Bob Bly | Free Newsletter

Avoid This Common Mistake When Creating Information Products

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

As I said in my last ETR article, the best way to prevent customers from illegally copying and sharing your information products is to create content that gives the buyer more than his money’s worth.

Selling great information products gives you several other advantages. For one thing, it minimizes refund requests. It also helps you build a base of loyal fans. These fans keep buying additional products from you and recommending them to others.

However, many information product marketers make a serious mistake that results in less quality – and lower customer satisfaction. Let me explain…

What your customers want is solid information that tells them how to do something, whether it’s saving money on a new car or becoming a freelance copywriter. The mistake many info marketers make is that they develop a “what-to” product instead of the “how-to” product their buyers want.

To live up to the customer’s expectation of getting great how-to information, your product has to tell him exactly HOW to do the thing that it’s about. That means specific step-by-step instructions… recommended tools and resources… and strategies, tips, and techniques for doing it better and faster.

But too many info products I see tell the reader what to do – but not how to do it.

For instance, one small-business advertising guide recommended advertising on billboards.

That’s advice on what to do, which is fine. But it’s not enough.

When a reader buys that specialized information product, he also wants to be told HOW to advertise on billboards.

What are the dimensions of a typical billboard? What’s the most effective word length for billboard copy? The recommended size of the letters painted on the board for maximum readability? How can he find billboards in his area where he can advertise? Who does he contact about renting them? What’s a reasonable cost he can expect to pay? Can that be negotiated?

Why do so many information product marketers produce “what-to-do” instead of “how-to-do-it” e-books and reports? It’s because “what-to-do” is so easy to write. All you have to do is present the big picture, and not the niggling details.

But that cheats the reader.

In most instances, the reader already has some idea of what to do. He is buying your specialized information product on the Internet – often at a premium price compared to books available in bookstores on similar topics – because he expects you to go into depth he doesn’t get from “bookstore books.”

I hire a lot of freelance writers to write e-books and reports for my small online publishing business, CTC Publishing. One of my pet peeves – and a classic example of what-to instead of how-to – is when I read a sentence in a first draft that says, “For more information on X, just search the keyword X on Google.”

I tell the writer: The reason the reader is paying for our e-book is because he expects us to have done the research and presented the results.

Telling your reader “Look it up on Google” is the sign of a lazy writer who has not done his homework – and a sin I always ask my writers to correct.

One more point…

Even though information product buyers want “how-to” instead of “what-to-do,” you can often take the quality of your content to an even higher level. You do this when, instead of (or in addition to) telling the reader what to do, you actually DO IT FOR HIM.

For instance, instead of saying “Here are some points to keep in mind when writing a collection letter to a customer who owes you money,” you actually include sample collection letters in your product.

Listen, everyone is lazy. Me. You. Your customers. And your writers. But the information product buyer has paid us to provide him with shortcuts. As the customer, he has the right to be lazy.

As the seller in this transaction of information publishing, we – the information product marketers – give up the right to be lazy. Our customer expects us to do the work, so he doesn’t have to. If we don’t, we are of little value to him. And he will let us know this by asking for his money back.

Read the latest information product you wrote or published… or, even better, the one you are working on right now. On every page, ask yourself: “Is this text telling the reader merely what to do, or is it actually showing him HOW to do it?”

If you are merely telling him what to do instead of how to do it, rewrite to correct the oversight. The result: a top-quality information product worth the premium price you have every right to charge.

[Ed. Note: Copywriting master and experienced info-marketer Bob Bly is coming out of his self-imposed retirement from public speaking to be a presenter at ETR's 2008 Info-Marketing Bootcamp. He - along with 11 other business-building and marketing experts - will reveal a proven technique that can help you make at least $100,000 in 2009. Learn the details here.

For expert insights into the world of direct marketing, be sure to sign up for Bob's free monthly newsletter, The Direct Response Letter. Do so today and get over $100 in free bonuses.]

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How to Profit From Idea Thieves

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

A common concern among would-be information marketers is illegal copying. Because their products are downloadable and easy for their customers to share, many think that will be the downfall of their business.

The reality is, only a tiny and insignificant fraction of your customers will even attempt to rip you off by copying and distributing your info products without paying for the right to do so. The incidence of this type of fraud is so rare that you can just shrug it off as a small cost of doing business.

However, there are steps you can take to reduce the pirating of your content to near-zero – and even make money from the few copies that do get pirated.

Let me explain…

There are all kinds of high-tech systems and devices for foiling would-be bootleggers of content – from music and movies to software and information products. But, eventually, all of them are defeated by hackers.

A better way to prevent your customers from illegally copying your e-books, audio CDs, and DVDs is to ask yourself what motivates them to steal your content in the first place.

Answer: Aside from the Internet making it easy to duplicate and distribute digital content, the main reason a customer will illegally copy an information product they have bought has to do with its price and value.

By that, I mean that customers are less motivated to pirate content that is (a) reasonably priced and (b) gives a fair value for its cost.

For instance, if your 50-page e-book on starting a small business is only $29, your customers – if they like it – will simply recommend it to their friends. “You should buy it here,” they’ll say, pointing others to your website.

However, had you priced the same e-book at $299, your customers might feel that it was too expensive. So after they print out your e-book for themselves, they’ll pass on the PDF to a few friends – illegally, of course.

Even when the price is high, you can still reduce illegal copying by providing great value for the money.

Say that 50-page e-book contains dozens of forms needed to start a business… forms a lawyer might charge thousands of dollars to create or review. In that case, $299 would be a reasonable price to pay. The customer would feel he is getting a fair value, and, therefore, would not want to rip you off.

On the other hand, if your 50-page e-book is nothing but general advice about small businesses, $299 would be excessive. In this instance, the customer might think you are ripping him off. And he might choose to get back at you by freely – and, yes, illegally – sharing the e-book with many other people.

So, really, the best way to prevent customers from illegally copying and sharing your content is to create information products that are reasonably priced – and give the buyer more than his money’s worth.

To further discourage bootleggers, my e-books now carry this warning on the title page:

——————————————————————————————————-

This is NOT a free e-book!

Purchase of this e-book entitles the buyer to keep one copy on his or her computer and to print out one copy only.

Printing out more than one copy – or distributing it electronically – is prohibited by international and U.S.A. copyright laws and treaties, and would subject the purchaser to penalties of up to $100,000 PER COPY distributed.

——————————————————————————————————

Don’t be too much of a hard case enforcing this policy. If a customer calls and wants to print an extra copy for his business partner, brother, or friend, let him.

The main reason to put the warning on the e-book is not to frustrate the buyer who wants to print out a few extra copies. I say let him. The warning is designed to discourage unscrupulous online operators from taking your e-book and selling it – or giving it away – to their own customers.

An even better idea is to make sure you profit from your information products, even if pirated copies do make the rounds.

How do you do this?

In every one of your information products, include plenty of links to the micro-sites for your other products. That way, the more your e-book is passed around, the more clicks you can expect to get on those links – and the more additional sales you can expect to make.

One more idea…

My colleague FG puts a boxed notice in his e-books. It says that the reader can go to a special URL and claim a valuable FREE bonus gift. The catch: He has to be a registered owner of the e-book to do it.

FG says that people are so intrigued by the free bonus that those who already have a pirated copy of his e-book will go online and buy it – just to qualify for the free bonus.

[Ed. Note: Copywriting master and experienced info-marketer Bob Bly is coming out of his self-imposed retirement from public speaking to appear at ETR's 2008 Info-Marketing Bootcamp. He - along with 11 other business-building and marketing experts - will reveal a proven technique that can help you make at least $100,000 in 2009. Learn the details here.

For expert insights into the world of direct marketing, be sure to sign up for Bob's free monthly newsletter, The Direct Response Letter. Do so today and get over $100 in free bonuses.]

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My Beef With Subway

Monday, September 1st, 2008

When you are imprecise with language in copywriting, it conveys an impression of sloppy thinking… and can also undermine your credibility. A case in point: the new commercial from Subway that proclaims “Everybody wants to try Subway’s hot beef sandwich.”

The problem is that word “everybody” – which is so transparently an exaggeration that it defies believability.

Do people on low-carb diets who are avoiding bread want this sandwich – which comes, of course, on bread? What about vegetarians? Do they really want to try this new beef sub? How about people who don’t like subs… people who don’t eat fast food… people who prefer ham or chicken to beef?

A better approach: “Beef lovers nationwide can’t wait to sink their teeth into Subway’s new Hot Beef Special Sandwich.”

This identifies the audience (meat eaters) and conveys the image of desirability and popularity while avoiding the obvious lie of “everybody.”

[Ed. Note: Copywriting expert Bob Bly knows the secrets behind writing copy that sells - and including specifics is one of the easiest ways to make your copy stronger. You can get a free copy of Bob's new report on marketing to the ever-growing market of "grumpy old men" here.

And be sure to catch Bob at ETR's Internet Ultimatum Bootcamp. He's agreed to come out of retirement to speak at this event. If you've never heard one of his advice-packed, humor-filled presentations, this could be your last chance. Learn more here.]

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A Non-Obvious Way to Build Your E-List

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

Internet marketers are always looking for new ways to build their e-lists quickly and at an affordable cost. So let me tell you about an under-used, non-obvious technique for adding new subscribers to your opt-in list. Using it, I added over 500 new subscribers to my e-list in just a few days – and these were buyers, not just prospects.

What I did was create an e-book with broad appeal to my major markets, which are copywriters and Internet marketers. (In case you are curious, the title of the e-book is “Writing E-Books for Fun and Profit,” and you can see the landing page at myveryfirstebook.com.)

I also priced it to sell. The cover price is $59. But for a limited time, it is available from me for only $19 – a discount of $40 off the regular rate.

Then I approached my affiliate with the biggest list and asked if they wanted to offer this e-book to their subscribers.

Here’s the twist: Instead of offering them the usual 50 percent commission, I told them they would get a 100 percent commission.

That’s right. They’d keep all the money.

It worked like a charm.

My affiliate thought the e-book would appeal to their list, which makes sense, because they target some of the same markets (copywriters, Internet marketers) I do. And with a 100 percent commission, they had a bigger-than-usual financial incentive to offer my e-book to their list.

So, on a Thursday, they sent a solo e-mail blast to their subscribers that had a hyperlink to my landing page for the product. It’s a special affiliate hyperlink, which makes it possible for us to track the source of the orders.

What happened?

Four days later, by Monday, we had over 500 orders.

The affiliate is happy, because they made over $10,000 on the deal. (The orders were placed on my landing page using my shopping cart, so I will write them a check for that amount.)

Their subscribers are happy, because they got a great e-book worth $59 for only $19.

And how do I win? Since their subscribers bought the e-book directly from me, I just added 500 new subscribers to my online list.

You could argue that by not collecting my usual 50 percent of the sale, I gave up $5,000 in profits. But not really. Because if I had not given a 100 percent commission as an incentive, this affiliate, who owns a big and profitable list, would not have sent an e-mail promoting my product to their readers.

My out-of-pocket cost to fulfill these 500 orders is virtually zero, because the product is a downloadable PDF file. Best of all, these are top-quality subscribers I am adding to my list. Unlike most list-building techniques, which add names through free offers, all of these new names are buyers, not prospects. They’ve already spent $19 with me. And buyers are always better than inquirers (those who join your list as a result of a free offer).

The lesson is threefold.

1. If you want affiliates and other online marketers to promote you to their lists, you have to make it financially worth their while to do so.

For a $19 product, a 50 percent commission means the affiliate gets only $9.50 per order. That’s just too little to compensate them for the slot in their e-mail schedule that you are asking them to give up to promote your product. However, a 100 percent commission on a $19 product is equivalent to the standard 50 percent commission on a $38 product. That’s still a relatively modest profit per order. But it was sufficient to get my affiliate to go forward with the promotion.

2. Price the product low. If you attempt this technique with a high-end product, you’ll get few orders – and add few new names to your e-list.

3. Create a product with broad appeal for this 100 percent commission affiliate deal. That way, you capture the maximum number of new names from each affiliate’s mailing list.

Why is this technique of offering affiliates 100 percent of the sale used so infrequently by Internet marketers? It’s psychological: Even though you know it makes sense, writing that big commission check to your affiliate is painful. But it shouldn’t be. It costs you nothing out of pocket. And you add all those new subscribers without paying a dime for online advertising.

One other tip: On the landing page for the product, state clearly that $19 is a special time-limited offer, and that once it expires, the price will go up. This gives visitors an incentive to buy now and not put it off, maximizing your conversion rates.

[Ed. Note: Building your list is a critical part of making any online business successful. Get proven strategies for finding new customers with ETR's 5 Days in July DVD Library. You'll get time-tested advice on starting an Internet business from experts who've done it themselves. Learn how to get your copy here.

Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter, a successful Internet marketer, and the author of more than 70 books. Get more of Bob's advice by subscribing to his free e-zine, The Direct Response Letter. Do so today and get a free gift worth $116.]

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How to Design Written Materials for Older Folks Like Me

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

Vision impairments increase with age – something to keep in mind when putting together any written materials aimed at the over-50 crowd. Time spent modifying your layout for them will more than pay for itself in increased audience response.

Here are four suggestions:

Maximize contrast between the typography and the background. Reason: More contrast makes it easier to distinguish an image. This is especially true of the contrast in color between text and paper.
As for type size, yes, older readers prefer large type. But type style matters too. Avoid ornate typefaces and the overuse of italics. Choose a serif type.
A bit more spacing between lines enhances readability. Avoid the extensive use of ALL CAPS and type reversing out of a solid background or screen.
Indenting paragraphs improves readability. Same with smaller blocks of copy and shorter lines of type.

(Source: Writing That Works)

[Ed. Note: Sometimes, attracting your ideal customer is as simple as making a few changes in the design of your promotion. Sometimes, it's as simple as mastering a few classic techniques. Learn how to get any customer, every time, right here.

And be sure to download your FREE copy of author and copywriting master Bob Bly's Marketing to GOM: 10 Tips for Selling to the Age 50+ Male Market right here.]

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Which Expert Will You Trust Your Business Success To?

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

The vast majority of entrepreneurs I meet – even mom-and-pops and small-business owners who operate out of their homes – spend thousands of dollars on hiring so-called experts to advise them on how to make their businesses more successful.

Sometimes, the expert’s advice works out, the investment is recouped, and the entrepreneur is better off for consulting with a professional. Other times, the expert’s advice is either useless or wrong. The business owner has thrown thousands of dollars he can’t afford to lose down the drain, and sees no improvement in his bottom line, productivity, efficiency, or operations.

Since I am frequently on both sides of the table – I sell my services as a copywriter and I also buy lots of services for my little Internet marketing business – I have a bit of advice that might save you from this agony… and enable you to select advisors who can actually help you.

In my experience, there are three types of experts for hire: the teacher, the practitioner, and the teacher/practitioner.

Teachers are those who give training, speeches, and seminars… write books and blogs and columns… sell their expertise as consultants or coaches – but don’t actually practice what they preach.

You know the expression “Those who can do; those who can’t teach.” I don’t think it’s always true… but these teachers have never proven that they can do what they talk about. That’s because, for the most part, they’ve only taught it or advised others how to do it.

An example of a “teacher expert” is Peter Drucker. He is revered as a management guru, and writes endless books and gives speech after speech advising CEOs on how to be great managers and leaders. But by his own admission, he has never been the chief executive of any company. (Running his own consulting business does not count.)

Practitioners are those who know about a particular skill or area because, rather than writing books or articles about it, they are personally successful at it.

An example is Gary Bencivenga, who is arguably one of the greatest copywriters who ever lived. Yet until his retirement, Gary – to the best of my knowledge – never wrote a book, article, or column on marketing. Nor was he a speaker at marketing conferences.

The third type of expert, the teacher/practitioner, is an active practitioner who is also a writer, speaker, and teacher.

A good example of this is Michael Masterson, who writes best-selling books on business and entrepreneurship based on his decades of experience building and growing many successful companies. Some of the companies he has been involved with have annual sales ranging from $10 million to $100 million – and beyond.

So, which type of expert should you hire – and when?

If you are a seminar organizer or meeting planner, most of your speakers are probably teachers. That’s because speaking is how they make their living, so they actively seek these engagements. (Practitioners usually shun speaking engagements, because they are too busy making money running their companies.)

You may think hiring a professional speaker to give a professional speech makes sense. After all, you want someone who knows the topic and can communicate it in a clear, motivating, and entertaining fashion.

The problem is that the teacher’s knowledge is all theoretical – gleaned from research and observation and thinking, but not from actually doing. Therefore, the teacher thinks he knows what works… but, in reality, he is just making educated guesses.

MA, a professional speaker who also owned and operated several successful insurance agencies, once said that nobody should be a full-time speaker – because if you are not practicing what you preach, you really don’t know what you are talking about.

I agree. And so does Early to Rise! All the speakers at Early to Rise conferences are successful in the subjects they speak about. What they have learned, they know from proven experience, not academic theory or guesswork.

Yes, you can hire a teacher as your seminar presenter or keynote speaker. Many can deliver a rousing talk that gets a standing ovation. But their expertise rarely extends beyond the content of that talk. And this shallowness inevitably comes through in both their presentation and their interaction with attendees after they step down from the platform.

If you are a small-business owner, you should never hire pure teachers.

Think about it. Let’s say you want to hire someone to manage a pay-per-click ad campaign for your company. Do you really want to take advice from someone who has, over his lifetime, done fewer actual PPC ad campaigns than you have? Someone who has only written a book based on studying the PPC campaigns of others – real entrepreneurs with the guts to actually put their own money where their mouth is?

The bottom line?

Your key business advisors and vendors should, first and foremost, have long experience – and a terrific track record – in the discipline for which you seek their help. Which means they should all be practitioners or practitioner/teachers.

The advantage of practitioner/teachers over practitioners is that their information is usually organized better, because they’ve already put it together as a seminar, workshop, or book. Plus, they have an enhanced ability to clearly and efficiently explain what they do (and why).

This gives you the best of both worlds. As a client, you get the practitioner/teacher expert’s in-depth experience and authoritative knowledge. You also benefit from his ability to educate you. That way, over time, you can learn to do more and more on your own – if you are so inclined.

[Ed. Note: You can get the benefit of decades of experience in business-building and money-making by signing up for ETR's 5 Days in July DVD Library. You'll get proven advice on starting an Internet business from experts who've done it themselves. Learn how to get your copy here.]

[Talk about a Practitioner/Teacher - Robert W. Bly is a freelance copywriter, a successful Internet marketer, and the author of more than 70 books. Get Bob's advice - all based on his own experience - by subscribing to his free e-zine, The Direct Response Letter. Do so today and get a free gift worth $116.]

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How Would You Rate This Headline?

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

I received a mailing today promoting a stock newsletter. In big, bold type, the headline on the outer envelope reads: “Inside: Three stocks set to quadruple in price in the next 12 months.”

Now, if you are new to marketing financial products… you might think this is a good headline. But to anyone with experience, it’s fairly lame.

The problem is, I – and everyone else on the mailing lists used in financial direct mail – have read this headline (or others nearly identical) about a zillion times before. The lack of originality robs it of impact – and reminds us that it’s a pure sales pitch.

You can’t know this unless you are an active reader of financial direct mail. That’s why you need to be on as many mailing lists as you can – online and offline – and read all the print and Internet promotions that come your way.

Not only does this give you marketing ideas and show you what’s working, it also educates you on what has been done to the death – and should be avoided in your own promotional efforts.

Doctors, engineers, and scientists keep up with the latest developments and current activity in their respective fields. Marketers must, too.

[Ed. Note: Keeping up with the latest in your field may not be easy. But if you have experts to guide you along the path to success, you're sure to reach it much faster. Learn how you can get dozens of ETR's top business builders to show you the ropes right here.

Author and copywriting master Bob Bly offers expert insights into the world of direct marketing each month in his free newsletter, Direct Response Letter. Sign up today and get over $100 in free bonuses.]

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Playing the Slots

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

If you are building an Internet marketing business, you will soon start to get requests from people asking you to promote something of theirs by sending an e-mail to your list.

Or perhaps you are on the other end of that transaction, asking successful Internet marketers to promote your book or event. And when they say no or ignore you, as most probably do, you become dismayed or even angry.

In this article, I want to increase your chances of convincing other online marketers to promote you or joint venture with you.

To begin with, you have to understand slots – and their monetary value.

A "slot" in Internet marketing is one of the finite number of opportunities during the year when the Internet marketer can send an e-mail to his list. I say "limited," because you can’t send too many e-mails to your subscribers. If you do, you’ll annoy them. They’ll unsubscribe, and your valuable e-list will get smaller.

For those of us who publish our free e-zines monthly, twice a week is about the maximum e-mail frequency our subscribers tolerate from us. With two slots a week, that means we have approximately 100 slots a year.

Let’s say I gross $400,000 a year in my online marketing business. That means each slot is worth $4,000 in revenue.

If I take up one of those slots by sending an e-mail promoting something of yours for which I make no money (e.g., a free teleseminar), it costs me $4,000 in lost revenue. Even if you offer me an affiliate commission to sell one of your products to my list, I have to ask myself whether it’s going to make the $4,000 I need.

Often, the products people ask me to promote are priced too low… and the commission is too small… for me to give up a slot. And when I turn them down, they are disappointed or even offended.

TC sent me a review copy of his new book with a letter asking me to promote it to my list. It’s a paperback book with a $19.95 cover price… and TC was offering me a 20 percent commission.

That means my commission on each book sold would be about four bucks. So I’d have to sell 1,000 of them for it to be worth taking up a slot. And the chances of me selling 1,000 copies of someone else’s book are slim to nonexistent.

Okay. Let’s say you want to convince me… or another Internet marketer who has a list you want to reach… to promote something of yours to his subscribers. Here are the questions I would ask you… and the responses that would get me to consider your deal.

1. Who are you and how do I know you? If you subscribe to my online newsletter… or read my books… or we met at a seminar… or have a mutual acquaintance… say so. This is important, as I generally promote products only from people I know or have some connection with.

2. How would your product benefit my subscribers – i.e., how would they profit from its content? Answering this requires you to have a familiarity with my list, which you can easily get by subscribing to my free e-zine.

3. What is your product price and the affiliate commission? If the price is too low – less than $20 – my commission will be too low to make any money from it. I give a 50 percent affiliate commission on all my products – and I look for a 50 percent affiliate commission on products others ask me to promote.

The rule of thumb for pricing products sold via direct response – online and offline – is that the sales price should be at least 8 times the cost of goods. This formula allows you to give up 50 percent of the purchase price to an affiliate… and still collect 4 times your cost of goods on each unit sold. On extremely high-priced products… $1,000 or more… an affiliate commission of 25 percent is acceptable to most potential joint-venture partners, because it gives them $250 for each $1,000 unit sold.

One more thing: Before I would agree to a joint-venture deal with you, even if your responses to the above three questions are satisfactory, I will ask for a review copy of your product.

This is mandatory. When I promote your product to my subscribers, I am recommending it to them. And I can’t recommend something I haven’t seen.

As an entrepreneur looking for joint-venture partners online, you need to understand that, for most Internet marketers, their e-mail offers to their list are the primary way they make money and put food on the table. And the number of opportunities they have to make money by sending those e-mail offers is limited.

For an Internet marketer with 100 slots a year, each slot represents 1 percent of his gross annual income. Unless that online marketer is your best buddy, why would he give up 1 percent of his total income for the year to promote your book, event, or news… just because you think his subscribers should know about it?

Internet marketing is a serious game… and to get the players to joint venture with you, you have to propose a deal that’s profitable and beneficial to you both.

[Ed. Note: Now's your chance to discover the true secrets behind ETR's $300 million success story. Our team of business-building experts has broken down the whole process into bite-sized chunks - so you can implement them TODAY and start seeing results pretty much immediately. Find out about your shortcut to business success here.

Bob Bly is a copywriting master and the author of over 70 books. If you want expert insights into the world of direct marketing, sign up for his free monthly newsletter, Direct Response Letter. Do so today and get over $100 in free bonuses.]

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The Naked Truth About Naked Conversation

Monday, July 21st, 2008

Social media evangelists are in love with Twitter, Facebook, and their ilk because these networks enable continuous "naked" conversations.

When I started in the corporate world in the late 1970s, we too had naked conversations – in the cafeteria, at the coffee machine, and at a bar after work. But if we spent too much time in conversation during working hours, the boss would (understandably) break us up and send us back to our desks.

If you are spending endless hours reading posts, comments, and messages online, those are hours you are not spending on the tasks for which you are paid a salary – or, if you’re self-employed, on billable work.

Naked conversation advocates will tell me that without their never-ending online gossip sessions they would not be able to keep their fingers on the pulse of the marketplace. I disagree, and suggest these alternatives:

Become a people watcher. Observe them in restaurants, stores, and at the bowling alley.

Read a daily newspaper.

Watch TV news and listen to talk radio.

Talk with the person sitting next to you at the lunch counter or standing next to you in line at the bank.

Read the "Letters to the Editor" in your industry trade publications.

If your only exposure is to people who are as obsessed with blogs, Twitter, and Facebook as you are, I would argue that you are talking with a limited (albeit large) cross-section of the marketplace, and in a limited (online-only) way. My suggestions above allow you to participate in useful conversations during your free time, not your work time. As a result, you get more work done… and make more money.

Yes, social media gives you more of a voice than the newspaper or radio. But in conversation, you always learn more when you listen than when you talk.

[Ed. Note: Social media is relatively "new" when it comes to marketing. To excel at any form of marketing, you should master classic direct-mail principles. You can learn how - from two of the best direct marketers around - right here.

And be sure to sign up for Bob Bly's Direct Response Letter, which is packed with ideas for strengthening your marketing.]

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Marketing With Free Information

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

One of the easiest – and most effective – ways to generate more leads and orders from your marketing is to offer, as a bonus, a free special report.

But be careful: Your prospects already have too much to read and don’t really want a "report" per se. What they seek is valuable content that can help them solve a problem, do their job better, or make more money. If they think your free report can deliver some of that, they’ll respond to your e-mail or sales letter just to get their hands on it.

So how can you transform a ho-hum offer of yet another "free report" into a compelling free-content offer that sends your response rates soaring?

The most important factor determining the desirability of your free special report is the topic: Does it cover something your prospects need or want to know? Great topics for free special reports include tips, predictions, news, interpretations, analyses, case studies, and discussions of controversial issues.

Example: The publisher of a newsletter found that its most popular feature was the monthly "You Be the Judge" column, which summarized a court case and challenged the reader to guess the outcome. Subscription rates skyrocketed when he began offering a "Best of ‘You Be the Judge’" compilation as a bonus to new subscribers.

I’ve found that anything having to do with making money works well as a free information bonus.

Example: Another newsletter publisher found that when they offered a reprint of their annual industry salary survey as a bonus for new subscribers, orders for new subscriptions increased 25 percent.

Giving your free report an attractive or compelling title also helps boost response rates.

Example: During the Clinton years, American Spectator offered a special report titled something like "Inside the Clinton White House." (That may not be the exact title. It was years ago, and memory fades.)

Put a price in the upper-right corner of the front cover of each report that you intend to use as a premium. Then set up a "reports library" on your website where visitors can purchase the reports for that price. That way, when you give them away as free bonuses and specify the value, you can legitimately say: "This report sells for $29 on our website, but reply today and it’s yours free."

Here’s a gimmick that works well if you want to use the report in your marketing to build your image as a leader in your industry: Instead of using an 8-1/2" x 11" page size, make it digest size (5-1/2" x 8-1/2") and publish it as a small paperback book. Let’s say the report is tips about leadership. Print the title on the front cover in reverse – white letters on a black background – and call it "The Little Black Book of Leadership Secrets." ("Secrets" and "Little Black Book" create an aura of importance and exclusivity that will make people want the information.) Then, when you offer it free in your marketing, you can position your company as "The Folks Who ‘Wrote the Book’" on Topic X.

Since so many marketers offer free reports, you may stand out by offering free information via other media – e.g., audio CDs, videos, software, online tools.

Here’s a way to quickly and easily create that kind of premium: Promote a paid teleconference to your list and record it. Then duplicate it on audio CD and offer that as a bonus. If you charged $79 for the teleconference, you can legitimately say the CD has a value of $79. (That’s important, because the higher the perceived value of the free bonus, the greater the demand for it will be.)

One final tip: If you sell to the federal market, keep in mind that government employees are not allowed to accept free gifts worth more than $25. So the price on your free book or report aimed at them should be $24.97.

[Ed. Note: Now's your chance to discover the true secrets behind ETR / Agora's $300+ million success story. Our team of business-building experts has broken down the whole process into bite-sized chunks - so you can implement them TODAY and start seeing results pretty much immediately. For your shortcut to business success, click here.

Bob Bly is a copywriting master and the author of more than 70 books. For expert insights into the world of direct marketing, sign up for his free monthly newsletter, Direct Response Letter. Do so today and get over $100 in free bonuses.]

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Are You Suffering from “RSS Feed Overload”?

Friday, July 11th, 2008

When Yale librarian Rutherford Rogers said "We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge," he could have been talking about Chris Schroeder. In a speech at the Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA) conference recently, Schroeder, CEO of Health Central Network, said RSS feeds are a great way to keep up with what’s new in your field. He then showed a slide of his own RSS feed inbox, and noted that it had 2,000 items awaiting his attention.

Mr. Schroeder, I have news for you. If you have 2,000 unread items in your RSS feed, it is anything BUT an ideal way of getting information. Over-subscribing to free content via RSS feeds is an invitation to information overload disaster – equivalent to getting a Sunday New York Times delivered to your door every day of the year.

Schroeder and many other people I know subscribe to so many data sources, their RSS feeds deliver hundreds or thousands of items a week – more than they could ever hope to read. I believe Mr. Schroeder either over-estimates his own need for information or is unable to distinguish between what he needs to know vs. what he would like to know.

These days, more information is published online every 24 hours than you could read in five years. The key to managing it is to be more selective, not less. So ruthlessly unsubscribe to e-zines, RSS feeds, etc. until you get only what you absolutely need.

Even then, you won’t have time to read even a small fraction of what you get. But at least your inbox will be somewhat under control.

[Ed. Note: There's no doubt you need to be super-selective when deciding what is valuable - and what's a time stealer. Learn how to take control of your life - and even create time for yourself - right here.

Make sure you check out the Direct Response Letter, Bob Bly's e-zine, filled with useful strategies for improving your marketing. Sign up today and get over $100 in free bonuses.]

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How Much E-Mail Is Too Much?

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

The other day, one of my online subscribers, CR, complained about a famous Internet marketer. "I unsubscribed from his list," she told me haughtily. "As soon as I joined, I got e-mails from him once or twice every day – and there’s no one I (or anybody else) need to hear from that much."

This begs the question: How frequently can you e-mail your online subscribers?

Or, said another way: How much e-mail is too much?

People have lots of opinions about this issue, which they support with arguments that are both passionate and logical.

The problem is: Their opinions are wholly subjective.

The fact is: There’s an easy way to objectively and accurately determine the optimal e-mail frequency for your online subscribers.

How does it work?

Well, every time you send another e-mail blast to your list, a small portion of your subscribers will opt out.

Why?

They decide that your content is no longer of value to them… or you are doing too much selling… or they don’t like your style… or you are e-mailing them too often.

The "opt-out rate" – the percentage of online subscribers who unsubscribe from your list per e-mail blast – is a Web metric that you can measure. A 0.1 percent opt-out rate means that if you have 10,000 online subscribers, 10 unsubscribed after getting your most recent e-mail.

When your opt-out rate is around 0.1 percent or less, you can rest assured that you are not sending too many e-mails to your list too often. If you were, the opt-out rate would be higher.

But when your opt-out rate gets above 0.2 to 0.4 percent, you are losing subscribers at too rapid a rate. For instance, if you have 10,000 subscribers and you’re losing 100 subscribers every time you send an e-mail to your list, you have an opt-out rate of 1.0 percent. That’s much too high.

You should measure and keep track of your opt-out rates with every e-mail you send.

Adjust your e-mail frequency, ratio of sales pitches to content, message length, and topics until your opt-out rate hovers around 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent or less.

Then watch what happens if you increase the frequency of your e-mails – if, for instance, you go from one e-mail per week to two.

If you get a sharp upward spike in the opt-out rate – double or more – your subscribers are telling you they don’t want to hear from you that often. And you should probably drop the extra e-mail.

On the other hand, if you add an extra e-mail per week and the opt-out rate does not rise significantly, you are safe in continuing at the higher frequency.

But should you?

Yes.

We have lots of preconceived notions about what our market wants – and doesn’t want. And one of those preconceived notions is that people don’t want too much e-mail. But when the opt-out rate is low, your subscribers are telling you they DO want to hear from you often via e-mail.

That’s important, because the more times you can reach out to your list with a valuable offer, the more money you make online.

My colleague Amy Africa, a top consultant in business-to-business (B2B) e-marketing, says that one of the most common online marketing mistakes is not e-mailing your list frequently enough.

And if you are making that mistake… you are leaving money on the table.

[Ed. Note: You can make sure that you're giving your customers exactly what they need AND that you're making the most money you can. The best way to do it? Master one vital skill. Learn how from two experts.

And be sure to sign up for author and copywriting master Bob Bly's Direct Response Letter. Do so today and get over $100 in free bonuses.]

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How to Land a New Job… or a New Client

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

A healthcare company was interviewing five candidates for a marketing manager’s position. Four of the candidates brought in and showed portfolios of ad campaigns they had done for previous employers in the healthcare industry. The fifth brought no portfolio. Instead, he turned the interview into a discussion about the company’s marketing objectives, current results, goals for improvement, and how they measured marketing effectiveness.

Of course, he got the job. "They were impressed that I focused on their business and not on my work," he told me.

Recommendation: In any selling situation – whether you’re selling a product or yourself – shift the conversation as quickly as you can away from yourself and onto your prospect, his business, and his needs. Though they may pretend otherwise, people are always more interested in themselves – and what you can do for them – than they are in you or what they can do for you.

[Ed. Note: Selling is the most financially valuable skill you can learn. To find out how to get the hard-won secrets and top selling strategies of two direct marketing masters, continue reading here...

And for even more on how to improve your selling skills, check out the Direct Response Letter, Bob Bly's monthly e-newsletter. Sign up today and get over $100 in free bonuses.]

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How to Sell With Statistics

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

Whenever I am writing copy, I like to gather lots of statistics on my topic.

The great thing about statistics is that you can use them to support almost any sales point you want to make in your promotion.

For example, marketers often cite the number of units that’ve been sold to prove that their product is popular and, therefore, must be good.

In the good old days, McDonald’s restaurant signs would proclaim "Over 1 Billion Sold." Of course, that really wasn’t proof that McDonald’s burgers are good. Many restaurants make hamburgers that are better. But it gave customers the impression that McDonald’s burgers were exceptional.

Ironically, a statistic that says the exact opposite – a number showing the product does not sell well – can also be used to make a case for superior quality.

Perhaps you have received a catalog for Harry & David, the mail-order company that sells, among other things, Royal Riviera Pears. The copy for the pears says, "Not one person in a thousand has ever tasted them." It makes the product sound exclusive, special, rare, and desirable. But what it really means is that very few people buy them!

Here’s another example of how statistics can be skewed in your favor…

I was asked to write a brochure for a company that did research for manufacturers. I asked the client about his competition and where his firm stood among them.

"That’s a negative," he said. "There are hundreds of small mom-and-pop operators doing this kind of research out of their homes. But there are only five real companies – and of those five, we are, unfortunately, the smallest."

So in the brochure copy, I wrote: "XYZ Research Associates is one of the 5 largest industrial research companies in North America" – turning a potential negative into a bragging point.

A few additional guidelines for using numbers in your marketing copy to make a case for your product or service:

Write your numbers using the largest unit of measurement. "A quarter of a century" sounds longer than "25 years."\

Round off to make a number sound bigger. If the client tells me his newsletter has 2,015 subscribers, I talk about "thousands of satisfied subscribers."

Use "negative statistics," saying what the product doesn’t do or have, rather than what it does do or have. For instance, club soda has "no sodium, no artificial flavors, no calories."

Prove statistical points with pictures. Compare two quantities with a bar chart, or show a price chart illustrating how shares of the stock you recommended went up.

Use a persuasive statistic at least three times: in the body copy, in the chart or graph, and in a caption for the chart or graph.

Make unexpected comparisons to dramatize numbers. You might, for example, say "More people have died from malaria over the past century than are now living in the United States" – much more memorable than just stating the number of malaria victims.

[Ed. Note: Using statistics to your advantage is a simple way to capture your prospect's attention and get him to buy. Many direct-marketing techniques are just as easy to learn - and just as effective at helping you get new customers. Master direct marketing, and you'll never want for money again.

Learn more about direct marketing from Bob Bly's free e-letter. Sign up today and get more than $100 in free bonuses.]

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How to Hire a Freelance Copywriter

Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

Hiring a freelance copywriter is no small responsibility. Make the right choice, and you get great copy that brings in leads, sales, and profits – in bushels. Make the wrong choice, and you end up pouring thousands of dollars down the drain. Fortunately, you can avoid that particular heartache (most of the time, anyway) simply by knowing what to look for in a direct-response copywriter.

Here are six questions that must be asked.

"Do you have experience in direct marketing?"

The answer should be "yes," and backed up by samples.

"Do you have experience in my industry?"

Previous experience dealing with your industry or product is a great plus to look for in a freelance copywriter. It helps to have a writer who already speaks the language and knows the buzzwords. Also, a writer with experience in your industry can offer valuable insight and guidance a neophyte cannot provide.

"If I wanted to hire you, how would I go about it?”

Some writers insist on payment up front, a practice many clients won’t agree to. Others get advance retainers. Some simply send a bill when the job is done. The important thing is to make sure you are comfortable with the writer’s prices, fee arrangement, and working methods.

"What is your style?"

Get samples from several writers, and pick the one whose approach seems "in sync" with your own. Don’t hire a writer whose style you don’t like and then ask him to write in a different style. It just won’t work.

"How well has your copy pulled?"

It doesn’t hurt to ask the writer how his copy has pulled for other clients. Just don’t weigh this information too heavily. After all, most freelancers, when asked, will naturally say that their copy is successful. Also, keep in mind that many freelancers do not have access to timely, accurate response figures.

"Who have you worked for?"

Lack of a client list means you are probably talking to a writer who is just starting out in freelancing (not necessarily a drawback). A long client list tells you the writer has been in business a while and is probably somewhat successful. However, keep in mind that it’s easier for a freelancer to get a small project from AT&T than it is for a major ad agency to win the entire AT&T account. So don’t let the client list impress you toomuch.

[Ed. Note: If you have the cash, you can hire your own copywriter. But if you're just starting out, you should consider mastering the art of copywriting on your own. That's just one element of business building you'll learn with ETR's Internet Money Club Independent Learner Edition. Learn the details here.

For useful strategies to improving your ad campaigns, check out the Direct Response Letter, Bob Bly's monthly e-newsletter. Sign up today and get over $100 in free bonuses.]

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Direct Marketing Is Like Baseball

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

I heard on the radio a few weeks ago that the Florida Marlins, with 23 wins and 14 losses, has the best record in Major League baseball today.

But that means the best-performing team in professional baseball loses four out of every 10 games it plays.

And remember: That’s the best record in baseball.

What’s ironic is that businesspeople who accept this statistical truth about baseball without a second thought… go bonkers when even one of their marketing programs fails.

Experienced direct marketers know – and expect – a percentage of their test campaigns to under-perform the current control, or even lose money. They accept this fact without despair, because they know that if one test mailing in every two… or every three… or even every five is a winner, they can make a lot of money.

Inexperienced direct marketers don’t get this.

As a result, countless small businesses test direct marketing once every few years. And if they don’t hit a home run the first time at bat, loudly proclaim "Direct mail doesn’t work"… and abandon it.

If you’re a business owner or marketing professional, is there a better way to get direct marketing to work for you? Yes. And it’s nothing more than doing more testing than you do right now.

Let’s say you are planning to mail 5,000 postcards to drive people to a Web page.

You just can’t decide which of two headlines you like: "Tastes Great" or "Less Filling." If you randomly pick just one, your risk of going with the wrong sales appeal – and, therefore, having your postcard mailing bomb – is 50 percent.

A much better approach is to split the postcard mailing into two batches, half with the headline "Tastes Great" and the other half with "Less Filling." Each drives traffic to a different URL so you can measure the click-through and conversion rates. Then you see which one generates the most leads.

Especially on the Web, testing different variations of a promotion is relatively quick, easy, and inexpensive. So if you create a long-copy landing page to sell a product on the Internet and your conversion rate is poor, don’t give up on the product. Instead, test different headlines, graphics, pricing, offers, premiums, subheads, and copy leads.

You’ll notice that one headline pulls slightly better than another… or one price generates 40 percent more orders.

Start incorporating the winners of those tests into your landing page and, in no time flat, you can take the promotion from being marginally profitable to being a real winner – all courtesy of testing.

I am amazed at how many marketers, both large and small, invest significant sums in developing products and promotions – both online and offline – and then just promote each of those products with a single promotion. With no testing of any kind.

If you are doing that, you are essentially hoping you’ll get a hit with only one chance at bat. In baseball, a .250 hitter who gets only one at-bat has a one in four chance of getting on base.

For product launches, the success rate is often as little as 10 percent – which means that a single promotion has only a one in 10 chance of making money. In other words, the odds are 10:1 against winning with a one-shot promotion.

By testing different elements of your promotion, you can significantly tip those odds in your favor.

Giving your marketing multiple chances to score a winner through testing is a much more sensible way to go, don’t you agree?

[Ed. Note: Testing is a major part of direct marketing. But it's not the only technique you need to know to increase your sales. For the inside scoop on a $40 billion a year industry from two marketing masters, continue reading here.

Make sure you check out the Direct Response Letter, Bob Bly's monthly e-newsletter. Bob's a freelance copywriter, the author of over 70 books, and a marketing expert - so you're sure to find useful strategies for improving your campaigns. Sign up today and get over $100 in free bonuses.

Correction: In the 6/5 issue of Early to Rise, we mistakenly calculated that the baseball team referenced loses six out of every ten games. In fact, the team loses four out of every ten games.]

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Do You Charge So Much Your Customers Complain?

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

An article in Circulation Management states: “Your subscribers should be complaining about their subscription price. If they’re not, then you’re not charging enough.”

I get the logic of this: If your customers accept your pricing too readily, that indicates they would be willing to pay more – and, therefore, you should price your product or service accordingly. But I’m not sure I agree with it. It sounds like making your prices so high that customers find them a burden, and are unhappy paying them, is a good idea.

Do we really want our customers complaining about our prices? Should we, in fact, always charge the maximum price we can get away with for everything we sell?

Internet marketer Fred Gleeck has a rule for pricing information products: The price should be low enough that if you multiply it by 10, the product would still be worth buying at that price. Thus, a product with a value of $1,000 should cost no more than $100.

I’m more comfortable with Fred’s guideline than Circulation Management’s. Fred’s advice ensures that customers always get more than their money’s worth. Circulation Management’s ensures that they barely or rarely do.

Which do you think is better?

[Ed. Note: Pricing is just one marketing element that can help your products sell. Expert marketers Bob Bly and Michael Masterson put together dozens of the most effective direct marketing techniques they know to make up ETR's Direct Marketing Masters program. Get the details here.

Bob Bly - who is a freelance copywriter and the author of over 70 books - also writes a free monthly e-zine, Direct Response Letter. Sign up now and get more than $100 in free bonuses.]

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Why Good Prospects Don’t Return Your Phone Call

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

It happens to everyone in the service industry, all the time.

You get a phone call from a great prospect.

He’s a perfect fit for your service – and he seems ready to buy.

So you send him the information he requested.

And then you hear nothing more from him – despite your repeated attempts to get him on the phone.

"What happened?" you ask yourself, agonizing over this seemingly lost opportunity. "What did I do wrong?"

Relax. You didn’t do anything wrong.

"I don’t understand," you think. "He seemed so eager and interested when he first called. Did something happen?"

Yes, something happened. And here, more likely than not, is what that something is…

The day he called to inquire about your service, he had a pressing problem that he wanted to solve fast. But priorities can change in a week, overnight, even in a minute. And suddenly, the problem he called you about is at the bottom of his priority list instead of the top.

However, you don’t know this. And so getting the prospect on the phone is still at the top of your priority list. And that’s where the disconnect is: Closing the deal is now much more important to you than it is to him.

Can you change that?

Some sales trainers would say yes, and give you a bunch of techniques for making the prospect’s need more urgent. But those techniques are largely useless. Prospects move according to their timetable, not yours – and there is nothing you can do to change it.

So how do you save the sale?

Remember, the prospect still has the problem he called you about. And he still needs a solution.

Your challenge is to gain "top of mind" awareness – to implant your service in his mind and link it to the nature of the problems you solve. Then, when the problem pops up and becomes a priority again in a week or a month or a year from now – and it will – he will think of you.

And the way to make that happen is through good old-fashioned follow-up.

If you sell a professional, creative, consultative, or technical service, the following "Triple Play" Follow-Up System can help you increase your closing rate of leads to sales by 50 percent or more.

There are three components to the system: managed contact, automated contact, and random contact.

Let’s take a look at each one. They’re all simple, and anyone can do them.

1. "Managed contact" means you use contact-management software – such as Goldmine or Act – to instruct your PC to automatically remind you when it’s time to touch base with any given prospect.

If you’ve never gotten any feedback from the prospect on the best time to contact him again, schedule regular phone calls or e-mails at an interval that makes sense to you. Perhaps monthly or quarterly. On the other hand, if the prospect has told you the best time to contact him ("Call me after Labor Day"), program your contact-management software to remind you accordingly.

2. "Automated contact" requires you to publish a monthly online newsletter that you distribute free to your clients and prospects.

When you get an inquiry or meet a potential client, you always ask, "May I sign you up for a free subscription to our online newsletter?" Nine out of 10 will say yes, allowing you to add their e-mail address to your subscriber list.

Now, a reminder of you and your service – your e-zine – appears in the prospect’s inbox every month. Which means you’ve got automated monthly follow-up for new leads.

3. "Random contact" means the follow-up isn’t planned. You just do it when the mood or opportunity arises.

The way I do this is to clip articles from the magazines and newspapers I read that would be of interest to particular clients or prospects. I scribble a brief note on each clipping (often nothing more than "John – FYI – Bob Bly"), put it in an envelope, and mail it.

And that’s the Triple Play Follow-Up System in a nutshell: managed contact… automated contact via an e-newsletter… and random follow-up via the mailing of clippings.

Any one of these follow-up methods can help make you stand out in a prospect’s mind – and separate you from your competitors. But the 1-2-3 Triple Play Follow-Up is an unbeatable combination for imprinting your name indelibly on the prospect’s memory… so when a need for your service does arise, he calls you first.

[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 70 books. Together with Michael Masterson, Bob has put together a comprehensive program that reveals insider secrets of direct marketing. Keep in mind that you can use direct marketing to help you grow any business - whether it's a brick-and-mortar store or an online company. Learn the details here.

Sign up for Bob's free monthly e-zine, Direct Response Letter, and get more than $100 in free bonuses.]

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The Only 3 Bits of Copy Worth Agonizing Over

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

One of the most labor-intensive, time-consuming marketing tasks is copywriting. Not necessarily writing the copy… but agonizing over what has been written.

As a copywriter, I do this all the time. I fret to an insane degree over every sentence, reading the copy over and over again, questioning whether the wording could be stronger.

It literally keeps me up at night.

Marketers do the same thing. They mark change after change on a nearly finished promotion, agonizing over whether the copy says exactly the right thing, in exactly the right way.

The irony, of course, is that, in most situations, all this agonizing is for naught.

I don’t mean to say that copy is unimportant. But most of the time, whether you go with "version A" or "version B" wouldn’t make one iota of difference in your response rate.

So I DO think you should agonize over your copy… but only a small fraction of it.

Specifically, here are three "hot spots" where what you say – and how you say it – really, really matters:

1. The first hot spot is determined by its position in the promotion.

In a standard, #10 direct-mail package, critical copy is the teaser on the outer envelope and the headline and lead of the sales letter. In a magalog, it’s the copy on the front cover… the inside front cover… the headline and lead on page 3… and the back cover.

These sections are worth stressing over, because different wording can result in dramatic increases or decreases in your response rates.

2. The second hot spot is where you describe the central message, theme, or idea of your selling proposition.

For instance, do you position your newsletter’s recommendations on energy stocks as a way for your reader to hedge his portfolio against a bear market triggered by rising oil prices? Or do you talk about how he can profit from the "next big thing" in energy investing – which, according to your editor, is that crude oil will reach $200 a barrel by the end of the decade?

The "big idea" of your promotion – and the way you express it – really matters.

3. The third hot spot is where you describe the offer.

Offering a "free information kit," for instance, usually generates more leads than the vaguer "send for more information." The idea of a "kit" is somehow more tangible and sounds more valuable.

On the order form, changing even one word in the copy can mean the difference between a winner and a disaster – for instance, "$100 a year" vs. "$500 a year" or "10-day money-back guarantee" vs. "90-day money-back guarantee."

It is worth your time to continue to polish and fine-tune these three critical areas… until you feel confident that what you’ve got can work.

You could spend the same amount of time agonizing over everything else in your mailer. But since most of it won’t make much difference either way in the response and sales generated… well, why bother?

Sign up for Bob's free monthly e-zine, Direct Response Letter, and get more than $100 in free bonuses.]

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The Price Is Right

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Ask most experienced direct marketers "What’s the best price to charge for my product," and the answer will be: whatever the market will bear.

In direct marketing, we can test prices and quickly see which is the most profitable – generating the highest return on our marketing dollars (ROMD). And, surprisingly, tests show that higher prices sometimes generate more orders than lower prices. In one classic example, a publisher was offering a service teaching presentation skills to business executives. When they tested $197 vs. $297 in their advertising, $297 was the winner.

Most direct marketers conclude that if the higher price wins, they should go with that. But while this is a sensible strategy in most instances, are there any situations in which charging a too-high price may come back to bite you… even if your price tests show the higher price to be the winner?

I can think of several.

The first is when pricing professional services.

GD, a pricing expert, once told me that the ideal price level for professional services is in the middle of the top third – NOT "the most you can get."

Let’s say the hourly rates for service providers in your industry range from $100 at the bottom to $400 at the top.

You don’t want to be in the lower third of the price range, charging $100 to $200 an hour, because prospects equate a bargain price with inferior quality.

Pricing in the middle range, at $200 to $300 an hour, isn’t bad. But it makes you one of the herd – a commodity.

The top range is an hourly rate between $300 and $400. So by following GD’s advice, you would set your hourly rate at $350, smack dab in the middle of the upper third. This is high enough that you are perceived as a top professional in your field, but not so high that you are always the most expensive provider of your service.

You see, if you are the highest-priced provider in your field, not only will new prospects hesitate before hiring you. "Every time you give your current clients an estimate, they will strongly consider bidding the job out for competitive quotes rather than just signing your agreement," said GD. "One day, they will try someone else, find they get equivalent service for a lower price, and you will never hear from them again."

Another problem with charging outrageously high prices is that it creates ill will between buyer and seller. The buyer feels ripped off, and complains loudly about things he might otherwise let pass. Also, if you charge a premium price and you fail to deliver the premium results you promised, that client will never hire you again… and will badmouth you to others.

Here’s another sign that your prices are too high: a spike in your refund rate.

So how do you put a logical limit on your pricing?

My friend, information marketing guru Fred Gleeck, has a simple rule. "I don’t sell a product unless I truly believe the content is worth at least 10 times the price I am charging," he says.

Then there is an ethical question: Given our free market society, is it okay for a drug company to charge a price for a proprietary medication that only the wealthiest patients can afford – especially when doing so effectively sentences poor people with the disease to death?

Fortunately, most of us don’t market products that people absolutely can’t live without… though some of us price our products as if that were the case. However, no matter what your pricing is – high, low, or in between – rest assured that some folks will complain about it.

Is there a way to prevent consumers from protesting against your high prices? Yes. By offering them options for getting your information cheaper. Like this:

The premium consulting service. A high level of personal service rendered by you or another top specialist and priced accordingly… in the thousands of dollars.
The mid-range coaching service. The customer does most of the work, but you offer advice, support, and encouragement through weekly telephone calls, online help, or some other mechanism.
Information products. You sell a manual, DVD, or audio learning system that teaches people how to solve a problem themselves. It’s reasonably priced (in the hundreds of dollars), and involves little or no service or support on your part.
A book. A how-to e-book or traditionally published book on your topic… selling for anywhere between $10 and $50.
Free content. How-to information delivered via your blog, podcasts, free Webinars, e-newsletters, special reports, or content-rich websites.

By giving your customers several ways to get your information inexpensively, it will be impossible for them to complain that you are too expensive or unfairly priced. You simply point out that if they can’t afford your high-end products and services, they can avail themselves of your expertise through your e-book, e-newsletter, or free online content.

You’ll be able to sleep at night, confident that people won’t be thinking of you as a greedy opportunist and besmirching your reputation.

Or at least not doing so loudly.

[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 70 books. Together with Michael Masterson, Bob has put together a comprehensive program that reveals insider secrets to direct marketing. Keep in mind that you can use direct marketing to help you grow any business - whether it's a brick-and-mortar store or an online company. Learn the details here.

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The Worst Self-Marketing Strategy Ever Devised

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

Many years ago, I taught a class at the Learning Annex in New York City on how to make a six-figure income as a freelancer. One student, JR, wanted to break into writing TV commercials for Madison Avenue, and he had devised what was (according to him) a brilliant self-marketing strategy for getting hired.

In actuality, it was the second-worst self-marketing idea I’d ever heard in my life.

JR told the class that he had written some "brilliant" TV commercials.

The Super Bowl was only a few weeks away at the time. JR’s strategy was to show up at the offices of Madison Avenue’s biggest ad agency and show the copy for his commercials to the creative director.

The creative director, he reasoned, was under tremendous pressure to produce great Super Bowl commercials for the agency’s clients. By bringing those great commercials with him, JR would save the day – and be hired at an enormous salary.

This was a terrible idea for all the obvious reasons:

All the commercials for the Super Bowl had been written and shot months earlier.
The creative director had never heard of JR. She didn’t know who JR was or whether he had any qualifications or talent. So the chances of her agreeing to see him were miniscule to none.
JR had no idea which of the agency’s clients were going to be running Super Bowl spots. Even if he did know, he hadn’t been briefed on the product positioning or the campaign strategy… so how could he possibly write commercials that achieved the clients’ marketing objectives?

I gently told JR – and the rest of the class – that doing work on spec for a client who hasn’t asked you to do so is an absolute waste of time. However, stupid as it is, there is a self-marketing strategy that’s even worse: giving an unsolicited critique of something a potential client has done – a new product design, an ad campaign, a website – in the hopes of being hired to fix it.

Why is giving an unsolicited critique even worse than doing unsolicited work on spec? Well, think about it.

You send a letter to a business telling them their website stinks… or their customer service people are idiots… or their product is lousy. There’s a good chance that the recipient of your letter is the person responsible for approving that website, training the customer service staff, or designing the product.

So right away, you have begun the relationship by insulting them – saying, in effect, "You don’t know what you are doing."

They probably don’t agree that they’ve done a bad job… or else they wouldn’t have produced the site, training, or product in the first place. You come along and give a contrary opinion – highly critical and negative. They think, "Who the heck are YOU, bub? Why should I listen to what YOU say?"

As they see it, your opinion is self-serving: You are a vendor, so your objective in reaching out to them is to get them to hire you. Worse, here you are, spending your time reviewing websites, calling companies that aren’t your clients, and telling them how bad their sites are – without being paid to do so.

This causes them to think that if you were really any good at what you do, you’d be swamped with projects – and not cold calling strangers trying to rustle up work.

I’ve frequently been on the receiving end of this "You’re doing it all wrong and I can help you fix it" strategy – especially from Web designers. And speaking as a prospect, I can tell you it not only doesn’t work with me, it’s also annoying and offensive.

Just last week, I got yet another such call from a Web designer.

"I was looking at your site and it really is poorly designed," TN, the Web designer, told me. "I would love to help you improve its performance."

"Do you know my marketing objective for my website?" I asked TN.

"Uh, no," he admitted.

"Well, TN," I said. "If you don’t know what I want the site to do for my business… and you don’t know its current performance metrics… how can you possibly know that you can improve it?"

I let him stutter and stammer for a few seconds, before politely ending the call.

My friend RA, who once ran a mail-order business selling information products for gamblers, was also a victim of the "You’re doing it all wrong and I can help you fix it" gambit.

SH, a newbie freelance copywriter, wrote RA an unsolicited two-page critique of his latest direct-marketing package. SH closed his letter by suggesting to RA that his marketing results would be greatly improved by letting a "professional copywriter" (like SA) work his magic on it.

RA and I both had a good laugh over this… because RA is universally acknowledged (except by SH, who didn’t recognize his name) as one of today’s top direct-response copywriters.

Irritated, RA sent SH a testy letter pointing out this fact… and noting that the package SH thought was so terrible was, in fact, a blockbuster control. Which made SH look stupid and silly.

Conclusion: Doing a critique OR work on spec for a potential client who has not asked for it seems, on the surface, a sensible approach to marketing your professional or technical services. But it is not.

My advice:

Never give unsolicited advice or criticism.
Don’t offer solutions until you really know what the problem is – and the only way you can really understand the problem is for the potential client to tell you.
If you want to show the potential client how smart you are, stop pontificating. Instead, ask intelligent questions and listen to the answers.

[Ed Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter, the author of more than 70 books, and co-creator of ETR's Direct Marketing Masters Edition program.

Sign up for Bob's free monthly e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and get more than $100 in free bonuses.]

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The 25-50-25 Formula for Business Success

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

"I was quite eager to learn about marketing, and began reading everything associated with it," one of my subscribers, KM, told me in a recent e-mail. "However, with AWAI’s Golden Thread e-zine, ETR, and, of course your insightful newsletter, I find myself reading more than applying. How do I sift through the worthy (but time-consuming) information that would benefit my business? Sometimes I force myself to read, fearful I may overlook some exceptional nugget. Help! Where do I stop?"

I hear similar stories all the time…

You are interested in some aspect of marketing – whether it is copywriting, Internet marketing, whatever. But you are overwhelmed by all the information being offered on the subject. (After all, we live in the Information Age.)

So you go "information crazy"… buying every course, attending every conference, reading every e-book, listening to every recording, and dialing into every teleseminar you can find.

Before you know it, a month… six months… or a year has gone by – and you are no closer to your business or career goal. That’s because you’ve spent all your time reading, studying, and learning the thing you are interested in… rather than actually DOING it.

Sadly, you are suffering from a syndrome I call "analysis paralysis."

All the information you are taking in has overloaded your circuits. You can’t process it all, sort through it, and figure out what to do first. So, instead, you do nothing. You take no action – other than to order yet another course or report to read.

You have become a marketing-information junkie – avoiding the harsh realities of the business world by retreating to your favorite comfy chair with yet another neat marketing book.

You spend all your time reading about starting a business. So there is no time left to actually start or run a business. You are an "armchair entrepreneur" – more enamored with the idea of entrepreneurship than the actuality.

Fortunately there is an easy solution: the 25-50-25 rule. It provides a simple guideline to help you get unstuck.

The rule says there are only three ways to learn a process (e.g., how to start an Internet business) or a skill (e.g., copywriting): studying, observing, and doing. The 25-50-25 rule says that to master a skill or process, and put what you learn into practical action, you must divide your time as follows:

No more than 25 percent of your time studying – i.e., reading books, going to bootcamps, attending workshops, listening to recordings in your car.
No more than 25 percent of your time observing – watching what successful people in your field are already doing. If, for example, you want to become a direct-mail copywriter, this means reading and analyzing the direct mail you get in your mailbox.
At least 50 percent of your time actually DOING the thing you are studying and observing. For example, if you want to sell information products on the Internet, you are spending 50 percent of your time creating your first product… designing your website… or building your list.

The idea is similar to Michael Masterson’s Ready, Fire, Aim approach. He says that you should take action right away, and then learn as you go.

Acquiring business knowledge is a worthwhile activity. But without action, that knowledge is worthless to you.

KM’s worry that, by not reading everything, he may miss a "nugget" of information is accurate: You will never know everything there is to know in your field, or even most of it.

But so what?

You don’t have to know everything – or even most of what there is to know – to succeed in most endeavors.

For example, there are hundreds of strategies for making money on the Internet. But you can make a six-figure annual income online using only a few of them, even if you never bother to learn the others.

In freelance copywriting, there are many top writers who write only one type of promotion. Or work in one narrow niche. And they make a fortune doing so.

When we were kids, our parents and teachers told us to study, study, study. But I see many people today much more enamored with studying and reading about marketing and entrepreneurship than actually doing.

Well, I understand that. Reading about marketing is fascinating – and fun. But the money is in the doing, not the reading.

Follow the 25-50-25 rule, and you’ll be doing – and making money – at least half the time.

[Ed Note: Freelance copywriter Bob Bly is the creator of The Direct Response Letter, the author of more than 70 books, and co-creator of ETR's Direct Marketing Masters Edition program.

Learn specific strategies for how to take action on all your business and personal goals with ETR's Total Success Achievement program. It's not too late to sign up and learn how to make your longest-held dreams come true. Click here to learn more.]

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Selling Lifestyle

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

At last year’s ETR/AWAI Bootcamp, I was chatting with Michael Masterson before we were to give a presentation together. We were talking about what motivates people to buy the kind of programs that ETR and AWAI market.

"People, especially as the years pass, don’t just care about becoming a millionaire or making six figures," he said. "What they are after most," said Michael, "is a certain kind of lifestyle… and living that life on their own terms. Money for them is mostly a means to that end."

I am convinced he is right, and marketers who simplistically trumpet "get rich" in their ads are making a mistake. Instead of selling the obvious benefit, they could be reaching their prospects on a deeper and more powerful level.

I saw this principle in action in a series of TV commercials for ITT Tech, an institute offering career training for adults.

In the old days, ads for career-training places implied that if you took their program you’d make a lot of money.

One of my clients in the career-training field back then ran an ad featuring a student standing proudly next to his new Jaguar. What the ad failed to mention was that he bought the Jaguar with money he won in a personal injury lawsuit, not with money he earned as a result of his training.

Anyway, the new ITT Tech ads are different. They feature interviews with students who graduated and are now gainfully employed. But they don’t talk about money.

One of the graduates talks about how proud his kids are to see him put on a suit and tie and go to work every day. Another one talks about the overseas business trips his company sends him on, and says how he loves to travel, try new foods, see different cultures, and meet new people on the job. He says nothing about money. His mother is in the commercial, too, saying how proud she is of her son.

I have coined a name for this type of marketing. I call it "lifestyle promotion."

The marketing for the ROM Cross Trainer is an excellent example. The machine looks something like Santa’s sleigh. It costs $14,615. The ad claims it can get you fit in only four minutes a day. And the company has been selling them since 1990.

Given the $14,615 purchase price, I’m guessing the target market for this product is upper-middle-class people earning six-figure incomes. They want to look and feel better, tone their bodies, and lose weight. They are told by doctors and trainers to exercise at least 20 to 30 minutes – maybe even an hour – anywhere from three to seven days a week.

But these are busy people. "I don’t have time to exercise!" they say. So the ROM Cross Trainer is the perfect fitness solution for them: You can get all the exercise you need – a complete workout – in just four minutes a day!

Plus, for many of them, time is money. For an executive or entrepreneur whose time is worth, say, $100 an hour, the ROM Cross Trainer is, again, the perfect fitness solution. By cutting his exercise time by five hours a week, it will pay for itself in less than eight months – making it a good investment instead of an expense.

Instead of taking time out of your day to train at the gym, your daily exercise routine is over in less than five minutes – without leaving your home or office. Instead of going to work out at night, you can get home at a reasonable hour and have dinner with your spouse and kids.

It’s all about lifestyle.

Lifestyle promotions can be written for almost any product and any market. But I find they work best with "lifestyle products" that have been "reverse engineered." In other words, instead of starting with the product, you start with the lifestyle desired by your target market. Then you design a product that helps them achieve it.

You can even write the lifestyle promotion first, creating copy you are confident will sell like gangbusters. Then you design a product that delivers on the promises in the copy.

MP, a copywriter, tells the story of how he was hired to write a direct-mail package to sell a book on decorating. As MP tells it, when he handed in his copy, the marketing director told him, "It’s great – but the book doesn’t fit what you’ve written."

MP swears the publisher had the author totally rewrite the book to fit his promotion. (And it was a big success.)

[Ed Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter, the author of more than 70 books, and co-creator of ETR's Direct Marketing Masters Edition program.

Sign up for Bob's free monthly e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and get more than $100 in free bonuses.]

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What’s Your “Signature Dish”?

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

In his reality TV show Kitchen Nightmares , celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey rescues a different failing restaurant each week from the incompetence of its owner and staff. One of his techniques is to help the restaurant create a "signature dish."

Of course, he does lots of other things too – from revamping the menu and teaching the chef how to cook better to training inept managers and cleaning up filthy kitchens. But the signature dish – a dish the place becomes known for – is one of his favorite ploys for reviving a floundering restaurant.

The signature dish, more often than not, is something simple. For one restaurant, it was a salad. For another, a burger. For a third, meatballs. In each case, the restaurant not only got back on its feet, but became known in the neighborhood for the dish.

So what does this have to do with your business?

In most industries, there is more competition now than ever – more companies competing with each other for business. And in an age of choice, it’s difficult to compete by being all things to all people.

A much better strategy is to specialize – in an industry, a product, a service, a method, a system, a task. In other words, to have a "signature dish."

My colleague MS is a good example.

A very successful copywriter, MS can – and does – write many different kinds of copy for his clients. But his specialty… his signature dish… is writing white papers.

Early on, he saw an opportunity created by the huge volume of white papers being published. He cleverly moved in to position himself as the preeminent white paper guru. He did this by creating a separate website on white papers. He also published and gave away a free white paper on how to write white papers.

These days, MS has almost more business than he can handle – writing white papers and other marketing materials for his clients.

Now many other copywriters… including yours truly… can write good white papers. But all else being equal, wouldn’t you rather go to the copywriter who is known as "the white paper guy"?

Of course.

Your prospects, too, want to deal with experts – people who are perceived as knowing what they are doing. Since you can’t know everything… nor is it realistic to claim you do… the only way to be a credible expert is to specialize.

If you are a lawyer, you can specialize in forming offshore corporations. If you are a dentist, you can specialize in pediatric dentistry. If you are a contractor, you can specialize in building decks and sun porches.

How do you choose your specialty? Here are some of the deciding factors:

What’s in demand? What does the market need? What will they pay a premium price for?
What market niches are underserved? In what specialties is there a crying need for more vendors?
What education and knowledge do you possess or can you acquire in a short time with reasonable cost and effort?
What niches do you already have experience in?
What do you enjoy doing? What do you have an aptitude for? What skills do you possess? What are you best at?

One word of warning: Don’t pick a specialty you loathe or have no talent for simply because it looks lucrative or has little competition. Remember the words of Aristotle, who said: "Where your talents and the needs of the marketplace intersect, therein lies your vocation."

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The Trouble With Cold-Calling

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

I won’t deny that cold-calling can work. Yet in 99 out of 100 cases, my advice is never to do it. The reason is that, even if the prospect on the other end of the phone expresses interest in your services, the very fact that you cold-called him puts you in a weak position – for three reasons.

First, people want to deal with vendors who are successful, not those who are desperate and need the work, right? Well, when you cold-call, your prospects assume that you are not busy. After all, if you were, you would not have time to sit there calling strangers and asking them for their business.

Second, cold-calling puts you at a disadvantage when estimating prices and quoting fees.

A large part of what determines how much you can charge is the law of supply and demand. When the demand for what you sell outweighs your supply, it’s a seller’s market and you can name your own price. By cold-calling, you are signaling to the prospect that the demand for your services is less than the amount of time you have available. Therefore, prospects generated by cold-calling are more price-resistant – and more likely to haggle.

Third, cold-calling puts you in a weak position when negotiating terms.

Again, cold-called prospects know that you want and need their business. You are perceived as being easy to hire, and, therefore, they feel they can dictate things like deadlines, payment schedules, and work arrangements.

Why is cold-calling so ineffective? Because it violates the "Silver Rule of Marketing."

The Silver Rule is a universal principle, first stated to me many years ago by my friend, marketing consultant Pete Silver. The Silver Rule of Marketing states: "It is better for them to come to you, rather than for you to go to them" (with "them" being your potential clients).

You can see why the Silver Rule makes sense.

If you go to a potential client, seek them out, ask for an audience, and plead with them to use your services, you are seen as needy and desperate. Your prospects think you can’t be any good at what you do. After all, if you were good, your schedule would be filled to overflowing – and you wouldn’t be spending your valuable time on the phone, dialing for dollars.

The only prospects who buy from needy and desperate vendors are those looking for the cheapest bid. So cold-calling risks dooming you to being the low-priced provider.

When they call you, the dynamic reverses. They call because they have a need or a problem… and they are hoping you can help them.

But how do you get prospects to call you? There are two methods. The first is good, and the second is better.

The first method is to generate inquiries through traditional marketing. This includes Yellow Pages advertising… magazine ads… TV commercials… direct mail… radio spots… billboards.

When someone calls in response to your ad in their industry trade magazine, you know they have either an immediate need – or at least some interest in what you are offering. Otherwise, they would not have called you. However, all they know about you is what they read in your ad. Therefore, they may not be convinced that you are the right one to hire.

The second method of getting people to call you eliminates this problem. I’m talking about establishing yourself as a recognized authority in your field. You can do this by writing articles for an industry trade publication… being interviewed on radio talk shows… writing a book… giving speeches at industry meetings… and/or publishing an informative print or online newsletter on your specialty.

When people call you because they read your book, they – like prospects who respond to your ad – are telling you that they have a need. However, unlike those who merely saw your ad, they are already predisposed to buy from you.

After all, prospects are skeptical of advertising claims. But authors are perceived as experts. So by writing the book (or the article or column or content-rich website) on the topic your prospects are interested in, you will be the one they call first when they need help solving problems in that area.

Think about how you can establish your reputation as a leading expert in your field or industry. Can you volunteer to be a speaker at the next big industry conference? Publish a white paper? Write letters to the editor? Publish a blog?

The best place to start: Write an article about the solution to a big problem your prospects are likely to have and publish it in a magazine, periodical, or on a website where they are likely to see it.

[Ed Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter, the author of more than 70 books, and co-creator of ETR's Direct Marketing Masters Edition program. Sign up for Bob's free monthly e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and get more than $100 in free bonuses.]

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What Business Owners Can Learn From Baseball Managers

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

Imagine this scenario…

Your favorite baseball team has the opportunity to hire GR. Now a free agent, GR is one of the league’s best hitters. He hits more home runs than 90 percent of all other players… and has an impressive .300 batting average.

The team manager and GR meet. The manager tells GR: "Step up to the plate, and our best pitcher will throw to you. Hit a home run and you’re part of the team. Strike out or pop out and you’re history."

Does that make sense? No. I mean, with a .300 average, GR fails to get a hit seven out of every 10 times he steps up to the plate.

But that doesn’t stop otherwise savvy business owners from thinking like this manager every day.

They hire an employee and start to put him to work. If he doesn’t generate home-run results the first time at bat, they fire him or move him to a marginal business operation.

The TV commercial doesn’t win a Clio? Start looking for a new agency. Sales letter didn’t beat the control? The copywriter is history. Website not getting a million hits a day? The designer and webmaster are fired.

So what’s the problem?

Unreasonable expectations… and an unwillingness to experiment and test things until you find what works.

Thomas Edison failed to invent the light bulb with a thousand experimental models that didn’t work. In experiment #1,001, he finally tested a tungsten filament that burned brightly without burning out.

What makes a small business profitable and competitive over the long haul is a lot of small, sensible tests… trials and errors… and meticulously planned roll-outs. Unfortunately, you don’t hear much about them.

If you want to produce marketing campaigns in 2008 that make you money, you have to keep two things in mind.

First, most marketing tests don’t make money.

Second, even one winner out of every 10 tests can make you rich.

Of course, I hope you do better than that. But as long as you keep your tests small and modest, and watch every penny, you can afford to be wrong a lot – as long as you are occasionally right.

This is one area where the Internet can give you an edge that we didn’t have in the old days.

At the 2007 AWAI Bootcamp, entrepreneur Gary Scott noted that "the Internet is very forgiving of mistakes." You no longer have to risk $10,000 to $50,000 on printing and postage for a mailing… or buying ad space in the newspaper… to test a new marketing idea. On the Internet, you can buy a domain name for $10… host the site for a month for $20… put up a website featuring your new product for $200… and drive traffic to your website with a limited Google AdWords test for $1,000.

Another advantage of Internet marketing is that you know in just a few days whether your campaign is going to fly. But with offline marketing, it takes weeks (for ads) or even months (for mail) before you know whether your test is a hit or a flop.

One other piece of advice…

Lots of people are obsessed with finding the next million-dollar idea. For instance, they want to make a million dollars a year on the Internet. So they work like the devil on some big mega-project which… they hope… will be that million-dollar business.

I’m not discouraging their efforts or disparaging such ambition. In fact, I wish I had it myself.

But I’m lazy. And for the average lazy person who wants to make a million dollars online, I find it’s much easier to have 100 working websites making you $10,000 a year each… than to try to build one site to $1 million a year.

Others may feel differently, but that’s the approach I’m using to build toward that million dollars a year. And, so far, it is working for me.

A million-dollar site requires constant innovation, attention, fresh content, and a lot of administration and management. My little "micro sites" need minimal time and attention. Once they’re up, you pretty much don’t have to touch them, as long as you know how to drive traffic to them.

That way, you can earn a full-time income on the Internet "working" part-time – as little as a few hours a week – as if you were retired.

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The More You Learn, the More You Earn

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

Years ago, a famous rock star returned to her high school to speak at an assembly. Although she had not graduated, she told the kids to stay in school. "The more you learn, the more you earn," she said.

Nowhere is this truer than in the business world.

Your success is likely to be directly proportional to the amount of knowledge you possess. Knowledge about your products… technology… and market. And about your profession.

Yet, though we live in a knowledge-based economy, most of us graduate knowing relatively little of what there is to know of the world. Or even about our college major. And with the dizzying pace at which new knowledge is created, the gap between what we know and what there is to know seems to grow each day.

As Thomas Edison observed, "We don’t know one millionth of one percent about anything."

More recently, Professor Richard Dawkins said in an interview with Scientific American magazine: "All of us are ignorant of most of what there is to know."

So, with all of us knowing next to nothing… what can we do to learn – and thereby earn – more?

First, find a niche – an area of specialization – and concentrate your efforts within that niche. The narrower your specialization, the better your chances of keeping reasonably up to date in the field.

Second, become an "information junkie."

Read constantly:

The leading trade magazines in your industry.
A daily newspaper.
A weekly news magazine such as Newsweek, Time, or U.S. News & World Report.
One or two of the top e-newsletters or blogs in your area of interest. (ETR fits the bill nicely for entrepreneurial success, as do The Daily Reckoning and Investor’s Daily Edge for investing.)

Third, read widely.

Even though you are a specialist, you need to acquire a solid base of knowledge outside your field.

Of course, your time is limited. So even here, you must choose carefully. What should you read… and why?

MU, a Ph.D. candidate and consultant in the science of innovation, says that to be more creative you must read in "adjacent areas." An adjacent area is something different from but at least peripherally related to your major field.

Example: A systems analyst might read in architecture, because both deal with designing systems.

Why do you need to read in adjacent areas?

Research shows that the ability to be innovative is dependent on possessing a wide storehouse of knowledge from which ideas can be generated. People who are not well read have a limited store of knowledge. They are, therefore, hampered in their ability to come up with new solutions.

Of course, reading is not the only way to learn. Doing things is equally (or, in some cases, even more) valuable.

According to an article in Prevention Magazine, new experiences stimulate the production of dopamine, a chemical involved in learning and memory. In addition, new experiences build brain mass and increase mental agility. Meanwhile, the absence of novelty causes the brain to shrink.

Solution: Take up a new language, hobby, sport, musical instrument, or anything else that offers continual challenges.

When does all this learning stop?

Never.

"School is never out for the pro" is ancient advice, and still true today.

You might protest: "But I am too busy putting out fires at work for all this studying!"

Then do it after hours.

In his book 212: The Extra Degree, S.L. Parker advises, "Add a few hours each month to your professional development outside of the work day." By doing so, you can add the equivalent of a full week of work to your most valuable asset: you.

[Ed. Note: Master copywriter and best-selling author Bob Bly is a contributor to ETR’s new business-building program, The Internet Money Club. Not only will this program teach you techniques that copywriting experts use to write sales-boosting copy, it will show you how to pick a product, set up a website, and pull in targeted, qualified traffic. And that’s just for starters. Click here to learn more.

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The Worst Positioning Statement in the World- "We’re Better"

Wednesday, October 12th, 2005

Here’s a trick question: What’s better – chopped liver or filet mignon?

Most people answer "filet mignon." But filet mignon isn’t better than chopped liver. Nor is chopped liver better than filet mignon.

If you picked "filet mignon," what you SHOULD have said is "I LIKE filet mignon better" … not "filet mignon IS better."

One is not inherently superior to the other. It’s a matter of taste. You like filet mignon. So to you, filet mignon is better. But I like chopped liver … so to me, it’s not.

What does this have to do with your business? Plenty.

Every business needs to have a Unique Selling Proposition, or "USP" … a reason why customers should buy from YOU instead of from your competitors.

Do you know what the weakest USP is? It’s "We’re better."

"Better," you see, is nonspecific … and it’s difficult to prove. You say you’re better. I say I’m better. Just SAYING it – without being able to prove it – makes prospects disbelieve you.

Also, "better" is such a general term that it has little meaning.

Same thing with the overused word "quality."

So how do you create a Unique Selling Proposition that actually makes people want to buy your product instead of the competition’s? There are many methods, but let me describe just three of them here.

1. The first is to focus on a feature of your product – one that is not only different or unique but also delivers an important benefit to the user.

Examples:

Crispix cereal. They didn’t say it "tastes better." They said Crispix "stays crisp in milk" … a benefit consumers want.
Wonder Bread "helps build strong bodies 12 ways." They didn’t say it’s better tasting or more nutritious. They just said that Wonder Bread builds strong bodies in 12 ways.

2. The second way to create a USP with selling power is to narrow your target market – that is, to focus on a specific market niche.

For example, there are thousands of business consultants out there, all fighting for clients. But my old high school chum, Gary Gerber, is a consultant who doesn’t fight for clients. He has all he can handle … and potential clients waiting in line to hire him.

Why?

Because Gary is not just a business consultant. He is a business-development consultant specializing in eye doctors. And it doesn’t hurt that he once owned the largest and most successful optometry practice in New Jersey.

If you were an eye doctor looking to build your practice, who would you want to work with? Gary … or a consultant who says he can help you but has never worked with an eye doctor before?

3. The third way to create a winning USP is with branding. The branding approach usually takes a massive, costly advertising campaign that small businesses cannot afford.

A great example is the George Foreman grill.

This is clearly not the world’s best grill, nor do I recall the manufacturer ever claiming that it is in their commercials. But it is the ONLY grill you can buy with the name "George Foreman" on it.

So if you want a grill that cooks good food, you can get one in lots of places. But if you want a "George Foreman" grill, you can ONLY get it from the George Foreman grill company.

You can’t confidently promote and sell yourself without a strong USP. After all, if you don’t have the reason why someone should buy your product on the tip of your tongue … how will you persuade prospects to buy what you’re selling instead of going to your competitors?

When formulating a USP, start by asking yourself these questions:

What is different about my product that delivers an important benefit to the user?
Is there an industry, application, or other niche I can specialize in?
Is there a way to brand my company or product in a unique fashion with appeal to consumers?

[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a popular Early to Rise columnist, self-made multi-millionaire, and the author of more than 60 books, including The Complete Idiot's Guide to Direct Marketing and The Copywriter's Handbook.

He is also the editor of ETR's Direct Marketing University: The Masters Edition - a program to help you start your own successful direct-mail business.]

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The Worst Positioning Statement in the World- "We’re Better"

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