It’s Brian Clark’s own story which talks about the circumstances behind how he came to set up Copyblogger.  If you’re not doing what you really want to do, I seriously recommend you read this post - it will be a wake up call, I promise!

I totally recommend it to anyone who’s not doing what they really want to do.

http://www.copyblogger.com/the-secret-of-life/

Here are some ways to improve the quality of the copy on your site:

Features and Benefits

I’ve seen countless articles where you’re told to write in terms of benefits, not features. Actually, you need both and here’s how to distinguish between them:

A feature is something your product or service is, has or does

A benefit is something your product or service does for others.

An example of a feature statement would be:

“This car has 4 doors”. (A feature is something your product is, has or does)

An example of a benefit statement based on that feature would be:

“That will enable you to put your heavy shopping on the rear seat without risking injury to your back”. (Something your 4-door car does for others).

There are two ways that I use to see whether a statement is a feature or a benefit. The first is to ask the question ‘so what?’ after the statement. So in the example above:

“This car has 4 doors”. “So what..?”.

The second is to use the bridging statement: ‘and the benefit to you is …’.

If you can answer the ‘so what’ question, or complete the bridging statement, your answer will be a benefit relating to that feature.

And remember – a feature can have many benefits.

You can also use features to provide proof of the benefits you’re promising your product will deliver. To use the same example:

“You won’t risk injuring your back with this car.”. (Benefit statement because it’s something your car is going to do for you). The sceptic may ask why, or look for proof.

Your answer is: “because it has 4 doors, so you can put your heavy shopping on the rear seat easily”. (Note that’s both a feature statement and a second benefit statement)

So – don’t slavishly write only in terms of benefits.

Use benefits to make a feature of your product or service meaningful to your prospects, and use features to provide proof to your prospects that they’ll get the benefit you’ve promised them.

Bite-Sized pieces

The principle of breaking large and complex tasks down into small pieces to make them easier to accomplish applies equally to reading.

If you’re faced with a page of solid text to read, with no paragraphs, you feel daunted. It whacks you in the eyes and makes you feel tired before you even begin.

But if you see a page that’s broken down into short sentences and paragraphs, with lots of white space, it’s easier on the eyes and not nearly so intimidating.

So keep things as short and simple as possible. No more than 2 verbs in a sentence, and no more than 3 sentences to a paragraph.

Bullets are also a great way to get a lot of information across quickly – and they’re easy on the eye because they break the text into manageable chunks.

Write the same way as you speak

At school I was taught never to start a sentence with a conjunction – ‘and’, or ‘but’ for example. But most people do that when talking – so it’s OK to do the same in your web writing.

It’s a great way to put emphasis on something – just as you do when you’re talking.

One of the best ways I know how to make your writing sound like the way you talk is to read your article out loud to yourself. Every time you come to something that sounds unnatural think how you’d normally say it, and then re-write it.

Hop, Skip and Jump

Most people don’t read every word on the page, and they miss even more when they’re reading on the screen. People prefer to scan the page to try to pick up the relevant points, often just in order to decide whether to stay on the page or not.

So help them.

Use Bolding and Sub-Headings to draw people’s attention to the main points you want to get across.

I aim to make it possible for people to get the basic message just by reading the bold words and sub-headings.

I don’t always succeed, but by doing that I enable people to get the relevant information as quickly as possible, which may make the difference between them deciding to focus some attention on my page or not.

And that may make the difference between a sale and a bounce.

Spelling and grammar errors

Nothing turns me off more than blatant spelling errors. They distract me from the message and, if that’s a sales message, you just lost a sale!

And there’s no excuse for spelling errors. Not only do all PC based word processors have spell checkers, but most web-based writing applications do now as well.

Because the web is global you’ll always come across regional variations in spelling – UK English and US English, for example. Everyone accepts these – but make sure you’re consistent.

If you want to use UK English make sure you set the spell check for the entire document to UK English – and it’s worth checking because Microsoft will quite happily switch you back to US English at the drop of a hat, given half a chance!

Reading a well-laid-out, easy-on-the-eye, spelling-error-free article is a pleasure. And if I’m happy and relaxed I’m much more open to whatever the writer might be selling, whether it’s an opt in or a product.

But if I’m irritated, annoyed or put off because of bad spelling or visually daunting text I’ll more than likely just click away to something more appealing.

What techniques do you use to keep people on your page..? Leave a comment and let us know!

George W Bush doesn’t believe one’s coming, while John Williams believes a Great Depression is coming. Others think we’re already in recession and still others are saying it will be 2011 before we see a return to real growth.

The net result was more uncertainty, wild swings in the Stock Markets and stories about consumer confidence being lower than it’s been for the last 16 years. Pretty much all doom and gloom.

But I’m of the view that every situation provides an opportunity and, while it’s certainly nicer to be in a boom time, recessions provide opportunities too.

The problem with recessions is that many people begin to feel insecure about their jobs and income. And this time round, with the levels of personal debt at all time highs combined with the falls in home equity values, feelings of insecurity are likely to be stronger than usual.

That usually sends people into ‘survival’ mode and that, often, is the worst mode to be in.

So how can we prepare ourselves for a recession?

Make ourselves independent of our employers by developing, improving or reviving some personal skill that we can sell to others.

We all have some personal knowledge or experience that would be useful to others. Even if we’ve been employed in the corporate world all our working lives, we will have developed knowledge and expertise that we can provide to others on a consultancy or freelance basis.

Some examples:

• If we’ve been an administrative assistant we could use our MS Office skills to offer copy-typing or Resume production services to others on a freelance basis. In fact any kind of document production service, but resumes are usually in demand during recessional times.
• If we’ve been in marketing or sales we can offer our services to small businesses on a commission only basis. This gives us the opportunity to provide marketing or sales services for 2 or 3 different businesses at the same time, if necessary.
• If we’ve been working in IT or on maintaining the company website we could offer website design services to small off line businesses. I wrote a separate article on this subject a while ago.

The trick is to identify what services you could provide to others. And if you can’t identify any then you should take the opportunity now, before hard times hit, to develop some skills and knowledge that you could provide professionally.

Mike Dillard has just launched a website about how to build a business on a budget. One of his key messages is that if you have a limited budget then spend it on something that gives you leverage. Like acquiring knowledge.

Once you have knowledge no one can take it away from you. It’s your knowledge and you can use it in the best way you know how to benefit you and your business.

There are other advantages to acquiring new knowledge too.

I said above that you should make yourself independent of your employer. That does not mean or imply that you should leave your employer. It means putting yourself into a position so that if your employer downsizes you you’re not left without options.

If you acquire extra knowledge it may be useful to your employer – which would make you more valuable to them and increase your chances of avoiding the downsizing. And you’ll always have the opportunity of turning that into a business of your own if you choose.

So what skills do you have and what skills do you need in order to sell your services as a freelance or contractor..?

• If you have good technical skills you may need to check out a marketing and selling course so you can sell yourself and your offering more effectively.
• You may need to study some books on consultancy so you’re better prepared for writing proposals and reports.
• You may need to identify a potential business partner whose skills complement yours. For example – I’m teaming up with someone who has much stronger technical skills than I do. But the balance of his technical skills and my marketing and writing skills enables the two of us to provide a very rounded offer.

Identify the skills you have and identify the skills you would need in order to provide services on a freelance basis and make sure you’re fully prepared.

So – how to prepare for a recession?

1. Identify the particular skills or experience you have that you could provide to others on a freelance basis.
2. Identify who would want to use the skills you have – and how to let them know about the services you can provide.
3. Identify your strengths and weaknesses. Do what you need to do to strengthen your weak areas.
4. If necessary, identify who you could team up with to make your offering stronger – someone whose strengths complement yours. Be sure to work out a very clear agreement as to how you’ll work together in order to avoid disputes later.
5. Put together a plan that you can implement quickly in the event you’re laid off.

If you do go independent you’ll need to report any income you earn from your independent work to the tax authorities – so be sure to keep records of your income and expenses right from the start, because trying to pull them together later will be a long and thankless task.

And if you don’t go independent you’ll have made yourself even more valuable to your employer – which will be to your benefit too.

Who knows - this recession could be the best thing that happened to you!

How are you preparing for the recession..? Leave a comment and let us know..!

That was an important post for me personally because I had gone through the roller coaster of emotions that we all do when starting out on a new venture, and I’d nearly walked away from it.

Thankfully I didn’t. But that close brush with becoming one of the 95% of Internet business start-ups that fail made me consider how I could offer support to others in the same position.

In other posts I’ve made suggestions on how to deal with the negative effects of over-hyped claims, and steps to make sure your business is properly set up.

Today I’m going to focus on a couple of things that I’ve personally done that are starting to get me some traction. This is not to say that I’m hugely successful. I’m not. Yet. But things are beginning to go my way.

These are things that, in addition to the content of my other posts, I hope will provide some support to people who are in the down period – when you’ve discovered that you don’t just put up a site and make millions.

Here we go:

Listen to your gut feel.

One of the things that attracted me to the business I joined was the promise of a pre-written email sequence to follow up with my opt-ins. In order to understand what people who opted in to my site were experiencing I opted in to my own site. And I was thoroughly dismayed.

The emails that came out were the epitome of ‘interruption marketing’ (hat tip to Seth Godin). They were full of SCREAMING and orders to DO THIS RIGHT NOW.

Most people who received those emails didn’t much like them, so they hit the ‘Spam’ button pretty regularly. As a result, the delivery rate, which was low a year ago, became so low that by this year it was zero. And the pre-written emails were scrapped.

Luckily (and much to the disapproval of my sponsor at the time) I set up my own lead capture page, edited and wrote my own follow up emails, set up my own Aweber account and kept my optins well away from the ‘official’ email sequence. And my delivery rate has been consistently over 98%.

This is not intended as a brag. My point is this: there was a lot of pressure for me to use the ‘company’ system, and that would have been the easy option. But I was very uncomfortable at the thought of emails like that going out in my name, and using my email address as the ‘reply to’ address. So I did my own thing – as much to protect my reputation as anything.

It’s not easy to do your own thing when you’re new in a business and your sponsor is encouraging you in the direction of the company system.

But, when your gut feel tells you otherwise, you should listen very carefully. And, as long as you’re not breaking the terms of your affiliate agreement, following your gut feel is usually not going to take you too far wrong.

Use your own personal experiences (and what you’ve learnt) for the benefit of others.

When I first set up this blog I thought that it had to be a marketing channel for my business. I was still finding my feet in the business and most of the benefits that I wrote about were simply re-stated from the company conference calls, emails and website. (If you check back on some of my posts from early last year you’ll see what I mean)

Nothing I wrote at that time described my own experience. And when I read those early posts now I am, frankly, embarrassed.

Some months back I slowly came to realise that this blog could be turned into a resource for other people who were dealing with the same struggles that I was. Including people in my down-line.

So I stopped writing about my businesses and started writing about my own personal experiences. The difficulties and successes I’d had and how I’d dealt with them.

Since then, my readership has gone up steadily and I actually enjoy writing my weekly post now – whereas before it was one of those tasks that loomed over me.

If you write about your own personal experiences it’s much easier to draw people into your circle because, strange as it may seem, people can ‘hear’ that what you’re writing is real.

And once you begin to build a relationship with people it’s seriously easier to persuade them to buy whatever it is you’re selling! (Seth Godin again: Permission Marketing)

So – two things that have helped to get things going my way: listening to my gut feel and using my experiences to offer support to others.

What about you..? What were some of the things that you did that started to move things your way? Leave a comment to let us know what the turning point was in your IM business.

So how did I deal with that?

The first, and unquestionably the most important, step goes back to your own mindset.

If you’re really in this business for the long haul, if failure is not an option for you, then this mindset will give you the soundest base possible for dealing with this.

This is an absolute requirement. Without a mindset like this you will, sooner or later, pull out.

So, with that as my foundation, the next step, for me, was to start picking out the facts. You have to be brutally honest with yourself here because this can very easily be confused with looking for excuses. For your own sake be brutally honest.

Here are some examples that I’ve been through where the facts explained some of the success that was being trumpeted and where the hype was exposed for exactly that. Once you get to grips with this in your own business you’ll find it much easier to deal with those ‘motivational’ emails and calls.

If you can do that, and stick with it, ultimately you will be successful.

I joined a new business about a year ago. All the hype at the time was how this person made $52K in their first month and how that person earned $10K a week.

Six weeks into the business I had made $0.

Still the emails kept coming, previewing calls where these mega earners, who had earned more in a month than they had in a year before joining this business, would be spilling their secrets etc, etc.

By this time I was feeling totally inadequate and ready to quit. I felt that I’d been misled, conned, scammed – all the angry emotions that people go through.

Then, as I began talking to people in the business I came to understand why this person had made $52K in their first month or $10K in a week.

They had done it all before.

They had been in previous MLM or network marketing businesses, had a list of thousands of people who were interested in that type of business and had simply brought them across.

This could not have been more different from my situation – but it was never loudly proclaimed. Or even proclaimed at all.

I was new to this type of business. I had no pre-existing down-line I could bring across. No wonder these people were pulling in the big bucks while I was making nothing.

These were not excuses – they were (and are) the facts. And as soon as I understood them I began to understand what I had to do.

I also realised that these ‘success models’ had started where I was. And that, in one case, it had taken them the best part of 20 years to develop a Rolodex that was big enough to pull in commissions of that order in the first month or so of a new business.

I also, quite by accident, discovered that these ‘motivational’ emails are not always to be taken at face value. I received one such email that talked about how ‘independent, 3rd party sources’ had reviewed the business and found it to be the best business around, etc, etc. When I checked out the ‘source’ I found it to be an affiliate – very far indeed from being an independent source!

Far from being disheartened, grasping these realities turned me away from quitting. They motivated me far more than all the hype. I began to look at my own business practices and to measure myself against my own yardstick. I started setting short-term goals, and as long as I could see I was improving month-by-month, I was OK with things.

And improving didn’t just mean making more money each month. Although I’m making money now, and I’m qualified in the business, I’ve not earned more money each month. Some months it’s less. Last month it was $0 again.

Improving means I know more this month than I did last month. I’m better at something now than I was last month. I can do things now that I couldn’t do last month. My knowledge of this business and what it takes to be successful is better now than it was last month.

I set myself targets to learn new things. To test new marketing techniques. To adopt new strategies.

These are not huge steps. They’re small steps. But as long as I’m making progress that I can measure, and as long as I keep on making that progress, I know I’ll get there in the end.

For me, failure is not an option. That mindset helps me to be dispassionate, objective and honest when I review my progress.

You have to be honest with yourself. If you’re not being honest with yourself then you will, eventually, pull out. And all your investment of money and time will have been wasted. Better, in that case, to pull out now and cut your losses.

Let me have your thoughts – do the hyped up emails turn you on or turn you off..? And how do you deal with them..?

I wasn’t surprised at his answer – but it was nice to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.

This goes back to my post last week relating to expectations. The wrong expectations will destroy persistence. (In addition to all the other bad stuff I mentioned)

I read another excellent post on the same subject today. Dean Hunt makes the comparison of starting a business online with climbing the corporate ladder – and very true it is too.

Here’s my take on this:

If you don’t have a clearly defined vision for what you want to achieve with your online business you’re dead in the water. Don’t even start out.

A clearly defined vision (some call it your Why? – the reason why you’re doing this) does a few things for you:

1. It motivates you. (Or it should – if it doesn’t, re-visit it)
2. It gives you a point of focus
3. It trains your sub-conscious mind to work towards your vision
4. It gives you a purpose

Without these things you won’t be able to make a sound business plan. If you don’t have a sound business plan you’ll have nothing to guide you when things don’t go to plan – as they inevitably won’t.

Creating a sound business plan forces you to think things through thoroughly. To consider alternatives and to have some options when things go wrong – a plan B.

If you treat your online business like a serious business it will become that – and no serious business ever became serious without a lot of work.

And if you treat your online business like a hobby – that’s what it will always be. (And most people don’t make a lot of money out of hobbies)

Stay focused on your vision and persist when things don’t go to plan. Don’t stop until you’ve achieved your vision and always remember that it will take time and work.

I know there are many reasons for this, but one of them has to do with expectations.

The newcomer doing their research in preparation for starting their online business is swamped by emails, websites and 101 other channels telling them they can earn $x,000 in their first month, first week – or by this time tomorrow!

I can count on less than the fingers of one hand the number of websites, emails or so-called training programs that tell you it will take time, it will take work, and it will take money to get going.

The reality is that it needs persistence, application, patience, and work. But these aren’t mentioned for obvious reasons: it’s not good sales talk.

Yet this results in hundreds of people launching into their new business with totally the wrong expectations. And because they have the wrong expectations they make the wrong plans, the wrong budgets and, ultimately, the wrong decisions.

The first real business program (G.A.P.) that I became involved with made this error, as a result of which I nearly walked away from it. Fortunately for me I didn’t, because it’s now turning around for me and starting to bring me some reasonable income.

But how many others have been through the same disillusionment with their program and walked..? Thousands would be my bet.

For some reason people who are not already successfully in business on the internet seem to treat the idea of setting up a business online differently than they would if it was off-line. They don’t take it so seriously.

As a result many don’t do business plans. Many put unnecessary pressure on themselves by expecting results in too short a time. Many run out of money before they’re making any money because they didn’t do a business plan and ensure they could fund the launch-and-learning period.

It takes time and experience to learn what works and what doesn’t, and if you don’t give yourself that time you’re doomed to failure.

I’ve put ‘health warnings’ on my sites now, basically telling people that they’re not going to get rich quickly and they’ve got to work if they want to make any money.

Has it affected my opt-ins..? Yes. It’s improved the quality of my leads noticeably.

So here are 6 steps I go through in order to be successful in whatever I’m doing:

1. I have a clear Vision of what I want to achieve. This doesn’t include the ‘How I’ll achieve it’, just the ‘What I will Achieve’. E.g. – I will have a successful online business, making $100,000 clear profit per annum. I’m specific to make it more real.
2. I define clearly WHY I want to achieve this. Maybe it’s so I can spend more time with my family, or give up working for the Man, or to buy that new powerboat. I write down my reason WHY and review it every day. I especially review it when things are not going well. When I visualize my success (step 3), it’s of me enjoying the benefits of my ‘WHY’
3. I visualise my success. I create a clear picture in my mind of me enjoying the successful achievement of my Vision. I make it real, I add colour, detail and emotion. For example, I see myself on my powerboat on a glorious sunny day with my family, knowing that my online business is making sales of my software product even while I’m enjoying my time in the boat. I make sure that when I see this picture in my mind’s eye I feel a surge of motivation!
4. I work out the Major Things I need to do to achieve my vision. Again – not the details, just the major things. For example: a) Develop a downloadable software product, b) set up a website, c) set up an Adwords campaign, etc. Then I take each one in order and get it done!
5. I make sure that I complete at least one thing every day that gets me towards achieving the Major Thing I’m working on. (If you keep moving forwards, one step at a time, you’ll get there!)
6. I write out my current favourite motivational slogan and stick it up where it stares me in the face – maybe on top of my PC screen. My current favourite (and a good one for when things aren’t going so well) is: ‘Failure is NOT an option’.

Mixing the ‘soft’ techniques (e.g. visualization, the reason why) with the ‘hard’ techniques (e.g. Major Things to be done, do one thing every day) works well for me – they’re both equally important elements of success.