Writing and publishing in the digital age

Publishing Your Own Content

October 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Publishing your own content is the way to go. I’ve recently (just a few days ago) published the second edition of my first ebook, The Bug Out Bag Book. It needed some revising and updating, so that’s what I did.

Publishing your own content is fulfilling and fast. When something you create sells, you’ll be happy about it. You’ll like the money, of course, but I think you’ll also like the feeling of being accepted by your target market. Someone thought what you published was worthy of their money, and that’s a great feeling.

Besides feeling great, you can put your work out fast. Back in the days of traditional publishing, how often did your favorite author put out a book? It was usually one per year for the fast writers. It’s not like that any more. From idea to sale can be a straight line now, quickly implemented.

Think about what you could do in a year. There’s no manufacturing time or cost, assuming you create a purely digital product. There are no distribution fees, and unlimited shelf space on the web. Without the publishing activities that were previously required (for books, DVDs, CDs, etc.), you can push out more content.

Say you’re an expert in video special effects. In the first part of the year, you write a how-to guide aimed at beginners in the visual effects space. It takes two months for you to research, write, and publish the book. While it’s on sale, you still have 10 months left in the year (pretend you started in January). So now you start working on a video training series that shows hobbyists how to create awesome special effects.

It takes you four months to create this content — plan the sessions, create the working files, and screen capture the tutorials. Then you publish the tutorial series. You’ve worked hard for six months total, so now you take a little break. While resting for a month, your book and video course continue to sell. With this positive sales feedback, you decide to write another how-to guide, but aimed at advanced visual effects workers.

With the technology we have now, we can get products out to the market fast. How much content can you produce, publish, and then market and sell over the course of a year? Can you make enough to generate a living income?

I haven’t done all of these things, but I know of people who have. I’ve watched training videos myself, and there are companies that have created libraries of courses — Lynda.com and Total Training, for example. People will pay for content. If you have an idea, create and publish it.

I’ve only written an ebook, but I’m going to test and experiment with other kinds of content publishing online. I’m about to start a premium subscription newsletter about being an indie entrepreneur. I’m also toying with the idea of producing original video content, and video tutorials. I’m a big fan of reading, writing, and digital media. So I want to take my interests and turn them into income.

I’ve done it with a niche ebook, and I’m going to experiment with other formats, too. I have the premium newsletter I just mentioned, and also another book in the works. Once I get that book knocked out, I’ll start experimenting with other forms of content publishing. And I’ll report on my experiments, too. It’s the only way we’ll learn and break free.

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Am I being real?

October 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

As I write, I ask myself, “Am I being real?” On this blog, I write about my experiences, observations, and adventures in business and writing online. The risk, as I see it, is to just repeat what everyone else is saying.

I read Brain Clark, Darren Rowse, Seth Godin, Ev Bogue, and Leo Babauta online, usually daily. They always have some great things to say, and provide awesome advice for conducting business online, marketing, and writing.

These things are all a part of what I do, and some of what I write about. What I don’t want to do is just subconsciously regurgitate what I’ve read the week before. I don’t want to write something based on pure theory, or based on some ebook I read two months ago.

So as I write, report on my experiences and (many) errors, and give advice about business, I often wonder if I’m being genuine.

I ask myself if I’m being real. Am I being true to myself, my experiences, and my ideas? Am I being honest and helpful, or parroting what others just said on their own blogs?

I worried about this “being real” when I was getting ready to rewrite my first ebook. I’m releasing it next month as a revised and expanded edition (it’s still short, but meant to be — I’ll post more details next week). It crossed my mind that I would read the manuscript I published in 2008 and be disgusted with a book full of theory and little or no practicality.

As it turns out, my writing wasn’t quite as bad as I thought it might be. Overall, I mean. The text had some issues… So as I was adding to it I made sure I was being honest, and true to my goals.

Sometimes I worry that my writing is just full of crap. If I find it is, I scrap it. The one thing I don’t want to be is fake — an Internet Marketing Theorist, for example.

Maybe being so critical of my thinking and writing will help me become better at both.

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Start a Business, not an Internet Business

October 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I think a lot of beginning entrepreneurs start out with the wrong frame if mind. They start out with the idea of an “Internet business” and that’s not the way they should look at it.

I was guilty of this myself. I saw all these people making a ton of money online, and I wanted to do the same thing. So I started learning about, and coming up with ideas for, my own Internet business. The problem was that I was focused on the Internet part instead of the business part.

It doesn’t matter where you implement your ideas, either online or at a physical location. If you don’t put the business part first, you’re not going to create a sustainable living income from the venture.

Visualize and create a business, with a defined product or service and target market. Where you do this business shouldn’t matter as much as what the business is at the core.

Once you have that part down, you can focus on your online implementation and revenue streams.

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The Gatekeepers are Busy

September 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The gatekeepers are busy looking for the key masters, so you can sneak behind them.

In the not too distant past, you didn’t get published unless you made it past the gatekeepers. Until they decided you were good enough to be profitable in a particular market, they wouldn’t invest any money getting your creative work out there for the world to see.

I’m not just talking books. Art, music, and movies, too. Until someone saw income potential for themselves in your work, you were just another hopeless amateur vying for their attention.

The gatekeepers are still at it. They still look around for the next big thing. While they’re busy doing that, you can just walk right by them and they won’t even notice.

While they are busy, you can just go around them and publish your own work. With the modern computer and some key software as your production house, and the Internet as your delivery system, you can create and distribute without waiting.

You don’t need the validation and approval of someone wanting to turn a profit to get your creations out there. Create what you want, and take it to the world.

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How to Market an Ebook Without Spending Money

August 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

You’ve written an ebook…now what? In this post, I’m going to teach you how to market your ebook without spending money. You might need to spend a little money on technical stuff, and maybe a sales letter, but marketing can be done for free.

When I wrote my first book (that I planned to sell), I had no money for advertising. I was forced to get creative and promote my work without spending money.

It turns out it’s not that hard. If you can write an ebook, you can do the basic tasks needed to market your book. But first…take care of your domain name.

Buy a Great Domain Name

A good domain name can go a long way. It should be relatively short, easy to remember and spell, and contain product-specific keywords.

Take a look at some popular websites today and note their name. Google. Facebook. Ebay. These are short and easy to remember. Some that are longer, but still easy to remember are: Internet Business Mastery, Zen Habits, and Entrepreneur’s Journey.

Those last few are each more than one word, but they are easy to remember and contain words descriptive of the site’s content. Take a look at their domain names.

They contain descriptive keywords, they aren’t too long, and they’re pretty easy to remember. This is what you should go for when picking any domain name. But you also need to keep your book’s title in mind, too.

If your book title is “Elephants are Awesome and You Can Ride Them Too,” you’ll need to get creative. That title is a bit cumbersome as a domain name. You could play with the core concept a little, like ridingawesomeelephants.com.

On the other hand, if your title is simple, coming up with a domain name will be easier. “How to Sell Men’s Shoes” is a simple book title and would make a great domain name (if available).

It’s best to make a long list of domain names. Your first idea might be good, but your 27th idea might be super fantastic. You also need a list in case your first choice is already taken by someone who hasn’t written a book as awesome as yours. Once you have your domain set up, you have to build a site to sell.

Setting Up Your Site to Sell

Everything on your site needs to lead visitors to one thing: buying your book. Anything that distracts from that result should be cut.

Ads? Gone. Links taking the prospect offsite? Lose them. An “about me” page full of information that is irrelevant to the product, your expertise, or why they should buy the book? Cut it. Unorthodox is OK, distracting from the goal is bad.

I’m not going to go into technical details here. Website construction and choosing a content management system are topics for another article. To be honest, that stuff is all secondary to creating a purposed selling environment.

If your site doesn’t sell, it doesn’t matter what tools you used to build it.

Make sure you have a clear sales message that is honest, direct, and persuasive. You might need to hire a copywriter for this if you have no experience writing sales letters, but you’ll make that money back.

Your book’s main benefit needs to be made perfectly clear to every visitor within a couple of seconds. If you haven’t communicated the main selling point of your book — the unique selling proposition — in 3 – 5 seconds, you lose. You’ll need to refine the look, the copy, and the message until it’s clear.

There’s a lot more to selling than that, but what you as a content creator need to focus on is the benefits your book provides and turn those browsers into buyers. Hire a competent copywriter to help you sell your work.

Content to Draw a Crowd

Selling your book isn’t going to happen on it’s own. You’ll need traffic on your site before you can make a sale. The key to getting traffic isn’t buying it with search ads, and it isn’t tricking Google into placing your site first (it’s not gonna happen, so don’t bother).

What you need is quality, informative content. Give value to your audience. These people who might buy your book aren’t your customers, your prospects, or some sleazy marketer’s conversion project. These people are your audience. Give to them, and they’ll buy from you.

The first and best way to do this is to create a bunch of informative content right on your site. If you’ve properly researched your subject, you should have a bunch of information that didn’t make it into the final draft of your book. Use that material to write several articles for your site.

This way, you have free informative content that sets you up as an expert in your book’s subject. People who are interested will read your free articles, and develop some trust in your knowledge level. That’s what can introduce them to you and help them decide to give you money.

When people search for things, it’s hard to predict — even with online keyword tools — what they will type. Having a bunch of articles (related to your book, of course) on your site will help bring in people that search for something that might not be in your book’s sales copy.

Getting browsers on the site is almost as good as getting them right on the sales page.

In case you’re thinking about what I said earlier…about not giving your audience distractions from the sales process…informative content isn’t a distraction. All you have to do is make it really easy for people reading an article to buy the book.

This can be done with a “home” button prominently displayed on the page. Or with a “Buy Now” ad or button in the sidebar that takes them either to the checkout page or another sales page. Make your site easy to read and your book easy to buy, and extra content won’t be a distraction.

Marketing Articles are Really Informative Freebies

There’s been a lot of talk the last few years about marketing articles. I’ve written several of them. They help drive traffic and grab readers searching for certain terms. It’s important, however, to view these articles as informative content instead of an SEO tool.

Apart from basic web SEO practices, don’t bother. Google and Bing are three steps ahead of you…and you really don’t want to fight with them anyways. They are your friends. Instead, ignore them and let them do their job.

Your job is to produce “marketing articles” that are really just free informative articles. These are just like what you put on your site — rich, original content relating to your book’s subject. The difference here is that you place them in article directories.

Here are a couple that I have used in the past:

What’s great about these sites (and others like them) is that you get a two-fold benefit. First, your article is online in a huge, search-engine crawled site. Many times I’m looking for information on a subject, Google returns Ezine Article links.

The other benefit is that many of these article directories allow publishers (bloggers, email marketers, etc.) to freely publish your article. This is beneficial to you because part of the license that lets people publish your article for free comes with a catch. They have to also publish a “resource box.” In this box, you put a link back to your site.

If you get a couple of articles published to popular sites, you can get some decent traffic from those resource links. And even if no one really popular picks up your articles, 1 referred person is better than none.

Testimonials

Testimonials are a great way to promote your book and show others that it’s a good buy. They take surprisingly little work, are free, and help promote your work.

Getting testimonials is easy. You just have to ask for them. If someone contacts you about the book (via email, contact form, whatever) and says something good, ask to use their words as a testimonial. Get permission, and then put the quote on your site.

I’ve found you can display testimonials three ways and get results. The first tactic used by many writers is to place some key testimonials right in the body of the sales letter. After you get a few, you could create a “What others are saying about this book…” section on the sales page.

Another great way to use them is in a sidebar. If your site has a sidebar filled with other information, add a couple of great testimonials there. Some people scan a sidebar to see what else the site might have to offer, so this is a good place to put a few positive words about your book.

If you get a lot of testimonials, put them all on your site. Create a separate page just for these faith-generating comments. Let your audience do some selling for you. Link to it in the sales letter (to open in a pop-up or separate tab so you don’t get them away from the main sales message), or have a menu item linking to a testimonial page.

Networking

Social networking can work both as general promotion and create an additional testimonial push. Get your work on the social networks.

I don’t mean release the whole book, but tell others about it. Create a Facebook page, link to it on Twitter, Google+ it. Whatever networks you are on need to hear about it. You can also link to all of your free content.

If you link to an article on Facebook, and then a friend shares it and says they like it, you’ve got another little testimonial. Then three of their friends like it and share it with others. This sharing and re-sharing can go on for a while, which is a good thing.

Social networking isn’t a magic pill or sure thing, but it’s worth your time. It’s another way to get the word out about your stuff, and it makes it really easy for other people to tell even more people about it, too. Use the networks.

Questions or Comments?

See…you can market your book for free. It just takes a little work on your part. What’s great is that you can apply these same principles to other products you create. If you have a membership site, online courses, how-to videos, or anything else for sale, you can use these ideas to help market your products.

Do you have any questions about any part of the process? Do you have some free technique that’s worked for you in the past that I didn’t cover here? I would love to hear about it in the comments, and I’m sure everyone else would, too.

If you liked this article, please share it on whatever social networks you frequent. Someone you know might be writing an ebook right now… Maybe they’re wondering how they can market it. Share the information. That’s why I wrote it. Thanks!

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How Clear is your Primary Marketing Message?

August 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

If you want sales, conversions, and success, you need to have a clear marketing message. Without it, your presentation will be muddled and prospects won’t bother. Without a clear message, will you even know what you are trying to promote?

Think of some sites you’ve visited in the past. Just picture one in your head. If this is a new site you found from a Google search, how fast did you determine if that site will help you in your search? Seconds. If a few seconds go by, and that site doesn’t fit what you need, it’s back to the search results.

You’ve got to capture attention right away, or people will just leave. I’ve been to many sites over the years that just plain suck. If I don’t see the point of the site fast, I don’t waste my time with it.

Make sure you communicate your intent right away. You have to grab the viewer’s attention. I’m not talking about some flashing image of a naked chick. I’m talking about presenting, in just a few seconds, a clear message to the world.

What is your primary marketing message, and how clear is it?

In one short sentence — a statement, really — tell the world what you are offering them. If you can’t do that, get to work and fix it.

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Don’t Join the Discussion…Make a Statement

August 4, 2011 By

A lot of bloggers talk about joining the discussion with your audience, but is that really right for you? Does spending time with the comments on your blog align with your goals?

Whenever I hear about joining the discussion online, or interacting with your community, I wonder if it’s really the right thing to do. It seems to be the common response among bloggers — to always respond to comments, interact on Facebook, etc.

Make a statement. If you have something to say, just say it. It doesn’t really matter what other people think, or if they comment to tell you they agree or disagree with you. That’s not really important. What’s important is to get your ideas out there — other opinions be damned.

If, after you’ve made your statement, it’s an organic process to interact with those who respond to your idea, go for it. Just don’t force it. I think too many people feel like they have to constantly interact to remain competitive online. After all, it’s what everyone else is doing…what all the “gurus” tell you to do.

Just because someone says you should do something doesn’t mean you should. That’s just their opinion. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s not appropriate. It really all depends on you, your goals, and your strengths.

Take podcasting, for example. There have been some really successful blogger-podcasters out there, like Sterling and Jay of Internet Business Mastery. They recommend blogging and podcasting as a way to get your message out to your audience. What if you are great at writing, but suck at talking?

Just because something works for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you. Just because you write a mean blog, do you think you can perform a mean podcast? It takes a slightly different skill set and approach to create a podcast. I tried it three different times. While I did improve over time and had subscribers, it just didn’t feel natural.

It was forced, a chore, and I ended up creating a low-quality product. So I stopped podcasting. It’s just not my thing. Maybe interaction with your audience isn’t your thing. Maybe it’s a chore to respond to every comment on your blog, or retweet this and that on Twitter. What if you just don’t care about Facebook?

If your message is solid, your statement clearly presented, and regular interaction with your blog audience isn’t your thing, don’t worry about it. If it’s not you, don’t do it. Just because successful bloggers, like Problogger and Copyblogger do it, doesn’t mean you have to. Take Zen Habits, for example. No comments. It works for Leo Babauta (the creator), and he’s got a great following.

Making a statement is more important that joining the discussion, so make your statement before you ever think about discussing it with your audience.

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The Internet has Changed how People Make Purchasing Decisions

July 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Window shopping is different now. Thanks to the Internet, there’s a lot more to it. No longer are we required to window shop during daylight hours when we can easily see. No longer do we have to live in an area with a variety of great stores. And no longer do we have to stop shopping when the mall closes.With the web, we can window shop as long as we want, and with that time comes the luxury of research. Today’s shopper pays attention, researches products, and reads peer reviews before making a purchasing decision.Yes, I know many people still make impulse buys, and spend too much money on something they don’t really need or want. It happens. But how often does it happen to you? How much time do you spend online reading about something, researching alternatives, and finally settling on what you want?

I take my time. When it comes to things I like to buy — electronics, computers, motorcycles — I want to know I’m spending my money on the right thing at the right price. If I want a new camera, I don’t just go to the local camera shop or electronics store and select a model from their display.

I head to my computer and research the crap out of cameras. I go to Amazon and find what’s available in my price range, and then I read the Amazon customer reviews. Then I head to Wal-Mart’s web site and see if they have the same thing, but cheaper. Then I head over to the manufacturer’s web site and find detailed technical specifications, before finally landing on YouTube watching review videos. And while I’m there I also check out sample videos taken with the camera I’m researching.

I end up with a lot of knowledge that weighs heavily on my purchasing decision. It’s not just about pretty ads with some product highlights any more. If you want to sell something, you’ve got to look at your product how today’s Internet-savvy shopper would look at it.

Beautiful print ads used to go far in the selling process. Great pictures and awesome graphic design really pull the prospect in and plants the product firmly in their mind. We’re visual creatures, after all.

That just doesn’t cut it any more. Sure, the beautiful prints ads will grab attention, but unless this person is as impulsive as a young teenager, they’re going to head online to learn more. Be prepared for that.

If you’ve got something to sell, don’t just create pretty ads. Give your audience as much valuable information as you possibly can. And make sure your product (or service) doesn’t suck, because then it will fail at the social proof aspect of the sales process.

For example, if a product you’re looking at on Amazon has a 4.5 star rating with 432 reviews, you’re going to take a close look at it. If that many people think it’s totally awesome, maybe it’s worth your money. On the other hand, if there are 432 reviews with a 2 star average rating, it’s probably crap. Don’t let that happen to you…keep your offerings awesome.

People don’t just buy something because of a glossy ad, and they don’t do it because of catchy wordplay either. Those are just part of the huge package of information available online. Whatever product or service you want to offer up to the world is going to fall under the same kind of consumer scrutiny as everything else does these days.

Be prepared by creating quality goods, giving away as much detailed information as possible, and fielding any questions as best as you can. You should even be ready for bad reviews. Don’t censor them…just accept them and make awesome stuff.

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How to Build a Relationship with Your Audience Using an Email Newsletter

July 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

An email newsletter isn’t just a tool to sell something. It’s a means to creating a relationship with your audience. To make this happen, you need at least these three things:

  • Express Permission
  • Regularity (not the digestive kind)
  • Engaging and Relevant Content (this doesn’t have to be free…example later)

I’ll cover each of these so everything is clear.

Express Permission
Spam is bad, so don’t do it. You won’t want to bark out your message anyway, because you’ll just end up pissing people off in the process. What you should look for is a group of willing participants.

For example, take a message and walk up to a stranger on the street. Give them the message verbally. People won’t be receptive to it because you’re just walking up to people and accosting them (basically). Now take the same message and give it to your spouse, child, parent, close friend, fellow cube dweller, whatever. Note the difference.

Now, I’m not saying that you should go walk around a mall barking at people. That would just be too much. But think about it. Think about your interactions with strangers versus your interactions with people you know — people in your circle.

People who are already willing to listen to you, those you have communicated with in the past, are going to be receptive to whatever you have to say. They may disagree with you, agree with you, think you are crazy, and anything in between. But the message will still be received. That’s the key here.

Your audience will need to ask for this kind of communication. This is your express permission. With email newsletters, this means putting up a form on your site and asking if they want more. Don’t push…just ask. Those who want more communication from you will fill out the form and then probably also (depending on your newsletter service) confirm that want to get the newsletter.

If an audience member voluntarily takes one to two steps to get on your email list, you have that express permission. They want to hear from you — even if it’s just for one more message. This permission is where the deeper interaction begins.

Regularity
Just as it’s important to be regular in your digestive “business,” you also need to have feeling of regular structure with your email newsletter. The rate of regularity will depend on your audience.

An email newsletter can be a tricky thing. Sometimes you have too much contact, and sometimes not enough. Unfortunately, there’s no magic formula to getting this right. You’ll have to experiment and see how your list responds.

If you get angry emails about you clogging up an inbox, or people start unsubscribing at an alarming rate, you might be bugging them too much. On the other hand, if you get questions back from your newsletter, and often, you might not be giving your list information often enough.

I’ve been on email lists where I would get emails once or twice a day, and others where I would get one once per month. The “frequent newsletter guy” was always trying to tell me about this or that new post or a new product he was pushing. He was hammering his list. This got a little old I left.

The list that just sent out once per month newsletters was much more refreshing. I didn’t feel bogged down by the offers. But in the end, there wasn’t enough communication to keep me engaged, and I left.

These two examples are my own personal experiences, but I think they illustrate how your newsletter schedule can affect a reader. Everyone is different, and some people will just react poorly no matter what you do.

The key is to find the “happy place” in the middle where you aren’t getting people complaining, and not many are jumping ship (which usually happens after you send out a newsletter). Find the publishing “regularity” that works for your list and stick to it.

Engaging and Relevant Content
This is really the core of any good newsletter — the engaging content that is relevant to your readers. If all you do is sell with your list, you’re really missing the point. And on top of that, you’re annoying the hell out of people who could help take your message, your community, and your goals to a higher level. So don’t do that.

An email newsletter is not a sales tool.

Yes, I know large national and international companies use their newsletters to sell. They’re missing the point, too. It’s not about sales. It’s about making a connection and giving away something of value.

OK, about the “giving away” part. It’s not necessary. Ev Bogue sells subscriptions to his list. The thing with it, however, is that it’s not strictly a “newsletter” in the traditional sense of the word. It’s more engaging than that. He can get away with selling subscriptions because his audience knows they will be getting value.

I’m new to Ev’s work, but so far I’m really impressed. He’s got kind of a different take on blogging and communicating with his audience, but it works. I can tell that he’s built up both trust and expectations of value with his readers. So he can sell subscriptions. Can you?

The standard approach is to have a free newsletter and make your money in other ways. But the rules are still pretty much the same. You have to build up trust and create value. Value is the key element here. If what you send to any inbox is bland, annoying, and completely useless, you’re going to lose subscribers.

To keep the subscribers you have, and to get more, you have to create relevant and engaging content that provides value for your audience.

Get permission to communicate, do it regularly, and provide awesome content (like epic shit) for your readers. Do that and you’ll see your audience grow — you’ll build a relationship with them. And that’s just good business.

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An Emotional Buying Response Doesn’t Have to be Created with Fluffy Crap

July 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Since the web first came out, we’ve been bombarded with crap. First, we had pages and pages of useless nonsense, just because someone wanted to be on the web. Once ecommerce kicked off, it was like the wild west, with snake oil peddlers and horse thieves trying to sell you their goods.

We fell for it. With no community oversight and no established norms, people would tell you just about anything to get you to part with your cash. They would paint pretty pictures for you and fill your heads with nonsense about how completely awesome you will be if you buy their $100 information product. These kinds of hollow tactics just don’t cut it any more, and it’s best if you leave them behind.

What these tactics were carefully designed to do was to create an emotional response in the reader. This is the response that prompts people to begin the purchase decision process. Take a look at these sample headlines:

I made $100,000 in 90 Days and You Can Too!!

Two weeks to becoming a real estate tycoon and earning your financial freedom? Read on…

These headlines — which are essentially an introductory sales message designed to get your attention — generate an emotional response in the reader. For the first headline, you, the reader, wants $100,000 (really, who doesn’t?). It normally takes a long time to get that kind of money, so the prospect of a three month turn-around is enticing. You get excited at the possibility and there’s the emotional response.

The second one is a little understated…no numbers thrown out at you. But it asks a question that is on the mind of anyone in debt, or someone who wants to make their own way in the world. Your mind jumps from reading the sentence to an image of financial freedom and controlling assets long known to have good returns (generally speaking, of course).

We buy things because of an emotional response. Sure, logic and pragmatism play a part, but if what you’re looking to buy isn’t a completely necessary purchase (think toilet paper), emotion rules the decision. It pulls you in and weighs heavily as you decide whether or not to part with your money.

Look back up at those two sample headlines. Will those work today? Well, on some people, yes. But it won’t work like it used to because those headlines are shit. Thanks to the Internet, most of us are trained to spot bullshit money-making schemes that are designed to take our money and provide no real value.

Cut the crap, but still create an emotional response.

The thing is, you still need to create that emotional response in your audience to sell. The trick is to do it without sounding like a scam artist. You’ve got to cut the crap, drop the “this will make you totally awesome instantly” sales methods, and present genuine benefits for your product or service.

Old-fashioned copywriting just won’t cut it any more. Instead, just be honest. You can create an emotional response without the useless hype by highlighting real-world benefits. Solve a real problem and that will create the response you need — it will stir your audience.

Remember my post about features and benefits? Use that. While it is possible to make $100k in three months, it’s highly unlikely. It’s damn near impossible for a noob that doesn’t know what he’s doing online. So the headline above is just nonsense. It doesn’t present anything real for the reader.

Let’s rework that headline just a bit to give it a dose of reality, while still generating an emotional response that will hook the reader into your message.

The tools you need to turn your ideas into a sustainable online business are right here. With training, discipline, and perseverance, you can create passive income streams, and live any kind of awesome life you want.

OK, that is a little long and rough, but you get the idea. That one might actually work as a headline with subhead setup. Anyway, my point is that it communicates a message, but without the hype. It even tells the reader that it’s going to take work. It always takes work…

Getting people interested in what you have to sell doesn’t have to involve anything unethical. You don’t have to lie, cheat, or steal your way to the top. Real people, real customers, would see right through you anyway.

Cut the crap, present honest benefits and an intriguing headline, and you’ll make sales. Here are some examples of headlines I’m talking about:

“Give me 31 Days and I’ll Give You a Dramatically Better Blog… Guaranteed” – Problogger, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog

“How to Build and Launch a Kick-Ass Online Product in Two Weeks” – Think Traffic

“Claim Your FREE Audio eBook Now… THE 3 PILLARS OF DESIGNING YOUR ULTIMATE INTERNET LIFESTYLE” – Internet Business Mastery

You see… you can still create an emotional response without spewing junk on the page.

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