World Copywriting Blog

Are you having trouble getting orders from the Web? I wonder if that's because you're making this mistake...

It's a fact: Some businesses make it so hard to buy from them online that I simply won't make the effort.

Neither will hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of other people.

Nor will direct marketing virtuoso Denny Hatch.

He tells why in an amusing yet depressing, and certainly instructive, story.  It's in his column about why he stopped buying an exotic light bulb from a company in Ohio, and moved his business over to a Georgia company:

"Make It Easy to Order!"

There's a big lesson that almost certainly applies to your business, in Denny's agitated column. What he writes is especially important right now because:

Some parts of the ailing U.S. economy are showing signs of a rapid upturn in the months ahead.

If you want to get your share of the forthcoming growth, read Denny's rant, learn the lessons and implement them with gusto!

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter

Walter Cronkite, the... pitchman?

As so many journalists and ex-journalists pay their respects to the pioneering television newsman who died on Friday, I'd like to share an unusual finding.

Before I do, let me say he was a big part of my life in the 1960s. Nearly every Monday through Friday, my family would gather 'round the TV to watch him on the CBS Evening News.

And he was a role model for me, personally -- I'm sure he was one of the major influences that attracted me to journalism for my first career (which ended in 1985).

Now -- and here's the juicy stuff -- did you know that Walter Cronkite was once, ever so briefly, a pitchman and a pick-up artist?  That's right.

In 1936, when he was 19 or 20, he read a commercial in a Kansas City radio station with a fetching young woman named Betsy Maxwell.  The commercial went like this:

Walter: "Well, angel, what heaven did you drop from?"
 
Betsy: "I'm no angel."

Walter: "You look like an angel."

Betsy: "That's because I use Richard Hudnut cosmetics."

Cronkite later reported: "The spark took. We went together for several years and finally married in 1940."

What a romantic guy, huh? :)

This from an appreciation by Cronkite's CBS News colleague Martha Teichner.

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter

Here's an interesting way to hire a copywriter...

Using the principles of copywriting to create help-wanted ads placed on Craigslist has produced some amazing results for copy-savvy friends and clients of mine.

But Isaiah Sieg of 80/20 Marketing has taken the use of copy to hire someone -- appropriately enough, a copywriter -- to a new level with this post on a freestanding Web site.

See for yourself and let me know what you think of this.  Me, I'm bowled over -- and very proud of my client for pioneering this approach!

http://www.renegadeproblog.com/careers/

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter

Stuck as you write some copy? This bumper sticker I saw recently ought to give you a laugh

Bye-bye affiliate marketing?

The company that hosts this blog for me, TypePad, just posted a link for its clients to a chilling story from the Associated Press.  I'm passing it along to you.

The gist of it: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is planning to stop bloggers from getting paid for endorsing products unless they explicitly say they are getting paid for their endorsements.

This can have profound and devastating effects on affiliate marketing as we know it. Keep your eyes open on this one. It's a serious move threatened by the Feds.

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter