Dan Kennedy often says clunky copy out­sells clean copy. I some­what agree with him, but not all the time. In fact, clunk­i­ness can work against you. And a recent uni­ver­sity study proves this.

Peo­ple have a ten­dency to forge not only a last­ing opin­ion based on first impres­sions but also a blan­ket opin­ion that per­vades all other areas as well.

The adage, “a first impres­sion is a last­ing one,” is not only tem­po­ral (i.e., the ini­tial opin­ion remains con­sis­tent and nearly imper­me­able for a long time) but also spa­tial. That is, a first impres­sion is also a uni­ver­sal one. It per­me­ates other areas, even unre­lated ones, as well.

Illog­i­cal? Yes. But it’s human nature.

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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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I’m back from Atlanta from attend­ing the Big Seminar.

I got to see my friends and some top mar­keters while there, includ­ing Jim Edwards, Mar­lon Sanders, Mike Woo-​​Ming, Brad Fal­lon, Jeff John­son, Ray Edwards, Eric Gra­ham, and more. (The pic­ture on the left is with Eric Gra­ham, one of my coach­ing stu­dents.)

The high­light of the week­end, aside from the great con­tent and the net­work­ing and shoulder-​​rubbing oppor­tu­ni­ties, was Sat­ur­day night. Dr. Scott Lewis, an Inter­net mar­keter as well, is a hyp­no­tist with a reg­u­lar show in Vegas. He gave a show on Sat­ur­day that was filled with surprises.

(My jaw still hurts from laugh­ing so much!)

Nev­er­the­less, I’m back in the office and now get­ting ready for a ton of events. May is shap­ing up to be quite a busy month, with webi­nars, tele­sem­i­nars, copy cri­tiques, and more.

First on the agenda…

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Since releas­ing my spe­cial report, The Death of The Saleslet­ter, there has been a lot of com­mo­tion and con­fu­sion cre­ated over what it means and how it’s affect­ing copy­writ­ing on the Internet.

Is it the death of long copy? Are copy­writ­ers a dying breed? Will video replace text? The answer to all of these is def­i­nitely “No.” And I’ve writ­ten a few blog posts since then to clar­ify, but there’s still some mis­un­der­stand­ing going around.

Well, I’ve decided to clear the air once and for all, and I’m doing it on a very spe­cial tele­sem­i­nar on which I was recently invited to be a guest speaker. And I’m doing it with none other than top copy­writer Clay­ton Makepeace.

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The new year has just started, and the first series of tele­sem­i­nars on which I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing is booked, loaded and ready to fire… And this one is going to be a doozie.

When Clay­ton Make­peace per­son­ally invited me to join him on this pow­er­ful tele­sem­i­nar series, I eagerly accepted. No, it’s not about copy­writ­ing. (Well, not directly, any­way. It does have copy­writ­ing, but it also has much, much more.)

It’s about one of the most lucra­tive indus­tries that, I believe, has trans­formed more reg­u­lar folk into mil­lion­aires than any other indus­try in the world…

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A few things to note today:

1. I love Word­Press so much, that I decided to con­vert my band’s web­site into a blog. (I’m not done yet. More web­sites to fol­low!) You see, it’s not really to use as a blog but as a con­tent deliv­ery system.

Why? Because the results (such as search engine rank­ings, the stam­pede of instant traf­fic using blog soft­ware, and par­tic­u­larly WordPress’s many plu­g­ins) are absolutely astonishing.

Go ahed and check it out Fortin​Drums​.com. (There’s a free video demo there, too. You’ll see yours truly ban­gin’ on them drums in the background.)

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