Brent Hodgson, Copywriter

Tomorrow, I’m packing a bag full of clothes into the back of the electric blue Mini Cooper S, and traveling to a secluded cabin along the Great Ocean Road - with no phone or internet access - for a week-long vacation.

But on my trip, I’m taking something that I wished I had access to 5 years ago…

Why You Need To Know Marc Lindsay and Daniel Turner

I first came across Marc Lindsay and Daniel Turner in March 2008 at a private internet marketing event for 30-or-so people.

It was instantly clear that they had something incredible.

To give you an idea what they do today - their web empire includes several 7-figure per year businesses (yes - several businesses - each generating over $1,000,000+), 140 websites, over 100 “staff”, and an outsourcing bill of $70,000 per month (Think it’s a big bill? Take a moment to calculate their profit margins!)

But the thing that I like most about Marc and Daniel is that they run everything on systems.

This means they haven’t become “outsourcing managers” - having to chase-up contractors, review work, arrange deadlines and deliverables, etc

Instead, they “play” with new business ideas (and let their outsourced teams make-it-happen), or just enjoy spending their time however they choose.

The Outsource Method

I’ve been fortunate enough to have known Marc personally - and his advice has helped me get through several business impasses while we’ve been growing Noble Samurai.

But I never got their full systems - or their “how to” - when it came to how they created the outsourcing systems that now make them millions of dollars per year.

So when they put all of the information together and released it, I jumped on it (and will be taking it away with me this week to the secluded cabin near the Great Ocean Road to interrogate it.)

The course will sell for $995 - HOWEVER, they’ve launched it with a $1 introductory trial (with the full price being $297 [no monthly fees] if you choose to keep it.)

If you want to find out more, here’s my referrer link. (If you use this link, and choose to keep the product, I will receive a commission - which I will probably spend on my next overseas vacation.)

Alternatively, here’s a direct link that you can use. (I won’t see a cent from this one)

If you’re into outsourcing, or you’re sick of doing the jobs you hate - this is well worth the $1 it costs to take a look.

Brent

Popularity: 6%

Let me be blunt for a moment - writing a killer sales letter that makes a ton of money takes time and effort. And it’s rare to hit a “home run” on your first attempt.

The best copywriters I know - they’re the best because they do it so often - so don’t be discouraged if you find it particularly difficult on your first attempt.

Over time, it starts to come naturally - as if it’s part of your DNA, or that it’s just like breathing or walking.

But when you’re just beginning, there are a few simple steps you can take to make copywriting a sales letter a much easier task, and get a much better result from your sales letters.

Step #1: Preparation Matters

Preparation is really the key to writing a great sales letter. And the fact is, 95% of the effort you will put into a sales letter happens in the preparation stage.

It’s not uncommon for top copywriters to spend several weeks preparing to write a sales letter, and just a few days writing.

So how do you prepare?

Well, the first thing that you can do is to get inspiration.

Look around in your industry, and beyond, for examples of written advertisements. Read as much as you can, and save the ads that you find particularly persuasive.

Next, copy them… word-for-word.

I know, it sounds tedious, but the best way to write great sales letters is by writing great sales letters.

Take the work of the naturals - Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy, John Carlton, Harlan Kilstein - and copy it until it becomes a part of you.

Don’t believe me?

Then write a headline of your own… Then copy out 50 headlines from the pro’s… then go back and write another headline of your own.

Is the second one better than the first?

You’d better believe it!

There’s no better way to get your mind thinking about sales copy.

But I’ve got to be realistic here - most people who are reading this won’t bother spending the time on this.

They’ll think it’s boring, tedious, a waste of time - so they’ll jump straight into writing their own sales copy.

For these people, I’m going to throw you a lifeline next so that you don’t waste your time writing junk - that the sales copy that you write has at least a reasonable chance of making a buck.

Step #2: Work out who you’re writing to.

We’re still in the preparation phase right now…

Grab a pen and paper, and write down the answers to these two questions:

1. Who am I writing to?, and;
2. What do I want them to say yes to?

You might be selling a cool piece of site-promotion software to bloggers - so the answers to these questions might be “Bloggers who own their own blog”, and “Will you buy this software for $149?”

The more specific that you can be in your “Who am I writing to?” answer, the more targeted your sales copy will be, and the more of those people will buy.

Step #3: Work Out What You’re REALLY Selling

A wise marketer once said “Sell the sizzle, not the steak!”

People don’t buy “steaks”.

They buy the juicy, tender, sizzling steak that smells *mmmmm* good, and practically melts in your mouth - that’s what people buy.

It’s the experience of eating a steak - not the idea of a rough-cut chunk of bovine flesh - that sells.

Chances are you’re not selling steak though - so we need to find the juicy, tender, meaty, filling, mouth-watering parts of your product or service for your sales letter.

The easiest way to do this is to take out several sheets of paper, and start writing a long list of EVERY feature that a customer might experience when they’re buying your product… Everything from “no interest finance” to “batteries are included” to “12 month guarantee on all parts and labour” to “made from high-tensile polycarbonate” to “free delivery”

Be as detailed as you can - mention anything and everything (even if it’s not a particularly valuable feature… even if it’s a defect!)

Step #4: Why Should I Care About That?

Don’t assume that your customer knows why they need your weatherstripping feature, or your high-tensile polycarbonate feature, or your no interest finance feature, free delivery service, or whatever.

Spell it out for them!

Beside each feature you have written down, write the benefits of this feature.

e.g. “No interest finance - saves $1,000’s off the lifetime cost of purchase, means you can afford to buy now..” etc

Here’s a few more examples:

• Free shipping on all orders - means there is nothing extra to pay, you don’t have to drive to the store to pick it up yourself, you can make small orders…

• High-tensile polycarbonate coating - protects the widget for 25 years so that you’ll never need to replace it, allows the widget to operate under much higher temperatures than normal, prevents dangerous widget-shattering incidents…

• Teflon-coated bull-bar - protects you and your family from automobile accidents, and means that roadkill just slides right off…

You get the idea…

Step #4: Try Turning Them into Feature-Benefit Bullets

A feature-benefit bullet is a ol’ copywriting trick that just works ridiculously well.

Here’s the structure of a feature-benefit bullet:

• Feature Benefit

OR, the reverse feature-benefit bullet (to mix things up a bit, and make for more interesting reading:

• Benefit Feature

See what I did there? It’s not complicated at all!

Let’s use some examples:

• Free Shipping on All Orders Means You Save Money, With Nothing Extra To Pay!

• High-Tensile Polycarbonate Coating Protects Your Widget for Life, Saving You Money!

And the reversal:

• Save Money on All Orders with Free Shipping

• Save Money on Widget Replacement with our High-Tensile Polycarbonate Coating

Easy, huh?

Here’s a tip: It’s EASIEST if you go find about 50-100 feature-benefit points from other convincing sales letters, and copy them down one-by-one before you begin.

Once you’re done copywriting your feature-benefit bullets for your sales letter, put them aside and forget about them. We’ll come back later.

Step #5: Why should the customer care?

Have you forgotten about the product yet? Good!

I want you to think about the customer now.

Go back to the note that you wrote in Step #2 - who are they?

Put yourself in their shoes, and then answer two more questions:

• What’s in it for me?
• Why should I care?

(Answer them as if you are the customer)

These can be difficult questions to answer, so let me help you here…

Every product solves problems.

We buy a sandwich because we have a hunger problem. We hire a bookkeeper because we have an accounting problem. We read a guide on copywriting because we have a copywriting problem… (Or maybe you’re just filling in time here, and you have a spare time problem.)

Find the biggest problem that the product solves, and the biggest benefit that it provides, and you have your answers to these questions.

In most cases, the strongest problems that a product solves are around emotional appeals:

• Make Money / avoid losing money;
• Avoid painful (physical, emotional or mental) experiences;
• Save Time;
• Have Fun / enjoy times of leisure;
• Live in greater comfort and security;
• Become more sexually attractive to others;
• Become more socially popular;
• Become more attractive;
• Be envied by others;
• Gain Power or Status;
• Access something of Exclusivity;

Step #6: Only the Strong Survive

Great work so far! You’re nearly there!

You probably feel like you have more bullets now than Rambo - and in a way, you’re right. You want as much ammunition as it takes in your sales letter to get customers to say “Yes!”…

…But now, it’s time to take the big guns, and leave the small guns at home…

This is simple - go through your lists and circle only the strongest feature-benefit bullets, the strongest appeals, the biggest problems your product solves, and the most convincing arguments.

One of these should be your primary appeal - the #1 reason someone should buy your product.

The rest, you’ll simply touch on in your sales copy.

Step #7: Start Writing

Get out your pen and paper (or computer, however you write best), and begin your sales letter.

Tip: Don’t waste your time (and the reader’s) telling stories - get straight to the point.

Here’s an opening line template you can tweak for your own use:

“If you suffer from {problem that your product solves}, and would like to {solution that your product provides}, {Productname} might be the best solution for you.”

Step #8: Complete the Picture

The opening line is the hardest. Once you’ve written that, the rest of the sales letter flows.

Use short, sharp paragraphs of 3-5 lines, and write to the reader on their level.

The structure of your sales letter should be along these lines:

1. Headline (the last thing you write)
2. Opening paragraph
3. Talk about how bad the problem is that your product solves
4. Talk about it is about the problem that’s really bad
5. Talk about it is about the problem that’s really Really bad
6. Talk about it is about the problem that’s really Really REALLY bad
7. Thankfully, there’s a solution!
8. Offer the solution: Your product
9. In what ways does your product solve the problem?
10. What other valuable things does your product also do? (Include your feature-benefit bullets here - they’re the ammo that makes someone buy)
11. What is your product valued at?
12. Make a genuine time-limited offer (discount/special)
13. Offer a guarantee
14. Remind them why the offer is valuable, then remind them that it’s time-limited.

Step #9: Break Up The Text with Sub-Headings

We’re nearly there!

Looking over your sales letter, suddenly it feels like you’re drowning in a sea of text, right?

It’s time to add something called “eye relief” - little points that make it easy for someone to read your sales copy.

Each sub-head should be short, 1-2 lines, and relevant to what you’re writing about.

For example, to tie in with the sections from the sales letter template above, your sub-headings that you write for sections #3-#14 might be about:

• 3. What is the problem, and why does it suck?
• 4. What is really bad about the problem?
• 5. What is even worse about the problem?
• 6. What is the worst thing about the problem?
• 7. Sum-up the problem as if it’s insurmountable
• 8. “{Product Name} Solves All Of This and More!”
• 9. “Here’s How {Produt Name} Works To Solve All Of These Problems For You…”
• 10. “Plus, {Product Name} Does So Much More!”
• 11. “OK - So What Does {Product Name Cost}?”
• 12. “Limited Time Offer: Expires On {Date}”
• 13. “100% Satisfaction Guarantee”
• 14. “Remember: You Only Have Until {Date} To Secure {Product Name} at a discount and {solve} {#1 problem} forever!”

Step #10: Write Your Headline

This is where it’s handy to have completed Step #1, and copied down a few dozen headlines from the pro’s…

The easiest way to write a great headline for your product is to re-write existing great headlines for other products, and tweak them so that they suit your product.

A reliable template for headlines is simply:

“How You Can {Solve Major Problem OR Receive Major Benefit} {Very Fast OR Very Easily}…”

e.g.

“How You Can Lose 20 Pounds Overnight, While You Sleep”

A headline should be relevant, straight to the point, and attention-grabbing.

Write dozens, and pick the best one.

Step #11: Test Test Test!

As I mentioned at the start of this article, it’s almost impossible to hit a home run every time…

…But it IS possible to turn even the least successful sales letter into a winner with consistent testing.

It’s also one of the most valuable actions that you can perform as a copywriter - it will help you to see exactly how to improve your copy in the future, and give you far better results.

Split testing and multivariate testing are your friends.

Popularity: 27%

It’s been an incredible few months since I last had a chance to blog.

In that time, I’ve been working to release Market Samurai - an all-in-one internet marketing software package.

Market Samurai is the Swiss Army Knife of internet marketing - it does market research, keyword analysis, SEO analysis, fetching and analysing content, building backlinks - and even more features are in development.

If you haven’t played with it yet, you can download a free trial copy from the Market Samurai web-site.

The past 10 weeks in particular have been an incredibly big period - not just for the release of Market Samurai, but for the team.

For several weeks, the Noble Samurai team was working huge rotating shifts (including some 37 hour days) just to manage the three launches.

The first, a limited “alpha” launch to the Immediate Edge. The second, a “private beta” launch to the 30 Day Challenge. And the final, a “public beta” to the general public.

It’s encouraging to see that Market Samurai is already proving itself “in the field” - even just a few weeks after launch.

Obviously with so many automated features, it’s significantly cutting the time spent on critical internet marketing tasks - but it’s also creating significantly better results too.

Already, 10,000’s of people have downloaded their copy of Market Samurai, and around 40% have upgraded to the full [paid] version - a phenomenal conversion rate, and a testament to what it does.

Here’s an example…

Within hours of setting up their first blog ever (on a brand-new domain), we had complete internet marketing “newbies” ranked on the first page of Google - for real keywords with real traffic and real customers!

Here are just a few of their results (taken from the 30 Day Challenge forums)…

#2 ranking in Google after 2 hours, #1 within 12 hours, #5 ranking after 2 hours, #1 & 2 (two listings for the same keyword) within 1 hour, #15 ranking after 30 mins, #1 in 16 hours, #5 after 5 hours 42 minutes, #7 after 9 hours, #5 after 4 hours, #4 after 8 hours, #1 after 13 hours, #3 after 6 hours, #4 after 5 hours, #1 after 5 hours, #1 after 4.5 hours, #1 in 15 hours, #3 after 5 days, #6 after 5 days, #3 after 16 hours, #3 after 6 hours, #1 ranking after 24 hours, #3 & 4 after 2 hours (rising to a double-listing at #2 & 3 shortly after), #1 overnight, #2 in 6.5 hours… etc, etc, etc…

It gives me a “warm fuzzy feeling” to see these types of results.

Anyway, if you haven’t had a play of Market Samurai yet, go download a free trial. It really is the bees-knees - the kind of software you wish you had whenever you have to go without it.

Popularity: 27%

Last week, I received an email from a potential internet marketing consulting client.

Without wanting to give too much away about them, they sell a series of small low-cost items (most priced under $25) in a market where their key online competitors sell similar items for hundreds of dollars.

You’d think with such a compelling price-point, making sales online would be a breeze!

After all, everyone wants a bargain!

But the truth was they weren’t making money.

Yes, they had a compelling product - but they couldn’t afford to get word out, and attract traffic to their website.

So how do you make this business work?

The first thing the client wanted me to do was to help them to make money out of Adwords.

“Fantastic!” I thought - this is where I start my work with most clients.

Here’s what I did:

The first thing I looked at was the Adwords Traffic Estimator tool. It showed that there were roughly 1,000 searches per day around their core keywords, assuming they had a #1 ad position…

…But, in order to obtain #1 position for these keywords, they would need to bid around $1 per click.

With around $10 margin per item, this was going to be unprofitable!

They would need to receive a minimum 10% sales conversion rate in order to make this profitable - incredibly high considering 0.05% (half of one-percent) is generally a good sales conversion rate online.

Do the maths: 0.05% x $25.00 = $0.125

…The maximum they could profitably afford to pay per click was around 12 cents per click - and at these figures, they could only expect around 25 clicks per day…

…They would receive, on average, one sale every 8 days…

…That’s 45 sales per year…

…At around $10 profit per item, this is $450 per year in sales…

Sure, I could make their Adwords profitable by bidding $0.12 per click - but it wouldn’t make their business “work”.

The issue wasn’t their web-site…

They had one of the best designed shopping-cart based web-sites I have ever seen! (In fact, it had a brilliant design concept - categorising items visually around appearance and style!)

The issue wasn’t their Adwords account…

Sure, their Adwords account wasn’t profitable… But it wasn’t Adwords’ fault - there was only a limited amount of traffic, and it was too expensive to capture enough of it

The issue wasn’t their marketing…

They were doing a lot of good things in their marketing…

The issue wasn’t the size of their market…

Based purely on Adwords CPC’s and traffic estimates, the traffic in their market was worth around $1,100 per day… That’s over $400,000 in Adwords - before you even look at getting traffic from affiliates and SEO.

The issue was simple:

The issue was their product! Put simply, their product was TOO CHEAP to compete online.

Their value per visitor, the maximum that they could afford to pay per visitor, was around the $0.12 mark. It was TOO LOW to make any money in their market.

They needed to “control the high-ground” of marketing - they needed their ads to be in the top positions - but with just $0.12 in their war-chest (compared to the $1.10 that their competitors could afford to bid) they couldn’t afford to out-bid the other guy.

With so little profit in their product, they were stuck!

They couldn’t afford to invest in SEO, give away any sort of affiliate commission, or even profitably afford to pay for marketing consulting!

This is why you cannot afford to compete on price when marketing online… because the guy who can afford to pay more for the top positions in Adwords, who can afford to pay for the best SEO, who can afford to pay more in affiliate commissions - they will beat you every time.

Sadly, I had to turn this potential client away because I knew I couldn’t help them to make money if they were competing at the low end of the market..

But if you’re reading this, I DO want to help you.

Over the coming weeks, I’m going to be writing a lot about pricing strategy…

Finding the right price point for your product is something that MOST online marketers don’t understand - but it means the difference between a profitable product, and a dud.

I’m going to show you market testing strategies for finding profitable price points, and why it’s more important to work out what you’re going to sell the product for - before you work out what you’re going to sell.

If you haven’t already, make sure you’re subscribed to my blog via email (by entering your name and email address in the box under my pretty picture ;)). Some of the strategies I’ll share will you were developed as part of the campaign I ran that made $570,000 in 37 minutes - you won’t want to miss them.

Popularity: 31%

Have the “Gurus” lost touch with the joe-average internet marketer?

Not all of them, but MOST of them…

Do they realise how much work it takes to actually start an internet business anymore?

Sometimes I wonder about this when I read about the latest “Get Rich Quick” software they’ve developed, and wonder how it could possibly deliver any legitimate value to any start-up internet business owner.

I wonder whether most of the gurus remember what it took to start their business, or have an appreciation of how the market has changed since their business hit critical mass.

Let’s face it - they don’t need to know these things.

Once you have a big list, and a rapport with that list, it’s all-over-red-rover!

You can sell other people’s products on affiliate commissions, and still make a killing.

You can live off the “Launch Spikes”…

(In fact, at a certain point you don’t even need to do that. Like Mark Joyner, you can simply drift off and enjoy retirement… which makes you wonder why the big “gurus” are still in the market?)

But for the rest of us - we need to carve out an internet business that is designed for today’s internet market - by ourselves…

And as I’ve said over and over again, building a business is hard work.

The good news is there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Eventually you hit “critical mass”.

You literally end up with a money-making machine.

It’s just building that machine that’s the hard part.

When I was still a young pup (er, younger pup… starting 6 years ago…), I worked in a small team to build an online business from practically nothing into one of these “lean, mean money-making machines”.

It took 2 people 2 years part-time work to get it to the “critical mass” stage.

It was part-time work because half the time was spent building the business, half the time was spent generating the cash using another business so that we could afford to pay ourselves (peanuts) to work on the website. (At the time I was taking home around $8.50 per hour… I had to work for an hour to earn my bus ticket to work - I couldn’t afford to drive.)

It was damn hard work too.

Not all of it was rewarding either…

We promised to send subscribers a monthly newsletter…

When you have a 60,000 person database, a monthly newsletter becomes a licence to make money. (3 years later when we’d built the business to this size, we would joke that the “Send Newsletter” button was the “Make Money” button.)

But when you’re sending a newsletter to 150 people, and still have a 1% conversion rate, it hardly seems worth it.

I wonder - if most of the gurus had to start again, without their databases, finances or contacts - could they do it?

Could they break into a new market?

Do they really understand what it takes to become a success, today?

Or have they lost touch, and they’re peddling concepts that used to work yesterday?

Personally, I’m more inclined to trust a guru who is actively out there, building online businesses that have yet to reach maturity… Or if they’re truly on the cutting-edge of their marketspace.

There are a few I do trust that I can think of off the top of my head - James Brausch is one (a “guru” who is building his own business before your eyes), John Reese is another (the hardest working internet marketer in the business), Ed Dale (because his “Lab” researchers are constantly trialling new concepts in new markets).

That’s not to say I don’t believe other “gurus” have nothing to offer - just I often wonder if they’re genuinely wanting to help, or if they’re just out for the quick buck from product launches…

What are your thoughts?

Who do you trust to help YOU in the marketplace, not just make a quick buck on launch commissions?

Brent

Popularity: 28%

Do you know when to stick at it, and where to give up and let the opportunity pass you buy?

Most businesses are not successful from day one.

It takes a long time, and a lot of hard work, to become an overnight success.

Unfortunately, most people give up long before they get close to this point. Perhaps that’s why 98% of people fail (or 99.5% in my estimations from my time working in the get-rich-quick industry).

I was watching one of Marcus Hochstadt’s DVD interviews with James Brausch recently.

It’s genuinely great content - after buying it for $35 during a 24 hour special, it almost feels like I stole it or don’t deserve it for what I paid for it.

I wrote down a page of insights that I wanted to apply to my business…

But one insight that stuck out to me was never explicitly revealed by James Brausch in the interview.

It’s about “sticking at it”.

James Brausch told the story about how he got into internet marketing. It was through an amazing piece of technology that he and four business partners had developed.

Over time, each of James Brausch’s business partners left the business for various reasons - he was left with a product, but alone with no marketing expertise, and nobody to help him.

It would have been easy to give up when things started to get hard - at the same time that his business partners left.

It would have been easier to give up now - when things were toughest, and he was alone with an whale-sized problem: How to commercialise this device?

But he “stuck”.

He kept going.

One thing lead to another, he turned that business into a success before selling it, started another, and then started the business he’s in today!

Ed Dale is another example - he failed to make a “winner” out of his first niche site 37 times before he created a model that worked.

Imagine how easy it would have been to give up?

What about Thomas Edisson - his story of persistence in the face of failure when inventing the light bulb is practically a cliche!

Personally, building an online business from $0 to $Millions in sales took 2 years before it reached critical mass.

The common trend that I’m noticing among the successful people I know is that you need to stick at something for 1.5 to 2 years in order to achieve success at it. (For relationships, I’m told it’s 6 months to 3 years.)

It’s a character building exercise.

It’s like success wants to test you to see if you can handle it - before it will give itself to you.

I don’t know why… It just works that way.

It’s interesting because if you can test someone’s character, you get a good indication of how likely it is that they will achieve success.

This is also something James Brausch spoke about in the interview.

I never realised how genuine his desire to see people become successful was.

He comes across as a jerk to so many people because he’s found “tough love” actually improves peoples chances of success.

It’s also interesting how he uses the Intern Program as a character building and testing exercise. (I won’t go into how, or what exclusive reward he offers though… It’s probably best that I don’t mention it.)

It makes me wonder… Do I have the character to stick with it, in my internet marketing ventures?

In the past, the answer (most of the time) was “no”… This time, I’m not so sure.

I guess time will tell.

What about you? Do you have the character to “stick it” for 1.5 to 2 years before you see the rewards of your work?

Brent

Popularity: 28%

At lunch during Ed Dale and Dan Raine’s Over the Edge conference in Beechworth - in the middle of … well, nowhere…

Just finished listening to Pete Williams‘ presentation on using offline media for promotion.

Check out the video Ed produced on-the-fly, just during a break before Pete Williams’ session:

http://seesmic.com/v/7lGar8juPy

Check it out!

Keep an eye out for my ugly mug in the video, and Ed’s comments about me.

If you want to see what people here are up to, have a look at the Beechworth 08 Twitter Aggregator…

Brent

Popularity: 26%

The hardest part of living the “Four Hour Work Week” is something that is only glossed over in the book…

It’s actually creating the income to fund your business, your outsourcers, and your lifestyle.

This is a pretty big black hole in the book.

Tim Ferriss’s release of the Four Hour Work Week has created a new gold-rush of “Get Rich Quick” junkies - this time, instead of the million dollars and a Porsche, they’re out to become part of the “New Rich” - to own lifestyle businesses.

The lifestyle is easy to build.

But building any sort of business (lifestyle business or otherwise) is hard work…

It’s not something that you can create overnight. It takes time and effort.

So how was Tim Ferriss able to build a lifestyle business?

Well, he never set out to build a lifestyle business to begin with… So there are gaps in some of the “How To”…

But if you read between the lines, there are 7 lessons that Tim Ferriss provides about building a business, and turning it into something that runs independently of you and funds your lifestyle.

But he does illude to a few concepts that show you what it takes.

1. Business Takes Hard Work

Once you’re past the excitement phase, starting a business is hard, unrewarding, time consuming, dull, boring, costly, arduous, stressful, crappy work.

Starting a business is hard, hard work, and it’s not for everyone.

But it’s one of the few ways to achieve the type of lifestyle that Tim Ferriss talks about.

Before Tim Ferriss achieves his “Four Hour Work Week”, we see how hard he works - both as an employee and as a business owner.

In the early stages of the book, he could easily be described as a “workaholic”.

He works more productive hours in a day than most people do in a month!

Tim Ferriss did not decide he was going to work 4 hours a week, then started a business.

He built a business, THEN decided to work 4 hours a week.

He didn’t have an internal conflict about working so hard when he “should have” be off on month-long lifestyle adventures. He was just working hard to build his business.

Sure, it’s good to begin with an end in mind… But your end is “build a lifestyle business”. It’s not “live the lifestyle”.

And building the business is going to take a lot of hard work.

2. In Business, You Don’t Have To Do It All Alone

OK - the bad news is that building a business is hard work, and someone has to do it.

BUT the good news is it doesn’t have to be you.

One of the key points in the book is that you can outsource practically any business activity.

Just on this point - I had a Virtual Assistant comment on my blog recently scoffed that she thought Tim Ferriss’s book conditioned business owners to expect Virtual Assistants to do “flunkie” work.

Running a business means doing a lot of “flunkie” work. Most small and start-up business owners do a lot of the flunkie work themselves.

If you think it’s boring, degrading, meaningless - whatever - it’s a necessary part of business.

(That’s why people outsource as much of the easy “flunkie” tasks to Virtual Assistants!)

There’s an issue that you’ll need to deal with though - to avoid the work, or pay for it.

If you’re outsourcing “little” tasks in your business, it immediately becomes obvious how much value a business owner invests into a business in the form of “free” labour and how it’s easy to undervalue our own time.

If a task’s outcome doesn’t make you money - how does it deliver value to your business?

Is it simply a case of the task being unprofitable in the short term? Will the task be profitable in the long term?

Is there a way to get rid of this task, or perhaps streamline it so that it is profitable - or at least costs less?

As a business owner, you don’t have to do it all… but for some tasks, that doesn’t mean you should get someone else to do it either.

3. Business Takes Someone With Strong Character Traits

Tim Ferriss has successful character traits.

He works hard. But more importantly, he sticks at things, long after most people have quit.

If you look at any successful person, you find that consistent action over a long period of time reaps rewards. A lot of action over a short period of time does not.

When business gets hard, you need to stick at it.

Success is like wine - it takes time to create.

Practically every successful person I know took 1.5 to 2 years of hard work to achieve success.

That’s 1.5 to 2 years of delayed gratification.

1.5 to 2 years of practically nothing… until they received something big.

1.5 to 2 years of trepidation and frustration before jubilation and celebration.

Do you have the character necessary to stick it through?

4. Choose a Business You’re Passionate About

Passion gets you a long way in any niche.

I’d prefer to hire a passionate marketer rather than a qualified marketer any day of the week. You can train someone to build their aptitude, but you can’t build attitude.

Someone with an insatiable passion will soak up skills and market insights faster than a dry sponge.

That’s why passion gets you a long way.

In Tim Ferriss’s example, he was passionate about nutrtition and combat arts.

This passion meant he’d already gathered a lot of knowledge about the needs and desires of his marketplace, plus a lot of technical information about nutrition and sports, long before he even developed a product.

But as we saw, after working so hard in his business for so long, he burned out and lost his passion.

It would have been easy to flake out and throw it all away (in some respects, he did) - this is where his strength of character showed through.

You still need the strong character to keep going when things get tough. But starting with a passion will get you a long way, fast.

5. Do Your Market Research Before You Begin A Business

This is something that Tim Ferriss DOES go into in his book - in fact, he dedicates a chapter to this area - but it’s such an important point that I thought I’d mention it here.

Market Research is CRITICAL for moving into a new business area.

I recently watched one of Marcus Hochstadt’s DVD interviews with James Brausch, who revealed that even though he has owned thousands of websites, there are only a few hundred profitable marketplaces online.

If you’re planning to build a freedom business, internet business, lifestyle business, or any other sort of business… How will you know that you’re going to reap a reward from your business?

It takes time to build a business and take it to profit.

Will you be investing time, money and effort into a business that is never going to compensate you? (A mistake I’ve made several times already)

How will you know unless you do your market research?

6. Make Sure Your Business Has Great Marketing

Just reading the book, it’s clear that Tim Ferriss is an exceptional marketer.

Featured on (how many?) TV programs and other forms of media. Building a brand. Carving out a marketplace. Speaking at Ivy League Universities.

And all of this was long before he even released his book.

He has an incredible marketing mind.

If you’re wanting to build a freedom business, or lifestyle business, do you?

How will you break into markets? How will you get the word out about your products? How will you communicate with potential customers? How will you build a brand?

It’s not easy…

There are plenty of people who are failing where they should be succeeding, simply because their marketing is sub-par.

Will you be doing your own marketing? Or will you be hiring or outsourcing to achieve a better result?

If you’ll be outsourcing, how will you fund this? (Marketing is rarely profitable from day one.)

How will you measure and track results, so that you know that you’re moving towards your goal?

7. Make Sure Your Business Is Constantly Moving Forward

A client and friend of mine, Brian Cavill, has a saying - “If you stop moving forward, you’re a backslider.”

Now, I don’t know if the saying is his or not, but it rings true in practically everything. If you’re not growing, you’re decaying. If you’re not competing, your competitors are. If you’re not improving, you’re getting worse.

In Steven Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, it’s one of the 7 habits - “Sharpening the Saw”.

There were a several examples of this principle in Tim Ferriss’ book, but to pick two examples:

Tim Ferriss applied the 80/20 rule, and only supplied his products to a small number of large distributors, and fired a large number of small distributors. Although it meant a smaller market, it improved the efficiency with which he distributed his products.

In another, we see his systems and procedures for outsourcing. These had been refined and improved over time as a result of problems he had with providers - and no doubt he was still improving them.

It takes hard work to build any sort of business…

I wonder how many people who dream about owning “lifestyle businesses” will be able to stick through, and create their business in the end… Or if they are just that - dreamers.

Brent

Popularity: 40%

Humans HAVE TO develop a resistance to commercial advertising and sales pitches.

Put it another way - if you said “Yes” every time someone offered you something to buy, pretty soon you will have spent all your money, and you’ll end up broke, bankrupt and starving!

That’s why it’s been a copywriter’s job to find ways to “get under the radar”.

It’s been our job to look for tactics where we can slip past people’s natural defences, their natural aversion to being “pitched to”, and sneaks into the soft fleshy part of their brain where we might be able to get them to make a buying decision…

RULE #1 OF SALES COPY: Don’t Make Your Ad Look Like An Ad

But SO MANY people are screwing this up online.

For a long time, I defended long form sales letters…

“They look horrible… They sound horrible… They’re blatantly obvious sales pitches…

…Yeah, but they sell well!”

And let’s face it - they HAVE sold well…

But do they sell the best?

Is there something that could sell better?

Step back for a minute - where did long-form salesletters come from?

They came from the direct marketing industry. The OFFLINE direct marketing industry.

They used to be delivered via post into people’s hands - and were read like genuine person-to-person letters.

It was a way of getting through the brochure-mail and junk-mail, and actually GETTING READ - because letters get read, whereas advertising mail lines the bottom of people’s budgie cages or is delivered straight to the bin.

This is why they were sales-LETTERS.

Long Form comes into the picture because you NEED 16 pages to establish a rapport with someone who you’ve never met with before.

Advertorials were born in a similar way.

Direct marketers’ ads weren’t being read in newspapers - so they came up with another strategy. They hid their sales pitch inside what looked like editorial - what looked (on the surface) to be a genuine article.

Long form sales letters worked really well in the infancy of the internet…

So did the split testing strategies behind sales letter creation…

But nobody really thought about the “why?”. People just blindly followed the advice of “Pro Copywriters” who assured everyone that long form was the way to go online - based on their 30 years experience offline. (This is the same reason EVERYONE has Red headlines… one copywriter said red headlines work the best, and within a month, every sales letter online suddenly had red headlines).

The problem is, people are becoming “immune” to online sales letters.

Via email, people are “spamming” sales letters that arrive… Via web pages, people are having a quick look, then hitting the back button.

And the reason is simple…

THE FUNDAMENTALS BEHIND GOOD DIRECT MARKETING ARE BEING FORGOTTEN

Copywriters are just blindly following what everyone else is doing - without thinking about WHY.

Copywriters are using slang and informal language in ALL sales letters… When it was originally used as an early NLP-style tactic to mirror and build rapport with targeted markets - weight-lifters, body-builders, people with a self-defence interest, cage fighters - people who use slang and informal speech normally.

Copywriters are using long-form styles that “turn off” their targeted customers instead of engaging them… Instead of fighting for attention with long form sales letters, copywriters should be engaging prospects by using writing styles that their prospects engage with - blogs, article sites, news sites, Wikipedia, video sites…

Copywriters should still squeeze before a sale - but they don’t need to use churn-and-burn strategies to hassle prospects into buying, or go away… Old-school copywriters used to have a high cost of attaining and then contacting leads - it was buy or die. Profit or lose money. Each lead cost so much more to gain, and so much more to contact.

Today, we have the luxury of communicating with our prospects online for free - so we can afford to invest into building life-long buying relationships with clients.

We don’t need to be take-take-take, pitch-pitch-pitch, sell-sell-sell as copywriters. We CAN give away value too to engage prospects.

This is the next generation of sales copy writing - particularly for the online marketplace.

We’re fighting for attention in the most distraction-riddled medium that has ever existed - the internet.

The copy writing war-cry for online marketing is not “BUY OR DIE!”

The new war-cry is now “ENGAGE!”

Are you engaging your prospects? Are you giving your market what it wants?

Are you slipping under the radar, using the same common technology, common writing styles, and common language used by your market? Or are you trying to jam your prospects faces into the much-hated long form sales letter?

Watch this space…

Copywriting is changing.

Popularity: 35%

Just a quick post…

I’m heading to Ed Dale and Dan Raine’s “Over The Edge” 2008 Seminar in Beechworth.

It’s going to be an interesting few days. The guys have become masters of “quick-hit SEO”.

Invariably, the strategies that they talk about at these events are the strategies that will be released as the “cutting-edge” strategies in 3 months time… So I’m not sure what I’ll discover… but I’m sure going to be bringing my notepad and system cards.

Brent

Popularity: 25%