So - There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch?

Just occasionally you get the chance to get something for (almost) nothing.

Here's one such occasion. Pop across to our new company website, at www.cinnamonedge.com later today, and we'll show you how easily you can earn yourself hundreds of pounds, or more, for doing no more than making a phone call, sending an email or writing a letter.

Really.

So, a very nearly free lunch - and it could be a damn fine lunch, at that.

Roy Everitt, Writing For Results

PS. Get your friends and associates to take a look as well, and you could ALL benefit. Go to www.cinnamonedge.com later today to see just how easily.

Well Versed Has Moved Home

Hi. I've moved home, but...

...you'll find me still 'writing for results' at www.wellversed.co.uk/writingforresults.htm

And you'll find loads more about exploding your profits with Cinnamon Edge, our new writing for business company, at www.cinnamonedge.com

There, you'll learn about our vast range of services, some great special offers on consultancy packages, and how you can earn yourself hundreds of pounds (or even more) with just one phone call, email or letter. Details of that will be up on the Cinnamon Edge site later today, so keep watching.

See you there!

Roy Everitt, Writing For Results

Well Versed Is Reborn (and renamed and it's moved)

Well Versed has moved home, so it's now part of the wellversed.co.uk website, and I've taken the opportunity to rename it as well.

So now it's named, much more appropriately for a blog about copywriting, marketing and mindset (drum roll...),

Writing For Results

I'll gradually move all the relevant archive material to the new blog, but for the time being you'll still be able to find all my old blog posts here.

My poetry blog, Well Versed Poetry (always a part of the web site) is still in the same place.

Here's a link to Writing For Results and here's one for Well Versed Poetry.

Roy Everitt, Writing for Results

It's always easier to lose than it is to win...

You might remember my post of a few days ago, talking about them and us and the courage of those who keep trying compared to those who give up.

Maybe it didn't make for easy reading?

Anyway, on a related theme, I was reading something this morning that reminded me of an adage I used to genuinely believe - that since it's always easier to concede a goal than it is to score one, it must follow that it's easier to lose a match than it is to win.

Now, assuming the teams are evenly matched, this must apply to both sides. Which cannot possibly be the case. Of course, your pub team will find it very difficult to beat, say Chelsea, and Chelsea would find it hard to lose to your Sunday morning scufflers, but assuming they were evenly matched...

Still, it always seems easier to give away a goal and a match. For both sides. But since that can only be a perception and not a fact, it follows that the team most convinced they are likely to lose (to put a totally negative slant on it) will lose.

The difference between winners and losers, given similar skills, and despite all evidence to the contrary, can only be in the way we think.

Think about it - and think positively, however hard it seems at times.

Roy Everitt, Writing for Results

Like a Foreign Country - We do Things Differently Here

Tapping Into The UK Market

It suddenly occurred to me yesterday, that although English is spoken as the first language in more countries than any other language, it's also become the most variable language in the world. English speakers in Australia don't speak quite the same language as their Antipodean neighbours in New Zealand, let alone their more distant cousins in the USA, Canada or in the UK. (The numerous regional dialects here are a further complication).* Then there are all those English speakers in Africa, The West Indies, India and Pakistan, etc, etc.

And yet... when it comes to learning to write advertising copy, almost all the advice and courses available come from the pens and keyboards of American copywriters. So, an English speaker in India, for example, who wants to tap into the massive UK market for direct mail and web copy, will most likely get a misleading impression of what's required if he or she tries to learn the trade from existing literature.

Just as I would be stumped if I asked an Australian how Indian people use the language so I could write copy for them. While the principles are more or less universal, the detail is where success or failure are decided - remember we're usually talking about single-digit percentages or even fractions of a percent between 'good' and 'bad' copy.

So, if you do want to write for the burgeoning UK market you'd better hone your skills with the help of a British copywriter.

This is a link to one of the best I know.

Roy Everitt, Writing for Results

* Not to mention the languages and dialects of first and second-generation arrivals to the UK, who can represent distinct populations in a marketing sense. More on that soon.

Overworked, Underpaid - and Self-Employed?

You just need to ask yourself why.

Why am I either overworked or underpaid when I decide my hours AND I decide my prices?

I was going to call this post 'Positioning and Self-Punishment' or something, but it might have been misconstrued. Then again, if you're underpaying yourself and overworking too, it might not be too far from the truth whichever way you choose to read it.

I was chatting to a friend just yesterday. A friend who, thankfully, understands perfectly what I'm talking about. For the moment, though, she is overworked, having acquired loads of new clients recently, to whom I guess she feels obliged.

Still, when I suggested she double her prices, maybe halve her clientele and therefore earn just as much with only half the work, she didn't even flinch. In fact she nodded.

Excellent. I hope she does just that. Then she'll get a big chunk of her life back.

Hardly anyone actually buys on price. Those who do are more than outweighed by those who don't, and you may as well have an easier life as a tougher one. Unless you're into self-punishment, of course.

It takes all sorts...

Roy Everitt, Writing for Results

STOP PRESS: Get into one of the best, probably the best self-employed business there is, and steal some great insights into the thinking of some your biggest customers when you order The Complete Guide To Copywriting by top writer Nick Wrathall.

It's aimed at business owners as much as copywriters, so you effectively get two great guides for the price of one - what business owners need you to write for them AND how to write it. Click here to find out more.

Another Great Copywriter Tells All

You may well have already taken a look at Nick Wrathall's Complete Guide To Copywriting, which I reviewed here a couple of weeks ago. It's aimed specifically at the under-served UK market, which is NOT quite the same as in the USA. If not, you MUST spare a few minutes of your time to read about a course that will teach you all you need to know about copywriting this side of the Atlantic.

To save you going back through my posts, here's another LINK

For the North American market, meanwhile, they don't come much bigger than Clayton Makepeace. His Profit Centre website has a number of products and access to some great free stuff to improve anyone's copywriting and marketing skills.

Even the best professionals keep an eye on the opposition and you can never know too much, which is why I subscribe to both Nick's and Clayton's newsletters - which are very different, as you can imagine!

You can get to Clayton's site HERE, or access his EasyWriters Marketing Club directly.

They're both big, bold and brash - and wildly successful - like the man himself.

Roy Everitt, Writing for Results

The Little Number That Made a BIG Impact

I had fun completing an online quiz the other day. It was simple enough, but I learned a couple of valuable lessons, too.

Firstly, trust your instincts.

Secondly, 0.21 is a big number.

To explain: there were eight pairs of direct response ads, where essentially only the headlines were different . In each pair, there was a winner and a runner-up, as measured by the response they got when split-tested. Now, with some of them the difference in results between best and second-best was quite small - just a few percent.

A couple of the margins were much more significant, though. One, from memory, was about 45%, and another, 21%. Clearly, the one that 'failed' by 45% wasn't very good, but the differences in the 21% pair were smaller. Still, 21% is a big margin. One would be substantially more profitable than the other (by much more than 21%, incidentally - perhaps over 100%*).

So, clearly, they had to go with the better one. After all, 21% is a lot, but over 100% is massive.

Now consider the actual response results: amazingly, the 'winner' drew just 1.21% response and the loser (obviously) a mere 1%!

When clients worry about response rates of 2 or 3 percent they're missing the real picture: does the direct response campaign bring in more than it costs? is the first question that matters; can we improve it by a fraction of a percent and maybe double its profitability? is the second.

The mass mailing of that 1.21% letter, by the way, did very well indeed for the client concerned.

Oh, and the first lesson, about instincts? I made the mistake of listening to the advice of 'gurus' and voted for a couple of headlines I really didn't like. I'd been led to believe I was in a minority, though, and went for specific numbers and longer headlines (this was the US, after all). On those, I was wrong. Snappy headlines worked every time, even in the USA. Too many numbers just cluttered the ad and probably confused and deterred readers.

Which goes to show you can't believe everything advertisers tell you - even their advice about advertising!

Roy Everitt, Writing for Results

* The cost of mailing a poor ad is the same as that of mailing a good one. If the product sells for, say $100, costs just $10 to make and you sell a thousand, you get $90,000. Then deduct the cost of the mailing to calculate the profit. If you've spent $72,000 dollars on mailing, say a hundred thousand homes, you'll be left with $18,000 profit. Now, increase the sales by 21%, which equates to another 210 sales at $90 - that's another $18,900 pure profit, giving a better than 100% improvement - from 0.21% increased response!

'It's Not The Despair That Kills, It's The Hope'

It's not an original phrase, but it's one we can all identify with if we think about it...

Sometimes, letting go is easier than fighting on - to give in is often the easy option.

However we phrase it, we know the feeling.

But this isn't the place for philosophising on the subject of despair. What I want to talk about today is the difference between success and failure, between comparative wealth and poverty.

Between them and us.

Which side are you standing on? Do you see wealthy or successful people as 'them'? Does resentment of their success mask your own feelings of discomfort over your own failure?

If so, remember you took the easy option.

Because, just as it's often easier to give in to despair, so it's almost always easier to accept our lot and not strive for something better. Failure is so much more comfortable, so often the easier path to take. And if you think I'm being unfair to those people whose choices are restricted by circumstance, remember I said 'comparative wealth and poverty'.

And anyway, many of the most successful people - however you choose to measure, comparative or not - came from the most deprived backgrounds.

And how we respond to our circumstances is always a matter of choice.

The easy path is to do nothing, the harder one is to do something to make things better.

If you're at the early stage of a new career or building a new business, you'll know you haven't taken the easy option.

But, unless you're a quitter, you will know you have made the better choice.

Roy Everitt, Writing for Results

To Serve or to Sell?

You have a service or product to sell. You know there are people out there who could use what you have. What do you you do?

If you answered 'Try to sell what you have to those who need it' you'd only be half right.

If you said, 'Offer to help the people who need it' you'd be absolutely right.

People don't like being sold to, in general. There are always a few who will enjoy the process, but most people have better things to do with their time. What people do like, however, is having their problems solved for them.

Your job, then, is to identify the problem your product solves. Or find a problem and then identify a product, and set about helping people with their problems. They'll be more willing than ever to pay for it. So you won't have to go through the excruciating sales process, and neither will they.

They'll be happier, you'll be wealthier, and the world will keep going round!

Roy Everitt, Writing for Results