World Copywriting Blog

Why Your Time-Line Is Key to Riches, Success and Profitable Results from Copywriting

Over the weekend, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told The World Economic Forum that the Internet will revolutionize television within the next five years.

According to Reuters, Gates told business leaders and politicians in Davos, Switzerland: "I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had."

Is it any wonder that the world's richest man is author of a book called "The Road Ahead?"

I don't think so.  Especially when you look at the way the world's second richest man, Warren Buffett, also thinks about business.

If we were to sum up his strategy in a few words - paraphrasing - it would be:

"I buy companies, and I plan never to sell them."

Long-term thinking.  If it's good enough for number one and number two, isn't it good enough for me and you?

One of my favorite books is called "All The Time You Need," by Robert R. Updegraff.  It's out of print but well worth hunting down.

In it, he talks about a conversation with an airline pilot, who told him:

"If every motorist would take up flying, he would be a much safer automobile driver because he would learn to drive farther ahead.

"You see, in an airplane you are obliged to watch and plan way ahead because you can't suddenly put on the brakes and come to a stop.

"If you drive a car with as much concern over what is happening down the block, or within the next quarter mile, as if you could not suddenly put on the brakes, you will seldom get in a tight fix and have to jam on the brakes."

Slightly antiquated language, but totally sound advice.

Updegraff goes on to say himself:

Since I began my study of time-use I have been shocked at how many otherwise able and intelligent people throw away hours and days, and even weeks, of their time because they do not plan ahead.

Indeed.

But what about marketers?  Entrepreneurs?  Copywriters?

We of the "Ready... Fire!... Aim" school of life -- and I confess I fall prey to the sweet siren song of this school more often than would serve me best -- we seldom plan the next steps after the current object of focus nearly as much as we should.

My friend Harlan Kilstein tells of a sneak peak he had inside the Florida home of John Reese, a universally acclaimed top strategic thinker of entrepreneurial Internet marketing.  Reese has a "war room" where he has plans for the next 18 months whiteboarded up on special wallpaper you can write on with markers.

The next 18 months.  Not just the next 18 minutes!

In case you've been wondering where I'm going with this, here it is:

Today my friend Ben Mack is launching a book with the extraordinarily relevant title of "Think Two Products Ahead."  His premise is that financial freedom, and indeed great wealth, come from planning a residual income stream from each sale you make.

That is... thinking about the next sale... and the sale after that... before you make your initial sale.

Long-term thinking.  Of the entrepreneurial kind.

One of those simple, "duh" ideas that could be worth millions of dollars to you.  So,

I'd like to recommend the book to you... check it out on Amazon at ...

http://tinyurl.com/yvftzz

And if you'd like to see the very clever Amazon promotion Ben's doing to make the book a bestseller, go to

http://tinyurl.com/2nvn9o

(You can also get a couple of neat bonuses from that link after you buy the book from Amazon, and submit your receipt number.)

It was shaving maven King Gillette who coined the concept of giving the razor away for free, and selling the customer blades... how long... forever?

If you're not doing that in your business, either plan to keep working for a long, long time... or, take a peek at what Ben has to say.

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter

Goodbye, Art Buchwald... You created great joy in many people's lives, even those who departed severely from your politics

A great writer and a great man has left us, but not before making good fun of the death process itself.

Which is not surprising.  He made it his business to make fun of everything.

The newspaper that gave rise to Art Buchwald's fame, The Washington Post, reported that Buchwald recently wrote:

So far things are going my way.  I am known in the hospice as The Man Who Wouldn't Die.  How long they allow me to stay here is another problem.  I don't know where I'd go now, or if people would still want to see me if I weren't in a hospice.  But in case you're wondering, I'm having a swell time -- the best time of my life.

Great way to look at things on your way out, wouldn't you agree?

Art Buchwald was the family dogma in the liberal, grad-school-educated, government employee household I grew up in.  My parents would have been nuts to be conservatives in those days, but I don't feel it's too smart or congruent for me to be a liberal now -- a political position Buchwald staunchly maintained to his dying day.

It really doesn't matter to me what someone's politics are if they can be funny about it.  And in America, Buchwald was, without question, the pre-eminent political humorist of the twentieth century.  I'd put Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert ahead of him in 2006, but, my God, did Buchwald have his run.

In 1964, for example, Buchwald wrote a column suggesting that President Johnson could not ask controversial and quirky FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to resign.  Why?  Because Hoover didn't exist.  He was a figment of the imagination of the Reader's Digest (a far-right mainstream magazine with enormous power in those days).

Maybe you had to be there.  But it was pretty funny at the time.

He even used humor - from the theatre of the absurd - to land his first writing job.  As a World War II vet living in Paris, he conned the New York Herald Tribune into hiring him as the nightlife and entertainment columnist for its European edition... by claiming he had been a wine taster in the Marine Corps.

Now, if you don't see the humor in that, please report back to the mortuary.  Immediately.  The boss needs you.

Buchwald's most famous piece of writing was a column he wrote the year I was born, 1953, where he attempted (with great warmth and finesse) to explain the American holiday Thanksgiving to the French.  This was pre-Bush II, when Americans with clout still considered the French human beings and even admired them for their fine food.

In that column, which gets reprinted in newspapers every year, Buchwald said that Thanksgiving was the only day that Americans "eat better than the French."

I'm sure Art Buchwald had some influence on my decision to be a writer.  I can't remember an incident, a converation, or a column that led to a defining moment.  But I do remember avidly enjoying his commentaries while reading the paper on the kitchen table in the house where I spent my early years.

So long, old chum.  You spread a lot of light and laughter to a world that desperately needed it.  You brightened my life and the lives of many, many others.

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter

P.S. I just found out that The New York Times posted a very well done and amusing video feature, possibly the first it has ever done of this type, which is an obituary of Art Buchwald.  There's lots of humor in it -- it starts after a brief intro with the man himself saying right into the camera:

Hi!  I'm Art Buchwald, and I just died!

Check it out: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/obituaries/BUCHWALD_FEATURE/blocker.html

The Easiest Way I Know of To Legally Make A Few Thousand Dollars Writing In One Afternoon

I was as surprised as anyone when I heard from a subscriber that a man named David Leland was making $1500 - $2500 by writing 500 word case studies for business clients.

It got even more amazing when I found out there were no hard technical skills involved.  David just tells simple human stories about how customers of a business use a product and like it.

It takes him all of a couple of hours to do it.

Well, this was too good to keep to himself.  So I managed to get David to write an article about this amazingly lucrative case-study market for my World Copywriting Newsletter (fortunately, I didn't have to pay him $2500 for it).

And last week, I held an oversubscribed teleseminar where David described in detail not only how to write lucrative case studies, but also how to sell them.

By popular demand, I've posted both the teleseminar and the article on the Web for you to review at your leisure.

Just go to: http://www.world-copywriting-institute.com/case-ts

And when you have a moment... could you pass the Grey Poupon?

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter

When Keyword Matching Starts Turning Upon Itself, Things Can Get Pretty Goofy...

I was cleaning out my spam folder in my Gmail box (no, the account is very private, and you can't have the address)... and what should I see after all the files had been deleted but a little clickable ad for "Spam Breakfast Burritos."

My mind, being what it is, immediately turned to: "You mean you can make food out of junk email?"

Gosh, if that were true, world hunger would be ended in 0.000000000003 seconds.

Or something like that.

But alas, that was not what the ad meant.  Of course I had to click on it to see what it was, and here is what I found:

(click here to see what I found)

Google, in its compulsion to monetize every second of use of Gmail, had placed an ad in reference to the only content word on the page: Spam.

Am I peeved?

Nah, I got a good laugh out of it.

But this is something to watch out for.

How far could this go?

It could get pretty intrusive.

Imagine, if you be a guy, that you are standing at a urinal in some commercial building, and the hologram of a doctor appears in front of you with the words: "This moment of relief is brought to you by Flomax.  If your flow isn't all you want it to be... "

I can't finish this. 

And yes, I know there are already billboards atop the urinals in many men's rooms already.

So I'll stop by saying thank you, Seth Godin, for inventing the term "Permission Marketing."

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter

Special Teleseminar Tuesday on Copywriting for Authors: "Words That Launch Best-Sellers: 5 Ways to Use Copywriting To Sell A Ton Of Books!"

If you're an author now or plan to be one, take advantage of this live special event on Tuesday. It's free and you don't have to travel to attend. This is a teleseminar that you need to attend if you want to increase the sales of current or future books.

I'm presenting a free teleseminar with my friend David Hancock, founder of Morgan James Publishing.  Morgan James has published three of my books.

The seminar is called:

Words That Launch Best-Sellers:
5 Ways to Use Copywriting To Sell A Ton Of Books!

Date: Tuesday, January 9, 2006

Time: 7 p.m. Eastern

In this teleseminar, I'll give you actual examples and templates you can use to create your own best-selling title.

I'll also unmask the mystery of chapter titles and tell you a simple but little-known secret on how you can greatly boost book sales just by the way you arrange your Table of Contents!

And, I will also give valuable tips on

• back cover copy (after the title, the back cover copy is what sells many books)
• cover letters to reviewers
• Web site copy to promote and sell the book

If you're thinking this sounds valuable enough to be a paid teleseminar, I whole-heartedly agree with you.

But David is a good friend of mine, and I agreed to do this for Morgan James authors and associates - and, most important, readers of my blog and newsletter - free of charge.

Note: The live teleseminar is free, but we won't be posting a free recording.  You'll have to be a paid member of Morgan James' Entrepeneurial Author University to hear the replay.  So if you want to hear this, make sure you sign up and attend the live Tuesday teleseminar!

To sign up, go to:

http://morgan-james-publishing.com/register.aspx

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter