In the com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­place of the new mil­len­nium, the demand for spe­cial­ized prod­ucts or ser­vices will increase. If your site sells every­thing or to every­one, chances are that your audi­ence will not per­ceive any greater value in shop­ping from you than any­one else.

The more generic you are, the greater your com­pe­ti­tion will be since you’ve placed your offer­ing in the same ring as the Wal-​​Marts, Tar­gets, and eBays of the world.

To bor­row the fish­ing anal­ogy, some peo­ple say that going after a larger mar­ket is cast­ing a wider net. Not so. (The net is really your website.)

Rather, it’s like fish­ing in a larger body of water where there are more fish, the fish are more spread out, and there are more com­peti­tors going after the same fish you are.

Unless you are try­ing to be another Wal-​​Mart, there’s no point in com­pet­ing with them. The sheer size of such big box Goliaths gives them a size­able com­pet­i­tive advan­tage — par­tic­u­larly pur­chas­ing power, both in terms of prod­ucts sold and adver­tis­ing dollars.

In addi­tion to being able to buy more ad space than small busi­nesses can, they can buy their stock at con­sid­er­able bulk dis­counts, osten­si­bly giv­ing them the lower price-​​point advan­tage against which most small busi­nesses can­not compete.

So how do you increase your sales in such a com­pet­i­tive, price-​​sensitive marketplace?

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“If you like to gam­ble, I tell you I’m your man. You win some, you lose some, it’s all the same to me.” — Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades”

I’m get­ting fed up.

It seems to me that prod­uct launches of late have less to do with sub­stance and strat­egy, and more to do with tricks and tac­tics. Blame it on the econ­omy. But I think we need to blame it on some­thing else. Some­thing more sinister.

In fact, have you not noticed that a grow­ing num­ber of mar­keters are urg­ing you to join their “club,” as if it’s some secret, back-​​of-​​the-​​room, clan­des­tine poker game?

Speak­ing of poker, busi­ness is some­what of a gam­ble. And admit­tedly, gam­bling can be prof­itable. Very prof­itable. After all, the more you gam­ble, the greater you win, right?

But do we really need to gam­ble with our customers?

What about the long-​​term? What about build­ing busi­nesses rather than just mak­ing money? What about invest­ing instead? What about invest­ing in your cus­tomers that can pay some­times 10 to 100 times more over the long run?

For exam­ple, some­one men­tioned a new pay-​​per-​​follower pro­gram on Twit­ter. (Ugh. How is that any dif­fer­ent than from spam­mers buy­ing bulk email lists?) I responded, and this pretty much sums up my phi­los­o­phy — it should be yours, too — with:

“I’d hate to treat my cus­tomers like pris­on­ers or prostitutes.”

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Not a copy­writer or just start­ing out? Can’t afford a high-​​priced copy­writer? Need copy real fast to start sell­ing or to pro­mote affil­i­ate prod­ucts right away?

Here’s some­thing that might inter­est you…

Com­puter pro­gram­mer Robert Plank shares his quick and easy for­mula for writ­ing com­pelling sales let­ters fast.

Sure, noth­ing beats know­ing how to write great copy. But…

This pain­less for­mula will have your prod­ucts launched and your web­sites up and run­ning in less than an hour! (If you hate writ­ing copy or don’t have time, or you sim­ply need copy really fast, you’re going to love this.)

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“You do not pay the price of suc­cess, you enjoy the price of suc­cess.“
– Zig Ziglar

Again, the inner you is your con­science while your con­nec­tion to it is your con­scious­ness. While you can act in accor­dance with or in oppo­si­tion to your con­science, you can’t betray your con­science for it is the wis­dom of the high­est that’s within. There­fore, if your goals ignore your con­science, they will uncon­sciously bring unnec­es­sary tur­moil in your life. But if your goals fol­low your con­science, you are then con­sciously purposeful.

If you’re like most peo­ple, you have cer­tain needs and aspi­ra­tions at this moment. You prob­a­bly want to reach higher goals, get pro­moted, make more money, spend more time with your fam­ily, find a bet­ter job, lose 10 pounds or so, take that vaca­tion in the Caribbean, start a busi­ness, etc. In other words, you want to improve your qual­ity of life right now and not at some point in the future.

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Many copy­writ­ers, both new and expe­ri­enced, strug­gle with how much to charge their clients. In fact, it is a prob­lem that many in the ser­vice indus­try face.

The dilemma?

Charge too lit­tle and you risk los­ing cred­i­bil­ity in the eyes of your cus­tomers and poten­tial clients. Addi­tion­ally, the qual­ity of your work, even if it is worth 100 times what they paid for it, will be seen as hav­ing dimin­ished value.

Worst of all, when you charge too lit­tle, you may begin to resent the project, the client, or even your cho­sen profession.

In short, charg­ing too lit­tle doesn’t do any­one any good, least of all you.

On the other hand, if you charge too much you run the risk of los­ing a poten­tial client. You may lose out on oppor­tu­ni­ties to work with clients who could open doors and pro­vide you and your busi­ness with an abun­dance of work.

The solu­tion?

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Before we begin, you must under­stand the con­cept that under­lies this book. In today’s soci­ety, I believe we have expe­ri­enced two major shifts that have almost com­pletely rev­o­lu­tion­ized the entire busi­ness landscape.

The first and most impor­tant one is com­pe­ti­tion.

The mere fact that busi­ness is becom­ing increas­ingly hyper­com­pet­i­tive is an under­state­ment. Busi­nesses, par­tic­u­larly home-​​based busi­nesses and self-​​employed pro­fes­sion­als, are grow­ing at an explo­sive rate.

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The com­pe­tent adver­tis­ing man must under­stand psy­chol­ogy. The more he knows about it the bet­ter. He must learn that cer­tain effects lead to cer­tain reac­tions, and use that knowl­edge to increase results and avoid mistakes.

Human nature is per­pet­ual. In most respects it is the same today as in the time of Cae­sar. So the prin­ci­ples of psy­chol­ogy are fixed and endur­ing. You will never need to unlearn what you learn about them.

We learn, for instance, that curios­ity is one of the strongest human incen­tives. We employ it when­ever we can. Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice were made suc­cess­ful largely through curios­ity. “Grains puffed to 8 times the nor­mal size.” “Foods shot from guns.” “125 mil­lion steam explo­sions caused in every ker­nel.” These foods were fail­ures before that fac­tor was discovered.

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