.)
• Total out-of-pocket, excluding my own labor: $263
• Total revenues: $2,958 (for 102 copies of the e-book, sold at $29 each)

As you can see, even with a budget of only a few hundred bucks, you should have enough to cover the initial start-up costs. That includes hosting … domain name registration … design of your landing page … creation of your first information product … setting up a merchant account … and shopping cart software.

The bottom line: If you have ambition, vision, and desire … and are willing to work hard, at least in the beginning … you can start a successful Internet marketing business for under $500.

To launch a business for under $500, however, you need to spend your money wisely — finding quality service providers that charge reasonable fees.

By patronizing the bargain suppliers and avoiding the rip-off artists, you can get started on a shoestring. And get hosting … website design … shopping cart software … and everything else you need … for pennies on the dollar.

By the way, figuring out how much time or money you are going to spend to start your Internet business is just the first step. To get it off the ground — and start making sales every day — you need to know the secrets to selling online. That is the main factor in determining your success.

My small Internet marketing business generates more than $25,000 a month in revenue.  And I can show you exactly how I do it.

More from Masterson…

I Like My New iPhone, but I’m Not So Sure About AT&T Stock

I love my new iPhone, but I don’t like the fact that I have to subscribe to AT&T to have one. AT&T service is okay, but I hate being forced to take it. I’m not the only one. Lots of my fellow iPhone users feel the same way.

That’s why I’ll be interested to see what happens when AT&T’s exclusive agreement with Apple expires in 2010. If Apple gives its customers what they want — which has been its pattern — this deal will no longer be exclusive.

Ralph de la Vega, head of the company’s wireless unit, said they are looking for “the next great set of devices that customers are going to want.”

The Investor’s Daily Edge editorial staff wondered what he meant. Upon asking, they found he meant “cameras, an electronic book-reader, and a dog-tracking collar.”

“Yes, a dog-tracking collar,” said Bob Irish, IDE’s investment director. ” If you own AT&T stock, consider this a warning.”

One of the questions I’m frequently asked is: “Do I need a lot of money to start and run a successful Internet marketing business?” 

Defeat the Top Three Fitness Problems With One Easy Exercise

Lower back pain? Painful shoulders and neck? Protruding belly?

America’s most common fitness complaints are all due to the same problem: a weak core. What the hell is a weak core?

It refers to the muscles in and around your waist and diaphragm. ETR’s own fitness coach, Yari Ferrao, is excited about a new method she’s found to build up core strength. It doesn’t require endless crunches or crazy ball exercises. It’s just a matter of learning to breathe. 

First, test your core strength. Stand in front of a mirror. Place one hand on your belly and one on your chest. Take a deep breath.

Does your belly rise or does your chest rise?

If your chest rises, she says, it means the muscles of your upper body are doing the lifting of the rib cage to bring oxygen into your lungs. And that would explain why you would have tension and knots surrounding your neck and rounded posture.

Yari’s solution — diaphragmatic breathing — not only fixes the three most common fitness problems, it provides a host of other health benefits. These include reduced stress, improved bowel movements, decreased anxiety, less insomnia, relief from asthma symptoms, and lower blood pressure … naturally!

Click here to watch Yari Ferrao show you the ultimate secret to a sexy, flat stomach, and a reduction in back pain!

Why did you do that, Nate?

I just got your FIRST draft. I haven’t even opened the file, much less reviewed it. And I certainly haven’t given you my comments so you can make the necessary revisions.

Sending an invoice along with the work you did is bad form. It leaves a bad taste in the client’s mouth. He feels the only thing you care about is getting paid, not whether the work is good. But sending an invoice with a first draft – when the project is not yet completed – can really piss off the client, as it did me in this case.

By the way, my agreement with Nate calls for payment upon completion. To me, completion means an acceptable final product. Most publishers and business clients feel that way.

If the term “completion” is too vague for you, apply this rule of thumb: Any ambiguity in the agreement is the fault of the vendor, not the customer.

If Nate expected a check upon submission of a first draft, he should have specified that in writing and had me sign it.

He did not.

[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 70 books. To subscribe to his free e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and claim your free gift worth $116, click here now.

Bob recently revealed the secrets that could jumpstart your online business, including how to deal with freelancers, in ETR's Internet Cash Generator program. Find out more about it here.]

A case in point: On 4/9/09, we sent an e-mail to my list offering one of my e-books at the cover price of $79.

It generated 32 orders and $2,528 in revenues. Not great, not bad.

Last Thursday, we sent the identical e-mail to the same list. But we added a P.S. offering the book at $49 (a $30 savings) if they ordered by midnight Sunday. So far, we have sold 155 copies at $49 each, generating $7,625 in revenues, and orders are still coming in.

Does it bother me to let people have a $79 product for only $49? Of course not. What’s important is not profit per sale but profit per e-mail blast… which the discounting tactic will more than triple.

This works with products that have a large enough profit margin – and in the case of e-books, the margin is close to 100 percent.

[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 70 books. To subscribe to his free e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and claim your free gift worth $116, click here now.

When and how to discount is just one of the secrets Bob reveals in ETR's Internet Cash Generator program, the complete guide to jumpstarting your online business. Find out more about it here.]