After read­ing and re-​​reading the lat­est FTC guide­lines, I’ve come to some impor­tant con­clu­sions that I want to share with you. Par­tic­u­larly as they relate to testimonials.

Last night, my good friend and top copy­writer John Carl­ton called me up, and we had an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion on this whole FTC thing and the hys­te­ria it has created.

I expressed to John my opin­ions about them, along with a very sim­ple solu­tion. And John agreed with me.

It’s a huge ben­e­fit to those who under­stand copy­writ­ing, because they can actu­ally turn around and use the FTC rul­ings to their advan­tage. Even make more sales as a result.

Part of the solu­tion is actu­ally sim­pler than you think. And it doesn’t involve tear­ing down all your tes­ti­mo­ni­als, plas­ter­ing a bazil­lion dis­claimers around them, or con­duct­ing painful, men­tal con­tor­tions to decide what is typ­i­cal or not.

You can start by doing this one sim­ple thing…

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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!

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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…

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Since we’re get­ting ready to fly to Vegas to speak this week­end, I didn’t want to leave with­out mak­ing a quick post. But with no time to write an arti­cle myself, I decided to spread some link love.

Any­way, here are five of them…

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As a copy­writer, one of the most impor­tant parts of my job is con­duct­ing research. And in fact, when my copy fails, aside from poor tar­get­ing or a poor offer, it’s almost always due to poor research.

As copy­writ­ers, the infor­ma­tion we need may not be as read­ily avail­able as we want it to be, par­tic­u­larly when we’re work­ing with a new com­pany or prod­uct. We have to dig. Or as my friend and top copy­writer John Carl­ton says, “We have to put on our sales detec­tive hats and dig deep.”

Sure, we can go through the prod­uct. We can go through the client’s col­lat­eral mate­ri­als. We can con­duct com­pet­i­tive research and per­haps even check out com­peti­tors’ products.

But the most impor­tant and salient research comes from…

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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.

Some peo­ple have asked what Web 2.0 tools do I use. Now, that ques­tion is two-​​sided. One is, what tools do I use with my copy? And the answer is, “not many.” I do use a few, and I’m test­ing a lot more, too.

Other than video and graph­ics, such as using YouTube​.com and Flickr​.com, which are the most pop­u­lar but not really impor­tant when you have your own ded­i­cated server like I do, there are some tools to allow my web­sites to be a lit­tle more interactive.

(If you remem­ber from my report, The Death of The Saleslet­ter,” I talk about the rise in “sam­pli­fi­ca­tion.” If there are any tools that I would pre­fer, other than video and audio, they would cer­tainly be those that helped to give my read­ers more proof, and to make their buy­ing expe­ri­ences eas­ier and more secure.)

I will blog about those once I get more sta­tis­tics to share with you.

But the sec­ond part of that ques­tion is, when it comes to run­ning my busi­ness, there are a few Web 2.0 tools and ser­vices that have helped my life quite tremen­dously. Here’s a list of some of them.

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