A stu­dent, who is an upcom­ing copy­writer, recently asked where he could find clients will­ing to pay higher rates for his skills.

Hav­ing built a client base through net­work­ing on Inter­net forums geared towards start-​​up busi­ness own­ers, he now wanted to find oppor­tu­ni­ties that would allow for upward mobil­ity within his craft.

This is a com­mon sce­nario, because local and espe­cially start-​​up busi­nesses are easy to find, and pro­vide plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to prac­tice your emerg­ing copy­writ­ing skills.

In a pre­vi­ous arti­cle, I talked about three tips for aspir­ing copy­writ­ers. I rec­om­mend any new copy­writer to fol­low these three tips to start build­ing a track record and get to a level that makes them appeal­ing to higher-​​paying clients.

But after your copy­writ­ing skills are devel­oped, how­ever, it becomes desir­able if not nec­es­sary to seek out clients — bet­ter, more lucra­tive clients — who are estab­lished enough to pay a fair wage for your skills and, above all, your results.

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Just a quick piece of news.

My wife’s book, Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins, is com­pletely done and all three sec­tions (each one con­tain­ing five chap­ters each) are avail­able with­out any optins.

In other words, the entire book is avail­able as a direct down­load right off the web page. You don’t need to reg­is­ter, log in, or fill out any forms.

The pre­vi­ous optin form was used sim­ply to notify those inter­ested when parts two and three would become avail­able (since it was writ­ten in install­ments over time). But now that all three parts are out, it’s no longer needed.

The first two are PDFs, and the third one is a video. So if you would like to read and watch Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins, go there now. And don’t for­get to retweet this.

Click here to get Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins by Sylvie Fortin.

It’s Thanks­giv­ing in Canada, so it’s time to give thanks. It’s also my birth­day. That’s why I’m the one who’s going to give you a gift (there’s only one con­di­tion, so read on).

I want to give thanks to all my loyal sub­scribers and read­ers. But there’s another per­fectly good and more impor­tant reason.

I need to make some room!

You see, I have 3,000 copies of one of my books in stor­age, and I need to get rid of them. Fast! So I’m fully pre­pared to give them away. For free. Let me give you some back­ground first…

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“Suc­cess is always tem­po­rary. When all is said and done, the only thing you’ll have left is your char­ac­ter.“
–Vince Gill

Today, when one is con­sid­ered “suc­cess­ful,” that per­son is usu­ally labeled as such accord­ing to some exter­nal cri­te­rion. This is only nat­ural, for along with the major­ity of the human race you have the ten­dency to judge a book by its cover. What you per­ceive or observe through any of your five senses is often­times inter­preted as real­ity or truth. And the prob­lem, how­ever, is that when you dis­tin­guish that which is suc­cess to you, you are only scratch­ing the surface.

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As we’re get­ting ready to speak at the next Big Sem­i­nar, and share the stage with none other than Jay Abra­ham, my wife Sylvie and I have been work­ing furi­ously on our upcom­ing prod­uct, Suc­cess Chef, which we are launch­ing at Big.

But as busy as I am these days, and with the added stress of writ­ing copy, deal­ing with clients and rais­ing three teenagers, I some­times find myself dip­ping into a few books as a dis­trac­tion for some solace and qui­etude — and to give me some fresh ideas.

Last week, I bought four books, and devoured them in a sin­gle week!

I’m noth­ing short of amazed at how great these books are. And I want to share them with you and encour­age you to grab a copy. (Audio ver­sions of the books are also avail­able, too.) They are…

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Core expan­sion is far dif­fer­ent than exten­sion. Exten­sion is often referred to as fran­chis­ing, licens­ing, line exten­sion, or branch­ing out — also known as con­glom­er­at­ing. In this con­text, I am refer­ring to expan­sion by division.

If you’re a spe­cial­ist in your field — which I hope you are after read­ing this book — and you offer only one type of ser­vice, you can expand from within by divid­ing your core (your prod­uct or ser­vice) into mul­ti­ple, smaller components.

This helps to do 3 things. 1) It doesn’t take away from your cat­e­gory or spe­cial­iza­tion. 2) It increases your hit ratio when tar­get­ing clients, since some of them might be inter­ested in your entire pack­age while oth­ers may be inter­ested in only a por­tion of it. And 3) it increases the aura of exper­tise you project because you refrain from spread­ing your­self too thin.

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I know that the yel­low pages’ peo­ple will hate me for this, but your yel­low pages’ ad, although an essen­tial part of your entire mar­ket­ing machine, doesn’t have to be of a large size, in color, promi­nently dis­played, or tied-​​in with other gim­micks that the yel­low pages sales­peo­ple have to offer. While nec­es­sary, the yel­low pages should only be used as sup­port systems.

The con­cept of this entire book is to teach you that cre­at­ing top-​​of-​​mind aware­ness (not “insti­tu­tional” adver­tis­ing) should be your main mar­ket­ing goal. When peo­ple have seen your ad, heard about you, or have a need for your ser­vices at any par­tic­u­lar time, your con­tact infor­ma­tion may or may not be avail­able to them at that par­tic­u­lar moment. There­fore, you want the yel­low pages to back you up and not use them as a full-​​blown mar­ket­ing medium.

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