Is it really possible to become a world class copywriter in just 30-days? One of the most famous letters in the illustrious Gary Halbert Letter is titled “Hands on Experience.” Gary goes over, in extreme detail, the process he would use learn copywriting, as if he was starting again from scratch. His most mysterious instructions are as follows: I want you to get a copy of the following ads and direct mail letters: “Do You Make These Mistakes In English?” “What Everybody Should Know About This Stock And Bond Business” “The Nancy L. Halbert Heraldry Letter” “How To Burn Off Body Fat, Hour-By-Hour” “At 60 Miles An Hour The Loudest Noise In This Rolls Royce Is The Ticking Of The Electric Clock” “Why Men Crack” “How To Collect From Social Security At Any Age” “The Admiral Byrd Transpolar Expedition Letter” “The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches” Now that you’ve obtained copies of these ads and letters, I want you to sit down and copy them out word-for-word in your own handwriting. Now if you’re like me, you’ve read this probably a zillion times over, wondering the whole time: “Thanks Gary, but where the heck do I find all these ads in the first place?” So I’ve spent countless hours online trying to track each of these down for my swipe file. And to save you the trouble, I’m listing all of them right here. With one exception, each of the ads will open as either a JPG or PDF file: “Do You Make These Mistakes In English?” “What Everybody Should Know About This Stock And Bond Business” “The Nancy L. Halbert Heraldry Letter” “How To Burn Off Body Fat, Hour-By-Hour” “At 60 Miles An Hour The Loudest Noise In This Rolls Royce Is The Ticking Of The Electric Clock” “Why Men Crack” “How To Collect From Social Security At Any Age” “The Admiral Byrd Transpolar Expedition Letter” “The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches” And here are 9 bonus ads for your swipe file: The “Billion Dollar Salesletter” for Wall Street Journal Gary Halbert’s “Tova” ad Halbert’s “Amazing Diet Secrets of a Desperate Housewife” Space ad by Eugene Schwartz Vic Schwab’s ad for “How to Win Friends & Influence People” “Astrology Today” ad by Ben Suarez David Ogilvy’s “How to Create Advertising that Sells” Gary Bencivenga’s “Lies, Lies, Lies” promo “Mercades Diesel” salesletter by Ed McLean In addition to above, here are more (free) educational resources to help you with your copywriting career: Gary Bencivenga Gary Halbert Clayton Makepeace Ryan Healy Bob Bly Ben Settle Ken McCarthy Info Marketing Blog Marketing & copywriting book reviews David Ogilvy’s famous speech about direct response: “We Sell or Else” Fantastic interview with David Ogilvy from 1977 Lastly, on the issue of finding your first clients…I’ve found the resource below to be extremely helpful in my copywriting career: How To Get Your First Copywriting Client in 14 Days or Less If you found any of this helpful, please drop me a line by sending me a quick email. P.S. If you’d like to learn even more about how to write copy that sells, I recommend you join the private Copywriting Code membership site. It’s packed with valuable copywriting lessons, and more are being added all the time. Click here to check it out. Related posts: Top 5 Issues of The Gary Halbert Letter Your Favorite Sales Letters of All Time? 7 More Ways To Get (and Keep!) Your Prospect’s Attention in Your Lead Who to Read, Who to Study… Two Killer Opening Lines for Your Next Sales Letter or Ad The Ryan McGrath Click her to the get the reset of the Article
Twitter is laying out plans to make money from the millions of people who see tweets all over the Web but don’t actually use Twitter. The social media company is planning to sell ads within streams of tweets on other publishers’ apps and websites, people familiar with the matter said. Twitter laid out its initiative to media buyers in a presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the people said. It isn’t clear which publishers are on board. The presentation at CES made references to ESPN’s SportsCenter app and Flipboard. ESPN and Twitter have had talks about the idea, but so far haven’t finalized a deal, one person familiar with the situation said. Executives from Flipboard could not be reached for comment. Twitter would share the revenue from the ads with the publisher, the people familiar with the matter said. A Twitter spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Click here to read the full article
The idea has been gaining traction for months as some early adapting publishers have touted audience engagement as a powerful tool for selling ads. Recent developments — including advertisers’ growing disdain for banner ads that are never seen or clicked on — suggest the idea may be catching on at an accelerating pace. Last month, Google issued a report that said 56% of ads it serves aren’t “viewable,” a term that suggests ads are too far down on the site or that readers aren’t scrolling down far enough. The result reinforced the notion that display ads are deeply flawed, says Jonah Goodhart, CEO of ad tech firm Moat. (USA TODAY is a client of Moat.) “Advertisers want the time and attention of the right audience to get the right message across,” says Tony Haile, CEO of web traction research firm Chartbeat, who’s been one of the loudest proponents of the quality-over-quantity approach. “To date, they’ve been given proxies like page views and click-through rates. We should value and deliver exactly what they want: (readers’) time and attention.” SEEKING SUPER JOURNALISTS This month, Gawker– known for aggregating and respinning highly viral stories with its own sharp voice – told readers its front page will be updated less often to give selected stories longer shelf life on its most prominent piece of real estate. Borrowing a retro play from newspapers, Gawker said its main page will be used more like a front page, displaying what its editors consider to be the best reported or simply most engaging stories — the ones often lost in the shuffle because of a constant flow of new posts. In the new arrangement, the highlighted front-page stories will be accompanied by larger images and headlines. Other stories will be placed on “sub-blogs” that pertain to the story topic – a tech story on Valleywag.com, for example. “Traffic will take a hit,” Gawker editor in chief Max Read says. “Page views is one measure, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.” Click Here to read the rest of the story
Paper bags are one of the most utilitarian items in our culture. They house lunches, groceries, and the goodies we purchase at retail stores. Before there were paper bags (or sacks if you live in the mid-west), one either brought their own container, usually a basket, or a shop owner rolled and glued some paper, known as a cornucopia, to hold one’s purchase.
Direct Mail v. Email: No Contest! By Nancy Scott on April 4th, 2013 A few weeks ago, a direct marketer asked me about the value of direct mail versus email. We often address “ROI” issues like these in Marketing AdVents, the monthly newsletter of the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DC), of which I am editor. The answer is, of course, “Let’s find out.”
Fake Antivirus Ringleader Must Pay $163 Million Acting on a Federal Trade Commission complaint, a federal court has imposed a $163 million judgment on a woman who allegedly helped run a scareware ring that tricked over one million consumers across six countries into purchasing fake security software.
128,000 Dominoes – Falling into past – a journey around the world (2 Guinness World Records) Sometimes we look at a project and wonder if it can ever be completed on time and within budget. This video is a great example that anything can be done with a great team effort.
History of Taiyo Yuden CD-R Taiyo Yuden invented the CD-R, along with Philips and Sony, on June 13th, 1988. At the time, Taiyo Yuden was the only manufacturer of CD-R media in the world, supplying media to many well-known CD-R distributors. The CD-R was not given the boost it needed until 1992. In that year, CD-ROM drives were introduced into the computer market. At that point, the CD-R market changed from mainly audio applications, to the data market, which because of its quick market expansion gave the CD-R notoriety and market success. As time passed, many Taiwanese manufacturers started to release their own CD-R media, thus resulting in a decrease in prices that continues today. With the market changing rapidly every day, Taiyo Yuden has managed to keep quality their number one issue. Because of this, they continue to be one of the best quality CD-R products in the market today. Who are the manufacturers of CD-R media? Taiyo Yuden is the inventor of CD-R technology and is credited with making the first green CD-Rs. Other manufacturers that have gotten into the CD-R game include TDK, Richo, and Kodak, and Mitsui. Mitsui made the first gold CD-Rs, while Verbatium made the first silver/blue CD-Rs. Most brands that you see in the marketplace are just name brands that are manufactured by someone else, probably one of the 5 on this list.
The physics world was abuzz Monday with early reports that the elusive “God particle” had been detected at Europe’s premier physics lab. Scientists working at the The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest atom smasher, may have discovered the existence of “The God Particle.” Discovering the particle, formally called the Higgs boson, would finalize physicists’ understanding of how subatomic particles have mass, which gives an object weight. Two international physics teams at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in Geneva will present their results Wednesday. Their data should reveal a definitive signature that the particle exists as seen in the atom-smasher experiments at CERN. Physicists have been pursuing the Higgs boson for three decades to understand how particles create forces, such as electromagnetism. To physicists, mass isn’t what we carry around on our waists, but the amount of resistance that matter produces as it’s being moved, or inertia. In theory, the God particle, a term coined by physicist Leon Lederman to capture its elusiveness, interacts with the other particles to give them inertia. CERN researchers reported in December they were close to discovering the particle, but the new results are built on twice as much data. Ahead of the expected announcement, the journal Nature reported “pure elation” Monday among physicists searching for the Higgs boson. One team saw only “a 0.00006% chance of being wrong,” the journal said. Officially, the lab is mum about the results until Wednesday. CERN technology official Steve Myers reported only that data collection for the experiments ended last month. “We don’t actually know the answer yet. We are still doing the calculations,” said physicist Paul Padley of Rice University in Houston, who is on one of the physics teams presenting the findings. “It’s endless fun for us to read all these news reports about the results, before we even have finished the calculations,” he said. Martial Trezzini, AP
NEW YORK – That coffee you’re drinking while gazing at your iPad? It cost more than all the electricity needed to run those games, emails, videos and news stories for a year. The annual cost to charge an iPad is just $1.36, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit research and development group funded by electric utilities.