Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
July 3, 2009
Issue #3
Dear Business-Builder,
It's not getting any easier – is it?
If you've spent any time in the trenches of Internet marketing over the past few years, you know precisely what I'm talking about: Those out-of-the-park grand slams are fewer and farther between these days.
Once upon a time, you could just blast an offer – almost any offer – to your customer file or even ice-cold prospect names, then sit back and watch an avalanche of orders come pouring in.
The money was amazing: When one of my clients e-mailed a single note to his 35,000 customers back in the mid-1990s, he raked in $12 million in less than a week.
Ah … the GOOD old days!
Today, that client would kill to get those kinds of results. Like most Internet marketers today, he's working harder and profiting less. Much less.
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
June 29, 2009
Issue #463
- The hard truth "get rich quick" gurus never tell you …
- What it really takes to hit the big time …
- Why what you do the rest of today matters …
- Much more …
Dear Business-Builder,
My mom’s cousin married Ty Cobb’s son, Herschel. Since I’m not good at math, I can’t really tell you what that makes me. Ty Cobb’s grand nephew once removed? I dunno.
But still, I’ve always been proud to be related — even distantly — to the man who invented modern baseball. So a few years ago, I read Cobb: A Biography by Al Stump and later, watched the movie starring Tommy Lee Jones.
Great book; good flick. Not because they heralded Cobb’s exploits on the field, but because they painted a crystal-clear picture of the man behind the legend.
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
June 26, 2009
Issue #78
Dear Business-Builder,
I was born cocky.
When I was 17 years old, running a Baumfolder in a printing plant for $1.60 an hour ($64 a week; $3,328 a year – before taxes!) – I was absolutely convinced I could write more compelling copy than I saw in the direct mail packages they had me working on …
At 23, as I slaved over a hot IBM Selectric at an L.A. agency for $15,000 a year, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that my sales copy was by far the strongest stuff in the mail – probably the hottest copy anybody had ever written in the entire history of the direct response industry, period …
And when I was 30, earning $300,000 plus overrides each year creating promotions for a $250-million-a-year financial newsletter and rare coin retailer – I was just too cool for school.
Sure – I had heroes; the stuff I saw Gary Bencivenga, Jim Rutz and Bill Bonner cranking out never failed to blow my mind. But with those exceptions, I was always the smartest guy in every room.
According to me.
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
June 22, 2009
Issue #698
Dear Business-Builder,
A couple of weeks ago, on our fourth birthday, I invited you to ask us for anything you like – and boy, did you ever!
In fact, as soon as NewsBlarg.com launches on July 4th, we’ll turn our full attention to improving The Total Package – so brace yourself; big changes are coming!
In the meantime, though, I thought it might be fun to address a couple of questions Dr. Kevin tossed at me in that issue – so here goes:
“How do you organize
your days and weeks?”
I rise around 4:00 AM and pad down to a little cedar cabin on my property in the dark. After a half-hour or so of mainlining caffeine and checking the day’s news, I open my “To Do” list, pick the morning’s most pressing creative project and go to work.
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
June 19, 2009
Issue #76
Three ways to unleash the hair-on-fire entrepreneur inside you:
- Why the $3 million a year us top copywriters can make is really just chump change …
- How the world’s second-best business could make you a bloody fortune …
- The single most profitable way you could spend an hour this week …
- And much, MUCH MORE!
Dear Business-Builder,
In Joe VS. The Volcano – one of my all-time favorite movies – a character says something I’ve never forgotten. It goes something like this …
“Nearly everyone on Earth sleepwalks through their lives.
“The handful of folks who are truly awake live in a state of perpetual amazement and wonder.”
Actually the truth is, most of us do both. We sleepwalk through most of every day – automatically performing mundane daily tasks … digging the ruts in which we live our lives … and fighting it out day-to-day in those self-made trenches …
And every once-in-a-while – usually at key turning points of the year or in our lives — we take a few moments to examine where we are, how far we’ve come and where we might want to go next.
Call it “Periodic Introspection.” And since we’re mid-year – one of those “turning points” I just mentioned – what better time to step back and take stock?
See, I’m a big believer in multiple streams of income – of NOT keeping all my eggs in one basket.
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