I’m in Austin, Texas this week to attend a wed­ding — con­grat­u­la­tions to Heather and Bran­don! — and a week­long, pri­vate sem­i­nar with my mas­ter­mind group. But while I’m here, I’ve got some good news and some bad news…

The bad news — for me, not you — is that, a week before leav­ing, I suf­fered a sacroil­iac joint injury. It was likely caused by my bad pos­ture related to my exist­ing her­ni­ated discs, which as a result is caus­ing ago­niz­ing sci­at­ica.

For the first three days, I was com­pletely immo­bile. It took me an hour just to get out of bed! Any slight move­ment would cre­ate shoot­ing pains in my lower back, par­tic­u­larly in my but­tocks, and would go down my leg with aches and a “pins and nee­dles” feeling.

It’s excru­ci­at­ing. In fact, I almost backed out of the Austin trip. But being able to regain some mobil­ity, I took a chance at the last minute. Luck­ily, the air­line pro­vided me with a wheel­chair. Cur­rently, I’m walk­ing with two canes and a back brace.

Now, the good news…

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In case you couldn’t make it this week’s webi­nar, I wanted to give you an “inside look” at the lat­est new 8-​​DVD sys­tem we’re releas­ing, with my col­league Ken Calhoun.

Espe­cially now, in this tough econ­omy, this sys­tem can be your “life­line to sur­vival.” It shows you exactly how to out­com­pete by cre­at­ing more com­pelling sales mes­sages. (Whether it’s in web­sites, emails, direct mail, ad cre­atives, Inter­net video, PPC ads, and more!)

It’s a full stun­ning 8 DVDs packed with dozens of proven, spe­cific tac­tics that can make a big dif­fer­ence to your busi­ness suc­cess. But just for a few short days, we’re mak­ing a very spe­cial offer!

If you order by our offi­cial launch date (that’s in early Feb­ru­ary), you can grab the entire 8-​​DVD, 10-​​hour sys­tem for about two-​​thirds off. That’s a dis­count of over 60%!

Why are we offer­ing this incred­i­ble sys­tem at such a low price dur­ing these next cou­ple of weeks?

Because the economy’s tight and we want to put this busi­ness life­sav­ing sys­tem into the hands of as many entre­pre­neurs and busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als as pos­si­ble, before the launch.

So head on over to watch the 9 video pre­view clips now.

Rant warn­ing: what fol­lows may offend some peo­ple. But I wanted to throw in my three cents on the topic of “forced con­ti­nu­ity,” which seems to be the sub­ject of a lot of debate these days.

Sev­eral well-​​known mar­keters have made offers of late with forced con­ti­nu­ity. What it means is, the intended prod­uct you want to buy can only be pur­chased when you buy another (often, a con­tin­u­ous sub­scrip­tion) billed to your account every month or so until you cancel.

Forced con­ti­nu­ity is noth­ing new. (In direct mar­ket­ing, they call these “Til For­bid” offers.) It’s another type of offer, pure and sim­ple. It’s mar­ket­ing. And there’s noth­ing wrong with that. What’s wrong is not the way the offer is made.

The real prob­lem is its lack of transparency.

But that’s not what I want to rant about today.

What a lot of peo­ple seem to be miss­ing here (and some­thing my bril­liant wife brought to my atten­tion, which makes per­fect sense to me), is that there is a deeper, much darker side to this whole thing.

Some­thing all mar­keters need to be aware of…

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Just an update on things.

I’m typ­ing this from my hotel room in Ana­heim, Cal­i­for­nia, where my wife and I are speak­ing at a sem­i­nar. My Inter­net con­nec­tion is shoddy and inter­mit­tent, so I can’t do much right now. Even typ­ing this blog post feels like pulling teeth.

To my coach­ing stu­dents, I will be answer­ing your emails once I return to my office, or this week­end if I have a chance and the con­nec­tion improves.

I will be back early next week, post­ing an explo­sive new arti­cle on how to dou­ble or even triple your prof­its using an amaz­ing twist on some­thing we already do as copy­writ­ers and busi­ness owners.

In the mean­time, glide on over to my new site, Copy­writ­ers Library, where I have over 6 hours of audio inter­views with mas­ter copy­writ­ers Gary Hal­bert and John Carl­ton, and 2 of my com­plete books reprinted free for you.

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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Ralph Zuran­ski: Hi, this is Ralph Zuran­ski. I’m on the phone with Michel Fortin. He’s one of the lead­ing copy­writ­ers in the world today. He is so suc­cess­ful in his writ­ing that he’s helped a num­ber of the Inter­net mar­keters achieve $1 mil­lion dol­lar days in sales.

He has been at a num­ber of the Inter­net con­fer­ences. Michel Fortin knows more about copy­writ­ing and test­ing copy than any­body that I’ve ever met.

I think that’s one of the rea­sons why he’s such a great teacher and also such a great copy­writer. He tests every aspect of copy­writ­ing to find out what works. I know that most of the time, on any of the copy­writ­ing pieces that he cre­ates, he has four or five tests that all run simul­ta­ne­ously… the color, the fonts, the place­ment of images.

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I couldn’t talk about this when I first learned about it, but now that it’s pub­lic I wanted to pass the info along.

You may or may not know Julie Perry.

She’s a very dear friend of mine, a well-​​known Inter­net mar­keter, and an entre­pre­neur. We con­stantly see each other at sem­i­nars and always have a great time. She’s always laugh­ing, fun to be with, and a great person.

If you can’t pic­ture her, to help you here’s a photo of the both of us — you might have seen her at Inter­net mar­ket­ing sem­i­nars, yourself:

She’s known for her love of boats. She’s writ­ten a book on yacht­ing, and she’s also the host of The​Boaters​.tv, a web­site for yachters and boat lovers.

Now, the sad news…

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