I recently merged my library with my blog. I had mul­ti­ple resources, books and tele­sem­i­nar record­ings on var­i­ous sites, but decided to con­sol­i­date them all and add them to my blog.

Rea­son? The fact that these resources are no longer as scat­tered makes them eas­ier to find and fol­low. If you want to book­mark these pages or even tell oth­ers about them, please do!

Read the rest of this post or share it »

What’s the most impor­tant part in copy­writ­ing? Is it the head­line? The bul­lets? The ben­e­fits? The tes­ti­mo­ni­als? The guar­an­tee? The offer?

Nope.

While all impor­tant, none of these are as impor­tant as this sin­gle yet pow­er­ful ele­ment. It trumps all the oth­ers by a long­shot, and it’s the one ele­ment all copy must absolutely have to suc­ceed. Once I tell you what it is, you’re going to smack your head and say, “Of course!”

But, it’s not what you think — at least, not in the way you think…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

My last post, where a dis­grun­tled copy­writer demanded “the truth” about cre­at­ing wealth in copy­writ­ing, inspired copy­writer Andrew Cavanagh to share the story of his begin­nings on my forum:

“Here’s how I made my first ‘money’ in copywriting.”

Then one by one, other copy­writ­ers started adding their own. The responses were noth­ing short of amazing!

Many of the sto­ries show that there’s indeed hope. They also show that we were all strug­gling copy­writ­ers once, too. And we didn’t all become overnight mil­lion­aires with million-​​dollar clients, as “Chuck,” the dis­il­lu­sioned copy­writer, postulated.

I loved it so much that I posted my own story. I’ve decided to share it with you here. (By the way, the pic­ture at the top is of me, circa 1991. A lot thin­ner, with glasses, and a lot more hair!) Any­way, here is my story…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Recently, I held three rarely given tele­sem­i­nars — two with Gary Hal­bert and one with John Carl­ton. These men are unde­ni­ably two of the world’s most in-​​demand copywriters.

Each inter­view lasted for two hours, for a total of six. Both Gary and John kept lis­ten­ers riv­eted as they answered press­ing ques­tions from peo­ple like you and me about how to write effec­tive copy that sells.

And now, you can…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Sad day. I’m speechless.

In case you haven’t heard, the infa­mous Gary Hal­bert, the Alpha Shitweasel, the Prince of Print, died in his sleep on Easter Sunday.

All I can say is, the copy­writ­ing world has lost one of its biggest icons. There will NEVER be another Gary Hal­bert, that’s for sure.

John Reese left the mes­sage on my copywriter’s board just after mid­night. John Carl­ton, who was Gary’s best friend in this biz, wrote a blog post that says it all. (It lit­er­ally brought tears to my eyes.)

I remem­ber two years ago when I did a sem­i­nar with him, John Carl­ton, and Mark Joyner, called the “Fusion Sem­i­nar.” (There are some incred­i­bly funny sto­ries from that sem­i­nar, which I will share with you some time soon!)

Rest in peace, brother. You can also lis­ten to two inter­views I’ve done with Gary Hal­bert, and one with John Carlton.

Click here to lis­ten to four hours with me and Gary Halbert.

The next ques­tion is, what does Web 2.0 have to do with saleslet­ters, if any­thing? And how does it affect them? For mar­keters, Web 2.0 presents a num­ber of new oppor­tu­ni­ties and avenues that allow more interaction.

More specif­i­cally, tools cre­ated by Web 2.0 can help to not only human­ize but also mag­ne­tize a web­site, which, in turn, gives mar­keters the abil­ity to cre­ate bet­ter rela­tion­ships with prospects, and sup­plies them with bet­ter tools to offer more proof, com­mu­ni­cate more effec­tively and develop that trust they so seek.

In terms of mar­ket­ing, it can lever­age a viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign by cre­at­ing a cer­tain buzz about the busi­ness, which can enhance a website’s traf­fic, expo­sure, stick­i­ness and, to some degree, believability.

But in terms of saleslet­ters specif­i­cally, which is what I really want to focus on, it can serve up a sales mes­sage in the way the user wants, not how the busi­ness behind it wants or thinks their users want.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Gary: Your wife has triplets. Now some­body comes up to you and explains, tells you your wife has triplets. Is there any way that that piece of infor­ma­tion could be trans­mit­ted to you in a way that wouldn’t be of inter­est to you? I mean, if they use bro­ken Eng­lish, bad gram­mar, if they use sign language.

How­ever it was, if it was, if your wife had unex­pect­edly had triplets I think you’d be inter­ested in the mes­sage. And, and, and that, that’s a point, uh, I think it’s really important ****.

Read the rest of this post or share it »