“This is the most powerful weapon I’ve ever seen” - Clint Eastwood

Perhaps Mr. Eastwood hasn’t seen the latest free keyword tool. Just wait and see what it can do. If you’re a blogger, the numbers say you’re asking about…

How to blog? A.K.A. “What topic do you talk about?”

Simply this: Find your readers’ hidden desires and speak to them. Especially if you want to be paid to blog. Want to be a highly paid blogger? Then doing this is absolutely crucial for you.

The previous post really explains what this means - why you should look for these hidden desires to find which topic will pay you the most. And of course, your topic will be right there in your headline. Why is this so incredibly important?

Brian Clark of CopyBlogger offers this about the importance of writing headlines that work:

“Your headline is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make on a prospective reader.”

David Ogilvy, arguably one of the world’s top ad writers, explains why you must speak to readers’ hidden desires in your blog tagline, your blog post title and every headline you write:

‘Five times more people read your headline than your article. Unless your headline sells people on reading your article, you’ve wasted 90% of your effort.‘

Do you want to be one of those bloggers who writes for months or years, hoping and praying people will read their stuff? I didn’t think so. Know for sure that people will respond. Here’s how to guarantee that:

Make A List Of Potential Topics

Remember the list of 6 things in the previous post? Put these 6 questions to work for you:

* What things do you know about?
* What things do you like?
* What things do you do for work?
* What skills do you use for work?
* What things do people ask you about?
* What hobbies and interests you have?

Use these 6 questions as a tool to make your own list of 10 things you might want to talk about. If you want to make money with your blog, use these 6 questions to create your own list of 50 (instead of 10) potential topics. Want to REALLY stack the money-making deck in your favor? Make a list of 200 possible subjects. How serious are you, anyway?

What you’re about to do with your potential topics list…you’ll probably consider to be real work. So why did the headline says “under 5 minutes”? I didn’t lie. Once you have 1 potential topic, you’ll start finding people’s hidden desires in less than 5 minutes (even if it takes 4 minutes for your browser to load the page.)

The methods you read here are infinitely easier and less time-consuming than the way even the world’s richest writers did this same kind of research just a few years ago.

Nonetheless, some of you probably won’t go through the work I’m about to suggest. That’s okay. Less competition for the rest of us who are serious about this. (And I wouldn’t recommend what I haven’t done myself - and had success with.)

Repeat the following steps for each and every item on your topics list. Sure, there are some luxury shortcuts here. If you could survey a 1000 people to find what they prefer, you could easily shorten your list to 5 or 10 of your best potential topics. Why a thousand people? Because your 5 friends won’t really give you the answers you really need here.

You don’t have a thousand people to ask? Then follow the simple methods here for each of your potential topics.

Why do these research methods give you such unerringly potent results? Because when people type something into the little Google search box, they’re actually telling Google (and us) what they really, REALLY want. If you have any doubts about this method, I challenge you to try it for at least a topic or three. Don’t stop until you see for yourself what it does.

So here’s the first of three methods:

Method #1: Find Out Why People Search For Your Topic

Open Google’s Keyword Tool in your browser.

Type in your topic, enter the code and get the keyword ideas as shown below.

Sort by the most recent month’s search volume as shown:

Now look what these items have in common. When people type in “antique cars”, what do they want? Do they want to restore these cars? Do they want car parts? Or do they want to buy and sell?

Big hint: look at the red circled items. Sure, some want parts (blue circle), some like to build models (tan circle). Many are interested in or have classic cars (green circles). Yet the vast majority are really into buying and selling.

Notice that I’m only looking at words near, at, or more than 1000 searches per month here. Why? With less than this, you’re only looking at less than 30 people a day. Writing for an audience that’s too small - is a huge mistake. Many an experienced blogger has changed their blog topic because they weren’t writing to a large enough audience. Don’t make this mistake.

We’ll come back later (in another method) and examine what the items further down the list can do for you.

Okay, so if your potential blog topic is “antique cars”…your best bet is probably helping people buy and sell, with an emphasis on classic cars.

What this crowd really wants is their buying and selling problems solved.

What can you do for them? You could…

* List upcoming auctions, either in the area, or nationwide
* Give tips on getting your car ready to sell
* Give tips on what to look for when you buy an antique car
* Stroke their ego - tell them why classic cars are the best
* Explain for newbies what makes a car classic

You see, now that you have your topic, it’s time to start cranking out ideas for blog posts, and turning these ideas into irresistible headlines. Or is it? Actually, we’re missing something big here. Have you figured out what it is?

Actually, we could take each color group above (sale, parts, models, classic) and put it with the word “car” or “cars”. Let’s just take the word “classic cars” as an example. Maybe you thought people were typing in “antique cars”. Nope. Way more people think (and type) “classic cars”. Here’s proof:

Look through this list above. (For the sake of space, I cut the list off. It continues on, and you’d want to examine all entries down to about the 1000-searches-per-month level.)

What are the hidden desires here? Simply rinse and repeat what you learned above.

If you simply want a blog to charitably touch people’s interests, that’s fine and dandy. Crank away at the headlines. Method #1 above is all you need for your reward. But maybe at this point you’re thinking more like Han Solo:

“Look, I ain’t in this for your revolution…I expect to be well paid. I’m in it for the money.”

Great. The next post reveals Method #2 of 3. This method is all about finding what topics make money. Let’s get those creditors (and bounty hunters?) off your back.

Enjoy this post? Get free updates by email or RSS.

“There is no more of an edge in marketing (and life) than knowing the hidden desires of the people you are trying to sell.” - Gary C Halbert, Copywriting Legend

Gary should know. The advertisements he wrote brought his clients billions of dollars. In fact, great copywriters very rarely fail. They make huge profits from almost every ad they write. Why? They’ve done their homework. And I’m going to reveal to you exactly how they do their homework.

First of all, why copywriters? Your success as a paid blogger means you must learn the tricks of the copywriting trade. So why do master copywriters suggest you choose a topic from the following?

1. Things you know quite a bit about
2. Problems you’re good at solving
3. Things people ask your advice about the most
4. What you already get paid for
5. Skills you need to do your job
6. Your hobbies/passions/interests in life

…Because you must thoroughly know who you’re talking to. You must write down a very specific profile. Know how many people fit in this profile. (There must be enough people in this group to make you money.) And most of all, you must know their HIDDEN DESIRES.

Until you get good at writing and some experience at blogging, stick to what you know. But don’t confuse writing with reading. You should always be reading to expand your number of topics and your blogging expertise.

However, as you write, picture your ideal reader. Write for someone you personally know. Know what impresses them. Know what makes them pull out their credit card and buy something.

Here’s a true story that happened very recently (with names changed).

Imagine your friend got laid off from his job four months ago. (We’ll call him Jake.) He barely has enough to eat. He hasn’t been to the movies or a restaurant in ages. Poor Jake. But all of a sudden, he’s leaving messages on your cell about some new multi-level marketing thing he wants you to join.

It seems Janet, the office secretary at his old job got him sucked into this, but how? What happened here? What possessed Jake to pull out his last few bleeding dollars for XYZ? You see, Janet knew Jake’s secret desire.

Jake always looked up to Larry, the boss. Janet knew Jake dreamed of having the big desk with the corner window. So Janet simply said, “Hey Jake, remember Larry? He quit the company 2 months ago because he’s making so much money with XYZ. He wanted me to invite you over to his house for dinner.”

Of course, Jake can’t sleep, he’s so totally sold on this “opportunity” now.

It’s worth repeating: “There is no more of an edge in marketing (and life) than knowing the hidden desires of the people you are trying to sell.”

Now I’m not suggesting you manipulate people to hand over their last dollar. But if you want to be a paid blogger, you’re going to have to overcome some challenges. People are becoming more and more resistance to advertising. What I’m point out here is simply timeless and oh-so-powerful.

In the old days, copywriters spent months reading…and reading to find people’s secret desires. Yet you have a powerful, free tool at your fingertips. It’s a tool these copywriters would have paid dearly for. This tool reduces your research work by at least a factor of 10. What is it?

A keyword tool. Almost everybody’s heard of keyword tools. But you might be be shocked how few people actually know how to use this tool to find people’s hidden desires.

This post starts a series on picking your niche (planning your blog topic). In the next post, I’ll show you precisely how to find people’s hidden desires with that friendly, free keyword tool.

Enjoy this post? Get free updates by email or RSS.

“Forget the keywords, write for humans!” - Humanist Bloggers

“Keywords bring the traffic to your site!” - SEO Bloggers

Who’s right? Does it really ruin a great headline to throw in a keyword? Don’t miss an important distinction here - one that certainly gives you a great edge in your marketing.

You already know market research is essential: Know who you’re talking to and what they want. What people type into a search engine tells you more than what people want. It tells you how they talk. Gain your audience by talking more like them. So yes, use keywords.

Here’s the distinction: use keywords, but don’t misuse them. We’ve all seen awkward headlines. Someone wanted to shoehorn a keyword in, but it just doesn’t fit. It doesn’t sound like the way we talk.

Yet there’s another egregious way to misuse keywords here: not being specific. Bloggers often just can’t resist the temptation to use a high-traffic keyword like “internet marketing”. Their keyword tool says this phrase gets 1.5 million searches a month. You can’t go wrong with this, can you? Yes you can.

Imagine a light-weight boxer signing in for the heavy-weight competition. It just wouldn’t be a competition at all. If you decide to use such a highly-searched, competitive phrase, you’d better be ready with volumes of content about your subject. You’d better have tons of links from other sites and have throngs of people coming to your website. If you don’t have all of this, your keyword will simply be ignored. Plain and simple.

This is not to say you can’t use these words. Just don’t expect immediate results. If you want immediate results, use the right size keywords. Not too much competition, not too little demand. This boils down to being more specific.

How to be more specific? I could use “internet marketing in San Diego, CA” (insert city here). Or, I could talk about specific internet marketing strategies, like blogging. Notice in my post title above, I use the word “bloggers”.

I could have asked “Do Keywords Really Matter in Your Headline?”. But instead, notice I chose the smaller keyphrase “post title” (approximately 4000 searches per month, with almost no competition) instead of “headline” (550,000 searches per month, with tons of competition).

More people relate to the popular term, but the less popular term catches Google attention more easily. Without question, you should write for people first. So are people going to “get” it if you use the less popular term? Answer this question and you’ve reached the great compromise you need here.

Humanist bloggers are right too. You should always make your headline before you write your blog post. Your headline is a promise. Keep that promise, and keep it short as possible.

SEO is only a small factor in what really gets eyeballs to your website. People are afloat in a sea of information today. Your headline is a spec on a ripple on a wave in that sea. Catch more attention by using the bait other people use. Make your headlines short, tasty and tweetable if you want people to bite.

Enjoy this post? Get free updates by email or RSS.

“One kind word can warm three winter months” - Japanese Proverb

Make a journal to write down only your successes. Every time you succeed at something, no matter how small, write it down. One study recently found this brings you tremendous self esteem, power and effectiveness.

I wish I’d paid more attention to the news clip when my radio alarm woke me up that morning. I’d like to find this study and know more about it.

Hearing a “well done” or a “thank you” from others is important. It’s said we can survive 3 minutes without air. Three hours on average without shelter. Three days without water. Three weeks without food. Three months without love. When others can’t be there with kind words, at least our success journal can speak to us.

The suicide of David B. Kellermann, CEO of Freddie Mac, is a sad symbol of what’s happening in the world today. The New York Times also quoted an anonymous Freddie Mac executive, “The pressure right now is relentless…Everyone in the financial sector, regardless of where you work, is constantly told both that this is our fault, and that we have to work as hard as possible, otherwise the nation will fall apart.”

Of course it’s not just the financial world. The Vancouver Sun reported 5 years ago: half of 2000 doctors surveyed are “in an advanced phase of burnout, characterized by emotional exhaustion, cynicism and feelings of ineffectiveness in their work.”

Granted, a success manual probably isn’t all you need. Yet I’d say it’s an important item in your survival gear.

Enjoy this post? Get free updates by email or RSS.

“Turn off the news and focus on the more important things in life, like wine!” - Entertaining little wine advertisement I got in the mail

Del Dotto wine is simply awesome too. One taste makes you a wine snob, but in a good way. In fact, here’s hoping you have as much fun with your wine as Gary Vaynerchuk does with his. (See below.)

More and more, that’s really what people really want and need nowadays - to be entertained. Follow the marketing high road. Make people laugh.

What’s the marketing high road? Ray Edwards kindly points us to Seth Godin’s fine explanation.

Conde Nast makes more money and gets more happy readers by spending $10,000 for a photo shoot than by filling their magazines with come ons, get rich quick claims and guaranteed results.

Investing in your entertainment - is the price too high? Of course not. But what if you don’t have $10,000 in your budget?

Be generous with what you have - your time. Don’t have much time either? Budget what little time you have to share your very best. Teach people. Give away your most useful information. People will always come back to you for more. More explanation. More consultation. More profit for you.

Feeling desperate from the recession? Being manipulative or deceptive to make a buck will come back and bite you. I feel sad for the spammer guy who keeps trying to comment on my blog posts. But only a little sad, and only if he doesn’t know any better.

It seems he’s selling a villa in Southern France. At least his link points to a YouTube video about this. The comment he tries to leave is all compliments about the post. We all like those. Yet he’s obviously using a fake email (it’s different every time). He’s hitting my blog’s spam filter, so it’s obvious: He’s busy trying to flatter everyone else with the same words.

Okay, so he tells that to all the blogs. What’s the big deal? Google is all about trust. If I link to sites/pages doing devious things, this hurts my ranking/trust/everything with Google. Why should I risk this, all to accept a little fake flattery? Better safe than sorry, I say.

More than that, why not spend time giving people what they want. Have a low budget? Make a homemade video and use your French mansion as a movie set. Do it right and that would get people watching.

Del Dotto’s ad ended with this: “If you get in a down mood, come see us at the caves. We have a new name for the caves, ‘wine spa’, where we massage your brain and heart.”

So if you’re feeling down about the recession, come on over to my snobby virtual, uh, blogger cave here…where only the best of people, such as you, are allowed to comment. I’ll massage your brain and heart with the best words I can find. Hey, I’d offer you a glass of wine here if I could.

Enjoy this post? Get free updates by email or RSS.

Blog search merely finds blogs. Twitter, the first of its kind, finds communities.

Why does this completely and utterly change the game for us online? Glad you asked. Here’s a quick example.

A year ago, my garage needed purging and my wallet needed cash. My friend Frank was ready to help, but something seemed missing. I was new to the Chula Vista, CA area, and I couldn’t help but wonder: “Don’t we need an ad in the newspaper?” Frank felt we didn’t, so I left it alone.

Friday rolled around and I was nervous. I’m way too busy to waste my Saturday morning. Where I come from, a trickle of people show up at your yard sale IF you advertise like mad. “Trust me!” is Frank’s answer to everything.

Saturday morning came and 5AM caught me groggily stacked stuff in the driveway. “Where’s Frank?” my wife asked. “Oh, he’s out there somewhere planting his ten homemade signs.”

At 6AM, people by the carload started showing up. Frank promised he’d written “Sale Starts at 7AM” on each sign. “I expected this,” he offered as he sipped his coffee. “You what?” I was dumbfounded. I found myself shooing people away from the lawn: “Sale doesn’t start ’til 7.”

It was like waving your arms at mosquitoes. Somewhat patiently, they waited at their cars, without any idea of what we were selling. Amazement turned to tension as cars backed up down the block and around the corner. Did I need some kind of checkered flag or starting gun…or bodyguards? Wow!

Seven AM was a barrage of expert hagglers. “How much for that whole box right there?” …While their cohort tugged at me about another box. Four exhausting hours later, it was suddenly over. Four hundred dollars and serious amounts of stuff gone. A record for any garage sale I’d ever had, to be sure.

“What just happened?” I was in awe. How in the world did a handful of signs around the freeway and along some streets get that much attention? Who knew there was such a fervent community of professional garage salers here? Who knew there was such an industrious colony, grabbing items for cheap and flipping them for profit south of the border? Frank knew, and he led me to some very unexpected money here.

What This Means For You And Your Blog:

The rich blogger is a rare breed. The average blogger makes a paltry $200 a year (the Daily News, 3/30/09, p.35). Yet everyone, it seems, is an “expert” at getting rich online. Here’s what the garage sale experience tells me:

You can get ahead in this business. You just have to pay very close attention. Make the effort to know EXACTLY what kind of people drive this freeway we call the internet. Study online communities. Learn what they truly want. Find a niche with enough motivated people and you’ve found a gold mine.

Don’t let someone else tell you the answers. Do your own research. Learn from mistakes of the brightest of blogging consultants. Search engines are powerful, but they’re just too dumb to dump the whole answer in your lap. Too many fine shades of difference here.

What you learn will tell you how to advertise where people are looking…Where they’re actually waiting to see you. Twitter has tons of communities. At first they might look similar. They’re not. Study them carefully! I am.

Enjoy this post? Get free updates by email or RSS.

Which do you choose? X dollars an hour, or getting paid for results? If you said “results” you’re in a super-powerful minority. If you’ve truly lived this philosophy the past few years, chances are great you’re not hurting too bad from the economy right now.

Honestly, for most of us, fear is a formidable enemy standing right in our path. To understand and overcome this fear, let’s look at two types of people: the clock punchers and the rock stars.

You know already who clock punchers are, don’t you? They’re the bread and butter of our work force, the 9-to-5′ers. People who ask, “Would you like fries with that?” Corporate executives too. All clock-punchers make x dollars an hour. Some of them have self-esteem, some don’t. Clock punchers are dependent on, perhaps addicted to, those comforting, dependable paychecks week after week…until a crisis comes along.

Rock stars, on the other hand, have unpredictable earnings from day one. Maybe they’re a one-hit wonder. Maybe they crank out success after success. Yet all rock stars have self esteem. They started their band (or business) from the garage. They’re not afraid to work for free. But they have dreams (and some have definite plans) for success.

No matter which group you’re in, success demands you become a real rock star. If you live McPaycheck to McPaycheck (or if you’ve gotten the McPink Slip) take heart. You can learn to be a rock star. And your time can be worth far, far more than what you were paid.

Clock punchers are usually given demeaning titles like “clerk” to convince them they’re only worth x dollars an hour. Those who are willing to sacrifice all their time get titles like “corporate executive”. Punchers, as a group, are more likely to fritter (or Twitter) away their time.

Rockstars use Twitter too. Ashton Kutcher raced with CNN to a million followers. Oprah just signed up with Twitter and already has 30,000 followers before she’s made a single tweet. Yet how much time did she spend currying followers? A very calculated amount of time, I tell you. Rock stars have learned each moment is extremely valuable.

What about the rest of us? We’re not Oprah. We have to pay the bills. What’s the fastest path to rockstardom?

Rockstars and Punchers alike have 168 hours a week. Fifty six hours of sleep. And every good Rockstar started off like the rest of us: with a 40-hour work week. Being generous, let’s add 42 hours a week for personal time - that’s fun time, family time, spiritual time, eating, time in the bathroom, driving to work, etc.

Once we subtract all these very necessary things from our week, what do we have left? Thirty hours. Wow. Really? Yep. Most of us don’t know that, because we’re too busy Twittering or watching TV.

What are you going to do with your 30 hours? Well, first of all, you’re going to have to learn how to guard those 30 hours with time management that really works.

Second of all, there’s massive benefit to spending some of this time reading. Brian Tracy, author of well over 20 leading books on developing human potential,  recommends, “Invest at least 15 minutes everyday reading about your profession.” Reading the tabloids doesn’t count here, unless that’s your profession.

Beginning rockstars spend most of their 30 hours working for free. They create something of value. Something people really want. And yes, they give it away for free.

How does this work? Should you *really* work for free? Well meaning friends and family have cautioned me against it. What’s been the result of all the free advice I’ve given online and offline? Just this past week, I’ve begun negotiations for SEO consulting with 6 different online businesses.

Recently, I asked my friends what things they bought online. One of them is planning to buy some software soon. Hmmm. Time for some *discreet* affiliate links on this site. Hopefully this little survey will bring in hundreds of affiliate dollars in short order. We’ll see.

I started this blog roughly 3 weeks ago. There are tons of improvements I want to make. They just haven’t yet fit into my 30 hours a week. Changing the theme to increase SEO, improving the tracking, social marketing, submitting my site to trusted link directories, the list goes on. (I’ll try to explain these in detail as I make these changes.)

You might say I’ve barely marketed this blog at all. Even without all these marketing advantages, look at the traffic increase from simply blogging consistently. Bars with a red dot at the top indicate days when I posted an article.

I see proof here that a part-time blog can succeed. Proof that clock-punchers can cross over to the other camp. Maybe these aren’t rockstar results yet, but I’m keeping the rockstar mentality. Your thoughts?

Enjoy this post? Get free updates by email or RSS.

Most people probably think their time management exercises are like eating fiber. Not tasty, but supposedly healthy. Have you had your dose of make-a-list and stick-to-it today? Only a couple days later, it becomes more like add-to-the-list, get sick and…you’re through with it. (Okay, there were a lot better rhymes I could have put in here, but I’ve run out of time.) What I mean is, do we really want to know how much time debt, sleep debt, and money debt we’re in?

The average tips on time management are really more like trans fat. The list of stuff you were supposed to do yesterday, the week before, or last month is clogging up your life. And this leads to mental constipation and eventual anxiety attack. Face it, some of us should not stick to our list.

Problem is, if we don’t have a list, things get way more complex. What we really need is a stress management course. So for now, let’s push aside the to-do list.

Instead, you might want to make a not-to-do list. Write down all the things you don’t want. All the things in your life that frustrate you. If you need a good cry or just want to let out a scream, that’s okay. I understand.

This little exercise might just give you some clarity on what you do want in your life. If you had that 50-hour day like you’ve always wanted, and everything was done, checked off and filed away…what would you love to do? (Besides sleep?) Well, okay, put sleep on the list. But no fair, pick something else too.

Now how do you get from where you are…to where you’d love to be? Here’s a secret. It won’t fix your life in a day, but I think it’s huge. Most of us don’t want to accept this fundamental truth, this no-brainer. Why? Accepting it is not easy. It’s just that the people who do accept it - they’re not stressed like the rest of us.

Here it is: You need food. You need clothes. You need shelter. Notice that Ferraris and houses on the beach are nowhere on this list. “But I don’t have a Ferrari or a house on the beach!” you protest. True, but liquor sales go up when the economy goes down. And liquor is expensive too. But before you label me as one of those religious ascetics, know that I’ve occasionally had an ale or two.

What I’m talking about here is having less and learning to still be happy. I once heard a guy explain how terrified he once was at the thought of having nothing. But when things got bad enough where he really did have nothing, it was nothing. True story.

What you do need is some hope. Here’s how to make some of your own: Make that list of things you love. Once again, the Ferrari and house on the beach probably don’t belong on this list. What could you reasonably enjoy on the weekend? Reading a good book? Time with your friends?

You don’t have friends? What about deciding what you’d like in a friend? Working to be a better friend? Reaching out to help others? You will find friends.

I love to hike a mountain. Well, it’s technically a mountain. It’s a one-and-a-half-mile long steep trail that’s more like going to the gym. It’s crowded, and sometimes you have to wait in the narrow spots.

Yet it’s such a high to reach the top. Wish I could drag all my friends up there to share this amazing feeling. All except for the time I saw this guy cussing someone else out for stepping 2 feet off the trail. Dude, you’re not really saving the environment!

What’s this have to do with time management? Everything. Take excellent care of yourself. It helps you get more done. If you have to schedule, be sure to schedule some fun.

So many times when I go to the mountain, I still have a pile of things undone. But when I get to the top, I’m really not worrying about my problems. And so far, there’s still food on the table.

Here’s another often overlooked time management help. Applying it should allow a good number of us to get more peaceful sleep than we’ve had in years. Thanks to Sonia Simone at Remarkable Communication for sharing this crucial step in getting things done: Get very clear about what you want, then be completely honest - no lies or excuses - about where you are now, with respect to that goal.

Why do we need this? One reason is, it’s so deceptively easy to rationalize, to excuse our way into procrastination. So easy to pile problems on ourselves by ignoring this one. How much has this thinking cost us? This one little excuse: “I can do that tomorrow”?

Sonia’s advice after this point is just as important: Don’t beat yourself to a pulp for your lack of progress. It’ll never bring you an inch closer to your goal. Don’t kill your engine just when you need to get moving.

Are you sitting at a hopelessly messy desk? What’s that costing you? In hours? In self-esteem? Hmmm. Better do a little straightening up myself. When you’re in control, de-cluttering takes only minutes a day. But let it go for a few busy days? You’ll have a full-fledged stress-laden mess on your hands.

Here’s a book that’ll have you truly amazed at why you’re messy, no matter who you are: Julia Morgenstern’s Organizing From The Inside Out. What she discovered - and certainly had to apply to herself - will have you transformed. Ridiculously worth the price I paid for it.

Our lives are packed. And figuring out our time is like packing our car for a trip. Fill it with the little fun stuff, and all of a sudden - no room for the big suitcase. But the other way around? You definitely have room for some of the fun stuff.

Decide to make this happen and something special will follow. All of those time management skills, like setting goals, are fun again.

Enjoy this post? Get free updates by email or RSS.

“You win battles by knowing the customer’s timing, and using a time which the customer does not expect.”

…What the great swordsman Miyamoto Musashi would have said if he was an internet marketer instead of a ninja.

Jeff Walker would probably say something like this too. He gives away a ton of free info in the video introducing his new Product Launch Formula version 2.x. (The ‘x’ stands for whatever bonus package you get.) The link might disappear, but right now, Brian Clark over at Copyblogger has Jeff’s link for the video you can see for free.

(No, I’m not Jeff’s or Brian’s affiliate.) I was simply impressed with the ideas. And the timing.

You see, Americans don’t spend their tax refunds when they come in the mail, do they? You know most refund checks get spent as soon as people know they’ve got one. Do you think it’s coincidence Jeff wants to get you excited about his product before April 15th?

He’ll want you to plop your tax refund on his product as soon as the green hits your hands. Not a bad strategy. In fact, if Affiliate Confession and their commenters are right, April 15th might be the one time this year when you have money. Hope they’re wrong.

Jeff’s video is somewhat lengthy. True, his earnings story made a good point: New technology and methods can make your next launch give you ten times the profit. I thought this how-much-money-I-made section went on a bit, though. (Seems like it’s tough for any internet marketer not to go on about this topic.)

What really caught my attention was about two-thirds into the video. Jeff asked the audience: Do you actually read every word of those sales letters that scroll on forever? Of course not. You read a little at the top. Then you skim to the bottom and find out how much it costs. He pointed out how this kind of sales letter just doesn’t seem to work anymore.

Instead, why not turn the sales letter on its side? Turn it into a timeline. Skip all the lengthy sales verbiage. The formula goes something like this:

• * Make your headline an announcement: you’re giving away something, maybe a video for free
• * Give the public free information they want - how to play guitar, for example
• * Give your friends/business partners the “full” program (there’s even a process for selecting the right friends here)
• * Work for the success of your friends
• * Collect rave reviews
• * Publish your glowing testimonials for the world to see
• * Watch people start buzzing about your free product - your full program isn’t for sale yet
• * Start asking your excited prospects exactly what they want in a product (clear away future objections too)
• * Finish creating your full product
• * Plan a launch date - a date when you give all your raving fans a limited time to buy your product
• * Keep momentum going with memberships and more product launches

Jeff links powerful human persuasion triggers within these steps. Can you spot them?

• * Social proof
• * Liking
• * Commitment
• * Consistency
• * Authority
• * Scarcity
• * Reciprocity

A Google search connected these to Robert Cialdini’s studies on persuasion. Wikipedia summarizes these nicely.

Googling “product launch formula” revealed more juicy tidbits. Testing made Jeff’s landing pages super simple: a video and a big red arrow drawing your eye to some short prompt text and a box/button for your email. Aside from those tiny links at the bottom, this is everything that’s on the page. Instead of just the typical few, more than half of the people who saw this page responded.

I can certainly vouch for this idea. It flat out worked for me back in the good ol’ days of pay-per-click and mortgage leads. Sites didn’t have video back then, so I had a smidge more text. Yet month after month, 60% (out of 150,000 people) filled out my form.

At least you can’t blame me for the dancing mortgage guy. Irritainment isn’t my style.

My summary here is super, super simplified. Yet these are extremely powerful ideas. The video introduces a guy who’s made a killing simply applying tips from Jeff’s free stuff.

Anyway, I was really impressed with Jeff’s ideas…and his timing. Speaking of timing, ditto to John P’s comments about the new Star Trek movie. So glad it’s coming in May instead of December. I wonder if Hollywood knows something about the economy we don’t…

Enjoy this post? Get free updates by email or RSS.

Ads or no ads on your new blog? Does it matter? Maybe it’s just me, but it seems few have written about this since 2007.

Aaron Wall of SEOBook said this about monetizing your site: “Many sites fail because they fill their site with ads before they get a loyal following.”

Notice he said “fill their site”? What about one or a few AdSense ads over at the side, away from your content? Do people really get that mad and go away? Or do ads make people trust you less?

Another writer says “Don’t monetize your blog with any kind of networks or affiliate programs from the start.

AskShane.org is not in favor of monetizing from the start either. He quotes Aaron Wall as saying “don’t monetize your site until you hit 1,000 visitors/day.”

Aaron himself explains on SEOBook.com that it’s easier to get links for a non-commercial site. ‘Put the ads in later when you get the links,’ he advises. If you don’t stray from your site’s original purpose, “most of the links will likely stay.”

Wow. It’s 2009, so I doubt if people will book a cruise on the AdSense profits they haven’t made yet. Yet should blogging just be a hobby if we can’t work on it full time?

One thing’s for sure: people hate to be sold. It’s true, indirect selling works much better. In fact, here’s some great insight on how to sell anything.

Want even more ideas? Here’s 101 ways to monetize your blog without irritating your readers.

I’m going to do some testing on this here. For now, the AdSense ads are gone. Let me know what you think.

Enjoy this post? Get free updates by email or RSS.