Since the new year is right around the corner, bloggers and marketers alike are posting their predictions as if a psychics convention has come to town.

So in keeping with that tradition, I’d like to post a few of my own. But unlike those who post their predictions in point form, I won’t make a specific list but rather share with you some of my thoughts.

(Near the end, however, this post will culminate in what I believe will be three major trends to watch out for and dive into, if you want to make some serious money in 2008 and beyond.)

First off, let me state that you may or may not agree with me on these. But something is definitely going on right now that points to these three trends. All the clues are pretty evident, and you’ve probably seen some of these yourself.

What I’m talking about is…

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You may have jumped onboard with PowerWords Generator and the initial launch of its powerful successor, ScribeJuice.™

John Tanner, the programmer behind the software and the ScribeJuice website, and I appreciate your enthusiastic response and unquenchable thirst for more ScribeJuice.

We promised an ever-growing suite of tools to help you write higher-response copy and we delivered with the initial launch. Now we’re giving you even more and there’s still much more in development.

This is not a one-trick-pony with a simple short-term goal to get more sales. In fact, not only are we adding more stuff all the time, but we’re also listening to what our clients are asking for and giving it to them!

(And some of the new features are going to knock your socks off!)

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One of the reasons I’ve been quiet lately is that I’ve been working with my associate, John Tanner, for the worldwide re-release of my thesaurus software. (But it’s no longer just a thesaurus! It’s a lot more…)

The software, initially called "PowerWords Generator," was a tool that scanned your copy, searched for and highlighted words that needed spicing up with better, more powerful and picturesque “action words.”

(These are also known as "power words," which is a term coined by my friend and top copywriter John Carlton.)

It’s more than just a simple thesaurus. For example, a dentist doesn’t create whiter teeth. She creates brighter smiles. A real estate agent doesn’t sell houses. He sell homes. An accounting software doesn’t help you to surpass your competition. It helps you to conquer it.

Split-tests show, time and time again, that by simply changing a few words to better, more vivid, impactful and picturesque words, you can generate dramatic boosts in conversion rates.

But that software is gone. It no longer exists. And here’s why…

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Remember when I talked about hiding content, in my free report The Death of The Salesletter, so it could open up based on a user’s actions and thereby personalizing the salesletter (and also making it short)?

You can hide content on the same sales page, making the page look shorter and less intimidating. And only desired content appears depending on a user’s choices.

In some cases, people break salesletters down into various pages, and add links to them in the letter. Traditionally, I recommend to my clients that they have the extra content open up in a pop-up window, as to not be distracted.

What does using this tactic help to do? Other than the potential for personalization, it means that people don’t have to be bothered by…

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Want to crawl inside my mind for a an hour or so to learn the process I go through to write copy? Tonight is your chance.

My coaching student, Eric Graham, is not only a copywriter but also a webinar expert. He’s in the process of producing several webinars to create content for an upcoming product he’s putting together.

So he asked me If was interested. I accepted.

And tonight, we’re doing not an interview but an actual, step-by-step webinar where I’m going to expand on the seven steps in my writing process.

And no, we’re not selling a thing. There’s nothing to buy.

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Some marketers “get it.”

When I wrote my free white paper, “The Death of The Salesletter,” I mentioned that the web is changing, whether we agree with it or not. Long-copy, text-only, static salesletters are slowly being replaced by more dynamic, cleaner, pithier, multimedia-based, content-driven sales messages.

One case in point is my friend Jack Humphey and his Authority Site Center. His latest product, launched today, is a membership site that teaches people how to create “authority sites” that drive traffic and sell products through content, in particular with the help of Web 2.0 websites, communities, and applications.

Jack actually offers a free report himself on this latest trend. You can download it for free — there’s a mini-video introduction that leads to an opt-in page, where Jack offers his free report, the “Authority Site Blackbook,” after you sign up.

But let me bring your attention to the salesletter for his new product, which is what I really want to focus on and what’s pretty amazing…

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One of the hottest “new” developments in the area of online copy is the Interactive Salesletter.

It’s simply a way to have readers interact in some way, where the content is changed on the fly to target the reader more specifically — such as changing chunks of the salesletter that “gels” with the reader’s aspirations, background, desires, history, etc.

(It’s very true that personalization DOES increase sales. Tremendously.)

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