"She started with nothing. She was determined. She cut costs to the bone.
She knew she had no fall-back position. This kind of attitude is basic
for success." Gary North
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Who Does What?
Graphic Designers do a lot of print media.
For business and the economy, this is a good place to start.
What does a Business Developer do and how is he different from a marketer?
For business and the economy, this is a good place to start.
What does a Business Developer do and how is he different from a marketer?
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Sweat the Small Stuff
Business and government suffer from a kind of physics envy, where the size of the investment is proportional to your success. Here Sutherland references a hotel with push buttons in the elevator that do not refer to your floor but to the type of music you want to hear during your elevator ride, blues, jazz, rock, and so forth. That feature is be the most memorable event of your stay at that hotel, perhaps most memorable of your visit to the city.
Tiny things, good or bad, can have a disproportionate affect on the results against the time, the money, the effort, and the disruption they cause.
Consultancy & Strategy cost a lot of money.
Trivia & USP has a big effect. Is it USP, uniqueness, that special quality, what is it? It's attention to detail.
Tiny things, good or bad, can have a disproportionate affect on the results against the time, the money, the effort, and the disruption they cause.
Consultancy & Strategy cost a lot of money.
Trivia & USP has a big effect. Is it USP, uniqueness, that special quality, what is it? It's attention to detail.
Framing the Value
There is perceived value and actual value. The two carry equal weight. One is not more valuable than the other. Here is Rory Sutherland's "Perspective is Everything." He finishes by saying that if you do something to perceptually damage your product, your service, your character in one respect, you can damage the other. What he's talking about here is confidence. Affect the perceived value, and you either appreciate or destroy the actual value. Perception is leaky. Do something perceptually bad in one respect, you can damage the other.
Monday, October 1, 2012
SEO
Here's what you need to know about search engine optimization.
1. Google gives sites with original content highest ranking. Pages need to have a minimum of 200 words to be ranked.
2. Sites that have inbound links from highly ranked sites are scored well by google. So if you can get a popular site to link to your site, you'll get a higher ranking at google.
3. Sites with at least five pages of content, including a privacy page and contact page, will get higher ranking at google than sites that don't have that number of pages.
4. Sales pages and landing pages are always ranked lower than other pages.
5. Pages in shopping carts are always ranked lower than other pages.
6. Pages that have image content instead of text content are ranked lower.
7. Landing pages that lead to your site are usually ranked very low.
8. Using javascript to create menu links essentially blocks google's ability to follow those links.
9. Pages that use combination of words and phrases associated with spam sales pages are penalized.
10. .com, .net, .org pages will almost always rank higher than pages on .biz and other domain extensions.
1. Google gives sites with original content highest ranking. Pages need to have a minimum of 200 words to be ranked.
2. Sites that have inbound links from highly ranked sites are scored well by google. So if you can get a popular site to link to your site, you'll get a higher ranking at google.
3. Sites with at least five pages of content, including a privacy page and contact page, will get higher ranking at google than sites that don't have that number of pages.
4. Sales pages and landing pages are always ranked lower than other pages.
5. Pages in shopping carts are always ranked lower than other pages.
6. Pages that have image content instead of text content are ranked lower.
7. Landing pages that lead to your site are usually ranked very low.
8. Using javascript to create menu links essentially blocks google's ability to follow those links.
9. Pages that use combination of words and phrases associated with spam sales pages are penalized.
10. .com, .net, .org pages will almost always rank higher than pages on .biz and other domain extensions.
Press Release Business
Sept. 27, 2012
A site member has a problem. He is trying to make money with two hopeless projects. He has a third in mind. The third one could work.
I have the following projects. One is tutoring. This keeps my nose above water. A poor use of my time since it is so underpaid. But I started this last year on behalf of the children of a couple of friends. The second project is writing articles for a website that a friend is driving traffic to. For this to work moneywise, I have to produce 3-5 short articles on popular topics each day. It starts at about $10/day; he says it can only go up from there. The third project will be writing ads for local businesses. For this business, I'll need to spend time with company owners, getting to know their business.
The goal of my site was to write a few articles a day, business articles. I want to promote businesses. Promote its owner, product, or service. When I asked to see a sample of a press release, I think I just got lazy and was hoping that a resource would kick-start me to get me moving again. I'm disappointed with the press releases that I see online. Was thinking that they should resemble more of a sales letter than one that just announces the opening of a new restaurant.
I've been working these past few months on building a wordpress website where I have placed my few micro-stream projects. The time invested was worth it than to pay someone $85 an hour to build it for me. Now I know a little on how to build websites; as I continue building mine, I might be able to provide such a service a year from now.
The site member has the right idea. He is investing time rather than money. This is the way that most new businesses should be designed. The person launching it should not commit too much money. This is what I did to launch my publishing career, and I have done it repeatedly ever since then. I'm in the information business, so I launch newsletters, e-letters, and websites.
The tutorial project is a dead end. He should immediately drop that project. It will never pay him enough money. It will affect the lives of only a handful of children, and it is draining his most important resource, which is his time. Absolutely, categorically, he must drop this project by the end of the week. There is no hope for it. If it works, he is doomed, and if it doesn't work, he's wasting his time. There is no way that he can monetize this project, and his time is too valuable to waste.
The second project, writing articles for somebody else, is also a loser. If a person writes an article for somebody else, then he ought to be paid for it up front. The minimum that he should be paid is $25 per article. If he writes three articles a day, that is $75. That is nice as supplemental income, but there's no way to make a living at it. Frankly, I think he ought to be paid $50 an article. But, for somebody who is starting a site, he cannot afford $50 an article.
This means that the individual is spending time that he does not have to supply somebody else with no money with articles that are not important. If the articles were important, they would be worth at least $25 apiece. So, by definition, they are not important.
Anyone who gets strung along by means of a promise that "one of these days the articles will be worth something" is naïve. He is being strung along by somebody who knows that he can get the person for $10. Why should that person ever raise the payment to what it ought to be, which is at least $50 an article? There is no way that the buyer is ever going to readjust his thinking to imagine that an article might be worth $50. He is building his business based on paying peanuts, and he will not readjust his thinking if the money ever starts coming in.
This leaves the third project. He writes for himself. In other words, he writes for what he hopes will be an audience, and the audience will for some reason pay money. Of course, the readers will never pay him a dime. They may pay a local business money.
The site owner may be able to get business owners to pay him something, assuming that his articles are essentially press releases. They are business-promotion articles, and maybe a businessman will pay to have that article posted. The trouble is, if the person does not have a lot of traffic to his site, the businessman is not going to pay the money to get a press release written for posting there. So, it is a major problem for anyone to build a site based on traffic. Who is going to come to a site to read press releases? What benefit is a local resident going to get from the site that promotes local businesses? Would you visit a site like this? I know I wouldn't.
So, he has a problem. He has two problems. The first problem is the problem of building traffic to a site that will emotionally compel a return every day. This means he has to have powerful copy, and reader benefits-laden copy. In other words, the articles have to be advertisements. But it is a lot more profitable to sit down and write advertising copy for somebody, and charge that person for the service.
He needs to design a website for each business, plus a landing page for each product. He is really in the advertising business, and he ought to face this fact squarely. I think he knows this. He needs to have a way to get people to come to the site, in order to read the articles, and then use the articles to direct people to landing pages to promote particular products. This is a multi-step process of selling products.
The overall idea is a good one, in terms of the need to bring traffic to an advertising page, but since the businessman does not know how to write an advertisement, and he does not know how to write a press release, and he does not have a commercial website, and he is a complete dolt about anything related to the Internet, he will never be able to convert clicks to his webpage into money.
The individual who creates the webpage has got to do everything. He has got to interview the businessman, write the article, post the article, drive new traffic to his own site, create the webpage for the business, create the advertising page for the business, show the guy how to set up a business account, and do this over and over and over. The only way to make this pay is to charge for the complete service.
A businessman should be willing to pay at least $2000 for the initial service. That means he needs to have a website, a way to get money from it, which means a merchant's account, and someone to write the advertising copy for each product. The businessman needs someone to write the press releases. He needs some way to get people to see the press release. All of this is going to cost him money. He knows this.
If a person can write advertising copy, he need never starve again. If a person can set up a website, set up a merchant account, and go through whatever is needed to write a press release, he will have a stream of income. Businessmen know they need this, but they don't know how to get it.
I would create a low-cost membership website, and I would create videos and training materials on teaching businessmen how to do this. The materials really would train them, but basically the materials are sales devices. They are saying the following: "Yes, in theory you can do this, but you don't have enough time to do it. I am an expert on how to do it, as I am proving by the fact that you're reading my materials. Therefore, I will set up the whole thing as a turnkey operation for you, and I will write advertising copy for a product once a month, and I will create a press release for the item, and all it will cost you is $2000 to set up the initial operation, and $300 per advertisement and press release."
Any local businessman who would turn down this offer is not a good prospect. He does not know anything about marketing, he is not going to be successful, and you should ignore him. I would jump at that kind of an offer if I were a businessman.
So, the initial website should appear to be a how-to website, which it technically is, but in fact it is a front door to a back-door offer. The back-door offer involves the creation of an initial website and online ordering program. The businessman knows he needs this, but he does not know how to get it. Anyone who has the knowledge of how to create a commercial website using WordPress.org materials is in a position to help local businessmen do what they know they ought to do, but they don't know how to do.
I think this business strategy would work in almost any urban zip code in the United States. It would certainly work with any businessman who has a constant stream of products that he is trying to sell. If the products have a price over a couple hundred dollars, he needs a website and landing page advertisements to sell these products. If the business is a service-oriented business, then he needs constant repeat sales, which means that he needs a way to contact these people on a regular basis to invite them in to spend their money. He needs a regular e-mail operation system, and businessmen do not know how to create this, either. So, a person could offer this service on a regular basis at something like $100 per mailing.
The idea is to sell a service to someone who knows he needs the service, and who has money to pay for the service. That is Bill Myers rule of success: "Find out what people want, and sell it to them."
Gary North Advises: 100 Hours to Master Details of Someone Else's Business
The person doing the advertising has got to spend at least 100 hours
mastering the details of the guy's business. The great advertising
copywriters invested large quantities of time in the details of the
business that they had been hired to write ads for. They immersed
themselves in the local business, and then they went on to immerse
themselves in the industry as a whole. This was required. There are no
shortcuts. I really mean this: there are no shortcuts. Anyone who takes
on the task of helping somebody else do this marketing is taking on the
responsibility of mastering the details of this person's retail
business. This is not some weekend hobby.
Mash-ups
Mike,
I think it would be effective if you were to demonstrate your word skills by your domain name. This might be accomplished by thinking about the purpose of copywriting and then creating some "mashups" that reflect the intersection of "words" (or variants like "lingo") and these objectives. A good way to do this is to use a thesaurus, list variants of the two concepts in two vertical columns and try combinations from each column (in both directions, left-to-right and right-to-left).
For instance, one purpose is to charm the reader, and you can mash that up with the notion of a snake charmer: "wordcharm" or "wordcharmer".
Variants of charm like "enthrall" might produce "wordthrall" (we don't use the word "thrall" itself much these days, but being in someone's thrall means being under their spell...perhaps a bit obtuse).
You might like a mashup of "captivate" and "verbs" - "captiverbs".
It's a bit difficult to describe the process, and you can carry it out to an infinite number of iterations where you use variants of words in your variant lists, but you'll often come up with something that's both meaningful and clever by using this mashup technique.
As a bonus, since you're basically creating new and unusual (but still meaningful) words, in many cases the domain names will still be available because no one else will have created these words.
Almost everything that's "new" is actually a mashup of things that already exist (like the clock radio), and words make dandy fodder for creating mashups.
motel
smog
spork
brunch
shopaholic
bootylicious
malware
choctacular
Internet
emoticon
webinar
webcast
podcast
sexting
sexcapade
mockumentary
Have fun!
Brian
I think it would be effective if you were to demonstrate your word skills by your domain name. This might be accomplished by thinking about the purpose of copywriting and then creating some "mashups" that reflect the intersection of "words" (or variants like "lingo") and these objectives. A good way to do this is to use a thesaurus, list variants of the two concepts in two vertical columns and try combinations from each column (in both directions, left-to-right and right-to-left).
For instance, one purpose is to charm the reader, and you can mash that up with the notion of a snake charmer: "wordcharm" or "wordcharmer".
Variants of charm like "enthrall" might produce "wordthrall" (we don't use the word "thrall" itself much these days, but being in someone's thrall means being under their spell...perhaps a bit obtuse).
You might like a mashup of "captivate" and "verbs" - "captiverbs".
It's a bit difficult to describe the process, and you can carry it out to an infinite number of iterations where you use variants of words in your variant lists, but you'll often come up with something that's both meaningful and clever by using this mashup technique.
As a bonus, since you're basically creating new and unusual (but still meaningful) words, in many cases the domain names will still be available because no one else will have created these words.
Almost everything that's "new" is actually a mashup of things that already exist (like the clock radio), and words make dandy fodder for creating mashups.
motel
smog
spork
brunch
shopaholic
bootylicious
malware
choctacular
Internet
emoticon
webinar
webcast
podcast
sexting
sexcapade
mockumentary
Have fun!
Brian
Great Advice from Bill Myers
Mike,
If you want to get into copywriting these days, you have to do a lot more than write copy. You'll need page layout and graphics editing software and know how to use both to create professional results.
Depending on where you live, your clients will most likely be interested getting flyers, newsletters and brochures created for them. That's the way it is where we live.
To get a jump on creating those kinds of products, take a trip to the nearest large tourist shopping area, and make a point to collect as many brochures as you can find from the brochure racks. Also collect newspapers that include lots of ads (because those advertisers will be potential clients).
Build up a large library of these that you can use for inspiration and guidance when you do get a client.
In the meantime, use your page layout and graphics editing program and try to duplicate at least five of the brochures or graphic ads you find.
Until you are able to do that, you won't really know if you can deliver quality results to your clients.
Trying to find clients for advertising and copywriting requires knocking on a lot of doors, dealing with a lot a rejection, and fighting with a lot of competition over a small number of clients.
It's not a business model I would want to pursue. But if it is your dream and you don't mind the hard work, go for it.
When it comes to creating ads and brochures for local clients, you'll quickly discover you'll spend far more time finding clients than you will creating ads.
And when you do find a client, you'll find you spend a lot of time visiting the client to get approval or corrections on the work you're doing.
It will involve a lot of face-to-face time with the client, and will require you to stick with the job to the completion.
Most local clients will balk at paying more than a few hundred dollars for a complete brochure, and you may find yourself spending 30 or 40 hours of work and travel time to make $200.
You may discover that if you factor in cost of fuel, printer ink, glossy paper costs, photo licensing, you'll actually lose money on your projects.
A lot of this is due to your competition - print shops, Kinkos, Office Depot, and lots of smaller ad agencies willing to cut prices below cost in order to get business.
As I said before, it wouldn't be the kind of business I'd want to get into.
I prefer businesses where you can stay at home, set your own hours, and use tools to produce products that can be created once, and then sold thousands of times - without ever having to go out and do a sales call.
This is why the internet became so important to entrepreneurs. It meant we could reach the world of potential customers at almost no cost, and deliver products digitally without having to worry about manufacturing, packaging and shipping costs.
Products that can be created at home and delivered digitally include:
Books
Videos
Software
Templates (for popular software products)
Audio Files
Ringtones
Phone Apps
Video Games
Images (ie stock photos)
Royalty free music
Web site templates
Web site support
Web site themes and graphic elements
Web site plugins
There are many other opportunities for digital products in addition to the above.
Even simple things can sell.
For example, I just posted a template for Kindle fiction novels. Easy for me to create. Easy to deliver, and easy to sell to those who need one like it.
I provided this free to our members here. But I've seen similar templates for Kindle novels selling for $50 or more.
Selling something like that would be easy. And would only require a web page and paypal account to get into business.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting anyone resell my template. I own it, and reselling it would be a violation of our terms of use.
But creating and selling those kinds of digital products is a far better business model than having to do cold sales calls on potential clients, and then creating and selling a product only once.
Just my opinion,
Bill
If you want to get into copywriting these days, you have to do a lot more than write copy. You'll need page layout and graphics editing software and know how to use both to create professional results.
Depending on where you live, your clients will most likely be interested getting flyers, newsletters and brochures created for them. That's the way it is where we live.
To get a jump on creating those kinds of products, take a trip to the nearest large tourist shopping area, and make a point to collect as many brochures as you can find from the brochure racks. Also collect newspapers that include lots of ads (because those advertisers will be potential clients).
Build up a large library of these that you can use for inspiration and guidance when you do get a client.
In the meantime, use your page layout and graphics editing program and try to duplicate at least five of the brochures or graphic ads you find.
Until you are able to do that, you won't really know if you can deliver quality results to your clients.
Trying to find clients for advertising and copywriting requires knocking on a lot of doors, dealing with a lot a rejection, and fighting with a lot of competition over a small number of clients.
It's not a business model I would want to pursue. But if it is your dream and you don't mind the hard work, go for it.
When it comes to creating ads and brochures for local clients, you'll quickly discover you'll spend far more time finding clients than you will creating ads.
And when you do find a client, you'll find you spend a lot of time visiting the client to get approval or corrections on the work you're doing.
It will involve a lot of face-to-face time with the client, and will require you to stick with the job to the completion.
Most local clients will balk at paying more than a few hundred dollars for a complete brochure, and you may find yourself spending 30 or 40 hours of work and travel time to make $200.
You may discover that if you factor in cost of fuel, printer ink, glossy paper costs, photo licensing, you'll actually lose money on your projects.
A lot of this is due to your competition - print shops, Kinkos, Office Depot, and lots of smaller ad agencies willing to cut prices below cost in order to get business.
As I said before, it wouldn't be the kind of business I'd want to get into.
I prefer businesses where you can stay at home, set your own hours, and use tools to produce products that can be created once, and then sold thousands of times - without ever having to go out and do a sales call.
This is why the internet became so important to entrepreneurs. It meant we could reach the world of potential customers at almost no cost, and deliver products digitally without having to worry about manufacturing, packaging and shipping costs.
Products that can be created at home and delivered digitally include:
Books
Videos
Software
Templates (for popular software products)
Audio Files
Ringtones
Phone Apps
Video Games
Images (ie stock photos)
Royalty free music
Web site templates
Web site support
Web site themes and graphic elements
Web site plugins
There are many other opportunities for digital products in addition to the above.
Even simple things can sell.
For example, I just posted a template for Kindle fiction novels. Easy for me to create. Easy to deliver, and easy to sell to those who need one like it.
I provided this free to our members here. But I've seen similar templates for Kindle novels selling for $50 or more.
Selling something like that would be easy. And would only require a web page and paypal account to get into business.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting anyone resell my template. I own it, and reselling it would be a violation of our terms of use.
But creating and selling those kinds of digital products is a far better business model than having to do cold sales calls on potential clients, and then creating and selling a product only once.
Just my opinion,
Bill
Helpful Comment from a Fellow Member
Mike
If you want some additional "how to..." material you might want to take a look at some of the material from Robert (Bob) Bly - www.bly.com. He has been a successful copywriter for more than 30 years. I find some of his early stuff very good (and still entirely relevant) but some of the more recent material seems to me to be a little too pushy / salesy. Just a view.
In copywriting, as in most other businesses, potential clients will take it as read that you can produce good copy: it is a hygeine factor. Therefore to sell your services on the basis of "how good you are" will probably not make you stand out in the eyes of potential clients. Your success will likely be driven by your ability to identify the right kind of client for you, to locate people like that and then rapidly make a connection with them at a basic, personal level (I call it "like and trust").
In my experience it will help if you can work out how to answer the inevitable question "What do you do?" (which is really client shorthand for "Why should I take the time to talk to you and get to know you?"). A useful formula to structure what you say is:
* Short description of your perfect client
* Outline of their most important problem or dream they want to fulfil
* Outline of how you resolve that issue or enable them to fulfil the dream.
In your case that might look something like: "I work with personal trainers who are passionate about enabling their clients to lose weight but struggle to make them understand that they can do that by eating more and exercising less. I give them the exact words they need to help clients see what they can achieve and how, so that they willingly sign up."
I hope that helps.
Stephen
He continues . . .
In my view you do not need to know more about the client's business than they do. You need to know more about copywriting, or rather do it better, than they do or feel that they have time to do... It's not the same thing. You will need to learn how to ask the right questions that help you to learn what messages your client wants to give to their customers and what makes their business different so that you can explain the Value your client offers and what makes them different from evryone else in their field.
In that sense you need to build a good basic understanding of marketing and sales. You will help your clients do what you are doing with them.
I am not a lawyer. Nowadays many of my clients are in the legal profession, however. Can I make them better lawyers? Absolutely not, in a technical sense. Can I help them to build their practice by developing excellent relationships with the right kind of client, gathering information about what drives the client at an emotional level and using that to put themselves in a Role for that client that sets them apart from other lawyers? Certainly.
In order to build a sample portfolio of work, one option is to do some stuff free of charge for a local not-for-profit or Church. Another is to identify a number of local businesses that you would like to have as clients. Do some research on each of them to identify what you feel to be their most important strength. Look at how you could improve how that is presented in their existing marketing material and work up an alternative of your own. Try to get in front of the owner or manager for 15 minutes to talk to them about their business and test your ideas before showing them what you produced.
Even if they say "no" you still have a piece of work prepared for a prospective client.... You will also have the benefit of learning how to have this type of conversation most effectively.
If you want some additional "how to..." material you might want to take a look at some of the material from Robert (Bob) Bly - www.bly.com. He has been a successful copywriter for more than 30 years. I find some of his early stuff very good (and still entirely relevant) but some of the more recent material seems to me to be a little too pushy / salesy. Just a view.
In copywriting, as in most other businesses, potential clients will take it as read that you can produce good copy: it is a hygeine factor. Therefore to sell your services on the basis of "how good you are" will probably not make you stand out in the eyes of potential clients. Your success will likely be driven by your ability to identify the right kind of client for you, to locate people like that and then rapidly make a connection with them at a basic, personal level (I call it "like and trust").
In my experience it will help if you can work out how to answer the inevitable question "What do you do?" (which is really client shorthand for "Why should I take the time to talk to you and get to know you?"). A useful formula to structure what you say is:
* Short description of your perfect client
* Outline of their most important problem or dream they want to fulfil
* Outline of how you resolve that issue or enable them to fulfil the dream.
In your case that might look something like: "I work with personal trainers who are passionate about enabling their clients to lose weight but struggle to make them understand that they can do that by eating more and exercising less. I give them the exact words they need to help clients see what they can achieve and how, so that they willingly sign up."
I hope that helps.
Stephen
He continues . . .
In my view you do not need to know more about the client's business than they do. You need to know more about copywriting, or rather do it better, than they do or feel that they have time to do... It's not the same thing. You will need to learn how to ask the right questions that help you to learn what messages your client wants to give to their customers and what makes their business different so that you can explain the Value your client offers and what makes them different from evryone else in their field.
In that sense you need to build a good basic understanding of marketing and sales. You will help your clients do what you are doing with them.
I am not a lawyer. Nowadays many of my clients are in the legal profession, however. Can I make them better lawyers? Absolutely not, in a technical sense. Can I help them to build their practice by developing excellent relationships with the right kind of client, gathering information about what drives the client at an emotional level and using that to put themselves in a Role for that client that sets them apart from other lawyers? Certainly.
In order to build a sample portfolio of work, one option is to do some stuff free of charge for a local not-for-profit or Church. Another is to identify a number of local businesses that you would like to have as clients. Do some research on each of them to identify what you feel to be their most important strength. Look at how you could improve how that is presented in their existing marketing material and work up an alternative of your own. Try to get in front of the owner or manager for 15 minutes to talk to them about their business and test your ideas before showing them what you produced.
Even if they say "no" you still have a piece of work prepared for a prospective client.... You will also have the benefit of learning how to have this type of conversation most effectively.
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