Frank Haywood

Sep

2006

Do you know The Secret?

I had The Secret pointed out to me a few days ago, and I was told it would be a good idea if I watched it. And then to continue watching it again and again every few months.

I wasn’t told what it was, so intrigued, I took a look. It’s very powerful stuff.

It’s a movie that you can watch online for $4.95, but you can also order it on DVD with the $4.95 discounted off the price of $29.95 plus shipping.

So I watched it, and straight afterwards ordered the DVD.

On the link above there’s a trailer. I gave my wife the headphones and said "watch this trailer" and went to put the kettle on. When I came back a couple of minutes later, she was almost in tears, it’s that strong.

"I want to see that" she blubbered. "It’s on its way" I replied.

I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s based around the principles of the book "The Science of Getting Rich" by Wallace D Wattles, which you can download for free from various sites if you do a search, but it’s much better as a movie.

Enjoy.

Sep

2006

Ever received email with words like FR’EE in them?

If so, it was probably spam am I right? However I’ve noticed an increasing number of mailing lists that I’m on have started sending me email that looks like spam. With mangled words in the body like FR’EE, F.REE, FR,EE and so on.

This is crazy as well as annoying, because even though I’m opted in to receive those mailings, when I receive them they look like spam. In fact I accidentally deleted one the other day while quickly going through an account.

They also hurt readability as it causes me to stop part way through a sentence even if only for a fraction of a second, but it halts the flow of the text.

So why have the authors started to do it?

Well, they want to use the magic words (now overused in my opinion) that trigger attention. Words like "free" and "sex", and my personal favourite phrase "free sex".

Sorry.

Anyway, if they use those in their emails, what do you think happens? They trigger a spam filter and the email either gets marked as spam or put in the spam folder or deleted or any combination of those things.

The reasoning is, they break up the spammy words by putting punctuation in them. D’oh! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

So now, even though the email is a legitimate opted-in newsletter, it looks like spam. Because guess what? Putting punctuation in words is exactly what the spammers do to get them past spam filters. And admins running those spam filters know this, so they get an even higher spam rating.

Isn’t that just daft? I read a bit of advice a couple of years ago about working on the web, and it simply said "keep it real".

That’s good advice. Just ignore what’s going on with spam and deliverability, and do what you do best. Ultimately your message will get across.

This has been a topic on my mind for a while now, but this piece was finally prompted after I read an article by Tom Kulzer of Aweber called Punctuation Reputation. Go and have a read.

Sep

2006

The day I first met Joe Robson

I don’t think there’s anyone who has a web store or single sales page will dispute that good copy will sell the product. Yes layout is important, yes a sprinkling of graphics helps, but when it comes down to selling the product, people need information and usually the best way of supplying that is the written word.

Meet Joe Robson. I did on the 3rd September 2006.

In case you’ve never heard of him, let me put you straight. He’s a god in the copy writing world, commanding fees of thousands of dollars for a single sales page, or he’ll give you a one-hour consultation on a page you’ve written yourself for under $500.00 – he has a lot of work.

Having the chance to hear him give a talk on copy writing and then chat to him afterwards was wonderful. He is such a down to earth guy with a wicked sense of humour.

Here’s a photo of me with him. I’m the one on the left.

What was it he said now with a big grin on his face? "This product will have you sucking cash out of people’s wallets like a rabbit on steroids."

He was trying to make a point that over-hyped copy like the above example will kill the sale instead of making it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly groaned to myself and said "come on, give me a break" more than once when reading the sales page for a new product.

(I just don’t understand why some people feel the need to hype everything they write. Sure, often you might want to liven up a bit of dull text, but it just seems to me that some writers don’t get the difference between "lying" and "enlivening".)

I sat, listened carefully and made notes while Joe gave his talk on "The 10 Steps To A Sale". Great stuff. I was so impressed I wanted more and went and bought his ebook "Make Your Words Sell". I’m part way through it now, and it’s got to be the all time bargain ever at only $29.95.

Joe wrote it in 2000 and spent 8 months doing it. He told me that if he was doing the same thing now, he’d do it as a course and charge at least $300.00 for it.

He also told me that he spent two months locked away writing the first version. Finished it, and wasn’t happy with it. He wanted to improve it but he was stuck with what he’d already written.

In the end he decided that the only thing he could do was to…

delete it!

Yep, he trashed 2 months work because he wasn’t happy with it. Then he started all over again, and that’s what I’m currently reading.

And I have to say it is a joy to read. Every time I read a sentence I can hear his voice in my head, with that little touch of seriousness when he’s trying to get a point over, followed by a pause and a bit of humour to make it stick.

What he should do is put audio versions of his articles on his Ad Copy Writing website, and I might just suggest that to him.

Joe reckons that once anyone has read his ebook then they should be able to produce a better sales page within a week or so. But it takes practice of course.

When I’ve read the ebook, I’ll review it here.

Sep

2006

Focus 4 The Future UK Marketing Seminar

Audio available: [audio:2006-09-05_focus_4_the_future_uk_marketing_seminar.mp3]

This last weekend I attended a three day seminar at Aston University in Birmingham, organised by Robert Puddy of Focus 4 The Future.

Here’s a photo of me with Robert, I’m the little guy on the right:-

Knowing that some of these seminars can have hundreds or even thousands of attendees, I was really pleased to find that this was a cosy and very friendly affair with about 40 people attending.

Well, I had a wonderful time. I met some lovely people. I learned things that just hadn’t occurred to me, and had my understanding of other things confirmed by the speakers.

And apart from the sessions with speakers, even more valuable to me and my business was the chance to network with a great set of like minded people, all using different parts of the many facets of online marketing. I promised several people I’d get in touch after a couple of days, and I will.

I needed the couple of days back here just to let my mind unscramble itself after such an intense weekend. I took Monday off, then spent today sorting out all the things that came up while I was away. Tomorrow I’ll begin a series of posts about the whole thing, including a few photographs of me with various people.

But before I do, I’d like to point out that three speakers couldn’t make it.

Craig Perrine had passport problems which he couldn’t resolve in time to get here. These things happen, and although it was disappointing I’m sure I’ll get to see Craig at another event some time in the future.

Michel Fortin and Sylvie Charrier had to cancel shortly before the event. Michel and Sylvie recently got married and unfortunately Sylvie has been diagnosed with breast cancer and has had to go in for immediate surgery.

My heart goes out to them, my mother was recently similarly diagnosed through a routine check. Fortunately it was caught early enough and only needed a minor operation and some radiotherapy, but also means she has to take an anti-cancer drug for the next five years.

My mother has been told she’s in the clear, although they will monitor every few weeks so the family is all thankful for that. Even so, it was an anxious and miserable time for us all, and I well understand how Michel and Sylvie must be feeling right now.

I wish Sylvie and Michel all the very best and that things work out well for them.

Aug

2006

Spelling and Grammar DO Make a Difference

Audio available: [audio:2006-08-31_spelling_and_grammar_do_make_a_difference.mp3]

The girl at the docks said "I like British seamen."

I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen that example before, it was given to me by my English literature teacher a long, long time ago.

What’s that? You can’t see anything wrong with that sentence? Well, yes that’s right there’s nothing wrong with it at all. But if you take away the "a" in the last word, it gives it a completely different meaning.

Through the getting on for 50 years I’ve been on this planet, I’ve had many people tell me that spelling doesn’t matter, it’s the meaning that’s important.

I used to argue with them, fruitlessly in most cases, until I realised that for whatever reasons, in the majority of cases, their perception of spelling and grammar wasn’t going to change. Even when I gave them the example above, usually well within the argument by this time, I’d get a smile, but the mindset wouldn’t give.

That’s another bit of lunacy I’ve come across – the inability or unwillingness of some people to change their mind even when presented with incontrovertible evidence, but don’t get me started on that one!

I don’t know if it’s because people are embarrassed by their poor spelling which is what makes them so defensive.

But we all make typos, I made several while writing this, but fixed them afterwards (all of them I hope). And sometimes we all fall over a sentence because we haven’t thought it out properly, or we don’t know where it’s going when we start. I’m too of that guilty…

Hmm…

And of course, often spell and grammar checkers only make things worse. Why? Because they give people a false sense of security that what they’ve written is okay.

For example, there’s countless times I’ve typed "form" when I meant "from". Now a grammar checker might pick it up, but I’ve always found that grammar checkers just complicate sentences and make them too formal when it was the informal style of writing I was aiming for. Like this article.

Now why do I bring this up?

Well, a couple of weeks or so ago, I was sent an email from one of the big marketers. I’m on lots of mailing lists as I like to see what’s going on in the marketing world, and I really don’t like spending too much time in forums as I think they can just suck all of your working hours out of you.

In this email, amongst several typos, was the theme. And that was that he claimed that spelling doesn’t matter. He said that it made absolutely no difference to his sales, people would still buy his products even if his emails and sales pages had spelling mistakes in them.

Well, I can tell him from personal experience, it DOES make a difference and he’s leaving money on the table.

If someone is trying to sell me advice (not give it), then in order to get me to part with my cash, I have to feel that they are in several ways superior to me, and have superior knowledge to me. In my head I call it a big dog, little dog thing.

Bad spelling is a bad start if you want to convince me to cough up. I always think, "well if he can’t be bothered to just get someone to check out his spelling (or at least use a spell checker), how bothered is he going to be if I have a problem and need to contact him?"

See what I mean?

If spelling really doesn’t matter, then how come I don’t see more spelling mistakes in newspapers and magazines? And in printed ads? I see some, but not many, they’re usually caught somewhere in the publishing process, so it’s quite rare.

I’d like to leave you with one last example.

Sometime in the last six months I’ve read two sales pages where their product would give "piece of mind" instead of "peace of mind."

Now I’m not sure if this is a UK only colloquialism, but here we talk about giving someone a "piece of my mind", which means we’re going to really have a good shout at them and tell them what’s what.

So is the writer going to calm my thoughts or give me a good telling off? Answers on a postcard please…

Addendum

My wife’s just read this, smiled and given me another example:-

An English professor wrote the words "woman without her man is nothing" on the blackboard and directed the students to punctuate it correctly.

The men wrote: "Woman, without her man, is nothing."

The women wrote: "Woman! Without her, man is nothing."

😉