Which Products are Easiest to Sell Online?
by Bob Bly
According to Internet entrepreneurs Brock Felt and Buck Rizvi, products sold online can be divided into four categories:
1 – Products that alleviate the prospect’s pain.
2 – Products that solve a problem.
3 – Products that give or enable pleasure.
4 – Products that prevent a problem or condition.
Of these, #1 and #2 are the easiest to sell, because people feel an urgent need to solve the problem or get rid of the pain.
Pleasure is desirable but its attainment is less urgent, making products in category #3 more difficult to sell.
Products in category #4 are the most difficult to sell – because, as health marketers have long known, people will buy cure but not prevention.
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This article appears courtesy of Bob Bly Direct Response Letter
The Secret to Getting Traffic From Articles
By Jeff Herring
Article Marketing is the number one source of free traffic on the Internet if you get your Resource Box right. Get this one wrong and you have wasted all your time. Get this one right and you have got it made!
What a Resource Box really is
Call it a Resource Box, Author Bio, etc., what it really is is your opportunity to create a compelling call to action for your reader.
Even though it is called an Author Bio, it is not the time for you to tell the reader all about you and convince them you are an expert. In fact, if you have not demonstrated that you are an expert in your article, it is way to late to try to do it now.
Even though it is an official Call to Action, I like to teach my students and members to use what I call “invitational language” in their Resource Box. Invitational language can be something as simple as “and now I would like to invite you to…” and then name the next action you would like them to take.
This is as opposed to something like “get this great new product now and all your problems will be solved by morning and if you don’t you will be broke forever!”
Sure I’ve exaggerated a bit, but not by much.
Here’s how to do it
You want the Resource Box to flow right out of your article, since it is then next paragraph in the article. Starting off with “Jim Smith is blah blah blah” is like announcing to the reader that the article is over and they can stop reading now. Not the result you want at all, right?
Instead you can start off with a nice transitional phrase beginning with the word “and.” For example, “And now I would like to…” or “And now you can…” is a great way to begin.
Then, back to my notion of invitational language, you simply invite the reader to take the next action you want them to take. For example, you can day “And now you can claim your free instant access to…” whatever it is you are going to offer them. The invitational language bring them in instead of chasing them off.
Then and only then do I ever mention my name, and then only so that the good information they are about to get is linked in their mind to my name and brand.
Here is a complete example:
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Click here to get two “plug-n-play” article templates – just plug in your info! And you will also get a 30 minute Audio Replay of a teleseminar about writing more articles in less time than you ever thought possible.
From Jeff Herring – The Article Marketing Guy and The Great Article Marketing Network.
Does Your Sales Brochure Meet The Dentist Office Waiting Room Test?
It’s hard to imagine a corporate sales campaign without a brochure.
Unfortunately, sales brochures have become so common that many are no longer as persuasive as they ought to be.
Award-winning copywriter and author of “The Everything Guide to Writing Copy”, Steve Slaunwhite, puts it this way. “The main challenge of writing a brochure is keeping the content focused. Most brochures are either too lightweight and don’t contain enough useful information, or too weighed down with extraneous facts and long-winded puffery.”
While most brochures still tend to be informative, many are just texty and not visually appealing or scannable, so they end up looking like a “misguided” fact sheet.
The last thing you want to do is put out a texty brochure that even your salespeople won’t read, much less your customers or prospects. So use a good mix of text and visual enhancements – diagrams, bullets, sidebars, callouts, etc – to make your brochure easy to read and understand.
If you need ideas on how to write a compelling brochure that’s informative and persuasive, here’s a suggestion. Visit your dentist’s office and take a careful look at one of those brochures they have laying around in the waiting room. You will learn a lot from how these dental brochures are written to persuade people to get a dental check-up fast.
4 Reasons Why Being a Freelance Copywriter Is One of the Best and Safest Jobs in Today’s New World
by Nick Usborne
If you’re a freelance copywriter, you probably already know and appreciate these four reasons.
If you’re employed, and do some moonlighting, one of these four reasons might tip you over into becoming a freelancer full-time.
If you don’t yet do any freelance copywriting work, feast your mind on the following.
(As you consider each reason, repeat after me, “Thank goodness I have a strong right side to my brain and am both creative and intuitive.”).
Reason #1: Quality copywriting can’t be outsourced overseas
Pity the web designers. Pity the programmers and coders. Their jobs are disappearing fast.
India has many excellent universities which graduate thousands of new engineers and programmers every year. They’re every bit as qualified and skilled as their North American counterparts and work for a fraction of the price.
And if you want some design work done for online or offline projects, try graphic designers from Eastern Europe or Russia. You’ll get some fabulous work, at an amazing price.
It’s not that these Indian programmers or Bulgarian designers work for peanuts. Their fees are low, because their cost of living is low.
As a result, if you want to protect your income for decades to come, don’t become a programmer or designer. Or a customer service agent. Or a virtual assistant. Or even a project manager.
But a freelance copywriter? That’s a great job to have, because it’s really, really hard to outsource.
As a copywriter, you’re protected both by your language and your culture.
A copywriter from Latvia, for whom English is a second or third language, is going to find it very hard competing with you.
A copywriter from India, who may be totally fluent in English, is going to find it hard or impossible to understand the cultural nuances that are part of copywriting to a North American or European audience.
In short, as a freelance copywriter, you’re almost totally protected from having your job outsourced to an overseas competitor.
Reason #2: Copywriting can’t be automated
For a huge number of careers, the threat doesn’t come just from outsourcing; it also comes from automation.
Remember typographers? A beautiful craft and career that has pretty much disappeared.
You’re a bookkeeper? I bet you hate QuickBooks and all the other software that enables small-business owners to track their own costs and income.
You’re a car mechanic? You’d better start learning less about the car and more about the software that diagnoses the car’s problems.
And while we’re on the subject of diagnosis, are doctors safe from being automated? Probably not for long. (But, if you’re a nurse, good for you. There’s a job that can’t be outsourced or automated. Very right-brain. Very intuitive.)
Copywriting can’t be automated either. Some software and systems come close to writing really bad copy, but they’ll never be able to write great copy.
How come? Because computers can’t be creative or intuitive. But you can.
Reason #3: Copywriters can always make good money
The work of the copywriter is intimately and closely connected with sales.
When you do good work, your client or employer sees the extra dollars flowing in. And he can immediately connect those extra dollars to the work you did for him.
Being close to the sale is the best place to be. That’s why sales people can earn huge commissions.
And that’s why good copywriters can command terrific fees.
When you’re close to the point of sale and do good work, you can always justify your costs.
Reason #4: As a freelancer, you can’t be fired
This final point applies only to freelancers.
Copywriters, as a group, are well-protected from having their jobs outsourced or automated, but they can still be “downsized.”
In other words, when you’re employed, you can be fired.
As a smart freelance copywriter, spreading your income across several different clients, you can never be fired. If you lose one client, you have others to take up the slack.
Concluding thoughts …
These are scary times. Jobs are under threat from so many directions.
When the economy is bad, your job can simply disappear overnight.
If you have a left-brain, problem-solving job, it can probably be outsourced overseas or automated.
If your job is far from the point of sale, you’ll always find it hard to make more money as an employee.
That’s why being a freelance copywriter is such a wonderful career. It’s protected and it’s close to the point of sale. You will always be needed and will always be able to command a good fee.
As for whether you should focus on copywriting for offline or online media, that’s a whole different story and probably another article.
This article appears courtesy of American Writers & Artists Inc.’s (AWAI) The Golden Thread, a free newsletter that delivers original, no-nonsense advice on the best wealth careers, lifestyle careers and work-at-home careers available. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.awaionline.com/signup/.
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