A dis­grun­tled, aspir­ing copy­writer wrote me demand­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tions. He believes most copy­writ­ers lie and exag­ger­ate their claims of wealth. Let’s call him “Chuck.”

I under­stand where Chuck is com­ing from. Because I’ve been where he is. So I responded, not because I wanted to acqui­esce to his demands but because I wanted to give him hope, ideas, and, dare I say it, a million-​​dollar education.

He says he will be ask­ing other copy­writ­ers the same ques­tion, and even threat­ened (although, that may be too harsh of a word) to pub­lish my reply. I’ve decided to take the lead myself, and pub­lish it here.

For all I know, this copy­writer may be gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion to cre­ate his own prod­uct. Who knows? If he is, I must say that his strat­egy is bril­liant. A tad decep­tive, but bril­liant. Regard­less, if he does cre­ate a prod­uct out of this, good for him!

But I’m reprint­ing the con­ver­sa­tion here not just to take the lead but also because I believe it will help a lot of other strug­gling copy­writ­ers out there. Also, I’m open­ing myself a lit­tle more than usual. I guess you can say that I’m expos­ing the real “Michel Fortin.”

My answer might sur­prise you…

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A lot of peo­ple ask me what’s my blog­ging strat­egy. They want to know, for instance, how I post arti­cles, build a list, and drive traf­fic to my blog. More impor­tant, they want to know how I make money with it. Those are good questions.

The short answer, of course, is to keep offer­ing great con­tent. Fresh con­tent. Con­tent you find valu­able. Con­tent you believe may be of inter­est or value to your readers.

But here’s some­thing you might find surprising…

I don’t use my blog as a busi­ness model like some A-​​list blog­gers out there. Mak­ing money is purely a byprod­uct. Sure, I do have ads on it, inter­spersed through­out, link­ing either to my prod­ucts or to prod­ucts I’m an affil­i­ate of. But they are not focal points.

Granted, those ads do help to pay the bills, keep my blog alive, and incen­tivize me to con­tinue post­ing what I hope is valu­able con­tent for my readers.

But some peo­ple won­der how I drive traf­fic to this blog and build my list of sub­scribers. After all, I don’t adver­tise it at all with any paid adver­tis­ing — other than in my sig­na­ture file on some forum posts, or on my social net­work pro­files like Twit­ter and Face­book.

I’ve revealed part of my strat­egy in some courses, such as Suc­cess Chef Uni­ver­sity, which is our flag­ship train­ing prod­uct. I’ve also revealed it in a few inter­views I gave here and there. I’ve also revealed a hand­ful of them on this blog in the past.

How­ever, there are very spe­cific things I do to help me grow this blog.

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The long antic­i­pated third and final install­ment of my wife’s shock­ing and highly con­tro­ver­sial exposé, Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins cov­er­ing five more sins, is finally out.

It took a bit longer this time, and Sylvie explains why in the report. She also clears up a lot of mis­con­cep­tions about why she wrote this report. And in fact, this time she did it a lit­tle differently.

This time, she did it on video!

There are sev­eral reasons.

For one, she wanted to save time. Her recent surgery forced her to post­pone writ­ing this sec­tion, and peo­ple were clam­or­ing for it.

Sec­ond, it would also give you a chance to hear her pas­sion, and some­times, her anger. Plus, she ends with a heart­felt plea you def­i­nitely don’t want to miss!

Like parts one and two, she uses strong lan­guage and doesn’t hold back! Your dis­cre­tion is advised.

She exposes the final five sins, i.e., Tele­sem­i­nar Idiots, Brain­less Free­bie Seek­ers, Coach­ing Addicts, Time-​​Sucking Vam­pires, and Slave Own­ers. The video is on the same down­load page of the first two parts. If you haven’t signed up, do it now…

Go now and watch part #3 of Inter​net​Mar​ket​ingSins​.com.

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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A recent coach­ing ses­sion touched upon the grow­ing trend that some mar­keters have adopted to squeeze out sales from exit­ing traffic.

In other words, you visit a web­site and read the saleslet­ter. You decide it’s not for you, so you leave. But when you try leave (either as you close your browser or sim­ply hover your mouse out­side of it), the web­site attempts to make a last-​​ditch offer.

The com­mon prac­tice is to offer a dis­count, and a recent trend is to make it through vir­tual sales assis­tant just before the prospect clicks away from the screen.

(Vir­tual assis­tant or not, it is no dif­fer­ent than a one-​​time offer appear­ing in an exit pop-​​up or spawned browser win­dow once the vis­i­tor leaves.)

Not only is the prac­tice annoy­ing, it can be detri­men­tal to your sales efforts.

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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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Just an update on things.

I’m typ­ing this from my hotel room in Ana­heim, Cal­i­for­nia, where my wife and I are speak­ing at a sem­i­nar. My Inter­net con­nec­tion is shoddy and inter­mit­tent, so I can’t do much right now. Even typ­ing this blog post feels like pulling teeth.

To my coach­ing stu­dents, I will be answer­ing your emails once I return to my office, or this week­end if I have a chance and the con­nec­tion improves.

I will be back early next week, post­ing an explo­sive new arti­cle on how to dou­ble or even triple your prof­its using an amaz­ing twist on some­thing we already do as copy­writ­ers and busi­ness owners.

In the mean­time, glide on over to my new site, Copy­writ­ers Library, where I have over 6 hours of audio inter­views with mas­ter copy­writ­ers Gary Hal­bert and John Carl­ton, and 2 of my com­plete books reprinted free for you.