“Will you be having our Tropical Sunrise Margarita or a glass of our Strawberry Lemonade?”

The waitress looked at me expectantly. For a second, it felt like those were my only two choices – and I almost said, “Margarita please.”

But then I shook my head and asked for a water.

I’d almost given in to a classic sales strategy. Expert copywriter John Forde calls it the “Foregone Conclusion” technique. And you might want to put it to work in your marketing efforts.

The idea is not to offer your prospective customers a choice between buying or not buying. Instead, you offer them a choice between buying one thing… or another.

“The door to deciding whether or not to buy at all is already closed,” says John.

With this technique, you make the assumption that the customer has already decided to buy something that you’re offering. Then only decision left for him to make is whether to choose option A or option B.

[Ed. Note: You can get weekly insights into the world of copywriting and marketing from John Forde just by signing up for his e-newsletter Copywriter's Roundtable. And you can learn a dozen of the most effective marketing strategies around just by picking up a copy of the Amazon.com best-seller Changing the Channel: 12 Easy Ways to Make Millions for Your Business by Michael Masterson and MaryEllen Tribby.]  

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My hand was already reaching down to toss it in the trash… but, suddenly, I stopped.

I lifted the catalog back up… and examined the front cover again.

“Free Shipping – No Minimum Order.”

Hmm, I thought. Maybe I’ll just take another look inside and see what I can find.

I love free shipping. It can persuade me to buy something… even if I wasn’t going to buy anything in the first place.

What sort of magic is at play here?

I never really thought about it until this year’s Info Marketing Bootcamp. Then, during his Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance presentation, Bob Bly said something that clicked: “Sometimes your bonus is just as important as the product you’re selling.”  

Take a look at any sales letter… or any infomercial… even some banner ads… and you’re bound to find a bonus.

A bonus is the free special report you get when you sign up for a newsletter… the MP3 download you get when you buy a book… the 6-in-1 kitchen tool and set of precision steak knives you get when you order a Ginsu knife… or the free shipping you get when you order a Land’s End fleece jacket.

Sometimes, as Bob pointed out, the bonus is that little extra push your customer needs in order to buy. A really good bonus shows her just how much value she is getting for her money.

In one example that Bob gave, a newsletter publisher compiled a “best of” collection of his most popular column. When he started offering the compilation as a bonus, subscription rates skyrocketed. Another newsletter publisher found that when he offered a reprint of his annual industry salary survey as a bonus for new subscribers, orders for new subscriptions increased 25 percent.

So the next time you come up with a sales offer, make sure you include a valuable bonus that can give your customer one more reason to buy.

[Ed. Note: Bob Bly - in addition to being the author of over 70 books and an expert Internet marketer - is a contributor to ETR's exclusive business-building program, the Internet Money Club. Not only will this program teach you techniques that marketing masters use to create monster sales, 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. Learn how to create your own Internet business this year, regardless of the current level of your technical or marketing know-how.

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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Suzanne Richardson reveals a quick and easy tool that can make your writing at least twice as effective.

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A brand-new year is just around the corner. And though, here at ETR, we firmly believe that you can make major changes in your life at ANY time, January always feels like the perfect time to set some new goals for yourself.

We want to help you kick off the year right. So for the next 12 days, a dozen ETR experts will be suggesting specific resolutions that could make 2009 your happiest, most productive, healthiest, and most prosperous year yet.

To get the ball rolling, I have a simple one for you: Become a writer in 2009. And today, I’m going to explain why this should be on your list of resolutions for 2009 – and then show you a surprisingly easy way to accomplish that goal.

First things first. Writing can…

• Help you get your business off the ground. Writing an e-mail newsletter is an inexpensive way to market a fledgling business. Michael Masterson began Early to Rise with around $1,000, a simple website, and a newsletter. Originally, it was sent only to his friends and colleagues. But it grew. Now, ETR is a $26 million business with over 440,000 readers.

• Help you become wealthy. I’m not suggesting that you’ll be the next J.K. Rowling. Most fiction writers struggle to get published, let alone make a living. But copywriting is a career path that can really rack up the cash. Clayton Makepeace, Bob Bly, Paul Hollingshead, Don Mahoney – each one of these men makes hundreds of thousands of dollars each year by writing sales copy.

• Move you up to the top of your company. This is another way to make copywriting pay off for you. After all, as Michael Masterson has pointed out in ETR many times, the best way to get promoted is to get into the profit centers of your company. Writing copy that helps directly bring in money is one of the quickest ways to do it.

• Help you find a job – in any economy. A recent survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found that the number one thing employers look for in new employees is “communication skills.” And a 2006 survey of 431 human resource officials indicated that those skills aren’t easy to find. Forty-seven percent reported that their employees who were graduates of two-year colleges were deficient in written communications, and 81 percent reported that their high-school-graduate employees had the same deficiency.

So if you know how to write, you’ll give yourself a big lead over other people competing for the job you want. Not convinced? My ability to write is what got me a job at ETR – fresh out of grad school, with very little work experience. And it helped me become Managing Editor in six short months.

• Help your business grow. The more traffic you get to your website, the more chances you have to find paying customers. And filling your website with high-quality content is a great way to get Google’s attention… and start attracting visitors.

Julie Broad, a member of ETR’s Internet Money Club, started her Internet business around this time last year. Then she started writing articles on real estate investing for ETR. (In fact, we have an article by Julie in this issue.) Soon afterward, her site’s traffic had increased 10 times. All because she was exposing her ideas and expertise – through writing – to ETR’s subscribers.

• Help build your credibility. Writing articles about your area of expertise can establish your credibility and help you get published in top publications in your industry.

Bob Bly shares this observation on the subject from E.U., a successful publisher: “It is simply amazing the reverence people have for the printed word. Simply because a person has written a book about a subject, people think he has something to say about it.”

And those are just a few reasons.

But it seems to me that a lot of people are intimidated by the idea of becoming a writer. If that’s the way you feel, I have (as I said at the beginning of this article) a super-easy way for you to do it:

Just get started.

If you don’t start writing, you won’t ever become a writer. 

I know a very smart, very experienced marketing expert we’ll call “Alec.” He has thousands of good ideas and a brain full of useful advice. But as soon as he tries to put it down on paper, he gets stuck.

He’s been invited to be a guest writer for a well-known marketing publication. And appearing in that publication’s pages could enhance his reputation, help him reach hundreds of thousands of new prospective customers, and get the attention of industry giants who could propel him to greater success.

But because he can’t even bring himself to start writing down his ideas… he’s missing out on all that potential.

This first step is very important. (And it works for any type of writing – articles, sales copy, fiction.) You simply choose an idea – one small idea that you’d like to share. And you write it down.

Then you give it to three people to read – even if those three people are your spouse, your best friend, and your grandmother. Or you post it to your blog, save it on your computer, put it in your journal. Just get it out of your head and onto the page.

And you do the same thing the next day… and the next day… and the next day.

Don’t worry about grammar. Don’t worry about spelling. Or whether you expressed yourself well. You can hone your writing skills later. (And, by the way, ETR has tons of great advice on that subject. To access it, all you have to do is a quick search through our Archives.)

Side Note: Many successful writers – including Clayton Makepeace, Michael Masterson, Charlie Byrne, and John Forde (to name a few) – write beautifully. So it’s worthwhile to learn what it takes to be a fine writer. But when you’re just starting out, doing the actual writing is much more important than crafting elegant sentences and paragraphs.

The thing is, if you wait until you can write like Jane Austen… or if you wait until you have a big list of potential subscribers to your not-yet-launched newsletter… or if you wait until you “get inspired” – you will never get started. You will NEVER become a good writer. And you won’t get any of the benefits that come with being a good writer either. So don’t wait. Start right now.

Michael Masterson has said it hundreds of times: Ready, Fire, Aim. You’ve already got the experience or the passion or the ideas. So you’re Ready. Now it’s time to Fire – to start writing about it. And then you can work on the Aiming/improving.

Pick up a pencil or open up a Word document and write something down. Right now. It’s as simple as that. If you can’t think of anything else, do this: Write an e-mail to us at ETR telling us what you think we can do better. Then send it to us at AskETR@ETRFeedback.com. We’re always eager to hear from our readers.

[Ed. Note: Writing down your ideas is a great way to start an e-mail newsletter. And starting an e-mail newsletter is the perfect low-cost way to get your Internet business up and running. For more advice about creating your own e-newsletter - plus step-by-step guides to product creation, marketing, website development, and much more - join ETR's Internet Money Club. Our team of experts will walk you through everything you need to know to start a business that could earn $100,000 to $25 million a year. Space is limited, so find out now if you can still enroll in the "Class" of 2009.]

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Getting your prospective customer to start reading your sales copy is your most important task as a marketer. But if your readers get turned off just by looking at it, you’ve lost them – and any potential sales – for good.

One of the best – and easiest – ways to make your writing more readable is to add more white space. But Charlie Byrne recommends four other super-simple “tricks”:

1. Use dashes.
2. Use bullets.
3. Use ellipses.
4. Occasionally bold and italicize key words and phrases.

Solid blocks of text look boring. Worse, they look like work. Sprinkling your text with bullets, dashes, ellipses, and bold or italicized words breaks up the text and makes it look easy to read… which automatically makes it more inviting to your reader.

Then, once you get your prospect to start reading, you can win her over with your persuasive, compelling sales copy.

[Ed. Note: Writing well is one of the most valuable skills you can learn. And if you master one type of writing - copywriting - you can persuade and influence others... sell more for clients who hire you (and command top dollar)... start your own business... and much more. Get all the secrets behind mastering this skill right here.]

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You can make your writing twice as readable – and, therefore, twice as powerful – by taking advantage of one amazingly simple little secret. It will take you about 30 seconds to learn. And it will help you for the rest of your writing life.

Simply use more white space.

Charlie Byrne, ETR’s Associate Publisher, demonstrated how this “trick” works just the other day.

A new writing assistant had drawn up a chapter-by-chapter summary of Michael Masterson’s book Ready, Fire, Aim. She’d done a good job with the content, but it was next to impossible to read. That’s because she stuck everything into big, blocky paragraphs.  %%track {http://web-purchases.com/700SRFA/E700J910/?o=[messageid]&u=[memberid]&l=[urlid]} -name {edmen-RFA-E700J910}%%

“I can’t believe how often I see this from would-be writers and copywriters,” Charlie told us. “My brain immediately says, ‘Nah, sorry. Looks like too much work to read this. Next?’”

So he copied the writing assistant’s summary into a new document… and added a few paragraph breaks.

Ta da! It was suddenly easy on the eyes and much more inviting to read.

[Ed. Note: Writing well is one of the most valuable skills you can learn. And if you master one type of writing - copywriting - you can persuade and influence others... sell more for clients who hire you (and command top dollar)... start your own business... and much more. Get all the secrets behind mastering this skill right here.]

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You open your inbox, and there it is … an e-mail, waiting patiently for you to read it and respond. A few seconds, a few quick keystrokes on your laptop, a click of the send button, and your response is shuttled instantaneously to its recipient.

It’s quick and easy.

But therein lies a hidden danger …

The ability to respond quickly and easily via e-mail can land you in scalding water.

For one thing, it takes the thinking out of your response. You can “blurt out” anything in just a few seconds. Click send before you’ve had a chance to reconsider … and your words are going to be delivered, whether you like it or not.

This can be a big problem when you respond in anger. Take “Glen,” for example. A top-level executive at ETR sent him an e-mail that didn’t make Glen happy, and Glen shot off an angry reply … full of curse words, overblown accusations, and defiant remarks.

Can you recover from mouthing off like that to your superiors? Possibly. But I wouldn’t want to try it.

Instead, think long and hard about your response before you send it. If you’re angry or upset, give it at least 24 hours. If you must put your feelings in writing immediately, do so in a blank e-mail or, better yet, in a Word document. (That way, there will be no chance that you’ll accidentally send it.) Once you’ve cooled down, write a new response. You’ll probably find that you’re able to explain how you feel in a calmer, more rational way.

[Ed. Note: Have you ever sent an angry e-mail ... and regretted it? Let us know right here.] (To protect everyone’s identity, please use initials or pseudonyms!)]

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“I’ve always been fascinated by copywriting,” an old college buddy remarked. “But there’s no way I could do it!”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Hello? I was a math major,” she said. “Not an English major like you.”

You may be suffering from the same misunderstanding.

You see, there’s no rule that says you must be an English major to become a copywriter. You don’t have to be a great writer – or even a very good one. In fact, sometimes an above-average grasp of the language can hinder you.

Take this famous example from copywriting master David Ogilvy: “I once used the word ‘obsolete’ in a headline, only to discover that 43 percent of housewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline, I used the word ‘ineffable,’ only to discover that I didn’t know what it meant myself.”

Copywriting isn’t about writing skill. It isn’t about flowery prose and five-syllable words. It’s not even about good grammar and complete sentences.

It’s about knowing how to sell. About delving deep into your customer’s heart, and rooting out the overpowering emotion inside her that makes her want your product or service.

Some copywriters are masters at selling AND writing. Clayton Makepeace. Bob Bly. Michael Masterson. And our own Charlie Byrne.

But others write copy that would make any editor cringe. And manage to make boatloads of money anyway.

Master the art of persuasion – the art of using words to convince people to buy – and you, too, can become a world-renowned copywriter… no English degree required.

[Ed. Note: You can get a crash course in copywriting from some of the best copywriters in the business at ETR's 2008 Info-Marketing Bootcamp. Charlie Byrne, John Forde, Bob Bly, and Michael Masterson will all be presenting some of their top ideas. Learn how you could be making $1.2 million in 2009 right here.]

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