Based on alarming new data, Ryan Deiss is predicting the World Wide Web as we know it, as independent direct marketers will be dead in 18 to 24 months.

Ryan has even outlined his findings in a shocking new report he’s calling: “The End of The Web” report. Download your complimentary copy right now.

Inside the report Ryan will reveal…

* The 3 giant companies who are KILLING online “mom and pops” (like YOU!) using an old Walmart strategy…and how you can PARTNER with them. (Yep, if you can’t beat ‘em it’s best just to join ‘em…)

* Why cheap, easy traffic (i.e. Google AdWords) has all but dried up, and the “Brute Force” traffic strategy that is more reliable and less expensive than Google…

* The “5 Phases of Technology” and why the transition from Phase 4 to Phase 5 will render most online businesses impotent over the next 12 – 18 months…

* The $200,000 “bet” I make every 30 days, and how you can follow my lead and cash-in on the largest wealth transfer the web has ever known…

* How the most common gadget in the world is killing traditional e-commerce, and why tactics like upsells and continuity may be gone forever. (There is a solution to this mess, but you have to read the report to see what it is…)

And much, much more…

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Years ago, a famous rock star—I recall it being either Madonna or Cyndi Lauper—returned to her high school to speak at an assembly.

Although she had not graduated, she told the kids: Stay in school.

“The more you learn, the more you earn,” she said.

Nowhere is this truer than in the business world.

Your success is likely to be directly proportional to the amount of knowledge you possess.

Knowledge about your products, technology, market and your profession, i.e. copywriting, website design, engineering.

Yet, even though we live in a knowledge-based economy, most of us graduate school knowing relatively little of what there is to know of the world—or even about our college major.

And with the dizzying pace at which new knowledge is created, the gap between what we know and what there is to know seems to grow exponentially with each passing day.

As Thomas Edison observed, “We don’t know one millionth of one percent about anything.”

Professor Richard Dawkins said in an interview with Scientific American magazine (7/07, p. 89): “All of us are ignorant of most of what there is to know.”

So, with all of us knowing next to nothing, what can we do to learn—and thereby earn—more?

First, find a niche—an area of specialization—and concentrate your efforts within that niche.

The narrower the area of your specialization, the better your chances of at least keeping reasonably up to date in the field.

Second, become an “information junkie”.

Read constantly.

I recommend every person seeking success in some area of business read:

1) The leading trade magazines in their industry.
2) A daily newspaper.
3) A weekly news magazine such as Newsweek, Time, or U.S. News & World Report.
4) One or two of the top e-newsletters or blogs covering your area of interest.

Third, read widely.

Even though you are a specialist, you need to acquire a solid base of knowledge outside your field.

Of course, your time is limited, so even here, you must choose your course of study carefully.

So what should you read and why?

MU, a Ph.D. candidate and consultant in the science of innovation, says that to be more innovative and creative you must read in “adjacent areas”.

An adjacent area is something different from but at least peripherally related to your major field.

Example: a systems analyst might read in architecture, because both deal with designing systems (the former a computer application, the latter a building).

Why do you need to read in adjacent areas?

Research shows that the ability to be innovative is dependent on possessing a wide storehouse of knowledge from which ideas can be generated.

People who are not well read have a limited store of knowledge, and therefore are hampered in their ability to come up with new solutions.

Of course, reading is not the only way to learn. Doing things is equally or in some cases even more valuable as a learning tool.

According to an article in Prevention magazine (10/07, p. 175), new experiences—doing new things—stimulates production of dopamine, a chemical involved in learning and memory.

In addition, new experiences build brain mass and increase mental agility, while the absence of novelty causes the brain to shrink.

Solution: take up a new language, hobby, sport, musical instrument, or any other activity that offers continual fresh challenges.

When does all this learning stop?

Never.

“School is never out for the pro” is old advice and still true today.

You might protest: “But I am too busy putting out fires at work for all this study and learning!”

Then do it after hours.

In his book “212: The Extra Degree”, S.L. Parker advises: “Add a few hours each month to your professional development outside of the work day.”

By doing so, you can add the equivalent of a full week of work on your most valuable asset: you.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

I want you to check out this awesome new script called Website Time Direct.

What it does is that it will direct your site to whatever URL you specify at the specific time and date.

It is a great tool to use for updating your site, or you can use it to run a Monday special, or launch your product.

Make sure to watch the video on the sales page to explore how you can use this awesome script.

Re-invent the way you do business on the web before all your competitors do…

Introducing Fast Fan Pages. You’ll be up and running with professional Facebook Fan Pages in as little as 7 easy clicks and generating laser-targeted niche traffic for free!

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Are web metrics as difficult to measure and analyze as the experts claim?

Not really, at least not when you follow the online marketing business model used by Agora Publishing and Early to Rise.

In the “Agora Model”, also known as the “Organic Model”, you generate sales mainly by sending e-mail marketing messages to your opt-in e-list of online subscribers.

And there are two metrics that are really important in e-mail marketing: click-through rates and conversion rates.

When you understand how this works—and I’m about to explain it—you can potentially multiply your online revenues 100X, giving you a sales increase of 9,000%.

Here’s how…

When you send an e-mail marketing message to your subscriber list, it should include a hyperlink to a “landing page” for the product being advertised.

A landing page is a web page dedicated to selling a single product, such as an e-book, course, boot camp, conference, or newsletter.

The click-through rate—often abbreviated “CTR”—refers to the percentage of people receiving your e-mail who click on the link and go to your landing page.

If you have 100,000 subscribers, and 1,000 click on the link to go to your landing page, the CTR is 1%.

Although many factors—the product, the offer, the list, the subject line, the copy—can affect CTR, the CTR generally ranges between 1% and 10%, though 1% to 5% is more likely.

So by writing a stronger e-mail message, you might be able to go from the low end of 1% to the high end of 10%, getting 10X as many subscribers to click to the landing page.

The conversion rate is the percentage of people clicking onto the landing page who actually buy the product.

In our example, if we have 1,000 clicks to the landing page, and get 10 orders, our conversion rate is 1%.

Conversion rates also range from 1% on the low end to 10% or sometimes higher on the high end.

If by writing stronger copy for your landing page, you can raise your numbers from the low end of 1% to the high end of 10%, you multiply your sales tenfold.

But here’s where the real leverage in online marketing comes into play:

If you can improve your click-through rates with better e-mail copy….

And boost your conversion rates with stronger landing page copy….

You can potentially get 100X more orders and revenues from every e-mail marketing message you send to your list.

For instance, say you are selling a $100 product.

You send an e-mail to your list of 100,000 subscribers.

It generates a 1% CTR, resulting in 1,000 unique visits to your landing page.

With a 1% conversion rate, you generate 10 orders, resulting in gross revenues of $1,000 for the promotion.

Now, you go back and write killer copy for the e-mail and the landing page, and test again.

Your e-mail generates a whopping 10% CTR to your list of 100,000 subscribers, resulting in 10,000 clicks to the landing page.

Now, your landing page converts 10% to buyers, generating 1,000 orders for gross revenues of $100,000. That’s 100X more than the last effort.

The big boost comes from multiplying two factors: the increased CTR times the increased conversion rates.

Each individually increases sales results tenfold.

But 10 X 10 gives us a hundredfold increase in orders and revenues.

Yes, there are other metrics to measure, like open rates and spam rate.

But just mastering the 2 most important e-mail marketing metrics—CTR and conversion rates—can make your Internet marketing business make 100X more sales and profits.

If you can’t multiply your clicks and conversions tenfold, smaller increases also translate into big gains.

For instance, if you just double your click-through rate, and double your conversion rate, you can quadruple your orders and revenues.

Easy? No. Possible? Yes.

Worth the effort? You bet.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

For a brief time, my friend Dan Kelly was homeless…but that seems like such a long time ago.

He’s now making a comfortable full-time income online, and he wants to show you how he did it.

The “Fast Start Formula” is a simple 7-step process for setting up an information publishing business based on the user’s hobbies, passions or expertise, including:

1) Find A Profitable Target Market

2) Setup A Lead Capture and Follow-up System

3) Drive Traffic To Lead Capture Page

4) Survey Your List

5) Create Your Product

6) Setup Your Sales Letter Mini-Site

7) Driving Traffic To Your Sales Site.

Dan has made it really simple to learn and apply easily and repeatably so users can feel like they’ve actually accomplished something and can build on that success. The product will be accessible inside of a password-protected member’s area and will contain MP3 audios, PDFs, training videos, and website templates.

As a savvy business owner or aspiring entrepreneur, you’ve probably noticed that there’s a BIG shift taking place in the way people choose to make money these days.

Just think, how do YOU earn a living right now?

If you’re a:

*Small Business Owner: You likely work 7 days a week. You may have a few employees that help run the show when you’re gone, but if you’re not regularly involved in the day-to-day, your ship will likely sink.

*Freelancer/Contractor: You work 10+ hours a day promoting your services AND working on actual projects. Despite your overtime and hard work, you still only get paid for the hours you spend at your desk working.

*Full-time salaried employee: You clock in five days a week—and except for paid vacation, sick leave, and a personal day here and there–you only get paid for the time you spend at your desk working.

*Stay-at-home mom: You aren’t making much money right now, and you have so much information to share with the world, but you don’t know how and where to start.

If the descriptions above sound like your life, I can guess that deep in your heart, you *truly believe* that there MUST be a better way to make money…

Well, the GREAT news is there IS a smarter way…

And starting next TUESDAY, August 2, entrepreneur mentor Ali Brown is going to show you how in her NEW 5-part telecourse: “Income Publishing Strategies: Create New Revenue Streams and Expert Status From Knowledge You Already Have”

Listen, you can’t just grab any topic out there and expect to make thousands of dollars on it. That’s why this course is *specifically designed* to help you create an info-product that *people want to BUY*, so you actually MAKE MONEY.

Go here now to learn more.

Hurry, because seats are going to fill up fast on this one! First class starts NEXT week.

There are endless debates and numerous formulas designed to tell us which parts of marketing are most important.

By most important, I mean which parts have the greatest effect on sales.

I have my own opinion about the most important part of marketing, and it may surprise you.

To begin with, it’s not the list, as so many experts claim.

The list is vitally important.

But there are plenty of lists you can rent or mail to through joint ventures—and through testing, you can determine which will work for you.

Having your own list—your house file—is also crucial.

But with patience, money, and effort, you can build a respectable house list—especially online, where it costs less than offline.

Lots of people say the most important part of marketing is the offer.

The offer can make a huge difference in response rates.

But, like lists, there are a finite number of offer options.

And once you test them, you know which offer works best for you.

As you’ve probably guessed, copy is important but not the most important element in marketing.

Unlike lists and offers, which are finite, the copy variations that can be written for a promotion are virtually limitless.

However, copy’s ability to lift response is somewhat limited.

New copy can beat the control by 25%…50%…even 100%—but rarely much more than that.

Changes in graphics can lift response even less than copy can, in most cases, so design is clearly not the most important part of marketing.

So what’s left?

Price is pretty important, but it’s not the #1 factor determining marketing success.

Price is really part of offer. And like lists and offer, the optimal price can quickly be determined through testing.

Is distribution the missing key? For 80% of businesses, distribution is fairly straightforward: get an order, ship it out. Or invite people to your store or showroom.

In some product categories (e.g., those sold through dealers, reps, or agents), distribution channels are trickier. But these situations are the exception, not the rule.

So what’s the most important part of marketing?

It’s the product.

By that, I don’t mean the physical product.

I mean what the product can do for the customer…the benefits it delivers…the functions it performs…the problems it solves…the needs it fills.

Are you offering to your customers something that they truly want or need?

And is it an urgently felt need, rather than one that isn’t that important or immediate?

Do the people in your market niche desire or require what you are selling today?

Will buying it make a huge improvement in the quality of their lives?

If the answer is yes, your marketing will be fairly successful—even if the price, offer, list, copy, and graphics are not perfect.

On the other hand, what if you have not found a great product that meets your prospect’s urgent needs or solves her most pressing problems?

Then she will not buy, no matter how persuasive the copy, eye-catching the graphics, appealing the offer, or reasonable the price.

There is an old saying in marketing: A great product will sell even if the promotion is poor, but a great promotion cannot sell a bad product.

It isn’t always true, but the fact remains that the most important factor in marketing is whether your product is a good fit with the needs, concerns, and desires of your customers.

But how do you know what those customers really want?

Madison Avenue advertising agencies and packaged goods marketers would answer: market research.

Direct marketers would answer: testing.

However, the fact is this: No matter how much research you do or how well you know your target market, deciding what products to offer them comes largely down to guesswork.

When you guess correctly, the promotion for your new product is a smash success, with the orders—and money—flying like snow.

That happens a lot, thank goodness.

But when you guess wrong, you end up offering to your customers something they don’t want or need—and have little interest in.

Your marketing campaign, no matter how brilliant, does not move them to buy—and that week, the phones don’t ring, and your online shopping cart software reports few orders.

So what should you do?

My best advice is for you to continually plan and test new products.

Spend a lot of time thinking about and talking to your customers. Ask them what they want, need, hope, dream, fear, and desire.

Then find or create products that address those wants, needs, dreams, and desires.

Offer these new products to your customers in limited marketing tests conducted at reasonable cost.

Then analyze the results.

Keep promoting your winners and cut your losses on the losers early.

By the way, one of the biggest marketing mistakes is to do the opposite: pour good money after bad in a desperate attempt to get your prospects to buy a product you think they should want.

Your customers know far better than you what they are interested in—and what they are indifferent to.

Just listen to them, and you’ll make a handsome living for as long as you’re in business.

If you argue with them and offer them what you think they should buy, instead of what they want to buy, you’ll soon be out of business.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

Time is short, so I’ll keep this quick and to the point.

I’ve arranged for you to have an exclusive, invitation only sneak peek at Andrew Fox’s new Killer Content system…

And as part of that you’re getting his own personal list of 978 profitable niches too.

All you need to do is fire up the system, choose a niche, then set the software to auto-update the content, and you’re done.

Simple, easy to set up, and ready to make you unlimited profits, all inside 10 minutes.

Oh and did I mention you’re also getting the CONTENT for those niches?

So you’re literally ready to go right now.

You could be making money from this thing even while you’re reading this, so shoot over there immediately and grab your own piece of the moolah pie…

There’s a ton of it going around, and if you’re not quick somebody will grab your slice.

You know the best part?

You don’t need money to get started, any special skills, or anything else.

It’s just a matter of watching his super-fast quick start guide, then getting everything ready to roll.

It really does take less than 10 minutes…

Aspiring professional bloggers take note! I found this really cool set of videos that actually teaches you how to set up your own blogging business! The best part is that it teaches you for free! There’s something like 15 free videos that walk you through it step by step!

* The WordPress Classroom *

Matt even teaches you how to link up your blog with all the latest social media platforms out there! It’s all explained in the videos. See you inside!

If you’re struggling to build and maintain a successful Internet income, you are going to be pumped for what’s to come!

Tom Ambrozewicz has perfected a system to dominate any niche market out there. It’s so easy.

I know you are skeptical…and it might sound crazy. I’m sure you’ve heard this before.

But let me quickly share some of the huge discoveries I’ve made:

- Secrets to finding Red Hot products and what to promote so that you can offer to a starving crowd of people…this happens to be the best way to make some serious money online.

- The 7 best-kept secrets for turning an average niche website into a cash pumping income producing machine.

- Ninja strategies for finding and taking advantage of the most profitable affiliate programs online.

These are only a few of the huge benefits of this system…

Once you create a profitable site…just one time, you’ll see exactly what it takes to be able to scale the process over and over again.

It IS that simple.

Go and check out Micro-Niche Ninja now!

One of the key essence in online niche marketing is content generation, and you probably know that it takes any from 10 to 100 niche content sites to make you a decent income from AdSense and affiliate marketing every month.

For this to happen, you might have thought that you need to spend a lot of money on writers to get them to write fresh and unique articles every time…

Well, you don’t need that option, and neither are you going to die writing. Sandwiched between these 2 choices is a convenient way of working that is spinning your articles.

For your information though, the new Google Farmer Update is smart enough to hit hard duplicate content sites, and even if you were used to spin content at 30-50% uniqueness, it’s still NOT enough. Sooner or later, Google will track down those articles and your backlinks won’t count.

Luckily, if you follow the instructions that I’ll be providing you on this page, duplicate content will NEVER be an issue again…

If you’re doing all the usual stuff online to make money (blogging, SEO, article writing, PPC, etc.) and you’re still close to being broke, it’s definitely not because you’re not working enough each day.

In fact, you’re probably working way TOO much…

And too HARD…

…at all the wrong things.

Chances are you’re doing what you have been told to do, instead of doing the easy stuff that actually works.

Successful Internet Marketing is about smart thinking, NOT about hard work.

Did you know that there are quick techniques you can implement in under 30 minutes…

…that can earn you massive sums of money every day?

No one who uses this technology likes to talk about it at all.

They keep it all to themselves…

That’s why I was thrilled when I heard about the brand new Lazy Affiliate Riches system.

It contains the secret automated system that a select few have been milking for extreme profits for the past 2 years, totally undercover.

You see, my friend Jeff Dedrick engineered this completely automated system that generates floods of income, easily and out of thin air, regardless of your technical skills or prior experience.

And Lazy Affiliate Riches gives you step-by-step instructions on everything you need to know, PLUS the automated tools that you previously have been lacking.

If you’re one of the smart ones that already got in, you’re learning how to work SMARTER, not harder, all the while finally making that money you’ve been dreaming of.

But if you’ve not jumped in on this yet, you may be wondering if you really CAN make a ton of cash online without hard work…

Look, you can either continue to struggle and fight your way through this…

…or you can take the easy way out and tap into this system today.

If you’re a “typical” Internet marketer you probably suffer from information overload! There are so many offers and opportunities that come your way…and many of them are GREAT!

On top of that, you’re an entrepreneur…therefore you tend to come up with great ideas of your own.

Combine these two things together…and you probably suffer from what many other internet marketers suffer from. It’s a disease known as “shiny penny syndrome”. You may know the symptoms. Something sounds like a great opportunity so you sign up and start learning about it.

Then ANOTHER great opportunity comes up. So you buy the program, even though you’re half way through the first program. You think you can do both at once. While running your current business.

And then a potential JV opportunity presents itself. And you’re afraid if you let it go, this will be the “big thing” that you missed out on…so you jump on board.

And now you are juggling WAY too many things, and aren’t productive at ANY of them. It’s time to stop the madness!

People often ask me to summarize Theory of Constraints. And in one word, it’s FOCUS. Buying more Internet Marketing products is NOT the answer!

The project that’s going to make you the most money in the least amount of time is the first thing you should be focused on.

You Need a Process to Determine Where You Should Focus

How to focus in 3 easy steps:

1. Determine the revenue potential for each project.

This is an estimate, of course, since you haven’t done the project yet. How much potential revenue do you think would result if you completed the project?

Include all income you will be collecting as a result of the project, even shipping.

Don’t worry if you don’t have perfect information. We just need a ballpark number or “close enough for hand grenades” number. And because you will have an estimate for each of your projects, we are just looking for them to be relative to each other.

2. Determine the cost to generate the revenue of each project.

Costs are those that you would incur as a result of the project. Example project costs:

• New hosting fees (don’t count fees you are already paying);
• Other new recurring fees like email hosting, but again, don’t count fees you are already paying;
• Sub-contracted help from rent-a-coder, freelancer, or some such outsourced labor. What part of the project will you be off-loading? You can look at bids on other similar projects to give you an idea of cost;
• Affiliate payments. What percent will your affiliates be getting?;
• Expert costs if you are paying a expert for their material;
• Material publications and shipping costs if you are selling physical products;
• And so on…

Do not include any costs that you are currently paying and will continue to pay whether you do the project or not.

3. Determine how much of YOUR time it will take to complete each project to start generating revenue.

“YOUR” is emphasized because we are not counting outsourced time. Outsourcing is a way to LEVERAGE your time.

Theory of Constraints has been getting some play in the Internet Marketing circles lately. And the reason is because it works.

You are the constraint of your business and this question is: How much of the constraint (YOUR time) will each project use?

The idea is to maximize the use of your constraint to generate the most income. So you can prioritize your projects based on the (Revenue – Costs)/Your Time.

Maximize the Use of Your Constraint (Your Time)!

The project that generates the highest Throughput (Revenue – Costs) per hour of your time should be your highest priority project—the one thing that you are focusing on.

Your constraint is the thing that limits your ability to make more money now as well as in the future.

I find that for most entrepreneurs, the constraint is their time and attention.

So for us to maximize our potential, we need to focus and work on those things that generate the most amount of Throughput for the least amount of our time and attention.

This also means that when you outsource, you are better leveraging the constraint (YOU). You are making money, but using less of your time and attention.

To the extent that you can outsource—do it!

We typically do this exercise and separate projects into 2 types—short term and long term. That’s because the goal is to maximize profits now as well as in the future.

Then we typically select one short-term and one long-term project to work on.

This means that you have 2 projects you can work on, but that’s it. We want to eliminate much of the multi-tasking your doing.

The key is to…Focus on Finishing!

It is far better to finish a project that will start generating income (or get you closer to that) than to start another project.

We generate no income when we start a project. We start generating income when we finish!

Now that you know which single project you should be focused on…

Do NOT work on or start any other projects until you finish that one project!

When you finish the short-term project (or it’s not what you thought and your decide to stop), you can start another short-term project.

And when you finish the long-term project, you can start the next one.

How much is it worth to actually finish a project on your list?

It’s common to find that some projects will return several THOUSAND dollars an hour for your time.

It’s also common to find that you have prioritized incorrectly—that you are working on some things that you shouldn’t be.

One client was beating himself up for not working on a book. Well when we did this analysis, we discovered that the book was NOT at the top of either the short term list or the long term list.

How much energy and attention do you spend beating yourself up or feeling guilty about what’s not getting done?

What if the thing you feel guilty about should NOT be worked on right now? How could you better spend that energy and what results could you achieve?

What if you knew the one short-term and the one long-term project you should be focused on with your 10 hours per week?

Here’s the point: You’ve spent a LONG time directing your time, money and attention to what you know. Now it’s time to FOCUS. You know enough, for now.

How to Focus in 3 Easy Steps:

1. Determine the revenue potential for each project.
2. Determine the cost to generate the revenue of each project
3. Determine how much of YOUR time it will take to complete each project to start generating revenue.

Extracted from StomperNet SEO Intelligence Report, July 22, 2011.

Have you noticed what successful affiliate marketers have all in common when they promote a product?

THE ANSWER: They *BRIBE* their subscribers and website visitors to buy the product through their affiliate link!

That’s right!

They offer them a mix of BONUS Packages and REBATES to differentiate themselves from other competitors.

This simple trick works extremely well and it’s responsible for generating millions of dollars in sales for many product launches in ALL kinds of niche markets!

All the big names in IM are using this strategy to generate more sales for their business and YOU SHOULD TOO!

It’s really simple. Once you’ve prepared a cool bonus package, use this cool software.

It will automate your bonus delivery to the customers!

No pain. No headache.

It’s a set-and-forget system.

Once you set this up, you won’t even need to touch it again!

So go ahead and implement this strategy in your business right away!

Watch Tim Atkinson log into one of his Clickbank accounts and find out how he makes this kinda money…

A few weeks ago, my wife called me at work when my back was up against the wall on a tight copy deadline.

She complained to me that she saw a bunch of big fat flies buzzing around our living room and kitchen.

“So go out and buy some fly traps,” I said testily – annoyed that she would bother me about such a trivial matter.

When I got home, I saw half a dozen small potted plants placed strategically around the living room and kitchen.

“What are these?” I asked her.

“You asked me to buy fly traps,” she said as if speaking to an idiot. “These are Venus fly traps.”

Of course, I had meant for her to go to the supermarket or hardware store and buy fly paper or insecticide or any other kind of paper and chemical fly trap not a plant.

So what does all this have to do with your marketing?

Simply this…The way in which you communicate people permeates your entire business—marketing, sales, support, credit and collection, and customer service.

Now, you may think you are communicating in a clear and unambiguous fashion—just as I did when I told Amy to buy “fly traps”.

But no matter how clear or direct you are, your customer may not understand you for one of 4 reasons.

First, you may not be as articulate as you think you are. Many of us are not.

Second, you may be using jargon your customers are unfamiliar with – or talking about ideas or technology they lack the background to understand.

Third, your customers may in fact be—in certain areas, anyway—slow or impatient learners.

LR, a loyal subscriber to my e-newsletter, has bought and asked for a refund on a number of my e-books.

Why? Because he refuses to learn how to download and use Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Each time, he grumbles: “Why can’t you sell regular books and not e-books?”

(We now offer to print and mail a hard copy for a small extra fee.)

Fourth, no matter how precise and clear you are, some customers are still going to misunderstand you.

Example: one of my customers sent me a nasty e-mail complaining that the quality of the audio CDs I sent him was crappy, because the CDs did not work.

“I put the CDs in every player in my house and car,” he wrote, naming the offending product. “They didn’t play in any of them.”

I called him up and politely said: “Could you remove one of the disks and look at the label?”

“OK,” he said as testily as his e-mail. “So what?”

I then asked him to read the first line of the label, which is printed in big, bold type.

“Dee Vee Dee,” he annunciated slowly.

“Yes, and that’s why it won’t play in your CD player,” I replied politely. “It’s a DVD, not an audio.”

“Oops,” he said sheepishly, “sorry.” And immediately hung up.

My point?

As the marketer, seller, and service provider, it is incumbent upon you to make all your customer communications as clear as crystal.

But no matter how clearly you communicate with people, some are bound to misunderstand you.

When it happens, they may become unjustly irate or rude with you…but even so, treat them with nothing but kindness and patience in return, as you help them solve their problem.

Communication is an integral part of marketing…selling…customer service…credit and collections and virtually every other area of your business.

Follow the advice of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said (and I am paraphrasing) that it is not enough to communicate so clearly that your customers can understand you.

You must communicate so clearly that your customers cannot possibly misunderstand you (even though some still will anyway).

By the way, the post script to my story about our fly problem is that the Venus fly trap plants Amy bought actually worked!

Flies are attracted to the bright red surface inside the trap; perhaps they think it’s food.

When they land, a sensor on the trap alerts the plant. The trap closes around the fly, imprisoning him. The plant secretes some sort of acid or juice that slowly digests him.

I came home the next night to find my wife trying to pry open one of the traps in which a fly had been caught with a pencil.

“What are you doing?” I asked in amazement.

Turns out she felt sorry for the fly and didn’t want him to suffer.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

You know we’re huge fans of the “local” marketing angle.

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And the reality is that those of us who are using “local” strategies in our marketing are killing it!

If your business hasn’t gotten the traction you want, I’ll bet it’s because you don’t have clients.

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Do you talk too much?

A study conducted at the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine found that, to forge closer relationships with the people they treat, some physicians reveal personal information to their patients.

Stuff like details about their health, family members, travel, politics, hobbies, and other interests.

You’d think this would help establish a bond between doctors and patients on a more personal level.

But guess what?

According to an article in Rochester Review, the study showed that these personal disclosures “have few demonstrable benefits”.

In fact, doctors chatting up the people they’re treating may even “disrupt the flow of important patient information.”

The lesson?

Other people care more about themselves—their worries, their concerns, their fears, their hopes, their dreams, even what movie they saw last weekend or where they went for dinner last night—than they do about you.

Therefore, if you want people to like you, you have to stop talking…and start listening.

Should you care if people like you? Yes. Professional salespeople know that to get prospects to buy from you, they first have to like you.

Conversely, prospects won’t buy from someone they don’t like.

Is that a problem if you are not a “people person”?

It need not be. Take me as an example.

I am introverted and not social.

But people who meet me at business and social functions often report a positive experience.

The reason is simple: I ask them questions and listen to their answers.

I don’t interrupt them, but let them talk as long as they want.

When they are done, I don’t switch the topic to me.

Instead, I keep the conversation focused on them—by asking another question.

When should you stop catering to the other person…and start talking about yourself?

Well, if you’re a businessperson trying to make a sale, the answer is: really, never.

Perhaps you have heard the expression, “You have two ears but only one mouth so you should listen twice as much as you talk.”

That ratio is tilted in the right direction, only not far enough.

One of my mentors, the late Howard Shenson, once told me that, to be successful in business, you should listen 80% of the time and talk only 20% of the time.

A common misconception many salespeople share is the compulsion to—at some point in the conversation—get the prospect to stop talking long enough so they can finally make their “presentation”.

Their mistaken belief is that the presentation—an orderly recitation of features and benefits—is necessary to make the sale.

In fact, if you listen, your prospects will tell you exactly what you have to do—and say—to get them to buy.

Just follow their lead…and forget about your “presentation”…and you’ll close more and bigger deals, more often.

The more the prospect talks, the better it usually is for the salesperson.

People are happiest when they can talk to someone who appears to listen and be genuinely interested.

On the other hand, if you launch into a “presentation”, they may become bored and lose interest.

I once saw a graphic designer sitting in a marketing director’s office talking about designing a big capabilities brochure.

The marketing director was interested and ready to sign on the dotted line.

But instead of letting her do so, the graphic designer said, “Let me show you our portfolio” and began unzipping one of those big simulated leather portfolio cases.

“That’s not necessary,” said the marketing director, clearly pressed for time and ready to issue a purchase order (PO).

“But I do want you to see our latest work,” the designer insisted.

Before the marketing director could protest further, the graphics person opened the portfolio and began flipping pages.

The marketing director was clearly bored and in a hurry. She tried to end the dog-and-pony show, but the designer was oblivious, droning on about minute details of this catalog layout or that printing challenge.

Finally, the artist got the message. But it was too late. When the marketing director saw me observing the scene from another meeting in a conference room, she shook her head, as if to say, “What a blockhead!”

I later found out that the project was awarded to another firm. Yes, by talking too much, you can actually talk yourself out of the sale.

A good rule for selling: say only as much as you have to. Then, shut up. The more you talk, the greater your chances of saying something that the prospect will find objectionable or disagreeable. Result: sale gone.

The same principle of “put the listener first” works not just in selling, but in virtually every other interpersonal situation—from a worker persuading the boss of the best way to tackle a task, to 2 spouses debating what color tile to use in the new bathroom.

Copywriters, too, know that they have to write about not what’s important to them, but about what’s important to the reader.

Or as Don Hauptman puts it: “Start with the prospect, not with the product.”

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.