By Michael Masterson
Prominent businessmen have long touted excellence as the ultimate corporate objective. And maybe it is - for Fortune 500 companies, that is. But most of the successful small-business owners I've known have grown their companies by pursuing something else.
Of the dozen-plus guys I know who have built multimillion-dollar businesses from scratch, many began with the "I can do that better" idea (which is a form of excellence, to be sure) - but none made excellence, in the abstract, a goal. More often than not, other ambitions - recognition, vindication, and cash flow - were predominant in their thinking.
When you are just beginning, you must pay attention to the critical financial issues:
* making sure your basic business transaction works
* making sure your basic selling proposition is profitable
* making sure you have the cash flow you need
Get the basics right first and worry about getting everything else perfect later on. That's what I mean when I say Ready, Fire, Aim.
That being said, there comes a time in every entrepreneur's career when the motivations that initially made him successful are insufficient. For his medium- to large-sized company to survive and prosper, he must figure out how to do things well and how to get a lot of people to work hard and well. In other words, he must pursue excellence.
If you expect to be proud of the successful business you will have one day, it's not too early to make the pursuit of excellence part of your Master Plan.
Here's how to make sure your new business is as good as it can be, without sacrificing your critical financial objectives.
* Start by hiring extraordinary people.
* Have them trained by experts.
* Give them the best business contacts you have, and encourage them to get more on their own.
* Set high standards for them.
In the start-up operation I'm currently working on, we interviewed all kinds of people for three positions. Some had a great deal of relevant experience. Interestingly, we selected none of those. The candidates who stood out - head and shoulders above the rest - were just one, two, and three years out of college. What these young people lack in experience, they make up for in other qualities. They are smart, hardworking, and driven to achieve.
This may be a secret of hiring: Experienced candidates will probably never be any better than they already are. If you are looking for improvement, you probably won't get it.
To attract the kind of people we were looking for, we took a different approach to hiring. Instead of sending out an ordinary bureaucratic announcement of the openings, we used an expert copywriter to promote the jobs. Instead of focusing on salary and benefits, we stressed the challenge of each project, reasoning that the difficulty of the job would be a motivation in itself. I think it was.
So the first thing you need to do - if you want to make excellence part of your Master Plan - is to spend a little extra time and effort to hire excellent people from the beginning.
But that's not all. You also need great product ideas, great marketing skills, a great product-development system, and great management - to name a few things. To get these things in your business, hire experts to come in and train your people. Look for experts you already know, people you can trust, and pay them on a per-diem basis to give your new employees intense one-on-one training sessions. You want to be sure that your inexperienced-but-excellent people know the best ways of doing everything - including the tricks and techniques of true experts.
Next, introduce your key people to key vendors and consultants in the industry so that when they have a problem they will have someone to call. Give them a pep talk on the importance of networking, and make some personal introductions if they're a little shy.
One thing you won't have to do if you have done a good job of hiring is pressure them to work hard. Excellent employees provide their own pressure. They just need guidance so they don't go off on the wrong track.
You might want to hold special weekly meetings at which your new people can ask questions about anything they are at all confused about. If you can create a comfortable atmosphere - one in which inexperienced questioners aren't made to feel stupid - you won't have to worry about mistakes being made for lack of a simple bit of advice.
Finally, even at this early stage of your business development, consider making excellence itself a main objective - that everything you do and every way you do it should greatly exceed expectations... of your colleagues, your vendors, and your customers.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Five Books You Have To Read If You Want To Be A Master Copywriter
1. Breakthrough Advertising
Breakthrough Advertising, written by a copywriting legend and a multimillionaire Eugene Schwartz is the most expensive book on copywriting you can possibly buy. It's the best one, too. This book is very rare, you can hardly find it anymore. Most likely, you'll have to buy a used copy.
2. How to Write a Good Advertisement
This is a very overlooked book which touches on a little bit of everything, from soup-to-nuts, about writing copy and placing ads. I'm not sure why it isn't mentioned as much as the more well-known classics like the Ogilvy and Hopkins material is, because it should be. Although the book was written in 1962, it reads like it was written earlier perhaps that's why it's often not cited by the greats. Even if you're already a professional, the book will serve you well to stir up some good ideas maybe even for that promotion you're working on right now.
3. Advertising Secrets of the Written Word
Sugarman's written an instant classic with this well-crafted copywriting resource. It's on the short list of copywriting books (along w/Bly, Collier, Ogilvy, Caples etc) that's a must-read foundation piece for any copywriter or other sales professional. Going deep into the specific mechanics of how to craft winning pitches, Sugarman's brilliance shows through in this, as in his other 2 must-get books as well. Sugarman's a pro, well worth learning from. Excellent pitch and well paced writing style, the Sugarman chute is a classic and this, along with his other books, are immensely powerful and useful resources - grab your copy now!
4. The Ultimate Sales Letter
DO NOT attempt to write a sales letter without first reading THE ULTIMATE SALES LETTER by Dan Kennedy. Sure, I know, you're a good writer and you can probably construct a pretty good letter on your own. But along the way, you're bound to make a few mistakes that could have been easily avoided. Or, your letter wont be nearly as good, or effective, as it could have been. You might be able to survive quarterbacking an NFL game on your own, but if John Elway or Joe Montana were on the sidelines offering up advice, wouldn't you take it? Highly successful sales letter copywriter, Dan Kennedy, reveals in concise detail, the twenty-eight steps he uses to construct sales letters. Beyond that, there is a section describing the effective uses of sales letters, a section on sequencing, and a final section on electronic sales letters. Even if you are commercial writer who may not be doing much in the way of sales letters, you will still learn valuable and applicable techniques.
5. Million Dollar Mailings
This book is a MASSIVE collection of Direct Response Sales Letters that are not, good, not great, but CONTROLS, proven to pull in orders of at least $1000000. Any copywriter or business owner who wants to continuously improve their ability to write outstanding direct response advertising copy will find this book to be of incredible value.
Breakthrough Advertising, written by a copywriting legend and a multimillionaire Eugene Schwartz is the most expensive book on copywriting you can possibly buy. It's the best one, too. This book is very rare, you can hardly find it anymore. Most likely, you'll have to buy a used copy.
2. How to Write a Good Advertisement
This is a very overlooked book which touches on a little bit of everything, from soup-to-nuts, about writing copy and placing ads. I'm not sure why it isn't mentioned as much as the more well-known classics like the Ogilvy and Hopkins material is, because it should be. Although the book was written in 1962, it reads like it was written earlier perhaps that's why it's often not cited by the greats. Even if you're already a professional, the book will serve you well to stir up some good ideas maybe even for that promotion you're working on right now.
3. Advertising Secrets of the Written Word
Sugarman's written an instant classic with this well-crafted copywriting resource. It's on the short list of copywriting books (along w/Bly, Collier, Ogilvy, Caples etc) that's a must-read foundation piece for any copywriter or other sales professional. Going deep into the specific mechanics of how to craft winning pitches, Sugarman's brilliance shows through in this, as in his other 2 must-get books as well. Sugarman's a pro, well worth learning from. Excellent pitch and well paced writing style, the Sugarman chute is a classic and this, along with his other books, are immensely powerful and useful resources - grab your copy now!
4. The Ultimate Sales Letter
DO NOT attempt to write a sales letter without first reading THE ULTIMATE SALES LETTER by Dan Kennedy. Sure, I know, you're a good writer and you can probably construct a pretty good letter on your own. But along the way, you're bound to make a few mistakes that could have been easily avoided. Or, your letter wont be nearly as good, or effective, as it could have been. You might be able to survive quarterbacking an NFL game on your own, but if John Elway or Joe Montana were on the sidelines offering up advice, wouldn't you take it? Highly successful sales letter copywriter, Dan Kennedy, reveals in concise detail, the twenty-eight steps he uses to construct sales letters. Beyond that, there is a section describing the effective uses of sales letters, a section on sequencing, and a final section on electronic sales letters. Even if you are commercial writer who may not be doing much in the way of sales letters, you will still learn valuable and applicable techniques.
5. Million Dollar Mailings
This book is a MASSIVE collection of Direct Response Sales Letters that are not, good, not great, but CONTROLS, proven to pull in orders of at least $1000000. Any copywriter or business owner who wants to continuously improve their ability to write outstanding direct response advertising copy will find this book to be of incredible value.
Make Money Online: 109 Tools and Resources
Making money online is a dream for many, but the simple fact is that it’s often just as tough as making money offline. Due to requests, we’ve put together a list of the most popular money making methods today, many of them focused on blogging and peer production. A word of caution: for the sake of completeness, we’ve included a small number of sites that have been criticized for their ethics. If it sounds too good to be true, it generally is. Commenters are
welcome to share their experiences of the various sites.
Get Paid To Write
1: Weblogs, Inc. - Apply to blog for one of their ninety plus blogs or submit your own topic idea. They will pay you per post that you write and you must meet their minimum post requirements.
26: Google Adsense - Most popular pay-per-click advertising provider. Make anywhere from $0.01 to $5.00 plus per click on site relevant ads.
86: Vume - Upload your videos, pictures, and audio clips, or write some blogs. At VuMe, it pays to be creative.
108: Dreamstime - Sell your stock images and get 50-80% from each sale you make. Join our powerful photo community and reach new stock photography markets.
109: Shutterstock - Earn 25 cents per photo download.
welcome to share their experiences of the various sites.
Get Paid To Write
1: Weblogs, Inc. - Apply to blog for one of their ninety plus blogs or submit your own topic idea. They will pay you per post that you write and you must meet their minimum post requirements.
2: PayPerPost - Get paid as much as $500 or more a month writing articles and reviews of their sponsors on your blog.
3: Blogsvertise - Their advertisers pay you to mention and talk about their websites, products and services in your own blog.
4: Review Me - After your blog has been accepted in their network, they will pay you $20 to $200 per post that you write.
5: Smorty - Earn $6 to $100 dollars per post you write on your blog. Amount paid for each post depends on the overall popularity and page rank of your blog.
6: SponsoredReviews - Write reviews for their advertisers’ products and services on your own blog. They charge a 35% transaction fee for their services.
7: LoudLaunch - Blog about the advertisers campaign releases that meet your interests. They pay once a month.
8: Blogitive - Get paid weekly via PayPal for posting stories that interest you.
9: BloggerWave - Select the advertiser opportunities that best suit your blog and write reviews on their products and services.
10: InBlogAds - Write about websites, products, services and companies on your blog and get paid for it.
11: BlogToProfit - Make $250 dollars or more by writing new posts on your blog.
12: Creative Weblogging - Write 7 to 10 posts per week for their network and they will pay you $225 per month.
13: WordFirm - Make money publishing books as a freelance writer from home.
14: 451 Press - Write for a blog within their network and receive forty percent of all generated revenue.
15: Digital Journal - Network of bloggers that get paid to report on newsworthy articles through their blogs.
16: BlogBurner - Sign up for a free blog and get paid for writing new posts. Your commissions are generated through Adsense clicks.
17: Squidoo - Earn money by writing your new blog, or choose to donate your earnings to charity.
18: About.com - Become a paid guide writing articles for About.com. Compensation depends on the growth of your page views.
19: DayTipper - Earn $3 for every short tip you write and get published.
20: Helium - Earn a share of their advertising revenue by writing articles in their channels.
21: Dewitts Media - Get paid to write your own blog. This site requires you have a minimum page rank of 3 to sign up.
22: BOTW Media - Make money writing a blog for their blogging network.
23: CreamAid - Get paid to submit blog posts in their directory.
24: BlogFeast - Generate revenue from pre-installed Google Adsense ads when you blog in their network.
25: Mashable - Mashable hires freelancers and new staff, offering one of the largest platforms for tech bloggers.
Advertising Programs26: Google Adsense - Most popular pay-per-click advertising provider. Make anywhere from $0.01 to $5.00 plus per click on site relevant ads.
27: Text-Link-Ads - Approve or deny the advertiser links that appear on your site. They pay you 50% of the sale price for each text link sold on your website.
28: BlogAds - The average blogger makes anywhere from $50 to $5000 dollars a month selling blog ads. To participate in this program you will need to get sponsored by someone in their network.
29: LinkWorth - Here you will find eleven different options to fit your advertising needs. Choose from text based advertisements, sponsored ads and paid blog reviews to name a few.
30: CrispAds - Access to over six thousand advertisers in their pay-per-click program. You choose the advertisers that suit you best.
31: Chitika - Offers six types of advertising to fit your needs.
32: AzoogleAds - Delivers targeted advertisers to their network of publishers to bring you the most profitable solutions.
33: Vibrant Media - Offers in-text contextual based advertisements.
34: MediaFed - Place advertisements in your blog’s RSS feed to generate additional revenue.
35: Qumana - Embeds ads directly into your posts. Ads are generated from keywords that you select. Not particularly popular with readers.
36: PeakClick - Austria based pay-per-click provider. Provides automatic insertion of site targeted ads.
37: DoubleClick - Offers a full suite of products for publishers that enable you to forecast, sell inventory, serve ads and analyze campaigns online and through other digital channels.
38: Tribal Fusion - They offer reliable payments, free ad-serving technology, a dedicated account manager and up-to-date, real-time reporting, with a 55% payout. Must go through an approval process.
39: AdBrite - Approve or reject any ads purchased for your sites. Also gives you the ability to sell ads direct with “Your Ad Here” links.
40: ThankYouPages - Shows ads based on demographics and relevancy. Majority of traffic must originate from U.S.
41: Clicksor - Inline text link advertising, underlines words directly in your posts making them clickable advertisements. Once more, we’d say that inline ads are not popular with regular blog readers.
42: TargetPoint - Contextually and search targeted pay-per-click ads.
43: IndustryBrains - Place relevant contextual text listings and graphical ads on your site.
44: BloggingAds - Post one-time ads on your site. Pays via PayPal.
45: BulletAds - Performance based online advertising network.
46: AdsMarket - Match your traffic to handpicked advertisers with top-converting products and services.
47: ROIRocket - Targeted campaigns specific to your marketing needs.
48: AdKnowledge - Offers complete outsourcing of your advertising management. Runs ads in websites, email and search engine inventory.
49: Yes Advertising - Payouts for running ads from their sponsors. Also offers a referral program that pays 20% of the referred webmasters earnings.
50: RevenuePilot - Offers pay-for-performance and pay-per-click advertising for your sites.
51: SearchFeed - Integrates paid advertisements into your site’s search feature.
52: Bidvertiser - Display text ads on your site and advertisers bid for placement.
53: Pheedo - Monetize your RSS feeds with this program.
54: ValueClick media - Generate revenue by displaying ads through banners, pop-unders and rich media. Be warned that pop-unders are unpopular these days.
55: OneMonkey - Another text based advertising program.
56: Yahoo Publisher Network - Use the internet giant, Yahoo, to display targeted ads on your site.
57: Q Ads - Monetize your site by placing ads anywhere you can add a picture.
Affiliate Networks and Programs
58: Amazon Associates - Link to Amazon’s products and services and earn up to 10% of the sale price. Converts well for product-focused sites.
59: Zilo - No IT or programming skills necessary! You can create and design your own shop quickly and easily, and Zlio allows you to choose from an extensive catalogue of over two million products for free60: ClickBank - Over 10,000 products to promote with commissions as high as 75%.
61: Commission Junction - Promote the advertiser’s products and services in exchange for a commission on leads or sales.
62: LinkShare - Pay-for-performance affiliate marketing network. Gives you the ability to use individual product links on your site and generate revenue from sales.
63: Affiliate Fuel - Serves as a middle man to bring publishers and advertisers together to promote products and services.
64: LinkConnector - Affiliate marketing network that offers a zero tolerance fraud policy to keep you safe while conducting business.
65: LeadPile - Affiliate network that allows you to generate and sell trade leads to the highest bidder.
66: Forex-Affiliate - Affiliate program that allows you to earn commissions from trading Forex (currency exchange) online.
67: incentAclick - CPA (cost-per-action) affiliate program that guarantees the fastest ROI in the industry.
68: AdPlosion - Earn revenue by selling leads, clicks and products from their advertisers. Also runs an incentive points program in addition to your commissions.
69: AffiliateFuture - Another affiliate program that pays you for generating leads, sales and clicks.
70: ClixGalore - Affiliate network consisting of 7500+ advertisers for you to choose from.
71:ThinkAction - Affiliate network that claims to have the top payouts and the possibility of earning over $100,000 dollars per month.
72: RocketProfit - Affiliate network, pays via check after your commissions reach $25 dollars.
73: CafePress - Earn affiliate commissions by selling your personally branded merchandise.
74: Avangate - Make money selling popular computer software titles through your site.
Paid Social Media Programs
75: Dada.net - Social site with a revenue sharing program that pays you for referring friends and driving traffic.
76: Jyve - Pays you to provide answers, advice and peer support to people in need of some help.
77: Cruxy - Specializes in social video, but serves as a venue to sell your digital media.
78: BitWine - Get paid to give advice and answer questions for people, on subjects of your interests and choice.
79: Kasamba - They enable experts to have paid online chat (and phone) sessions with clients. It's user rating based, so the better the expert, the more he/she can charge for his services.80: Ether - Make money answering questions for your peers over the phone. You set your rates and call availability.
81: T Shirt Takeaway - Allows bands, Designers, and everyone else to Design t-shirts and sell them directly to My Space and other sites using widgets.82: UpBlogger - Social net work site that pays you based on the amount of visits you receive to your uploaded content.
83: JustAnswer - Help others solve their problems and earn money for your knowledge.
84: MetaCafe - Upload your videos and earn money based on the number of views you receive.
85: Revver - Yeah, you can earn money by making an awesome video and putting it on Revver.86: Vume - Upload your videos, pictures, and audio clips, or write some blogs. At VuMe, it pays to be creative.
87: ChaCha - Get paid to offer support to members of their community.
88: AssociatedContent - Earn money by uploading your videos, text, audio and images to their site. Earnings are determined by the exposure you receive from your content.
89: myLot - Pays you for posting, commenting and using their social network.
90: KnowBrainers - Another site that pays you to get involved with the community and answer questions. Optionally you can answer questions through the RSS feeds on your own blog.
Everything Else That Pays
91: Google User Research - Google Pays you money to participate in their user research studies online.
92: Microsoft Research Panel - Get paid from Microsoft for providing feedback on their products.
93: Amazon Mechanical Turk - Amazon pays you to complete simple tasks that their computers can’t understand. Payments are a matter of cents.
94: eJury - Earn $5 to $10 dollars per verdict rendered as a mock juror for practice trials.
95: WorkingSOL - This company pays you to handle technical support for many large companies. You can work from home on the computer or by phone and decide what times you are available.
96: Appingo - Always looking for experienced copy editors and proof readers. Must submit a resume.
97: IntelliShop - Pays you to shop at stores in your area and write a review of your experience.
98: Mahalo Greenhouse - They pay $10 to $15 dollars per site you submit to their directory.
99: Focus Pointe Global - Get paid to join their focus groups and voice your opinion. Available to teens and adults.
100: Agloco - Sign up, download their toolbar and get paid to surf the internet. This site has been criticized as a “pyramid scheme”, although the founders deny the allegation.
101: Arise - Make money providing phone, web and email support and sales for 40 plus companies in their network.
102: CraZoo - Earn money for starting new threads and posting in online forums.
103: Tutor.com - Get paid to tutor people online.
104: ForumBoosting.com - Make money posting in forums across the internet.
105: Share-A-Pic - Earn money by uploading and sharing your pictures on their website.
106: Opuzz Voice - Earn money by doing voice overs for their clients online.
107: SlashMySearch - Get paid to search the internet with their search engine.
Photography108: Dreamstime - Sell your stock images and get 50-80% from each sale you make. Join our powerful photo community and reach new stock photography markets.
109: Shutterstock - Earn 25 cents per photo download.
15 Sites for Promoting Your Local Business
1. Website: Google AdWords
How It Will Help You: AdWords helps you target local online customers by setting your pay-per-click ads to appear only when people search a particular city, state or region. There's no minimum spending requirement--your daily budget is up to you.
How It Will Help You: AdWords helps you target local online customers by setting your pay-per-click ads to appear only when people search a particular city, state or region. There's no minimum spending requirement--your daily budget is up to you.
2. Website: Yahoo! Local Listings
How It Will Help You: Local Listings will promote your business to customers looking for information in Yahoo! Local. Choose from three different plans (one is free) to meet your company's needs.
3. Website: CitySearch
How It Will Help You: CitySearch offers online advertising tools to easily open your account, manage your daily results and receive ad placement on MSN, Yahoo!, Google and Ask.com. Similar to the idea of pay-per-click advertising, CitySearch offers two paid plans, "Web Connect" and "Call Connect."
4. Website: Ask.com's AskCity
How It Will Help You: Ask.com recently launched AskCity, a new local search application that's a one-stop destination for making plans. In one screen, consumers can map a route, make dinner reservations, purchase movie tickets and e-mail plans to others. Pricing for advertising on Ask.com varies.
5. Website: AOL's CityGuide
How It Will Help You: AOL's CityGuide specializes in providing local entertainment information to AOL service members. Advertising with AOL allows marketers to target consumers specifically by lifestyle and market.
6. Website: Craigslist
How It Will Help You: Craigslist gets an estimated 10 million unique visitors per day. With an online classified ad format organized by region or city, Craigslist connects buyers and sellers in more than 300 communities; for the most part, posting on the site is free.
7. Website: MerchantCircle.com
How It Will Help You: This free site offers a local business listing service that allows you to better manage your online reputation and become more visible in search engine results.
8. Website: Dotster
How It Will Help You: Dotster is a web domain registration and hosting company offering a local web advertising package called "Local Site Promotion." You set your monthly budget and Dotster will make your ad visible on all the major search engines.
9. Website: Local.com
How It Will Help You: Advertising on Local.com will give you access to their 10 million-plus monthly customers. Choose from a free basic listing or pay-per-click options.
10. Website: Froogle Local
How It Will Help You: Google's shopping search engine allows users to search for specific products by location. It's a great way for users to find retail stores regardless of whether you use e-commerce.
11. Website:ReachLocal
How It Will Help You: This site provides a central location for businesses to set-up, maintain and track local search advertising campaigns. Pricing varies.
12. Website: RegisterLocal
How It Will Help You: RegisterLocal is a service, costing $199.95 per year, that allows you to create a master profile they submit to search engines and directories on your behalf.
13. Website: TrueLocal
How It Will Help You: This local search engine features full-text searching and offers advertising opportunities for businesses. Currently indexing more than 13 million local businesses, TrueLocal starts at just $1 per month.
14. Website: YellowPages.com
How It Will Help You: YellowPages.com is a large online local directory site featuring city guides and advertising solutions. Basic listings are free.
15. Website: Web.com's MyEzClicks program
How It Will Help You: MyEzClicks lists your business on more than 30 major search engines, including Google, Yahoo! and MSN for a monthly fee.