Michael Senoff On Copytalking!
Here
is a free 15-minute consultation that I
recently did with a gentleman named
Bal. April is a working mother of two
your boys. She e-mailed me frustrated
and in search for some honest advice
about copywriting. April had recently
invested money into a copywriting
training system. She was disappointed
with the product and the coaching that
was promised with it. Listen as I guide
April through some simple yet overlooked
principles on copywriting. You'll hear
how my hate for copywriting forced me to
create easy shortcuts to creating
compelling copy that sells. I unload all
my most closely guarded secrets about
copywriting in this exclusive audio
recording from hardtofindseminars.com
This is a one hour call. Enjoy
Michael: Well, with
copywriting, you could have the most
beautiful sales letter in the world,
with every advantage, with every
question asked, with the most beautiful
paper and stories and success stories
and everything you’re going to learn in
that Masterson’s course and any course
on copywriting. It could be perfect, but
it will fail miserably if you’re crowd
isn’t starving or even hungry.
Music
Hi, it’s Michael Senoff with Michael
Senoff’s
HardtoFindSeminars.com. Here’s about
a 50 minute consult I did with a lady
named April. April contacted me after
being very frustrated from another
copywriting seminar she had purchased.
She’s looking for answers on how to
start her copywriting business. In this
recording, there’s some consulting
advice on how she can obtain this in the
shortest time possible. I go into three
ways to research your market and give
her general philosophies about my
thoughts on copywriting. We also talk
about how to use talking or Copy Talking
to create effective copy in a more
natural, more compelling manner. I hope
this recording helps you gain some new
insight on copywriting. Get ready, let’s
go!
Michael: Okay, it says, “Hello, my name is April and I’m a mom of
two. I home school and my husband’s job
is constantly being threatened. Anyway,
I stumbled upon copywriting about a year
ago. It sounded very tempting to me. I
love to write and thought this would be
the perfect opportunity for me to stay
home with the boys and make money in
case my husband loses his job. So, I
bought a course and the support from the
course is really none. If you call to
ask a question, they don’t offer any
solutions. Keep in mind, they stressed
how they could help anyone become a
copywriter. I’ll be honest, I did not
know anything about this business and
because of people like you, I’m finally
finding my way. However, I still do not
have a niche market. I still do not know
where to start, and I’m at my wits’ end.
I really would appreciate any advice you
could give. I have gone on several
teleconferences which have been
wonderful. Again, thank you for your
time and any advice you could give would
be greatly appreciated. Sincerely,
April”You’re in Kentucky.
April: Yes.
Michael: Tell me, what did you sign up for? What company?
April: It was the AWAI.
Michael: AWAI.
April: I got the six-figure course.
Michael: How much was that? I’m curious.
April: It was $500.
Michael: And, that was taught by Michael Masterson. Did it include
audios with it? I’ve never actually seen
that course, but what do you get with
that course?
April: You get a binder with several sections in it from the very
beginning to closing, unique selling
points, things like that throughout. It
comes with a DVD, but it’s very brief.
It’s just the introduction.
Michael: So, it’s mainly a written course that you study like a
guide.
April: Yes.
Michael: There’s no audio with it or anything.
April: No, just like I said, it’s a DVD or CD ROM. It’s just
Michael Masterson basically explaining
how he came upon the course and tells
how Paul Hollingfield became a
copywriter and that type of thing. It
really makes it sound really good.
Michael: You’re a mom of two. How old are your boys?
April: They’re six and seven.
Michael: I’ve got a six and a half year old and a three and a half
year old. So, I know how it is. Tell me
your experience with writing. You say
you like writing. Were you always good
at creative writing? What do you like
about writing? Have you had any
experience in writing like poetry or
stories or what?
April: Actually, I had two poems printed in the International
Library of Poetry. Through high school,
I was always in Advanced English. I had
a teacher who really inspired me. I
really liked being creative, and I’m
actually also taking a course with the
Institute for Children’s Literature. So,
I’m working through there to help me get
published. Children’s books are what I
want to write.
I really like it. I also used to work for retail, and
I feel like I could sell pretty well.
Michael: Where did you do retail? Where were you working?
April: I worked at Service Merchandise. I think they went
bankrupt.
Michael: So, you’ve done retail. You like people, and you think you
can sell, and you’re published in a
couple of the poetry books. Is that your
ideal goal to get published as a
children’s book author?
April: Yeah, I would like to do that.
Michael: The idea, as far as being able to write and make money with
your writing is something that
interested you, too.
April: Yes, but this copywriting, I thought that it would be fairly
easy. It’s been harder than I thought to
actually try to sell something on paper.
If I’m just pitching a product from
home, list all these things about it to
try to sell it. I feel like I could do
it if I just get taught the proper
steps.
Michael: Sure you can.
April: I’m a doer, so I can read, but I have to read five or
six times. Show me and it becomes easy.
Michael: You’ve got to have a starting point. So, if you could
learn all the steps of writing, you’ve
got to know, what’s the goal. What are
we trying to do? Obviously, copywriting
is using writing to sell. It’s basically
selling in person, but you’re selling on
paper. So, you take the one-on-one
personal selling like you did with
Service Merchandise like a customer
standing in front of you and they’re
asking about the TV set or whatever.
It’s the same thing except your
transferring it on paper.
Now, that could be very difficult because we don’t
naturally sell on paper, and we don’t
naturally talk to people on paper, do
we?
April: No.
Michael: We’ve got to learn that in school, and it could be
grueling because it’s not a natural
thing. If someone came up to you and you
were familiar with the products at
Service Merchandise and said, “April,
can you tell me about this and why
should I buy it?”, you probably wouldn’t
have to think too much, would you?
April: No.
Michael: You could do it naturally, right?
April: Oh, yes.
Michael: What I want to show you is how to take that natural
ability to sell by talking to another
human being one-on-one and how to get
that transferred onto paper without
being an effort.
First, I want to ask you, do you have any idea of what
you want to sell? Is it that you want to
sell your service as a copywriter as
improving someone’s advertisement, or
selling your service as a copywriter to
help someone else’s writing be better?
Some people are better editors. Let’s
say you hired yourself as a copywriter
or as a writing expert where you can
look and analyze someone’s writing
whether it’s for their website or
whether it’s for a letter they’re
sending out about the product or service
they sell or any of their written
communication that they’re currently
using in their business.
Some people are really very, very good at taking and
looking at what they’ve already done and
editing, making it better, but they have
something to work with, compared to
taking an idea from zero, from a blank
sheet of paper into a whole sales
presentation. Does that make sense?
April: Oh, yeah.
Michael: Some people can give great advice on people’s situations,
but they can’t use the advice for
themselves. What do you feel like you
want to sell? Did you get into the
Masterson course to learn how to sell
your service as a copywriter or more
just to learn how to write better
yourself so you could sell your own
product? What direction would you like
to take it if you were to move on with
it?
April: That’s something I have trouble with. I had talked to a guy
named Bob Martle. He does Yellow Page
ads, and he did a teleconference with
Mike Marshall in applying theory, and
that sounded pretty interesting to me. I
could help somebody move their business.
Michael: He was making money rewriting people’s yellow page ads?
April: Yeah, he would go to the business, and see if they were
doing anything to progress the business,
help them in other ways as well, but he
would take information about the company
and just create a yellow page ad for the
company and have that published in the
yellow page ads, which also ended up for
long-term.
Michael: So, he would charge them for the service of recreating
their existing yellow page ad, or if
they didn’t have one, creating a yellow
page ad, and he would position himself
as an expert and say that he could do it
better than the sales reps at the yellow
page ad company. Was he talking about
how he was making all this money doing
that?
April: Well, he said that he would charge appropriately. That way
it wouldn’t scare people off. He would
charge, but he would get more business
from them for like a small column – not
really a column. I can’t remember what
he said, the smaller ads. I believe he
was charging $500 and going on to that
to make a thousand dollars possibly a
little more for larger ads.
Michael: During that teleconference, was he trying to sell you
something, a course or anything?
April: No.
Michael: Okay, he was just talking about his experience.
April: Yes.
Michael: He really liked that business and did pretty well with it.
April: Yes, he said that’s how he makes his living.
Michael: Is his main thing yellow page ads?
April: I believe so. I think that he’s main, and then whatever
other business he creates for himself
from that.
Michael: It’s a way to get in the door. That’s smart. Do you know
why? Because 99 percent of businesses
can understand that. They understand
yellow page ads, and they understand
that if they have one, they don’t know
if it’s really working or not. They can
gauge by the phone calls, but they can’t
tell you for sure if their yellow page
ad is profitable.
The yellow page ads are very expensive. They’re
extremely expensive and you get one shot
because once it’s printed, it’s in that
book for an entire year, but if it gets
a happy customer and he does write an ad
that really does well for the client, I
could see it definitely being a lead
into doing other copywriting work.
So, I like that technique. One thing I don’t like
about it is that it’s cyclical. It’s
once every year. So, if you approach 100
businesses, and let’s say 50 have a
yellow page ad, the numbers aren’t going
to work out to where they’re ready to do
their ad because they’ve got to wait
until their existing ad expires. So,
that’s kind of a negative if you’re
prospecting businesses mainly for their
yellow page ads. Most of them aren’t
going to be ready because their yellow
page ad hasn’t expired.
Now, you may get businesses that don’t have yellow
page ads, but if you approach them,
yellow page ads are an expensive
proposition. There’s probably a good
reason they don’t have yellow page ads
either maybe they’re doing well with
their business without, or there’s no
way they’re going to pay that kind of
money on it.
In my opinion, that may be for you a little bit of an
uphill battle. I think you may be able
to approach a prospect with some writing
that everyone talk to, you know is a
potential candidate. You know that if
they like what you have to say that
they’re ready to use your services or at
least they have the ability to.
So, for example, let me give you an idea. Do you know
what eBay is?
April: Yes.
Michael: Okay. Ebay is kind of like yellow page ads in a way,
right? When people have auctions and
they’re selling stuff. Well, if you’re
going to start a business, you want to
be April the Queen of Ebay Copywriting,
or you want to pick a niche. You want to
be an expert in writing for one certain
type thing that has plenty of business
and obviously something that you enjoy.
What if you became the advertising queen of eBay
auctions? I’m trying to give you an idea
of something that you would never run
out of potential people to prospect. You
could do it all from your computer. I
don’t know if you read in the book about
niching yourself. Did you read a little
bit about that, how it’s better to be a
specialist than a generalist?
April: Yes.
Michael: A heart surgeon or a brain surgeon gets more money than a
general practitioner. When you’re an
expert at something and you niche
yourself, that’s when you pick out a
little tiny market, and you call
yourself the expert for that market. It
has more power and it positions you
better.
What do you think makes a great sales letter? Have you
got any fundamentals down in your head
from the course yet?
April: Well, I’ve also listened to Dave Garfinkel, a
teleconference, and one thing that
really stuck in my head that he said,
basically, you want to think like a
customer. Focus on the product, who they
want, and what are the questions they
want to ask about the product – to try
to fill all those questions that they
have in their head so there’s not going
to be anything left in their minds.
They’re just going to want to buy that.
Michael: That’s called research. Being successful in copywriting is
90 percent research. Copywriting isn’t
dreaming up out of your mind what you
think should go down on that paper. This
isn’t like writing a novel or writing a
story. It has nothing to do with that.
It is mainly research.
First of all, you have to have your
market. Before I get into this, the real
good part is all your answers are right
there. All your copy is already written
for you. To be successful in copywriting
whether it’s writing a sales letter or
eBay auction or anything is really to be
able to assemble words that are already
in the marketplace in a proper order
that gets them read and you have to
smooth out the transitions.
So, if you think
you’re going to dream up something out
of the air and write it down, that’s
really not your job. You’re really a
researcher and you’re an assembler of
information. You’re to smooth everything
out.
So, for instance, do
you have any hobbies or anything? Are
you into horses? Do you have anything
you collect? Anything like that that you
can think of?
April: I like to sing.
Michael: You like to sing?
April: I used to sing
professionally.
Michael: So, you like to sing, and
you sang professionally. Tell me about
that.
April: I sing country music. I
would just go around the local jamborees
and sing on Saturday nights. This is
when I was 15 to the time I was 17 years
old.
Michael: That’s great. That sounds
like fun. Let’s say you put together,
“How to make $500 a month singing at
country fairs.” You wanted to create a
book or an information product on how to
do that. There’s a lot of people who
like to sing, and could you make $500 a
month.
April: I was just a teenager
time. I’d just work on Saturdays, and
I’d make $30-$40 maybe $50, just
depending on what the show was.
Michael: Just as an example, let’s
just say, “How to Make $200 a Month
Singing Part-Time Professionally”, and
you had this book, and this is a product
that you wanted to sell whether it was
on tape or on eBay. So, you’ve got this
product, and let’s say it’s already
created and you know how to do that. You
know all the steps to find the shows,
how to get booked, what to wear, what to
expect. You have your information
product.
There’s a lot of
people who love to sing. I mean, look at
American Idol, how popular that. It’s
really popularized it. There are lists
available. Have you learned anything
about mailing lists and direct mail
lists in the course at all?
April: I have learned a little
bit about that. It doesn’t really go
into too much detail.
Michael: Do you know that you can
find names of people for any kind of
category that you can think of? Let’s
say that you could find a list of the
names and addresses of all the people
who are American Idol fans who love this
thing, and you had 1,000 names, and you
wanted to create a sales letter. So,
what do you think you would do to start
gathering your research when you write
your sales letter to hit on all those
hot buttons, all the things that someone
who wants to make money and who wants to
make money singing? Do you have any idea
where you would start to gather your
research before you put together your
letter?
April: Yes, I would try to figure
out exactly what’s the audience and
what’s the age range, I guess what the
most popular category of singing is
whether it’s hip hop or rock or country,
and then I would zero in on the one
specific thing had the most interest.
Michael: What you’re saying is you
want to identify who your market is, who
your message, your letter or your eBay
auction or whatever is going to. So, you
want to match that message to your
market, right?
Now, a great way to
start generating ideas is to go to
Amazon.com, and to type in “How to
make money singing part-time” or
“Singing for profit” – terms that will
bring up books that are on the subject.
Do you think that you would be the only
one in the world who has a book on how
to make money singing?
April: Oh, no.
Michael: Absolutely not. Do you
think people before you have already
gone through all this stuff we’re
talking about and who wanted to create a
book on how to make money singing? Do
you think there’s other people who sing
for profit and have tried to teach other
people on how to do it?
So, you can leverage
off of all their time and all their
research because all the research has
been done before. Amazon is a great
place to start. You will find books on
how to sing for profit or how to sing
for money with a little bit of research
on Amazon. On
Amazon.com, they allow you to look
inside the book digitally, to look at
the table of contents.
Now, those table of
contents, you can bet if you look at
four or five or six different books on
the subject, you’re going to see things
that keep coming up. You’re going to
find the important subjects about
singing for profit. So, you can already
borrow a table of contents and outline a
structure for your letter. Does that
make sense? Is that easy? You’ve
leveraged off someone else who’s already
had the experience before you.
You could also go into
the index and look for things. You want
ideas to stick out in your head, and
then you’re going to relate to those
ideas and say, “Well, this could be a
real important thing.” When you’re
writing your bullets, the things that
real titillate the reader, you can find
lots of different unique things in the
index of the book. Now, that’s just
doing free research. If you want the
whole book, you can get the whole book.
So, people before you
have already researched this subject.
They’ve already researched this market.
You can also determine if it’s been a
successful selling book. You can look at
the numbers. That’s just one way to
start doing your research.
Let’s say you want to
answer the main questions people have
about this. You can find websites. You
can find user groups that are all
related to people who want to sing for
money. Do you know what a message board
is online? A message board is kind of
like a website where people who are
interested in the subject participate
and ask questions. It’s a community, and
there’s experts in the group and there’s
novices in the group. The novices are
usually asking questions because they
want to learn to sing for profit, and
the experts are giving the best advice.
What you really want
to find out are all the questions that
people have about this. So, you start
writing a list o all the different
questions that people have about this
subject, and then you want to make sure
that you’re going to answer those
questions in your sales copy or in your
letter or in your sales message. Are you
with me?
April: Yes.
Michael: There’s another great site
for doing research, finding answers and
questions from people about all
different subjects. It’s called Google
Answers. You know what Google is, right?
April: Yes.
Michael: You go to Google and look
at all the things they have, or type in
Google Answers, you can search every
topic you can think of from
entertainment to business to advertising
to horseback riding. You name it. This
is when people are interesting in a
specific topic, and they type in a
question that they want information on,
and they pay a Google researcher to find
the answer for them.
So, you have questions
from people who are interested, and you
have professionally researched answers
to those questions, and they’re
available for free for you to look at,
on anything you can think of.
So, being able to
research and anticipate what your market
wants is the most important thing. When
you create sales letter, you’re not
dreaming up anything. You’ve got to come
up with a system that works for you. Are
you a little confused right now of how
to put it all together, or is it coming
clear?
April: It makes sense to me,
but I also have a few things that are
kind of confusing to me in my mind.
Michael: I just want to tap on the
research stuff. So, I’ve given you two
different tools to find out what your
market wants with the questions and with
the answers. So, I n your letter, you
can’t answer everything, but you’re
going to find and write down questions
and answers, or you’re going to copy and
paste material that you find from Amazon
or from Google Answers.
So, you need to
collect your research and organize into
a place, and you need to take those
questions and answers and categorize
them from the most important to the
least important. Your letter consists of
a headline that captures attention and
you know how important headlines are.
If you go to my
website, I have a website called
HardtoFindAds.com. Have you heard of
that?
April: Oh, yes.
Michael: Have you been in there?
April: Yes, I have. I also got a CD
from you before, one of the free ones
where you did the interview with Brian
Keith Voyles.
Michael: Were those helpful, those
interviews?
April: Yes, they were very helpful.
Michael: Good, and you hear Brian
Keith Voyles. He talks about how
research is almost everything. Now,
these are simple ways to do research,
the examples I have given you. Do you
know what my favorite way of research
is? Picking up the phone and talking to
the person in normal language just like
we’re talking, and recording the call.
After a while, the
person on the other line doesn’t worry
about recording, and let’s say you
collected all your questions. Let’s say
you found someone. You’ve got to capture
that passion in someone’s words, and
that’s why I like audio especially to do
research.
If you talk to
passionate – and we’ll use our example –
singers who really have a burning desire
to sing, and you call them and said,
“Look, I’m putting together a book about
singing, and would it be all right if I
asked you some questions for me doing my
research.” Let’s say you had all the
questions that you found from Google
Answers or from
Amazon.com, and you had them in a
list, and you said, “I’m just going to
ask you some question.” You can just
say, “Well, how did you get into this
singing, and what inspired you, and what
do you like about it, and what don’t you
like about it?” You ask them everything.
After a while, they’re
into, and they’re so passionate, and
you’re capturing all that on audio tape.
They’ve forgotten that they’re being
recorded just like some of the
recordings I’m doing.
When you hear these
recordings with me, they’re not thinking
about being recorded. Brian Keith Voyles
is just talking passionately about his
life’s experiences and what he loved.
Can you relate to that?
April: It comes through.
Michael: Well, if you take those
words and transfer them onto paper, and
leave them almost identical how they
were expressing them, that same feeling
can come through. It won’t come through
as much as with audio, but it will come
through much better than you dreaming up
what to say.
You could literally
let people write your letters for you,
let them talk your letters for you. I’m
coming out with a product called Copy
Talking. It’s so much easier to just sit
on the phone and record it and interview
someone who’s passionate about a
subject, they’ll talk your whole letter
for you. You’ve got to be the best
listener.
If you’re a good
listener, and you just shut up and let
them talk, they’ll talk and they’ll
talk, and be interested in what they
have. They will talk your letter for
you. That’s what makes it so easy. All
you’ve got to be is the person asking
the questions, listening, let it be
recorded, and you capture that passion
and then you could have those words
transcribed. Then, you become an editor.
So, you take some of
the things that they say. It’s like, you
know how at the beginning of each one of
my recordings I pick out a headline
almost and then the music comes. When
I’m editing the recording, I’ll go
through the whole recording, and then
I’m just sitting there listening to it,
and then they’ll say something, and it’s
usually towards the end. It has to take
some time before they get warmed up, and
it’s towards the middle or the end, and
they’ll say something that my ears just
kind of perk up. It makes me listen a
little bit more, and then I’m looking
for that headline in my audio recording,
and I go, “That’s it. That’s my headline
for the audio recording.”
Well, it’s no
different. They’ll say something, and
that will be the headline for your sales
letter. They’ll tell you the headline
for your letter. You don’t have to dream
it up. They’ll tell you.
Did you listen to the
Eugene Schwartz material on my site?
April: I don’t think that I
listened to that.
Michael: You have got to listen to
that. That is one of the single best
lessons on copywriting, and you’re going
to hear him repeat some of the stuff I’m
telling you because I learned it from
him. You’ve got to listen. This is
really important that you listen to that
one, but you’ll hear a story how the
largest newsletter in the world is
called Bottom Line. It was started by a
guy named Marty Edelson.
Marty Edelson had this
crazy idea. He had no money. he came to
a professional copywriter, and the guy
was Eugene Schwartz. Eugene Schwartz
brought him into the office, and he just
sat and listened to Marty Edelson talk
about his dreams and his desires. Eugene
Schwartz was just taking notes, and
Marty Edelson said something in that
became the headline that launched this
huge multi-million dollar newsletter
publisher called Bottom Line.
So, Eugene Schwartz
talks a lot about being a good listener,
and your prospect or your interviewee or
the Google Question and Answers that
people asking and answering the
questions, these people will write your
copy for you.
Another thing he talks
about in the Eugene Schwartz recording
is your job as a copywriter is not to
create desire. You’re not going to write
a letter and get people interested who
weren’t interested in singing. You’re
not going to get them interested and
sell them on the idea that you want them
to be getting into singing and learning
how to sing and go to fairs and make
money part time singing. That’s not your
job.
The desire is already
there in the marketplace. You already
found your market, your list of people
who have that desire. Your job is to put
your information in front of people who
already have that desire to sell them on
the idea.
So, don’t think that
copywriting is creating desire or
convincing people to do something.
That’s just an uphill battle. Your most
important thing when you create or
develop a product is you want to be
selling to a hungry market.
Have you ever heard of
Gary Halbert?
April: Yes.
Michael: You heard his “hamburger
stand” analogy. In his seminars back in
the 80s and even today, he always does
this. He says, “Let’s say you had a
hamburger stand. You could have any one
advantage at all to make your hamburger
stand successful. What advantage would
you want?” Could you think of what
advantage out of any advantage you would
want for your hamburger stand to make it
successful?
April: The customer could get
what they want the way they wanted it. I
would try to satisfy that customer and
have all the ingredients that they would
want to make that stand successful.
Michael: Okay, anything else you
can think of?
April: I would try to be as
friendly as I could and just try to sell
the product and make them happy.
Michael: You just said you would
try and sell the product. Remember what
I said? You’re not going to create the
desire. Do you think you have the
ability to make someone hungry or is
someone already hungry? The one
advantage would be to have a starving
crowd?
You could have your
hamburger stand, and they could be the
crappiest hamburgers. You could have no
choice but just a hamburger and a bun
and ketchup without any extra choices.
It could be in the worst location. They
could be $10, but if someone is
starving, are they going to buy your
hamburger? They’re going to buy it.
So, the desire, that
starving crowd is the single most
important thing you could have in this
whole copywriting business because did
it take a lot of convincing to sell
someone who’s starving for food, do you
need to write all these advantages and
headlines and all this stuff in your
sales letter to sell them on the
hamburger? Do you even need a letter?
All they have to see
is hamburgers. If they’re starving, it
doesn’t matter what the price is. Well,
with copywriting, you could have the
most beautiful sales letter in the
world, with every advantage, with every
question asked, with the most beautiful
paper and stories and success stories,
and everything you’re going to learn in
that Masterson’s course and any course
on copywriting. It could be perfect, but
it will fail miserably if your crowd
isn’t starving or even hungry.
Could you convince
someone who just ate lunch and walked
outside in front of your hamburger
stand, could you pay them any amount of
money to buy another hamburger if their
stomach is full?
April: No.
Michael: Does that make sense?
April: Yes.
Michael: So, your market, your
starving crowd is critical. That’s the
number one most important decision
you’re going to make when you get into
the business because do you know what?
You don’t even have to be that good. You
don’t even have to learn half the stuff
in your Michael Masterson’s course to be
a successful copywriter. If you have
that starving crowd, it could be just an
okay sales letter, maybe better than
what the guy’s doing already because he
may be doing nothing already.
Understanding that one
thing, and it’s easy to lose focus on
that, is just critical.
April: I thought of something
else I’m really passionate about,
insurance.
Michael: Insurance?
April: Yes. My grandfather passed
away a couple years back, and I also
worked at a doctor’s office for a while.
It was really disheartening to see how
hard it is for the older people to get
insurance to cover their medications and
things like that. So, I didn’t know if
that would even be a possible niche
market for myself since I’ve had some
experience working with the insurance
part of it, and having to handle all his
affairs since he passed away. I had to
call and get all that stuff wrapped up.
Michael: I think that’s admirable of
you, and you know something a little bit
about it, and you would be helping
people. You probably feel good about it,
but my opinion is no one wants to think
about dying, and no one wants to think
about their house being robbed or
something bad happening to their family.
Do you know when they
sell most burglar alarms? After they’ve
been robbed. It’s ten times easier to
sell a solution than it is a
preventative. What you’re talking about
I think is a preventative. Does that
make sense?
April: Yes.
Michael: Why make it an uphill
battle when you could sell anything? I
don’t think there’s a passionate hungry
crowd of even elderly people wanting to
take care of their insurance or they
would’ve done it already. So, then
you’re falling into the trap of selling
a preventative which we know through
research does not sell nearly as well as
a solution. So, I think that’s an uphill
battle.
Think of something
that people are just nuts about. Maybe
how to sing, a course on singing.
There’s lots of them out there that you
can model. There’s probably room in the
marketplace. That’s if you’re coming up
and creating an information product.
I have a product on my
site. It’s a $97 product. It’s called,
“How to Take $28 Ebook or Concept in
Your Mind and Turn it into a $3,900
Information Product”. It’s really what
I’ve been doing using audio. I give a
lot of free audio away, but I also take
my audio and I package it, and I sell
it. The aspect of finding a market and
doing the recordings and editing the
recordings and turning them into
transcripts, and then you’ve got to
create the sales letter. That’s what
that course is about. You don’t have to
pay anything now. It’s only $97 if
you’re totally happy with it. It’s all
digital. You can listen and download,
and there’s my best of the best
recordings on the subject. There’s about
eight of them that are exclusive for
this product.
It’s like the
recordings on my site, but it’s the best
of the best on how to create an
information product from an idea or an
ebook, just what I’ve been doing, but
have I clarified anything. I know we’ve
talked about a lot of stuff. You’ll have
to relisten to it. I think you need to
come up with some decisions. What do you
want to do?
Do you want to sell
your copywriting services to make money?
Do you want to create your own
information product, which I would
highly recommend? Get a product that you
make that is yours, that is original,
that you don’t have to share anything
with, that you control, and then create
a sales promotion or a letter for that
and try and sell it.
The margins, April,
are incredible on information products
especially if you put it up as a digital
product. You don’t have to mess with
printing. Once it’s up there on the
internet, you can send someone a link to
download whether it’s several audio
recordings on a certain subject.
In my course, I show
you how to enhance the value. Ebooks and
books sell for $19-$29. This same
information with audio recordings can
sell as much as $495. So, in this
course, I show you how to use audio, how
to do interviews with people, how to
increase the value of your ebook or your
book or your idea ten and twenty times
just by having audio available. It does
increase value. It’s nice to be able to
put a CD in your car player, and make it
more accessible.
Most people never get
through a book, and ebooks are cheap.
It’s all in your wording. You learned
this in copywriting. Ebook reminds me of
$19 book. They’re all over the internet,
and you can get them for free. That’s
what most people think of ebooks. Do you
know that?
Seminars and training
courses, you spend how much on that
course?
April: $500.
Michael: Five hundred bucks on a
system, on a course, right? When you
bought that thing, you were thinking
this was, what? A course? Did you think
you were buying an ebook?
April: No, I knew it was a
course, and I really thought that it was
going to give me all the things that I
needed to make that start. They really
stress how you could make six figures.
Michael: You can.
April: I know you have to work
for it, but the way that they made it
sound. It would be a lot-
Michael: Easier?
April: Yes. So, like I said again,
they talk about all the help they would
give you.
Michael: So, you’re disappointed you
didn’t get any help. What was the help
part of it? You could call in?
April: Yeah, they have this 1-800
line that you could call in. So, I would
call and you get a representative or a
customer service person and send you a
direct response online. Well, if you’re
with the course, you can get into that.
However, unless you have the Master’s
course, you can not technically go on
there and send your resume. It’s another
thousand dollars or however much that
is.
So, I actually got the
number off of one of the sites for an
insurance type agency to write copy for
them and help get more sales for them.
So, I would call the man, I think he was
from Texas. He said, “Well, I’m going to
send you all the information.” He never
sent me the information. So, I called
him to maybe see how I can either close
the deal or maybe if I could really find
out what’s going on, why he’s not
sending me the papers, and they were
like, “Just keep calling him.”
Michael: Was this a lead that they
promised you or something?
April: Well, they really backed
this. They didn’t say it to me, or
promise me that I definitely get this
lead, but they really strongly promote
this site.
Michael: What’s the site called?
April: It’s
DirectResponseDog.com.
Michael: So, they take a course,
learn how to copywrite, it will
basically give you leads to do work for.
April: Right.
Michael: So, businesses sign up for
this job who are looking for copywriters
who had been trained in this system that
could help improve the copy. This was
one of these people. All right, so how
many did you contact, just one?
April: A couple of them because
some of them wanted you have a degree,
which I don’t a college degree.
Michael: Well, you can’t get
discouraged about that. You may have to
contact ten to find one. That’s just
reality. How long does it take to send
out ten emails? It doesn’t take long.
You can do that in an hour, and if one
comes back to you and it could lead to a
potential project, a job, a company to
keep you busy for a long time. You don’t
need that may accounts.
April: I don’t want you to
think that I’m complaining.
Michael: I’m not.
April: I would call and ask
them other things, questions about the
course.
Michael: They weren’t really
helpful. They probably farm out all
their customer service to these people
who just don’t have the experience.
April: I found out another
thing which really bothers me, that they
give you this assignment, and I wrote
one assignment for a restaurant. You had
to talk about this restaurant you went
to – why it’s the best, why you would
take someone there – I found out that
the people who are actually reviewing
these assignments are not even
copywriters.
Michael: Who’s reviewing them?
April: They just said it was just
people they would hire. They would just
send these letters to them, and they
basically would just read them and edit
them. They weren’t professional
copywriters. They didn’t say names or
who exactly they were.
Michael: So, you were under the
impression when you did assignments
you’d have real professional copywriters
reviewing your work.
April: That’s what they even say in
the course of the letter.
Michael: That’s disappointing.
April: It’s too late now. With
this course that you have, also, I’m not
a very big computer guru. I know how to
do my emails and things like that. So,
that sounds like a really good
opportunity for me to create some kind
of product.
Michael: You didn’t even have to
write. You can talk it. All you need is
your digital recorder and a phone and be
curious. I’ll show you how to get all
the questions. You’ve just got to be
able to ask questions, shut up and
listen.
Now, that’s getting
the raw information. Then, there are
some technical things you need to learn
how to do or you can hire it out. You’re
going to have to learn how to edit a
recording. Once you buy your digital
recorder, you’ve got to learn how to get
that set up. It’s a pain in the butt,
but once it’s set up, it’s set up, and
with some patience you can figure that
out. If you’ve got a computer and a
phone, that’s all you need.
You got to learn how
to get the recording off the digital
recorder and download it into your
computer. You’re going to need to learn
how to open up that file and save it as
a wav file, which is the way you’re
going to do your editing. You’re going
to have to download a piece of software
that allows you to edit.
This is so easy. It’s
hard because you don’t know, but if you
take the time and go through the pain
and learn how to do this, you’ll have a
great skill to be able to record and
upload and download and edit a recording
and to be able to get it up on a
website. I’ve got a service that makes
it very easy to do. It’s all learnable.
You just need some instruction on how to
do that.
Everyone who’s online
had to start the same place you are, and
it’s either you’re got time or money.
You could either learn how to do it, or
there’s plenty of experts that you can
pay to do all that for you. I have a
webmaster. I don’t do all this stuff
myself. I pay a guy who’s much better
than I am at all this, but I have
learned a lot of the basics. I had to
learn how to record a call and how to
edit. I don’t do all my editing now. I
farm it off.
So, as you grow, you
build a team. I have a full-time
transcriber. I have two editors who do
my editing. I have a webmaster. I have a
team around me, a virtual team that I’m
working with. It’s like an office, but
it’s all virtual. I’ve never met these
people personally, but I talk to them
everyday or I email everyday. You can
find any help you need, any help you
need on anything technical. You can go
onto Elance or any of those job boards.
Elance is a place,
it’s kind of like eBay. Have you heard
of Elance?
April: Yes.
Michael: You heard me talk about
it. Anything you can’t do, you can hire
people to do it. You can hire people in
India to do it very inexpensively.
There’s people all over the world ready
to help you with the internet very
inexpensively in other countries. If you
go to Elance, that would be a great site
for you to look at because there’s even
copywriters there wanting to do work.
Did you know that?
Let’s say you got a
copywriting job, and it’s something that
bored you, but you got the guy who wants
to use you. You could farm it out to
another copywriter under you who may be
more skilled than you, and may be in
another country and may be able to do
the job for less money than you’re
charging your client. What do you think
Garfinkel does?
David Garfinkel has
copywriters under him that he passes the
work onto. You could be successful in
the copywriting business and not
necessarily even know how to write. You
could approach people to improve their
copywriting.
Now, you define
potential prospects is not hard. Take
anywhere you look. Go pick up a stack of
the newspapers or the free give away
newspaper or the classified newspaper.
Look at classified ads. You can identify
poorly written ads, and you can call any
one of those people, or put together a
simple letter that says, | 