For some people writing can be about as enjoyable as chewing nails. They sit down to create a sales letter…and nothing.

Their normally active, multi-tasking brain suddenly becomes as barren as the Mojave desert.

Not one babbling brook.

Not one fluffy bunny.

Not a cloud in the sky.

So how do you get started? Well the first thing you need to do is…

Get your juices flowing

You can’t just wait around for the inspiration boat to come in. It ain’t gonna happen…at least not when you want it to.

Some people think if they just sit and wait long enough something will come to them. Some magical idea will miraculously appear and they will begin to write prolifcally like Edgar Allen Poe, Hemingway, or Issac Asimov.

Did you know it took nineteen years for Asimov to publish his first 100 books, ten years to publish the next 100, and only five years to bring the total up to 300. Mr. Asimov, when asked by Bob Bly how he became so prolific replied that he believed he was so prolific because he had a simple straightforward style.

So there’s a good place to start.

Write the way you speak, write fast and edit later

Now I must preface this with a disclaimer…not everybody is going to agree with me.

However, I find that if you write the way you speak, write fast, and prevent yourself from editing what you write as you go, you will do a better job of developing content.

Why? When you stop and start to edit what you have written as you go you interrupt your left brain or the creative part of your brain. Once interrupted, it is harder to get the creative juices flowing again. So next time leave the editing for later and focus on writing what it is you want to say.

Waiting for inspiration

This usually results in the development of brain glaciers. Have you been there?

These glaciers make nothing you write seem good enough. You start, but keep erasing everything you write re-wording things over-and-over again never exactly saying what you really mean to say. Eventually these glaciers develop into a full-blown mountain forming a mental blockade. And the result? You end up writing nothing, nada.

To prevent this you must begin to write. It is as simple as that. Just do a brain dump. Get your fingers moving writing down all of the random thoughts flying into your head. Don’t worry about form or style at this point just begin. You will have time to go back and refine your thoughts later.

Do the easy stuff first

The trick to writing is to just get started. Once you get started and the more you write, the easier thoughts flow and more fluid your writing becomes. Once I get going, the flood of ideas is only hindered by my typing speed.

So pick something easy and just get started. Once you gain momentum the rest will come more easily.

Write about what interests you most

Similar to writing what you would consider easy first in the spirit of just getting moving you should also write about what interests you most. An area of the product that really interests you. A benefit you can enthusiastically describe.

When you write with enthusiasm the reader gets carried along with you in the excitement and selling your product will become easier.

Study expert’s copy

Constant exposure to the copy of experts will transform your writing over time. Copy ads of famous copywriters over word for word.

If you do this enough times the expert’s writing begins to imprint on your brain and you become a better writer as a result. When you sit down to write you next sales letter the components seem obvious, the wording flows, and the message has higher impact. Not every time but your chances of writing better copy will increase exponentially.

Begin with a bunch of headlines

One of the first things you can do is think about a list of benefits the product provides. Think about the product’s target audience and how the product’s benefits will be useful to them. Then take a few hours and headlines and subheads that feature the benefits you uncover.

This activity is useful not only in creating the headlines and subheads but will be useful content when constructing a bulleted list.

Write to your mama

Have you ever read one of those sterile corporate brochures riddled with big words that did not add a lot of value to the message and at times left you wondering what it all was supposed to mean? Well, let me tell you something…those type of brochures don’t really generate results.

When you are writing any sort of promotional piece whether you are trying to sell a product or service it is important to write as if you were speaking to one person. Your reader will feel your enthusiasm when they pick-up your promotional material and you will be able to more effectively sell the benefits of the product.

So next time you sit down to write, write like you are talking to your mother or a friend. Your copy will be easier to understand and be more effective.

Dump the details

When writing a promotional piece care should be taken not to weight down your message with too much detail.

Why? It distracts and bores the reader and you will lose their attention. If they really are that interested in the detail have it available for them just not in your promotion.

How to describe your product

When you try to describe your product to prospects think about the differentiation characteristics.

Make a list of these features and then ask yourself, “what benefits do these features provide the end user?” Make a list and use this content to describe your product. You will find your description is clearer and your writing more persuasive.

Technorati Tags: Copywriting

The blog went up, the posts began, and then I disappeared. So what happened?

Well, I had to shift gears momentarily and work on my internet marketing training goals. You see when I left the corporate sector with a commitment to hang my own shingle I had no idea what I didn’t know. What’s the old saying? You don’t know what you don’t know. I think that’s it. Well that’s me.

You see I spent years partnering with merchants and creating direct response marketing campaigns. I know all about building campaigns that deliver a positive ROI and selling businesses on partnerships.

So what was missing? Quite frankly, it was the nuts and blots of internet marketing. When you have a staff to supervise, you can hire experts to manage every aspect of your business and focus your energy on the areas you excel.

However, as a beginning entrepreneur what I found is that I knew little about the operational parts of running an internet marketing campaigns. For example, until I posted this site I had never posted one.

So why bother? Well when I launched my copywriting/consulting business all the calls were coming from the internet marketers who desperately needs writers to supply content for their sites. As you know I am already an accomplished writer but felt in order to deliver better value to these prospective customers I needed to understand their world.

Unlike the kids hitting the scene now, there was no such thing as internet marketing when I was going through school. So I have been spending part of my time learning this stuff. My goal is to evolve the business so that it reaches a stage where I feel comfortable farming out some of this stuff but I don’t feel comfortable doing that until I learn it myself. I want to have a safety net in case my help moves on.

The good news…I’m almost there, yeah!

If you are anything like me don’t get discouraged or give-up. I would encourage you to consider signing up for one of these courses to bring your self around the learning curve a little faster. They definitely helped me. Roz’s program truly motivated me because her story is a lot like mine. She is just as great a person as she seems in her posts.

In addition to the handbook you can sign-up for personal mentoring and coaching. Here is the link to her program and her description of it.

Roz Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook

Read the amazing true story of how one woman, with no previous business experience, earned $436,797+ in 2002 and now earns MUCH MORE than that … just by selling other people’s stuff online!

In her down-to-earth, sincere and often humorous style, Rosalind Gardner guides you through the entire process of building an affiliate marketing business on the ‘Net.

Frequently revised and updated to reflect industry changes, the Super Affiliate Handbook now consists of 236 pages and 124 screenshots that will show you step-by-step how to become a Super Affiliate. You’ll learn how to pick the best affiliate programs, negotiate a commission raise and save time, money and effort on everything from affiliate software to web hosting.

To learn exactly how she does it, Click Here.

The other training programs that I highly recommend are the ones produced by the Internet Marketing Center. Derel Gehl and his team put together a comprehensive overview of how to get going on the internet and are truly worth the investment.

Read the materials carefully and sign-up for the one that most closely meets your needs right now. As your skills advance you may want to consider the more accelerated options but I would suggest for beginners to start with The Insider Secrets to marketing your business on the internet course. Here’s the link to the beginner program I recommend.

Internet Training Center Programs

“Discover the EXACT formula we useto attract 1,000,000+ visitors to our websites each year!” Learn how you can get other website owners to send traffic to your site, score a top ranking in the search engines, and get 1,000s of dollars in free advertising… And attract an avalanche of eager customers to your website with the exact same system we’ve used to turn just $25 into over $60,000,000 in online sales! (You heard us right… that’s $60 MILLION!) 1,000s of people with little or no Internet experience are already using this proven step-by-step formula to make everything from $5,000 each month to $2 MILLION+ each year… To take a 100% RISK-FREE test drive, click here now!

I plan to spend the rest of my day writing and keeping my Sheltie Lexi from trying to munch on the cats. Thank you for visiting my blog I hope you have a great day!

Karen

Success is not the position you stand, but the direction in which you look.

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Business Development, Internet Marketing, internet marketing center, List Building, Marketing Tools, roz gardner, SEO, Viral Marketing

I’m doing a little research for a book I am working on with a client of mine and I need your help.

The client’s book will be called “The Last Guru” and the goal is to address people’s most pressing problems in one book.

Dr. Harvey Goldstein a clinical psychologist and well-known hostage negotiator has read just about all of the self-help books out there in his quest to help his patients and to provide robust content for his leadership development and executive negotiation seminars.

What he has found though, is that these books tend to be the same concepts just re-branded over and over again

He feels that instead of people having to buy lots of self-help books on a variety of topics if he can address the most frustrating problems people face in their lives and provide some answers in one book then this book will become the last book a person would have to buy.

As part of the research I am conducting a survey and that’s where you come in. If you click on the link below it will take you to a simple, one-question, anonymous survey. If you want to see the results when I am done just leave me a message here with your email address and I will forward the spreadsheet to you when the survey is complete.

Here’s the link to the survey.

Thank you for helping us out with this project.

Karen Callahan

Technorati Tags: Adversity, Emotional Control, Goal Achievement, Handling Stress, Happiness, Health, Life Skills, Motivation, Obstacles, Persuasion, Professional Success, Prosperity, Self-Esteem, Strength, Wealth, Wisdom

As the super bowl approaches and advertisers belly up to present the intellectual bullion of their respective agencies creatives while the public prepares to be wowed and entertained I can’t help but wonder what we will see.

Will we see originality, sure. Will we laugh, probably.

But the real question we should be asking ourselves is whether these ads will accomplish the clients goals? I say no, unless of course all clients want is a boost to their ego.

Why? Because these ads don’t really work.

If you were to ask advertisers to define the components of an ads originality they may refer to its style, freshness, liveliness, or imagination.

Some may say an original ad is any ad that is different.

But what does all this really mean? And, what does originality have to do with meeting clients objectives?

Advertisers preoccupation with “originality,” at times, can lead to the absurd. The author of Scientific Advertising Claude C. Hopkins once described this phenomenon as writers abandoning their parts. He said, “they forget they are salesmen and try to be performers.” “Instead of sales, they seek applause.”

One of the first men elected to the Copywriter’s Hall of Fame the legendary Rosser Reeves agrees and says, “writers will defend their quest for difference passionately claiming that due to tremendous market clutter, and in order to compete and get the attention of the consumer, the ad must be different.”

Sounds plausible, but what happened to selling the product? If the product is worth paying for then consumers would pay attention to it, wouldn’t they? And so, will the mere “difference,” “cleverness,” “the queer and the unusual” –actually sell more of the product? I think not.

So when advertisers drop the rumored $2.7 to $3 million premium for a 60-second spot during the upcoming Super Bowl at then end of the day I wonder if the investment will really be worth it to clients?

And don’t think savvy advertisers aren’t paying attention, Careerbuilder.com actually fired their agency last year because their ad didn’t score well on one of the viewer voting sites.

I mean lets get real here, when the party is over and all that’s left is the bar-be-que stain on your shirt sleeve and a little swill in the bottom of your glass will you really remember those ads? And even if you do, will they compel you to purchase whatever these advertisers are selling?

After all isn’t that really the goal?

I can hear the agency defendants already screaming, “but these are brand awareness campaigns not designed to deliver tangible results.” And to that I would say if the advertising over time does not deliver a boost in results to the bottom line given no drastic shifts in market dynamics then advertisers have failed.

So before investing in one of these “original campaigns” do yourself a favor and ponder whether the gross plundering of your shareholder’s nest egg is really worth the 60-seconds of originality…and a laugh?

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Brand, Claude Hopkins, Direct Response Marketing, originality, Rosser Reeves, Super Bowl

Today I am working on getting my site some visibility by connecting to Technorati. If you haven’t stumbled upon Technorati yet you should take a look.

As a writer I am constantly having to perform research on a variety of topics. One week I may need to become an expert at Real Estate Investing and the next week it could be Knitting.

You just never know…

I used to research my topics and subscribe to all of these blogs depending on what I was working on. It was okay except that my email box became so loaded-up with messages that over time I would have to spend a lot of time unsubscribing from all of these lists. What a nightmare.

Now I am going to schedule feeds through Technorati and a Feedreeder to gain control of all of this correspondence, I’m not sure which one is the best I’ll let you know. And I plan to use Technorati to do research for me, yeah!

So while investigating this I have found that you also can have your own site spidered if you write a blog and paste the Technorati code on you page so that is what I plan to do here…paste the code so the little spiders can find me.

I know you youngsters probably learned this little trick in elementary school. Oh well we all need to start sometime so here I go…

If you want to try this too head on over to Technorati and give it a try yourself.

Karen

Technorati Profile

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/v9bw82zuf3″ rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

Technorati Tags: correspondence, feedreader, feeds, gain control, spiders, Technorati, visibility

I’m reading an interesting book called “The Magic of Thinking Big.” In this book the author David J. Schwartz discusses how people can benefit tremendously if they approach things differently both professionally, and personally.

Ultimately, how one chooses to spend their time makes all the difference in the world. It has an impact not only on their results but on their financial payoff.Some individuals shy away from going after big challenges because they don’t feel confident in their ability to handle the situation. They may fear that they won’t be able to handle all of the details, or think they don’t know enough, or just be afraid they may embarrass themselves.

And you know what? Any of these scenarios could come true.

But, hey if you never try to do something… you’ll never know if you can. The bottom line is if you approach challenges with the right attitude, you can accomplish just about anything you set out to do.

I read this book years ago when I was pushing myself to find a big goal to set and accomplish so I could shine in my new job and make a big profit for my company. It worked. I’ve used this simple approach many times since then with continued success and would encourage anybody to give it a shot.

In his book, Schwartz reviews ways you can develop the skills necessary to discover and land your next “Big Fish.” How to overcome obstacles and how to develop the right mindset so you will be successful.

Here are some of the ideas he shares:

• Why if you believe you can succeed … you will
• Ways to cure yourself of excusitis, the failure disease
• How to build confidence and destroy fear
• How to think big
• How to think and dream creatively
• Making your environment work for you, not against you
• Ways to grow attitudes that will carry you forward to success.
• Practicing being the kind of person people like
• Why it is important to be someone who does things
• How to turn defeat into victory
• How goals will help you grow
• Think like a leader

Ultimately, Schwartz concludes, there is magic in thinking big, but it’s easy to forget. When you hit rough spots, it is easy to swing back into your usual ways of thinking–and when you do, you lose.

And he is right. If you would like your own copy of this powerful book, you can purchase “The Magic of Thinking Big” here.

Till next time, “Embrace life, have confidence in yourself, and take action.”

Technorati Tags: accomplish goals, Action, confidence, creativity, David Schwartz, destroy fear, overcome challenges, Success, the right attitude

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