So it surprised the hell out of me when we went to look at some copy on one of his sites.  He said something to the effect of, “Dude, the copy’s not working.”

Okay, easy enough to fix.  Let’s look at your metrics.  ”My what?”

What’s your conversion rate?

“Not quite 3%!”

With short copy, that’s pretty good.  Okay, let’s look at your traffic sources.  Where do your prospects come from?

“I don’t know.”

Uh… well, how many unique visitors are you getting per day?

“I don’t know.”

What is your customer acquisition cost?

“Can’t you just go and look at my web logs and Google stuff and tell me?”

Sure, if you want to hire me for analytics, reporting, and testing.  At this point, I had no choice but to give him some tough love:

If you don’t know your numbers, you’re not in business.  You have no idea what is working and what is not, nor can you prove it.  Chances are, you are not maximizing your advertising, because you don’t know where it’s effective, and where you are just throwing it out the window.  Nor can you prove that the copy is great, it sucks, or it’s barely adequate, unless you split-test and measure the results.

And those are just the basics.

Haven’t heard from him since.  Too bad.  I hate to see wasted opportunity.

Wanna hear something even more scary?  I discussed this with a few copywriters, and was astonished at the conversation.  There are some copywriters who don’t even know that “something like metrics” even exist.  All they want to do is write copy.  They’ve never even heard of anything like a “customer acquisition cost,” let alone show their clients how to slash it to a level where they’ll kill their competition.

They wouldn’t know junk traffic from revenue generating traffic – nor have they ever heard of taguchi or multivariate testing.

Even Al Capone kept track of his numbers.  He used them to grow one of the biggest enterprises of the day in his field.   And sure enough, what was it that brought him down?

Not reporting.

-Kevin Dawson

I thank the Lord daily for how busy I’ve been…

…but that doesn’t mean I’ve been untouched by these tough times.

Product launches, my second specialty, are down in revenues.  Marketers are having to work a lot harder for less in the way of results.  For the first time, I’ve had to write 40 emails in a launch, just to get the same response I’d normally get with 15.

But another problem (one I should have seen, in retrospect) is that of client and customer rip-offs.

Now, client rip-offs are mostly the fault of the copywriter.  And it comes from not getting the entire fee up-front. Here’s and example:

I wrote a sales letter, squeeze page, and autoresponders for a Forex clown who claimed to be a Christian, and a man of God.   So I let him “owe me” a few hundred on a sales letter, because he said he was tapped, and was dead broke until he launched.

Never heard from him.  Then I saw him launch through an affiliate program, and he ignored my emails.  Then I sent him one saying my network was far superior to the smaller one he signed up with…

THAT got his attention.  He wrote back immediately, promising 30% to anyone I could get to sign on.

Sure.  30% wouldn’t get my dog’s interest…

…but it shows you his greed, and lack of sophistication.

Plus, I never promised to hook him up with my network…. I just told him he would have done better going with it.  He mistook it for an offer, which explains why he finally responded.  (With a laughable affiliate offer, at that.)

And he refused to pay the balance on the sales letter.

Another copywriter I know blogged about a client who, instead of paying him his balance owing, had the court serve him a bankruptcy notice.  I’ve heard it’s pretty easy to claim bankruptcy on a business entity after you’ve drained all the profits from it… I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know for sure.  But it sounds like a dirty trick to me.

I also hear from clients that returns are through the roof.  One huge marketer (not a client) recently revealed after a mega-launch, the returns were 30 freakin’ percent!  (I’m beginning to think that 30% is a bad number…)

So keep an eye out for these things and others during these hard times.  Forge alliances.  Make friends with those whom you trust in business.  Create or join a mastermind goup.  Realize you may have to work harder for the same – or even less – money.

And know that this, too, shall pass.

-Kevin Dawson

Just now, I get an email from a well-known Internet Marketer.  Skim it and decide his message is interesting enough for me to find out about more about his offer…

I get to the long copy sales page and start reading the headline, but in less than 10 seconds – the screen darkens and a box slides down from the top telling me to give him my first name and primary email address & he’ll send me an “oh so special” eBook absolutely free.

What’s going on?  He was talking to me about something completely different!

Does this IM master not realize that he just blasted me with a commercial inside a commercial?

He has just asked me to decide which pitch to allow.

Do I want to invest in continuing to read his sales copy knowing that it may or may not be worth my time, but I will definitely be asked to hand over cash in the end – or should I just give him my name and email addy and get my hands on this eBook.  Try a free sample of what he offers to see if what he hands out is even worth my time, let alone my $.

Not to mention the fact that he barely gave me enough time to get sucked in by the first headline and he switches channels on me – who cares if he does own both stations?

I was so bothered, I just closed out of everything and went back to reading emails.

For anyone who doesn’t have a clear understanding of what I mean, think about this…

Your sales page is the Internet’s equivalent of your face-to-face close.  It has to cover all the elements a good in-person close will cover (and then some).

Now imagine you’re pitching in person and, just after you open, a stranger drops down from the sky, puts their hand over your mouth and starts selling your prospects on something completely different.

That is exactly what happens when you try to sell one person on two different outcomes.  Sure, you’ll still have conversions, but certainly less that you would if you closed them without distractions and multiple goals.  And I’m not talking about upsells or add-ons.

So, to that Internet Marketer, I say, “Stop it! Stop trying to make a sale and build a list all at once.  If your sales page and product are great quality, you’ll capture people’s names when they buy.

Set-up a separate funnel for list building or that other product.  Just be grateful you have my attention to listen to one!

OK, and now we return to our regularly scheduled program!

But the Universe, my clients, and my publisher have been very, very good to me.

I’ve had more work then I can handle.  I’m not bragging – I’m forever grateful and humbled for everything that is coming my way!

Not only have I been swamped, but I’ve been swamped with amazing clients.  The cream of the crop!  Quality people, quality offerings, quality missions.  I recently dubbed myself “Copywriter to the Sexy and Profitable Stars“.  They like it, I like it.  Who’s going to argue?! Ha!

But enough of that – you aren’t here to read about my life, you want to know what I can do for you.

And I respect that…

First off, repeat after me. “There is no recession in my World.”  Repeat it again and again and again.  Repeat it until you believe it!

Because if you don’t, you’re screwed.  Seriously – SCREWED! (And I’m not talking about the fun way either!)

So, now you’re saying to me, “But you don’t know my situation.  I’ve got <blah> <blah> <blah>…” Fill in the blahs with whatever “poor me”-type sob story you want.

If that is what you are saying, then quite frankly, YOU ARE RIGHT!  Pack it up and call it a day because you have just given your power over to someone or something else.  And reading this is a waste of time.

But, you can choose to believe that there really is no recession.  Think about it.  There is no less $ in the world.

As Stuart Wilde says money is energy.  It doesn’t leave the atmosphere. It merely flows somewhere else.  So, if money isn’t flowing to you, go to where the money is flowing.  Change your mindset, change your business model, change your business.

Here’s an interesting business model to study.  This woman has become wildly successful and I only heard about her today.

Here’s her website http://www.flylady.net/index.asp

Her name is Marla Cilley and she is known as the FLYLady.  FLY stands for Finally Loving Yourself.

Her store sells her books and cleaning equipment.  (Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?) <grin>

Here’s one of her videos:

Go Shine Your Sink

Now, I get it, but I’m not jumping out of my chair to buy something.

So why am I telling you to model her?

She has a little list.  Well, it isn’t a traditional aweber thing.  She built her list in Yahoo Groups.

Yahoo just recognized her because her little list just logged its 500,000 subscriber.

So, let’s see – no aweber, site ends in .net, sells books and cleaning equipment AND has been able to build a 500K name list of rabid fans .  Hmmm?

So, what are you waiting for?

Definitely no recession in her World.  And I hope there isn’t one in your World either.

xoxo

Google “omerta,” and you’ll understand everything.

But let me tell you, he’s one smart copywriter, and when he does something like this, it makes everyone sit up and take notice.  To see more of what this is about, check out his site here.  And go ahead and ask him about his wild-a** November Challenge.

I’ll tell you this much: you won’t be disappointed.

-Kevin Dawson