Dear Business-Builder,
The great investor Warren Buffet has a net worth of about $62 billion. That’s sixty-two thousand million dollars.
If your net worth is $10 million, Warren is 6,200 times richer than you.
If you’re worth $1 million, he has 62,000 times more money than you do.
If your net worth is $100,000, Mr. Buffet is 620,000 times richer than you are.
There are people whose businesses grow a hundred, maybe even a thousand times or more faster than yours does. For every new customer you attract, they attract 100, 1,000, maybe even 10,000 or more.
There are people who look, feel and perform ten, twenty, even thirty years younger than you do …
Who have far greater success in love and relationships (OK – maybe just in sex) than you do …
Who live better for less, have greener lawns, clearer skin, more hair, thinner waists and smaller butts, better-behaved or more successful kids, more friends or are more successful in some other area of life than you are.
Sorry – but you know it’s true. And no, I’m not trying to depress you – just trying to make a very important point.
So let me ask you: WHY do you think all those people are doing so much better than you in so many different areas?
Are they all thousands of times smarter than you?
Do they work thousands of times harder?
Are they thousands of times luckier?
… Or do they have a SECRET?
Ah, secrets …
Secrets tease, tantalize and torment us. An offered secret is irresistible – impossible to refuse. Once our curiosity is engaged, knowledge that someone else knows a secret that we don’t is like having a stone in our shoe. It gnaws and nags at us. We can’t willingly rest until we’re in on the secret, too.
Secrets also appeal to our laziness and desire for instant gratification. They seem to say, “The success you crave is not about anything as mundane as hard work or discipline or patience. Once you know this secret, everything you desire will flow to you instantly and without effort.”
We hope and dream that a single secret may be the magic key that unlocks the floodgates and unleashes a tidal wave of personal and business success for us.
More importantly, secrets help us make sense of the vast gulf between ourselves and others, who have already solved a problem we’ve encountered, overcome an obstacle we struggle with, or achieved a goal we aspire to.
And frankly, it’s comforting to believe that a single secret may be all that holds us back; all that separates us from the fortunate few who seem to be enjoying so much more success and happiness than we are.
Secrets are also a powerful “secret”
to grabbing huge response for your next promotion
Since offering to reveal a secret appeals to us humans on so many visceral levels, it’s no wonder that many of the most successful direct response promotions of all time have used them to boost attention and readership by an order of magnitude.
Nor is it any wonder that offering to reveal more secrets in a free report that is delivered along with the product can drive response rates, revenues and profits through the roof.
So how could YOU use secrets to hit one out of the park the next time you’re at bat?
Way I see it, there are actually four kinds of secrets …
- Simple Secrets: These are like one-hit wonders of the secrets world. Want to fly First Class for what others pay for coach? Enjoy a luxury cruise for free? Get tickets to a “sold-out” concert? Lower your blood pressure without costly or dangerous drugs? Here’s the secret …
If you haven’t already, buy a product – any product – from Boardroom or Rodale. Before long, your inbox and mailbox will be stuffed with promotions that tell simple secrets – and that offer to give you thousands more secrets when you buy the book or newsletter they’re promoting.
Note that these promotions don’t just promise to tell you the secrets when you buy the product; they give you tons of them right in the promotion. These freebie secrets are proof elements: They prove that the secrets revealed in the product actually are astonishing and that they actually could work!
- Forecasts: If you think about it, predicting a future event in a promotion is kind of like telling your prospect a secret that very few other people know. If you can provide little-known facts about why your prophecy will inevitably be fulfilled … demonstrate how knowing about this event in advance can bring value to your prospect’s life …
And then offer to show him, in your product or premium, how to use this “confidential, privileged information” to solve a problem or get what he wants, your readership and response are likely to soar.
- Mis/Disinformation: Lies are, by definition, secrets too. When you show your prospect how “the establishment” or better yet, your competitors are at fault for his situation, you free him from responsibility for it.
Better yet: You send the message that once he fully understands how and why he’s being lied to, the problem that plagues him will vanish and/or the object of his desire will miraculously appear before him.
- Conspiracies: These are big, fat, irresistible bundles of secrets that amplify and broaden their power by an order of magnitude.
Show your prospect why and how the deck is stacked against him: Why Wall Street is conspiring to rob him … how the government is planning to bankrupt him … why drug companies are conspiring to make (or keep) him sick … why his accountant can’t (or won’t) lower his taxes … why the diet industry fails him … and you create massive credibility for your product by validating his suspicions and by creating an excuse for his current predicament.
So let’s talk – what are you selling now? How could using secrets in your sales copy, premiums or maybe even in the product itself take your response to the next level?
Let’s see if we can’t come up with a ton of exciting new ways to use these amazingly powerful response boosters!
Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,
Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE
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This is powerful. I’ve bought quite a few things because of this.
That’s the ultimate test. I’ll admit, I’m cheap. Anything that gets me to buy is good.
Beau Smith
Of course, there is “The Secret” which has sold zillions of copies!
And, Dr. Joe Vitale’s, the “Missing Secret” and his “Secret to Attracting Money”.
Perhaps we should all add the word “Secret” to our list of sure-fire, direct response words to use as often as possible!
Cheers!
David Foley
Clayton,
This is powerful information and you are absolutely right about using secrets. In my offline work using the term secret and secrets themselves have more than tripled profits in the past. I will continue to use this powerful tool in the now and future.
Creatively,
Glenn
Wow, David Foley commented here, I love The Kids In The Hall!
Anyways, didn’t Warren Buffet donate a bulk of his money to Bill Gates’ Eugenics and Abortion On Tap Program?
Tesla,
Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not THAT Dave Foley, but “Kids In The Hall” is quite funny. “Newsradio” as well.
Cheers!
The OTHER David Foley
I work with a great group of world class copywriters and we use these secrets everyday…plus one more.
It’s the “5th secret of copy”. The secret that most ordinary copywriters and even many professional copywriters never even consider.
It’s sold millions of dollars of newsletters for us and never seems to stop working.
The secret? Well, I would like to tell you…after all this is a forum for learning better copy…but—oh what the hell.
The “5th secret” is transubstantiation. If you don’t know what transubstantiation is, you haven’t been doing your reading outside of class…time to do a little homework.
“Secrets also appeal to our laziness and desire for instant gratification.”
Well, if those attributes don’t define the America we’re living in, I’m not sure what does.
Here’s another secret…
If we don’t craft our sales message by going over it again and again, refining it by small iterations until it’s right…
(in “our laziness and desire for instant gratification.”)
…we’re cheating ourselves and cheapening our own brand.
Hey Clayton,
This is my first time actually posting but I figured what the hell.
This is definitely some great stuff and stuff that I’ve used to skyrocket my earnings on numerous occasions.
I almost feel like I shouldn’t be writing this but using that in my ad copy w/ PPC has greatly increased my CTR AND Conversions…
Something to think about…
Cheers,
–Curt
Hey Clayton,
I’ll let you into a Secret!!
You just turned on the Light!!-Thank you.
Geoff.
Hey Clayton,
Thanks for all your wonderful posts. I DO and will ALWAYS read each and every one of them.
It’s my first time posting here but I just want to share what someone taught me about the secret of success …
There’s actually only 2 things you need to know about the secret of success …
(1) Never tell what you know.
(2) …
Ok, ok, I’m being playful here … but it’s just human nature to be inquisitive … to know what others knew so that we won’t be at a comparative disadvantage.
And that’s why secrets are so POWERFUL!
Dangle a little just to bait them, then withhold the rest and you can virtually lead them by the nose.
Man, how often do we fall for secrets.
Thank you for this post and have a great day.
Gideon
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Clayton,
Im going to share your secret and the rest of every so called marketing guru’s secret right here.
Here is the secret, you mastered the craft of lieing to people so well that they believe every word you say.
That opens the door for you to steal as much money as you can while feeling good about it in the name of marketing.
I originally purchased 1 book from you, all the book was about is you braggin about your success stories, in the short read that I read, I saw nothing of practical value one could do in their life to actually improve their financial life.
The book was Double Your Profits, I have to honesly say,
It SUCKED!
Thank Goodness their was a money back guarantee.
That one experience was enough to turn me off to you BS for good as well as all these other Marketing Gurus.
“Any man with a briefcase can steal more money than any man with a gun” Don Henley
I enjoy your website a lot and look forward to the moment I can acquire one of your business packages. . .especially the gold one. In the meantime . . .the “Redhead” can write as well as anything I’ve read anywhere else . . .often, better. It just hits me as more genuine.
And I love the mysteries and humor.
Stating the facts of what’s really going on with the latest marketing techniques and how our brain mulls it over without over-analyzing it is great copy as well.
I read quite a few newsletters, compare and contrast: interesting. Some are very similar.
Hopefully, I’m absorbing some of the good parts.
For a high school drop-out, your English grammar is perfect and priceless.
Thank you.
Patricia (AWAI copywrite student, in my 3rd career)
Thanks for your “inverse testimonial,” Vinnie … I’ll be sure to balance it against the thousands of positive ones we’ve received and the hundreds of readers who have told us they’ve improved their results with our ideas.
I have to wonder: If you hate sales so much, why are you reading marketing sites? If you hate me so much, why are you reading me?
You, my friend, are one sick puppy.
HI Clayton
Secrets are the icing on the cake – you know the one your mom tells you to not touch? It looks sooo good and you know that you want try just one bite. How about your finger – dipping it into the icing to see how it tastes? Ohh – what do you do?
You look around for mom, (even as an adult) then you grab a small spoon and scoop a bit into the spoon and eat it. Yummy – even after all these years mom hasn’t lost her magic touch.
But she has a secret you can’t figure out – how come her cakes are sooo soo good when all yours flop in the center. In the oven they look great, you follow the recipe and do everything right – its not the same. So maybe one say mom will tell you her secret (if you stop stealing her cake)
Secrets are such an intrinsic part of who we are. I remember a game called Chinese Whispers we used to play here as kids. You would start by telling someone something, by the time it got back to you after being passed along the line – then it was so different from the original story – you think I didn’t say that!
Gossip, glamor, heresay – prove to people that your product works and this is a huge secret – so special, they will lap it up like cats like milk.
My two dollars worth,
All the best
Susan Connors
Australia
Hey, Vinnie …
So you say Double Your Profits sucked? Nothing of practical value, you say?
Hmmm … well, let’s check in with some other folks who actually read it and applied what it teaches …
“IMPROVED MY ADS SIGNIFICANTLY!”
“Clayton, I just finished reading your book; ‘Double Your Profits.’ It’s given me an entirely new outlook on copywriting.
“From your advice, I gained so many ideas to improve my copy. I used your techniques to re-write a number of ads I had written previously. They have improved significantly as a result.
“Your book isn’t just copywriting training…it’s LIFE training!”
– Roger H.
“THE QUALITY OF MY COPY SKYROCKETED!”
“Before getting your material, I was punching out pretty good copy. Clients were happy. We were all making good money.
“But now with what you’ve taught me… WOW… I can tell the difference is startling.”
– Alexi N.
GREAT ADVICE
“To call “Double Your Profits in 12 months or Less” an E-book written by him (Clayton) might be misleading. Yes, you can buy it, download it and read it in Adobe Acrobat…but don’t be fooled. It has sixteen chapters and 215 pages.
“It is written with enormous energy and gives the impression that he can’t get the words and ideas out fast enough. He offers some great advice on how freelance copywriters can improve their relationships with their best clients.”
– Federal Review
$2,300 IN SALES PER MINUTE!
“Shortly after I received “How To Double Your Profits In 12 Months Or Less,” I had a copywriting project for a client.
“We developed a teleseminar to sell his info product in 2006. I created 6 emails to promote the call, which lasted just over 90 minutes.
“The result from the call (plus the orders that dribbled in over the next few days): We had 83 orders, totaling $207,085. Where’s my calculator…that works out to just over $2,300 per MINUTE.”
– Jonathan R.
– CLAYTON
Clayton
I find it difficult and quite hilarious trying to picture you running around and pointing a briefcase at people to rob them of their money!
“case in point” Vinnie seems to think so…….