The Curse of the Modern Age
“For a list of the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life,” says Alice Kahn, “please press three.” I’m sure you know what she’s talking about. And even if you don’t,...
The Copywriter's Roundtable
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Make the Most of 2010
Sometimes, it’s all too easy for your best intentions to… er… fall flat on their face. I’m sure you know what I mean, especially this time of year. You start out your New Year with the best of intentions, full of hope and promise. But just a few months in, the unexpected gets in the way. Or worse, a mega-blunder. ..
How To Get Started
I got a note from a reader who aspires to a copywriting career and wanted to know how best to get started. You can imagine, I get that question a lot. Here was my reply…
Seven+ Ways to Keep Your Clients
Over the years, have I written my share of crotchety emails to product managers, traffic managers, legal assistants, publishers, and graphic designers? I confess — I have. A tiny handful have even made it past the...
How to Ace Any Job Interview
Interviewers will tell you, they hire based on qualifications… experience… results… and so on and so forth, blah blah, etc. Says Richard Wiseman, in his book “59 Seconds…” they’re mostly kidding themselves. And he’s...
14 Ways to Make Your Prospect Relax
I’m not unveiling any big secret by telling you that a lot of what you’ll do when selling is all about emotion. And it has to be that way. Why? Because we humans —...
7 Easy Ways to Get More From Writers
What’s the single best way to make sure you get what you want out of the writers you’ll hire? I’ll give you not just one but seven easy ways to guarantee a quality result,...
The World’s Most Famous Copywriter?
Claude Hopkins looks like a crotchedty chemist. Or a vacuum cleaner salesman. At least, he does in most of the pictures you’ll find of him online. Which is appropriate considering that he sold both,...
Inspiration or Flat-Out Imitation?
Every great direct response copywriter can tell you what a valuable thing it is to have a “swipe file,” that burgeoning bin or desktop folder of winning promos crafted by other copywriters. The idea, of course, isn’t to rip off the best of your colleagues… but rather to read, see what’s working, and use that to get your own creative juices flowing. Not everybody gets that. Some people understand the concept, but go ahead and plagiarize anyway…
When Clichés Work “Like Gangbusters”
I joked in an issue of my e-letter about writing “good,” and got a note from a reader soon after that said… “So there I was reading my favorite newsletter writer and I come...
In Picture Ads, The Eyes Have It
The common wisdom is that everybody loves a pretty face, right? Not always so, says Bryan Eisenberg over at grokdotcom. Oh sure, the pretty face does attract attention. But that’s the problem. In ads, a real looker can pull a visitor’s eyes away from your message…
How One Big Idea Trumps Lots of Small Ones
“Shut up and listen,” I said. I was talking to Michael Masterson, the great copywriter, publisher, and best-selling author. Had I lost my mind? Not at all.
Rather, I was summing up the core idea behind one of the best-selling books of all time, Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” That, in my opinion, is the key idea behind that book. And the fact that it’s so easily defined has a lot to do with its success.
Michael came back with another example… I delivered a third… and the volley went back and forth, until we ran out of ready examples. It wasn’t a game. See, Michael and I — along with another brilliant copywriter, Bill Bonner — had just finished running four straight days of an intensive, private copywriting bootcamp…
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