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It Takes Two - How to Cultivate Profitable Alliances
“Cross promoting with other businesses can give you a significant advantage over the competition, with many benefits and cost savings.” -Heidi Richards-
More and more competition in the marketplace is making it necessary for companies to find...
Life's True ROI
al debt load and ROI, whether the industry as a whole is in a slump, whether there are too many partner or legal problems, whether future demand will materialize and so on and so forth. While these questions are certainly relevant, the most...
Secrets To Successful Publishing
Have you ever wondered what would it take to compete successfully with the “big guys” like Simon & Schuster and even get to the top of the heap? If there is such thing as a magic formula for success, then the story of Geela, the author of the...
Top Ten Tips When Business is Slow
How's your business going to keep growing with the holidays just around the corner? What can you do when most people don't want to spend money now?
If you are concerned the cash flow won't flow and you won't have enough income for the next...
Work at Home
If you are tired of your present job, laid off, want to spend more time with family, and want to be your own boss, it is possible to work at home. Home jobs can include finance relates jobs such as bookkeeping, writing jobs such as copywriting,...
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The Secrets of The Shriekers
I am constantly bombarded with all sorts of advertisements, single-page sites, and sites offering very little real content but some wonderful new "product" or "service" for sale that purports to make its customers wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. For the purposes of this article, let's refer to Amazing Formula (http://www.amazingformula.com) as an example of such a site. (Note: I have never purchased this product and can make no claim, verification or guarantee one way or the other as to its effectiveness. The sole purpose of my mentioning this site is as a study of the ad copy within.) There isn't very much in terms of "content"; the marketing of the "bribes" is confined to a single page, with a hyperlink to "testimonials" which may or may not be legitimate. Yet, this site has been around in some form for nearly four years, according to The Internet Wayback Machine (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.amazingformula.com), with the same basic "content" and no significant updates. Why? Because it works. What makes this website and others like it profitable, even without a significant content update in 4 years? The sales copy. The sales copy of this page uses simple, but effective techniques to trigger the user into buying the product, in this case a CD-ROM indicating how to sell anything to anyone at any time. Let's look at some of these techniques now. That's right, I, Adam Senour, am going to give away millions of dollars' worth of secrets to you and I'm going to do it WITHOUT CHARGING YOU A SINGLE RED CENT!!! No e-books to download, No expensive CD-ROMs to purchase, No courses to subscribe to, NOTHING! You too will be a website copy writing genius, able to sell your goods and services at will! Short paragraphs. Users traditionally don't wish to read long blocks of text. They like information concise, simple, and to the point. "You" words/second-person perspective. This is arguably the most misunderstood and underrated aspect of copy writing. When reading sales copy, users are looking not for general information on the product. They want the answer to one simple question: "What's in it for me?" Using words such as "you", "your", and "yourself", while being generic in nature, go a long way toward establishing a website rapport with your customers. Bold, Underline, Italics. Highlighting
important phrases with bold, underline, and italics allows your customer to quickly scan and decipher the nature of your copy and the key elements of it. Bold, underline, and italics can be used in conjunction with colour to further distinguish vital elements of your marketing message.However, it is strongly advised that you use bold, underline, and italics sparingly in order to ensure that only your most important points are receiving the full attention of your customers. Use bold, italics, and underline sparingly. The colour coding of important words, and the selection of those colours. "Cool" colours such as Blues and greens are traditionally used to relax the user and put him/her in a positive mood conducive to sales; and "hot" colours such as reds, yellows and oranges are meant to incite the user into making a purchasing decision. Headings and subheadings. Headings and subheadings should be used to break up long blocks of text into shorter and easier-to-read sections. In the case of the Amazing Formula website, graphic headings are used to break up the content; however, for search engine reasons, you may wish to consider text-based headings to split up your content into sections. Bullet lists. These lists can be numbered, as this one is, or they can be unordered, as the Amazing Formula ones are. There doesn’t seem to be much difference in either event, as long as the copy for each bullet remains concise and to the point as in point 2; although the unordered list bullets can be stylized with graphics, as the Amazing Formula website has done. A call to action. What do you want your customer to do? Where would you like them to go next? Give your customer at least one clear and understandable path to follow to make the appropriate action. In the case of the Amazing Formula site, there are not one, but 2 "Click to order via our secure server!" buttons as well as an order hyperlink in the menu on the top of the page. The garden path, albeit a very short one in this case, is clearly laid out for the customer to follow. These are the seven secrets of The Shriekers. Implementing them on your website should lead to a significant increase in sales and profits.
Adam Senour is the owner of ADAM Web Design, a leading web design and development company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Visit http://www.adamwebdesign.ca for more information on ADAM Web Design products and services.
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Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers ... |
Online shopping from the earth's biggest selection of books, magazines, music, DVDs, videos, electronics, computers, software, apparel & accessories, shoes, ... |
www.amazon.com |
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Amazon.com Books: New & used textbooks, biographies, children's ... |
Online shopping for millions of new & used books on thousands of topics at everyday low prices. |
www.amazon.com |
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Google Book Search |
Google digitizes many books from library collections. If an Old English edition, translation, or study is out of print or hard to locate, one can search for ... |
books.google.com |
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Books - The New York Times Book Review |
Reviews, features, author interviews and book excerpts from the national daily and the Sunday book review. Registration required. |
www.nytimes.com |
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The Online Books Page |
Features over 10000 online books free to the public. |
onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu |
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Barnes & Noble.com - Books, Used & Out of Print, Textbooks ... |
Barnes & Noble.com is the Web's premier destination for Books, DVD, Music, PC & Video Games, Children's titles, Toys & Games, Gift Cards, and more. |
www.barnesandnoble.com |
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The Online Books Page |
Listing over 25000 free books on the Web - Updated December 5, 2006 ... New on online books -- Google Library revs up, and other milestones -- Latest Book ... |
digital.library.upenn.edu |
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Amazon.co.uk: low prices in Electronics, Books, Music, DVDs & more |
UK branch of the online bookseller features large searchable selection of books. |
www.amazon.co.uk |
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AbeBooks: New & Used Books, Textbooks, Rare & Out of Print Books |
Abebooks - Over 80 million new, used, and rare books. |
www.abebooks.com |
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Guardian Unlimited Books |
Extensive site includes news and reviews, critics, authors, first chapters, Top 10s, bestsellers, talk board and games. Offers special sections by genre and ... |
books.guardian.co.uk |
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Books - Salon |
The literary section of Salon features book reviews, interviews, columnists and publishing news. |
dir.salon.com |
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Globe and Mail: Book News |
Presents book reviews and columnist along with best-seller lists and Book Briefs emailed newsletter. Canada. |
www.theglobeandmail.com |
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calendarlive.com - BOOKS & TALKS |
Reviews, features and event listings from the West Coast daily newspaper. |
www.calendarlive.com |
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Book - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
A book is also a literary work or a main division of such a work. ... Books, especially heavy ones, need the support of surrounding volumes to maintain ... |
en.wikipedia.org |
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Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times |
Book reviews, literary news, literary competitions, weblogs, book quizzes and literature features from The Times and The Sunday Times. |
www.timesonline.co.uk |
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Book World - washingtonpost.com |
The Sunday book review of the national daily newspaper features criticism, columns and an online book club. |
www.washingtonpost.com |
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Internet Public Library: Books |
Books. Rather than continuing to maintain its own index of online texts, the IPL is now pleased to recommend a number of other worthwhile resources for this ... |
www.ipl.org |
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oreilly.com -- Welcome to O'Reilly Media, Inc. |
O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly has been a ... |
www.oreilly.com |
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SF Gate: Entertainment: Books |
Chronicle reviewers pick the best books of the season for the readers on ... Jessica Mitford's children recall the woman they called Decca in a new book. ... |
www.sfgate.com |
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Life - Entertainment News - USATODAY.com |
The latest in entertainment news with movie, TV, book, music and theater reviews, travel tips and tools and original content from USATODAY.com - updated ... |
www.usatoday.com |
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