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.

The other day I was asked, “How do I moti­vate a poten­tial joint ven­ture part­ner to bite? When you have a great idea and you’ve located the per­fect part­ner, how do you moti­vate them to do busi­ness with you?”

In my last post, I talked about the power of a USP and how to define one. Being unique, or hav­ing an inter­est­ing twist or hook, will def­i­nitely up your chances of get­ting noticed.

But regard­less of how you approach your prospec­tive part­ner, whether it’s through an email, fax, or phone call, or by snail mail or FedEx, it is impor­tant to craft the offer in a man­ner that shows the ben­e­fits to your joint-​​venture partner.

How­ever, there are a few extra tricks to moti­vate a poten­tial partner.

Here are some of them…

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With spam inces­santly inun­dat­ing our inboxes and people’s atten­tion spans con­stantly shrink­ing, some have claimed that email mar­ket­ing is on the way out.

I say “nonsense.”

In fact, it’s because of those very rea­sons that email mar­ket­ing is now stronger than ever before. I per­son­ally know of some mar­keters who have made lit­er­ally mil­lions of dol­lars with email mar­ket­ing alone in recent weeks.

I’m talk­ing about legit­i­mate, law-​​compliant, optin email.

Remem­ber, the most com­mon use of the Inter­net is still email — not instant mes­sen­g­ing, social net­work­ing, or brows­ing web­sites. It’s often the very first thing peo­ple do when they log onto the web.

Granted, the biggest stum­bling block is to increase your “open rate” (i.e., the per­cent­age of peo­ple who actu­ally open your emails). And to do so you first need to get your emails deliv­ered and over­come overzeal­ous spam fil­ters.

But once they do reach your read­ers’ inboxes, the most impor­tant step in get­ting your mes­sages through to your audi­ence is with good copy. And like a good head­line in sales copy, it all starts with the sub­ject line.

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The fol­low­ing is prob­a­bly the great­est com­mand­ment in “Power Positioning.”

Now that we’ve talked about lead gen­er­a­tion adver­tis­ing, the next step is where to adver­tise. And the trick to hav­ing as many pre-​​qualified prospects come for­ward is to have your ad noticed and read by such a spe­cific group of peo­ple as much, as often, and as effec­tively as pos­si­ble. Gen­eral pub­li­ca­tions won’t do that and they cost a lot of money… That’s cost-​​per-​​lead money.

Spe­cial­ized pub­li­ca­tions, on the other hand, have the dis­tinc­tion of appeal­ing to a spe­cific audi­ence and thus increase the chances of it being noticed as well as read. Why? If one news­pa­per has a read­er­ship of 100,000 but only 25,000 fits into your demo­graph­ics, where another has only 40,000 read­ers but all of which fits into your demo­graph­ics (because the pub­li­ca­tion is spe­cial­ized), which one do you think will give you the great­est response?

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Face­book is grow­ing by leaps and bounds. If you don’t know what Face­book is, it’s a social net­work­ing site much like MySpace, but with a lot more con­trol, flex­i­bil­ity, and ver­stil­ity. (Check out my pro­file.)

But after test­ing it for a while, I’ve con­cluded that it’s not a viable mar­ket­ing tool. At least, not for me. There are two rea­sons why using Web 2.0 social-​​driven sites to make money (or to drive tar­geted traf­fic) is not viable.

First, and more impor­tantly, it’s labor-​​intensive. It’s a full-​​time affair.

I don’t pre­tend to be a social mar­ket­ing expert by any stretch. And I’m sure that, if you are a social site junkie, you can find some pretty cre­ative ways for using them to gen­er­ate mas­sive amounts of traf­fic. Some already have.

But for me, my busi­ness, and my spe­cific tar­get mar­ket, and like many social net­work­ing sites out there, it’s a waste of time. So if you’re not pre­pared on work­ing it exten­sively and reli­giously, then I dis­c­om­mend it.

How­ever, noth­ing stops you from out­sourc­ing the leg­work, if you’re so inclined. But there’s another good rea­son why I don’t rec­om­mend it…

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Remem­ber when I talked about using mul­ti­me­dia and being pithy? Well, I just came across the short­est saleslet­ter I’ve ever seen.

“Six Fig­ure Blog­ging” by Andy Wibbels and Dar­ren Rowse is a course on how to make money blogging.

Visit the web­site and you’ll be first pre­sented with a short opt-​​in page. Go ahead and opt in. That will lead you to the sales page.

What you will find: a cover graphic of the course, one para­graph of copy, an audio about the course, a link to the course syl­labus, an “Enroll Now” but­ton, and a short, two-​​line dis­claimer. That’s it!

Plus, main copy in the one para­graph sim­ply says, “How to make $10,000 a month blog­ging.” That’s all. Admit­tedly, the “link syl­labus” page is a longer ver­sion, and the real saleslet­ter when you think about it. (But even then, it’s only five printed pages long.)

Click here to check out this short salesletter…

A cou­ple of notes. First off, my per­sonal coach­ing pro­gram has room for three more stu­dents. As a mem­ber, you can ask me unlim­ited ques­tions, one ques­tion at a time, which I will answer. This is a great oppor­tu­nity to be men­tored by me, personally.

Sec­ond, one of my stu­dents in my per­sonal coach­ing pro­gram, asked: “Michel, I’m start­ing a blog using Word­Press. Do you have any gen­eral tips on things like lay­out, plu­g­ins, design, etc?”

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