The other day, one of my read­ers asked me the fol­low­ing ques­tion, which I found rather inter­est­ing: “Why should the author of a prod­uct be included in their sales copy?”

Seems like a pretty redun­dant ques­tion, right? Espe­cially to any vet­eran copy­writer or mar­keter worth their salt.

But the ques­tion didn’t stop there. The reader offered the fol­low­ing insight, which explains why this issue was such an impor­tant one to him, and why I felt com­pelled to answer:

“Specif­i­cally, why do my read­ers need to know who I am or what I bring to the table? How does telling them my qual­i­fi­ca­tions increase the strength of my copy? My prod­uct solves a med­ical con­di­tion. But I am not a doc­tor and I have never had this con­di­tion myself. I’ve spent a year research­ing the best method to cure this con­di­tion. I have a list of 20,000 peo­ple with this con­di­tion and con­verse with them a lot. I know pretty much every­thing there is to know about this con­di­tion and have made it into an ebook.”

The answer is quite sim­ple, actu­ally. In fact, in his attempt to defend him­self (i.e., that he’s not a doc­tor but has lots of expe­ri­ence and spe­cial­ized knowl­edge about his mar­ket), the reader answered his own ques­tion. Let me explain…

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One of the most pop­u­lar threads on my now defunct dis­cus­sion forum for copy­writ­ers was one started by my friend Dean Jack­son.

If you don’t know Dean Jack­son, he is a Toron­ton­ian, a real estate mogul, an infor­ma­tion mar­ket­ing mil­lion­aire (author of many pro­grams, includ­ing the highly suc­cess­ful “Stop Your Divorce!”), and a darn-​​fine copywriter.

This post was extremely pop­u­lar for a num­ber of reasons.

In it, Dean shared his quick-​​and-​​dirty for­mula for writ­ing saleslet­ters really fast. Of course, I’m a big fan of Robert Plank’s Speed Copy Secrets. But this for­mula is a great short­cut if you want to write a bare­bones saleslet­ter in less than an hour.

Above all, the idea behind this for­mula is to get you to start writ­ing. Too many mar­keters and copy­writ­ers get stuck at the begin­ning, such as at the head­line, and they fail to get any trac­tion. They often blame it on “writer’s block.”

Accord­ing to Dean, this for­mula has helped him write sev­eral million-​​dollar saleslet­ters for him­self and oth­ers. With his gra­cious per­mis­sion, I’m reprint­ing it here on this blog, along with some of my own edi­to­r­ial com­ments and tips…

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Yes­ter­day, I had a tweet burp.

(If you’ve been liv­ing under a rock in the past year, a “tweet” is a brief, text mes­sage on micro-​​blogging plat­form Twit­ter.)

I call it a “tweet burp” because it’s some­thing like a brain fart. But I pre­fer “brain burp.” Rea­son is, unlike a brain fart where one for­gets some­thing basic or says some­thing mean­ing­less, what I thought, and sub­se­quently tweeted about, was sur­pris­ingly meaningful.

And for some, even profound.

They are tips on how to Twit­ter bet­ter. (Try to say that 10 times in a row really fast!) Let me share it with you by post­ing some of the high­lights here.

Some of these tips are not extra­or­di­nary, of course. Most of them are sim­ply com­mon sense. But they are some of the things I do in my own social media involve­ment that has proven to work well for me. I rec­om­mend you do the same…

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I want to give you a quick update on things. You may have noticed I haven’t blogged any­thing new in a while. But there’s a reason.

Before I explain, check out this free newslet­ter. It’s high qual­ity, with top-​​shelf con­tent, and it’s 100% free. I’m proud of it, because I was a part of its incep­tion, and my wife and I are in the pre­miere issue.

I believe it’s going to be the gold stan­dard in the Inter­net mar­ket­ing newslet­ter indus­try. When so many newslet­ters out there are paid for and marketer-​​specific, this newslet­ter cov­ers a wide range of mar­ket­ing top­ics, strate­gies, and experts.

And the top­ics are not overly gen­er­al­ized, the­o­ret­i­cal or philo­soph­i­cal stuff. There’s going to be tons of strategy-​​specific ways to max­i­mize your mar­ket­ing and your mon­ey­mak­ing efforts. A great way to start 2009!

Note that there will be an offer on the result­ing thank-​​you page for a dif­fer­ent prod­uct. But you’re not held hostage, and the newslet­ter will still arrive in your email inbox, even if you refuse. It’s not manda­tory at all. Sign up and instantly get your first issue.

Now, speak­ing of my wife, here’s the rea­son why I’ve been out of the loop…

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It’s my wife Sylvie Fortin’s birth­day today. (Yes, she’s a Hallowe’en child! She’s dress­ing up as Lucy Ricardo tonight.) But appar­ently, she’s the one giv­ing out the gifts — or is that treats?

You see, the other day my wife held a pri­vate, closed-​​door webi­nar that shows you how to both spot and tap hun­gry mar­kets — there are a few million-​​dollar tips in there! For­tu­nately, we recorded it.

And right now, we’re releas­ing it to the pub­lic for free!

I’m proud of my wife, her bril­liance, and the knowl­edge she so will­ingly shares. And when I say her “bril­liance,” I mean it in more ways than one. In fact, it’s golden! Go check out the video below and you’ll see exactly what I mean…

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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…

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Why is it that suc­cess­ful mar­keters and online entre­pre­neurs seem to have this vir­tual “6th sense” when it comes to pin­point­ing hot, hun­gry, and highly prof­itable mar­kets they can sell prod­ucts to?

We see this again and again and again.

They seem to have this “Midas touch” when it comes to sell­ing online. Any prod­uct they launch sells like gang­busters. Every pro­mo­tion they do bal­loons their bank accounts. Every new mar­ket they enter becomes a sure­fire winner.

But ask them how they tap these hid­den gold­mines with an almost impec­ca­ble accu­racy, and the likely response you will get is, “I don’t know, it just feels right.”

There’s a reason.

(Stay with me, because in a moment I’m going to show you how you can do this your­self, and you don’t have to be psy­chic or shell out a lot of money!)

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