As noted in an earlier issue of this newsletter, I believe that
today many people — and in particular, many younger people — are
fascinated with bright, shiny objects (BSOs).

By “BSO,” I mean they embrace the new, trendy, hip, and cool …
and as a corollary, eschew the old, the proven, and the tried and
true.

This favoring of BSOs over tested methods and ideas is true in
many fields, but especially so in marketing.

I contend that doing so is an egregious error.

Why?

Two reasons.

First, to paraphrase George Santayana — “Those who forget the
past, don’t learn from it.”

Or more to the point, as Martin Cohen writes in his book Reason
and Nature:

“The notion that we can dismiss the views of all previous
thinkers surely leaves no basis for the hope that our own work
will prove of any value to others.”

To me this is “axiomatic,” which means it is irrefutable logic
and always true.

Think about it: if you dismiss the views of all who came before
you, then shouldn’t the next generation conclude they can learn
nothing from you?

Second, the problem with BSOs is: they are untested and unproven.

That makes them highly risky and more likely to fail.

By comparison, the tried and true is tested and proven.

That reduces your risk of a big failure … and increases the odds
of success.

How does this translate into direct marketing?

Well, many times I have come up with an initial selling idea for
a product.

When I run it past the client, they say — “That won’t work; we
know because we have tested it many times, and in each test it
always failed.”

A BSO fan would argue:

“Well, just because you guys couldn’t get it to work doesn’t mean
it won’t work now. Get some cojones and try it my way!”

Not me. As an old-school direct response guy, I am grateful the
client knows the idea has been tested and proven ineffective, as
it saves me from writing something that will more than likely
bomb.

I thank them, go back to the drawing board, and brainstorm, both
on my own and often with them, to find a new idea with the
potential to be a winner.

Other old-time direct response copywriters tell me they agree
that the surest and most likely route to a winner is to take what
is tested and proven, dust it off, and give it a new twist.

As my old friend, superstar copywriter Richard Armstrong, wrote
in an article for AWAI:

“I believe there’s a much better word than creativity to describe
what we’re really striving for in this business: Ingenuity.

“What you really want to do is study what’s worked in the past.
Find out what’s working now. And see if you can come up with a
way to do the exact same thing … only better.

“If you do that, I guarantee you catch more customers … and
eventually more clients, too!”

In copywriting, it is rare to find something under the sun that
is entirely new.

More often, winning comes from saying the same old thing, but
saying it in a fresh and compelling new way.

And then test, test, test.

Don’t assume your idea, whether old school or BSO, is the best.

You don’t know. You have to test.

In marketing, as the great Claude Hopkins wrote: The only way to
settle the question of whether an ad will work is with a test,
not with arguments around a table.

And then, once we direct marketers roll it out, while continually
testing to beat our control.

Back in my day, people at Madison Avenue ad agencies hated the
tested direct response control.

They believed in their intuition and subjective judgment of their
peers: If everyone at the agency or my friends in advertising
think my ad is clever, funny, or creative, it must be good!

This in part explains the gross ineffectiveness of so many widely
admired national ad campaigns for major brands produced by the
big ad agencies.

My friend, motivational Rob Gilbert, says the key to success in
virtually every walk of life is:

“Do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t work.”

Pretty simple. Common sense. And good advice.

This happens to me with some regularity:

A person emails to criticize something I have produced — often a
book, ebook, info product, or one of my landing pages or web
sites.

Sometimes they are nice … but more often, a bit snarky.

And wouldn’t you know it, almost all of these emails end the same
way: “Hire ME to fix it for you!”

This doesn’t work, for 3 reasons.

First, you don’t start off any business relationship by insulting
the potential client or customer.

After all, client you are insulting may have done the work you
are saying sucks — not something he is likely to take kindly too.

Second, the person emailing me has only criticized. But they have
not presented a single shred of evidence that they are qualified
to fix it and can improve results.

Third, they think you are unaware of the problem, and that they
are somehow doing you a service by bringing it to your attention.

What they do not realize is: we already know about the problem.

We just haven’t done anything about it either because (a) we
haven’t had time, and it is a relatively low priority or (b) we
don’t agree with them that it is in fact a problem.

And not because we are stupid, lazy, unskilled, or unaware.

For instance, former subscriber (I unsubscribed her) PZ wrote:

“Last week I purchased Writing Brochures for Fun and Profit
ebook. Please issue a credit to my Paypal account.

“I’m more than disappointed, this just feels like a rip-off.

“While some of the ideas are still good, referencing mainframes,
VCRs, and tape reels is not only ridiculous it’s going to send
younger readers to Google.

“Below is a copy of my receipt, and screenshots of a couple of
the most absurd pages.

And of course, PZ moves in for the close:

“If you are interested in having this and other materials
updated, please do get in touch. I do a lot of editing and
updating to repurpose old material.”

I immediately wrote back:

“Why would I want to hire you? I can’t think of a single reason.

“We are going to refund your money, unsubscribe you, and block
you from our shopping cart and our email inbox.

“PZ, you are starving to death with a loaf of bread under each
arm.

“Because what’s important is what you said in your email: the
ideas are still good.

“Do you reject books like Ogilvy on Advertising, Scientific
Advertising, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and the
Bible because they were written years ago?

“If so, how sad for you. For you are the one missing out. That I
didn’t update mainframe to distributed computing, the cloud, or
whatever has absolutely nothing to do with the value of the
course you bought.”

Two important takeaways if you are a buyer of business and
marketing advice, a seller of services, or both:

1–Technology is transient. But human psychology has not changed
in 10 centuries.

2–Criticizing someone’s business and then offering to come in and
help them make it better is absolutely the worst prospecting
strategy on the planet.

To me, the best I can say about PZ is that she, to turn a phrase
from Coolio, is living in the “Idiot’s Paradise.”

KM, another writer/ignoramus trolling for business, wrote a
letter to my friend, RA.

He said RA’s direct mail package was terrible, and for a fee, he
would rewrite it and make the copy much better.

RA and I had a good laugh over this, because (a) the package was
selling the product like hot cakes and (b) it was written by one
of the top copywriters in the country — RA himself.

And that’s my third takeaway:

3–Talking about stuff without knowing the facts is a good
opportunity to make yourself look like a total idiot.

My friend Hunter Shea is a successful and prolific horror writer.

He is the author of more than 17 published novels including “The
Jersey Devil” (Pinnacle), “They Rise” (Severed Press), and “We
Are Always Watching” (Sinister Grin).

Anyway, Hunter recently told me an interesting story with a
lesson for writers that I want to share with you.

Take it away Mr. Shea….

“I attended only one writer’s conference in my life. It was close
to home in New York City, held in a college during the semester
break.

“Following my printed schedule, I went to a classroom to listen
to a famous thriller author talk about his path to publication.

“It was a packed room, so I had to take a seat in the back. I
noticed an old man sitting next to me.

“He leaned over and whispered, ‘You spend a lot of money on this,
kid?’

“‘You could say that.’ I’d spent nine hundred dollars I didn’t
have at the time.

“‘You see all these people?’ he said, pointing at the back of
everyone’s heads.

“‘Yeah.

“‘None of them will ever be writers. Come back here in ten years
and you’ll see the same faces.’

“‘Do me a favor. Hold onto your money. You want to be a writer?’

“I nodded, hoping the guy would quiet down once the author
started talking.

“‘Then go home and do two things. Read a ton. Then write a ton.
That’s all there is to it.’

“I quietly thanked him for the advice, enjoyed the talk by the
thriller author, and attended as many sessions that morning as I
could.

“Imagine my surprise when I saw that old man during the lunch
event stride up to the podium when he was introduced as the key
speaker for the day.

“That man was Elmore Leonard.

“Boom! I took his advice, and never again spent a dime on a
writing conference.

“Elmore Leonard saved me enough money over the years to buy a
brand new car. I wish he were alive so I could thank him
properly.

“If you’re going to spend your money, spend it on books to read.”

Thanks, Hunter!

One Friday night last month, after checking, answering, and then
deleting or filing in Outlook all my emails, we left the house at
6pm to get a quick dinner.

When we returned at 7:30pm, I checked my email again.

In the 90 minutes we were out, I had gotten $907 in info product
orders online, all for products I was not actively promoting that
week.

(We call these “over the transom” orders because we took no
deliberate action to generate them.)

No work on my part. Over $900 made while eating in a Korean
restaurant.

(Full disclosure: this is an isolated incident — and not a
typical Friday night.)

Some people work all week to make $900 in a 9-to-5 job that bores
them.

One that they must commute to and from on their own time and dime
— for a boss they don’t like

I tell you this not to brag, but to illustrate (a) the value of
having multiple streams of income and (b) the advantage of having
at least one of these be a stream of passive income.

Just to be clear, passive income is anything that makes money
without your direct labor.

Passive income streams generate cash flow for you on Sundays,
holidays, vacations, and even while you sleep.

As George Clason writes in his book The Richest Man in Babylon,
“I wish an income that will keep flowing into my purse whether I
sit upon the wall or travel to far lands.”

On the other hand, with active income streams, you get paid only
when you are working.

Dentistry, for instance, although lucrative, is strictly an
active income stream.

Dentists have a saying: “Unless you are drilling and filling, you
are not billing.”

Most people I know have, for the most part, only a single stream
of income — typically the paycheck from their full-time job,
where they toil away to make someone else rich.

And unless you are getting a huge salary, that’s risky … although
back in the day, when I worked on staff at a Fortune 500 firm in
the late 70s, a corporate job gave one the illusion of security.
I know I felt safe in mine.

But no longer.

The scary part is that if you get laid off or the company
falters, you suddenly have zero income … except for a small sum
from temporary unemployment insurance.

Your income stops. But your expenses relentlessly keep on coming.

This sudden stoppage of your cash flow makes it extremely
difficult to pay your rent, mortgage, car loans, insurance
premiums, property tax, and kids’ college tuition — among many
other expenses.

When I became a full-time freelance writer in February 1982, my
main source of money was an active income stream — writing copy
for clients.

But even back then, I had a smaller passive income stream:
royalties from my hardcover and paperback books published by
mainstream publishing houses.

The nice thing about royalties is that your work can generate
ongoing income for you months, even years, after you write it.

For instance, I recently got a check from one of my publishers
for $4,856 … for the Chinese edition of a book I wrote in 1985,
which is work I completed more than 3 decades ago.

Some of the passive income streams various writers I know have in
place include:

–Book royalties.
–Copywriting royalties.
–Reselling your published articles to multiple magazines and web
sites over and over.
–Real estate investing.
–Stocks and bonds.
–Online information marketing.
–Options trading.

Action step: develop at least one active income stream and one
passive income stream.

Your goal: Build them to annual six-figure revenues. Each.

That way, if you decide to quite working someday, you can live
comfortably from the passive income stream alone.

I hear from hundreds of freelance writers each year, many of whom
are not entirely happy with their careers.

And they fall into two distinct groups:

>> The first group is freelancers who are primarily pursuing
their literary or journalistic calling.

They mostly write plays, poems, movies, novels, nonfiction books,
articles, essays, short stories, screenplays, and whatever else they
are passionate about.

They love what they do. And find it fulfilling.

Only problem is: most writers in this first group tell me they
are hardly making any money … and are barely getting by.

>> The second group is freelance writers who pursue high-paying
commercial projects.

These assignments include technical articles for scientific and
medical journals … white papers … long-form direct response sales
letters … video sales letters … web sites … speeches … and many
other lucrative gigs.

Most of the writers in this group who reveal their income to me
say they are earning $100,000 to $200,000 a year or more.

As a result, they can afford to live in a nice house in a good
neighborhood … pay tuition for their kids at Ivy League colleges
… take great vacations at five-star resorts … drive late-model
luxury cars … and build a big enough IRA to retire secure for
life.

Only problem is: many tell me that, while this commercial writing
pays the bills, it doesn’t fulfill them artistically.

The solution for both groups is simple. I call it “the 80/20
formula for freelance writing success.”

The formula says you spend 80% or so of your time on high-paying
projects for commercial clients — and the other 20% on your
literary, journalistic, and artistic writings.

By spending 80% of your time on high-profit writing, you earn
enough money to provide well for your family — while remaining
freelance and avoiding having to work at a 9-to-5 job for someone
else.

But by spending the other 20% of your time writing for fun and
artistic fulfillment, you also get to write the things that
matter most to you.

And because of your cash flow from the high-paying 80% of your
work, you don’t even need to make a dime from your more literary
endeavors — although for some of us it does in fact generate
additional, and in some cases even significant, cash flow.

By the way, the magic of the formula is that you spend some time
writing what others will pay you a lot of money to write … and
some time writing things for your own pleasure, self-expression,
and amusement — whether they pay well, poorly, or not at all.

There is no magic, however, about the actual ratio. You can
adjust it to fit your temperament and needs. For instance, I do
90/10, not 80/20, and that works for me.

Full disclosure: the great advantage I have is that I actually
love writing the high-profit stuff — in my case, copy.

Some writers do. Others not so much. But the 80/20 formula works
in either case. Try it!

Comedian Steven Wright famously quipped: “If how-to books
really worked, we’d only need just one.”

Well, recently I received as a gift a new how-to business book.

In the preface, the author shocked me by stating, “The average
person who buys any how-to information gets little or no
results.”

Do you believe it? From long experience, I certainly do.

And if so, is this dose of realism at the beginning of a new
how-to book demotivating, discouraging, a rude awakening?

Or is it inspiration to beat the averages … and be one of those
who DO get results?

I have no solid proof of these numbers, but I think they are
pretty accurate for business how-to books, and probably even
worse for self-help books:

If you sell 10,000 copies of your how-to business book or course,
10% of those who buy — a thousand people — will actually skim or
read it.

Of those 1,000 readers, only 10% — just 100 of them — will do
some or all of what you recommend in the book.

Finally, of the 100 who actually work your system, most will give
up to soon, because it’s hard work or they get distracted.

And therefore only 10% — just 10 people — will gain the skill,
start the business, and actually make money from it.

LM comments: “Yes, I believe it. One of my FB groups is filled
with people who are always buying info products and believing
that one of them is finally going to make them rich.

“But we’ve all been in the group for several years, and almost
everyone is in the same position or even worse off than they were
when the group formed.”

As a how-to author, I get the most satisfaction from those 10
buyers who actually follow the advice and get the result they
want. They represent just 0.1% of your 10,000 purchasers.

But if I can help even 10 people achieve their business or career
goals, I can be happy that at least I have changed their lives
for the better.

It does happen. Reader SS writes, “I built a career based on one
of your how-to books, Bob. That being said, I’ve read many how-to
books that were very good — yet, I didn’t do much with the
information. I don’t think I’m alone in that.”

And JM reports, “Bob, I bought one of your books 3 years ago from
my meager pay. The book paid for itself almost immediately.”

In consulting, where clients are paying thousands of dollars for
customized advice instead of just $15 to $25 for a book,
consultant HB once told me:

“Only half my clients listen to my advice, and of those, they
implement only half of what I tell them. So 75% of my
recommendations are ignored, despite the high fees I charge.”

In closing, Steve Wright said, “I went to the bookstore and asked
the clerk where the self-help section was.”

She replied: “I could show you, but that would defeat the
purpose.”

Subscriber RL sent me this comment from the late suspense
novelist Robert B. Parker — one of my favorite commercial authors:

“I do first draft. I don’t revise. I don’t reread. I send it in.
They edit it. But they don’t make any significant changes.”

By comparison, Hemingway revised every morning. He claimed to
have written one of the pages of “A Farewell to Arms” 59 times.

George Plimpton asked him why. Was there some technical problem?
What was so hard?

Hemingway replied: “Getting the words right.”

Poet Donald Hall said he rewrote one of his poems 600 times.

And William Zinsser wrote, “The secret to good writing is
rewriting.”

Yes, but how MUCH rewriting?

The problem is this…..

For most of us, if we don’t revise and rewrite enough, our
writing is not as good as it could be.

On the other hand, if we do endless rewrites and edits, the piece
never gets finished — and if we are working on a flat project
fee, we end up making less than minimum wage.

To answer this question about the ideal number of rewrites, I
made a short video on the subject of “How many rewrites should
you do before you consider the piece finished.”

You can watch it free here:

I agree with actor Michael J. Fox, who said, “Strive for
excellence, not perfection.”

A few weeks ago, subscriber MP told me she read someone else’s
book on information marketing, followed the advice, and it did
not work.

And then she asked me, “How is your material any different?”

It sounds like a reasonable question, but I refused to answer it,
telling her “I have no interest in convincing you to buy my
material.”

You might think me rude in my reply, but I said it politely.

And there are three reasons why when anyone asks, “Why should I
buy your course instead of Mr. X’s?” I do not take the bait.

First, in most instances, I have not seen the competing product.

So how can I say how mine is different than that one
specifically?

(In MP’s case, I had not read nor even heard of the book she had
read.)

My usual response is to tell the person to read the sales page
describing my course.

That gives you everything you need to make an intelligent
decision about buying the product.

And then, you either buy it or you don’t.

I’m OK either way.

Also, I am not that sympathetic with people who are worried that,
after buying my info product, it won’t meet their needs.

That’s because I offer an unconditional 90-day guarantee of
satisfaction.

So there’s no risk to the buyer of any kind.

If they listen, watch, or read my info product and return it,
they get a prompt refund.

And they keep all the knowledge they gained — for free!

In essence, I am the one who has in a sense been “cheated.”

Because I have moved all the risk off the buyer’s shoulders and
onto mine.

But I don’t mind. That is the cost of doing business.

And if they can’t even pull the trigger on a $29 ebook with a
money-back guarantee and therefore ZERO purchase risk, well …

Then they probably don’t have the cojones do whatever business
the ebook teaches — so they are wise to walk away.

>> Second, there is the question of ROTI — return on time
invested.

Let’s say — although I charge by the project for my services, not
by the hour — it works out that I earn at minimum $250 an hour
working for my clients.

That’s about $4.17 a minute.

So if it takes me 10 minutes on the phone with MP to answer her
questions, I have spent almost $42 of my time to sell a $29
product — a net loss for me of nearly $13.

>> Third, I have no desire to be a “dancing monkey.”

A dancing monkey is a seller who will jump through hoops — and
say and do anything — to get the order.

There are a couple of reasons not to be a dancing monkey.

The first is: it’s a bit degrading and humiliation — comes close
to begging at times.

Second, it risks alienating many potential clients or customers.

That’s because many prospects are turned off by vendors who seem
desperate and in need of the money.

People would rather buy from someone who is busy and successful,
not someone who is needy and hungry.

Also, when it comes to info products, mine are reasonably priced
— many have said my prices are extremely low compared with others
in my markets.

So I have done my bit to help people improve their lives and
businesses at a fair price that doesn’t gouge them or break their
bank account.

And combined with the unconditional 3-month free trial I offer on
every info product I sell, my conscience is clear … and I sleep
well at night.

MP later wrote back saying, “I will buy it.”

Why?

I told her my bio and testimonials, which are on the sales page
of every info product I sell (see for example
www.theinternetmarketingretirementplan.com), should convince her
or not.

“I guess years and clients have proven you are right,” she
replied. And clicked the order button.

Now, there’s a copywriting lesson here, and it is this:

On your web sales pages, put the credibility right up front —
starting on the first screen.

Reason:

If your credentials are way into the copy in a long sales page,
the reader may never scroll that far down and see them — and
therefore, not buy and click away before ever discovering them.