Copywriting Kid

• Spying On John Carlton
  • The Art Of Bombing
    Thursday, 11:49am Tampa Bay, FL “What kind of music do you play here, Bob?” “Oh, we got both kinds. Country and western.” (Bob, the bar owner, and Jake Blues in “The Blues Brothers”) Howdy… Each year around July 4th, I like to post something on the blog about the First Amendment to the Constitution. The part about free speech remains [...]
  • The Wisdom of Crowds
    Monday, 12:10pm Reno, NV “Let’s just say I was testing the bounds of reality…” (Jim Morrison of The Doors) Howdy… We have a winner! Actually, the winning answer to last Friday’s quiz crashed the gates within ten minutes of the post going live. But it was good to let the test string out, anyway… because the hard-core thinking and pure cogitation [...]
  • Quiz Time #5. Prize!
    Saturday, 8:42pm Reno, NV “Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.“ (HAL to astronaut Dave in “2001″) Howdy… Okay, let’s do a quickie quiz, what d’ya say? It’s Saturday evening, after all… and I just got my ass whupped by [...]
  • Death By Habit
    Thursday, 7:13am Reno, NV “I yam what I yam.” (Popeye, avoiding introspection.) Howdy… Are your routines helping you… or slowly murdering you? As with most of life, it’s complicated. And you’re gonna have to spend more than your normal 38 seconds cogitating on this issue if you’re ever gonna make peace with your natural inclination to habitualize your ass into oblivion. (Side [...]
  • Cheeky Bastards
    Tuesday, 12:20pm Melbourne, Australia “Buttula spruiks arrival of Spork at his new gig.” (Actual headline in last Thursday’s “The Australian” newspaper) Howdy… Reporting in from the fringes of the Outback… … okay, I’m actually comfortably settled in an intriguing old hotel in Melbourne, nowhere near the Outback. It still feels like I’m far from home, though. Two weeks into this March Across [...]
  • The Big Lie
    Monday, 10:45am Sydney, Australia Howdy… Special guest-star post today… by my old buddy David Garfinkel (”Garf” to those us lucky enough to be close friends). Garf has been my First Choice as “wingman” for the last half-dozen seminars I’ve given (including the Copywriting Sweatshops, the Hot Seat Marketing Makeovers, and particularly the Simple Writing System main event). So, while I’m [...]
  • Photo Orgy
    Thursday, 10:06pm Reno, NV “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.” (Ansel Adams) Howdy… I grew up in a photo-loving family. Pop still has his trusty Kodak folding camera — a true antique now — and I cannot yet bring myself to dig through that box in the garage with all my old cameras (cuz [...]
  • Yo, Aussies!
    Thursday, 7:55pm Reno, NV “It was never part of our plans not to play well… it just happened that way.” (Ron Barassi, Hall O’ Fame footballer & Carlton coach) G’day, mates. In about 10 days, my biz partner Stan will morph into Road Dog Stan, and we’ll both be off to the Land Down Unda. Three weekends, three cities, three [...]
  • What’s On Your Mind?
    Thursday, 10:45pm Reno, NV “That is just too fuckin’ pretty to be real.” (Bob the drummer) Howdy… Sorry for the profanity in the above quote, but that’s what he said. It was around 15 years ago, in the midst of my 3rd mid-life crisis. I’d dropped out of advertising for a while — wasn’t sure how long I’d be floating, and [...]
  • Myth Busting
    Tuesday, 12:59pm Reno, NV “You’ll lose 20 pounds while you sleep!” (Go-straight-to-jail diet-ad lingo that nevertheless pops up every couple of years) Howdy… You know what? I haven’t pissed anybody off in a while. So let’s see if we can’t rile up the mob a little bit, cause a little unrest in the ranks. The best way to do this, [...]

When it comes to headlines, it doesn’t get much better than Digg at times:

Mother cooks and eats friend in front of 7year old son..

Pissed off French Workers Kidnap Bosses

BREAKING: Obama Passing Laws to Search Citizens Computer

Next Page →

• Spying On Clayton Makepeace
  • 300 Million in 10 Days … Year After Year. How Do They Do It?
    Troy White reveals the $300 Million dollar marketing secrets of the Calgary Stampede. And how to get thousands of people working for free.
  • Could This BIG LIE Be Setting Your Business Up for the KILL?
    Dear Web Business-Builder, Quick question before we get started: What’s the biggest surprise you ever got from a marketing test? Hold that thought because I’ll be asking again … You’ve probably heard the saying, “if it ain’t broke — don’t fix it.” Heard that, right? It’s one of the reasons major corporations today have become [...]
  • The Oft-Confused Features And Benefits
    Theodore Levitt once said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.” This is one of the most quoted passages in marketing in trying to explain the difference between features and benefits. However, the quote is incomplete and leaving out something that, to me, is far more important. And that is, what’s the purpose [...]
  • You Have Absolutely No Right to Be Successful
    Clayton Makepeace shares the traits you need to be a successful copywriter: courage, independence, intensity, persistence, and a mind-blowing work ethic.
  • The Single Greatest Success Secret (And how it can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams)
    Clayton Makepeace reveals the single greatest success secret and how it can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.
  • Turn your stories into profits
    Fellow Business-Builder, I am NOT a good storyteller.  It’s something that I have to work on all the time.  But, I have had great success using stories in my marketing campaigns. And the more I think about it, the easier I realize any storytelling newbie (like myself) can easily pull out a [...]
  • The Golden Paradise …
    Dear Web Business-Builder, Saturday night is movie night at my house. That’s when my wife and I curl up on the couch, pop the cork on a nice bottle of wine, and relax. It’s usually some chick flick or another. And I’m OK with that. But this Saturday night was different. We watched [...]
  • Are You Socially Awkward?
    You’ve no doubt heard about how social media is taking over the world - or at least the Internet marketing world. And depending on your perspective, this takeover may seem hostile, especially if you’re new to online marketing and have just started to build your own Internet business. The sheer volume of different [...]
  • Brain Management 101
    Dear Business-Builder, A couple of weeks ago, on our fourth birthday, I invited you to ask us for anything you like – and boy, did you ever! In fact, as soon as NewsBlarg.com launches on July 4th, we’ll turn our full attention to improving The Total Package – so brace yourself; big changes are [...]
  • How Big Can You Dream?
    Clayton Makepeace reveals three ways to unleash the hair-on-fire entrepreneur inside you.
• Spying on Michel Fortin
  • Social Media Isn’t Dead, But It Can Be Deadly
    I love social media. And I love trying and testing new stuff. If there’s some new social media tool, website, or community, I’ll be one of the first ones to try it out. But there is a limit. And I think we need to be careful. Because social media is like a drug. It can become dangerously [...]
  • How to Extract Doubt From Your Sales Copy
    A few years ago, something happened that provided incontrovertible proof of the importance of an infallible rule in copywriting. I knew it all along but never saw it proven to me in such a personal and direct way. What am I talking about? No, it’s not the headline. It’s not being emotional. It’s not benefits. And it’s not split-testing, [...]
  • It’s Not About Facebook, It’s About Integrity
    As expected, my last blog post generated quite a number of comments. Some were insightful, even a few of the negative ones, and I appreciate them all. Thank you. However, from most of the comments I’ve read, including some of the positive ones, it seems a lot of people missed the point I was trying to convey. [...]
  • Did Larry Winget Go Overboard?
    If you have been living under a rock in the past few weeks, then you might have missed one of the biggest kerfuffles in Internet history. Or so it seems. No, I’m not talking about the contested elections in Iran. I’m talking about the recent Facebook username frenzy, when Facebook allowed its users to register usernames, making profile addresses [...]
  • The Oft-Confused Features And Benefits
    Theodore Levitt once said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.” This is one of the most quoted passages in marketing in trying to explain the difference between features and benefits. However, the quote is incomplete and leaving out something that, to me, is far more important. And that is, what’s the purpose [...]
  • Pardon Our Dust As We Disqus
    Just a quick note to let you know this blog is undergoing some renovations. I’ve just installed Disqus (pronounced “discuss”) comment system, which will replace the native WordPress commenting system. It takes a while for the system to import all the comments from WordPress — it’s about 70% done, now — and it should be all back to normal soon. Fingers crossed. Why [...]
  • 60-Minute Naked Truth Salesletter Formula
    When I used to run a copywriters board, one of the most popular threads on the discussion forum was one started by my friend and fellow Canadian Dean Jackson. If you don’t know Dean Jackson, he is a Torontonian, a real estate mogul, an information marketing millionaire (author of many programs, including the highly successful “Stop Your [...]
  • How to Upsell With Extended Benefits
    Today, marketers are scrambling to find ways to increase cashflow. Some will try to find new products to sell. Others will try to drive more traffic to their existing sales pages. However, one area most people tend to overlook is the ability to increase their current sales by upselling their customers the moment they checkout. But I’m not referring [...]
  • How Far Are You Willing to Go to Land a Sale?
    Today, Scotty Stevens asked me the following question: “How far would you travel to meet a potential client, if they had the deposit ready for your services? My girlfriend thinks the customer is pulling the strings if they don’t at least meet me halfway. Before, I’ve always traveled as far as it takes, even if it meant [...]
  • Tweet Fearlessly, Block Ruthlessly
    Yesterday, I had a tweet burp. (If you’ve been living under a rock in the past year, a “tweet” is a brief, text message on micro-blogging platform Twitter.) I call it a “tweet burp” because it’s something like a brain fart. But I prefer “brain burp.” Reason is, unlike a brain fart where one forgets something basic or says [...]