Posted by: Daniel Levis
December 12, 2007
Issue #305

What I Learned From Working With
Ted Nicholas This Week…

In this special interview issue:

• Understanding the difference between the letter of the copywriting laws and their true spirit …
• What sells more, fear of loss or promise of reward?
• The single biggest secret to info-marketing success …
• And more!

Dear Web Business Builder,

It was a rare treat having the opportunity to promote and host a live learning event with Ted Nicholas earlier this week for my Selling to Human Nature subscribers.

Ted Nicholas has been directly responsible for more then $5.7 BILLION in sales, spanning an amazing 50 year + career in which he’s been busy consulting and writing copy for external clients … starting, growing and selling 21 different businesses … writing and promoting 15 books to the bestseller list … as well as giving hundreds of high priced, extreme value seminars all over the world.

For 98 minutes, Ted held us spellbound as we discussed the most pressing questions folks just like you have about getting into the information marketing business … making it, as a freelance copywriter … and writing blockbuster ads that sell your information products like crazy.

To promote this very special event, I held a little contest. I challenged people to tell the difference between one of Ted’s huge blockbuster ads that made millions, and another ad that simply broke even.

I posted the headline and lead from the two ads, both selling Ted’s classic bestseller “How To Form A Corporation Without A Lawyer For Under $50” on my blog, and asked everyone if they could tell the difference. Then, on the call, I debriefed the two ads with Ted.

Of the 250 or so entries, about half of them were wrong. From the responses, it became clear to me that many people are studying copywriting intently, and in so doing, picking up a lot of guidelines and rules, but not necessarily understanding the principles behind them.

For example, many people decided that since the first ad was full of the words “I”, “me”, and “mine”, and deficient in the words “you”, “your”, and “yours” that there was no way it could be the winner. Isn’t that after all one of the rules they teach you in copywriting 101? Here are a few comments from my subscribers:

“People don’t care about you - they care about protecting themselves.”

“The second ad is the winner because it’s very powerful. It uses YOU, putting the focus on the reader and is arousing in him FEAR, a very primitive emotion, fear to lose everything, not only the business but whatever he has.”

“I believe the second ad is the winner. The entire ad is focused on me, the reader and what can happen to me if I don’t incorporate. The first ad is written from the perspective of what happened to the writer.”

Here are the first few paragraphs of the first ad:

Only Way Left For
Little Guy To Get Rich …

Here is the uncensored message my wife
asked me not to write

“I love my wife. And I understand why she wants me to keep my mouth shut. She wants to protect me from the IRS.

But I can’t be quiet any longer. I’m angry. We are really getting jerked around. And I’m tired of it.

The government says one thing. And then does the opposite. Especially Bush. And I even voted for him. One of my biggest mistakes.

Of course this ad was the winner, by a country mile. Does that mean the self-interest principle is wrong? Not at all. The self-interest principle is correct. People don’t care about other people. They care about themselves.

This ad may be full of “I” and “my” and “mine”, but when people experienced this ad, they didn’t feel like they were reading an ad. They felt they were reading a story. And they identified very strongly with the hero. They saw their own feelings and self-interests being expressed through his story. As far as they were concerned, the story was about them.

Another phrase from the persuasion “rule book” that came up frequently was “The fear of loss trumps the promise of gain”. Here are a few such comments.

“The second ad was the blockbuster ad for Ted Nicholas because people are far more scared of losing something than from gaining something.”

“I’d have to say the second ad is the million dollar ad because I also think fear of loss is a bigger motivator than anger.”

“Ad # 2 wins. Pain trumps gain. Period.”

Here are a few paragraphs from the second ad.

DANGER

All Your Personal Assets
Could Be Wiped Out Overnight

There is only one completely safe way to protect your
car, home, cash, and other personal assets from
business risks

It’s downright scary.

As a self employed individual, your home, car, stocks, and other personal assets are always at risk.

The big fear is that a business disaster, which is beyond anyone’s control, could happen to you. An accident, lawsuit, or financial loss … events which happen every day … could wipe you out.

A major problem is that we live in a ‘litigation-happy’ society. It’s often a dangerous and naive assumption to believe that no one will ever sue you. A law-suit could be filed by a customer, supplier, relative, or disgruntled employee. In fact, there is a strong probability you will be sued in the near future even if you are very careful. You could lose, often on some technical point of law with which you are unfamiliar. If so … boom! Just like that you could lose your business. In addition, your home, cars, cash, stocks, bonds, and other assets could also go down the drain without proper protection.

So what did Ted have to say about this when I asked him about it on the call? Is he of the opinion that the fear of loss is greater than the promise of reward, or that one emotion necessarily trumps another? His answer is incredibly enlightening …

In Ted’s Own Words …

“Well I’ve made more money with the fear of loss than I have with the hope of reward overall, because one good marketing technique is indeed to scare the begeezus out of somebody and then offer a solution. But it’s kind of hard to say that one emotional response is more powerful than another.

If you’re successful in creating anger, in the sense that the person’s angry along with you, then I think you have a real good chance to sell. This is what happened in Only Way Left For The Little Guy. I was angry, but the people reading it were angry with me, they were on my side. They were on the same page. That’s why they ordered the product. But if you just get somebody angry, and they’re angry at you, and angry at the subject you’re bringing up, then very few people are going to order. So it depends on how you demonstrate the emotion.

Now, in the case of fear of loss, if what you’re selling really creates the fear of loss in a believable, credible way, then your chance of selling is also very very high. But if the fear of loss is not fully believable, if it’s a little bit hollow in the way that it’s presented, you’re not going to be successful.

I think of it like two tuning forks, you know. I’m looking to be a tuning fork with my copy. And I’m looking to communicate with millions of people who are their tuning forks. And if they’re both vibrating the way they do in music, then we can make music together, and people will buy my product.

But if I’m missing the mark, if I think I’m communicating in such a way were my prospect is going to feel similarly or be moved emotionally but I’m missing it, if I’m just not capturing it, then whether it’s anger or if it’s fear of loss, it’s not going to work.

What that little guy ad has is what I try to create in all my copy to a greater degree now that I ever did, the idea that: What comes from the heart, goes to the heart. If it’s really heartfelt, authentically, I don’t mean created. I don’t mean manufactured. I don’t mean artificial. I mean what really is from your heart, goes to the heart of the reader. So what the copywriters listening here today need to work on is messages that are from the heart. Because that takes away that feeling that the copy is puffery, that it’s exaggeration, that it’s lies.

You know people are more skeptical now than ever. And so when they read an ad they’re feeling, “why should I trust the writer of this ad?” That’s what you have to overcome, building that trust. The “I to you” “heart to heart” kind of approach is what makes it work.”

Isn’t that incredible advice? Be real. Be sincere. And speak from the heart when you sell. What a concept.

We also spoke at length about getting into the information marketing business. I asked Ted what the best niches are to get into now. Here’s what he said:

Ultimately, what I recommend is that you don’t try to sell anything unless you’re deeply passionate about it. Because if you don’t have that emotion, that energy and that vitality that comes from your passion in your copy you’re not going to sell anything to anybody. Stay in the niches that really turn you on.

I’ve worked in 49 different niches, but I spend most of my time in health, and helping entrepreneurs, because that’s what I’m passionate about. I’ve got a constant stream of people coming to me with various products and services, and I turn away 99% of them, because I’m not turned on by what they’re doing.

Within your passions, there are usually one or two things where you can find a niche, and a business. The first step is to make a list of all the things you love, the things that turn you on when you’re not working. What do you like to do? Make a list of those things, and then think about how you can create a business around those things. That to me is the best way to start.

A lot of people ask me what’s the best business to get into today. And I say there’s no best business for everyone. What’s the best business for me, is not necessarily the best thing for you. Everybody listening to this call should individualize their business according to their own passions, and energies, and vitalities, so you can communicate with your market from the heart.

What Can This Simple
Wisdom Do For You?

After 9 publishers turned down Ted’s first information product, a book called “How to Form A Corporation Without A Lawyer For Under $50” he began applying these simple principles.

He took out a small classified ad in the Wall Street Journal for $90, soliciting expressions of interest, and got 450 replies. Then he sent out a sales letter to each one, and got back nearly $500 in orders. Thus an empire was born.

Each month the ads got bigger and bigger, until he was selling in a single step with full-page ads like “Only Way Left For Little Guy To Get Rich”. Within six months he was spending $50,000 a month in ads, and plucking $250,000 a month in cash, checks, and credit cards from the mailbox at the end of his driveway.

Over the years Ted wrote over 320 ads for “How to Form A Corporation Without A Lawyer for Under $50”, 120 of which broke even or better. He sold 2 million copies, and made tens of millions from his first book, eventually growing his mailing list to over 750,000 names, and making hundreds of millions in back end sales. List rental alone brought in over a million a year.

The Moral Of The Story …

Ted’s book contained just 32,000 words, yet he wrote over 320,000 words of copy to sell it. He is one of the most successful copywriters and info-marketers to have ever lived — yet more than half of the ads he wrote were flops.

This week’s big lesson from Ted Nicholas? Fail fast. Fail often. And fail forward — selling something you believe in passionately. And you can’t help but succeed!

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis
Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

PS. If you missed the training session with Ted last week, that’s really unfortunate. To make sure you don’t miss the next training session, hop on over to Info-Marketer’s Blog and get on my mailing list right away. To sign up for Ted’s excellent e-zine, click here.

Looking for resources related to this article? Try some of these.

Looking for more of Daniel’s articles? Check these out.

Looking for past issues of The Total Package? Click here for our archives.

Want to share or reprint this article? Feel free. Just give us full attribution and a link to our Home Page when you do.

Attribution Statement: This article was first published in The Total Package. To sign-up to receive your own FREE subscription to The Total Package and claim four FREE money making e-books go to www.makepeacetotalpackage.com.

Related posts

• How to Sell to People Who Don’t Want to Be Sold …
• Direct Response ‘Rithmatic: The Third “R”
• Could This Be The Next Secret?
• A Conversation With Million-Dollar Copywriter CARLINE ANGLADE-COLE
• Face Your Fears

---

6 Comments »

1. Comment by Tommy — December 12, 2007 @ 8:29 am

   First let me say I am no copywriter…I want to highlight a point that is often overlooked in sales about fear of loss. Ted talks about believability…

   Amen…finally someone talking about putting in print what is REAL.

   Using take aways and fear of loss will be infinitely more powerful when they are REAL.

   Getting someone to believe an exaggeration is not the same as a REAL fear of loss and this may be obvious to you or maybe not…

   Real fear of loss is known by the reader and phony fear of loss is obvious as well.

   I cringe when I see a poor use of a take away…you might fool a few laydowns (which you were going to get anyway) but your not gonna close the sweet spot

   Trust is established with irrefutable proof…anything you do to jeopardize that is a mistake

2. Comment by Tommy — December 12, 2007 @ 8:32 am

   Sorry I didn\’t say this earlier.

   great article.

3. Comment by Jamie — December 12, 2007 @ 2:45 pm

   Be Real… Or Be Gone! This is something that I\’ve been saying since I first started studying copywriting and internet marketing, and it\’s something that so many miss the mark on. They lay down the hype nice and thick, and ultimately, many people will fall for it, if they aren\’t versed on the \”tricks of the trade\”, for lack of a better phrase.

   \”You know people are more skeptical now than ever. And so when they read an ad they’re feeling, “why should I trust the writer of this ad?” That’s what you have to overcome, building that trust. The “I to you” “heart to heart” kind of approach is what makes it work.\”

   This is absolutely true. If you\’re not real, authentic, passionate and speaking to the reader from the heart, it doesn\’t matter if you\’re using benefits, results, fear of loss or any other tactic, your copy is going to fail miserably. This is part of speaking in (when you\’re writing external copy) the \”authors voice\” is about too. You must be able to convey the authors passion, their \”heart\” believably, or it\’s simply not going to work.

   Daniel, I\’m really proud that you of all people have brought out in the open what I\’ve been trying to convey to people I associate with for a long time now.

   Thanks so much for sharing these insights. Now maybe people will listen.

   Peace & Prosperity,

   Jamie Davidson

4. Comment by Rob Palmer — December 12, 2007 @ 5:07 pm

   Great stuff…full of insights. But I think there is another very important reason why ad No.1 outpulled No.2

   No.2 is themed around the risk of losing your assets. Something we should all be concerned about certainly, but not exactly on the top of most people\’s minds every day. It\’s about prevention, not cure, and we all know which is the strongest sell.

   But No.1 focuses on paying taxes - something we all do every working day, and something we all hate. It provides an immediate solution to an immediate problem. It\’s a magic bullet - an instant cure to a pressing problem. No.1 could hardly fail!

5. Comment by Online Copywriter Andrew Cavan — December 12, 2007 @ 6:11 pm

   I guess no one is going to take me up on that $10,000 bet over which as was the winner then.

   This was a great teleseminar Daniel.

   Kindest regards,
   Andrew Cavanagh

6. Comment by Daniel Levis — December 12, 2007 @ 10:58 pm

   Yes Rob, I see where you\\\’re coming from. I asked Ted this very question, and he said that with other ads he had done very well selling \\\”prevention\\\”. For example, \\\”What will you do when your personal assets are siezed to satisfy a judgement against your corporation?\\\” was a huge winner.

   Cheers!

7. Comment by wpfzuqhx — January 3, 2008 @ 6:52 pm

   [URL=http://uhhqkvfy.com]ggjwkwkr[/URL] duemjqmi http://mpuvahtt.com psrskupb ccbjhime bnpekulk