Posted by:
Daniel Levis
August 27, 2008
Issue #490
Dear Web Business-Builder,
Probably the biggest pain point for aspiring info-product marketers is product creation.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve talked to people who are slaving over their first info-product for months, sometimes years.
Others seem to start one project after another never finishing any of them.
And still more bring dud products to market that never should have been born.
There are many reasons for these common afflictions …
Three of the biggest are the idea that your first info-product has to be a runaway best seller … that you have to personally create the content that goes into your info-product … and that it has to be perfect.
If you can sidestep these paralyzing erroneous conclusions, you can have your first product done and selling in mere weeks. It can be like picking up a dime and watching it turn into a dollar before it reaches your pocket.
The Lazy Man’s Way to Info-Riches …
One of the fastest and easiest ways to create a niche info-product that sells is to interview published authors. If you can find a topic with 20 or 30 different books written on that topic, it means you probably won’t have too much trouble selling information built around that same general topic. And you can get the authors of those books to do most of the content creation for you.
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
August 21, 2008
Issue #14
(… And Great Copy Into A WINDFALL
For Copywriters And Our Clients)
"There are certain prime human emotions with which the thoughts of all of us are occupied a goodly part of the time. Tune in on them, and you have your reader's attention. Tie it up to the thing you have to offer, and you are sure of his interest."
– Robert Collier
The Robert Collier Letter Book
Dear Business-Builder,
In the 35-plus years since I created my first little piece of direct response sales copy, I've written considerably more than a thousand direct response ads, television spots and mail pieces.
Because nearly all of them were direct response promotions, each produced an easily measurable and almost immediate result. And over the years, as I studied those results, my approach to strategizing and creating sales promotions began to evolve.
Today, my work process is very different than it was in those early years. My first thought is no longer about the product benefits or even the product's USP. Nor do I begin each project by thinking about all the rational "reasons why" my prospect should buy.
Please don't get me wrong: It's not that I've discarded any of these techniques. They still have prominent places in every promotion I create. But something else has risen to the top of my "to-do" list when creating a promotion – and that change has produced the closest thing to sales miracles I have ever witnessed.
Dinosaurs still roamed the earth when I started my writing career. Back in the early 1970s, there were no computerized mailing lists, no toll-free order hotlines, no affordable fax machines, no FedEx or other overnight delivery services – and no personal mentors or coaches for aspiring copywriters.
Thankfully, I had The Giants to instruct me. I read, re-read and re-re-read the wonderful guides left for me by those who had come before – particularly, Claude Hopkins' Scientific Advertising, Rosser Reeves' Reality in Advertising and John Caples' Tested Advertising Methods.
Thanks to these Giants, I "knew" every ad was supposed to begin by identifying the benefits my product offered to prospects – the ways in which it made their lives easier, richer, and more rewarding.
I knew I should use the most powerful of these benefits to craft a compelling Unique Selling Proposition … establish it right up front … and turn it into a mantra throughout my copy.
And I understood the importance of fully developing every "Reason Why" my prospects should buy.
But there was a problem: My only assignments were from fund-raising organizations – groups that had no product to sell and offered little if any direct benefit to the donor!
Giving them money wouldn't relieve your rheumatism, banish bad breath, give you whiter teeth or make you attractive to the opposite sex. Nor would it help you avoid a disaster in the health or wealth departments, or even save you time in the laundry room.
In fact the only tangible, personal result of forking over a ten-buck contribution was that you'd wind up $10 poorer!
Sure – there were vague benefits in the selfless act of giving away money to a worthy cause – like feeling good about the good you were doing. But even at that early age, I suspected that writing an appeal letter or TV spot saying, "Give me money – it'll make you feel good" – wouldn't exactly set the world on fire.
Here again, fate stepped in for me …
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Posted by:
Gary Bencivenga
August 19, 2008
Issue #484
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
My friends, star marketers Alex Mandossian and Yanik Silver, recently paid me a compliment by calling me, "The world’s greatest living reason-why copywriter."
I consider it such high praise because my mentor, David Ogilvy, was in my view the greatest reason-why copywriter of all time. In fact, when asked by a reporter if he was a strong proponent of "reason why" advertising, Ogilvy responded, "Is there any other kind?"
Thinking of Mr. Ogilvy (or "D. O.," as we staffers at Ogilvy & Mather called him) has prompted me to once again offend every English teacher whose classes I endured, and inspire everyone else who speaks the King’s English to cringe, by penning another of my infamous poems, this one entitled …
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
August 18, 2008
Issue #483
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?
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Posted by:
Troy White
August 15, 2008
Issue #482
Fellow Business-Builder,
Can you believe August is almost gone?
Yeesh! That kinda flew by.
In between dealing with the insurance companies, estimators and police with our recent break-in, I found myself knee-deep in a brand new project for an exciting new client.
She has a program being released in a highly competitive field and hired me to help her find ways to grow her sales as fast as humanly possible.
Now a few details on the project:
- She is in Canada – and wants to focus on Canadian buyers (but the content applies to those who live pretty well anywhere).
- She has an amazing story (she went from $0 to $3 million in her first 6 months), and then another $3 million in the next 12.
- She is selling training in a field that is oversaturated with “gurus” – but she has no goal to be one. All she wants is to share the formula she used to create speed wealth like she did … rather than feeding people a little here – then upsell them to a little more – another upsell – a little more content, etc. She wants to give it all at once – for a sizable premium.
- She is the real deal and has proven to me time and time again she over-delivers.
- She is only offering the program three more times and then is out of it.
So, the foundation is set and I need to find out how to market her services, and who to market to.
We had discussed using online and offline media for maximum results in the timeline we set … and I think she really needs print materials mixed in to stand out from all the others.
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