Yes, I’ve overbooked myself before. I’ve done it more than once. You’d think I’d learned after the first time I did but I didn’t. It took my second round to accidently overbooking myself to learn my lesson.

It started out innocently enough. I had two projects already on my schedule for the month. Two new clients wanted to hire me. I offered to start their projects the next month. They wanted it sooner. They asked if they paid more if I’d move them up in the line. I countered by asking for 50% more, figuring that they would say no. You can imagine my surprise when they both agreed to pay alot more money to get a quick start date.

That month I worked my butt off. Every spare moment I could come up, I was writing copy for those clients. I didn’t have a day off the entire month. My family wound up having to do a number of family things without me because I needed the time to try to catch up on the projects.

By the end of the month, I felt completely wiped out. Worse, partway through the month, one of my forearms cramped up. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to uncramp. About two months later, I finally was forced to take a week off from doing lots of typing just to break the pain/muscle cramping cycle.

Since then, I’ve learned my mistakes. There’s only been one instance since where I was booked so tightly and those clients did so with the understanding that I would deliver the best possible sales copy I could but I would not guarantee the delivery date.

Here’s my 5 quick tips that have made a world of difference.

I use these every day to help give my schedule some sanity and structure. Feel free to try any or all of them in your copywriting business.

1. Hire a part-time babysitter.

I started out with a few hours each week and as my business grew, added more hours of babysitting. Now I have babysitting coverage 20-25 hours weekdays so I don’t have to work exclusively nights & weekends. Just factor your babysitting costs in to your project bids.

2. A project isn’t booked on my schedule until I have received the client’s deposit.

If it’s a check, I wait until it clears my bank to finalize the bookings. The longer they take to pay their deposit, the further in line they wind up.

I once had a client send me an unsigned check. I sent it back to him with a note saying his project wouldn’t be booked or started until I received his payment. He sent me a new check and during that delay, 2 other clients booked with me. You can imagine his shock when I told him it would be a month later start time because two others had paid while I was waiting for his payment.

After that, he paid in full upfront to ensure his booking spot.

3. Overestimate the time you need to complete a project, then work on delivering it early without sacrificing the quality of your work.

By overestimating the time I need, I’ve been able to work around deaths in the family, my son’s birth, my wife’s major car accident in 2008r, and countless other things that threw scheduling roadblocks in the way. I still meet the client’s deadline because I hadn’t lost time to the unexpected or unavoidable incidents in life.

4. Guard your time against time vampires.

That’s a Dan Kennedy term, not mine. I highly recommend you read his No B.S. book on Time Management. Case in point: I RARELY talk to prospects on the phone about their project. It’s WAY too easy for a 10 minute call to balloon into an hour if you’re not careful. Everything initially is done by email. Paying clients get my office phone number. VIPs get my mobile number as well.

99% of the calls I take or do are by appointment. It’s a lot easily to manage that way.

5. Put your own down time and personal projects into your schedule.

Not only does it recharge your batteries, but it gives you something different to look forward to. All work and no play will make anybody a grumpy soul eventually.

Hope that helps,

Mike

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It’s been awhile since I wrote something on this blog. I’ve been swamped between personal life and business commitments, so please accept my apologies.

I’m going to make a stronger commitment to writing and posting more often on this blog in 2010, so stay tuned because I have some topics to cover and share!

One of the most frequently questions I get asked by clients is the same basic one that stirs up raging public forum debates: Does sales letter size matter?

Well, let me make a very public stand on this debate.

Ready?

My answer is… it depends.

Some stand, huh?

Let me explain before some readers send me flaming emails.

Honestly, it depends on the media you are using. If you are writing a product description for a print catalog, space is at a premium. So you need to use very short, powerful copy to do this, often times less than 100 words of text.

If you are writing a direct mail piece, then there are times where the mailing cost will dictate how much copy you can use. Case in point, I recently wrote an offline direct mail piece that I thought was killer.

Except that it was 16 pages… 17 pages with the order form included. That would have bumped the mailing costs up by 50% for my client which they wouldn’t approve. I don’t blame them so it was back to the cutting board to get the mailer between 10-15 pages of even tighter copy.

I think one of the reasons why many copywriters enjoy writing online sales copy so much is space is rarely an issue. Most online sales letters are just one long scrolling webpage and it can be as long as you feel it needs to be.

Here’s a great example: In August 2004, John Reese’s Traffic Secrets launched using an 80 page sales letter written by Michel Fortin. Now I’ve never asked Michel this directly, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t sit down thinking to himself “I’m bored. Let me write 80 printable pages for this sales letter”.

Not hardly.

Michel sat down to write a sales letter to sell a $997 home study product (at the time an unheard of price for a home study info-product for the IM niche) and it took him 80 pages to tell everything that was in the product… include client testimonials… include video demos… and so on. It took him 80 pages to ethically make the sale and in that case, it was 1.08 million dollars in sales for the first 24 hours alone!

I’ll paraphrase legendary marketer Dan Kennedy, who I think says it even better: “There isn’t too long. Only too boring.”

If you bore your reader, then the copy is probably too long or need reworking.

When I sit down to write a sales letter, I deliberately write more copy than I need to ethically sell the product or what the mailing budget is dictating. So if I need a 5 page direct mail letter, I’ll write 6-8 pages. If I think I need 12 pages to sell an ebook, I’ll write 14 or more pages.

Then I edit ruthlessly to cut out any excess fat. Any text that isn’t carrying its weight or doesn’t help ethically move the prospect towards buying is cut. By the time I take that 6-8 page “draft” and edit it (usually several rounds of editing), it’s 5 pages of copy tighter than a military bootcamp private’s made bed.

So that’s my take on it. The length of the letter rarely matters. It’s making the sale consistently that does.

What do you think?

Until next time,

Mike

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Many different copywriting experts claim that the most important part of any sales letter is the opening headline. That’s because it is often the first thing that a prospect reads when they see your marketing piece.

Studies have shown that 70-80% of all readers will decide if they want to read the rest of the sales letter after reading the opening headline.

Grab their interest with a compelling headline or killer hook and there’s a real good chance that they will keep reading.

Well, what if there was a way to improve the chances of success for the opening headline?  What if there was a way to literally set the stage so the reader is even more attentive to the opening headline?

The good news is you can do exactly that using a copywriting element called a pre-headline.

You see, a pre-headline, or prehead for short, is found before the opening headline.  Its job is to set the stage for the opening headline. To use a football analogy, it’s like a perfectly thrown pass by the quarterback to a receiver standing the end zone: right into the receiver’s hands for the touchdown.

You can use your preheadline as a lesser opening headline that leads into the opening headline. That takes some practice and usually a good amount of headline brainstorming to get it right.

So I’m going to share with you an easy way to craft a prehead to do exactly what you want and that’s to lead into the opening headline.

The easiest way is to use your opening headline to identify who your target prospect or prospects might be.

Let me give you an example.  Here’s the preheadline for a sales letter I wrote selling a How To Get Government Grants product:

Attention Students, Loan Seekers, and Entrepreneurs who need more money for their personal (or business) projects…

Notice how I’ve identified the ideal prospects for this product.  I’ve also identified one of their biggest reasons for being interested in government grants — they need more money for their personal or business projects.

I use an ellipse (3 dots closely set together in a row or ALT 0133 on your keyboard) to subtly tell the reader that the message continues.

Let’s see what I used for an opening headline:

Free Money Expert Swears Under Oath
That His Never Revealed Before Secrets
Lets Almost Anyone Legally Steal* Money!

My opening headline then tells my targeted and identified prospect a big benefit: an insider’s scoop on how to get the grants they want.

Try adding a prehead to your salesletters. I’m sure you’ll be happy with the results.

To Your Success,

Mike

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At first, it was just testing different headlines on the same marketing piece. Many times, there was little or no difference but when I did find a new version that converted better, it was often a 25% or more improvement in conversion rates.

In fact, one headline change on a postcard mailer improved the response rate from approximately 1% to a solid 5% — an awesome 5000% improvement!

When I started online in 2004, it didn’t take me long to figure out that you could do even more elaborate testing.

Eventually I discovered multi-variate (sometimes called multi-variable) testing which would allow you to test more than one element on a web page at once.

That led to a series of blood boiling adventures with different testing tools to find one that I liked and actually worked as advertised.

Eventually I got so annoyed with it that I hired a programmer to build my own multi-variate testing tool called Easy Multi Tracking. http://www.easymultitracking.com

Fast forward to the present day. I’ve decided to share one of my recent testing results done on a squeeze page of mine. I’m not going to reveal the location of the squeeze page because I don’t want a bunch of non-targeted prospects hitting the site and causing the current testing I’m doing to become skewed.

For those of you who might be familiar with the term, a squeeze page is a web page where site visitors can either choose to give you their name & email address to progress further into the site or just leave the site instead.

It’s an effective way to build an email list of targeted prospects.

So one of my squeeze pages started out around 10% opt-in rate which is pretty bad but then I started running some tests on it. I tested things like different headlines, graphic signatures, headline colors and so on. Within 6 months, the opt-in rate was up to approximately 55% which is a significant improvement.

One of my tests on that squeeze page involved graphic callouts. I tested using a graphic callout by the opt-in box versus no graphic callout.

Here’s an example of using the graphic callout by the opt-in box:

My gut feeling was that the graphic callout would produce a higher conversion rate simply because it drew more attention to the opt-in box.

Of course, relying on your gut feeling is a poor predictor so that’s why I rely on doing multi-variate testing instead.

I set up a test on the squeeze page where Callout #1A was the control (the opt-in box with a graphic callout) and Callout #1B was the same opt-in box without any graphic callout.

Well, the results were mind-blowing. I didn’t believe them at first, so I re-ran the test a second time. Rather than tell you what they were… I’m going to show you.

The graphic callout smoked the non-graphic call-out by a cool 296.73%!

Now when it comes to graphic design, I’m terrible at it. I’ve hardly ever used the graphic design software that came with Dreamweaver MX2004 and it’s considered one of the better ones out there (Fireworks). So I frequently rely on hiring graphic designers or using ‘out of the box’ graphics, especially for things like testimonial boxes or bullet point graphics.

That’s why I absolutely love the response-boosting graphics that Mike Capuzzi offers and I frequently recommend to other copywriters & marketers to use them.

Adding a hand-drawn graphic is an easy response booster and adds a “personal” touch to the copy, almost as if you wrote the words in after the sales letter was finished.

The good news is, every hand-drawn graphic has been tested by Mike or his customers and proven to boost response rates in both offline and online marketing pieces.

There’s no guesswork involved. Simply choose the hand-drawn graphics you need and insert them into your offline or online marketing piece.

If you’re like me, you might do some tweaking to change the size of the graphics or where it’s positioned on the piece but that takes about 30 seconds to do.

The graphic callout I created and used for the test are part of Mike’s product and they produced almost a 300% increase in response rate for my squeeze page. Each time I’ve used them in my copy for my products or my clients, I’ve seen an increase in response rate too.

You can get the full scoop on Mike Capuzzi’s product here:

http://michaelhumphreys.com/recommends/OnlineDoodles

Until next time,

Michael

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Michel wrote an emotional letter which he posted on the front of his forum explaining his reasons behind making this decision. After reading the letter, my reaction was mixed.

Let me explain.

On one hand, Michel’s forum was one of my favorite places to hang out. Over the years, I had developed a number of friendships through that forum.

It was also a great resource of copywriting and marketing knowledge, shared by thousands of people over the years.

Unfortunately, I understood much of what Michel said he was feeling because I’ve been there before myself. When I decided to close my massage therapy center, I had had enough. I was completely burnt out with the day-to-day stressors that came with running a business of that size.

In fact, I was so burned out that I opted to close the business rather than try to find a buyer. Trying to sell the business would have meant that I would have been forced to stick around for another 6-24 months to find a suitable buyer and then help transition the center to the new owner. I didn’t want to wait 1-2 years to get out… I wanted out IMMEDIATELY.

Do I think Michel has closed his copywriting forum temporarily?

Probably not.

I know Michel a little better than the average online marketer or copywriter… having talked with him numerous times by email and by phone. I’ve even ghostwritten copy for him.

I don’t believe Michel would reopen that forum unless he had a burning desire to do so once again. I can’t see Michel reopening it and just going through the motions of running it the way he’d want to see it run.

I don’t have any proof. I don’t know what Michel has planned for the future either. I’ll probably find out what Michel does next at the same time as the rest of the world and that’s okay with me.

In my opinion, Michel is one of the best copywriters in the world. He’s probably even better as a marketer which doesn’t always get the public recognition.

My point is Michel needs to do what is best for Michel. As a former business burn-out myself, I support his decision even if isn’t one that doesn’t benefit me the most.

So what does benefit me? Moving forward with my career and my life. I’ll still periodically check in with Michel by email to see how he’s doing but providing for my family will always be my top priority.

As for missing the social lounge for copywriters, I got some great news a few days ago. It seems my buddy & fellow copywriter Bruce Wedding opened a new forum for copywriters. It’s growing quickly and has a strong chance to become the new hang-out for copywriting dudes like me. I even decided to be a moderator there after Bruce asked me if I would.

You can check it out at: http://www.copywritingboard.com/

So come stop by. Get a sales letter critique while you’re at it. It’s a free copywriting and marketing resource that grows stronger by the day. Your bank account may wind up thanking you for joining this new forum.

Until next time,

Michael

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My college-educated brain wants to throw the 5 syllable word out in a sentence so I sound really smart. Blame it on 7 years of college and 2 health degrees.

My street-smart gut throws a fit and starts suggesting ordinary 1 or 2 syllable words instead. My gut reminds me that the average American reads on a 12 year olds level, not a PhD wanna-be’s.

Ten times out of ten, I go with my gut.

I don’t reach for a thesaurus or dictionary… although I do have both of them in my office. I don’t grab a list of “hot” words that sound salesy or sizzling. I have a stack of those lists too and almost never look at them.

I fire up my web browser and head to this free site instead: http://www.visuwords.com

Simply type the words you want to look up and Visuword does the rest. It will find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. It will give you visual diagrams, similar to the old atom molecule models you last saw in high school science class. Best of all, you’ll get additional ways the words associate.

According the Visuwords site:

Visuwords™ uses Princeton University’s WordNet, an opensource database built by University students and language researchers. Combined with a visualization tool and user interface built from a combination of modern web technologies, Visuwords™ is available as a free resource to all patrons of the web.

The word association is an overlooked key for finding a better word than the huge PhD language you’re trying to avoid. It can change the entire context of the sentence or paragraph.

Change the context to something easier to understand and you can keep your readers reading. If it’s something like a sales letter, that means there’s an increased likelihood that they will buy your product or service.

So next time you’re stuck for a word, give Visuwords a try. Your bank account may wind up thanking you!

Until next time,

Michael

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