As expected, my last blog post gen­er­ated quite a num­ber of com­ments. Some were insight­ful, even a few of the neg­a­tive ones, and I appre­ci­ate them all. Thank you.

How­ever, from most of the com­ments I’ve read, includ­ing some of the pos­i­tive ones, it seems a lot of peo­ple missed the point I was try­ing to con­vey. They thought it was about Face­book user­names and there­fore no big deal.

Well, it wasn’t about Face­book specif­i­cally. It was about hav­ing integrity and respect, and doing what’s right.

They missed it, and that was prob­a­bly my fault. My pas­sion for the topic and oppo­si­tion to the con­cept of “friendly extor­tion,” which I blogged about in the past, caused me to write more force­fully than the norm, and I was less than clear than I should have been.

Face­book wasn’t the prob­lem. It just so hap­pened to be the tool used in this case. It was more about the scarcity mind­set and the sense of enti­tle­ment peo­ple have in think­ing this was accept­able behav­ior and that we should tol­er­ate it.

So I wanted to clear the air. I recorded this quick lit­tle video after I woke up this morn­ing — oh, and please ignore the fash­ion­able bed-​​head hairdo.

Please let me know what you think…

Many copy­writ­ers, both new and expe­ri­enced, strug­gle with how much to charge their clients. In fact, it is a prob­lem that many in the ser­vice indus­try face.

The dilemma?

Charge too lit­tle and you risk los­ing cred­i­bil­ity in the eyes of your cus­tomers and poten­tial clients. Addi­tion­ally, the qual­ity of your work, even if it is worth 100 times what they paid for it, will be seen as hav­ing dimin­ished value.

Worst of all, when you charge too lit­tle, you may begin to resent the project, the client, or even your cho­sen profession.

In short, charg­ing too lit­tle doesn’t do any­one any good, least of all you.

On the other hand, if you charge too much you run the risk of los­ing a poten­tial client. You may lose out on oppor­tu­ni­ties to work with clients who could open doors and pro­vide you and your busi­ness with an abun­dance of work.

The solu­tion?

Read the rest of this post or share it »

If you’ve read my report, The Death of The Saleslet­ter, then you know that many of my “pre­dic­tions” (I’m using quotes for a rea­son) were based on actual test results. Many of them were made by, or done based on tests from, John Reese.

John is one of my men­tors. He’s not only a multi-​​millionaire but also a vision­ary. And lately, John has proven this to be true. Recently, he released a fas­ci­nat­ing report enti­tled The Rebirth of Inter­net Mar­ket­ing, which I highly encour­age you to down­load and read — if you haven’t already.

While John touches on many aspects of the trends affect­ing Inter­net mar­ket­ing (such as adver­tis­ing, con­tent, author­ity sites, and more), for me the most salient point is, with­out ques­tion, the decline in long-​​copy saleslet­ters, and the increas­ing pop­u­lar­ity and ver­sa­til­ity of video-​​based salesletters.

How­ever, there are a few things to note.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

My 50-​​page report last week cre­ated quite a stir. Some peo­ple who did not read it may have mis­un­der­stood my point. How­ever, I’m not going to make another blog post ded­i­cated to the grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity of online audio or video. (I prob­a­bly will, but I’ll save it for another time.)

But to sum­ma­rize, while saleslet­ters in prin­ci­ple are not dying — I’ve cho­sen “Death of the Saleslet­ter” as a title to get peo­ple to read the report, among other things — and long copy is here to stay, the deliv­ery mech­a­nism is indeed slowly being replaced. (Granted, we still have a way to go, yet.)

By the same token, a cer­tain type of saleslet­ter is indeed dying.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

So what exactly is Web 2.0? I’m not an ana­lyst or some dot­com pun­dit. But being online since 1991 (or since 1982 if you con­sider bul­letin board ser­vices), I’ve wit­nessed enough to have a good grasp of what’s going on.

So here’s my perspective.

At the dawn of the Inter­net the web was pri­mar­ily a uni­di­rec­tional, one-​​way com­mu­ni­ca­tions process. The web was com­prised mostly of sta­tic web pages, filled with hyper­text and links. It was akin to the direct mail indus­try, only this time it was served up on a com­puter mon­i­tor rather than on a piece of paper.

In fact, web pages that worked the best, espe­cially in a direct mar­ket­ing con­text, were ads and saleslet­ters that closely mim­ic­ked the long-​​copy print saleslet­ters we often get in the mail.

For many years and until recently, this was true.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

The next ques­tion is, what does Web 2.0 have to do with saleslet­ters, if any­thing? And how does it affect them? For mar­keters, Web 2.0 presents a num­ber of new oppor­tu­ni­ties and avenues that allow more interaction.

More specif­i­cally, tools cre­ated by Web 2.0 can help to not only human­ize but also mag­ne­tize a web­site, which, in turn, gives mar­keters the abil­ity to cre­ate bet­ter rela­tion­ships with prospects, and sup­plies them with bet­ter tools to offer more proof, com­mu­ni­cate more effec­tively and develop that trust they so seek.

In terms of mar­ket­ing, it can lever­age a viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign by cre­at­ing a cer­tain buzz about the busi­ness, which can enhance a website’s traf­fic, expo­sure, stick­i­ness and, to some degree, believability.

But in terms of saleslet­ters specif­i­cally, which is what I really want to focus on, it can serve up a sales mes­sage in the way the user wants, not how the busi­ness behind it wants or thinks their users want.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Nowa­days, it’s no longer a choice between the A and B piles. It’s no longer a choice between hun­dreds of sta­tions or chan­nels. It’s a choice between mil­lions if not bil­lions of options called “websites.”

But there’s some­thing else.

The Inter­net has mul­ti­plied not only the num­ber of options but also the num­ber of choices, too! (If you want a hint, think of those choices as “applications.”)

From mil­lions of web pages (as opposed to just hun­dreds of direct mail pieces, TV chan­nels or radio sta­tions), to var­i­ous deliv­ery meth­ods for each one (e.g., text, audio and video), to addi­tional appli­ca­tions that equally demand atten­tion (on the web as well as on a com­puter desk­top), a user’s choices have there­fore become expo­nen­tially more complex.

Read the rest of this post or share it »