After read­ing and re-​​reading the lat­est FTC guide­lines, I’ve come to some impor­tant con­clu­sions that I want to share with you. Par­tic­u­larly as they relate to testimonials.

Last night, my good friend and top copy­writer John Carl­ton called me up, and we had an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion on this whole FTC thing and the hys­te­ria it has created.

I expressed to John my opin­ions about them, along with a very sim­ple solu­tion. And John agreed with me.

It’s a huge ben­e­fit to those who under­stand copy­writ­ing, because they can actu­ally turn around and use the FTC rul­ings to their advan­tage. Even make more sales as a result.

Part of the solu­tion is actu­ally sim­pler than you think. And it doesn’t involve tear­ing down all your tes­ti­mo­ni­als, plas­ter­ing a bazil­lion dis­claimers around them, or con­duct­ing painful, men­tal con­tor­tions to decide what is typ­i­cal or not.

You can start by doing this one sim­ple thing…

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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…

If you’ve spent much time at all here, you’ll know Michel’s a fanat­i­cal tester. But he’s not alone in his pas­sion for quan­tifi­able results.

For instance our friend Alex Man­doss­ian preaches to any­one with ears to hear that, “Noth­ing is true or false, but test­ing makes it so.”

(Hope I got that right, Alex.)

That’s so impor­tant. Because while copy always has been and always will be indis­pens­able in sell­ing — espe­cially on the web — any copy­writer who thinks words alone are enough is doing his clients a huge disservice.

At Suc­cess Doc­tor we’re pas­sion­ate about copy, but we also rec­og­nize words have lim­i­ta­tions. When you tune your copywriter’s radar into mar­kets that value test­ing, you’ll quickly dis­cover — it’s the most com­pet­i­tive mar­kets that place the great­est pre­mium on test­ing over “gut” feeling.

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Pre­am­ble: In response to some excel­lent rebut­tals as well as count­less com­ments I’ve received on my pre­vi­ous post, “The Real Sin­is­ter Side of Forced Con­ti­nu­ity,” I believe some peo­ple are miss­ing the point of my argu­ment, and I want to clar­ify a few things.

I’m not a lawyer by any stretch. But as a copy­writer and busi­ness owner, I do know the rules enough to know that there’s a dif­fer­ence between “optional con­ti­nu­ity,” “forced con­ti­nu­ity,” and “hid­den continuity.”

Optional con­ti­nu­ity is self-​​explanatory. Forced con­ti­nu­ity is a very com­mon mar­ket­ing prac­tice (I’m not a fan of it, but I don’t mind it). In fact, there’s noth­ing wrong with forced con­ti­nu­ity in and of itself.

What’s wrong is when it’s used in a wrong way.

The real prob­lem, I believe, is that good mar­keters, includ­ing mar­keters using “forced con­ti­nu­ity” in an eth­i­cal and legit­i­mate way, are get­ting a bad rep­u­ta­tion because some mar­keters unscrupu­lously mis­use forced continuity.

The lack of trans­parency is the real cul­prit — such as hid­ing it or dis­guis­ing it. Espe­cially when it’s done on pur­pose. That annoys me. Because it’s no longer an issue of mis­use. It’s out-​​and-​​out abuse.

But what both­ers me more is how it affects us all. And it affects us all, both cus­tomers and mar­keters alike, in more ways than you think.

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“If you have built cas­tles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where there should be. Now, put foun­da­tions under them.“
– Henry David Thoreau

“When you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.“
– Jim Rohn

A ques­tion peo­ple often ask me in my sem­i­nars is, “Why are there so many peo­ple who suc­ceed, have every­thing a per­son can ever wish for, yet still feel unhappy, unsat­is­fied, or unful­filled?” Why, in other words, do so many peo­ple suc­cess­fully fail? You might won­der what this ques­tion has to do with self-​​esteem. To explain, let me draw on an analogy.

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“The secret of suc­cess is con­stancy of pur­pose.“
–Anony­mous

I agree that, if one wants to achieve more, the most impor­tant tool for doing so in today’s world is time man­age­ment. The chal­lenge in deal­ing with an inces­santly increas­ing demand on this scarcer com­mod­ity that we call time is preva­lent in our soci­ety. Peo­ple are busier than ever before and seem to never have enough time to do what they really want.

How­ever, if you study truly suc­cess­ful men and women, you will rec­og­nize that they always seem to have lots of time. They live in the moment, are happy and love what they do, and are intrin­si­cally very pro­duc­tive. More­over, they have intense focused con­cen­tra­tion on the task at hand and seem to man­age their time almost instinc­tively. And they do so with pas­sion, zest and fervor.

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I’m up for a challenge.

Just recently, my friend and SEO blog­ging expert Andy Beard posted an arti­cle about an inter­est­ing case study.

After sim­ply reword­ing the head­line of a blog post, John Wes­ley lit­er­ally mul­ti­plied his traf­fic to one of his blog posts by 10 times.

With the same post!

In other words, noth­ing was changed except for the head­line. The arti­cle was exactly the same, word for word. But by chang­ing the head­line slightly, the blog post drew a ton of traf­fic, par­tic­u­larly from social net­work­ing sites.

Well, now’s your chance to have me do the same thing for you — and learn a thing or two, too. Here’s how. Let me rewire one of your own head­lines for max­i­mum sell­ing power. But there’s a catch…

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