Most successful bloggers dream of writing a best selling book one day.

A book that will impact the lives of MILLIONS!

In this article best selling author Jerry Gillies reveals his own personal secrets on how to write a best selling book.

Jerry wrote the 2 Million selling best seller MONEYLOVE back in 1978 – in the days before the Internet and Amazon.

At a time when you could not fake your book into a “best seller”.

How I Raised Myself from Poverty to Prosperity With a Bestselling Book, plus 7 Secrets That Will Help You Do The Same

By Jerry Gillies

I am not declaring that I am smarter, or even a better writer than you.

In fact, I’d be willing to bet you are in better financial shape right now than I was then.

Two things, however, that led to my success:

1. An overwhelming belief that I had something valuable to say.
2. The willingness to drop everything else in my life, including an income, and focus all my energy and attention on writing.

I was barely getting by after quitting my job as a broadcast journalist in New York and moving to Miami. Then, Moneylove came out and hundreds of thousands of dollars started pouring in. This is not a unique or unusual story. Many writers have seen their fortunes dramatically improve following their first bestselling book.

In fact, there are few single events in life that can produce the results in cash, widespread recognition, and building a legacy than having a book hit the NY Times bestseller list. Being able to call yourself a bestselling author is just as prestigious, though not nearly as difficult to attain, as being able to call yourself an Academy Award-winning actor, or Nobel Prize winner.

In the process of moving from poverty to prosperity, I discovered some truths gathered during thirty years of being a bestselling author and knowing many authors even more successful than me. So, here are the seven secrets, the concepts, the strategies that produced two million sales for Moneylove.

How To Write A Best Selling Book Secret #1:

The Company You Keep

Most of us have heard this or a variation of it ‘You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.’

Well before Moneylove, I wrote a book called FRIENDS–The Power and Potential of The Company You Keep.

In that book, I focused on the importance to a happy and successful life of having what I termed a “supportive interpersonal environment.”

Since all writers need encouragement and praise, it is vital that the people around you can provide these benefits. Particularly, you need to include writers in your circle of friends. And specifically, if possible, writers who are published and more successful than you.

This is a big one you don’t hear about too much. Instead, you hear about how writers are mostly loners and isolated, therefore not available to you for mentoring and support. This is basically a Big Lie.

It is true that a majority of writers keep to themselves a lot, otherwise they wouldn’t get much writing done. But I luckily stumbled upon the fact that there are bestselling authors hanging out at a lot of specific places, and they are very friendly and approachable at those places. The advantage of getting to know some bestselling authors is that you will discover we are ordinary folk, and you fit in very well when we get together.

A bestselling millionaire author would much rather hang out with a beginning writer earning minimum wage as a waiter (while writing his or her book) than a banking tycoon or multimillionaire builder.

Best Selling Writers – Where Are They? How Do You Reach Them?

When I was doing interviews at NBC Radio in New York, I got to talk to a number of bestselling writers, but it wasn’t until I joined and became active in the Association for Humanistic Psychology that I had the opportunity to be in the company of lots of them. One amazing thing I discovered was that I was treated with the same welcoming energy and respect before I had written my first book as I was when sales of Moneylove started approaching their first million copies. And the lectures and workshops at AHP conventions were fascinating and gave me a lot of material for future books.

Next, I joined The National Speakers Association, thanks to Mark Victor Hansen, who invited me to my first NSA convention. Then, the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, where I got to know people like Ray Bradbury and Rita Mae Brown.

Finally, The Inside Edge, the famed leadership support group [Mastermind] that Jack Canfield, Louise Hay, Wayne Dyer, Norman Cousins, myself and Susan Jeffers helped found, and most of the board of advisors had written successful books.

There’s not enough room in this article to list all the advantages of hanging out with other authors.

A strategy you might explore is to get in touch with some successful authors and find out whether they attend any of the writers conferences or other professional associations, and, if so, whether they would be willing to meet with you for a chat.

Of course, if you have any bestselling authors in your city, you can contact them and ask for a personal interview. As a former newsman, I sometimes used this ploy and just asked a favorite author if I could interview them for a possible article or newsletter. Now we have blogs to serve that purpose. No matter how rich, famous, and busy a bestselling author is, they will rarely turn down a new writer who wants to spend a few minutes with them.

A perfect example of this comes from two of the bestselling authors in human history. They are also two longtime friends of mine, going back over thirty years, before they ever wrote or even thought of the first book in the bestselling series
of the 20th century, the Chicken Soup for The Soul series.

I first met Jack Canfield when I interviewed him for NBC. Mark Victor Hansen and I became friends after he wrote me a wonderful note telling me how much Moneylove had meant to him and had helped him become a prosperity teacher. They were both impressed with how successful Moneylove was.

The Chicken Soup for the Soul books, over 225 of them, which have sold half a billion copies in 47 languages, are collections of short true stories from teachers, workshop leaders, and ordinary people. Some of them are funny. Some are sad. But they all have an uplifting message. I’ve written five of the stories myself for three of the books over the years.

I think Jack and Mark would have been astonished, to know two things when we first talked about this first Chicken Soup book: One, how very very successful it would be, making them both millionaires many times over. Two, and maybe even a bigger surprise–they did not start out planning exactly this kind of book, of tales from mostly ordinary people out there.

Here’s a Chicken Soup for the Soul story, which I don’t think has ever been told anywhere before, but I was there.

Shortly after meeting Mark Victor Hansen, he invited me as his guest to the annual convention of The National Speakers Association, being held that year in New Orleans. I didn’t know any of the professional speakers in the group, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover how many knew me through Moneylove. These included people like Zig Ziglar and Denis Waitley and Og Mandino. I became a member, and I then told Jack Canfield about the group and that I thought he’d enjoy it and gain some real value from being a member.

One of the great benefits of seeing all those great speakers in one place, seeing and hearing their best talks, one after the other over several days, was that we got to hear their best stories. Jack and Mark and I talked about the fact that every speaker had at least one killer story he or she told at the end of their talk.

It was either a funny or inspiring or poignantly moving story, sometimes all three.

I don’t know which of us thought of the idea first, but we began to discuss going to all these top speakers and collecting their killer stories for a book.

Jack and Mark took off with this idea as I got involved in other things, mostly traveling and doing workshops overseas. A problem came up that provides a valuable lesson for all authors.

That lesson is:

Since many of the most famous and successful speakers had just one powerful closing story they used for audiences all over, year after year, they were reluctant to allow them to be circulated more widely in a book. Also, some of them were the types of stories that had to be heard with an audience to be most effective. Their power and impact might be diminished by appearing in print.

So, Jack and Mark dramatically changed their focus. They realized that lots of people had great, moving, funny, inspiring stories. Stories from their own lives. And Chicken Soup for The Soul was born. They also deserve a lot of credit for their persistence and commitment (two more qualities any author needs), since that first Chicken Soup book was turned down by about 150 different publishers in the course of a year or so. Finally, the small Florida-based company, Health Communications, took it on. The rest is truly publishing history.

Some valuable lessons for all writers and potential bestselling authors in the experiences of Jack and Mark. But I think the most valuable one of all was that they were ready to turn on a dime when circumstances changed. They changed the criteria for the stories in the book itself, and they kept going when many another author would have given up after the first 10 or 50 or 100 rejections.

Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer.
– Ray Bradbury

How To Write A Best Selling Book Secret #2:

Happy Talk About What You Do

Many writers giving advice say an author shouldn’t talk about what he or she is writing. It’s true that talking too much to too many people about your forthcoming book, article, or blog post can suck the energy out of any creative project. I agree with that premise, but do want accentuate the positive truth that you should be talking about what you are doing in your own life. Especially the stuff you plan to include in your book.

“You better make them care about what you think. It had better be quirky or perverse or thoughtful enough so that you hit some chord in them. Otherwise it doesn’t work. I mean we’ve all read pieces where we thought, ‘Oh, who gives a damn.’ ”
—Nora Ephron

My Own Happy Talk Experience

A lot of the success for me in writing and promoting Moneylove came from the fact that I was already talking about prosperity consciousness before I even pitched the book to a publisher. I had listened to some tapes of a man named Leonard Orr, who had an unusual concept. He said your attitudes about money itself dictated your financial results.

This excited and stimulated my creativity and I went to one of his evening seminars. I started to come up with strategies of my own to put his ideas into action. I had been doing lectures and workshops on communication and relationships. Now I threw in little tidbits about prosperity consciousness, and how I was using it in my own life.

People got enthusiastic, got results, and asked for more and the rest is all about the momentum that energy generated.

I love the song Happy Talk in the musical, South Pacific. Especially the opening:

Happy talk, keep talking happy talk,
Talk about things you’d like to do,

I would change the second line to: “Talk about things you do.” If you are passionate and excited about the subject of your book, or whatever you are writing, and have found the ideas are making a difference in your life, or the lives of anyone else, then talk about that–not the specifics of your actual book.

One great strategy to put this concept into practice is to prepare, before you even start writing your book, an actual thirty minute talk on the subject. This will also enable you to introduce your ideas and focus on the most important theme. You can even approach local organizations that book speakers about having you do your talk. Even if you do some free talks for charitable groups, churches and such, it’s a great marketing research tool.

This also helps with something all aspiring authors need to do. In today’s publishing world, an author needs to do a lot of the marketing and promotion himself. It is vital that you not only provide a great proposal or manuscript to a publisher, but also tell what audiences will buy the book and how you intend to reach them

How To Write A Best Selling Book Secret #3:

Start Immediately

“My advice is not to wait to be struck by an idea. If you’re a writer, you sit down and damn well decide to have an idea. That’s the way to get an idea.”
~ Andy Rooney

One of the first pieces of prosperity advice I put in Moneylove was from pioneering psychologist William James. He said that in order to change your life, you had to start immediately. So, let us consider this: you are probably not a bestselling author right now, or you wouldn’t be reading this article. What you want to therefore change is to become a bestseller author, at least to begin that process. Start immediately. Start writing, even if you’re not sure what you want to say.

If you are serious, begin to write at least one page a day. It doesn’t have to have a purpose or specific goal, but you have to do it with energy and without exception. Julia Cameron says in, The Artist’s Way, that you should wake up every morning and immediately write three pages. Some folks might find that too daunting. Do it if you can, but at the very least–one page. Once you have done this for a month, check out your first pages versus your latest pages and you will find the practice has made a difference. This will change your results whether you are wanting to write a book, a blog, persuasive emails, or clever Tweets.

Here are several starting immediately strategies I’ve given in my Writing A Bestseller workshops along with personal coaching clients:

Write a simple and clear sentence that explains what your book is about.

If you have such a clear command of your purpose in writing a book (or anything) that you can convey its essence in a single sentence, you are starting out way ahead of most authors.

Write the copy for your book’s jacket.

For the research necessary to do this, you will have to go to the library or a bookstore and check out the jacket copy on hardcover books, particularly the side flaps. Writing your own version of this for your own book can provide momentum, even if what you write now won’t accurately describe your finished manuscript.

Start doing what I call Sampling Your Future Success.

I did this by cutting out a copy of the NY Times bestseller list, and typing Moneylove on the list before putting it on my bulletin board.

In addition to a proposal or manuscript, you need to have a clear idea of who your audience is and how they can be reached If you have a blog with thousands of hits, that’s an easy one.

I also always visualize myself appearing on a major talk show and imagine what questions the host (I use Oprah a lot, since I actually was a guest on her show) will ask, and how I would respond.

How To Write A Best Selling Book Secret #4:

Capture the readers attention with your opening lines

One way to always guarantee you will intrigue, attract, interest, and capture the attention of a reader is to become a master of the opening line, or even the opening several lines.

Even before you fully write your book (or even a blog post) getting the opening clarified and clear in your head is essential.

I don’t know about you, but when I am browsing through books in a bookstore, the library, or online, I always check out the beginning sentences. The first words either trigger a desire in me to read more, or they don’t. In Moneylove, my opening lines in the Introduction were:

“You deserve to be rich, and you can be rich. MONEYLOVE can help you have a life of abundance, filled with love and creativity and, incidentally, all the cash you want.”

I call this, beginning the begin!

Business experts doing a lot of market research and psychologists doing a lot of studies, have both reached the same conclusion, that first minute of contact is vital. It’s that minute that determines the progress of any interaction–personal or professional.

Widely considered the best opening line in literature is Jane Austen’s for Pride and Prejudice:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

This sentence lets the reader know what kind of a book he or she has chosen. It sets a tone.

And here’s a shocking truth about being a bestselling author: you can learn as much or more about good writing from reading really great opening lines from books, as you can from almost any college course on writing. And this is the best time in history to do this, because you can find those openings online without having to go to a library or bookstore. If you put into your search engine a request such as “great opening lines in books,” or: “the best literary opening lines,” you will gain access to an unlimited stream of the best ones out there.

In nonfiction, look at the opening line of the foreword to Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich:

“The Thirteen Steps to Riches described in this book offer the shortest dependable philosophy of individual achievement ever presented for the benefit of the man or woman who is searching for a definite goal,”

How To Write A Best Selling Book Secret #5:

The Short and Sweet of It

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.
– Henry David Thoreau

Short words and short sentences are pretty much norm now in most writing courses, but when I first started talking about this in the 1970s, the standard was flowery language and complex sentences, except for a few brilliant writers who knew this secret. That it is no longer a secret is pretty much due to one man, Rudolf Flesch (see Secret Seven below for more on him).

As you can see by my opening for this article, I do not always follow the popular advice to keep sentences short. Sometimes long is more expressive. Sometimes a few long sentences interspersed with a lot of short ones can create a pleasing rhythm. Back and forth. A master of this quality in her writing is Harper Lee. Her opening for, To Kill a Mockingbird, is a brilliant example of mixing short sentences and long flowing ones. She didn’t go for flash or shock, but simply started with the kind of statement a child might make,

“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”

Look at how simply Harper Lee conveys the life of a sleepy old Southern town in very few words. “There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and nothing to buy it with.”

To Kill a Mocking Bird, one of my very favorite books, is the epitomé of clear and simple writing. As the best books in fiction or nonfiction always do, an author should create a dialogue with the reader that resembles a good friend telling a good story.

In terms of cutting down on wordage, I have had any number of successful nonfiction and fiction writers tell me that one of the most important disciplines any writer can master is to take a paragraph or sentence, or even a page, that you really are in love with, and cut it from your manuscript.

I had a whole chapter left out of Moneylove when I got the final galleys prior to it going to the printing presses. The book originally had seven chapters, and my editor, Herb Katz, without telling me, cut a whole chapter out because he felt it didn’t fit with the other chapters. After a while, I was forced to agree with him, but not until I had ranted and raved for a week or two.

Writing can be like music. There are high notes. There are low notes. And once in a while, there are no notes, as you pause to let the mind breathe between paragraphs.

A Warning Note:

If most of the writing you have done has been of an academic sort while taking college courses, you will be at a disadvantage in writing for a larger mainstream audience. Most readers today are most comfortable with a 5th grade level of vocabulary, and anything more may go right over their heads.

How To Write A Best Selling Book Secret #6:

Become a One Trick Pony

This cliché phrase is often used in a pejorative way, to describe someone who has only one talent or skill and nothing more to offer once that is displayed or presented. However, for a writer starting out, it can be a valuable strategy, No matter how many subjects you have mastered and how many tricks you possess, It’s useful to appear as if you are a supreme master, a real expert about one important subject.

One of the bestselling authors I had some impact on was Spencer Johnson. Spencer has been kind enough to tell me my two hour seminar on writing a bestseller at the National Speakers Association really made a difference in his approach to writing. What he was doing with corporate clients was teaching them the value of praising employees, in a very short amount of time. This one minute praise technique led to the huge bestseller he wrote with management expert Kenneth Blanchard, The One-Minute Manager, which has sold over thirteen million copies. Spencer Johnson went on to write the bestselling, Who Moved My Cheese, as well as the ValueTales series of children’s books.

Spencer Johnson is obviously a very creative writer who has lots of ideas for books, but his first effort was so successful because rather than just come up with a book he thought would sell, he focused on what he was already doing. And once he became a master of that one idea, he and his co-author, Ken Blanchard, came up with the add-ons of One Minute Goals and One Minute Reprimands. They thus became three-trick ponies and much more.

Louise Hay is another multi-million copy bestselling author who started out with one trick, which led to You Can Heal Your Life — over 50 million sold and counting.

I remember back in the early 1980s, Louise, her assistant, Julie, and I sitting in a hot tub in the backyard of her rented house in Santa Monica. She had produced a cult classic, You Can Heal Your Body. A small booklet, it was beloved by the holistic health community. But Louise had delayed turning this material into a full-length book, even though she had a publishing contract to do so. A lot of our conversation focused on trying to motivate Louise to finish the book. I can assure you that, at that moment, Louise did not have a clue, or even a dream, about being a bestselling author. And she certainly could not have foreseen that she would create a large publishing empire (Hay House) and influence and help millions of people around the world. And it all grew out of her original idea that certain emotions trigger certain illnesses and symptoms. For a one trick pony, Louise Hay certainly picked the right trick.

We were friends, so I wouldn’t have even thought about charging her for the coaching I did in and out of that hot tub. I earned a lot more money than any coaching fees would have produced, however, as she mentions Moneylove very favorably in You Can Heal Your Life. This led to thousands of sales for me.

Often, when you want to be focusing on an upcoming book project, no matter how multi-dimensional you are–no matter how many tricks you have up your sleeve–it is best to focus on a single strong subject or theme. For an aspiring bestselling author, multitasking can be a mental vampire, sucking the energy out of the big idea you have.

How To Write A Best Selling Book Secret #7:

Bookworm Your Way to Success

A simple truth: your success as a writer of books is affected by your reading habits.

Ask any successful author…

“If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed quickly, to trap them before they escape.”
—Ray Bradbury

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Stephen King

“I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.”
Samuel Johnson

I don’t know any good and successful writers who don’t surround themselves with books, both fiction and nonfiction.

I have long asserted that fiction is important to read, especially for those who have limited themselves to nonfiction. I have had a number of professional speakers and motivational teachers say they only read nonfiction because that’s information they need for their careers. Wrong!

Fiction is important because novelists are some of the great thinkers and philosophers about the human condition. I have learned more about life and people from novels than from any nonfiction books on the subject. There are parts of the brain that are stimulated and enriched by reading fiction that no other method seems to duplicate.

I also have never met a successful author who didn’t have a few favorite books on writing.

So, here are my seven favorites on being a better writer:

1. The Elements of Style…by Strunk and White. This is the classic on writing style that almost every writer of note has a copy of. It is an enduring masterpiece whether you are writing a nonfiction book, a novel, an article or blog post.

2. The Artist’s Way…by Julia Cameron. A book not just about writing but an instruction manual on training your mind to be more creatively productive.

3. On Writing Well—by William Zinsser –This addresses directly the problem most beginning writers have with too many words, sentences and paragraphs that are just too long. And Zinsser demonstrates how it should be done by his own crisp,clear, simple writing style.

4. The Art of Readable Writing—by Rudolf Flesch. You might as well start with this classic from 1949, though almost any of Flesch’s books on speaking and writing plainly and clearly are well worth reading. This was the very first book I read on writing, as a high school student. It may just be the single book that most influenced my writing style. Flesch was also the author of the iconic bestseller, Why Johnny Can’t Read.

5. Bird by Bird—by Anne Lamott. One of the most outrageous and down-to-earth and funny books you’ll find on the subject of writing. She is one of my very favorite writers, and unusual in that she has had bestsellers both on the fiction and nonfiction lists.

6. Zen in the Art of Writing – by Ray Bradbury. The late genius created this collection of essays on writing and creativity. A lot of the material was introduced during his annual opening night lecture at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, where we were both on the faculty. I was proud to be his friend and for him to be my generous mentor. Those of you familiar with my Moneylove philosophy will understand why I love this book. While many writers talk and write about how difficult and lonely writing is, Ray thought writing was more fun than anything else. He said, “If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer.”

7. Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writer’s Manual – by Rita Mae Brown. While still in her twenties, she wrote Rubyfruit Jungle, a novel about growing up as a lesbian in the South. Rita Mae is also one of my all-time favorite authors, and listening to her erudite lectures at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference was a delight and powerful learning experience.

You may choose your own favorite books about writing, there certainly are hundreds, perhaps thousands, to select from, and maybe a friend or teacher or writer you know has recommended one or more. For me, these seven books contain the essential information I want and need to practice my craft, though I have read and collected many others over the years.

How To Write A Best Selling Book – Bonus:

It always astonishes me how many writers don’t know what a tremendous resource the magazine, Publishers Weekly, can be. It’s the trade publication for the publishing industry and aimed at publishers, editors, bookstores, and literary agents. If you are serious about writing a bestseller, it is a must-read. Or I should say it’s a must-browse. With hundreds of pages every week, actually reading the whole thing would be overwhelming.

Publishers Weekly will help you keep up with what books are coming out, which authors just got a big advance, how social media is promoting book sales, and whether an editor you were thinking of sending your book proposal to has just left and gone to another publishing house. For me, however, the best part of PW is the review section, with nonfiction as a separate category. In those mini-reviews, you will find books you wouldn’t know about otherwise, books that aren’t to be found in your local bookstore or library. I’ve lost count of how many books I’ve ordered after first reading about them in Publishers Weekly.
It is more than worth your while to check out this little-known publication (among the public, including writers). Your local library probably has a copy, and most bookstores do. You can therefore check it out at no cost.

I cannot imagine any writer who follows all seven secrets will have any difficulty in creating at least one huge bestseller. Go forth and prove me right!

About Jerry Gillies

Jerry Gillies passed away late 2015.

Jerry was one of the first prosperity teachers of modern times – writing International Best seller: MONEYLOVE in 1978 – His reach and influence was considerable. Although Jerry is no longer here in body, he will always remain in the hearts & souls of the people whose lives he’s touched over his 75 years on this earth.

IncomeDiary is honored to feature a number of posts and an interview with Jerry.

The post 7 Secrets To Writing A Best Selling Book That Sold 2 Million Copies! appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

The Step-By-Step System for More Sales, To More Customers, More Often

When asked who impresses me most in selling and persuasion…

I don’t mention a great statesman or politician or business leader or even a top sale closer…

No, for me, the greatest salespeople are the writers of persuasive sales copy!

One such person is Ray Edwards.

Lets face it, sales often gets a bad name – but not with Ray Edwards.

He is a master at taking the sleaze out of sales.

Earlier this month I was fortunate to have some time with Ray and interview him for our new series of Podcasts.

Two things in particular stood out for me…

1. The P.A.S.T.O.R Formula (a very easy to understand way to write persuasive sales copy)
2. Plus Ray has some very wise words about SEO Copywriting – top advice for all serious bloggers (19.55 min)

=> Listen to this Podcast several times. It really is that GOOD!

Free Ebook Reveals… The $2 BILLION Sales Letter You’ve Never Heard Of…
PLUS
A Free Copywriting Course

Ray Edwards – 5 Recommended Books on Writing and Copywriting

=> How to Write Copy that Sells By Ray Edwards (Get it!)

=> The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. (fantastic book)

=> Deep Work by Cal Newport. (highly recommended)

=> Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott,

=> On Writing by Stephen King

Ray Edwards Podcast Transcript…

Barry Dunlop: First things first, Ray, and the most importantly, how did you get started as a copywriter?

Ray Edwards: It’s an interesting question to me, because I didn’t know that I was getting started.I was about eight or nine years old. I used to go to my grandparents’ house on the weekends, and they had this newspaper that they got every week.

It had the most fascinating articles in it, the most fantastic articles about how you could use certain pressure points on your body to relieve pain, and how you could absorb books in just a few minutes that other people spent weeks reading.

Only later did I discover, Barry, that these were not articles. These were long-form, direct-response copy advertisements, and they were written by Eugene Schwartz, the great copywriter from the ’50s and ’60s.

The newspaper was the “Weekly World News.” It was a tabloid, kind of fantastical, the newspaper that had stories about UFOs, the boy who eats his own head, and stuff like that.

Barry: [laughs] We had them in Ireland as well, by the way.

Ray: People love that kind of stuff. That’s why it’s at the checkout stand in the US at the grocery stores, because people buy them on impulse.Later, I got into the radio broadcasting business, and I began studying copywriting to help small business owners that we were working with — they were our clients — to help them bring dollars in the door.

Those kind of business people did not care about building their image or building a brand. What they cared about was getting the cash registers to ring so they could pay the bills every month. That was really the beginning of it for me.

Barry: Got you. I like it, actually, because if I look at my own life, quite often people ask me how I did this. I often answer, “Well, it was really an accident.”I’m sure that it isn’t really an accident, but you didn’t know you were becoming a copywriter then – but you where.

Possibly maybe the question I should have started off with then is, “How do you define copywriting? What is copywriting, and why is it so important to us entrepreneurs and small business people?”

Ray: That’s such a good question, because usually with half the people I talk to, I have to clear up the confusion about the word copywriting. Most people, many people, think that it refers to that little symbol after the title of a book, a piece of music, or a work of art that protects your intellectual property.

That’s not the kind of copywrite that we’re talking about. We’re talking about writing the words that sell products or services or ideas. That is writing copy.

It is really salesmanship or persuasion in print.

Barry: : I like that. “Salemanship or persuasion in print.”I always prided myself in being very good at face-to-face selling, and over the years, I always said to people who might congratulate me on my sales ability, that “The salespeople I really admire are the salespeople who can move you from far, far away by something they’ve written.”

Those are always the most impressive sales people to me.

In your book, “How to Write Copy that Sells,” which is a great book, you refer to the magic building blocks of sales copy. Would you mind giving a little bit of information on what are those blocks and how we use them?

Ray: Sure, I’d be happy to walk through the basics of that.What I discovered pretty early on is that there is an underlying formula to how to construct a persuasive sales message. The building blocks of a sales letter, the perfect sales letter…I’ll give you the basic outline of the sales letter. It starts…

Actually, with your permission, I’d like to back up. I think there’s a better place for us to go with this.

The building blocks are a little lengthy to describe, but there’s something I can give your listeners that I think they could start using five minutes from now to be more persuasive, not just in their sales copy, but in their emails and their conversations with people. Do you think that would useful?

Barry: That would be spot on. We’d absolutely love it. That’s what we like at IncomeSup, real actionable stuff we can take away today.

Ray: Good, because this formula that I’m about to give you, this framework, is really the foundation of the building blocks. If people want more information about the building blocks, they can refer to my book, which I think they can get on Amazon for eight bucks or something like that. Obviously, I’m going to get rich if I sell enough of those books.

[laughter]

Ray: Here’s the foundation. I call it the PASTOR framework. People look at me sometimes with the raised eyebrow when I say, “I’m going to give you the sales copy.” They’re like, “Do you want me to be a preacher? “My answer is, “No, this is about you thinking of yourself in the original meaning, context, of that word, which was to shepherd. The shepherd is in charge of caring for the flock, protecting them, feeding them, making sure they have water, keeping the predators away.”

I tell people, “If you will take that approach, if you will think of yourself as a shepherd to your customers, then you will never come across as pushy or salesy, because you’ll always be working in their best interests, to protect them.”

That’s the attitude that the word pastor is designed to invoke. The letters of the word pastor, P-A-S-T-O-R, actually stand for the outline of any persuasive messaging.

It starts like this.

The P stands for the person, the problem, and the pain.

You need to identify the person you’re writing to, the problem that your product or service is intended to solve, and you need to be able to express very clearly the pain that your person is experiencing, and you need to be able to express it in their terms, not in your terms.

What I mean by that — just a quick example — someone who is struggling to get into physical condition, into physical shape. Maybe they’re overweight, and they want to lose some pounds.

You might see their problem in the pain that they’re experiencing in terms of their cardiovascular health, the risk of diabetes, and so forth. You may see those as the big reasons they need to make this change.

They, on the other hand, don’t perceive that pain. That’s not what’s most real to them most of the time. What’s most real to them is the way they look, the way they feel about the way they look.

You need to talk about the pain the way it’s meaningful to your person. It’s a case of that old adage, that is, we sell people what they want, but we have to make sure we give them what they need.

Barry: Got you. That’s great.

Ray: The A of pastor stands for amplify, and this is where you stress the consequences of what will happen if they don’t solve the problem.

Barry, we are great creatures of denial. We are able to deny so many things.

I was a smoker for quite some time. I smoked a lot of cigarettes, about two packs a day, I was able to deny that that was really bad for me. That was creating a terrible risk for my heart. It was creating a terrible risk of cancer.

As I saw more and more people fall victim to those problems, I realized, “I need to stop this,” because the consequences of not stopping that behavior became more real to me.

That’s part of our job in the sales copy , to amplify the cost of not solving the problem.

The S in pastor stands for story and solution.

This is where you tell the story of someone who has solved that same problem using your solution, or even a solution like yours.

The T stands for transformation and testimony.

This is where you articulate the results that your product or service will bring, and you provide real, live testimonials to strengthen your case.

It’s really important to understand here that you need to talk about the transformation and not about the methodology.

The example I often like to give is if people buy the P90x weight loss and exercise fitness program, they are not buying the box of DVDs, the wall chart, and chin-up bar. That’s not what they’re buying.

What they’re buying is the six-pack abs, the muscular physique, the great-looking body that they really feel like they should have, the great-looking body that most people feel like they have, until they look in the mirror, and then they realize, “Oh, I look like that?”

They’re looking for that transformation. That’s also what you need to talk about in the offer, which is the next part of the framework.

The O is the offer.

This is where you describe exactly what you’re offering for sale. 80 percent of your offer talk, where you say, “Here’s exactly what you get,” 80 percent of what you say there is also about the transformation. This is where I see people mess this up a lot of time.

They talk about the methodology, the DVDs, the 800 pages of coursework, or the three-day seminar. That stuff, the deliverables, the vehicle that gets people to the transformation, should only be about 20 percent of your offer talk.

Finally, the R stands for response, and that just means you ask for one.

You ask for the sale.

Using those letters of the word pastor to build out the framework of your persuasive message works with any kind of messaging that you’re doing, including an interview like the one we’re doing right now.

Barry: I was almost going to say at the beginning, “Do you have a formula?” and here you give us one. I didn’t even ask you did you have a formula, and you’ve come right out with it. So many people try to make out that somehow you have to be some sort of special clever, if you like, or something like this. When you lay it out like this, it gives people like myself who, obviously, I’m fairly confident as a salesperson, but was never very confident as a copywriter. I think, “OK, well, I can follow a formula like that. That’s really quite straightforward.”

I know our audience would love that, Ray, and it’s really good.

If I may, I keep coming back to your book, How to Write Copy that Sells, but there’s something in particular that got my attention, which I think I know where it goes with this, but I wanted to get your clarification on it.

You mentioned in the book the secrets of writing blockbuster copy by watching movies. Can you elaborate? Can you go a little further into that? How in the world can I write really great copy by watching movies?

Ray: This is like the best news ever, right? You’re like this too good to be true.[laughter]

Barry: Something like that.

Ray: “I can watch “The Avengers,” and I can learn how to write copy?”

Barry: Yes.

Ray: There’s a Native American proverb that says,

“Those who tell the stories rule the world.”

I’ve written some blockbuster promotions. Some of my sales letters have brought in multimillion-dollar paydays for my clients and for me. Something that I recognized early on is that as I compared the successful pieces of copy that I had created, I began to identify the single biggest difference between copy that rocks, that really gets the job done and sells stuff like nobody’s business, is stories.

The way I came across this idea — which I’m not the first person to come across this, but I think my particular view of it is a little bit different.

I figured it out watching moves, and more specifically, watching movie trailers. You know, when you go to the theater, and they show the coming attraction previews, they have these super compelling preview reels that often more compelling than the actual movie itself?

Barry: I know I’ve gone to the movie and been disappointed. [laughs]

Ray: Yes, you walk out of the movie and say to yourself, “They put all the best stuff in the trailer.”

Barry: Sometimes. Not always, but sometimes.

Ray: Yes. I think that the secret of great movie trailers, and of great sales copy is something that I call the dominant story idea, or I call it the DSI for short. The formula — I’m into breaking things down into processes and formulae, and the formula that I see happening with the best, most successful movie trailers is they do three things without fail. There are other elements they may bring into it, but they do these three things without fail.

Number one, they give you the dominant story idea.

Number two a sample of the feelings you will get from the movie itself.

Number three, they provide proof that the movie delivers . I’ve selected a couple. In the book, I give a couple of examples. They’re older examples, and I do that because most people will recognize these films. If they don’t immediately recognize them, they were made so long ago that nobody will get mad at me for giving away the spoilers.

The first example I love to share is the movie “21,” which starred Kevin Spacey. The dominant story idea of this movie was a college math whiz professor uses his skills to beat the Vegas casinos, gets seduced by the dark side, and gets in trouble with some very, very bad guys.

The sample feelings are we see Ben Campbell and his innocent face. We see him start winning. We see him getting seduced by money, power, and very hot women, and then we see him getting into some really scary situations.

We’re already kind of tense, and thinking, “I want this guy to win, I don’t want bad things to happen to him.” The proof that the movie works is really social proof, because we see Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, and Laurence Fishburne.

These are proven actors that we love, and some very compelling scenes. They’re tightly edited, only the best parts are shown, and in the background, we’re anchored to the sound of The Doors playing “Break on Through to the Other Side.”

We get all these feelings delivered to us, proof that the movie works, and we instantly get the dominant story idea. We could walk out of the theater and say, “Well, I’ll tell you what that movie is about. It’s about this guy who learned how to beat the casinos, and then they start chasing him down.

“He’s in trouble with the mob.” It’s very easy to describe the dominant story idea. When we’re writing our copy, we need to first of all, showcase our dominant story idea, “What’s the big idea of our copy?”

Number two, give sample feelings. If we look at movie trailer examples, in your copy, you need to show some scenes that will help the reader feel the feelings they want to get from your product .

To go back to the P90x DVD product, if you watch their ads on television, their infomercials, what you see is transformation after transformation after transformation. You see people who look maybe like you do now, and then you see those people transformed into what you want to look like in the near future.

That’s not an accident. If you look at those commercials very carefully, Barry, you will see that the Beach Body people have selected an assortment of individuals who pretty much look like anybody.

Anybody in the audience who’s watching this is going to find somebody that looks sort of like them. That’s not an accident. Then proof the product works are the before and after shots.

That’s an example of how to use this framework that movie producers use to pull people in and get their attention, and get them interested in the story.

Barry: Wonderful. This is absolute gold dust, this is. Assuming that I’m a rookie copywriter, or I’m a business owner, which is most of our audience, who might be writing a sales letter or a sales copy for the first time in their life, in your experience, what’s the biggest mistake people make when they first start writing copy?

Ray: There’s absolutely one biggest mistake that wrecks and destroys most copy, and that is writing the copy for the benefit of the marketer instead of writing it for the benefit of the customer. We have such a hard time getting out of our own heads, and into the heads of the people we’re selling to. This is almost impossible to do without interacting with customers in some way.

Maybe it’s reading emails from customers. Maybe it’s reading your customer support desk tickets. The best way is to do it through talking with actual customers and listening to their language, the way they describe their problems, their situation, their life, and writing from their perspective.

One way to gauge this is to go through your copy and see how much of the time you spend focused on you, your awesomeness, your good product, your good reputation, your good track record.

These are all things that are important for people to know, but really, 80 percent of the copy should be about the problem that your customer has, how you’re going to help them solve it, and the pain that they experience.

Jay Abraham is the one who made the observation that if you can describe your customer’s problem in so much detail that you can describe it better than they can, they automatically assume you know how to fix the problem.

Barry: That’s wonderful. I get that, that’s clever.

Something that’s always fascinated me, Ray, about copy, and you will know the stats a whole lot better than me, is the difference between writing copy and also the headline.

In your experience, which comes first, the headline or the copy, or is there no right or wrong way for doing it?

Ray: Well, it’s like any art form, and copy is part science and part art. Sometimes the headline comes to me first, but usually that’s not how it works. I’d say 90 percent of the time I write the copy first, and the headline emerges. My experience is that the more time you spend in research, preparation, and writing drafts, the more discovery you do about the right language to use to express your main idea.

You need to have a big idea.

A corollary to not writing from the perspective of the consumer is not having a big idea that you can quickly sum up for people.

P90x, I don’t know that they would approve of how I’m going to describe their big idea, but I think their big idea is, “Spend 90 days working out so hard you will puke in a bucket, and you’ll look great.”

[laughter]

Ray: The unique thing about them is they were the pioneers of going the opposite direction of the whole market, which was to say, “This device, this exercise machine, this diet program is easy. It makes you burn pounds while you sleep.” The P90x people made their mark by saying, “This is really hard, but it’s worth it.”To get back to your question about which comes first, the headline or the copy, I think most of the time it’s writing the copy first, and the headline emerges, but as I said, sometimes it works the other way around.

I think every person has to find their own process, but that’s my process.

Barry: That’s very interesting, because a lot of our audience is bloggers. Generally speaking — this is not always the case — but bloggers quite often are into SEO, so quite often, they’ll write a title first, because they’ll have to include whatever term they’re going after for search engine optimization. They work backwards, which I know…It’s interesting, that your way seems much more genuine and sincere. It seems the right way. That’s why the question came up, because I wondered if there was a right or wrong.

What you’re really saying is there is no right or wrong, but you personally start with the copy, and then you go to the headline.

Ray: Yes.

Barry: Talking of the headline…Go on. Sorry, Ray.

Ray: I’m going to jump in for just a moment, because you just brought up something that I’m a little bothered by, that is this idea of SEO copywriting. I understand how important it is, but I believe that you have to focus on good writing first and SEO second. If you start by focusing on SEO, and you build your writing based on that, I think you end up with a lesser quality piece of writing.

It may not be true in every case, so I don’t want anybody to get angry with me, but I think if you start from figuring out, “What’s the message that I’m trying to deliver? What’s the change that I want to make with people?”

I have a concept I call your unique core thesis. I think for every piece of writing that you’re creating you need a unique core thesis. One way of describing it would be it’s the one idea that you want people to walk away from your presentation with. If they don’t buy anything, if they don’t remember anything else you said, this is the one thing you want them to take away.

If you can figure out what that thing is, it will shape the rest of your writing. After you do that, you can figure out the SEO part based on what you wrote. You’ll attract the people you actually are writing it for, which may be a different group than you started out thinking about.

Barry: That is brilliant, Ray. That is exactly the kind of information we need. You’ve put it better than I could have ever imagined putting it, so thank you for that. It really is good.You might well be able to get a theme here coming up, because I’ve got a bit of a fascination with headlines. [laughs] Maybe I should see a doctor about it.

Do you want to give us some ideas? Do you have any particular headlines that work really well for you, and maybe can you explain why they work so well? Why did you think they worked so well?

Ray: I said earlier this is part art and part science. The science part is learning from things that have worked in the past and being able to use those forms to guide your creation process, especially early in the game when you’re just getting started, either when you’re just getting started with copywriting in general, or maybe when you’re just starting on a project.You need to have a little bit of a kickstart. The headline is a really important piece of copy, because its job is to get people to stop and then read what comes next. That’s the job of the headline.

John Caples, who’s a legendary copywriter said:

“If you can come up with a good headline and lead” — the lead is the first part of the ad — “you’re almost sure to have a good ad. But even the greatest copywriter cannot save an ad without a good headline.”

I think the qualities that you are looking for in a good headline, there are five of them.

Number one, it grabs attention. It needs to make people stop and think. Here’s a couple of classic headlines that worked really well on this score, on the grabbing attention idea.

“Can you really be younger next year?” That’s a great headline for the people that it would appeal to. If you’re a 20-year-old, you’re probably not going to be interested in that, but if you’re of a certain age you might be interested in that headline.

“Which of these five mistakes do you make in English?” That’s another famous headline that was a real attention-getter and made a lot of money for the company that hired John Caples to write it.

The second quality of a headline that works is it screens and qualifies your readers. The third quality is it draws readers into the body copy. The fourth is it communicates the big idea, which we were just talking about a little bit earlier. The fifth is it establishes credibility.

You can’t always get a headline to meet all five of those criteria, but I usually try. I shoot for at least three.

You asked me, though, for some examples of headlines that work really well. I’m going to give you a couple that people can start with, and they can use them today.

The first one is the how-to headline. The key to making this particular headline work is you need to tie it to a benefit your reader cares about. You’ve seen these so often you may dismiss them, but they really work extremely well.

“How to write a blog post every day.”

That’s one of the best testing headlines that I’ve personally used myself.

“How to land more clients as a freelancer.”

You can see that those are directly tied to benefits that readers are going to care about. That’s the key to making that headline work.

I’ll give you three.

The second form of headline I would give you that would work really well is what I call the transactional headline. This is all about making a promise of a trade.

You say something like,

“Give me 30 minutes, and I’ll give you more blog traffic.”

You’re asking them for something, but you’re giving them something that is much more valuable.

“Try these five tactics for a week and be twice as productive.”

That’s a transactional headline.

Barry: Interestingly, when you’re coming with those headlines — again, maybe it’s because I’m focused on blogging — those are great, also, for SEO, actually. Those are terms that people might use or want to use when searching for the information that you’re providing. It’s actually brilliant. I have, obviously, got a big fascination with headlines. We’re going to change the subjects, just for a little bit, because I do know that you personally do a lot of, have in the past, done a lot of writing for print.

Would you say there’s a big difference between writing for a printed material rather than the Web, or is there no difference between the two? What would you say the difference was?

Ray: There is some difference, but I think there’s less than most people believe. The main difference is you can click on things on the web and go somewhere else and explore further.If you’ve been using a tablet or a touch device long enough, you’ll find yourself in a restaurant trying to tap things on the menu and realize, “Oh, that doesn’t work on a paper menu.”

That’s the biggest difference, is the clickability, and the fact that you can incorporate videos and things like that into your copy.

The actual writing of the text is not all that different, especially when you consider that I believe one of the main principles we need to remember is we need to think about, “What’s the context in which people are coming to our copy?”

If people are coming to the copy that represents your product, your company, or your service, and they’re coming to it online after having read an ad, say on Facebook, that’s much different than people coming to your copy because a friend of theirs sent them an email and said, “Hey, you’ve got to go check this site out.”

They have a whole different attitude , or they have a whole different set of desires, and so, you have to think about, “How are most people coming to my copy online?” and having to write in a way that responds to that context.

If you think about it, the same is true of something in print. If you’re sending a letter in the mail, you know certain things about what’s going to happen. They’re going to get the letter out of the mailbox, out of the post. They’re going to open it, or maybe they’re going to throw it away.

What makes them throw it away? You need to think about what the envelope looks like. It comes down — again, I know I sound like a broken record, if anybody remembers what those are, but…

Barry: I do. [laughs]

Ray: Thank you. Bless you, my friend. It comes back to understanding the life, the worldview, the context of the people you’re writing to, and delivering content to them in a way that’s relevant to them and their situation.

Barry: Got you. We’re going to go slightly off at a tangent now, just because the question’s come into my head. There’s a question which I ask a lot of entrepreneurs when I meet them, so I don’t see why I can’t ask it of a copywriter, as well. If it doesn’t stack up and doesn’t make sense, obviously, you’ll tell me so.

But if you could go get in a time machine, and you could go back in time 5 years, 10 years, 20 years — it doesn’t matter how far you go back, is there anything you personally…This is a very personal question.

Is there anything, not necessarily that you would do personally differently, but anything that you think, “We should have done this,” or maybe, “This would have been something to have done then.” Is there anything that you would like to add there?

Ray: In the context of my business, I would have started much earlier building an email list that I sent email to regularly. A lot of people will say, “The money’s in the list.” No, it’s not.

The money is in the relationship you have to the list. You can have an email subscriber base of 100,000 subscribers, but if none of them open your emails, guess how much that list is worth?

Barry: Nothing.

Ray: Exactly. Then again, you could have a list of 1,000 subscribers, and if all of them are rabidly waiting and paying attention for your next email, that is an extraordinarily valuable asset, so I wish, a lot earlier.

Barry: You seem to have done very well with the catching up, put it that way, Ray. I’ve been aware of you for quite some time. One thing I’ve been primarily aware of about is your very good reputation, because you know that we’re in a world today where bad reputations get around really fast. Your integrity and your honorability is something that most…

They’ll say, “Ray, a good guy. A good guy.” I congratulate you on that, because that’s the kind of thing that I’d like to think most people would say about me. Whether they do or not, I don’t know. I think I would like to acknowledge that, Ray, because I think it’s very important.

Also, and this is where we’re going to come back to something you and I are involved in in a moment, is product launches. People have different opinions about it.

Actually, can I just make a recommendation to everybody here? I think most of the IncomeDiary people will have heard of you now.

If you’ve not heard of Ray, I would seriously suggest you get on his list. Go to his blog. It doesn’t even matter if you get a link from IncomeDiary telling you about Ray, just make sure you’re getting email from Ray Edwards, because it’s an education. It really is.

Today I had an email from you. I want to pick this one up in particular, Ray, because I thought it was great. It relates to a product launch. It’s a launch for your product, The Copywriting Academy Online Coaching Program. Your subject line for it was, “My Clever Scam.”

It related to me, because quite often, doing what I do in business and did all my life, you quite often find somebody who tries to see the worst in you, and tries to assume that you’re a nasty person. Maybe you’re just there to take money off people, and maybe not even deliver any value.

I know that’s not the case for you, and hopefully people know that’s not the case with me. I loved your email, and how you went about it.

How do you handle, may I ask ? I’m sure you don’t get a lot of it, but you get the odd negative person. Does it ever get to you? Does it get you down? How do you handle it? Do you let it go in one ear, out the other?

Ray: Obviously, I would be lying if I said it didn’t get to me. It bothers me, because none of us likes to hear that people don’t like us for whatever reason. In this case, I think it was for no real good reason at all.My wife sometimes will say to me, “Honey, don’t burn down their newspaper stand.” What she’s referring to is there was a television show in America called “Frasier.” I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it.

Barry: Oh, indeed, yes.

Ray: There’s an episode in Frasier where — for those who don’t know, in the series he had a radio show. They were doing a focus group where they brought in all these listeners to talk about what they liked about the Frasier show, and what they didn’t.Everybody loved his show except this one guy, who just didn’t like it, and Frasier became obsessed with making that guy like him.

He started following him around and stalking him, and in the end of this comedic sketch, Frasier ends up accidentally setting fire to the guy’s newspaper stand. That’s what my wife is referring. She’s basically saying, “Let go.”

Barry: I’ll use that next time, because that’s a good explanation, actually. I’ve seen this a lot in life. You could have a hundred really happy customers, one customer who really doesn’t have anything to be unhappy about, but just is a miserable person, if you like, and you worry about them. Terrific. Thank you, Ray. That’s a great answer.

Coming back to the product launches, I think most people now are familiar with what I would call a product launch formula, if you like, of how they work. In your opinion, do these still work, or if they don’t, what needs to be done to them these days to adapt them to work in 2017? What’s your view currently?

Ray: They still work. They work better than ever, in fact, when you do them correctly. I think the problem that happens is people have seen product launches from the outside, and they think they know how to do one, and what’s involved.What they’re missing is the fact they’re looking at the tip of the iceberg, and underneath the water, there’s much more substance than there is above the water line. They don’t really see the internal workings.

Often, they’re watching a person do a product launch who copied what they’re doing from a person who copied what they were doing from another person, who copied it from another person.

None of them actually went to the source, who is Jeff Walker, who created a thing called Product Launch Formula. He’s the guy who really has the latest data, because he’s at the center of this particular form of marketing.

The short answer is, I think you need to do product launches with intelligence, with grace, and for those who don’t know, it’s simply a matter of releasing a sequence of free, useful material that people can use and benefit from, whether they ever buy anything from you or not.

For me this is modern marketing.

You need to make your marketing valuable in and of itself, whether people buy from you or not.

I have a philosophy that if people don’t get something from my marketing that they can use, that benefits them, if they walk away from it saying, “Well, that was a waste of time,” then I haven’t done my job, because I believe that marketing is something we do for people, not something we do to them.

Barry: I love that. I think that’s the point, which I emphasize to people. In fact, I’ve said it to many people, because occasionally people will say to me — I actually would get emails, because people often just reply to the list email when we send it out, and say, “What’s he selling, and how much does it cost?” I would say, “Obviously, eventually Mr. X or whoever is going to probably try to sell you something, and that’s wonderful. However, that’s not what you need to worry about right now. Right now, he’s giving you a 30 minute video. There is a price to the 30 minute video.

“It’s 30 minutes of your time to watch it. It isn’t entirely free if you look at it that way. From the point of view that you’re going to have 30 minutes, and if you get some value out of it, it’ll be worth your 30 minutes investment.”

That’s what I like about product launches. In fact, I actually tell everybody to get on as many lists as possible, certainly of all the high quality guys, because there’s so much wonderful information that they’ll give away at no cost to you, except investing your time to watch it, or listen to it.

That’s something that I have really got from you, Ray. Sometimes, I look at what — and don’t take this the wrong way — at what you’re giving away, and I think, “Is the man really thinking right? [laughs] It’s almost too much.”

Like earlier on, you’ve given us this PASTOR formula, which is an amazing formula. If nobody does anything but just implement that PASTOR formula, they’re going to make money from it. They’re going to have value from it. All they’ve done is listen to two guys talking on a Skype call across the world, and they’ve got phenomenal value out of it.

I’m really grateful for you making the time to do this for the IncomeDiary audience, Ray. It’s really kind of you.

Ray: It’s my pleasure. If I may take just a moment, I want to button up this topic a little bit, because I think it’s important to understand that everything that happens to you in your business is an opportunity, if you’ll take the time to see it that way. The email that you referred to, the opportunity arose with me being really, honestly, Barry, I was upset with this person who made these comments about me online. Then I took a moment to calm down, and think about my spiritual practices, and thinking, “Well, this is not really the right way to respond to this. What’s the opportunity in this?”

I didn’t name this person by name, and I didn’t point out anything that would make them feel belittled. They’re not reading my email, because I made sure they were unsubscribed from my list.

I titled it My Clever Scam, and then I said in the email, “Every time we open the doors for the Copy Writing Academy, this happens. It’s just like it’s a full moon. The crazies come out.”

Then I said, “We had thousands of people go through my all-new free training. 99.9 percent of the people loved it, but there’s always a few jokers who just don’t get it, or maybe they do, they just like stirring things up, like the guy who posted, “Very clever scam, teasing before selling us something.”

Then he wrote in all caps, “SCAMMER.” I wrote — and I did get a little sarcastic here — I said, “How doth cluelessness show itself? Let me count the ways.

“Number one, if you think selling something is evil, then why are you watching a video about how to sell stuff?

Number two, did you not read the thousands of messages from other people who got great value from the series?

“Number three, well, you figured out my clever scam, which is to give away free stuff that’s so good, people want to buy my paid training.”

My message was, to my subscribers, if you become successful at all, you’re going to have these people show up.

These trolls are going to show up. I made the observation, “It doesn’t matter how good you are. I bet even Mr. Rogers had trolls. Take it as a sign that you’re on the track.”

Barry: That’s very good. I always say that to people as well. If you don’t occasionally sort of — I hate to use the word — “upset” somebody, or somebody says something negative to you, you’re really not trying hard enough. You’ve nailed it there. I, obviously, like everybody, see a lot of email, but I printed this one off.

Actually, I realized I only printed off the first page of it. I’m pretty sure you had a very clever PS on it. Did you have a clever PS, something about commies, or something like that in it?

Ray: I said, “I suppose I should be flattered to have a troll or two. This will happen to you. Want to see the free training that has Tommy Troll so upset? Go grab it soon. We’ll be taking it down in a few days.”

The PS said, “Yes, I might eventually sell you something, so if you hate capitalism, bunnies, and babies, you won’t be interested in this.” I made “be interested in this” into a link.

Barry: Indeed. That was actually, to me, the best part of the email.

As I said earlier, people, get on Ray’s list. If you don’t…Listen, you can hear the guy’s as genuine as he ever could be.

Look, the man’s saying, “Look, you don’t even have to buy.” He’s going to try reasonably hard to sell you something, but he hasn’t yet worked out a way to get the credit card out of your pocket and make it work.

Ray: If I could work that out, I wouldn’t do it, because that’s not a good thing to do.

Barry: Indeed, that’s not a good thing to do.

Many, many years ago, I remember a story I was told by somebody when I was starting out. Believe it or not, my entrepreneurial career started out as an Amway distributor. I remember my upline gave me this advice.

I had somebody, a family member, that was really laughing at me, and saying I was being silly to do this AMWAY thing”

My up-line explained, “These are the people you’re going to succeed in spite of.”

I found it a way to great way to turn it around. It was in spite of that person writing that really nasty email, or that person saying that nasty comment on Facebook. “You’re going to succeed anyway.”

They’re always going to live the life that they’re going to live, but the life they’re living isn’t going to impact on your life. Whatever they say, you’ve always got the opportunity to turn it around, and make it into something positive.

Ray: I love that. There’s a book I would recommend that talks about this, not just about emails or online trolls, but it’s about any obstacle that you run into in your life. The book is called “The Obstacle is the Way.” It’s by Ryan Holiday. It’s a fantastic book.

Barry: We will put a link to that in the show notes. That’s really, really good. In fact, actually, you raced ahead again there, Ray. I was going to ask you, apart from your own fantastic books, and I know you’ve got a number, is there a particular business book that you would say right now, “This is a book I’ve read recently. I really like it,” or even one maybe 20 years ago. Would you want to recommend a book?

Ray: I’m going to give you the one that is having the most impact on my life and my business right now. I’ve read this book three times, and I’m getting ready to do a fourth read through. It’s called “Deep Work,” and it’s by Cal Newport. The subtitle is “Rules For Focused Success in a Distracted World.”

Barry: Wow. Is it a big book, a small book? Is it a scientific book, or is it more of a…?

Ray: It’s not a boring academic book, but it is not small. It’s about 250 pages or so.

Barry: I think most of us can cope with that, just about.

Ray: In the notes to his book, he says, “One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you’ll achieve extraordinary results. Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.“Now, first of all, that’s great copy. Secondly, I think this is an important book for us, just as people, because the world is full of so many distractions these days, I think it would be easy for most of us to miss our real calling in life.

Your calling, it may be to be an Amway distributor. Whatever it is, if you get distracted by too many video games, too much Candy Crush, too much Facebook, whatever the case may be, you may miss what you’re really put here to do.

This book is really powerful. It’s had a big impact on my business. Many of my colleagues and friends whose names most people would know who are listening to this, they’re all loving this book. It’s something we’re all sharing with one another. I would really recommend this book.

Barry: Thank you. I’ll be on Amazon as soon as this call’s over and ordering it. I look forward to reading it. I really appreciate the recommendation. Ray, just a summary, actually, I was going to ask you. You’ve given us so much, I’m thinking, “How do I describe this particular interview? [laughs]

Some closing thoughts, if you like. Thinking again, our audience, a lot of bloggers, a lot of small business people, a lot of people who, or want to be, I would actually say they’re wannabe copy writers. What’s your pieces of advice you would possibly give us, if you like, as your parting thoughts?

Ray: I’ll give you a couple of things. For those who want to write, or want to be copy writers, Stephen King in his book, “On Writing,” which is another book I highly recommend — even though it’s about writing fiction, it’s still a wonderful instructional guide for how to write anything really successfully. He says, ” to write good stuff, you have to write a lot of bad stuff,” and that the one thing writers who become good have in common is they write a lot, so I would encourage you to write a lot.

The second piece of advice I would give you comes from Anne Lamott, who wrote a book called “Bird by Bird,” another strong recommendation for reading. This is kind of colorful language, so I have to clean this up a little bit. She says,

“Give yourself permission to write crappy first drafts.”

When you do that, when you tell yourself, “OK, this is my first draft, and it’s going to be horrible, and I’m OK with that.” It relieves so much pressure that you can pour out the creativity that’s inside of you, knowing, “I’m going to edit this later. I’m not going to edit it right now.”

Then the final thought that I would offer is something that is a powerful, formative belief that I picked up from a legend in the field of motivational speaking. He’s really the guy who invented, I believe, motivational speaking, Earl Nightingale.

Earl Nightingale said something that I heard him say when I was probably 19 years old, and it’s had a huge influence on the rest of my life. He said, “The best definition of success I have ever encountered is this.

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”

If you think about that sentence, it means that you can become successful today if you made a little progress toward a worthy ideal today.

=> Check out Rays website

The post Ray Edwards Copywriter – How to Write Copy That Sells appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

I started my entrepreneurial career in the Summer of 1982, selling door to door.

Some would call it ‘hard selling’.

But, the master sales closers I met, made it look easy.

Prospects fell in love with them.

They never had to close anyone hard.

Truth be known, I wanted to be like them.

I learned a lot from these sales mentors.

Strategies and techniques that have made me a lot of money.

You see, being a commission only sales person is not that different from being an Internet Marketer.

They both get paid by results!

To succeed in sales…

You have to convince your prospect you care…

Selling is not a battle with a winner and a loser, it is an encounter with either two winners or two losers.

This is an essential clarification.

One that is often missed by people who do not understand the true ethos of selling and persuasion.

The most successful salespeople really care about their customers and this comes across in everything they say and do.

Selling is not about tricking anyone, it is about helping people own products that make their life better.

Persuasion is not manipulation…

Persuasion is not manipulation – manipulation is coercion through force to get someone to do something that is not in their best interest.

Persuasion on the other hand is the art of getting people to make decisions that are in their best interest.

This clarification is essential because without it you will become nothing more than a Conman or woman!

Finally, in this introduction, I should also tell you about the salespeople I admire most…

They are called COPYWRITERS or as Ray Edwards calls them: Cash Flow Engineers!

To succeed in face to face selling is great but my ultimate admiration goes to those Master Sales Closers who master the art of selling from a web page, email or in PRINT!

15 Things The Best Sales Closers Taught Me About Selling Online

#1 Prospects rarely buy the first time you ask.

One of my early sales mentors explained that all the best relationships start with a No. (His wife had refused to marry him a number of times before eventually saying yes)

And so it is with selling, you will hear No more often than Yes.

How does this apply to making money online?

Consider an email sequence for a typical product launch…

a) a launch email… telling you about the product. Explaining how it solves a particular problem or pain. Normally, there will be scarcity, limited numbers of memberships etc available. This will be your first opportunity to buy.

b) a followup email telling you of a success story related to using the product and a reminder of everything that is included. Another opportunity to buy.

c) an FAQ type email, listing questions people are asking followed by answers. Another opportunity to buy.

That’s only three emails, most product launches consist of 5 – 6 emails.

And most of the sales come in the last few hours of a promo!

It is human nature to procrastinate.

It was that way for me as a rookie salesman back in 1982 and it is still the same today.

In a recent affiliate promotion, I was party to, 12.5 % of the sales came with the first email, a further 25% on the second email and a whopping 62.5% of sales on the 3rd email.

Imagine how things would be if the affiliate had only sent one email? And imagine what may have happened if the affiliate had emailed 4 times or even 5.

I do not advocate pressure selling.

However, if you believe your subscriber or prospect will benefit from your product and it is in their best interest to own it, you should take the time to explain your offering in detail and why it is in their best interest to own.

In any case, if your subscriber does not like your offering or is put off my your emails, they can unsubscribe.

The best internet marketers actively encourage subscribers to unsubscribe if they are not a buyer.

If your products help people save money, make money, lose weight, live longer or enhance their life in any way, customers will thank you for helping them to buy!

The best sales closer believes they are doing a disservice if they do not close the sale and the prospect has to buy elsewhere.

The top sales closers are almost evangelical in their belief in their product.

#2 Top Sales Closers, use Questions to Sell

I remember it like it was yesterday, the first time a sales mentor told me selling is asking, not telling.

He was quite clear – telling was a waste of time!

Asking was where the money is!

As soon as I started applying it my sales skyrocketed!

Example Questions:

What concerns do you have? [What is the pain? Why are you looking for a new car today? a new home? ]

What’s the most important priority to you with this purchase? [The No 1 thing they want to fix/solve]

What prompted you to look into this?

If you are selling offline and responding to an Internet inquiry ask:

How did you find our website?

9 times out of 10 the answer will be via GOOGLE.

You then ask, what search term did you use to find us?

The answers you get, allows you to adapt your sales presentation to the prospect rather than reciting some ‘canned sales pitch’

Above all, asking questions removes pressure in face to face selling.

How does this apply to selling online?

Clever copywriters ask questions in sales copy. However, there is one important distinction…

Only ever ask questions that prompt your prospect to give the answer you want.

In sales copy, the answer should never be ‘I don’t know’.

Here is one particular style of questioning you will often come across…

It is the open-ended question: “Who else wants __________________?”

This type of question works because it implies lots of people are already getting X result.

e.g.

“Who else wants to learn these secret copy-writing strategies?”

“Who else wants to learn a second language in 30 days?”

Questions need not be exclusively about making sales.

Many Internet Marketers use surveys to research buyers motivations prior to creating a product.

Tools that allow you to do this include Survey Monkey – but there are others.

#3 Top Sales Closers Know Facts Tell but Stories Sell

The best salespeople LOVE to tell stories … and they are great at telling them.

People remember well-told stories and in a competitive sales situation, the best storyteller wins!

Telling stories sets you apart from your competition and make you stand out.

Better still combine that story with the benefits of your product and you will create a memorable and positive association with your product in the customers head.

All the most successful companies have a great story (or two)

A great place to start is with a Founders story…

How the founder came to create the product.

Richard Branson is a great example of this.

Stories create curiosity.

Stories allow your prospect to experience ownership of your product or service in the present moment.

Stories give you license to say things to your prospects that might otherwise be risky or too personal that in turn trigger powerful emotions that motivate your prospect to buy.

and above all…

Stories allow you to make a personal connection with your potential buyers.

How does this apply to Internet Marketing?

Every great Internet Marketer has their own unique Founders Story.

What is yours?

Why did you create your product? What is the pain are you are fixing?

Tell your story!

#4 The Best Sales Closers are Great Listeners

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” – Epictetus

If you stop and really listen the prospect will tell you why they should own your product. Especially so if you guide them with the right kind of questions. Importantly, the less you talk and the more you listen, the less pressurized the sales environment will be.

#5 A confused mind says NO!

The top sales closer is clear and concise in their communication.

The best sales closer talks low and slow.

They are not the fast-talking salesperson that popular culture would suggest.

Talking calmly and slowly makes it easier for your prospect to listen and believe you.

If you talk too fast and in a high pitched voice, you will come across as pushy and not trustworthy.

The top sales closer takes the time to explain everything in detail and clearly before asking for the order.

They use questions to discover what the prospect already knows and tailor their presentation to the prospects particular need.

If they use an acronym the top sales closer makes sure to explain what it stands for.

Above all, the top sales closer knows their product back to front and enjoy talking about it.

They know their subject so well that they could explain it to a child.

If you can explain yourself effectively to someone who has no background on the subject, then you will certainly be able to make a persuasive case with someone who does have some background.

How does this apply to Internet Marketing?

When you send out an email or write a blog post it is important to not assume anything.

Every email or sales page should explain why your subscriber should read it.

What did you promise them in the subject line? Are you delivering?

Tell them something cool. (Stories are good)

Above all:

o Explain the value of your offer
o Remind the reader what they’ll get out of taking action (remove the pain)
o Use bullet points to highlight the important parts of your offer.
o Make your content easy to scan

#6 The best sales closers know their stats!

The best sales closers know their stats!

At least weekly and often daily they will be comparing their closing rates and commissions earned.

As a 21-year-old Rookie, my first sales manager introduced me to CAPS.

Contacts | Appointments | Presentations | Sales

I knew that for approx every 20 cold calls (doors knocked) I would get one person to agree to an appointment.

Of those potential ‘appointments’ a certain number would fall to the wayside – typically 3 appointments would result in one presentation to a qualified prospect.

My closing rate of appointments to sales averaged out at around 2 sales for every 3 presentations, but even if it was only one sale per 3 presentations and the average commission per sales was $600, that meant I earned $3.33 per cold call.

(180 cold contacts | 9 “appointments’ | 3 Presentations | 1 sale for $600 commission)

600 / 180 = $3.33 per cold call

Not bad for a penniless 21-year-old back in 1982

How does this apply to Internet Marketing?

One of the most frequently used is EPC – earnings per click, but there are many more. Check out this link.

Knowing your EPC is particularly important if you do any pay per click advertising.

Additionally, you should know how many visitors to a web page it takes to get a subscriber and then in turn you should know what that subscriber is worth to you.

Or another measurement one blogger I know uses is ‘earnings per visitor’.

In this case, he earns 7 cents per visitor. Now when you have 400000 visitors per month that starts to add up! ($28,000 per month)

Smart marketers are more likely to focus on the lifetime value of a customer – some will even be prepared to lose money on their first transaction, but that is not something I recommend to you.

#7 Cover the objection before the customer does

Selling is about handling objections – covering of the reasons not to buy before the customer even thinks about them.

Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust. – Zig Ziglar

Average salespeople think that Objections are a bad thing which indicates that their customer is not going to buy.

But the truth is that Objections are in fact Buying Signals.

I mean, if you had no interest, you would not even bother to object!

The top sales closer sees objections as buying signals.

#8 Always remain positive – especially with nasty customers

Someone years ago said the customer is always right. I don’t 100% agree but in the main, it has been my policy to give the customer the benefit of the doubt.

Of course, customers can be scammers but my experience is that it a small percentage and it is best to “allow” for these occasional scanners as a cost of doing business.

In any case…

Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business. – Zig Ziglar

You never really know the true character of a business or an individual until something goes wrong. It is how you handle these issues that define you.

Handled correctly, the angriest customer can turn into your greatest cheerleader.

Remain polite and considerate – it pays handsome dividends in the end.

#9 Twist my arm but don’t break it

The best sales closers and copywriters use humor to sell

When faced by a customer wanting an extra discount old sales closer I knew would say:

“Twist my arm but don’t break it”

It got a smile just about every time and more often than not, the sale.

When you make people smile, they relax and often forget their objections.

Of course, there are plenty of other ways to handle price ‘objections’ – using humor is just one.

With the possible exception of the funeral business, humor sells!

Another example of humor, this time used in negotiation, is the I’ll throw in a pet frog technique.

Of course, you don’t have to throw in a pet frog, it can be any semi-ridiculous offer as long as it makes the prospect smile / relax.

If you can get a prospect to laugh, then you can get him to buy.

Humor does not have to apply exclusively to the closing process, it can be used in your marketing and lead generation as well.

For examples of how you may use it online, our friend Neil Patel article has a great article on using humor in your content marketing you should check out.

As Victor Borge said: Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

#10 Connect at a Heart Level

When you are in the company of a master sales closer it is as though you have known each other all your life.

The master sales closer knows how to build rapport and create trust.

My friend and mentor Craig Ballantyne is a master at connecting with his audience and building rapport.

To demonstrate, below is a paragraph from a recent email promoting Craigs ETR Product Launch Course.

“The ETR Product Launch Blueprint isn’t like any other course out there. You see, Craig describes his students as his family. They don’t just give you a bunch of information and then let you sink or swim. Instead, they guarantee your success.”

The best sales closers make you feel like family – you want to spend time with them and you want to buy from them.

#11 Timid salesmen have skinny kids

Timid salesmen have skinny kids is a 1978 book by Judge Ziglar.

It is also one of my favorite sales quotes!

To succeed in selling you have to be brave.

Overcoming fear of rejection is perhaps the greatest obstacle for any salesperson.

Most people will have heard of Napoleon Hill and his book Think and Grow Rich

Less well known but highly recommended is his book “How to Sell Your Way Through Life” from which the following quote is taken:

Fear is man’s worst enemy. Like a demon of hell, it sits upon one’s shoulders and whispers, “You can’t write that. It will hurt your business; it will deprive you of an income. You can’t write this or do that because of public opinion. You must not express new ideas nor advocate new ways of doing business because people will laugh at you.

The top sales closers interpret No and rejection differently — they appreciate every no is one closer to a yes

They are not afraid to pick up the phone to call a ‘cold’ prospect. They have confidence in their ability, confident that whatever the prospect responds with they can handle it.

#12 The Top Sales Closer Has A Plan

One thing that sets the average salesperson apart from the top sales closer is how they plan their day.

Plans will change and delays will happen but whatever happens, the top sales closer will make the best of it.

Above all, the top sales closer does not confuse being busy with being productive.

For example, if an appointment gets canceled or changed around, the average salesperson will have a coffee or catch up on gossip, but the top sales closer, on the other hand, would use that time to prospect or follow up with an existing customer.

Time is your most valuable asset. Don’t waste it!

Discover How To Create And Live Your Perfect Day

#13 Scarcity Sells

This is a subject that divides opinion.

Using scarcity implies ‘pressure selling’, but is it?

In my experience when people really want to do something (this applies to relationships, everything) they will use any ‘excuse’ to justify it.

The salesperson/entrepreneur just has to provide the reason.

Let me give an example…

Some friends of mine recently released a new Plugin for WordPress. (a relatively expensive plugin)

From memory, they sold this Plugin on the basis that the first 125 copies were one price, up to 250 copies was another price and thereafter up to 500 copies was another price. After 500 copies, everything was full price.

Clearly, I was not as good a friend as I thought I was, as all 125 copies of the lowest priced option had gone by the time I knew about it.

I inquired would it be possible to but at the 125 copy price? But the response was clear, all copies had gone. (I bought at the 250 price)

There was a reason why my friends offered this special pricing. They had invested a significant amount in development and wanted to recover some of that cash ASAP – hence the special initial pricing.

There has to be a reason why the prospect must take action sooner, rather than later!

Another example…

Have you ever bought a Limited Edition?

We have limited editions of coins, cars, trainers, art print, watches and just about everything you can imagine.

This is an everyday example of scarcity selling!

A wise old closer told me to think abundance – but sell scarcity.

Wise words to remember in business and in life!

Very important – once an offer expires, it has expired! If I had been able to buy at the 125 copy example above that would have been False Scarcity – and that is wrong!

More copywriting gems!

It has been my privilege to hang out with some of the best sales copywriters on the planet.

There is never a dull moment.

In their writing they always…

Inject scarcity – Find a way to deliver this…via increased price, limited time, etc. [special price today only]

Give a guarantee to remove/reverse all risk. [I have a consulting friend who charges a yearly 6 figure sum – his offer is that if he can’t demonstrate how his services will generate at least 10 times ROI on his fee at year end, then he will return the fee]

Call to action – Be specific and tell the reader what they need to do right now

Give a warning that if they don’t buy, this is what will happen [i.e. the pain will still be there]

Still struggling with the ethics of scarcity selling?

Check out: Ethical Use of Scarcity to Light a Fire Under Your Prospects

It is unwise to pay too much, but it is worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money … that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the things it was bought to do.

The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot … it cannot be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better. ~ John Ruskin

#14 Sum Tertius

Sum Tertius is Latin for I am third.

One of my all-time favorite books on selling is The Closers.

It is not a politically correct book!

But if you are serious about understanding selling face to face, it is essential reading.

It was this book that introduced me to the concept of I AM THIRD.

In “The Closers” the author tells the story of an old sales closer called Sam Johnson and his mentorship of a young rookie salesman.

Sam wore a gold ring with the inscription “sum tertius”.

Sam’s explained that Master Closers put God first in their life, the other guy second and themselves always third.

For the non-believers, I have seen some variations of I AM THIRD, such as Putting Family first, the other guy second and yourself third.

Something Important…

Putting yourself third is actually how you become No 1 in sales and business.

It is a strategy I have used throughout my business career.

#15 Be honorable.

Don’t let greed for a sales commission get in the way of success.

What does that mean to a sales closer?

Well, this may surprise you, but sometimes it includes knowing when not to sell something.

I mean, if something is not in a customer’s best interest or the solution you offer is not the best option available you should have the integrity to let the customer know that.

Trust is a hard-won thing, it is precious, not something to sacrifice for a quick profit.

As my sales career progressed I became the master sales closer that prospects fell in love with.

But with that comes responsibility – a responsibility to always do the right thing and not abuse that trust.

I have always believed first and foremost that selling is about SERVICE and this quote by Zig Ziglar, in particular, resonates with me…

How does this apply to Internet Marketing?

For starters only ever promote products you believe in and have used yourself.

When you build a large list online, you could be tempted to promote all sorts of dubious offers just for the commission.

Don’t do that.

Your reputation and integrity are more important than any quick commission.

The Master Sales Closer knows that and you should too.

Be honorable, not selfish.

Commit to making the world and society a better place.

In the end, your opinions and what you think, count for nothing.

In life, you are measured only by what you do.

“Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.” – Oprah Winfrey

Author Bio:
Barry Dunlop is a lifelong entrepreneur, Mastermind Facilitator and sales coach who launched his first Internet Business in 1998. He also invests in renewable energy technology, Domain Names and Website Flipping. You can follow / message Barry on Twitter

I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard.” – Estée Lauder

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The post What The Best Sales Closers Taught Me About Selling Online appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

The post Writing Sentences That Sell appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Do people even care about your blog posts?

You put in your heart and soul to create and publish a powerful piece but each time, it’s tantamount to shouting your words in an abyss.

One of the scariest parts of web analytics to look at is your site’s bounce rate, especially if it jumps to the moon often.

Oh, boy! Could it be that your writing just isn’t as engaging as it should?

After all, if the most successful writers like Steinbeck or Hemingway took several years to excel in their work, how on earth are you supposed to generate a moving piece of content out of thin air?

You get overwhelmed when the time comes to craft the next post because you fear the most probable response to your posts will be radio silence . . . over again.

Fortunately, you can use the following fool-proof techniques to change your blog readers from mere skimmers to addicted, loyal readers.

1. Use Powerful, Emotional Connecting Headlines

‘Thou shall write fantastic headlines’ is a commandment in the blogging world and blog readers love them!

In his copywriting book, Advertising Secrets of the Written Word, Joseph Sugarman asks what the purpose of a headline is, and while most people will say to grab attention, Sugarman says that a headline’s purpose is to get the audience to read the first sentence.

He also states that the main purpose of the first sentence is to get your audience to read the second sentence and so forth. Well, this doesn’t just apply to copywriting but to blog writing as well.

Therefore, the best way to suck out the readers’ eyes from their skulls and keep them reading to the end is to make your headlines sweet.

If people don’t find your headline interesting, they will obviously not bother about the rest of the content.

I checked on BuzzSumo to find out which posts had the most shares on popular blogs. After reading through literally hundreds of post headlines, I filtered out top 7 headline formulas that work like a charm.
For each headline formula, I checked out several examples and each of these examples:

=> Generated over 1000 shares on social media
=> Is among top 10 of the popular posts from the blog it was published
=> Demonstrates how to use the headline formula for tutorial-type of articles in any niche
=> Was posted in 2015; so these headlines are fresh from the kitchen and neither overused nor worn out.

So which article headline formulas will work for you in 2016 and beyond?

=> Classic how-to
=> Asking a burning question
=> Mistakes, errors, and goofs
=> The Guide
=> The Why
=> List posts
=> Reasons why

2. Blog Readers Love Storytelling

Since the start of mankind, we’ve been wired to respond to story telling.

The Wikipedia definition of storytelling is:

Storytelling is the conveying of events in words, sound and/or images, often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation, and instilling moral values.

It is the main reason you love watching TV or movies. The reason we narrate bedtime stories to our children. The reason you like exchanging your most recent personal adventures over that cup of coffee. And the reason you can’t wait to check out your Facebook feed for the latest updates from your friends.

We are story addicts because they are deeply tattooed on our brain cells. They are a powerful mode of communication. We use stories you live and relive moments.

Let me tell you a story about the incredible power of words.

Well, it’s the story of Scheherazade, a charming Persian girl who was to be executed the following morning in the King’s palace.

One day, the King had realized that his first wife wasn’t faithful, and so he decided to take in a new virgin each day and execute her every morning.

The King had killed 1000 such virgins by the time Scheherazade came to him.

Scheherazade had come to the King for a purpose: to marry him.

But Scheherazade was not just seriously gorgeous; she was amazingly smart, well read and bred. She had a plan to stop the King’s bloodthirsty frenzy. So what did she do?

She narrated an interesting story to the King each night, and when the story became more exciting, she could cut it short and request to finish it the following day. Thus, the King spared her life for an extra day so she could finish up the story.

The following night, Scheherazade could finish the story and start a new, more exciting story only to stop half way before dawn. This went on for the next 1001 nights when she told the King that she had no more tales for him.

She had narrated 1000 stories during this period and during the 1001 nights, the King had completely fallen in love with her that he decided to spare her life. Scheherazade became the King’s queen.

You can see the tremendous power that is infused in stories.

A study shows that a story is 22 times more unforgettable than a mere fact. Pack your ideas into a story when crafting sales pages, email newsletters, about pages, product reviews and blog posts.

So why should you use stories in your writing?

=> Stories increase credibility and clarity in the facts you write. That is the same purpose that testimonials achieve.

=> Stories make you bond with readers. This is because they involve emotions which make it hard to forget.

=> Stories are entertaining. People fancy entertainment. So share something fun, fascinating and outrageous.

=> Stories win the attention of your readers. Use them in your opening and you’ll draw their attention to the entire post.

=> Stories will inspire readers to take action. If you use a vivid story in your post that readers find interesting, they will hit the share button in no time. The same applies to a sales page where you want them to sign up for an offer or buy something.

According to Carmine Gallo your story should be emotional, Novel and above all memorable…

“A person can have the greatest idea in the world—completely different and novel—but if that person can’t convince enough other people, it doesn’t matter.”

Gregory Burns ~ Neuroscience professor at Emory University

3. Use more White Space

If you use huge blocks of 10 long sentences per paragraph, people will rarely read through. So, break your post into small paragraphs; even one-sentence paragraphs are acceptable.

When you write a short, engaging and value-packed paragraph, you’ll get more eyeballs on that paragraph and on the next one, till the end.

Create subheads to partition your content and tell your story. Also, play around with text size, fonts and bullet points.

Highlight some of the important words to ensure that your message stands out to grab the readers’ attention.

4. Use Visuals

Statistics show that visitors spend 100 percent more time on a page that has videos. Posts containing videos can attract 3 times more inbound links compared to posts with plain text.

Visual content contributes to 90 percent of all information transmitted to the human brain and the brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text.

So as you can see, use of visuals such as videos, infographics and images tend to do much better than plain text, and this currently is one of the major blogging trends.

So which visual media should you use to draw the attention of your readers?

Videos

Use videos on your site to announce new products, their features and to explain the products’ use. This is what successful companies do.

Videos are amazingly useful when it comes to revealing common problems that your customers face and how your product can solve such problems.

Whereas there are cheaper options for visual media available, a great video makes your campaign more outstanding as it reflects high quality. According to a study, using a video on a website’s landing page saw a growth in conversions by 86 percent.

You can use different types of videos to enhance your business. These include how-to videos, customer testimonials, demonstrations or animated explainer videos. Whatever you choose, ensure that the videos resonate well with your brand’s ethos and overall style.

Don’t have your own video? Well of course there is always YouTube. Here is an awesome video to go with this post…

… Notice how engaging the speaker is and also what Warren Buffett had to say…

Infographics

Use of infographics is a brilliant way to break down your complex data into a simple and digestible form. Infographics are memorable, creative and have a higher perceived value and this makes readers to not only want to see what is in them but also to share them.

To appeal to the audience, incorporate the right shapes, colors and fonts to communicate important information. Ensure that the information included in your infographics is contextually relevant and accurate.

Infographic Example – The Rule Of Three

This Infographic has been shared many times – can you imagine why?

Want to know more about the Rule Of Three and how it helps you communicate better – Check This Out

Including high-quality and contextually relevant images in your posts will make your readers more likely to read the post to the end. According to Jeff Bullas, who’s a social media expert and content marketing superstar, articles containing images attract 94 percent more views.

Attractive and high-quality images can be costly to buy and can take a long time to create. Luckily, with resources like Canva, you simply need to drag and drop images and create unique and captivating photos for your posts.

Besides, you can find an endless number of high-quality images on several photo-sharing websites including Flickr, Morguefile, Pixabay and Unsplash for free.

Memes

Use of memes is an incredibly unique way to evoke your blog readers’ positive emotions and look unique from the competition. First off, you should establish if the memes will work well with your niche and whether they’ll spark any engagement with the audience.

Does your brand resonate well with a younger audience? Then this may work for you. Most importantly, memes allow you to add in some in-jokes, and this is a fantastic way to excite your audience and create a lively community for your brand.

5. Provide freebies

Blog Readers love FREE STUFF!

By giving away amazing helpful content for free, you will improve your credibility and position yourself as an expert. It is also the No 1 way to build a substantial email list.

So gift your blog readers a checklist, training video, 7 day e-course, infographics, recipes, cheat sheets, useful tips or anything else that resonates well with your niche and audience.

Your freebies will also entice readers to go back to your site and read more content. It will also encourage the blog reader to share your website and content with friends and colleagues.

In Summary:

It is possible to ensure that your blog readers don’t just skim through your posts.

Just follow the Golden Rules of all great Blog Posts!

=> Write awesome, engaging headlines.
=> Incorporate relevant stories.
=> Format your content to make it scannable
=> Use visuals. (better still if the visual can be easily shared)
=> Give something valuable away for free.

Kevinson Libama Bio:

Kevinson is a blog writer, content marketer and content consultant. He is the founder of Your Freelance Tips.

The post Convert Your Skimming Visitors to Addicted Blog Readers appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Three times a year, in Miami, San Diego, and Nashville, Bedros Keuilian and I hold Mastermind Meetings.

Each meeting brings together forty online business owners to learn our latest secrets, hear from guest experts, and network with like-minded ambitious achievers.

It’s their chance to Play Up a Level and escape the isolation that comes with being a successful online business owner.

On the big day of the meetings, I line ‘em up, and Bedros knocks ‘em down

What I mean is that I pump up the group with mindset and motivation, and then Bedros teaches them the killer copy and sales converting tactics our members need to go and make their first sales (for our beginners) or their first 6-figure launches (for the advanced members of our group).

Bedros Keuilian, Craig Ballantyne, and the Nashville strip in the background

At the Nashville event in September, Bedros outlined the critical factors in creating a Killer Offer.

The Killer Offer Formula

=> Massive Social Proof
=> Extreme Value
=> Big Bonuses (including the “one thing” they want more than the main product)
=> Must-Have Urgency
=> Done-For-You Components
=> Complete Risk Reversal

StorySell – The Hero’s Journey formula

Bedros also taught us how to StorySell using the classic Hero’s Journey formula. It’s in every movie that you see and novel you read. “People resonate and learn from stories much better than facts and figures,”

Bedros said, “And the process, which I’ve outlined below, can be used in your email case studies, Facebook posts, used in live group or one on one selling and even built into sales copy, too.”

From Bedros:

The reader instinctively inserts himself into the story as the ‘hero’ and takes the journey in your story. Of course where it’s most powerful is that in your story the hero gets or achieves the reward… in real life the reader is left without the reward and therefore must take action on your offer in order to complete the journey and achieve the reward.

This is why story selling is so powerful… it works on a deeper, more subconscious level forcing your reader to commit to and resonate with the hero’s journey. And that dramatically increases the odds of the reader, listener, viewer taking the desired action that you want them to take. It also creates a deeper bond with you, the storyteller which is how you become the expert and authority.

SO WHAT’S THE FORMULA TO TELLING STORY’S LIKE THIS?

The Hero’s Journey…

1) the hero is called to adventure (they’ve had enough)
2) trials and failures.
3) meets his/her mentor or advisor (you)
4) growth in new skills and abilities?
5) death and rebirth (mindset transformation)
6) revelation (the big ah-ha I CAN do it moment)
7) atonement (make right with the higher power)
8) returns changed (In our business physically transformed)

Here’s an example..

I met one of our new Mastermind members, young Kenny Preslar, several years ago.

He went through some tough times but recently had a huge breakthrough.

Here’s his story and you’ll see that it follows the hero’s journey.

1) Frustrated as a young college kid – attended a 1-day seminar in 2012
2) Rejection – applied to become Craig’s business apprentice, but was rejected
3) Mentor – Learned from Craig virtually and through our email newsletters
4) Created his First Product – had minor success, but still struggled
5) Attended his 1st Mastermind Meeting with Bedros & Craig – overcame fear and doubt
6) Had his Big A-Ha moment – realized success required great copywriting
7) The Victory => His 2nd salesletter produced a best-seller
8) Radical Transformation – He now has the success and confidence he desired

Boom!

It’s that simple. Stories don’t always have to be long… they can be short and punchy so long as they follow the formula above and pull the reader into the hero’s journey.

More Copywriting Conversion Tips!

1) Create a Copywriting Swipe File

A swipe file can literally be a file folder where you print off great webcopy or where you rip out pages from magazines.

Your swipe file should contain all of the best headlines, offers, and ads you’ve read, so that you can refer to it when you are writing your own ads.

NOTE: A swipe file is NOT a “STEAL” file. You can’t plagiarize other people’s copy, BUT you can get inspiration from it.

(I keep a swipe file on my computer of the best emails and subject lines I get from email marketers.)

Go to Google and type in “100 Greatest Headlines Ever Written” and you’ll find a great resource to get you started. Two famous headlines of note include: “The Real Secret to Making People Like You” AND “Advice to wives whose husbands don’t save money — by a wife”. Can you think why they may work?

Copywriter friend Robert Phillips also suggests keeping a swipe file of metaphors. A metaphor allows you to explain complicated concepts quickly.

The example Robert gave me was from a health ad touting an antioxidant pill. In order to help readers understand the benefits of an antioxidant, the writers compared oxidation inside the body to what happens when your car rusts.

The reader will immediately think, “A-ha! I know what my car looks like when it rusts…and I don’t want that happening inside my body…so I need this pill.”

Metaphors are powerful, and you can find them in almost every piece of copy. Keep your eyes out for good ones to add to your swipe file.

2) The #1 mistake people make is not…

…asking for the sale.

Robert says he reviews a LOT of copy, and most people write a decent headline and make a great offer, but then really “wimp out” when it comes time to ask for the sale.

So make sure to keep a swipe file of the best closes, to see how the masters get their prospects to take action.

3) A good product with average copy plus a great list plus GREAT DESIGN = Success

Two things that can boost the success of “average” copy are:

a) Sending it to the right list

b) Adding Great Design – AKA “cosmetics” to the copy / message.

When you send great copy to people who aren’t interested, you won’t make many, if any sales. But if you send “okay” copy to a hungry marketplace, you’ll make a LOT of sales.

This is called having the right “message to market match”.

Of course if you have fantastic copy and a killer offer then the success you can expect will be greatly multiplied!

And it’s a very important mindset to have when building your list and creating offers for that list.

Great Design (cosmetics) can include adding photos, sub-headlines, different fonts, bolding text, plus using images like red arrows and yellow highlighting to point out the key parts of the copy that your prospects must read.

Now, beware, overdoing any particular ‘design’ feature – like too much BOLD of highlighting is not a good thing, That is why we say Great Design and you will find some great examples here.

Finally – for some more inspiration, (and adding to your Swipe File) Check out 10 10 Reasons Why You Suck at Email Marketing this helps you become a better writer and storyteller.

Conversion is key.

Talk soon,

Craig Ballantyne

Final Thought From Zig Ziglar:

“If people like you they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you”

The post How to Create a Killer Offer That Converts Like Crazy! appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

At the point of conducting this interview Ted has earned himself and his clients in excess of 7 billion dollars but it wouldn’t surprise me if by the time you see this interview, its a lot more! If you want to find out more about Ted and his products generally, you can visit his site: http://www.tednicholas.com

Free Ebook Reveals… The $2 BILLION Sales Letter You’ve Never Heard Of…
PLUS
A Free Copywriting Course

** Copywriting Secrets That Have Sold Billions – An Interview with Ted Nicholas **

Ted Nicholas Interview Transcript:

Michael Dunlop I understand you got into your first business at just 21 years of age and nearly 100 grand in debt. Your first business was a fudge shop, and I love the story of how your shop became a success. Can you share with us some of this story and what you learned from your first business?

Ted Nicholas: Oh, I’d be happy to. Well first of all, I always wanted to be in my own business, as I’m sure a lot people listening to this interview have in their hearts. The heart of an entrepreneur has to be there for a quite awhile before it actually takes root, I would think.

That was certainly the case with me. I always wanted to be in my own business. I grew up in a small family business. I learned how, among other things, to make candy, because in my father’s restaurant, he also had a candy and ice cream shop. I was always intrigued with the process of confectionery manufacturing and ice cream manufacturing. So, I started my own business.

But I had just one obstacle that most entrepreneurs have. I didn’t have any money. Basically, I had $800 in savings. In order to start the business, I needed about $100,000.00 So, I basically put together a plan to develop $100,000.00 without starting from scratch.

Basically what I did was convince a real estate owner of property that I could buy his property for no money down. And I remember my payment was $308.74 a month on a 20-year mortgage. So, I bought the property. And I bought equipment on the basis that I would like to buy this equipment from confectionery manufacturers, and if I’m successful, I’ll pay for it. If I’m not, I’ll return the used equipment. Well, you can imagine what some of the people told me when I made that proposition.

But fortunately, one company by the name of WC Smith in Philadelphia went along with me and put equipment in my place. Then with raw materials, I went through the same sort of thing. By the day that I opened, I was actually $96, 000 in debt, and I thought this is great. I have this shop. It was actually a “see candy made” sort of a fudge shop called Peterson’s House of Fudge. But I had one problem, no customers and no money for promotion to gain customers.

But I had one problem, no customers and no money for promotion to gain customers.

So, I didn’t know exactly what to do. But I was reading the paper one morning, and I saw that there was a young woman who won a national skating – it happened to be roller skating – and she was training in a rink about a mile or so away from my shop. So I went to see her.

I thought there are just a couple of things that turn people on… See, I had this roadside location where 25, 000 cars passed my property every day. The only problem was nobody was stopping, and three people had previously gone bankrupt in the location where I was. So, it wasn’t exactly a hot property.

But I wanted to figure out a way to get people stop, and I thought there are two things that turn people on: women and cars. Because, most of the drivers driving by were male drivers. A lot of times male drivers are more turned on by cars than they are by women, but I thought a certain percentage would be excited if I had an attractive woman outside my shop stirring a kettle of fudge.

So, I convinced this young woman that she’d start working for me that following Saturday. I’d build a platform. We’d put a copper kettle outside. And she would stand there in a rather brief outfit with a big chef’s cap, stirring this big kettle of fudge. And when she did that, we had an absolute traffic jam, because the people wanted to know what the heck’s going on this attractive woman stirring this fudge.

A local newspaper came out and did an article on my business. I told the newspaper reporter that I wanted to create a whole chain of stores eventually; that was my dream. The guy thought that was pretty funny, because there I was without any money, with my first shop, with this girl stirring the fudge.

But one thing lead to another, and the business became enormously successful. Several things so happened that affected the rest of my career. Because I noticed that when I changed the sign – I had some signs like 15 miles away from my shop, 14 miles away, 12 miles away, and they would say basically: “Go to Peterson’s House of Fudge”. And when I changed a few words on the sign more or less people stopped, depending on what I had on the sign.

I thought that was fascinating, and then I put certain words like “free samples” on the sign. I put on “see candy made” and certain key words like “perfect Sunday ride destination for the family.” When I put on these words on the sign, my business just started to thrive more and more and more. So, I became intrigued with the power of words. I thought gee, words. I could just put words on signs, and I’d get people to stop at my shop. What a marvelous thing.

And then a second thing happened. I created a catalog for all my candy products. I had 77 flavors of fudge plus about 100 other products that I was marketing, selling and manufacturing there. I would put this catalog inside the shopping bag when people bought whatever they bought. Or even if they bought ice cream, I’d put in this catalog. And I got a large response from the catalog. People would go home and they would start ordering my confectionery products.

Well a couple of months later, I created a new catalog. Same products, different copy, and I noticed that I had different results on each one of the products that I’d described. So I thought: Why don’t people talk about this? Because if you change the words, you’re going to change the response

Because if you change the words, you’re going to change the response.

I talked with other business people that I knew, restaurateurs and the like, and their eyes would glaze over. They didn’t seem interested at all in the idea of the power of words. I thought these people are missing the boat, because with the proper words, you can really create business.

because with the proper words, you can really create business.

So, another very instrumental thing to me at that time was I would write letters to the editor. And when I got my letters in newspapers and magazines – local papers, national papers, national magazines – when I got my letters and articles that I had written published, I thought this is just so great. If I could ever figure out a way how to make a living writing words, I’m going to do it. It would be such a pleasure for me to do, and I kind of filed that. This was at age 21.

By the time I was 30, 29 actually, I had 30 shops of my own. I was invited to the White House as one of the two outstanding small businessmen in America and invited to meet the president at that time. I’d never even been to the White House as a tourist. It was a great experience.

So, I wrote my first book in my mid-thirties called, “How to Form Your Own Corporation Without a Lawyer for Under $75.” I realized that by the time I was 35, I had set up something like 17 companies of my own. And my lawyer’s secretary was doing the work and sending me invoices for like $1, 500, $2, 000.

I thought the best-kept secret in America, and in the United Kingdom, and in Europe, is that entrepreneurs have no money and they can’t raise any money. I thought if I could make it cheaper, easier, and quicker for people to set up a company, I would be doing a real service for people.

So, I set up this little business. Well basically, I took my book then to nine publishers, they all turned me down. I said, look I have got this idea. I am going to revolutionize incorporating in America. They thought, yeah, sure you are. They all turned me down. Of course their lawyer, the legal departments in all these publishing companies, they didn’t like the idea at all, of having a book with the tear-out forms right in the book, to form a company. So I basically set up my publishing company in the corner of my house, called Enterprise Publishing.

At the same time, I set up an incorporation company called The Company Corporation, which has since become, by the way, the largest incorporating company in the world, which incorporates companies in all fifty of the U.S. states. At the time I set up the company, all the competing registered agents would only deal with other lawyers, where I would deal with entrepreneurs, lawyers, accountants, whoever wanted to use our services.

When I started that company, I wrote my first classified ad and ran it in the Wall Street Journal. It cost me ninety dollars. I ran this ad. I sent out my first sales letter in 1973 and I got back in close to five hundred dollars worth of sales.

I thought, this is fantastic. Ninety dollar ad, five hundred dollars worth of sales, I will just run that ad in every newspaper and magazine that I can in America and in Europe as well, and I will make a fortune. Besides that, the people are sending me cash with their orders.

In many cases they would send a twenty dollar bill with cash to buy the book, and I am just going to create a great business. Within six months the postman was bringing bags full of orders to my door. Remember I was still operating out of my house, in this little suburban house that I lived in at the time.

I was getting in, at that time, I was spending about fifty thousand U.S. dollars a month on ads. Mind you, I started with ninety dollars. I am now spending, six months later, fifty thousand dollars in ads, but I was getting back in two hundred thousand dollars in orders.

Well, this business just started growing and growing and growing, and pretty soon I had people sending me their books and manuscripts in order to publish their books and manuscripts. They figured, I must be the worlds largest publisher because I am running, by that time, I was running full-page ads, whereas my competitive publishers never ran an ad in their lives.

Most publishers are good at distributing books but they are very bad at marketing books. So I devoted all my energy on marketing the book, because you can easily get people to print the book, the problem is marketing the book and selling the book, as it is with virtually any product.

Your problem is not creating the product. The problem is always marketing the product. That is what I devoted my time since 1973 until now, in how to market my products and products of my hundreds – I have got hundreds of people who are my mentoring clients, on how they can market their products.

If you have got an Internet business, or for that matter, a non-Internet business, a business that does business offline, or if you have a retail shop, your problem is not opening the shop, your problem is not manufacturing the goods, you can always get people to do that.

The problem is getting people into your shop and getting people to buy your products, and that is what I became focused on, and a specialist in. That is what I have been doing ever since. That is kind of a longer answer then you were looking for, but a kind of a complete answer as to how I began in the business.

Michael Dunlop: That was an incredible answer and exactly what I wanted to hear. Anyone listening to this can apply something of what you said to their business. That was great. So right now, and in your past, you have been a successful international speaker, an author, marketing consultant, and one of the most successfully, highest paid copywriters in the world. When you started out, who was your mentor and who inspired you?

Ted Nicholas: That is a darn good question. I was looking for mentors because everybody does better when they have a mentor. When I started I didn’t know anybody. There wasn’t anybody that was teaching marketing, teaching copywriting, that I knew about and that I had any respect for. Well perhaps, there were a couple of university professors that I had gone to their seminars. To be very honest, I have nothing against university professors, I love them when they are good.

Professors when they are teaching marketing, when they have never spent a dime on their own on marketing their own products, and they are making statements that are just erroneous. I remember I went to one and he was saying, “Never have a question mark in a headline.”

I am thinking, I have made millions with headlines that have question marks, and this poor audience, is listening to this professor tell them not to have a headline with a question mark in it. So I didn’t know any mentor. The closest I came to mentors is some really great books.

Books have been my friend ever since I started my adult life, really and my marketing career, my business career. So I read books by John Caples, and by Robert Collier, and by David Ogilvy, three names. Russ Arrives, and these people inspired me so much because while the books are written perhaps forty or fifty years prior to my career start, they had more information, more knowledge, then any of the current books at that time that existed on the market. I became very intrigued.

So, my best mentors were really authors of books. In fact, every since then, I think the two best ways to learn in life, of course, I have written 15 best selling books so admittedly I have a bias that is part of my profession. But basically, I think the two best ways to learn are in reading books and traveling. I like to do a lot of both because it is a terrific way of arming yourself. So, that is as close as I came to mentors.

Michael I know you have got some incredible stats throughout your business. Do you want to share with us some of the stats on your achievements, Ted? For example, What have you spent on testing marketing and how much have you made in revenue?

Ted: Oh, well I have spent at least a hundred million dollars on tests, which is probably a conservative figure. The only way I really could learn anything, and the way that I did it, was through a lot of trial and error. This is what I tried to save my readers and entrepreneurs now. Trial and error is a very good way to learn, but it is a slow way and it is an expensive way.

What I do now with clients and with attendees at my seminars, and with readers, is try as much as I can to shortcut the process so they don’t have to spend twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five years learning, because if they did trial and error for twenty-five, or thirty, thirty-five years, they could learn as much, possibly more, then I have learned.

I thought if I could shortcut the process, it would be great. So, I have done a lot of… In fact you could say that out of, I have sold nearly seven billion dollars worth of products and services with my own ads, for my own products and also for clients. And virtually every time I run an ad, I’m also running a test. And so virtually I’m testing and testing all the time, because I’m testing my most frequent…

The thing that I do more frequently is test headlines, because headlines are responsible for arguably about 73% of the success of any ad, be it online or offline. And most copywriters and most entrepreneurs will spend most of their time on the body copy, and almost no time on a headline. And I did the reserve.

For example, if I’m running an ad campaign for a product, I’ll write 250 headlines before I choose. Your headline has to be a killer, and when it is you have a chance that people are going to read your copy. And then each word in the copy has to be very persuasive, very good. So this is the way I look at it.

Michael Can you share with us some of the most successful headlines and explain why they worked?

Ted: Oh, sure. Well, one thing that comes to mind immediately is one of my clients – his name is Bill Fisher – came to me with a failed book. And in fact the title of the book, I re-titled it, is now called, “How to Fight Cancer and Win.” Book titles, by the way, are headlines for books.

The product name – anybody listening to me today, I want you to understand that your product name is crucially important because that’s in effect like a headline for your product. And your book title is crucially important, if you happen to be an author or someone who is marketing booking and information, you’re title is very important.

So he came to me with a book called something like, “The Cancer Encyclopedia.” I read the book and I thought, “This book is fantastic.” It dealt with a cancer approach based a lot on diet, and was a Dr. Joanna Budwig who was nominated for the Nobel Prize seven times.

What a lot of copywriters don’t do, they don’t do their homework. I read the book very carefully before I decided I was going to get involved in marketing the book. I read it very carefully. And on page 117, I think it was, I found what turned out to be my headline because on that page, it’s quoted as how she found the combination of these two natural foods.

I thought, when I read that in the book, I thought, “That’s my headline, ” because then I wrote this headline down on my 3×5 card. I use 3×5 cards as I’m going through the book writing down benefits. The headline that I came up with was, “How to prevent and even cure cancer with these two natural foods.” The sub-headline said something like, “Seven time Nobel prize winning doctor shows.” Why did I have that in the sub-headline? Because I have to build credibility, because you make a statement like that in a headline…

Here’s another thing that I found out, another secret of marketing. A headline not only has to be absolutely true, it has to seem absolutely true, because if you just have a headline that is true but unbelievable, nobody will read the rest of the copy because of what I call a BS detector. All of us read copy. If it sounds false, you don’t continue reading it. And so I had that sub-headline to establish the credibility of this seven-time Nobel doctor, who would not make a statement like that without having a scientific basis for it.

That’s an example of a headline and how I came about getting the headline. Another example is, “The Ultimate Tax Shelter” and this is from my book “How to Form your Own Corporation Without a Lawyer for Under $75.” Interestingly, there’s not a word in the book about how a corporation could be a tax shelter for you, but it’s what I call a hidden benefit for a reader of the book because one of the reasons people set up corporations for themselves is to legally reduce their taxes.

That headline is so powerful, just four words, that that’s been ripped off by more people, because I’ve sent more cease and desist letters. See, when people rip off my copy, I send a cease and desist letter. And 95% of the time, they stop using the copy. And the 5% of the time they don’t, I simply sue them for taking my intellectual property and trying to make money with my own ideas.

So basically, those are just a couple of examples. I could give you hundreds more, but those are just a couple of examples. When you write a great headline, you can run it forever. You can run it forever, because the same things that motivated people the first time, 10 years later, 20 years later because the same principles apply.

The headline is crucial. When there’s so much marketing on the Internet, I’m intrigued by the fact that the headlines on the Internet are worse than the headlines offline, because it’s less expensive to operate on the Internet, so you have a lot of technical people writing headlines. The headlines are so bad. It’s atrocious. And it’s no wonder that 99.9% of websites lose money, because among other things, the headlines are so bad.

Michael Do you have a formula or specific strategy you use for creating headlines you can share with us?

Ted: Well, I do. Actually, I have 12 different approaches to creating headlines. They’re so darn important. It would be kind of difficult to go through all 12 here. But I can tell you the ones I use the most, and a couple of headline ideas that are just so powerful that are very infrequently used, that I could share with you and the audience here today.

One of the ones that I like best, whenever I can use it, is what I call the testimonial headline. If you’re really good at what you’re doing, and your product – people love it – you’re going to get a lot of letters, unsolicited about how people love your product, love using your product, benefited from your product. And very often, those letters that you get about your product are terrific fuel to create headlines with.

And so very often, when I get a letter from the mind and heart of a reader, or somebody who has bought one of my products, or for that matter who has bought one of the products of my clients that I write copy for…Very often my clients have drawers full of letters, for example, and they don’t use them because they don’t realize how powerful testimonials are.

So one of the great things is to use testimonials as the basis of your headline, because you can create a headline written in such a way that it doesn’t sound like a headline. For example, one of the letters that I got that I used: I created a multimillion dollar campaign for a company that I write copy with. Actually, I own 20% of the company. It’s a company called Green Power, headquartered in the Netherlands. It’s a nutritional company.

And one of the readers sent a letter to the founder of the company, whose name happens to be Dr. Reinhard Hittich. Here’s the letter basically. Again, I don’t have it right in front of me, but here’s the gist of it. It said, “Dr. Hittich, my father and grandfather both died of heart attacks before age 50. And I’m age 48, and I’m scared to death of dieing of a heart attack myself. Can you help me?”

Well, when I saw that letter, I thought, “That’s a letter from the heart of the reader.” Now, would an advertising agency, Michael, ever write a headline like that? What do you think?

Michael: No.

Ted: Absolutely not. But I used that basically as the headline for this multi-page sales letter, quoting this reader, which is one great way to create a headline. Just to give you and particularly your audience of subscribers and listeners and viewers one of the ways to do it.

The other thing that I use a lot of, in fact when I run out of headline ideas, I simply start with the words “how to”. How to write better copy? How to write stronger headlines? I mean, whatever the subject it is that you want to market, starting with the words “how to” is always a very, very powerful way. So, it’s one of the ways that I use to write headline.

Another tip that I’d like to give to the readers is I’ve noticed over the years that fear of loss attracts a lot more people to reading the copy than hope of reward. See when I first began, I thought hope of reward is much more positive, much more powerful. And I’m attracted by hope of reward personally.

Another tip that I’d like to give to the readers is I’ve noticed over the years that fear of loss attracts a lot more people to reading the copy than hope of reward.

I’m also attracted by and intrigued by fear of loss because I don’t want to lose, but I found I don’t want to lose money, time, assets and other things. But I’ve noticed over the years when I have written headlines with hope of reward and fear of loss, the fear of loss wants to out-pull.

For example, one headline that had sold millions of dollars worth of products, information products says, “How to avoid losing your home, your cash, your cars, the education fund for your children – how to avoid losing them in a lawsuit, how to avoid losing those assets in a lawsuit?”

And using that headline helped me sell lots of products by making yourself judgment proof. So, those are just a few quick tips on what you can do and how some of the structures I use to write headlines and some of the basis that I use to write headlines.

Michael: Ted that was an incredible share. That’s something I will even apply more to my businesses. That was great.

Ted: I’m sure you can Michael; you will get a lot of more interest in your services using those tips.

You have lots of experience in direct mail, how does this differ or even if it does differ from writing sales copy for your website?

Ted: It doesn’t differ, it’s more like than it is different, doesn’t differ very much. The only thing I do differently on the website and on emails is I give the reader the prospective chance to go to the order form earlier than I do in a sales letter, because in a sales letter when you have a letter and if someone’s opened the envelope, it’s kind of easier to guide the prospect to the end of the letter, through the copy than it is when you have the copy and the electronic version of the copy.

So in the early stage of the letter, I say something like “If you are ready to go to the order form click here.” So that it enables the impatient reader to go to the order form earlier than it does in something that’s sent through the mail. But the basic concept of the headlines, the intriguing copy, the story, the personality that you have to have in your copy, you have to have a good persona in the copy.

I just finished a critique from one of my mentoring members just a couple of hours ago and the letter sounds like – mind you, the mentoring member is paying me a small amount of money per month. We have a mentoring program that we have a special at only $47 per month. People can get my personal attention up to one time a month to critique their letters and so on.

And it creates its value probably on the Internet. And the guy writes this letter and he sounds in the letter like he is giving a college lecture and I said basically in my reply to him, my member, I said “Dear, are you ready for some tough love? Because what I gave a lot of is tough love, because I love my member, I want to help them as much as I can. And of course all the members are ready for tough love, that’s what they want from me.

So, I basically tell them about how he can create his own persona that is much different, in other words I want him to sound more like he is having a conversation at the bar over a beer or over a mixed drink if he likes than he is giving a college lecture. See a lot of people when they write copy, they say to themselves “I’m going to sit down and write copy. I have to sound like a college…”

They don’t say it is exactly, but I have to sound very learned, so they sound like college professors and people don’t like to be talked at like a college professor will often do. They want to be talked with; they want somebody who understands them, who knows what keeps them awake at night, who talks the same language, who is very informal.

So, I teach my mentees the concept of being as casual and informal using short words, using easy to understand copy. And this is what people really respond to and being a lot more emotional with their copy than they normally are. Now, as I’m sure you are aware, it takes a lot more courage to be emotional in copy than it does to be intellectual in copy.

In other words, I teach right brain copywriting which works. Left brain copy-writing gets you an “A” in English, but an “F” in marketing. I teach right brain copy which might get you a “D” in English, but an “A” in marketing. Because people are not responding to the grammar, they are responding to the emotional content of the copy. So, does that answer your question?

Michael When starting any business or website, I believe you have to have passion and lots of it if possible for the subject that your business is about and I understand the same applies for you on what you promote. Can you share with us why it’s really important?

Ted: Well, first of all, life is too short to get involved in anything that you don’t love and have passion for. They are your number one because you are going to find soon that those long hours that you – I don’t believe in workaholism, but if you are starting a business and selling products, there are going to be times when you are going to work long days and long hours.

And if you don’t have that passion for that business to fuel your energy, you are going to run out of energy and it’s going to show in your copy, in your marketing and your whole approach to the business. So, you need to have passion for the product, plus when you have passion for the product or service, you are going to be more inclined to want to study, want to learn, want to keep educating yourself about that.

For example, I do a lot of work in the nutritional area. I get up in the morning; I take 72 vitamins and minerals every morning. I lift weights three days a week. I play tournament tennis. I keep myself in shape. Why? A) Because I know that it is good for me, but B) Because I love it, I love to be in shape, I love to do all that.

So, that when I’m writing copy about nutrition and exercise, that’s where I’m starting from. I have the passion for it. I love it. And I’m willing to read these dull and boring research results about nutritional products and vitamins and minerals and how they effect on a human body because I’m curious about it.

I want to know is there anything I can do to improve my own health because you can always do a little – now they used to say when I first started 30-some years ago writing copy for the nutritional area, it used to be like 80% was genetic. Now they are talking about 15 to 20 percentage genetic, 80% is lifestyle.

So, it’s your lifestyle and what you read and what you drink. So you’ve got to have that passion. And if you don’t have it, get out. My advice to you is to just simply get out of it. I’ve given that advice to some of my mentees that tell me, “Well, look Ted, I’m thinking about going into this business or this business.” I say, “Listen, which one do you have the most interest in?”

“Oh, I’m more interested in this one.” Well, that’s the business, because there’s no one business that’s perfect for everybody. The best business for you, anybody listening to us today, is the one that you love the most, that you’re passionate about. And you’re going to do a better job, and you’re going to write better copy, and your marketing is going to be more inspired. This is the direction you want to go. Critical.

Michael: Brilliant, brilliant. Top advice for everybody out there; how people want to take this and do something they want to do and not just to make money.

Ted: Yeah, that’s right. Money is a byproduct. Money is OK, but it’s a byproduct. It comes after. I think one good formula is: find something you love and have passion for, and the money will follow, assuming you’re not in some field where there’s absolutely no market for it.

I mean, obviously, if you have a lot of passion and there’s no market for a particular product or service, you’re not going to be able to make a lot of money. But if there’s a market for it, and you have passion for it, and you become good at it and you understand it, and you can differentiate yourself from all other people that are marketing similar products, you’re going to be successful.

Michael: Brilliant, brilliant. I was actually going to say something along those lines myself, so that’s top advice.

So as you mentioned earlier in the interview, you spent nearly $100 million, even more, on advertising over the years. And, what sort of top tips for getting advertising cheaper – because obviously the cheaper the better?

Ted: Yes, well, I have a whole segment that I teach at my longer seminars, where basically you get advertising at up to 80% discount. But basically, I can just tell you particularly these days, if you’re talking in print media, print media is having a lot of problems now. It’s no secret. You read the financial papers, and magazines and newspapers are having difficulty competing with the electronic Internet media, all that’s happening on the Internet.

So you can make really good deals. So just a few quick tips. When you are looking at potentially advertising in a print media of any kind, be it a newspaper or a magazine, assume that you’re going to be able to get a good deal on the advertising in that publication. And assume that what is called the rate card, or the rates that the magazine or newspaper quotes, are simply a wish list on the part of the magazine or newspaper.

See, when the magazines or newspapers deal with big companies and their advertising agencies, they love to spend money. But entrepreneurs like you and me and the listeners today want to get as much advertising as possible for the lowest amount of money.

So all of the sudden, you have a different power, different motivation for your advertising purchase, than let’s say an advertising agency does. So you’ve got to make it clear, that when you’re talking to a magazine that you are looking for a very good test rate for your advertising.

And basically, simply by asking questions of that publication, assuming that it’s right for you, assuming that it is to your audience and to your market, assuming that it has other ads in it – because a magazine without any ads in it, you want to avoid like the plague. Because if it doesn’t have any ads in it, it means it’s not a good direct response medium. But if it has direct response ads in it, that’s a good sign.

Assume that you can get a good deal if you just simply ask questions. Simple questions to ask are, “What’s the best deal you can give me to test your publication, Mr. Advertising Owner? Because if our ad works in your publication, we’re going to run it on a regular basis and we’ll be a regular advertiser.” And of course, the larger your ad, the better deal you’ll be able to make.

Particularly, if you’re a full page advertiser, you’re going to be able to make a really good deal because the best deals come from those that buy full page space in a magazine or newspaper. Full page in a magazine, or quarter page in a newspaper.

What are your top tips for getting people to take action, and actually buy something from you?

Ted: What you’ve got to do to get people to take action, no matter what you are selling, no matter what market you are in, no matter what media you are using – people have to feel they are buying dollars for pennies. By that I mean you’ve got to make your deal so attractive that the person would rather have what you’re offering than they would to keep the money they have in their pocket. If you want a challenge, that’s it.

Because people that have never sold anything by direct marketing think it’s easy. You just write this beautiful letter, with flowery language, with a great headline, and people just reach in their pockets and send you checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars. If it were that easy, there’d be a lot more millionaires then there are. The ones that are millionaires have realized – and a lot of them are my students – you’ve got to sell dollars for pennies.

One way to do that is with great copy. You’ve got to have great headlines, great sub-headlines, great body copy, and a great offer. What I mean by a great offer is this: You’ve got to have, these days, at least three and usually five or six free bonuses that are worth more, actually worth more than the value of the total deal that you are selling. That’s what I mean selling dollars for pennies.

Let’s say you’re selling a $100 deal of any kind, whatever it is, some widget for $100. If you have free bonuses worth $149 or $198 or $197, and you’re selling for $97, the whole deal, the deal then becomes… But this is where your copy has to be strong: You’ve got to convince your prospect that you’re selling dollars for pennies.

People do not want to send you $100 and get a dollar’s worth of value. Then you are selling pennies for dollars, and if you’re selling pennies for dollars you’re going to go bankrupt. It’s only a question of time. The only way you’re going to avoid bankruptcy is sell dollars for pennies. When you are sitting down and writing copy, I’m not just sitting down and writing copy that’s powerful. How can I make a deal that’s so attractive that the person can’t help but order the deals?

Now, if people don’t know you, people have no knowledge of you, you have no reputation, you’re a complete stranger to them, there’s a bigger challenge to get somebody to part with their money. One way to do it is you sell dollars for pennies.

And then this is your offer:

“Look, I’m willing to take the risk on this offer. Not you. You don’t have to take any risk. I’ll take all the risk. I’ll send you the product, and you try it for a month.

You send me no money; I’ll send you the product. At the end of a 30 day period, if you aren’t thrilled with the product, simply send it back and you’ll owe me nothing. I didn’t charge you anything; you’ll still owe me nothing. If you love the product and wouldn’t part with it for anything, I’ll bill you $97 for that product.”

See, you’re selling dollars for pennies, and you’re just reducing the risk to nothing. This is one way to get a lot of sales from people who are complete strangers to you.

Another way that we use to do it a lot offline – and some of my clients still do it because they follow my earlier models – is, look, send us your check or money order or credit card information to buy this product. We won’t cash your check or money order or charge your credit card for a 30 day period.

You have to be thrilled and satisfied with the product. At the end of 30 days, we’ll deposit your check in the bank or we’ll charge your credit card. And if you’re not satisfied with the product, just simply send it back and you’ll owe nothing and the matter’s closed. What could be fairer than that? Is that a good deal or not, Michael? What do you think?

Michael: That’s a great deal.

Ted: Great deal. So anybody listening today, we’re in what a lot of people think are tough times. I noticed that with my clients, some are making more money than they ever have. My business is booming because people need more marketing help than they ever did in so-called tough times than they do in regular times.

But there are some businesses that are being affected these days by the economy. One way to get sales is to do these dramatic and radical things to get sales, because you have to convince the person.

Some people say to me, “But Ted, a lot of people may send back the product.” Well, if you don’t believe in the product enough to let people try it before they pay for it, improve the product. Spend your time improving the product. If your product is so weak and so flimsy and so lousy that you’re unwilling to do that, you ought to close your shop anyway. You’re in the wrong business.

The only way that you’re going to stay in business is a good established product you’re proud of. Plus, will you sleep better at night if you know your product is just second to none – fantastic. This is what I teach my people to do. The easiest thing, in a way, is improve your product.

The hardest thing is to get customers to buy the product. So spend your time mostly in getting people to buy the product, and partly in improving the product so that it’s so darn good, nobody would ever want to return it if they’re in their right mind. Now, that’s how you want to look at your business.

Michael So, you spoke at Yanik Silver’s Underground Seminar. You actually spoke at two of his events, but the first time I saw you was in London. I see you talk on videos, and you just have so much energy and presence about you. What is your secret for this? How do you keep that energy level up?

Ted: Well, that’s a good question. I’ve never been asked that exactly, but that’s a great question. I like that, Michael.

Well, basically, I love what I do, so I have passion for what I do. I’m also committed, personally, to help as many entrepreneurs to succeed in this world as I possibly can. I have a figure in my mind of two million minimum.

Now, I’m working on a plan to help young entrepreneurs that are below age 21, that I haven’t focused on. Most of my readers and clients, let’s say, are over 20, 21. I like the idea of helping teen-aged entrepreneurs, because when I was a teenager I would have liked it if a Ted Nicholas type of teacher was in my life.

I love what I do, so I have passion for what I do. I’m also committed, personally, to help as many entrepreneurs to succeed in this world as I possibly can. I have a figure in my mind of two million minimum.

So what keeps me going is my love for what I do, my interest in entrepreneurship, and my inner core belief that the secret to individual freedom – I’m a libertarian politically – that the secret to individual freedom is more people being free, more people being entrepreneurs.

They’re the hardest people to control because they think for themselves. Governments have a harder time controlling entrepreneurs. In other words, free society has more entrepreneurs than an un-free society. Even un-free societies need some entrepreneurs, but they have to black marketeers.

I like the idea of just helping people being free, being successful, being entrepreneurs, and it just turns me on. I love doing it. And don’t tell anybody, Michael, but I would even do it for free.

But I have found out when I do it for free – when I first started I did it for free because I sold out for more money than I could ever spend in 1991. But I found out when you don’t charge people for your services…

Michael: They don’t value it.

Ted: …even a small amount, they don’t value it. I was helping my friends build successful businesses and they weren’t valuing. So I thought, I’m going to have a seminar, and I’m going to charge more money than anybody charges in the US, because those people are going to value what I say at the seminar.

I had the Olympic champions of business at my first seminar in Florida. I found out that people will value when you charge them an appropriate amount. In other words, all my seminars have a money back guarantee. You come to the seminar; if you’re not thrilled with the results the first day of that seminar, we’re happy to give your money back. We don’t want you in the seminar.

If we’re not delivering value, we don’t want you in the seminar. But people tell me, in one day they get more value – it’s very flattering – than they’ve ever gotten at any other seminar than they ever have, the whole length of the seminar, the whole time of the seminar.

It turns me on. Again, this is a little longer answer then you were probably looking for or probably expected, but this is what keeps me going, keeps me excited. And I’m just excited about what I’m doing. I can’t wait for my next seminar.

Michael: Oh, I’ve heard you speak twice and it was incredible. I think the first time you spoke was for about four hours. It was only expected to be 45 minutes, and not one person left the room I think. It was like 9:00 or 10:00 at night when you finished. It was incredible. OK Ted, where you can people find out more about you and your services?

Ted: People are welcome to look at the website at http://www.tednicholas.com. And on that website, you’ll find out all about a lot of great products that can help you, some that are very inexpensive. They’re all actually inexpensive depending on what you’re really looking for, and will teach you everything from how to write great copy to create great marketing programs and create products.

Also, I have several home study courses, and as I mentioned before briefly during the interview, you could become a mentoring member. I’m going to be cutting this off very soon. But basically I have a $97 a month program that now you can still get in at $47 per month. $47 per month. You have access to me personally, where people have paid me as much as $120, 000 a year minimum, you have access to me as a member to run by your copy, get better ideas on headlines, better ideas on structure.

You get $680 some dollars… Again, I don’t have this in front of me. Over $600 worth of free bonuses if you join that mentoring program. If you’re not thrilled with it, you can cancel it at any time.

So, http://www.tednicholas.com. And we’d be happy to work with you. We’re always, again, looking to help the kind of people that really respect and appreciate the kind of information that we publish.

The post Ted Nicholas Interview – Master Copywriter Reveals His Billion Dollar Secrets, Creating Killer Copy That Sells appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

I first met Yanik in 2006 when I attended his Underground Online Seminar 2 in Washington DC. I had never before been to such a FUN, business event and I was literally blown away with the amount of information Yanik and the speakers provided. (This was also the event were I first met Ryan Lee) Even cooler for me, Yanik awarded prizes to members of the audience – such as in my case winning a prize for being the youngest attendee. When Yanik presented me with his Internet Copywriting workshop course (value something like $1497) I really did not know just what a remarkable influence on my life Yanik was about to become. Even though I was just a 17yr old “kid entrepreneur” Yanik went out of his way to inspire me and encourage me as he still does today. Thank you Yanik.

Just a few of the things revealed in this interview are Yanik’s philosophy on business, his passion for helping young entrepreneurs, plus some insights he got from hanging out with Sir Richard Branson in Necker Island and running his newest Business Maverick Business Adventures.

Yanik also introduces us to the principle of creating “Fish” or “Done For You” products – something I am starting to apply myself these days.

Enjoy the interview – I look forward to your comments

Very Best Wishes

Michael

PS: My Takeaway from this interview? Well as always with Yanik there are tons of Takeaways — but one that for me stands out a mile and which is also somewhat obvious is: Your questions dictate your Answers

So often in life and in business we ask ourselves the wrong questions – so next time you are looking for an answer – think “Am I asking the right question?”

Yanik Silver Interview

++ Click Here to Hear This Yanik Silver Podcast and Interview ++

Interview Transcript

Michael Dunlop: Hello everyone, this is Michael Dunlop from Income Diary and today I’m with Yanik Silver, who has being mentioned in dozens of our interviews and top lists and posts throughout the last seven months we’ve had the site up so it’s great to have him here today in person. Welcome Yanik.

Yanik Silver: Thanks Michael, yeah I’m excited to be here.

Michael: Okay Yanik’s being mentioned for a good reason and today we’ll get to share some great advice from him. So I’ll jump straight in with my first question which is – a lot of my readers are starting off with their online business, or blog, or website and so many of them are trying to put together their big idea – so what advice would you give them to bring it together?

Yanik: Well there’s, two parts to it. One is, I really think that, your questions dictate your answers, When I first got started online, I literally was kinda scoping out the scene and this was back in ’99 and I didn’t even have an email address back then and looking at some people that were selling information online and digitally delivering it that I’m like thought that’s an interesting thing. I could probably do that and I’d literally like ask myself the question you know, how can I create a fully automatic website that makes me money while I sleep, is an incredible value for people, and, and is not just an e-book and I’ll explain why, why that was important in a moment, and so literally at 3 o’clock in the morning one night I woke up and tapped my wife on the shoulder- I’m like “Missy, Missy, wake up, wake up, I got this great idea” and she’s like “Oh, please go back to bed” and I’m like “No, no, this is gonna be, this is gonna be really good” and I jumped out of bed and, and took action and so that was one of the key points was, was jumping out of bed and, and taking action, and that’s you know, one of the things that, that I see so many people falling down on – as I think everyone has at least one million dollar idea in, in their head and they don’t, they don’t take that, that positive action to, to get it going. That first idea was a little site called ‘Instant Sales Letters’ and that has gone on now to be my first, that was my very first million dollar product at forty bucks a clip so we sold a bunch of those.

Michael: Yeah, that’s, that’s incredible.

Yanik: Yeah, and, and actually kinda relates to, you know, what, what you mentioned before, Michael, was, you know, how, that the idea stage in, for young entrepreneurs and for those getting started, um, I’m a, I’m a big believer in having that big idea or having a, a big hook which is a unique angle, so like remember in my questions I said it can’t be an e-book, I wanted to differentiate what I was doing from other things out there in the market place at that point, so ‘Instant Sales Letters’ was a series of, of download-able templates that people could use and, you know, the technology behind this is pretty damn crude right now and I probably should update it but I haven’t, I haven’t touched it in probably five or six years, but the, the big idea of that was something that I call it a “fish product” and everyone has heard this saying – “you hand a man a fish you feed him for a day, if you teach a man to fish you feed him for life, well that’s kinda bullshit.

People want the fish handed to them you know, and you walk into a restaurant, you don’t want to go out back and go fishing for your dinner in most cases. You want it prepared really nicely by the chef and so that was what ‘Instant Sales Letters’ did and my wife even had a little bit of success kinda knocking me off with instant thank you letters, but you know, anytime you can give people a fish product I always think about okay, what, what can you do to make it push buttons simple for people – how do you give them something on a silver platter. Look at even like Matt Mullenweg and WordPress for example. I mean that, that really took off. I had the good fortune of meeting Matt Mullenweg, down in the British Virgin Islands actually along with your dad, and you know WordPress, I think what makes it so great, I mean there’s a lot of things, but part of it is that it’s so damn simple and it’s like, it’s like the fish product. It’s, it’s handing it to them on a platter for, for concept management, so there’s a lot of those out there and I’ve had good success with that and then the other really big point of the, the big idea is I always think about how can I go the opposite direction? I look at things like my underground online seminar which is a good example of that which stemmed out of me thinking about what’s in the market place right now? and this was five years ago and I’m like okay there’s a lot of internet seminars and there’s a lot of people doing it the exact same way, with pretty much the same speakers, so I thought, okay to really differentiate let’s go with really unknown speakers who are making a whole lot of money online, making millions of dollars but are doing it very quietly and most people never heard of and that was how the underground seminar was born so those are just two ways of coming up with a big idea.

Michael: That’s great advice, Yanik. I’m sure everyone could take something away from that, even myself, at the last MasterMind you had, my dad brought me along and I took away the idea of “done for you” which is sort of the same sort of principles, like, you know, give it to them done instead of teaching them how to do it.

Yanik: Yeah, some people are, are do it yourselfers and then a, a lot of us are, are kinda lazy and, and that’s not lazy in a bad way, but we’re all so busy. However if you present its as “done for you” and the give it to them on a silver platter it works much better. This stems through kinda everything that I try and do, everything from when we get our affiliates to help promote our products, for example you wanna provide your clients with all the tools that they need to do it, all the pre-done emails if possible, and banners, and so forth so they don’t have to think about it too much.

Michael: Yep, exactly and that’s probably touching on my next question- you, you mentioned that, uh, you were selling ‘Instant Sales Letters’ for just forty dollars, but like loads of my readers, um, you know, sending from twenty to a hundred dollars to sell over a million dollars worth you must of, uh, sold a lot, say what sort of, of tools or resources, or what was the idea that you used to sell so much?

Yanik: The biggest thing is partially what we covered is it had a good hook to it and so it got people excited, they could, as soon as they got the site or even heard the URL they, they kinda got what, what it was and that get the ball rolling. I really based a lot of my business on affiliate marketing, where we get other people to promote our products, drive traffic to our site, and right now we have about some forty some thousand affiliates which sounds impressing but the reality of affiliate marketing is that a tiny percentage actually produce business. It is not even like the 80/20 rule, the Pareto Principle, it’s more like a 97/3 rule or a 98/2 rule, so about two percent are, are driving ninety eight percent of your sales and traffic and, I mean, this is a total aside but I ran an affiliate program for, for one of my friends at one point and we had a hundred fifty affiliates only, and we generated about four million dollars in sales from, from those affiliates in one year, so you don’t need a ton of affiliates to do this right but, but affiliate marketing has always been one of my kinda arsenal weapons of choice because of the low risk involved, because of the fact that I only have to pay my employees once somebody that they referred has made a sale and so the very first thing that I did and it’s so simple and you can still today is, I started thinking about okay, well, where are my existing costumers already and at that point I went to AltaVista search engine which, I don’t even know if it’s still around? Obviously you would go to Google today and maybe a couple of other search engines, but just type in a couple of your keyword phrases and see who else is coming up on top, so who’s in the top ten, so I typed in ‘sales letters’ and I would see, okay, you know, one of the top ones was like a university, they’re not going to promote for me, obviously, or it would be pretty hard to get them to promote for me and then, you know, so I went through the list of top ten, top twenty sites and obviously those top ten, top twenty, had the traffic that I was looking for and so I just contacted them in a very personal way, not in a spam me sort of way, and, and just said ‘hey, you know, I created this site called Instant Sales Letters I think, the visitors coming to your site might be interested in this if you wanna come, go check it out here’s a password for it” and you know, I think I got like one or two of those people to, to respond and say “yeah, okay” and then they promoted it and then what I did was kinda of like a, a Chinese water torture where just, we just kept, uh, following up on the rest of those, those hot prospects with, with the results from, from the guys who promoted it so, I just kept them posted: “hey, you know, so and so just promoted this and they made this” and I think I got about thirty, nah, probably like forty percent of my top twenty people to sign up as affiliates pretty quickly and from there it just kinda, kinda grew where we’d advertised it a little bit, we still do some paperclip advertising, but, uh, to tell you the truth the affiliate program the affiliate network is probably the biggest thing that ever really runs it. Articles that I’ve done have helped, but the affiliate program, that is the big one.

Michael: Alright, great, great advice, Yanik. You have got more than just one product here, you got dozen of products and services and events now and you got hundreds of thousands of people following what you’re doing and contacting you, how do you sort of keep up with all of this and what advise would you give to other entrepreneurs with a lot on their plates right now?

Yanik: Ha, I don’t know, you got to figure out where your breaking point sort of is. I mean I love having multiple things on the go and for some people they like having only one thing on the go. Instant Sales Letters was my very first thing and the funny thing is, uh, that’s probably the most entrenched thing I did because I focused solely on that and built that up and had a good foundation around it and then the other things kinda came as a, as a creative byproduct of, of ‘Instant Sales Letters’ I mean, within four months I was on track to do six figures a year and that’s when people started asking me “hey how did you do this and can you teach me how to do the same thing and that’s how I started creating internet marketing related products based on what I’ve done and so that was all just this weird, you know, side by-product that, well my original goal was to sell ‘Instant Sales Letter’ for half a million dollars to like stamps.com or something like that but, but I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t do that today for, just because it’s a great engine that drives a lot of the other things that we’re doing. I try and focus in on what I’m really good at and I’ve taken a lot of different self assessment tests throughout the years and I think any kind of time that you spend leaning about yourself, learning about your strengths, learning about where you fall down, what you suck at, is all, is all really good time that’s proactive. I mean I’ve literally done everything from like a two day test at the Johnson O’Connor Human Engineering Institute, which is, I think they have locations all around the US, I don’t, they probably have some internationally too, to things like now the Discover Your Strengths, Kolbe Profiling, which is a really good test which is online which is ‘Kolbe.com’ um, created by a woman named Kathy Kolbe which is your connotative ability which is like your natural inclination of how you work and I found that, that really fascinating and, you know, for me, my number which won’t mean anything to you right now, but it’s a 24 or 10-2 but the ten is the area called quick start, which mean how quickly do I initiate a project without knowing what the hell I’m doing and, so a lot of entrepreneurs are behind that quick start and just knowing, you know, knowing a lot of these things about yourself helps you to realize what, what you’re really good at, what, what gives you passion, and for me it’s, it’s definitely the ideas, it’s the start up phase, it’s the, um, it’s coming up with the, the big hook, the big ideas, and a lot of entrepreneurs are like that and, and you gotta, you gotta sometimes partner up with someone who’s, who’s the opposite. I mean, I just hired, a VP of operations – so now I’m in charge of figuring out where we’re going and the vision and the big ideas and then he’s in charge of how are we gonna get there and I’ve found that throughout the years that I’ve done this it’s been really helpful of me bringing my strengths to the table and then having a partner in a lot of cases who has different strengths. A lot of people bring a partner in for the wrong reasons, they bring him in for comradery, or just having somebody to commiserate with. I think it’s a good time to bring people in if they compliment your strengths, so they’re, you know, whatever you’re weak at is where they’re strengths are, hopefully.

Michael: No, that’s a, spot on, I’ve recently got somebody working with myself and I did it for exactly those reasons and it’s helped my business so much it’s, it’s great. Uh, okay, okay so, um, as you mentioned you’ve got so many different things going on like, uh, you have your physical book, e-books, you run seminars, you got your physical newsletter, MasterMind trips, and so on and what is your favorite business model and why?

Yanik: You said favorite business model or business?

Michael: Ah, business model, sorry. Which one of them would you…

Yanik: You know it’s kinda weird, and I would’ve answered this probably differently two years ago and I still love this business model because I think it’s probably one of the best for people that want to break into doing something on their own and, and want to create a nice lifestyle business and that is Information Marketing. I’m such a big believer in having these high margins, low cost produced products, whether it is an e-book, or a membership site, or, or a home-study course, or even a series of seminars or events. I think creating info-products and you can do really well with them and, and its also one of the easiest most lucrative, most fulfilling business models that you can come up with because you get to impact other people. I’ve worked with students from, you know, one guy, one of my favorites is this college kid that came to me and, and he knew how to take engines out of a Honda Accord and put it into a Honda Civic because uh, because they share the same engine or something like that and he, he put it out on a CD-rom and after I worked with him for a little bit he did a hundred thousand dollars a year selling that information to other, other you know mostly kids that wanted to mod their Hondas and, uh, his mom accused him of selling drugs out of his dorm room, he had that much money, yeah so, I, I got a good laugh out of that and I enjoyed that so, you know that’s just one example of selling information and I, I think, you know, we have students who’ve done everything from potty training, to guitar lessons, to financial related things, and I, so I love that model and even if you don’t think you’re an expert at something, I’ve taught repeatedly about taking public domain information and so information that has fallen out of copyright, for whatever reason, and, and just using that. We have, we have stuff that we created, about houseplants that, that sell and about for artists how to, uh, how to draw people better so we’ve done little, little projects like that just to show people how, how easy it is. Um, or I mean, you become almost like a publisher and like what you and I are doing right now, Michael, you’re interviewing me and there’s no reason that, that if you picked out a marketplace, like let’s say I don’t know training parrots how to do tricks, or something like that, you talk to a vet, you talk to, I don’t know, an animal trainer, and you just have a couple interviews and you package them up into a little course that teaches, uh, people how to, how to train their parrots, or whatever marketplace you decide. So I love, I love information and I think, you, um, there’s so many multiple ways they could deliver it now that gets really exciting, whether it’s via.. all the way up to iPhone, to the most simplistic, which is a regular book, which so many people are familiar with and delivering via kindle, delivering via online membership site, there’s just a ton of ways of doing that. Now, so like I said that would have been my answer two years ago, and I still love that, that business model. Um, today, I, you know, I’m evolved as an entrepreneur and part of what I really, what I really lean and get attracted to is passionate, passionate projects so, not only should there be a good solid business model or margin to it, but I, I think it should be something that hopefully gets you excited, that you can have fun with, and, and that yeah, just really revs you up.

Michael: Well hit. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with that as well. Um, so, that sort of leads me to my next question, actually, you’re well known for the Internet Lifestyle, and I guess that’s sort of what you were just talking about, so what’s your favorite thing about the Internet Lifestyle?

Yanik: For me the Internet Lifestyle means: fun, freedom, financial independence funded by the internet (lot of F’s in there) maybe we could call it the, the F-bomb Internet Lifestyle My favorite thing is that internet is an amazing golden opportunity right now, a golden age where literally for a couple bucks and a semi-decent idea you can get started and see what happens and the coolest part is we can just grab our laptops. You can run our business from just about anywhere via Skype, via instant message, via gmail and that to me is the coolest part. I mean there’s got to be a balance to, to your entrepreneurship and to, to your whole life, I mean, really that’s where the fun part kicks in and I’m, you know, we could definitely talk about that for a while, but on, on ‘internetlifestyle.com’, which is, which is my blog, I have a whole running list called my ultimate big life list, and some of the things that, that I want to accomplish and, and so that, that keeps me motivated beyond any sort of monetary thing and, and just, uh, the, the freedom. That I think that’s probably the biggest driver for entrepreneurs, if you’re gonna kinda get down to what is the essence of entrepreneurship in, in a lot of cases, it was the freedom that, that drives them and you, you don’t want to get in a situation where, where you lose sight of that and your business really becomes a, a job for you, you wanna, and you have to, and it’s definitely a constant process of being vigilant because, you know, for me, I can keep taking more and more new projects and I’ll never leave my office even though my office is out of my house but still, you gotta have that, that balance and create that fun and the freedom for you and then another element that I kinda just added, like I said I’ve been evolving as an entrepreneur and I have this notion of, not just making more money, not just having more fun, but now it’s about giving, giving more back, so combining all this together I think becomes an optimal business bliss.

Michael: Alright, great. And is this the reason why you launched Maverick Business Adventures or what did inspire you to create that business?

Yanik: Yeah, partially that. It was partially around this, uh, idea, I was kinda, ah, a little burnt out on just the internet marketing thing that I was doing and it wasn’t totally fulfilling to me and I, I made a list of all the things that I would love to have in an ideal business and it was things like: adventure, unique experiences, hanging out with really smart entrepreneurs, brainstorming, um, helping the next generation of young entrepreneurs, and philanthropy, and, and giving back, and having an impact and, and so that was the impetus turn for Maverick Business Adventures. I don’t know where it’s gonna lead to, but I, but I got some, some pretty big ideas for it with, uh, not just this high, high level group of, of entrepreneurs that, that are million dollar plus businesses, but, but hopefully expanding to, to a whole, whole series of groups. I mean, my ultimate goal by 2020 is to have a million, a million young entrepreneurs ages 13-23 start their own businesses and based on mentorship, blueprints, strategies and the secrets that, that a lot of Maverick members would be sharing and creating that, that platform for, for the next generation.

Michael: Which, I mean, everything there just sounded so great to me as well. I mean, I think, for a lot of entrepreneurs it’s hard to, sort of, talk about business to normal people so Maverick Business Adventures sounds like a, a great opportunity for everyone to, sort of, connect on a better level.

Yanik: Yeah definitely, I mean at the highest level it’s everything from hanging out at Sir Richard Branson’s Island and doing all sort of cool activities, and plus raising a lot of money for his charity to like next year we’re going to South Africa. That will be a great trip and we’re going to the finals of the Soccer World Cup, and the semi-finals, and cage diving with sharks, and going on a safari and at the same time while we’re there we’re teaching at the Branson School of Entrepreneurship some kids that we’ve actually already been mentoring with, so it, it combines those three things, those elements that, that I’ve always loved all throughout my life and now I’m just, I just have, uh, kind of, uh, a, I don’t know, a holder for all of them in, in one place.

Michael: Great Yanik. I mentioned at the beginning of the interview you are probably, you are the most mentioned person on this site. You come up all the time. Why do you think you’ve come across so well on the Internet? Is it because you just provide the best value or what do you think is the best way to be seen as the best, I think I just answered that myself, but…

Yanik: Well, I definitely appreciate that, it’s very uplifting and it’s great, maybe it’s just because I have a unique name, I think, uh…

Michael: We know that’s not the case.

Yanik: Well I’ve attempted to be really conscientious about focusing on the things that I expect from myself and I mean, literally if I look up my planner right now on October 6th 1998, (Which was when I felt like I was first getting out of this really big upward trajectory) and one of the big things that, that I wrote there was “I’m rich by enriching others ten times to a hundred times what they pay me in return” and I think that’s, that’s a big element of what, what I really, really, really try and , and focus on, whether it’s a product for forty dollars like the ‘Instant Sales Letters’, I wanna make sure that someone gets at least four hundred to four thousand dollars, and I return to our MasterMind, which is twenty thousand dollars so I wanna make sure that people get a tremendous ROI and I’m, I’m always, uh, attempting to do that, always looking for ways that we can, we can add value, we can provide, you know, some unexpected bonuses. Just, just really having that intention out there, I think helps a lot.

I’m rich by enriching others ten times to a hundred times what they pay me in return

Michael: Well that’s really powerful stuff and I’m not surprised you do so well after hearing that. So we have a lot of, we have lot different aged people on this site, but in particular we have a lot of young entrepreneurs and I thought we’d just quickly mention, you’re doing a pre-day at your underground event in March 2010 – so what would you say to any young entrepreneur out there who is starting an online business right now?

Yanik: I would tell them A) congratulations because I think it’s one of the most exciting things that you could do and, and I’m really excited about the recent statistics that I’ve seen, that say that, that kids coming out of high school, it’s about seventy percent now wanna, wanna start their own business or do their own thing and, and it used to be only maybe about twenty years ago that the statistics were completely opposite where seventy percent wanted to get a job and, and work for, work, work for a big company and have that security and, and I don’t think that there’s any security in that. I think the security in your life comes from having the self assurance and, and the knowledge of knowing that you can literally start from nothing and create something incredibly valuable that, that, that you know, essentially, that the career cash on demand, money, value, pretty much whatever you want. I would tell you another couple other pieces of advice that, that I would, that I’d like to share on that is, you know, a lot of time the, there’s, there’s thinking around, well, you know, if I, I need a lot of money to, to start this business and that’s all bullshit. You don’t, you don’t need a lot of money. On every Maverick Adventures multiday trip that we go on we spend time with a group of, of young kids, uh, in, in every location and I remember this pretty vividly from this last one that we did in San Francisco and we had, I don’t know, maybe like forty kids there or something and I had a panel of the Maverick members up there and I love asking them how much, how much money did you start your business with because it’s, it’s always revealing and a lot of them are like, you know, Tim Huston, from Internet Lifestyle, he said five dollars and, you know, that, that was cool. Um, some of the guys are a couple hundred dollars. One guy, um, who trains fitness trainers, he has a multimillion dollar business now, but his very first business that he started, he started with something like, I think he told me either two hundred or three hundred thousand dollars and that was the one that failed. The one that succeeded was the one that started with a couple hundred dollars and having a so called lack of capital, I think, it forces you to you get creative, it forces you to just not throw your money at, at a problem and cause you’re always gonna have either an excess of time or an excess of money and it’s, it’s, it’s, that’s where the creativity comes from and, and coming up with unique ways to market, uh, what you’re doing and, you know use the natural kinda gift that you got, the, the media is definitely fascinated by young entrepreneurship, but use, use the media to your advantage, that’s all free. Um, I mean, everyone has grown, grown up with, with all sorts of connection points around Facebook and Twitter now and, and, you know, a bunch of other social media sites, use those your advantage to, to build, build your, your marketplace up. So, so start, you know, just start, that, that’s probably the biggest thing and just get into motion and start thinking about what’s the best use of my time and I would also, you know, I, I definitely would stress something that I did really early on was, was learn about direct response marketing and that’s, that’s what I think when you break it all down is, is what the Internet comes down to and, and so I would study like from a hundred years ago to like all the best mail order practitioners because, you know, what, what we’re really trying to do is, in some way shape or form, influence peoples’ actions whether it’s a click whether it’s get them to buy just through the computer screen and, and now we have a lot of different tools that are at our disposals from video to, to live messaging and, and SMS, all sorts of stuff, but back then a hundred years ago, you know, people had to walk down to their mailbox or, or their local mail post and, and place that order. Uh, and, and it would be hard to get them to do that. So if you can learn and study what, what psychology went into that, you can apply that, and not in a, not in a deceptive way, not in a, not in a way that’s used for evil, but in a way, a way that gets people to, uh, gets them to see that you’re product or service is a real benefit to them and, and you gotta have that, this element of, of persuasion there in a good way. One of my favorite books that I’ve read nine times on that is by a guy named Robert Ciladini called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Michael: Brilliant, top advice, Yanik. Actually, been looking into that myself, so, cool. Uh, if you could go back in a time machine, if it was possible, uh, what would you do differently?

Yanik: That is a good question. You know what, the funny thing is I’ve asked this question of a lot of people too when I interview them and I always cringe when I answer this, because it comes out the same way as so many other people’s answers, that I’ve asked this of and it is that I wouldn’t change too much because I really think we all develop at the right time – you know, what is that saying- “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear”, or something like that?

I think you have to go through certain things to, to kinda, kinda come into your own, so I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t really change too much, I mean, you know, maybe I would’ve got started with having more continuity in my business quicker. So that means some sort of ‘Of The Month’ kind of thing, whether it’s a newsletter or membership site or, you know, something that, so we know every single month in, month out, that there’s X amount of income coming in. Um, I probably would’ve got, got smarter around testing prices sooner, all the things where, you know, you realize that you’re leaving money on the table when you’re looking back at, at, at what you’ve done. You know, selling a bunch of those ‘Instant Sales Letters’, I mean, we had an up-sell originally, very quickly, but you know we never, we never added any sort of continuity to it or anything like that. Um, I don’t know, I mean, I think, definitely everything develops in the right time, so, so I don’t think I would change too much.

Michael: Yeah, cool. I mean, about ninety percent, probably, of people I interview, they sort of look at it the same way, you know, in the, they like the way, the route they’ve taken because, uh, they’ve learned from everything they’ve done wrong and if they didn’t have the opportunity to do things wrong then they probably wouldn’t have learned the lessons.

Yanik: Yeah, absolutely.

Michael: Alright, cool. I’ve got a, a few quickfire questions for you to end the interview – The first is what do you like most about the Internet?

Yanik: I love the way that you can literally come up with an idea at, at 3o’clock in the morning and depending on how fast you are, what kinda skills you got, or what kinda skills you got on your team, that within a day or, or at most a couple weeks, you can have something out there and see what happens. I mean, you get that instant feedback, that’s what, that’s what’s so exciting, you get instant feedback around, around an email that you send or, or a twitter or, or, you know, whatever, and, and that’s exciting to me.

Michael: Wicked. And what do you like least about the Internet?

Yanik: What I like least about it is that it’s too easy to get wrapped up and sidetracked in a hundred different weird, random things that, that makes you think like you’re, you’re doing something productive but you’re really not.

Michael: Twitter.

Yanik: Well, possibly, yeah. If you’re in there for a strategic reason or, uh, you know like, like the other day I connected with the CMO of Kodak on Twitter so that was a strategic thing I wanted to do and go in there and set up this interview and that happened, but if you’re just kinda socializing, unless you got a plan for what you want to achieve it’s too easy to get sucked into your screen 24/7.

Michael: Cool. And, uh, who do you look up to? Um, who’s your role model for your business?

Yanik: As trite as it sounds, Sir Richard Branson is definitely my role model. I’ve been really fortunate and had the opportunity to hang out with him a couple times now and he’s one of the few kinda role model / inventors that I’ve met that once I’ve met them I’ve been even more inspired.

Michael: That’s always good.

Yanik: Yeah, I just love the fact that he’s not afraid to put himself out there. I mean, he runs multiple businesses, there is something like three hundred Virgin companies out there, that, that’s really inspiring to me because as, as an entrepreneur, with ADD (I haven’t been diagnosed with it, but I’m sure I got it) – you know, I love that, that aspect of it. I love the way that he’s created, he’s sort of imprinted his DNA on the companies and that cheeky sort of behavior, if I can steal a British term. He totally lives his life on his terms and that to me is the big inspiring point. You know there’s a lot of very wealthy, rich entrepreneurs that just seem pretty damn boring.

Michael: Yeah, well they say life is an adventure, so go live it.

Yanik: Yeah, make it one.

Michael: Yeah, wicked. And what is the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Yanik: You know what, it’s not something that I’ve been given directly, but there are some audio and print programs by a guy named Earl Nightingale – one is called ‘Lead the Field’ and is the most popular one but, I really like ‘The Strangest Secret’. So I study a lot of his stuff, even like really random obscure stuff and one thing that, that I really took to heart from, from him was: if you wanna become an expert in any subject you have to read or study for one hour a day on that subject material for three years, and if you wanna become a world class expert you read or study for one hour a day for, for five years. In my formative kinda entrepreneurial years where I think I was about eighteen when I first got impacted by learning about stuff like direct response marketing and also because of what I learned from Earl Nightingale I said “Well, you know, what would happen if you study for two hours a day or three hours a day”? – so you know what I just really ramped up for my my success.

Michael: Cool. Alright, so thanks very much for, um, being here today, Yanik. We’re taking some great advice away from you. Is there anything, uh, any last things you’d like to tell us, any personal business plans you have, or would you like to quickly mention the underground?

Yanik: Sure, I’ll mention the underground – after all you’re gonna be facilitating the Young Mogul day, that we’re having this year as the pre-day to Underground. It takes place March 12th-14th, 2010 in DC, with the Young Mogul day on the 11th, and that’s going to be really exciting and we’ll be releasing that soon. I’m sure that they’ll hear about it from you and, um, yeah, I don’t know, I mean I have, uh, we got, we got a lot of great big plans in place for this new vision of, uh, like I, I mentioned the, the one million young entrepreneurs getting started and it’s going to be part of an association that we’re going to be calling the, uh, the ‘Maverick One Million Association’, so that’ll be at ‘maverickonemillion.org’ so look for, look for something there pretty soon.

Michael: Alright, thanks very much, Yanik.

Yanik: Thanks, Michael. Appreciate it.

Just some of Yanik’s Websites:

Underground Online Seminar

Internet Copywriting workshop

Yanik Silver

Maverick Business Adventures

Instant Sales Letters

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