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.

Read the rest or post a comment »

There’s a debate going on my discussion board about “clean design” vs. “clunky design” with your copy, and how it can or cannot affect response rates.

I’m talking about odd layouts, inconsistent typestyles, emphasis using formatting (like underlining, highlighting, bolding, etc), “junking up” copy, and so on.

For example, on a teleseminar I was giving last week, someone asked “I see so much copy with poor design and bad grammar with spelling mistakes — is it intentional or just plain bad copywriting?”

Which reminds me…

Read the rest or post a comment »

An interesting debate is raging among copy writers, web designers and content developers about the differences, if any, between writing copy for the web versus writing content.

According to prolific copywriter Nick Usborne of Excess Voice, a recent survey conducted among the readers of his newsletter of the same name offers some interesting results. They seem to be split almost three ways: one-third consists of copywriters, another content writers and the final third both.

But it’s wrong.

Read the rest or post a comment »