New Blog Posts For Small Business

Hi Everyone,

This is a reminder that I have started a brand new blog especially for new and budding online entrepreneurs.

It's jam-packed full of useful information designed to help you get online and selling your products and services.

Get involved now... just go over to www.busyvids.blogspot.co.uk and don't forget to follow me on Google+ to stay informed.

All the best,
Bill

It's True... I Am Back!

Yes, after a long lay off from blog writing I'm now back bashing the keys with vigour and excitement. Why? Well there's a lot to catch up on and there's been a few changes around here lately. I'm still copywriting of course and I'm still very much involved with my video production and marketing company, but just about everything else is being wound down.

That means the web design part of the business will be no longer, come the end of this year, although all existing clients will still be able to request new sites and updates etc. There have been a number of reasons for this decision but primarily it's because I want to focus more time to writing my novel. It's a crime thriller with lots of twists and turns and I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes a best seller.

At least that's what I'm secretely wishing and hoping for...

I've been writing copy now for almost 30 years and I've also written several marketing ebooks for myself and a few diverse ebooks for some of my clients. For example, I wrote a 400 page ebook about Bird Flu a few years ago, an ebook about Gardening and a self help book based on Spirituaism and Karma. I've also written many reports and whitepapers on numerous subjects.

So, I thought perhaps it was time to write something that a lot of people could enjoy, so here we go. In fact, I've written the first chapter already and there is a long way to go, but I'm committed to finishing this project come what may.

What else has been happeing?

Well, seeing as you asked...
I've been working on quite a bit of web page content writing lately, and just finished a 107 page website. That was quite a slog but also very satisfying. I've also been inundated by many new clients wanting marketing emails. I think I must have written over 100 emails this year already. Email marketing is not easy and I have to be honest with my clients and tell them not to expect too much, especially if they are emailing to a cold list of prospects. Still, it has worked just fine for some and they have managed to pick up some lifetime customers.

On the video front we have been busy creating a lot of tutorial videos. We don't tend to put these on our BusyVids channels because the clients prefer to do that themsleves, which saves us some time anyway. We have also engaged the services of a very talented animator who will be putting together some very funny marketing videos quite soon.

Both websites, topcopywriter.co.uk and busyvids.co.uk were upgraded last year so that they are more mobile friendly, which is an absolute must these days. They will both undergo another makeover later this year with some new graphics and some more video content.

Okay you're now up to speed so I'll sign off and update this blog next week.

All for now.

Bill
www.topcopywriter.co.uk
www.busyvids.co.uk

Writing Website Content For Seriously Engineered Outriggers

What the f....?

Seriously Engineered Outriggers?

Hi Guys!

Of course I mean SEO, only I'm just about fed up to the back teeth with SEO. SEO this and SEO that and we are SEO experts and can get your site on page one of Google... blah blah blah.

Not a day goes by when I don't get at least one email from some "SEO Expert" based somewhere in the world and usually over the Eastern part... if you know what I mean.

For anyone just starting out with an online business it must be an absolute nightmare. I wonder just how many unsuspecting victims have fallen prey to these SEO sharks!

Now for you guys I want to reveal some valuable stuff about SEO. Okay you need it, if you want to get your website ranking higher but you don't have to pay a fortune for it. Here's what you need to do...

1. Ensure the content on your website is absolutely free of grammatical errors and typos.

2. Ensure your content is relevant to the products or services you are offering.

3. Ensure your content is interesting and informative. That means it has some real value to the reader.

4. Ensure you have a keyword density of not more than 2%. 1.5% is the optimum. Now that is not a lot of keywords. 1.5% is just 3 keywords per 200 words of content.

5. Ensure that any images on your page have "alt tag". Here's an example of what an alt tag should look like:

< img alt="knight writer img" border="0" src="images/newlogo2.png" width="166" height="109" >

And here's an explanation:

< = open tag or begin tag
img alt = alternative text
"knight writer img" = a description of the image
border="0" = no border
src="images/newlogo2.png" = the source of the image. Its file path.
width="166" height="109" = the size of the image
> = End tag. Not closing tag

A closing tag looks like this /> and is for something else, which I'll get onto later in another blog post.

Now, make sure your main keyword appears in the title of your content or at least in the first sentence. Also, if you are able to access the code for your web pages then ensure the main keywords appear in the title tags for those pages.

Okay so that's the basic on-page SEO sorted.

Now you need some backlinks. Want to get some for free? Of course you do! Never mind, just pop over to www.fiverr.com and pay $5 for some quality backlinks. You can get backlinks from PR 9 sites for just 5 bucks and these guys will do all the work for you. You don't need to spend hundreds on SEO experts for exactly the same results.

Okay now off you go and get some Seriously Engineered Outriggers for your site and we'll see you at the top.

All for now comrades.

Bill
knight-writer.co.uk
busyvids.co.uk

AIDA - God Bless Her!

Hi All,

Do you ... yes YOU... know anything about AIDA?

If you're a copywriter then you will but is you're not then take a minute to be enlightened.

The A I D A formula has worked incredibly well for advertisers and marketers the world over and continues to so to this day and probably always will... even though the concept is donkey's years old.

It's all relatively simple and if it works then there's no reason to try anything else... okay?

Right then here it is...

The acronym AIDA stands for... Attract... Interest... Desire... Action.

And this is what it all means.

In every form of advertising and marketing the very first thing you have  to do is Attract attention. This is almost always the job of the headline. If the headline of your ad or sales letter gets your prospect's attention, then chances are they will begin to read your ad or sale s message. Great... that's part one achieved.

Next, while your prospect is reading your sales message you have to ensure you Interest then in your offer, and the way you do this is to list all the benefits of the product or service that you want to sell them. (I'll elaborate on this in my next blog post).

Okay so you've got their Attention and they are becoming very Interested in your product or service... is this enough? No!

You have make sure they really want it. They need to want it so bad it hurts. They need to think that if they don't have it then life will just not be worth living. How will they ever be able to hold their head up in public ever again without it? You got to make 'em squirm... okay well maybe not squirm but you certainly have to make them Desire it.

So, when you've attracted Attention, go them Interested and made them Desire your product or service you gotta tell them what to do next.

You'd be surprised at how many marketers just don't ask for the order. It's crazy!

Why go to all the trouble of writing an ad or a sales piece and then not say something like. "To get this widget in the next 2 minutes simply click on this link" or fill out this form or pick up the phone or whatever...

You must always ask the prospect to take Action... plain and simple!

So there you have it...

AIDA... the formula responsible for generating billions if not trillions in sales over the past 100 years.

God bless her!

All for now.

KnightWriter
Busyvids

Copy... The Long And The Short Of It

Hi All,

Those of you old enough to remember the seventies and eighties might also remember when those large Reader's Digest letters would land on the doormat. On the envelope would be some "teaser" copy like "Claim Your Free Gift Inside". Then inside would be a "lift letter" from the CEO recommending you read the full letter because it offered a great deal on Reader's Digest membership and the chance to win a car or a holiday.

Reader's Digest employed some of the best copywriters in the business to create these letters, as did Nightingale Conant and many other mail order magnates.

Ah! Those were the days. Those were the days when it was possible to make millions from mail order offers and quite a few people did. I personally know of two people who became millionaires simply by sending out letters offering to tell prospects... how to become rich. I actually made quite few grand myself from selling my own business manuals by mail order. 

And here's how I did it...

In those days the long form sales letter ruled because we all knew that "the more you tell the more you sell". A very different story today of course. But what hasn't changed and probably never will is the desire to make money, or at least the need to know how to make money.

This is how may people did it...

There were 2 very popular weekly publications, one was "The Dalton's Weekly" and the other was "The Exchange & Mart". Now both had classifieds ad sections where you could place a very cheap line ad. So let's say you had an information product you wanted to sell, something like a manual about How To Start Up Your Own Publishing Business. 

You would place an ad in one or both of these 2 publications under the Business Opportunity sections, which might read something like...

Discover New Secret Money 
Making Opportunity. 50 page
manual explains how. For more
details send SAE to Anglox
Publications, 182 Sturminster Rd,
Bristol, BS14 8AR

It would cost about £20 to place an ad like this but it was money well invested. As enquiries started to arrive in the post you began generating a highly targeted list of prospects. So the next step was to send these interested people a long sales letter about your manual, explaining all the benefits and how easy it is to make money and entice them into sending you an order together with their cheque.

This marketing method was known as the "2 step method". Step one was to place the ad and step 2 was to send out the sales letter.

As a lead generator, this method was very good, usually returning about 10% in enquiries. However, conversion rates were pretty much the same as they are today, which is about 2-3 per cent. So let's say your original classified ad is seen by 1000 people and 100 responded. You could expect to make 2 or 3 sales.

The manual might be priced at £29 so there was profit in this method... but not enough to become rich. But the whole exercise was not really about making a shed load of money, although it would certainly be nice, the real reason for this was to test the market. And if it was profitable then you would ramp it up.

Now the next stage was to seek out a list broker, and there were quite a few of those around. You see, everyone who sent for details of your offer went onto your list, and lists could be sold... hence more profits. Some people used to just generate mailing lists and rent or sell them. That was their business and a good business it was too.

The biggest list brokers could almost guarantee results and their lists were fresh so these were the guys you looked for. To rent a list of names and addresses might cost something like £25 per 1000, so you had to work out whether the cost to rent these lists, together with the costs to print and mail your sales letter were going to be profitable, based on you tests.

Here's a breakdown of what had to be considered...

List rental 10,000 = £250
Paper & print costs = £500
Postage costs = £2000

So total costs for this mailout campaign were £2,750.

The number of sales @ 2% would be 200 x £29 = £5,800. Therefore profit would be £3,050.

To put these figures in perspective, the average weekly wage in the early 80's was £120, so 3 grand represented 6 months wages, which you could make in just 1-2 weeks!

Now, roll out big time and rent 100,000 names and addresses. This would be cheaper pro rata and you had buying power on your side. Let's do the maths...

List rental 100,000 = £2000
Paper & print costs = £5000
Postage costs = £20000

Total investment = £27,000
Total Income = £58,000

Total ROI = 10 x 3,050 = £31,000

Now 30 grand was like 5 times the average annual income. If you could make this much from one campaign then you needed to have several campaigns lined up to become a millionaire. Ans that's how it was done. In fact if you used a mailing house to do everything for you, it was totally hands off and you still made around the same amount of profit.

The key to success with mail order was the copy. If the sales letter was good your conversions could be as high as 8 or even 10 per cent! I'll let you do the maths for that one.

Long form sales copy was the answer to many marketer's dreams back then but what now?

Well, as you know the Internet rules these days and so when long form sales letters began appearing on web pages they did at first work very well. Maybe because of the novelty value or maybe because people had more time I don't know, but they certainly don't work quite as well as they did.

Online attention spans are very short now so a copywriter has to get the message across in a different way, which makes his job a little more difficult. The copywriter has to condense the message in a way that attracts attention almost immediately, highlights the benefits right up front, offer a shed load of bonuses, include overwhelming testimonials and sell at an unbelievable price.

So, not much has changed except we have to sell more with less words.

The Internet does have many advantages over the mail order route, especially in terms of presentation of offers, with graphics and video now almost standard procedure. But the best advantage of all is instant gratification and instant cash in the bank. The customer gets what he wants right away and you get the cash just as fast... luvverrrly!

If any of you want to know about how many marketers made their money by placing ads in national newspapers, let me know and I'll dedicate the next blog to it.

Hope you enjoyed this one, all for now.

Bill

KnightWriter
BusyVids

The Awesome Power of Press Releases

Hi all,

I was recently asked, (well when I say recently it was about 4 months ago actually), what is the purpose of a press release. My answer was... to get some backlinks and leads.

What? Backlinks and leads? I hear you cry in disbelief... Oh c'mon now you didn't ever think that a press release was about letting the world know about your latest product launch or about the new guy who has taken over at sales & marketing... did you?

Well, here's a little secret... press releases are supposed to be newsworthy but that's not the ultimate goal of a press release, especially an online press release. As far as I'm concerned a press release is all about getting people to read it and then follow through to your website or at the very least "expose" yourself to the masses, in the most decent way possible of course.

Every time I write a press release, which is at least once a week, I fully expect my website hit counter to start spinning for at least a week after. Otherwise what is the point?

A press release is a very powerful mechanism, not only for getting news out in a timely manner, but to laser target your market audience with specific news about a specific subject. Only those people who are interested in the subject matter are ever going to read it anyway so it really needs to strike a chord with these guys.

Let me give you an example...

I'm a member of the UK Business Forums (UKBF) and I use their press release forum for putting out news about our BusyVids offerings. I've also used PRWeb and DWPub for the same purpose but it's much cheaper to use the UKBF's resource. In fact it's free if you are a full member... as I am.

Now these press releases achieve two things...

1. They get read by the right target market audience and many will follow the links to my websites.

2. They get ranked in Google, so I get valuable backlinks to my sites and even further exposure.

Here's a screenshot of one I published recently for BusyVids. You can see the date it was published is 4th July, and today's date is 11th July. So in just 7 days my PR has received 5,436 views, which is about 27 times more than any of the other press releases on this page.

To enlarge this screenshot just click on it.

A quick check on my website's analytics revealed that 3,882 people (unique visitors) had followed through to visit my website and as a result we picked up 11 video production jobs each worth £149 (11 x £149 = £1,639). Not bad for 15 minutes of writing.

So that's one reason for writing press releases. The other, as mentioned already, is the Google rank and backlinks. See the screenshot below, which shows the press release in the Google search pages.

To enlarge this screenshot just click on it.

So from 343 million search results my press release is right there in position one (the 3 above are paid listings) and on page one for the search phrase "Online Video Production & Marketing Company". Those advertisers on the right-hand side are paying around £1 a click so I win again.

Now here's a screenshot of the actual press release, showing the links back to both my BusyVids website and my KnightWriter website.

To enlarge this screenshot just click on it.

So, now you can see why I love press releases so much. They are just soooo powerful! 

Done right they can bring an almost instant flood of traffic to your website and pull in a few handy bucks too.

It's much easier to show these kind of results with screenshots rather than try to explain how it all works. 

Press release anyone?

All for now.

Bill

BusyVids
KnightWriter

Copywriting Services For Copywriters?

Hi All,

Did you know that some copywriters hire other copywriters to write their copy? It's true! 

But it's not fair on their clients now is it? Okay, so if a client wants say 20 articles written about some mundane subject like the rise and fall of the tides on the river servern, then why not farm the project out... I just might.

But if a client is willing to pay top dollar for a cash generating sales letter then any copywriter worth their weight should never, ever ask another copywriter to write it. Don't you agree? Otherwise it's like asking a top barrister to represent you in court and then he sends along his most junior assistant, who is more likely to get you sent down than get you off.

If you're willing to pay for the best then you should get the best... right?

Okay, so why am I ranting on about this? Well, it's because I was asked recently if I would help lighten the load of one of my fellow copywriters. Now this guy is at best one of my competitors, so why should I help get him out of a hole or worse than that... let him take the credit for my creative work?

The answer came back as... "well I'd do it for you". Yeah I'm sure I would trust anyone to write a best-selling sales letter for me... not!

Copywriters may all be writers in one sense or another but over a period of time a copywriter develops a certain style... what I like to think of as "distinctive flair". And although many copywriters tend to prefer to live outside the limelight, I'm one for hanging around in the shadows. Not that I make a habit of hanging around in dimly lit areas of course... no really I don't. Oh suit yourself!

What I mean is I like to dart in and out of the limelight like a shadowy figure. Not that it has any bearing on anything anyway. A bit like this post really. Has anyone spotted the deliberate reason behind writing this post? Nope... bet you haven't.

Okay I'm simply writing this post about copywriting because I want my website to benefit from this keyword-rich posting. I want the Google bots to feast on it and become intoxicated to the extent that they haul my website's ass back up to position three on the search page results for "copywriting services". Because for some reason it has dropped dangerously low on that page and I'm fearing it will disappear into the abyss, which is page two and beyond.

Page two is no good... not for me, not for you, not for anyone. It has to be page one or die.

Okay, how many words is that? I think this will do for this post. 

Now you see, anyone can write this type of copy. You don't need to be a professional copywriter. The copy just needs to make sense and contain the right amount of keywords. 

Here endeth the lesson.

All for now.

Real interesting stuff coming along very soon.

KnightWriter
BusyVids