Dear Friend,

I find it amusing when copywriters brag about their alleged successes on their websites.

One copywriter was bragging about a 46% response rate he allegedly got from a lead gen piece he wrote for a client.

Oh yeah… a measly 46%?

Ha! That ain't nothin'.

I got a 100% response on a lead gen piece I wrote a few years ago.

Yup, you read that right… 100%!

When it was all said and done, guess how much cashola I eventually made from that 100% response.

Go ahead, take a wild guess.

None, nada, zip, a goose egg… ZERO!

So how impressed are ya NOW with my 100% response?

You see, response rates don't mean Jack Crap.

Neither does how much traffic you're getting to your website, how many mooches you've got on your freebie-seeker e-mail list… or any of that other stuff dumb rookie marketers brag about.

The ONLY metrics that really matters are your ROI on your marketing dollars… and…

How much cashola are you making from the business
for your greedy little self!

So bragging about response rates is kinda stupid.

Here I was with a 100% response and going broke. And I know marketers getting a .28 response… and getting filthy stinkin', honkin' rich.

So let the clueless rookies brag about response rates. That stuff doesn't impress a "gun."

One other thing I've noticed about the plethora of copywriters coming out of the woodwork online nowadays. They never talk about their failures. They lead you to believe they've never had any.

Hey, I'm the first to let you know I've picked a bunch of "whoopsy daisies" during my copywriting/entrepreneurial journey… and I'm PROUD of my failures.

When you're swinging for the fences, you're going to strike out most of the time. To break the world record for home runs, you're gonna have to break the record for strike outs, too.

I've lost MILLIONS of dollars (literally) of my OWN money making a bunch of mistakes with my OWN businesses… putting my OWN money where my mouth (and pen) is.

But I don't look at losing all that money as failure. I consider it…

A multi-million dollar investment
in my marketing education!

So yeah, I'm not the least bit embarrassed to share my mistakes. I've learned wayyyyy more from them than my successes.

For example, here's a doozy I made when I was still a rookie:

I hit my first home run and started thinking I could do no wrong. (Typical arrogant rookie mistake.) I'd written a full-page magazine ad that was kicking complete booty in every single magazine I ran in. It was bringing in 3x to 5x ad cost on every insertion.

BTW… back then I thought making 3x to 5x ad cost on a front end offer was a GOOD thing… a VERY good thing.

Another stupid rookie mistake. I robbed myself of an absolute multi-million dollar fortune with that mindset. (But we talked about THAT in Part 1.)

Anyhoo… my ad was so successful I started rolling it out in every media I had available in that market at the time.

Penthouse magazine saw my ad running in various bodybuilding and fitness magazines and started courting me for my business.

They showed me all kinds of circulation statistics showing how many of their readers had a strong interest in fitness, were supplement buyers, other supplement companies were running ads, yadda yadda yadda.

I believed them. I didn't know any better.

(NEVER believe any of the stuff in the magazines' media kits. They inflate their circulation numbers and make you believe every single one of their readers makes $200k+ a year and spends 10% of their income on whatever it is you're selling.)

Back then a full page ad in Penthouse was $45,000. (Thanks to the private banking cartel that committed the biggest fraud in the history of the world on December 24, 1913, that's equal to about $90,000 in today's dollars.)

I did the best negotiation job I could and got the ad rep down to a test rate of $15,000… AND 30-day net terms.

I was so successful with this ad in every other media, I assumed it was a given I'd get at LEAST 3 times ad costs… maybe more. So the minor little detail that I didn't have the $15k didn't seem like a problem.

Ya know… it seems like every time I start thinking I can do no wrong, something humbles me.

Since I had been rolling out so quickly, I was reinvesting every penny back into the business. I had a pretty big cash flow… but very little net.

So it hit me pretty hard when that ad only grossed $4,700… and I was on the hook to Penthouse for $15,000 in 30 days.

So I applied the same negotiation skills I used to get a $45k ad for $15k on net 30-day terms… and negotiated a payment plan for the balance I owed them.

I felt like such a complete schmuck. (I've been told schmuck in Hebrew means "useless penis." If that's true, it's a completely accurate description of how I felt at the time.)

Now maybe to you, the lesson here seems quite obvious… but back in my rookie days I had never thought about it before this Penthouse incident.

What's the lesson?

No matter how successful your copy is… and no matter how many different media you've successfully run in…

Every insertion in a new media is a new test!

Just because your copy is kicking booty in one magazine doesn't mean it's going to do as well in another.

Just because your ad is doing great on one website doesn't mean it will do great on another.

Just because your copy is working well online doesn't mean it's gonna do well in an offline media. And vicey-versey.

Capiche?

My ad was pulling 3 to 5 times ad costs in about 6 or 7 magazines. I was SURE it would be a grand slam home run in Penthouse. And with their huge circulation, I was already counting the money and picking out which Mercedes I was going to buy.

Seriously.

But alas, no "winner, winner chicken dinner" for rookie DD.

I didn't think I was taking a big risk. I ASSumed my past success with that ad in other media guaranteed success in Penthouse, too. But in the end what I'd done was roll the dice with money I didn't have.

Hard lesson to learn… but I've never made that one again since.

Make no mistake about it…

You'll learn MUCH more from your failures than your successes. So don't be afraid of failure… because for every failure, you're much closer to success.

And trust your Uncle DD…

Just one success can make up for all the failures… 1,000-fold.

All the best,

Dear Friend,

Sorry for going M.I.A. over the last couple weeks.

I took a new client about a month ago. First client work I've done in about 3 years.

It's been a great experience.

I couldn't ask for a better client. So I've been working my little fingers to the bone for him. I'm doing everything in my power to make this one of the most successful pieces I've ever written.

And my new client has given me permission to do everything I know how to do to make SURE this project is going to be a success. (That's one of the reasons I know this is going to be a raging winner.)

But this project has been a lot more work than I originally anticipated. I'm COMPLETELY focused on it right now and everything else has been put on the back burner.

That's why I haven't posted anything the past two weeks.

I really expected to have this project finished by now. But about 3/4 of the way through the first draft I realized I just wasn't on the right track.

As much as I would have liked to just "tweak" the piece a little and turn it into the client, that wasn't an option for me.

The only correct choice was to crumple up all the work I had done and toss it in the trash.

To be totally transparent with you… it was a little painful.

But in the best interest of the client, it was the ONLY option.

So I had to suck it up, ask for a little more time… and start all over again with a new theme.

I know I'm on track this time. The closer I get to finishing the piece, the more my gut tells me this is going to be a big winner.

I've had to really go deep in my market research to get into the head of my prospect. So I've been looking through all kinds of material for information, inspiration and motivation.

And just this morning several things came together (from two totally unrelated sources) that caused the proverbial light bulb to go off in my head.

It was such an epiphany for me, I simply HAD to take some time away from my client project and share it with you. (Chris, I hope you don't mind!)

Swiping Jazz Guitar Licks & Swiping Copy

I've been studying jazz guitar for a while now.

For some reason it's been a real challenge for me… but all the pieces are FINALLY starting to fall in place.

I immersed myself in the theory of jazz improvisation… but it never translated well into actually playing it.

For example, I know that you can play a major 7th arpeggio up a minor 3rd from a minor seventh chord to get some cool extended harmonies. I've read that a bunch of times.

But when I play a a major 7th arpeggio up a minor 3rd from a minor seventh chord… it sounds very "formulaic". It doesn't sound very musical.

Here's what I've discovered…

To really make it sound musical… I need to hear how a MASTER uses the formula of a major 7th arpeggio up a minor 3rd from a minor seventh chord.

Once I hear how the master uses the formula, I copy that lick and start practicing it in every possible musical setting.

And THAT is when I really understand how to use the technique.

A lot of players are afraid if they do that, they'll sound like a rip off of the master player… but it doesn't work like that.

No matter how hard I try to copy every single nuance of the master's lick… I still sound like me.

Sure, I swiped the lick from the master… but my personality and style automatically get injected into the lick.

And what usually happens is this…

After I've been playing the master's lick for several months, it morphs into an equally cool musical lick… but with a completely different twist.

What I'm saying is… it's great to learn the theory and techniques… but to really "get it"… watch how the masters do it and emulate them.

And you really don't "know" something until you actually start DOING it.

All the best,









P.S. I'm confident this little shortcut I just shared with you could have cut at least a DECADE off my jazz improvisation learning curve.

I think it could do the same for your copywriting, too.

Remember this article from a week or so ago?

I asked you what you'd like me to talk about on the blog.

I've addressed each and every comment/question I received up until today.

Thanks to each one of you who contributed.

To hear your free MP3 click the play button below:

Doberman Dan Answers Your Questions-Part1

All the best,

Dear Friend,

I could really use your feedback.

I have fun writing the articles here on DobermanDan.com… but mostly I've been writing about whatever tickles my fancy.

So I got to thinking…

I wonder what YOU would like me write about.

Would you be so kind to take a couple minutes and tell me in the comment box below what topics for articles or videos/audios you'd like to see me produce.

Thanks! I really appreciate it.

Al the best,

I need your help.

I've got some time opening up in my calendar and I'd like to devote it to helping YOU.

I'm considering running an eight-week coaching program called…

“How to Start a Part Time Six Figure
Business From Your Kitchen Table”

If you’ve ever wanted a “marketing master” to take you under his wing and reveal all the insider secrets to “shortcut” your way to success… this is for you.

If you've been wanting to start an online business but don't know where to start… I'll show EXACTLY what to do… step by step.

If you've already got a business – online or offline – I'm going to show you how to explode your sales and profits EXPONENTIALLY.

I'm going to totally "spill the beans" and show you my entire process for…

• Researching and entering new markets…




• Developing in-demand products…




• Maximizing ALL available media to ramp up your business as quickly as possible…




• Putting many aspects of your business on “auto pilot” so you have the time freedom to do what you want, when you want…




• And most important, how to start everything on a shoestring budget and minimal time commitment. (You don't have to quit your full-time job or business and put your entire life "on hold" to do this.)

I'm going to be pretty selective about who I allow in the program because you're going to get a lot of personal time and attention from me.

You're not going to be passed off to some underling. You're going to get 8 weeks with me and me ONLY.

And because of that, I can only accept 10 people into the program.

This isn't some some B.S. scarcity technique. Because of all the personal attention, I'm forced to limit it to only 10 people.

I'm going to take you by the hand and lead you through the entrepreneurial "minefield"… helping you avoid all the pitfalls that held me back for so long. It'll cut YEARS off the time it takes to have a successful business.

Sound good?

Well, hold your horses there, cowboy (or cowgirl)…

Here's the big "but"…

I don't sell "make money" products for a living. I run real businesses selling real products to real people.

And since it will take time away from the businesses that support my bad habits of sleeping indoors and eating… I'll actually lose money putting this coaching program on for you.

So before I take time away from my "bread and butter" and invest it into putting this program together for you… I want to "test the waters" and see if you're sincerely interested.

If you’ve read my articles here on the website then you know what I bring to the table.

And since you know how much value I deliver in my FREE content… you can be sure I’m going to OVER-deliver in my coaching program.

But this won't be cheap. The investment for the 8-week program will be around $2,000. (I might let you break it up into 3 payments.)

So here's what I'm asking you to do right now…

If the investment is in your price range and you're pretty sure you would be interested in participating, enter your first name and e-mail below.

You're not obligated to anything. I just want to see how many of my subscribers are sincerely interested in being coached by me.

And no, I'm not going to start bombarding you with sales pitches. (You should know me better than that!)

So if you're interested, please enter your name and e-mail below:

Thanks!

All the best,

Dear Friend,

If you do any kind of client work, this very well may be the most important "from the trenches" advice you'll ever get.

I stopped taking copywriting clients back in 2005… for several reasons.

First of all, it was a slap upside my noggin to see a client take what I wrote and make MILLIONS… when I only got a measly $15k plus a small percentage of royalties if I was lucky.

It didn't take me too long to realize I could do that for my own projects and keep the millions for myself.

Duh!

And it's way more fun to work on my own businesses than put up with whiny, pain in the ass clients. At times, I felt more like a psychologist than a copywriter.

There was another big reason I stopped writing copy for clients…

I could write the best sales letter ever written in the history of the world…

And it could still bomb!

See, if the other sales processes in the client's business sucked… world class copy really didn't make much of a difference.

That's why I decided if I would ever consider taking on another client, they would have to allow me to analyze and help them improve EVERYTHING related to making the sale.

That would include…

• List selection…




• Media selection…




• PPC campaigns…




• Followup processes and systems…




• Order fulfillment…




• Customer service… (Imagine spending $100k on a mailing that gets thousands of people to call you… only to have the phone answered by a surly, know-nothing bimbo who talks callers OUT of the sale!)




• Customer retention techniques…




• Back end sales…




• And more…

If I'm given the opportunity to act as if I have an ownership position… and improve everything that affects the profitability of the business… THEN I know without a shadow of a doubt I can TRANSFORM that business into a huge non-stop money-sucking machine.

A few weeks ago it slipped out to a few people in the direct response world that I might consider taking a client or two if I was allowed to do what I just described.

The e-mails and phone calls started flooding in.

And after only one conversation with a potential client who practically begged me to work with him, I was painfully reminded of exactly why I stopped taking clients.

This guy was completely clueless about online and offline marketing. The only reason he has the current level of success is he has thrown a ton of mud up against the wall and, luckily for him, some of it stuck.

He has ZERO long term sustainable marketing and prospecting strategies in place. He built his house on sand and it's only a matter of time until it crumbles.

Unless he hires me.

But that ain't EVER gonna happen… and I'll tell you why.

This guy made the fatal mistake.

Copywriters… Hearken Unto Me Or Thou Shalt Be Screweth…

After learning this lesson the hard way several times, I implemented a little "litmus test" for potential clients.

And in EVERY case, when this happened, the client turned out to be a dishonest schmuck who reneged on our agreement.

Here's a HUGE honkin' red warning flag…

Your potential client starts the relationship by immediately trying to weasel out of or negotiate down your up-front fee.

In many cases it involves him asking you to work "on spec". That means you write the piece for free, he'll run it and if he likes the results, he'll pay you.

(That might be OK for a beginning copywriter… but get everything spelled out in writing. Decide on the exact results the client needs for you to get paid… and exactly how much he'll pay you.)

After you've got some chops and can demonstrate you produce results… spec assignments suck.

Another popular client weaseling technique is some kind of promise to pay a portion of your fee now and the balance later.

Or he sells you on taking less up front by promising a bigger percentage on the back end.

Whenever you're approached with those scenarios… no matter how bad you need the money, don't walk…

RUN from that guy!

I had to learn this lesson the hard way. Against my better judgment I've accepted clients who weaseled out of paying all or some of my up-front fee.

One was a well known Internet marketing "guru" who you would probably know. He persuaded me to accept only 7% down of my typical $15,000 fee with a promise of paying a higher than normal royalty on the back end.

This was a guy was running all over the country speaking at all the IM events telling people he had a multi-million dollar online business. And pitching his $1,500 e-mail marketing course.

If that were really true, $15k should have been pocket change for him. He would have easily gotten a 100-fold return on investment.

My gut told me there was something wrong… but hey… this guy was a "friend" and one of the most connected IM "gurus" out there.

Guess what happened.

Yup… he never paid me a dime of the balance owed. In fact, he evaded my calls and e-mails for two months before he had the balls to tell me he was reneging on our contract for no reason whatsoever.

As far as I know, he could be running that copy somewhere and screwing me out of thousands of dollars.

But it was actually a good thing. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. Thanks to him, I haven't accepted a copywriting client since then.

Over the past 15 years, every single time a potential client has tried to get out of paying my fee… without exception… he has not kept his word and screwed me out of some or ALL of my promised compensation.

Please learn from my mistakes…

If you've got the chops and can show that you can write copy that converts… charge what you're worth… and don't back down from that price.

If a client doesn't understand the value of your services, fire him immediately and find one that does. They're out there and they are a joy to work with.

I wrote a lot of stuff for a flat fee. It wasn't until I had a lot more experience and could show some really stellar results that I started asking for a royalty.

Let me share a secret with you about client work that Gary Halbert shared with me…

Don't count on royalties!

If you're going to ask for a fee plus royalty arrangement, charge enough of a fee so if that's the only compensation you get, you'll be satisfied.

In many cases, you won't get paid your promised royalties because your client is a schmuck.  Or you'll get royalties for a few months until some other hired gun beats your control.

So ask for what you think the job is worth. If you get any royalties, consider it an unexpected windfall.

They're not ALL schmucks…

About the same time the schmuck client contacted me, I got to meet and have dinner with one of my subscribers, Chris from New Zealand.

Now that is the kind of guy you want to have as a client. He's positive, likes to take risks and is fun to hang out with.

I'm going to work with him on a new business he's starting.

And get this. He said…

"Even if this whole thing flops, it's worth $15,000 to me just to discover your marketing secrets."

Those are the kind of clients you should find.

They're out there. You just might have to "kiss a few frogs" like I did to find 'em.

Gotta run. I've got real "pay the bills" work to do.

All the best,

P.S. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag yet… but if you ever wanted to discover my secrets for starting a highly profitable "kitchen table" business from scratch… you're going to be really excited.

Keep an eye on your inbox.

Dear Friend,

Remember this article a few weeks ago?

That's the one about my personalized hand written promotion that flopped.

First, some background…

The "Doberman Dan" personality has not written for the bodybuilding crowd for several years. Doberman Dan is NOW the "Kitchen Table Entrepreneur's Best Friend"… NOT a bodybuilding author.

Rick Gray was the author of the letter. That's why it was signed by him and not Doberman Dan.

Rick Gray runs A.S. Research, the bodybuilding supplement company. Sometimes I love the guy… sometimes I hate him. But we have a lot in common… we share the same brain and body.

A bunch of people guessed why it bombed. Most hit on some good points that could have POSSIBLY been minor contributing factors… but only a few hit the nail on the head.

As soon as I checked the results of this letter and discovered it was stinking up the place, I immediately knew the problem. I heard Gary Halbert's voice in my head saying…

"Delay Is The DEATH Of A Sale!"

When you have your prospect in front of you (figuratively or literally), give them your ENTIRE sales message right then and there!

Sending them to a website was stupid. I should have sent the entire sales message in the envelope with phone ONLY ordering.

Never, ever, EVER do anything that delays the sale or delays the prospect from your complete sales message.

I know the current Internet Marketing "technique du jour" is to send your prospects an e-mail teaser with a link to your online sales pitch. That's usually done because sending your entire sales message would make a very long e-mail.

Well, guess what…

I've tested this numerous times and several of my friends have, too…

Every time we send the entire sales message in an e-mail it almost always eclipses the response of the teaser e-mail with the link to the sales pitch.

Why?

Exactly the same reason I said before…

Delay Is The DEATH Of A Sale!

So there you go. Learn from my mistakes and save yourself a ton of money.

All the best,

P.S. Thanks to everybody who participated in my little quiz. I've got some super sharp subscribers and I really appreciate you.

Dear Friend,

I've never done this before and may never do it again… so listen up.

I have a unique opportunity that just may make you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.

Here's what it's all about…

I currently have a product that is wildly successful in a small niche market. I've known for a while now that it also has "cross over" appeal in a much larger market.

It has been highly profitable in the niche market… but by my estimation, the potential is about 100 times greater in this new market.

I've done almost all the work to go forward with this project. There's just one problem…

There's only one of me
and only 24 hours in a day!

Look, I expect this project to be highly successful in a very short period of time.

But if I add this project to my already overflowing plate… it is going to take me away from some other projects that I'm very passionate about… and are almost ready to launch.

This isn't the first time I've had this problem.

Back in the 90's I sold a fledgling info product business I developed. It was very profitable and had big potential… but I was completely bored with it.

Another direct marketer took that idea and made an absolute FORTUNE with it. He became a MULTI-millionaire.

Am I upset about that? Not in the least. It was a project I had ZERO passion for. It didn't matter how much money it made. It wasn't fun for me and took up a lot of my time.

See, money is not the main motivator for me.

Since I stopped taking clients back in 2005, I've turned down a whole BUNCH of very profitable copywriting and consulting gigs… because I had no interest whatsoever in the product or market.

Don't get me wrong… I like making a lot of money… but only with projects I personally find fun and interesting.

Which brings me to your possible new million dollar opportunity…

I've done about 85% of the work on this project…

• The market has been THOROUGHLY researched by me personally…

• I've got an entire plan for affordable testing…

• I've got NUMEROUS direct mail lists selected for testing and possible roll out…

• I've got the entire online testing and roll out planned…

• I've got 5+ years of successful testing and marketing in the niche market I'm currently in which can easily be rolled over into this new market…

• The product is already in production…

• The product labels have been designed and an initial inventory printed…

• I've got all the resources in place to outsource practically EVERYTHING and put all the day to day LMS (lesser mortal stuff) on auto-pilot…

So why don't I just do this project myself?

Good question.

First of all, I don't want to run another business right now. Especially one that will be as big as I think this one will be.

Plus, I've got some really big plans for DobermanDan.com that you'll find out about soon… and I simply don't have the capital for the launch of two different businesses.

Here's where you possibly come in…

I'm looking for the right person who would like to take over this project and run with it… with my help.

See, even though I don't want to run another business right now, I know how big this could be… and I don't want to miss out on all the money this will rake in.

So I'd like to stay involved as your consultant and copywriter.

Here's the deal…

Since I'm tired of seeing such a potentially profitable project sit on the back burner… I'm going to offer you the opportunity of a lifetime.

If you qualify, you're going to get handed this "Doberman Dan Developed and Approved" project for what used to be my copywriting fee… $15,000 and a 5% royalty on gross sales.

There will be some additional investment to get this going. Stuff like initial advertising costs, fulfillment set up, infrastructure stuff, shopping cart, etc. I estimate $10,000 should be more than enough to cover this. After that, you can use your profits and let the business fund the roll out as you go.

If you're a P.W.M. (player with money), you could take this project to the moon in no time at all with more capital to invest in the initial testing and rollout.

Let me make something clear…

Just having the money to invest in this project doesn't automatically qualify you to work with me.

You also need to have the following qualities:

1. You're a nice person. If you're not easy to get along with, we will not be working together.




2. You're a positive person. If you always see the glass as "half empty" we probably won't click.




3. You're a big boy or girl. You understand that all business ventures involve risk. I'm not God and I can't guarantee your success. You also understand that success is never a straight path. You usually zigzag, fail, get off track, get back on track, and so on. A project like this requires tweaking and correcting as you go. You're not going to have a multi-million dollar business overnight.

Make sense? Good!

Here's what you need to do if you think you qualify…

Send an e-mail to dan @ DobermanDan.com and tell me this…

• "Yes, I've got the $15,000 and at least an additional $10,000 to get things rolling."

• "Yes, I'm a cool, honest and positive person."

• "Yes, I understand every business involves risk and I'm willing to take that risk."

Or something like that.

After you've done that, I'll set up a phone call with you to see if we can work together. If I feel you qualify, I'll be happy to share the details of this project.

I'm really excited about getting this project going. In the hands of the right person, and with my help, I believe this business is going to take off like a rocket.

All the best,









P.S. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to work with me. I will literally lead you by the hand and show you exactly what to do to make this project a raging success.

I know from experience this opportunity won't be available for very long. If you think you qualify, you need to contact me as soon as possible.

I had a great interview the other day with Ben Settle. You can check it out here.

And in case you would prefer the written word, the transcription is below.

All the best,
Dan

Ben Settle Teleseminar Transcription

Doberman Dan:    Welcome, everybody, to another edition of The Doberman Dan Show.  This is Doberman Dan from DobermanDan.com.  I’ve got the pleasure this evening of interviewing a very successful copywriter, and I also believe I can call him a kitchen table entrepreneur, like myself, Ben Settle, from BenSettle.com.  How you doin’, Ben?

Ben Settle:    I am doin’ great.

Doberman Dan:    Good, I really appreciate you doin’ this.  We’re just going to have fun.  I didn’t give you much of an outline at all for this call, so you’re probably wondering what we’re going to do, but this will be just like me and you talkin’.  And don’t get nervous that there’s about 20 people on the phone line and another 300 on the webcast; don’t be nervous at all.  I’m lyin’, man.  [Laughter]

Ben Settle:    Well, yeah, that would be pretty cool if there was that many people.

Doberman Dan:    There’s about 10 percent of that many people, but I could lie about that and nobody would know.  I hear these guys on teleconferences all the time say, “Well geez, we’ve got 750 people on the line!”

Ben Settle:    Yeah, right.  [Laughter]  Yeah, the old inflated number game.

Doberman Dan:    Yeah, exactly.  Nah, this’ll be just like a conversation between me and you.  And the cool thing about it is I will learn more about you and get to know you better ‘cause I’m gonna ask you questions that we’ve never spoken about before.

With that brief and improvised introduction, I would like you to tell me a little bit about yourself.  Tell me about if you were born and if you have a mother and then take it from there.  Keep it brief.  I don’t need to know about you falling down, skinning your knee when you were three.  Tell me about your background your family, your work background and stuff like that and how you got involved in direct response and copywriting.

Ben Settle:    Well, I’ll give you the condensed version for the sake of time.  Basically, I got involved business back in late 1990s.  Like a lot of people, I started out in network marketing, multilevel marketing and was really, really bad at it.  I mean, just terrible at it.

Low and behold, I got married, and we were both doin’ the business together; had all these big plans and everything.  One thing led to another, and about nine months after we were married we were pretty much homeless.  I mean, we were livin’ in an office.  That’s all we could afford because we were spendin’ all of our money on leads and that sort of thing.  Neither of us was very good at it.

I don’t know if it was – what you want to call it.  I considered it an answer to pray, but, basically, I just kind of ran into copywriting one night when I was just sort of sitting there staring at the ceiling.  I just didn’t know what to do.  I mean, we’re livin’ in this dinky little office for like $200.00 a month ‘cause we couldn’t afford a real apartment keeping it a secret from my family.  It was kind of embarrassing.

I don’t know what it was, but I guess I kind of picked up this book that I had read several times before ‘cause it’s very short, but it always inspired me.  It’s called The Seven Lost Secrets of Success, by Joe Vitale.  It’s about an old-time ad guy named Bruce Barton.  A lot of people don’t know who is today, but back in the early to mid 1900s, he was the man in advertising.  Everyone knew who he was.  I guess he was an advisor to certain politicians and he had a lot of influence.

Basically, he told a story in that book about – it was during the Depression, and it was some big city, maybe New York or Chicago or something like that.  This guy came to Bruce Barton and he said, “You know, I just can’t get anyone to hire me.  I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”  But this guy had a talent.  I guess he had a reputation for writing sales letters.  Bruce Barton took him over to the window and he’s like, “Now look at all those buildings out there.”  Like I said, I don’t know what city it was, but it was one of those big cities.  And he goes, “You say you’re good at writing sales letter.  Why don’t you write a sales letter to sell one of those companies on hiring you?”  There was somethin’ about that that just clicked.

From then on, I just started pursuing it with reckless abandon; everything I could get my hands on.  If I made a little bit of money working on a project, I’d reinvest it back into copywriting education and marketing education, found Dan Kennedy and Gary Halbert and all them and you know how it goes from there.  You just get the bug and you just start tearin’ through everything you can.

Eventually, I made my way up the rings and now I have the glorious pleasure of talking on The Doberman Dan Show.

Doberman Dan:    Thanks.  Well, I’m glad to have ya’.  I didn’t know that.  I knew that you were in multilevel marketing, but I had no idea things were that bad for ya’.

Ben Settle:    I was in it for about four years, and then when I got out of it – it’s a good steppingstone.  I mean, that kind of business is a great steppingstone because you have to do face-to-face sales eventually, or phone sales or something.  So you’re kind of forced to kind of discover who you are and you start seeing through the mists of what sales actually work and what doesn’t.

In my case, we were taught the basic stuff that you learn in most sales books, which, in my opinion, is all crap.  I mean, almost none of it works.  It’s all based on persistence and tricks and tactics and all that.  So I won’t say it’s a bad thing, but it’s a great way to get started in business and it gets you goin’.

Doberman Dan:    Yeah, like you said, a lot of it’s face-to-face or phone selling and, woo buddy, it can be brutal.  You’ve got to learn really fast or you’ll just get really beat-up.  [Laughter]

Ben Settle:    One of the adventures we had – [Laughter] – we were livin’ in that office, and I don’t know which guru it was – [Laughter] – of network marketing that recommended this.  They’re like, “Take these tapes and go pass ‘em around town.”  [Laughter]  So we’re goin’ door-to-door to all the business around the town, and people are tellin’ us to get the hell out of their store!  [Laughter]  It was not fun.  I mean, you start learning real fast that the stuff they tell you to do is just not what to do.

Doberman Dan:    Well, you separated yourself from 99 percent of all the other people in network marketing in that you actually did something.  Most people do nothing.  So even though – I can relate to you story – being completely broke and homeless – ‘cause I’ve been there done that; a couple times, actually.  [Laughter]  But it was part of your education and it led you to direct marketing and copywriting so thank god for that.

Ben Settle:    Yeah, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.  If anything, I wish I’d ran into copywriting earlier.

Doberman Dan:    When you found all these guys, like you found Dan Kennedy and Gary Halbert, and started learnin’ about this stuff, then what was the next step?  I mean, did you have to get a job, or did you immediately go into being a copywriter, or how’d that all evolve?

Ben Settle:    Well, for some reason I have a very strategic way of thinking.  Sometimes it gets me in trouble ‘cause I’ll think too long term.  I’ll try to think too many moves ahead, like in a chess game.  I play a lot of chess, by the way, but I’m not very good at it, but I think it helps to think strategically.

In this case what I would do, I had a job.  I was duplicating videos for a major video duplication company in Illinois.  I was part time.  By that I mean I was working 30 hours a week because when my wife and I got married, she started a cleaning business.  Well, I was helping her clean offices, too, so I kind of went part time at the job and helpin’ her.

Then I found this opportunity later on to get on the second shift at my job, which was the 2:30-11:00 shift.  And I don’t know if anyone listening to this knows what I mean by duplicating tapes.  I mean, I’m literally was just videotapes in machines and pushing record, and then I had nothing to do, often for an hour or two.  And I wanted to get on the second shift ‘cause no one’s there, so I did.  Just thinkin’ ahead, “I should get on second shift,” because now I had all this time at work where, yeah, I’m doin’ a job, but I’m also studying copywriting and marketing stuff and I’m writing ads.  I spent a lot of time handwriting ads out back then.

Doberman Dan:    I’m sorry to interrupt.  You really did that?

Ben Settle:    Yeah.

Doberman Dan:    That’s awesome.  I’m sorry.  Keep goin’ ‘cause I tell people to do that all the time, very few actually do.

Ben Settle:    Yeah, what I would do is – that was a big part of my education.  On the way to work ‘cause I worked about 20-some miles from where I lived and through a lot of heavy traffic, I would listen to audios and that sort of thing.  If I was working on a project, I was doing a lot of projects with Michael Senoff at the time, and what he does is he likes to interview product creators when he’s helping them sell something.

So I would have his interview, and would always listen to it over and over for whatever project I was working on.  So on the way there, I was sort of working on an ad.  When I got there, I was pretty much working on my ads.  When I was on my breaks, I’d work on my ads.  During lunch, I’d go out to the car and work on ads or read or something.  Then at night, when everyone was gone from there for a few hours, if I had an ad to work on, I would do that, or I would just handwrite ads out.  This was before I had any clients or anything.  You have nothing to do but write ads out and that sort of thing and I did that a lot.  I mean, I think anything Gary Halbert wrote I would just copy out by hand; even his entire Boron Letters book, which I think is just a fascinating book.  I mean, it’s just a real good way to get it ingrained in your head how to structure ads and that sort of thing.

Doberman Dan:    Wow, I didn’t know you’d done all that, but a lot of people have been told to do that and they don’t but, yet, you did.  Look at the result: You’ve been making your fulltime living from this for quite a while now.

Ben Settle:    Oh yeah, I went full time in this in 2005.  That’s when I officially quit that job and my wife and I, we moved to another state after that.  Pretty much had no choice but to do your own business at that point.

I think copying out ads is essential, but the problem is most people aren’t that into it.  So unless someone’s really into it, they’re probably not gonna do it.  And even if they do do it, they’ll copy out the wrong ads, for one thing.  Then for second thing, they’re not going to copy out ads that are actually interesting and entertaining.  Like, it’s easy to copy Gary Halbert ads out ‘cause they’re so freaking entertaining and they’re just fun.  I mean, it’s just fun to read his stuff.  It’s almost like reading a book sometimes.

But then you’ll see guys – well, I love – sometimes I’ll kind read marketing forms and that sort of thing and the people’ll be braggin’ about their swipe files and stuff, “Well, I’ve got this ad in my swipe file.”  I don’t ever poke my nose into these things.  I just kind of lurk.  A lot of times, people are copying ads that really maybe they were good, maybe they weren’t, but they weren’t tested, like maybe big launch ads in some cases where these marketers are just such geniuses.  They’ll sell their product whether the ad is any good or not.

In some cases, some of these guys will say, “Well, I only put a few hours into writin’ that ad.  I just slapped it up there.”  And then you’ll have copywriters, “Well, hey, it made all this money.  I’m copying it out by hand.” or, “I’m studying it,” or, “It’s in my swipe file.”  I’m just shakin’ my head sayin’, “You don’t get it.  You’ve got to go back to the masters and you’ve got to see how they did it when they were sellin’ to cold people, skeptical people.  It was a whole different ballgame back then.  It’s not like you could just slap somethin’ up on the Internet like you can now.  Send it out to thousands of affiliates who all hype it up for ya’ first.

Doberman Dan:    Yeah, exactly.  If you’re gonna copy out ads by hand to ingrain that in your cranium there and improve your ad writing ability, you really need to copy out what’s a proven winner.  That’s going back to the classics, or the stuff that we know is, what they call a control, which have been tested and shown to be a winner and then rolled out to millions of names.

So you had the job, you’re workin’ nights.  You were takin’ advantage of that time and copyin’ ads out by hand.  So what was the next step?  How’d you get into direct marketing?  Did you start your own project, or did you start out being a freelance copywriter?  What happened then?

Ben Settle:    Well, yeah, I started out just freelancing.  In fact, if I could go back, I would have done more freelancing and less joint ventures.  I’ll explain what I mean by that.  When I got into this – the one good thing I can – well, one of the few good things I could say I got out of network marketing was it got me reading Robert Kiyosaki books.  A lot of people know his main flagship book, Rich Dad Poor Dad.  It just such a huge impact on me because it talked about multiple streams of income, like you don’t want to have just one.  You want to have income coming in automatically as much as possible.

So what I, and this is kind of will have the strategic part of my brain kind of got me in trouble in some ways, I said, “Well, I’m just gonna do joint ventures.  Well, I’ll write the ad essentially for free, but then I’ll get paid on sales perpetually.”  That worked with – for example, when I worked with Michael Senoff that worked fine.  He’s an honest guy, and he’s a real marketer and stuff.  But a lot of people out there try to take advantage of that, which happened to me sometimes.

I guess what my point is if I could go back, I would do joint ventures like that, and I should have done a lot more just straight freelance stuff, which a lot of times I would turn down at the time because I wanted that long-term income stream coming in.

Doberman Dan:    When you say “straight freelance stuff,” you mean possible offered you, “Hey, I’ll pay you x and you write my ad and we’re done?”

Ben Settle:    Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean by that.

Doberman Dan:    So to get your first clients, you approached people and said, “Hey, I will write this ad for nothing up front.  I just want x percentage of the gross.”  Is that how you approached it?

Ben Settle:    Well, yeah, and here’s kind of the way it worked.  I actually stumbled into this, in a lot of ways, on accident.  What happened was I read a newsletter Gary Halbert wrote called, Why Multilevel Marketing Sucks, ironically.  In that newsletter he talked about how you can take your skills, you can find somebody selling something and you can basically be like a commissioned salesperson where you sell it with your ad and then they give you a percentage.  So I found that very intriguing.

It just so happens, though, that I ran into Michael Senoff.  He actually had been reading my website at the time.  I was just writing these little newsletters, and he just happened to be in that same mindset.  He was willing to do that, so that was cool.  I thought, “Well, this is great.  This is workin’ out really good,” ‘cause I’d done a project or two with him and it worked out very well.  I mean, like the first project, at the time, I paid off my car and everything.  At that time, that was a big deal, a really big deal when you’re kind of struggling and everything.

But the problem was is when I went to other people, I thought, “Well, I’ll mimic this.  I’ll duplicate this and I’ll go find some other people to work with, too, while I’m workin’ with him.  Maybe I’ll have four or five of these things comin’ in at once.”  So I just kind of compiled a list of marketers, or people I knew who were using sales letters, and I just wrote them each a letter.

I got one response from – I’m not going to name who they are because I’d probably get in some kind of legal trouble if I did because I don’t have anything nice to say about ‘em.  But basically it’s a company that sets up Nevada corporations and that sort of thing.  I’d spent a lot of time writing one of their ads, dealt with the founder of the company.  He’s like, “I’m an old marketing guy.  I know exactly what this is all about.  Let’s do this.”  The problem is that he decided to retire when I was halfway through the sales letter, handed it over to someone in his family who didn’t know anything about marketing, couldn’t even understand the concept behind doin’ a joint venture like this.  It kind of left a sour taste in my mouth ‘cause it was just a big waste of time.

At that point, I decided, “Well, I better start tryin’ to get some real freelance, then, too, at the same time.”  So I kind of learned that the hard way.

Doberman Dan:    But that’s a pretty irresistible offer for somebody who wants to do that.  Approach a business, hopefully with an honest owner.

Ben Settle:    It is an irresistible offer, but I just wouldn’t even recommend it any more.  I used to recommend.  I wouldn’t say I would never recommend doing it, but they should have some skin in the game, if nothin’ else.  They should have something invested in it otherwise you could be putting yourself on the hook for a lot of your time.  Unless, of course, you really want to get smart about it, and it’s your ad.  Once you write it you own the copyright to it and you can always take it to a competitor or something and just tweak it for their product, but then you go through the same thing again.  It’s still kind of a long shot.

I’ll say this, after that incident, I still did some of these jobs.  I did that with Ken McCarthy and that turned out to be a very good joint venture.  I mean, there’s just certain people that you could probably do it with, but going back I would have done more the straight freelance stuff and did the joint venture stuff on the side and taken my time with it and not made it a priority.

Doberman Dan:    I got ya’.  I got ya’.  Hey, I just want to say somethin’ real quick to the folks.  We’ve got a bunch of people listenin’ to us on the webcast.  On that website, there’s a box that you can submit questions.  I can see questions that are being submitted.  So if you have any questions for Ben, submit those now on the website and we’ll definitely get to those.  As soon as you send your question, I can see it on the website here that I’m lookin’ at.

Freelance work you did and some joint ventures.  Here’s the biggest question that came up when I interviewed Caleb last week I guess it was.  Everybody wants to know – all the copywriters on the line, or all the people who are considering becoming a freelance copywriter – want to know how do you get your clients?

You told us how you got the joint venture clients.  You don’t necessarily recommend that right now.  But what is the quickest way to get clients, or what are the best ways to get copywriting clients?

Ben Settle:    Well, the first thing you gotta do, and this is gonna sound kind of strange probably, but it needs to be said because there’s not a lot of people out there saying it.  That is you’ve got to stop thinkin’ like a copywriter because you gotta think like a marketer, a salesperson.  And the problem, and I see this all the time and other people work – I’m in two Mastermind groups.  I’m in yours, but I’m also in another one and in that group, we’re all copywriters.  Two of them got together and actually created a whole course on freelancing.  They were saying what I’m about to say, too.

That everywhere you look you see people trying to write these long sales letters selling people on why they need copywriting, which is just a huge, huge mistake.  I mean, I don’t know why people are doin’ it.  I don’t know where this all started.  I don’t even understand why anybody would bother doin’ it.  Why try to convince someone they need copywriting when you could be attracting people already looking for copywriters?

I mean, that’s what it all comes down to: Who’s already hiring copywriters?  Go to them.  You don’t have to explain to them why they need good copywriting.  You don’t have to explain to them what it’ll mean to have a super control and all that.  They already know that.  They’re lookin’ for people ‘cause they’re tryin’ to pump out more ads.  And believe me, there are a lot of people out there like that who just have nothing but projects right now and they’re looking for copywriters.

I mean, that’s going after the starving crowd, as Gary Halbert would say, right?  I mean, you can sell them burgers all day long, but if you sit there and try to convince someone who’s full why they need to have your hamburger, it’s kind of like an uphill battle.

Doberman Dan:    [Laughter]  That’s great.  That is so true.  You just probably saved people a lot of wasted time and money chasing after the wrong prospects.

Ben Settle:    Yeah, I hope so.  Well, you just see it all over.  I mean, I live reading other copywriters sites ‘cause I just like to see what people are up to and everything.  You can learn something from everybody, but one thing, I just notice it all over the place, it’s like their ads are written to people who have no idea what copywriting is.  “Well, here’s what copywriting is, and if you hire me, I studied under guru A and guru B,” but unless those people know who those gurus that you studied under are, they don’t care.  If you’re going after the right people, they’re already looking for copywriters.  All you’ve got to do is explain to them why they should choose you and give you a shot.

Doberman Dan:    Boy, if people were paying for this call, which they probably should be, they would have gotten their money’s worth from just that one tip there.

I didn’t properly set you up at the beginning.  I mean, you’ve written copy for some really heavy hitters in the direct marketing world and online marketing world.  So we’re getting advice not from some young kid that just started.  We’re getting advice from – well, you are young, but.  We’re getting advice from a young, up and coming copywriter that’s highly in demand, turning away clients as matter of fact he’s just so booked, and is on the list of many top marketers as one of the first-call copywriters.  If you’re thinking about getting into the copywriting business, you need to listen to what Ben says.

So we talked about getting clients.  This is another question that came up quite a bit: How do you get good at copywriting as quickly as possible, and what did you do specifically – I mean, because you’ve become really successful in a very short period of time, so what do you recommend for getting good at copywriting quickly?

Ben Settle:    Well, the problem I’m about to – actually, I have three things that I think everybody should do, and almost nobody will do the first thing.  But I promise you, if you did the first thing I’m about to say, even though it goes against what a lot of people are telling people to do and it goes against the urge to buy everything that comes into your email box that’s in a major launch and all that.  If you just did these three things, I mean, these are basically the three things I did.  I can’t guarantee you anything, but I’m just sayin’.  I mean, this worked very well for me.

And the first thing that I would recommend, and, again, I’m going to preface this with nobody ever does it – everybody says that they want to do what I’m about to suggest, but no one actually ever does it – and that is when you find a good resource, for example – I can give you all kinds of examples.  I did this with Breakthrough Advertising, which is a book by Eugene Schwartz; and John Carlton’s original Kick-Ass Copywriting Secrets Course; and all the copywriting issues of The Gary Halbert Letter; more recently Gary Bencivenga DVD and some other products.

Go through the best stuff you have at least 10 times.  If it’s a book, read through it 10 times.  I know that sounds really tedious.  I know it sounds boring.  I know it sounds like, well, all the marketers out there like to brag about how they have $10,000.00 worth of books on their shelves.  Well, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think I even have more than other than Bencivenga DVD, which was kind of big investment, I don’t think I even have close to that on my shelf.  And yet, I know people who have everything and they’re still struggling, and I think it all comes down to just mastering the basics.

So if you find a book or a course or anything that you know is giving good information and that you resonate with – that’s really important because everybody resonates differently with different teachers – go through it 10 times minimum.  Just highlight, take notes.  If you’re working on an ad, I can almost guarantee you will get ideas for that ad that you never would have gotten otherwise, really good ideas.  It’s almost like you’re tapping into the brains of the people who wrote or created those products.  That’s the first thing.  I mean, I know it’s hard work and all that, but trust me, if you’re into this and your serious, just do it.  Trust me on this and just give it a try.

Doberman Dan:    Extremely good advice.  Well, actually, I got in this trap a few years ago, just buying everything having to do with direct response marketing and copywriting.  Some of it was good; some of it not so good, but I think for some people it almost turns into – it’s almost kind of a delusion.  They feel like they’re making forward progress because they have growing library.  When in fact, they’re not really making forward progress ‘cause they’re not getting the value out of the stuff they should have.

I mean, when I read something one time, I get something out of it, but every subsequent time I get more and more out of it.  For me, if I really need to get the maximum value out of a book or some sort of information product, the minimum for me is seven times.  So your advice about don’t spend every dime you got on building a library worth of stuff.  Get less stuff that resonates with you and is exceptionally good information and read it 10 times each.

Ben Settle:    Yeah, this’ll actually make and save you money because now you’re not buying everything coming down the pike.  And I’m not saying not to buy multiple things.  I’m just saying don’t go on to the next thing until you’ve gone through the first thing 10 times.  If something bores you right away, just throw it aside and start with something else.  I’m talking about things that engage you and that you like.

You’d be amazed at what you get out of it on the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, tenth time especially.  I mean, oh my gosh, whenever I write an ad, even to this day, when I write a sales letter, I don’t let it leave even for anyone to look at until I’ve read it out loud 10 times because repetition just does something.  You just keep getting ideas and your brain just produces all these solutions to problems.  I mean, I can’t tell you how many ads wrote themselves when I was reading Breakthrough Advertising.  It was almost like crazy.  I almost didn’t ever want to stop reading that ‘cause it just made life so much easier.

I just think that’s a huge, huge thing.  I can’t tell you how many people tell me, “Ben, I know I need to start doing that.  I intend to do that.  I have all these books,” and then they never do it.  Then they’re on the next launch circle jerk there and they just go on and on and on.  They’re like, “Well, what do I do next?  What do I do next?”  Just cut all the noise out, focus on the basics, master those basics like nothing else and you’ll just rise to the top much faster.  I can almost guarantee it.

Doberman Dan:    I don’t want to get you off track of the next point you were gonna cover, but I do want to ask you if you could reiterate the things, either the course or the books that you consider, or at least were for you, essential reading.  You talked about John Carlton’s Kick-Ass Copywriting Course.

Ben Settle:    Oh yeah, in fact, I’m actually rereading that right now.  I mean, I never stop readin’ that stuff, but I definitely went through that 10 or 15 times before I moved on to the next thing.

Doberman Dan:    You mentioned Breakthrough Advertising.  You mentioned TheGaryHalbertLetter.com.

Ben Settle:    Well, yeah.  I have a point to make about that that I think will – people might think I’m a little stupid for this, but I honestly think it made a huge difference.  There’s another Gary Halbert-trained professional, awesome copywriter.  His name is Scott Haynes.  And I don’t have a lot of his ads, but the few that I do, I just study those things like crazy.

Early on, he used to have a newsletter.  This was back in 2002 or 2003.  He sold a few info products, and one of the products that he sold that I have since read 25 times probably, was he just took the copywriting issues of The Gary Halbert Letter, he had them bound and he sold them for like $200.00.  Now, almost all of those were free on his site, but I just bought it because I knew if I bought it, especially since I really didn’t even have $200.00, I think I’d gotten a copywriting job of Elance at the time when I bought it, I just invested it in that.  Gosh, that made a huge difference.  I mean, just once you buy something, you’re putting yourself on the line.  It doesn’t just sit on a desk if you really needed that money, you kind of have to get your invest back somehow.  So I just want to add it wasn’t just all The Gary Halbert Letters necessarily, but especially those copywriting issues.

Doberman Dan:    Good point.  Yeah, there’s a problem with free, actually, and the problem with free is people don’t value it.  I can tell you from personal experience that the information on TheGaryHalbertLetter.com can make you an absolute fortune.  You can learn how to be a copywriter on there, you can learn how to be a successful freelancer, you can learn how to start your own mail-order business, you can learn how to make $1 million or more, however much you want to make.  The problem is it’s available free and people don’t value it.  I have gut feeling that you’ve placed a higher value on that information and actually reading the information from TheGaryHalbertLetter.com when you invested the $200.00 to buy it in printed form.  Is that right?

Ben Settle:    Absolutely and you know what else he did?  At the time, I was annoyed for about five seconds when he did this.  None of the Boron Letters are free on there, but there was a time when he sold ‘em for like $97.00, and they were bound.  It was actually kind of cool how they did it.  They were his handwritten letters to his son bound together.  I mean, everything you need to know about copywriting and marketing is basically in there.

But I’ll tell you what, had I not spent the $97.00 on that I never would have read it and extracted the value I got from it than I had seen it free.  In a way, he almost did people a disservice by putting ‘em up free sort of in a way.  I mean, I’m glad they’re up there free, but I’m just saying if you don’t have the proper mindset, it can kind of backfire on ya’.

Doberman Dan:    I may be hurting my subscribers by giving all my content away free.  [Laughter]

Ben Settle:    Well, won’t comment on that necessarily, but I will say that I have severely restricted the level of information I give away.  I used to give away the farm.  I even wrote about this last summer ‘cause I remember this.  I kept getting people complaining.  How can you complain when something’s free?

It made me realize that the people who are actually applying information were buying stuff.  If that means you’ve got to buy something to apply it, I haven’t done anyone any good if they don’t actually apply what I say.  I’m not saying I never give value or anything, but I don’t get into strict, hard stuff that I would put in a product any more.  Some of it’s in there, but, really, it’s like you’re almost doing people a disservice.

Doberman Dan:    Yep, good point.  I agree.  What else did you do to get good so fast?

Ben Settle:    Well, the other products – it’s funny you asked this question ‘cause there was a subscriber to my newsletter.  His name is Collin.  He asked me this exact same question on Saturday night, so it’s kind of fresh in my head.

Another course that I just went through, not because I bought it but because I was writing an ad for it – so that’s kind of nice perk to being a copywriter, actually, you get all these cool products you get to use them free – is Ken McCarthy’s copywriting product, which I believe you have.  In fact, I know you have it ‘cause you gave him a testimonial for it.  Man, I went through that thing about 10, 15 times too ‘cause I was writing an ad I really wanted to impress him.  I didn’t want to just throw him some crappy little piece of ad and say, “Here, look what I did.”

As a side note on that, I also want to say that if you can find someone who will rip your stuff apart the way he ripped my stuff apart, man, that will make you light years ahead.  You will leap light years ahead in your abilities in one second, literally.  When somebody can just take it and objectively say, “Look, this needs to be fixed, this needs to be fixed, that needs to be fixed.”  He did that for me in some ways; I should have paid him for the ad, if I think about it.  Anyway, that was another product is Ken McCarthy’s Advanced Copywriting for Serious Info Marketers, I think it’s called.

There was the Gary Bencivenga DVDs, which I think I’m still going through those.  I mean, I’ve lost count how many times I’ve gone through it.  Paul Hartunian’s Publicity System, which is really good.  There’s probably some other ones.  They’re just not on the top of my mind right now.  The key is just to find the ones that appeal to you and just tear right through ‘em 10 times at a minimum.  More, I’ve gone through some of this stuff more than 10 times and I always will.  I mean, why stop.

Doberman Dan:    Good advice.  Hey, I want to tell you something about the Ken McCarthy copywriting course that I probably haven’t ever told ya’.  He came out with that – when did he come – what year did he come out with that?

Ben Settle:    I believe it’s been around probably since early 2005.

Doberman Dan:    That’s what I thought because – anyway, I bought his course, which is just awesome.  You’ll learn stuff in there that I’ve not heard anybody else teach, none of the people who teach copywriting so that’s a great course.

But I can’t remember what blog I was on, but I was on a blog for copywriters and there was a discussion about the promotion for Ken McCarthy’s copywriting course and somebody knew that you had written it.  So somebody said, “Ah, yeah, Ben Settle wrote it.”  That’s the first time I’d ever heard your name, and then I kept hearing more and more and more about Ben Settle.  I hadn’t met you yet, but the only thing I could think of is, “Man, this Ben Settle guy has some brass balls because he took on a job – first of all, took on a job for Ken McCarthy, which is a really heavy hitter in Internet marketing.”

Ben Settle:    He does not suffer fools.  I’ll just put it this way.  I mean, he’s like – in a way, he’s like the best client you could have, but also a nightmare in a way because he will not let anything but your absolute best.  He’s just not going to put anything out with his name on it that’s not top shape.

Doberman Dan:    For that reason, there are few copywriters who would have accepted that gig.  And the second reason is, my god man, you’re writing copy for a copywriting course.  You’re going to have every copywriter in the world with their arms crossed critiquing your piece like, “Oh, geez.”

There’s an old joke – I play guitar.  There’s an old joke.  How many guitars players does it take to change a light bulb?  Well, it takes six.  One to change a light bulb and five to stand around with our arms crossed talking about how much better they could have done it.  That’s kind of the same way with the copywriting world.

Actually, I take it back.  I read your name on that blog first, and then I actually sought out the promotion for Ken’s copywriting course.  The interesting thing about that piece that you wrote was I expected this copy I’m just going to be completely blown away by it, which isn’t what happened.  What happened was I was drawn into the copy, of course, but the copy almost became invisible, like I didn’t notice the copy.  And I was reading it as a copywriter with the intention of critiquing it, but I got sucked into it and I got so – it’s like I didn’t even notice the copy at that point.  I was sucked in and I was so rabid for the product.  Does that make sense?

Ben Settle:    Yeah, unfortunately, that happens a lot where people are trying to impress other copywriters.  This, by the way, I do not – there’s only about – let’s see – four, five – maybe seven people, ten at the most, who I even let read my ads that are in copywriting.  I mean, you would be one of ‘em.  You did actually look at one of my ads recently.  And that’s because most people don’t know how to separate – they’re tryin’ to – they’re looking for some kind of cool factor, but a good ad is not cool.

I mean, it’s supposed to speak to the market.  I like to let the market read things.  What does the market think?  I couldn’t care less what any guru thinks, as far as a copywriter or something, not because I don’t respect them or anything, but because who cares what they think as an advertising critic.  What I care about is what does that guy who has the problem that the product is supposed to help with, what does he think?  How is he going to be affected by this?

Doberman Dan:    That was just an incredible piece of work you did.  Like I said, it was a great example of how to write copy and it’s a great example of what the copy’s job should actually be.  Not drawing attention to itself, but drawing the reader into it and sellin’ a product.  Kudos to you for that because you had the brass balls to accept that gig and then you just did an exceptional job.

Ben Settle:    Like I say, I’d love to take all the credit, but he really – I mean, believe me the first draft I handed in was not good enough – [Laughter] – in many ways.  At the time, I thought, “Well, what the hell does this guy know?”  But I came to really take his advice to heart.  I mean, it changed my writing in a lot of ways that you can never get from a book or anything.  I mean, you just kind of have to have someone who’s better than you dissect what you’re doing.  It’s kind of like if you’re in golf and you play with Tiger Woods, no matter how good you are, you’re probably going to learn something life changing about your game just by having someone like that look at what you’re doing.

I consider Ken to be one of the top copywriters, even though he doesn’t bill himself as one, but he really knows his stuff.  Like you were sayin’ in his course, yeah, he talks about the basics and the stuff you’re gonna find.  I mean, there’s always going to be overlap with other products and stuff, but when he gets into positioning and the inner game stuff and some of that creepy stuff he talks about toward the end about other marketers out there and how to stop yourself, prevent yourself from getting scammed and hurt by other marketers and clients.  You just can’t get most of that anywhere but from real life, school of hard knocks.

Doberman Dan:    That’s right.  Hey, I want to ask you one more of my questions, and then I’ve got a bunch of people have submitted a bunch of questions I’d like to get into real quick.

You’ve got a great blog, by the way, at BenSettle.com.  You’ve built up a real nice fan base, too.  Two things, basically, I remember you saying awhile back, I guess, I don’t know if it was the BenSettle.com blog, but when you were first starting copywriting and didn’t have work you took that as an opportunity to write something every day for your blog.  You viewed that as, first of all, a way to get better at writing, and second of all, a way to consistently put copy up on your blogs.  Do you recommend that for copywriters just starting out?

Ben Settle:    Oh man, even more so.  I’ll tell you exactly what happened.  I was having a year where just there wasn’t a lot happening.  I mean, I was making a lot of mistakes and that sort thing.  I just had a lot of time on my hands, and I thought, “Well, I might as well write,” because you can always – and when I say write, I was writing articles for ezine directories and stuff, which is the same as if I was writing for a blog or my website.  What happens is you start saying, “Okay, I’ve learned all this stuff about writing ads.  I can practice writing ads.  I can practice persuading people just to click a link at the end of my article just like it was a sales letter.  So you structure.  You’ve got your intro, you tell the story, you lead into some kind of a lesson.  You’re not selling anything, but you’re kind of selling them on the click.  So it’s practice, practice; you’re constantly honing your abilities to sell in print, so to speak.

What I did was I was submitting something like 10 per day and this went on for a while.  What I ended up doing was I didn’t put them all on my website, but what happened was I compiled a bunch of them into an ebook that I gave away to people who opted in to my newsletter on my website.  And that ebook, which was just articles I had written when I had too much time on my hands, well, like I said, I was saying how there’s all these marketers already looking for copywriters.  When I say that, I mean literally they’re out looking for copywriters.  They’re just turned off by the hype and nonsense that they see from people trying to – probably from people trying to impress other copywriters instead of write good ads.

I can tell you now that two of my biggest clients just came ‘cause the read that ebook.  They didn’t even see my – they never saw any of my ads.  They never looked at any of my work that I’d done.  They didn’t know anyone I knew.  They were out looking for copywriters, or looking for someone they could believe in and trust, and they just happened to read that ebook.  I mean, they both told me, “I read your ebook.  I mean, I think your style is perfect for what I’m trying to do.  When can you start?”  I mean, always be writing, and that was number two of the three things I was going to say anyway about how to build your skills up fast is always, always, always be writing ads constantly.

Doberman Dan:    Good point.  I probably cut you off.  You were gonna say of three different things how to get better at writing.  Let’s go back that.

Ben Settle:    Yeah, the third thing was – you know, there’s actually like 10 things I could say.  Besides writing ads out by hand, which we already talked about, another is just to become really, really good at sales in general.  I mean, the more you learn about selling, and I’m not talking about the kind of Mickey Mouse stuff that you see people talk about, like tactics and all that.

I’m talking about learning how to identify problems people have and then figuring out how to talk to those problems.  You can only do that really by learning sales.  They don’t really teach that in copywriting necessarily.  So that’s the third thing is just either just try to sell something, even if you’re just selling yourself to other clients.  Just get out there and try to sell people something and that alone will give you another quantum leap in your knowledge and you’ll start realizing that you can only learn so much from a book.  I mean, sometimes you’ve got to go out there and just do things.

Doberman Dan:    Good advice.  You’re basically a salesman in print.  It doesn’t have anything to do with being a good writer, so to speak; it has evening to do with being a good salesman in print.  So, yeah, very good point.

I take it back.  There’s one – I said I was only going to ask one question, but one more question I want to ask you – one of my questions before we get into the subscriber questions.  How’d you build up such a nice fan base for your blog?  What have you specifically done to do that, or what do you recommend?

Ben Settle:    This is another thing where I – I mean, there’s a lot of things that I’ve done.  One thing I’m purposely and deliberately not going to reveal ever for free anywhere so I’ll leave that out, but this is something I was teasing my list about a few weeks back saying, “What’s the real key to selling on the Internet?”  People were saying, “Well, it’s value,” or, “It’s teaching,” or, “Putting out lots of content.”  I’m like, “No, no, it’s none of that stuff.”  That’s all important don’t get me wrong, all that stuff’s important and those are things that I definitely do, but there is one thing that almost nobody is teaching and if they just did that, I don’t think they’d ever have a problem getting a following.

To answer you question, one thing that I definitely do, and I did this basically because through observation I noticed that Gary Halbert did it and I noticed guys like Dan Kennedy do it and I noticed a lot of other people who are very successful do it so I just started doing it, is you just let you personality shine through.

I mean, I’m the first person to admit I’m not the coolest guy in the world.  I’ve got some kind of weird interests and tastes.  I’m sittin’ here putting videos about Bigfoot up on site and things like that.  I mean, let’s face it; I’m not exactly the most popular kid in school.  But that personality, people know that they’re dealing with a real person.

An example of this would be I used to collect comic books when I was a kid.  I probably still would if I had more time.  But I was always intrigued by some of these comics.  I mean, they’ve really got rabid fans if you’ve ever been to a comic book convention.  I was thinking about Spider-Man in particular.  This character’s been worth billions dollars to Marvel Comics.  I remember reading an interview with one of the writers of Spider-Man at the time, and he was like, “I realize that people are not just buying the comic book to see Spider-Man kick someone’s ass.  They also want to see what’s going on in Peter Parker’s love life and stuff.”  It’s almost a soap opera aspect of it.  There was a lot of personality in those comics.

If you look at any really successful marketer, they’re not cold fish.  They’re out there giving their personality.  You’re not always going to like it, but it’s like a real person.  I mean, even guys who are really polarizing, for example, take a guy like Rush Limbaugh, for example.  I heard something like 50 percent of the people who listen to him hate him, but they sure love his personality ‘cause they’re listening every day.  They may hate his guts and everything he stands for, but a lot of the people just like his personality.  A lot of TV shows are like that, like sports shows on ESPN and stuff.  A lot of the shows are driven by some personality.  It’s not necessarily the content of the information.

I would say personality is a big, big thing.  Don’t hold back.  I mean, be who you are, and if people don’t like it, there’s a little link on there that says “Unsubscribe” and go fly a kite, man.  It’s not for everybody.  [Laughter]

Doberman Dan:    I’ve never actually heard anybody say that for building a base of fans for your blog but so true.  I mean, I hear stuff like, “Well, you’ve gotta consistently put up content.”  Well, okay, yeah, but – yeah, if your content has no personality, I don’t think they’re going to return.

Ben Settle:    I don’t think so either.  If they do, it’s probably on a freebie mindset, “Well, this is free.”  It’s not because they’re engaged by it.  I would say that’s almost as important as the one thing that I’m deliberately withholding.  Personality alone will take you a long way.

Doberman Dan:    I’m glad you shared that.  I think I probably need to start incorporating more of that in my blog, too.

Ben Settle:    I think you do a good job of it, especially on your Doberman Dan Show.  I mean, it’s the real Doberman Dan.  It’s not some shadow of someone else.  It’s not you’re trying to be like someone else.  It’s almost like if you send a photocopy, right?  You take a photocopy of a driver’s license and then you fax that to someone else and that fax looks blurry and then you take that fax and photocopy that.  This is what a lot of people are doing out there.  It’s like they’re trying to be like someone else and they’re not being themselves.

Doberman Dan:    That’s true.  I do my best to try to let my personality show through in my articles, but the few videos I’ve actually made for the site I’ve stifled myself because I’ve wanted to make a few jokes here and there and I thought, “No, I better not.”  But you know what?  I probably shouldn’t worry about that.  If I make a joke and nobody likes it, well, big deal.  I think I should probably, warts and all, you get Doberman Dan, at least that’s been the goal of my articles.  I don’t think I’m going to stifle myself in the future on any audios or videos based on that advice.

I want to get into some questions, and the first one I’m going to start with is Dean from London because he stayed up really late to be on this call.  What?  It’s almost 9:00 Eastern time.  It’s probably almost, holy smokes, like 3:00 in the morning over there or something.  So thanks, Dean; appreciate it.  I hope missing sleep – I hope all this was worth the missing sleep you did.  Anyway, he says, “Hi, great interview.  Ben has an awesome blog, and I’d be interested to hear any tips he has for starting out blogging and generate an audience from scratch.  Thanks for the opportunity of this material.”  We basically already covered that, but I just wanted to give as shout-out to Dean for staying up late to listen to us.  Do you have anything else to add to that for starting out blogging and generate an audience from scratch?

Ben Settle:    Well, yeah, we did cover the personality aspect and all that.  I would say this isn’t going to genuine a lot of traffic, but it will steadily build you some traffic and some good back links.  And that is, blog every single day, or at least five days a week, and then take that blog and put it on EzineArticles.com and try to maybe keyword optimize the title.  That’s a whole other thing in and of itself and there’s lots written on that for free on the Internet.  You’ll make Google happy.  You’ll make EzineArticles.com happy and you’ll make yourself happy because you’ll start getting some more traffic that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.  And you already did the work.  I mean, you already wrote the articles.

Doberman Dan:    That’s right, so just recycle it and put it up there.  What was the website again, Ezine – [Crosstalk]

Ben Settle:    EzineArcticles.com, and you can also – one cool thing you can do, too, is you can have, for example, some social media sites, like Facebook, you can have them pull your feed automatically.  You have to go on there to see how to do it.  So now you’ll syndicate it on Facebook, too, and all your friends there will see it.  Then maybe put a link on Twitter, too, and now you’re getting out there in multiple different places.

Doberman Dan:    Good idea.  Thanks for the question, Dean, and thanks for staying up late.  Check this out, Ben: Kyle Tully in Sydney, Australia.

Ben Settle:    Oh, Kyle, I know Kyle.

Doberman Dan:    Do you know Kyle?  Really?  Okay.

Ben Settle:    I know Kyle.  He’s a cool guy.

Doberman Dan:    I would like to know, I’d like to have the opportunity to get to know Kyle ‘cause check out his message.  He says, “I’ve actually got 749 guys in the room with me right now, so your stats are off.”  [Laughter]  So big shout-out to Kyle in Australia.  I have no idea what time it is down there.  I’m assuming it’s Sydney, Australia.

Let’s see, Angel Suarez in Palm Bay, “What do you find to be the most effective way to create trust and remove distrust?”  Very good question.

Ben Settle:    Well, there’s a lot of people who, unfortunately, all they’ll do is say, “Well, you’ve got to get testimonials,” like that’s some magical thing.  I’m glad that recently people are coming to the realization that testimonials are probably the weakest form of proof and trust and you can get these days ‘cause they’re so easily manufactured.

Man, I will tell you this: there’s lots and lots of ways to do this.  But the easiest way that I know of to do it is to tell a story in you’re ad about someone who’s in the market who’s facing the exact same problem as the people in your market and how they overcame that problem – you’re doing this in story form – by finding your product.  They will feel like they were talking to a kindred soul.

I mean, people talk a lot about, “Well, here’s how you use proof.  You do this.  You do that.  You show numbers.  You show screenshots.”  You can do that.  I’m not saying don’t do it, but if you just learn how to tell a story from the point of view of someone going through the exact same problem that your product solves in your ad, whether it be you or somebody else, it will go a long way toward building trust and getting people just to not only believe you but they just can’t get enough of what you’re saying.

Doberman Dan:    Good tip and thanks for the question, Angel; good question.  Hey, Ben, I want to ask a favor.  It’s 8:56 now.  I told you we’d only be on the phone ‘til 9:00.  Can you stick around a few minutes more to get through the rest of these?

Ben Settle:    We can spend another hour if you want.  We can keep rollin’ as long as you want.

Doberman Dan:    Okay, we’ve got more subscriber questions.  I got more questions for ya’.  If people need to jump off the line, then do what you got to do.  But I’m recording this so if they’ve got to run, they can catch the rest of it later.

Tammy, in Pennington Gap, asks, “Do you think the majority of written copy will eventually be mostly persuasion by video?  Which do you think is the best to learn?”

Ben Settle:    That’s a very good question because, man, there’s so much – so many people who, for example, people who sell audio, they’re going to tell you audio’s the best.  People who sell video stuff, they’re going to tell you video’s the best.  People who are hardcore copywriters and text, they’re going to tell you, you only need a sales letter.

My take on this is do whatever works for you market.  I mean, some people absolutely hate reading, and this an absolute – from what I understand, this is a neurological fact, like neurologists – and I’m going on memory here, this is something Ken McCarthy told me, actually, ‘cause he studies neurology I guess.  He was saying that neurologists can’t even understand how the human brain can even communicate through the written text, something like that.  So it’s really hard for – I mean, a lot of people just don’t like reading.

Those of us in marketing who are buying all these books and stuff, we love it, but we’re kind of like freaks compared to the rest of the population.  I mean, most people don’t like it.  I don’t what the statistic is, like 42 percent of people never read another book when they graduate college or something.  I would say use anything that works.

I mean, I’ll give you an example.  Just six months ago, I bought a $1,000.00 info product based solely on a teleseminar.  I didn’t even read the ad.  I didn’t see a video either.  But there have been times where I’ve only bought from ads, like Gary Bencivenga’s $5,000.00 DVD seminar.  There’s no audio or video on that at all.  I don’t even think there’s a picture in it other than the top graphic.  So text can work.  Audio can work.  Video can work.

The most important thing you can do is get your message-to-market match down first.  Get that down first and then you can start experimenting with whether video or audio or text or whatever works better, but the message-to-market is most important.

Doberman Dan:    That is extremely important.  I have a theory.  One of the niches that I have a business in is the bodybuilding market because, if anybody didn’t know this, this DobermanDan.com site is not my business.  It’s a passion.  At this point, I don’t make a dime from it.  I got real work to do and I own real businesses and I’ve got to steal time when I can to do this stuff for DobermanDan.com.  Brief little rant there.

My bodybuilding niche I’ve noticed somethin’.  It appears to me that they younger guys in that niche, a lot of them are almost functionally illiterate.  People my age, I’m going to be 45 in December, it seems like people my age and older, as a general rule, are still readers and definitely the boomers are readers.  Market to somebody in their 60s and 70s, and send ‘em a magalog or a direct mail, those guys are readers.

But I don’t have anything to back this up, Ben, but I think a lot of people in my market, especially if they went to public schools, are functionally illiterate.  They cannot understand what they read, or possibly they can’t even really read and they definitely can’t communicate by the written word.  I just judge that based on the customer service calls that my customer service center getaways and the emails that they get.  So, I don’t know, I just have a gut feeling that video may be – or audio, or both, may be more effective for that crowd, as opposed to the baby boomer market.  Do you have any thoughts on that?

Ben Settle:    Yeah, that wouldn’t surprise me one bit.  On the other hand, and this is no reflection on anybody in particular, I’m just sayin, personally, I wouldn’t – this is an old Gary Halbert teaching that I always remembered is go after players with money, and usually they tend to be readers, but that doesn’t mean who doesn’t like reading isn’t a player with money.

But I was just thinkin’, I don’t know if this means anything to anyone in any way, shape or form, but I’m just using myself as an example, I have probably the lowest attention span of anybody I know in my age – like Generation X.  Honestly, I just cannot, unless there’s like light sabers or hobbits or superheroes in a movie or TV show – [Laughter] – unless Jack Bauer’s got someone strung up to a lamp post and is electrocuting them to get information or someone lost on an island out in the middle of nowhere.  I’m just going down my favorite TV shows.

But anyway, my point is that I have a really low attention span, and they a short video is good for people with – I’ve heard this at least – is good for people with low attention spans.  I can’t even sit through a video.  I mean, this is why I say test everything ‘cause you never know what your market’s going to respond to.

Doberman Dan:    Yeah, that’s true.  Here’s one from Jim in Bellevue, Colorado, another good question.  These are all really good questions.  Yeah, man, I get this a lot, so I’m glad you’re going to answer this.  “How do you write a persuasive piece without all the hype that so many copywriters these days use?”

Ben Settle:    That is a good question ‘cause – I mean, it’s like if you get grounded in the basics, in the fundamentals of selling and writing an ad, hype has – it amazes me that people actually believe they’ve got to hype things up, and this is the problem with just studying any old sales letter out there just ‘cause it pulls a lot of sales in.  Again, some of these launches, for example, are so masterful done that nobody’s even reading the ads, but people will say, “Well, that launch brought in $10 million and, man, I’m going to copy that.  I’m going to get sales letter and I’m going to mimic it in my swipe file and I’m going to use it.  I’m stud copywriter now.”

Well, nothing can be further from the truth.  If they just threw the thing together.  Yeah, you have like these 30-word headlines that are just nothin’ but hype and adjectives.  It really doesn’t even matter what they say.  They could put an “Order here” button and they would buy.

My point is you don’t need all that hype if you have substance, if you do your research right, if you know exactly what that prospect that you’re writing to needs to hear at that particular time in his life, talking to his most urgent problem or desire.  You just tell them how you can solve that problem or get that whatever it is they want.  You don’t need all that hype.  You just have to show them – remember, if you’re going after people who already want something, remember the starving crowd, you don’t have to hype up how good your hamburger is; just tell ‘em you have a hamburger and here’s why you should buy mine instead of someone else’s, and do your research.  You don’t need all that hype.

One way to really tone things down, I think, if you’re worried this is right your sales letter in a blank email as if you were writing to your own mother and see how it reads.  Would you use five exclamation points to and the word “free” every five seconds?  Or would you talk like a rational human being to someone you care about showing them the answer to their most urgent problem?  It’s really that simple.  That’s a great way to do a gut check.

Of course, you may be writing to a market that your mom’s not in.  I mean, think of someone else maybe who fits the bill there.  The point is you don’t have to use all that hype; just talk to their problems.  The message-to-market match is everything.

Doberman Dan:    That’s a good technique, the blank email technique you were talking about: write like you were writing to your mother.

Ben Settle:    Or someone in the market.  Remember that ad I sent you guys, the one about the grappling, a few weeks ago?

Doberman Dan:    Yeah.

Ben Settle:    Okay, my mom’s not in that market, right?  But it’s easy to picture someone – I know who that market is and it’s not actually the martial arts crowd in this guys case.  It’s a different segment of the market.  I mean, I know people who are in that market and it’s very easy for me just to kind of write that like I’m writing to them.  I’m just telling an interesting story and it just leads into the product, which leads into the benefits, which leads into the sale.  There’s no hype in that.  I mean, I don’t remember any hype in it.

So I’d just say it doesn’t have to be your mom – I just use that as an example – just someone in the market that you love or care about.

Doberman Dan:    Yeah, good example.  I’m looking at Kyle Tully’s message again.  Is he from Sydney, Australia, or is there another Sydney I don’t know about?

Ben Settle:    I’m not sure.  I know he’s in Australia, but I’m not sure what city.

Doberman Dan:    Oh, then it’s got to be Sydney, Australia.  You think he really has 749 guys in the room with him?  [Laughter]

Ben Settle:    Hey, you never know.  He’s got a big-time consulting course out there, which it sounds like it’s doing really good.  Knowing what I know about him, I’ve seen what he says in forums and stuff, he’s one of the extremely knowledgeable guys, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s one of the better ones out there.

Doberman Dan:    Cool.  Well, it’s good to have him on the call.  Shawn in Toledo, this is another excellent question.  He asks, “Ben, how did you know when you really ready to take on your first client?  Did you have some type of success with one of your own ads that led you to believe you were ready?”

Ben Settle:    I didn’t think I was ready.  [Laughter]  I’ll tell you what kind of happened.  I was still sort of flirting in the MLM industry at the time, and what I did was I wrote some sales letters.  I bought some leads and I got their snail mail addresses and I wrote – I did one of those Dan Kennedy three sequence-type things, and those were my first ones.  I think I did get a couple people who called me back.  I don’t remember what happened after that, but I knew at that point at least there was something worth – I had something to offer.

So what I did was there was this email list I was part of called the _____ ____ Roundtable, and I have no idea if it’s still around or not.  But it was basically like a little group you could join on the Internet and everybody could kind of send an offer to the whole group.  I mean, it’s kind of like a Yahoo group-type thing and it welcomed you sending offers as long as it wasn’t – they probably wouldn’t do it anymore like this, but back then, early 2000s, the hype factor wasn’t quite like it is today.

I did an offer.  I just wanted to get something going.  I just wanted to get a client just so I could get some real-world experience and I offered to write ads in that joint venture fashion, but only for like five percent.  I mean, I was just stupid at the time.  I didn’t really know what I was doing.  I wrote three or four ads out of that.  Didn’t make much money out of any of those, but I knew at that point that I was at least worth getting paid to do it, let’s put it that way, after I had those ads in my portfolio and stuff.  You’ve just got to get out there.

One thing you can do is just find something to sell on eBay and write an ad for it, and if it’s something people want, you’re going to make sales and you’ll that, really, writing has almost nothing to do with it.  I mean, at its highest level, really, writing is just that kind of greased thing that kind of greases the slide there so people can get to order form, but it’s mostly sales and psychology.

Doberman Dan:    Good tip.  I just noticed we got somebody else with us from the UK who’s up extremely late.  John Canning from the UK says, “Ben, loved your book, Copywriter’s Crib Sheet.  I need to know what you think about headlines.”  Let me see.  Sorry, I may not have read that right.  “I need to know what you think about  Headlines, the book name; one line only or a longer subtitle as well?”  _______ talking about – I don’t know if he’s talking about headlines for just books or just headlines in general.  I think he’s just talking about headlines in general.

Ben Settle:    Well, this is the thing.  I’m not a big fan of rules.  You test everything.  If it’s something you’re concerned about, I’m assuming that you can test.  I mean, there are some cases where people just have one shot and they don’t intend to test, or maybe they don’t have the traffic where it’s even worth the time you have to test, which people will probably get on me for saying that.  If you only have five visitors coming to your site, what are you testing?

The point is if you can test it, you’ll found out.  I mean, test the long one, test the short one, test the subheadline under it.  Hey, this is going to sound really crazy: test without a headline and just see what happens.  I mean, what does it hurt?  I mean, wasn’t Gary Halbert’s big coat-of-arms letter, that had no headline on it, and yet, that was like the most mailed letter in history.  Of course, that was a different media.  That was direct mail.  But still, test everything just for the fun of it.

I mean, you’ll find that a lot rules are made to be broken so, in my opinion, there’s no one size fits all.  Some people have one-word headlines.  Some people like to do these Reader’s Digest headlines, like three or four words, and they all work.  But, really, if you get the message-to-market match down, and you’re saying exactly what that person needs to hear at that exact time in his life about a very specific problem that’s bothering him and keeping him up at night, just say it.  I wouldn’t worry about length too much.

Doberman Dan:    What is Copywriter’s Crib Sheet?  Is that a book of yours?

Ben Settle:    Well, on one of my websites, or the Copywriting Grab Bag book that I sell there’s a pop-up that comes up where you can opt-in to get a free ebook, and I called it the Copywriter’s Crib Sheet.  It’s basically some articles I’ve written a long time ago, some of which are floating around the Internet, some of which aren’t, but they’re all complied together.  I just came up with the word “crib sheet” ‘cause everybody’s using the word “cheat sheet” these days and I didn’t want to sound like everybody else.

Yeah, in fact, that’s the ebook that has landed me a couple of my best clients.

Doberman Dan:    Okay, ‘cause I got your book, but that’s the first time I ever heard about this one.

Ben Settle:    Yeah, that’s a free one, though, an opt-in one.

Doberman Dan:    Here’s a question, a couple questions from Frank in Newfoundland, Canada, “Is the copy Ben wrote for Ken McCarthy’s copywriting course available to review?  Is it up on Ben’s site as a sample, or is the current promo at Ken’s site Ben’s copy?”

Ben Settle:    As far as I know, it’s still up.  I mean, you could find it through KenMcCarthy.com.  You could also go to SecretCopywritingTactics.com, which is my affiliate link for it, not that you have to go there or anything.  But it should still be up, as far as I know.  If it’s not, then I’m not sure where you’d find it.

Doberman Dan:    Yeah, everybody should go to that site.  What was it?  Secret Copywriting?

Ben Settle:    Oh, SecretCopywritingTactics.com.  I will say, it doesn’t look like a sales letter that a – I hope it doesn’t look like something a copywriter wrote.  I mean, the headline is about as far from hypey as you can get, but it’s written to people who know a little bit about copywriting but struggling with it, they don’t know where to turn and yada, yada, yada.  It’s not really actually written to someone who’s never heard about copywriting before.

Doberman Dan:    Yeah, everybody should check out that site ‘cause that’s just a great example of great copy, of how to write copy.  Like I said earlier, it doesn’t draw attention to itself.  It does what it’s supposed to do.  It gets you reading about the product and excited about the product.

Frank in Canada has another question, but I’m not gonna ask it ‘cause, I’m sorry, you’re limited to just one question.  Nah, I’m just kidding.  [Laughter]  “Ben mentioned Eugene Schwartz, Bencivenga, Halbert, Carlton, etc.  What’s Ben’s opinion on Clayton Makepeace?”

Ben Settle:    I haven’t read a lot of his stuff.  I mean, obviously, I know who Clayton Makepeace is, and I have tremendous respect for him, but there’s just only – not every teacher resonates with everyone.  He’s just not necessarily my cup of tea as far as teaching style, which makes some people probably throw their hands up and shriek at me or something.  But again, everyone has different teaching styles that they resonant with.

I’ve read a lot of his stuff, don’t get me wrong.  I think his – I’ll tell what, he wrote an article about how to get inside the mind of your prospect.  I think he wrote it back in 2006 or something.  That one issue is just solid gold.  I mean, I just couldn’t believe how much value I got out of that one issue.  I’m a big fan of his.  I’m certainly not a groupie or anything.

I do drink the kool aid of some people, like Bencivenga or Gary Halbert and that sort of thing, but I can’t say I know a lot about Mr. Makepeace.

Doberman Dan:    Yeah, his website is at MakepeaceTotalPackage.com, and he just gives away a ton of content so you should definitely check him out.

Ben Settle:    That might be why I haven’t done it.  Maybe it’s because he gives away free and I just need to pay for content, – [Laughter] – which is kind of weird.  Most people want it free.  I want to pay for it.

Doberman Dan:    Well, here’s the deal, there’s a lot of great information on Clayton’s site but you know what?  Don’t go there.  I’m gonna charge you $1,000.00, so send me a check for $1,000.00.  As soon as I get your check, then you can go on and look at his info.

Well, Frank asks a third question here.  I’m sorry, I’m cutting you off, Frank.  Nah, I’m only kidding.  He says, “I purchased Ben’s Copywriting Grab Bag.  Is it the same product as the Copywriter’s Crib Sheet?”  Well, we kind of already answered that, right?

Ben Settle:    Yeah, I get this question a lot, though, and maybe I should probably answer it just publicly.  A lot of times people will buy the Copywriting Grab Bag, either they bought it before I put the Crib Sheet up there in a pop-up, or they just bought it first time they visited that sales letter.  So if they go to the main CopywritingGrabBag.com, there’s a pop-up box so even if you bought the book, you can just opt-in and then get the book and opt-out if you want.  That’s how you can get it for free.

Doberman Dan:    Okay.  All right, good, thanks.  Most everybody seems to be on the webcast page, but we do have a few people with us on the phone.  If anybody’s actually listening in on the phone wants to ask Ben a question, you can press *2, and the will raise your hand on my little website I’m looking at, if the technology works like it’s supposed to.  So if you want to ask Ben a question right now, punch in – that is if you’re on the phone listening to this teleconference – punch in asterisk and the number two and that’ll raise your hand.  Then, again, if the technology works, I supposedly can unmute you and we can take your question live.

In the meantime, I got a couple more if you can hang out with us a few more minutes.

Ben Settle:    Yeah, I’ve got the next hour blocked off, so whatever we’ve got to do to get to everyone’s questions.

Doberman Dan:    Here’s one that came up a lot, I get asked a lot and I believe it came up during a previous teleseminar: How do you come up with big idea when you’re writing copy?  How do you come up with that hook or big idea?  Do you have techniques for that?”

Ben Settle:    Yeah, I do, actually, ‘cause I remember you had this in your little bullet points so I was expecting this one.

Remember that ad we were just talking about, the one about the grappling product?

Doberman Dan:    Yes.

Ben Settle:    Okay, grappling, the market that he’s selling to is not martial arts fanatics who would even know what grappling is.  So how do you make something like grappling sexy to someone who doesn’t want to have to practice, they don’t want to have to learn anything, they just want to kind of kick someone’s butt; push a button, basically?  Well, that was a charge.  How do you do that?

Well, all I did was a lot of research.  The big idea was very obvious to me when I learned that people use to use grappling back in ancient Rome to wrestle lions and stuff.  There was my hook.  I just did a lot of research.  I found out some things about the topic and I put it in the ad, into a story form and that was the big idea.  By the time we got to the product, whether it was grappling or karate or whatever, it really didn’t matter.  They just knew they wanted to be able to fight people like gladiators and samurai and that sort of thing.

That’s your big idea.  Just find some interesting little tidbit that you know the market will be turned on by and, boom, you’ve got it.  You’ve got your idea.  You can center your whole ad around that and then the benefits and all that follow after you tell your story.  Really, the big idea, it’s just digging it up; dig, dig, dig.

Doberman Dan:    Good stuff.  Hey, Dean in London has another question.  He says – one other thing, I’ll just say this real briefly.  I really like the people from the UK.  It seems like every now and then, my customer service people will forward certain emails to me that I need to handle, and every single time, almost without exception, I get an email from somebody from the UK.  They’re just so polite and nice and well-spoken, as opposed to some of the other emails I get from people who are like, “I-E-oh-ah-ah-bing-bang-walla-walla-bing-bang,” or like, “Hey, gimme a training program now!”

Ben Settle:    Yeah, they are.  They’re very polite, and same with Australia.  I’ve never met anyone from Australia I didn’t like.

Doberman Dan:    That’s right.  I get these emails from people in the US like, “Hey, give me a training program ‘cause I need one!”

Ben Settle:    “I want it free!”

Doberman Dan:    Yeah.  [Laughter]  The people from the UK and Australia are so nice and polite and so well-spoken.  I probably shouldn’t have said that.  Now people in the US are going to be offended.

Anyway, Dean says, “Hey guys, still here and enjoying the information.  It’s 2:15 a.m. right now and I’m glad I stayed up.  I actually have a history based on sales, and I’ve been very interested in Ben’s points about sales and psychology being key.  Many salespeople I know have relied on being order takers for a long while and are suffering right now.  My personally style is to play to the very basic needs of the individual.  In business, it generally comes down to profit; and in the consumer market, it is generally security and relationships.  Would Ben agree that you need to break even the most complex sales down to very basic needs like this?”

Ben Settle:    Yeah, and in fact, I have a perfect story to illustrate exactly what Dean is saying.  There’s this guy.  His name is Jim Camp, and he’s the negotiation master of the world.  He’s the man when it comes to negotiation.  Michael Senoff interviewed him, I think it was last year.  These days I just don’t have a lot of time to listen to newer stuff.  I like to just kind of read, like explained, I like to kind of go over stuff I’ve already heard.  But this interview Michael did with Jim Camp was just phenomenally good.  I mean, that was one of the 10 time things I listened to.

He told this story about, and this changed a lot of the way I thought about sales by the way, he told the story about when he was just starting out selling water filters door to door.  I guess he was kind of a younger guy, maybe even a teenager at the time.  He’d read all the books and all the tricks and all the tactics and all that stuff.  He was ready to go out there with whatever the books were telling him to do and all that, and all the fake enthusiasm and all that stuff, fast talking.

Three weeks he said.  He did everything the company told him to do.  Three weeks he was in a neighborhood which actually had problems with their local water supply so they would be good prospects, and yet in three weeks, not one sale.  He said he finally just said the heck with this.  He threw the stupid script out, knocked on the door and said, “Just tell you don’t want soft hair and I’ll leave you alone.”  He said people started opening doors.  He got it down to that one basic need that his thing could solve that was in that neighborhood.  People had that problem.  They could relate to that.  “Yeah, my hair’s all greasy,” or whatever.  And that is breaking it down to its most basic benefit and need, and I think Dean is absolutely right about that.

Doberman Dan:    That’s a great story.  “Hey, just tell me you don’t want soft hair and I’m gone.”

Ben Settle:    Yeah, you can do that even cold calling, whatever.  I mean, let’s say you’re calling marketers up who you think are looking for copywriters cause they’re using sales letters.  “Hey, my name is so-and-so.  I know that you’re using sales letters now, and I just want to let you know I can write some sales letters.  I you don’t need that, well, that’s fine.”  You don’t take it personally, right?

But you’ve just told them what you do and you’ve given them that chance to tell you, yes, they want it or, no, they don’t.  If they don’t, you haven’t wasted any more time on it.  Just tell ___ _____ ___.  I wouldn’t say, “Just tell me you need a good sales letter and I’ll leave you alone,” but you know what I mean.  Basically, you want to use that same approach of that you know they want somethin’, here’s how you can get it and if the don’t, next, move on to the next thing.  It’s really that simple.

Doberman Dan:    That is true.  That’s breaking it down to its most simple component there.  That’s true.

You’ve developed this – I guess you’re just launching it, or you can fill me in.  But you’ve developed the Crackerjack Selling System, which is not specifically about copywriting.  It’s basically about selling in general and persuasion really, too.  So I’d like to know how do you sharpen your persuasion – well, first of all, tell me more about the Crackerjack Selling System and where you’re at with it right now, and then tell me how do you sharpen your persuasion skills.

Ben Settle:    Well, the Crackerjack Selling Secrets is a book that I’ve written.  I wanted to do something like this for a long time.  It’s almost like a 101 – I mean, it is 101 ways to sell ethically, legally, morally; no black hat stuff, no pressure, no hype, no rejection-type stuff.  I mean, it’s like 101 ways that anybody can use to sell whatever they have to sell.  The thing about it is, though, it’s a book that I’m giving away to people who join CD of the month thing I’m developing right now where I’m going to interview top sales people, and by that I mean they could be social media experts, they could be email experts, copywriting experts, negotiating experts.  I mean, they’re just experts in selling and persuasion in some form.

Jim Yagi, who is in our Mastermind group, he’s agreed to do it.  He’s going to talk about paper click selling.  So all these different ways to sell that everybody is either exposed to or maybe want to know more about.  So every month I’ll be talking to a different expert, basically, on that.

The book, yeah, it’s selling tips, but you can pretty much apply most of them to any kind of selling you’re doing.  I mean, this is stuff – it’s almost like I wrote this just because I wanted to have the stuff that I use almost in like a list form, and then I decided to turn it into book and flushed it out.  That’s what that is and that’s a couple months off.  I’m just really behind on it, but that’ll be launched probably in another couple months or so.

Doberman Dan:    Yeah, I know.  I’m still waiting on my copy.  [Laughter]

Ben Settle:    Well, it’s coming.  You know what’s funny?  I swear I’m not doing this stuff on purpose, and I’ve been accused of doing this on purpose.  It took almost a year to launch the Copywriting Grab Bag book.  People are waiting sitting on my notification list, like, “When’s this book coming out and are you just jerking me around?  It’s like eight months later.”  I’m like, “No, I just,” – it’s kind of like it’s my passion __ ____.  My real income comes from doing what I’m teaching.  But I’m not dragging it out on purpose; it’s just taking me awhile.  I want to do it right, and I’d rather do it right and make everyone happy than do it half-assed and make everyone mad.  That’s the explanation for that.

Doberman Dan:    Okay.  Well, we’ll wait for it.  We’ll give you the time you need, but I do want my copy so don’t forget about me.

So in the research that you’ve been doing for this project, what tips have you got about how to sharpen your persuasion skills?

Ben Settle:    You know what?  Just to kind of make up for taking my sweet old time on this and making everybody angry at me for not getting it out, I’m going to give away Crackerjack Selling Secret Number 2 in the book.  So this is in the book.  It’s number – I believe I have it as Number 2.  That I think it’s the second most important thing.  It could even be the most important thing, but either way.

I’m going to tell you a story that this guy told me, and I think it’ll make the whole idea of persuasion sales, again, down to its most basic, fundamental level.  And that is, there’s this guy, Doug Dianna, he’s a top, top, top magalog copywriter.  He’s one of the few copywriters I believe Gary Bencivenga recommends people go to, like clients and stuff.  I mean, he’s just up there in the upper reaches of the whole A-list copywriting world.  He agreed to let me interview him for my Copywriting Grab Bag book a couple years ago.

At the time, I had just gotten a dog and like most new dogs, and even now, two years later, she still doesn’t listen to me very well, but at the time, she didn’t listen to me at all.  I guess I had mentioned that to him or something, and he goes, we were talking about what’s the key to selling and he goes, “Ben, do you have a dog?”  I said, “I have dog.  Yeah, I just got it.”  He goes, “Okay, does your dog listen to you?”  I said, “No, she doesn’t listen to me at all.”  He goes, “Well, I’m a stranger.  Your dog has never seen me before, never caught my scent before, has no idea who I am and yet I bet you I could walk into your house and I could get your dog to run up into my lap and jump in my lap no matter what.”  I said, “Well, how would you do that?”  He goes, “I’d simply walk in and hold up her favorite dog cookie and she’d come runnin’ to me.”  And you know what?  I don’t think there’s a dog owner in the world who couldn’t relate to that story, even your Doberman, I would guess would probably do something like that.

That’s what it’s all about.  It’s not about tricks and tactics, as Jim Camp taught in that story I related to you.  It’s just about finding out what people want and then here’s how you get it.  Here’s what they want.  How can what I sell give them what they want?  It’s really no more complicated than that.

So I guess the answer to the question is not so much concentrate on a lot of tactics but use more strategies to find out what people already want, become an expert at digging up what people really want and then selling becomes much, much easier.

Doberman Dan:    That’s a great analogy with the dog.  Yeah, that makes perfect sense.  I gotta ask you this because I just couldn’t let you get by without answering this question.  [Laughter]  I’m real curious about your answer, too.  What are the selling secrets you learned from Bigfoot?  First of all, tell everybody about your Bigfoot trip, and then tell us what, if any, selling secrets you learned from it.

Ben Settle:    Well, I’ve learned two things from Bigfoot.  Bigfoot could be one of my, if he had a book, I’d probably read it 10 times _______.  Basically, the first thing I can is if you think about it – you know what?  I tell the story of the trip and then the last ones will become very clear.

My wife and I took a two-week road trip recently, and on our back we stopped in a town called Willow Creek, California, which is not too far from where live and it’s not too far from where that original Bigfoot sighting was where you see that video, they call it the Patterson-Gimlin video.  Everyone’s probably seen this video at some point or another where it kind of looks at the camera and keeps walking.  Well, that’s where it was at.  I mean, we’re just a hop, skip and a jump from there.

So this town, though, apparently is just all Bigfoot.  I mean, the whole town just loves Bigfoot.  I mean, everywhere you go in this town, there’s the Bigfoot motel, there’s a Bigfoot burger, there’s Bigfoot books, there’s Bigfoot statues everywhere, there’s a Bigfoot museum, there’s even a Bigfoot golf course there; everything is Bigfoot in this town.

We went to this museum and we were just going to stop in and see what they got, maybe look at the displays and all that and we walked out with like $300.00 worth of merchandise: sweatshirts and I got a shot glass, which I use to measure fish oil in now and gave it a practical use ‘cause I take liquid fish oil.  Everything’s Bigfoot so we came out with all this Bigfoot stuff that we had never intended to buy, and that’s when you realize Bigfoot’s like big money.  I mean, people will crowd to this town just to buy Bigfoot stuff.  The reason why is because Bigfoot has this tremendously powerful personal brand.  I mean, everyone knows who Bigfoot is, for the most part.  Maybe you’re in a different part of the country, you probably have your own version of Bigfoot and it’s probably just as recognizable with a name.

So my thought was, “Man, if you can become sort of the Bigfoot of your niche, the Bigfoot of your market, like a Dan Kennedy, everyone knows who he is, or Bill Gates in the computer industry.  Everyone knows Bill Gates.  He’s like the Bigfoot of computers.  Warren Buffett in investing.  If you can become that Bigfoot in whatever it is you do, you will sell even without trying.  I mean, people will come to you to buy things just because you’re the main guy, you’re like the top brand, the top person.  So that’s the first thing I learned from our hairy little friend out there.

The second thing is when you go to a town like Willow Creek, California, and there are other towns like that in the United States, but they’re just right next to where the Bigfoot sighting was, you realize these people have a real passion for Bigfoot.  They really do.  This is probably why we walked out with all this stuff.  I mean, they eat, sleep, drink, poop Bigfoot; everything is Bigfoot and that enthusiasm is just contagious.  I mean, you just kind of want to be a part of it.

I’ve noticed that with our bookkeepers.  We recently got a new bookkeeper.  Actually, we’ve had him for a while, but we’re dealing with him more and more.  He’s just really into bookkeeping, he’s just really into payroll and taxes and figuring out things.  He’s so into it you can’t help but get into it, too.  So that was the second thing.  That enthusiasm, if it’s real, is really contagious no matter what you’re selling.  You sell muscle supplement stuff, I bet you could probably talk for hours about it and give really fascinating information about it.  Right now we’re talking about copywriting and there’s people, it’s 3:00 a.m. in the UK, and they’re listening to this.  They’re just into it ‘cause we’re all just kind of into this.

If you’re just really that into it at that level, you’re going to attract business and sales automatically.

Doberman Dan:    So be the Bigfoot.  Whatever your niche is, be the Bigfoot.

Ben Settle:    Yeah, and make sure someone captures the video of you and don’t show your face ever again.  [Laughter]

Doberman Dan:    Did you get to actually meet Bigfoot while you there?  Shook his hand, get an autograph?

Ben Settle:    Well, I did get a picture in front of his statue, but I didn’t get to meet the real Bigfoot.  Not yet, maybe some day.  I don’t live too far from where that is.  I mean, there’s Bigfoot sightings everywhere these days in this part of the world.

Doberman Dan:    All right, I’ve got to ask you this, and then I’m going to let all these night owls in the UK, and everybody else, go to bed.  But we gotta talk about this ‘cause one of my bullet points was: the best way to make money as a copywriter when you’re between clients or maybe can’t find any.

So you’re what I would consider a fellow kitchen table entrepreneur like myself.  You have started your own projects.  Was that to basically go along with that multiple stream of income thing?  Or was that one day out of necessity when you didn’t have any clients you’re thinking, “Holy crap, the mortgage is going to be due in two weeks.  I better get some money comin’ in?”

First of all, how did that come about, you startin’ your own Internet marketing projects or direct marketing projects, how did that come about?  Then would you recommend that for other copywriters?

Ben Settle:    Yeah, and I’ll say this, there’s another lesson from the old multilevel marketing industry, something I did not know about when I was in it, which would have probably made it a lot more profitable, but you can definitely take this in any industry.

I’ve written some ads for someone, kind of the top marketing guy in that industry and he would teach something called funded proposals.  That is where, okay, you’re out there selling your MLM or whatever but you’re also selling them an info product that kind of pays the bills until they join your group or even if they do join your group.  It’s just like an extra way of financing what you’re doing.  I don’t see any reason why copywriters can’t do the same thing.

I mean, like we were saying, if you’re writing every day, basically you’ll have a book within 20 or 30 days.  Now, that book, you can sell it.  This is kind of how I did it.  I had written all these newsletters before and I just compiled them into a book and that makes up about a third of the Copywriting Grab Bag.  I mean, the other two-thirds is interviews, you’re in it, for example, and Ken McCarthy and Doug Dianna and stuff.  But, really, while you’re putting that content out, while you’re writing to build your blog or your website, some of that stuff you can take off your website and make it exclusive, put it in a book.  And not only do you have a book that you can sell people, to your audience, it also gives you a lot of positioning in your market ‘cause you’re not just some guy or gal out there talking about copywriting.  You’ve got a real book.  There’s all kinds of publishing companies that you can use to do it real cheap instead of just using an ebook.

I’m a big, big believer in whatever you’re doing write a book about it, too, and you can sell it.  Of course, if you’re selling money at a discount, you can charge more for it, then, otherwise, even better in copywriting.

Doberman Dan:    Explain that, please, selling money at a discount.

Ben Settle:    Well, you’re selling someone information on how to make money.  So basically if what you’re selling is the real deal, they should make back way more than what they spent on your book or whatever product you have.  It’s like selling money at a discount so to speak.  You’re not just selling – I mean, selling how to make money is the easiest thing in the world to sell because it pays for itself.  It’s not like selling a book on – for example, I wrote a book about dogs once and that’s not selling money at a discount at all, except for I had a chapter in there on how to save money on vet bills.  But, basically, it’s a harder sell then here’s how you make money on the Internet.  It’s a no-brainer to pay $30.00 for something like that if you think you can make $100.00 or $200.00 a month after that.

Doberman Dan:    Exactly.  It sounds like you think that the info business is just a natural progression for a copywriter.  That you should write a book or write a course, or if you’re writing anyway, you could be in the process of developing an info product.

Ben Settle:    Well, what is the most powerful selling tool someone can have, or one of them at least, is demonstration and what better demonstration that you know what you’re doing.  Look, let’s face it.  We can say this.  It’s an absolute truth, and if somebody doesn’t like this, is just living in a dream world and probably drinking their own kool-aid I guess.  Copywriters, as a whole, are very flaky.  I mean, it is amazing to me just how flaky they are and how unreliable they are.

I mean, believe me, I told you there’s all these clients out there looking for copywriters, not even necessarily someone who’s the best copywriter in the world, but just someone who will turn something in on time that they’re not embarrassed to send to their list.

And while you write a book or info product, you’re demonstrating that (a) you can actually put information together in an organized way and you’re kind of business men or business woman, too.  It just demonstrates that you’re a lot more trustworthy and you get to kind of show off what you know in the book without bragging or hyping yourself up.

Doberman Dan:    So not only an extra stream of income, but really establishing your credibility also.

Ben Settle:    There’s something that I’ve been – I kept trying to remember what this was during the call.  I meant to write it down, and I just remembered it.  We were talking about ways to get clients and all that, and this is kind of off the subject a little bit, but I think people listening to this will really benefit from it.  Is that whole idea of social proof?

I mean, when I worked, when I wrote an ad for Ken McCarthy, many doors opened for me at that point.  When I wrote an ad for this guy in the network marketing industry, Mike Dillard, a lot of doors opened for me just automatically just because his name, I was attached to something he was doing.  There’s this other guy that I write ads for; his name is Captain Chris Pizzo.  He’s in the self defense industry.  I mean, that opened doors.  I mean, it’s not ever necessarily getting a lot of clients.  You want to get the right clients, people who have a very good reputation in their market, in the industry.

Believe me, there are people when they have their giant mastermind groups and all that, from what I understand, maybe it’s not the case with all of them, but a lot of these guys are looking for people who can write ads and aren’t going to skimp out or hand in something, some piece of crap that may or may not work.  They’re looking for someone they can trust and believe in.  So kind of like when you go shopping for a car, right?

You know who told me this was Doug Dianna.  I’m drawing about who told me this.  He goes, “I’m going to shopping for a car tomorrow.”  This was when I interviewed him.  He goes, “I’m not shopping for a car.  I’m first shopping for a salesman, someone who can kind of guide me through all this and who I can trust.”  He said, and I would totally agree with this, “It’s the same in copywriting.”  People want someone that they can trust.

I just got an email last week from this guy who was interested in hiring me and he was asking, he goes, “I’m not even actually looking for the best copywriter in the world.  I just want someone I can work with, someone who I can kind of trust and do business I with.”  I don’t think people understand just how untrusted copywriters are right now.  We’re just a dime a dozen right now and there’s a lot of shady people out there.  And it’s not just copywriters, it’s everyone in our market.

I don’t know if you remember Ken McCarthy’s copywriting course, that part where he talked about just some of the shenanigans that he knows of out there.  It’s really, really bad.  I mean, copywriters can get screwed over too, but I’m just saying people are looking for someone that they can trust and be that person.

Doberman Dan:    Right, that’s exactly right.  I lied.  I was said I was only going to ask one more thing.  [Laughter]  I thought of one more really important thing that I had on the list and I just don’t want to end the call until we talk about this.

As a little side note, I’ve been keepin’ up on a few of the gurus who have launches comin’ up, and these guys always show their gross numbers, like, “I made $40 bazillion last month, and here’s the growth,” and blah, blah, blah; and really, that doesn’t tell you anything.  Gross can be incredibly misleading.  Okay, let’s say you did make $40 million last month.  You had $60 million in expenses or whatever.  It’s somewhat misleading.  It looks impressive to the newbies.

And I’m all for making as much money as you want to make, and I certainly could make more money, and I know you could make more money, but I’m more about freedom and lifestyle.  And I know ‘cause we’ve talked about this on the phone, if you could help build the dream a little bit for the newbie copywriters or the people who want to get into direct response and want to be a copywriter, build the dream a little bit about your lifestyle and what a typically day involves.  I know you’re not slaving all the time.  There may be some instances where you’re slavin’ away for 16 hours on a deadline.  But as a general rule, you got a really nice lifestyle, so build the dream for us, Ben.

Ben Settle:    Okay, before I do that, I wanted to say something about what you were saying about when the people hype up the numbers and the publicly count their money and all that.  I’m not going to say who told me this, all right, so take this with a grain of salt, but it’s someone who’s pretty well-connected in the marketing world.  He goes, this was recently he told me, he goes, “There’s one thing I’ve learned about a lot of these guys, they’re all full of shit.”  [Laughter]  ‘Cause he deals with ‘em, he deals with a lot of them.  He goes, “They may be saying their making umpteen million, but you look at – they’re really only netting a couple hundred grand in a lot of cases.”

I would say, first of all, don’t be intimidated by people like that.  In fact, anyone who’s publicly counting their money – I mean, I’m personally just kind of like – I mean, I wouldn’t say never trust them.  I’m just saying just realize that if someone has to say it, they’re probably not real confident.  It’s kind of like Fonzi.  He doesn’t have to tell people he’s tough.  People just know it because he’s cool.  Well, it’s the same in marketing.

To answer you question I like to think so.  I mean, I don’t really get up with an alarm clock.  I used to just because I wanted to keep that discipline, but our dog acts as a pretty good alarm clock these days so I don’t have to worry about that.  But yeah, it’s very laidback.  I’m not really a slave to anyone’s agenda.  Some days, if I’ve been working really hard, we’ll literally just say, “Screw it, I’m not working today.  Let’s go to a movie.”  You’re in control of your time.  You can go take wacky two week road trips whenever you want and go visit Willow Creek, California if you want, or whatever.  It really doesn’t matter.  You can go anywhere you want in the world, for the most part.  It’s not like some business crashed while you were gone or someone’s playing office politics trying to sabotage you at your job or anything like that.
You’re in control of your life in a lot of ways.

Now, I will say this, freelance copywriting is basically just a more glorified job, though.  You’re still beholden to things that you say you’re going to do, so that’s why, ultimately, you also want to have your own stuff going, too, so that one day you can walk away from the freelancing or maybe it’s just optional at that point.

But yeah, I don’t think I work more than three or four hours a day total.  I just can’t.  My brain just fries after a while.  I go to bed whenever I want and I can go exercise whenever I want.  A lot of times, you can go a week without really; you can just kind of relax for a couple weeks at a time between projects with no pressure.  When you get really good at, you get really fast at it and you actually save even more time.  It’s almost like what used to take you six weeks, only takes you two or three weeks.  I’m just now starting to get to that point myself where I’m actually much faster at this.

And even better than that, is eventually you’re going to start attracting more serious players into your life.  By that I mean, there will be certain business owners looking for copywriters to partner with because, believe me, copywriters screw people over all the time, as I was saying, even big name guys.  When one of these bigger companies, if it’s like a client of yours or something and you just get along with everyone, there’s a good chance you’re going to be offered a chance to be a part of that and you may only have to do that from now on.  I’m trying to transition into to that slowly but surely.  I’m partnering with a client right now, but I’m still doing freelance stuff, but eventually I won’t have to do that at all or even my own stuff.  I mean, if I do do it, it’s just because I want to.

That’s really what it comes down to.  It’s not about lounging around and not doing anything.  That’s not living.  Living is playing the game of life on your own terms.  And if you like doing business, and I’m guessing everyone listening to this call is into this, it’s fun.  It’s really fun when you don’t have that pressure of freelancing on you all the time.  It’s fun even when you’re a freelancer, don’t get me wrong.  A bad day as a freelancer is still 10-times better than a good day on regular job.

People who work regular jobs, they’ll say, “I have a really good job.  I’ve got a really good boss.”  That may be true, but they don’t really know what real freedom is.  They don’t really understand what it’s like to be able to just live life on your own terms without having to ask someone’s permission to go to the bathroom, without having to ask for anything.  I mean, you can give yourself a raise whenever you want, just raise your fees, as long as you’re delivering value.  If you’re making your clients money, believe me, they’re going to keep hiring you.  That’s the name of the game.  To me, it’s the ultimate in freedom.  All you need is a computer, or if you write by long hand, which I’ve never been able to do except when copying ads out, you only need a notebook.

Doberman Dan:    That’s right.  Freedom with a pen and notebook, or freedom with your computer.  Yeah, that was an important thing that I wanted to ask you ‘cause I know that’s one of the big perks of being a copywriter and being in this crazy direct marketing business.

Ben Settle:    It is crazy.

Doberman Dan:    Ben, I really appreciate it.  This was a really good call, getting a lot of feedback here on the Q&A thing, people submitting questions and getting a lot of feedback that people liked it.  Thanks a lot.  Thanks for staying later than we planned.

Ben Settle:    It’s fine.  I had a good time.  It was fun.

Doberman Dan:    Anything else you want to say before we close the call or just tell people your websites again, please.

Ben Settle:    Yeah, if you want, I have a daily email tip, or at least five days a week.  I don’t really just send junk.  There’s always a plan.  I may send you a sales pitch, but there’s usually a point to it.  That’s at BenSettle.com.

My other two websites are CopywritingGrabBag.com, which is where you can grab that Copywriter’s Crib Sheet for free; just wait for the pop-up to show up.  And CrackerjackSelling.com is the notification list for my CD of the month deal that I’m building right now.  I’ve given a couple updates on that.  It’s going a little slower, but if you want to be the first to know what’s going on, just jump on that list, too.

Doberman Dan:    All right, thanks, Ben.  Thanks again for the call.  It was really good, and, like I said, getting a lot of positive feedback about that.  Thanks for your time.

Ben Settle:    All right, thank you.

Doberman Dan:    Okay, good.  Well, we’ll talk with you soon.  Take care.

Ben Settle:    Okay, bye.

Doberman Dan:    Bye-bye.

[End of Audio]

The other day I interviewed the young up and coming copywriter/kitchen table entrepreneur, Caleb Osborne.

He shared a ton of hot money-making tips that any business owner or copywriter can use to make a big stack of "Benjamins".

You can listen to it or download the MP3 here.

But I REALLY want to make sure you extract every possible money-making nugget out of that interview, so I'm also including the transcript of that call below.

Enjoy!

All the best,

Caleb Osborne Teleseminar Transcription

Doberman Dan:    Welcome to another edition of the Doberman Dan Show.  That’s for lack of a better name.  That’s what I’m calling it.  Tonight we got a really special guest.  I’ve got Caleb Osborne with me, an up and coming copywriter and direct marketer.

I met Caleb – let me see – when did we meet?  We met at Gary Halvert’s Root Canal seminar, right?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah.

Doberman Dan:    Was the 2005?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; December of 2005.

Doberman Dan:    You were how old then at that seminar?

Caleb Osborne:    Let me think.  I think I was 19 at that one.  Yeah; I think that’s right.

Doberman Dan:    Nineteen years old and now just within the past few years has become a very in-demand copywriter.  One of the few copywriters that I would personally hire and not only am I just runnin’ my mouth about that, but I have hired him on numerous occasions.  So that is true.

Caleb Osborne – he’s one of the few Doberman Dan approved copywriters and I put my money where my mouth is.  So that’s my brief introduction.

Before I get started Caleb, I gotta tell ya’ somethin’.  I just wanna warn ya’ this may be an incredibly interesting interview for view because if you hear like I’m not responding or you hear me snoring, I have been having an allergy attack all day.

Then the lawn care guy showed up just a couple hours ago and that just made it ten times worse.  So I took two Benadryl and I haven’t eaten dinner yet.

So if you’re talkin’ and you finish a thought and you hear no response from me or snoring, the Benadryl has put me out and you’re just gonna have to carry this whole call for the next 55 minutes or so.

Caleb Osborne:    Alright; fair warning.

Doberman Dan:    So anyway, that’s a brief introduction and I’d like you to tell everybody a little bit about your background and the stuff like that.  Like have you actually ever had a real job or did you just get started in direct response young and then you’ve never really had to work for a living like the rest of us?

Caleb Osborne:    That’s a good question; good question.  I definitely never had a career.  I got out of high school.  I graduated when I was 17.  Let me think here.  I did a couple odd jobs.  I think I worked at Circuit City back when they were in business and only lasted a couple months.

Then I worked at a restaurant.  So I was a dishwasher and then a food chef eventually pretty quickly ‘cause that one got fired and I got to get moved up pretty quickly.  So I had to cook a little bit.

Then I really got it in my head – I think I started exploring.  Think I wanted to go to college and I saw one of the bullets – copyrighting, got me interested – one of the bullets on the back of Rich Dad Poor Dad was like how to pay for your college education with like – I don’t know — $5,000.00 or something like that.  I don’t know.  It was some interesting bullet and I don’t even remember what it was, but it was on the back of this Rich Dad Poor Dad book.  So I read that.

Then I got introduced to this whole world of business and there’s businesses that exist and these are a whole different – I just never thought to work for myself.

So, I got in my head that I wanted to work for myself and the next move I made was – well I helped out my dad for a bit.  He had a construction company so I was building decks and things like that, but during that time I was looking for a sales position, a sales job ‘cause I discovered I needed to learn how to sell things.

So I found a face-to-face selling job selling in-house water treatment systems.  They were like a couple thousand dollars and up.  So it was really good training.  I starved definitely for the first two months or so ‘cause there’s no salary.

It was just straight commission, but really, really instructive in just kind of teaching you pretty much how to deal with people and about human psychology and just the steps to making a sale and how to not be shy about asking for the money.

So that was kind of my background before I got into copyrighting I guess.  So I guess after I was a salesman and I was doing that and then always reading books and kind of with the intent to use this knowledge in my business and I didn’t know what kind of business I wanted – actually I did have an idea.  I had an idea I wanted to do a web hosting business.

I actually spent a lot of money getting like a licensing deal to have these web sites or web hosting, professional web hosting and a company down in Georgia that would do all the web design for me.  I was like oh, this’ll be great because I won’t have to do the work and all I’ll have to do is sell the stuff.

Then that’s kind of at the point when I realized I need to learn how to sell things.  So the whole time I was learning more about selling and marketing and things like that.  Then of course I stumbled onto things by Dan Kennedy and I made the connection as well at that time – I know I’m kind of rambling here, but I’ve never really thought about how the whole thing happened and some things are jumping out at me as I’ve talked about them.

Doberman Dan:    That’s good.  That’s what I wanted to happen in this call.  Just to interrupt for a second, that’s one thing I’ve discovered by doing these teleseminars and I’m really excited about doing them is ‘cause I figured out neither of us do this for a living.

We don’t teach for a living.  We don’t teach what we do for a living and I figured out that guys who do it, teach for a living or are gurus have this all organized and planned, but for guys like us, the more that we can talk about it and have somebody draw it out of us, the better it is.

We gotta bunch of stuff up in our noggin.  We just need somebody to help us draw it out.  So go ahead, please.

Caleb Osborne:    I think that’s definitely an instructive point, too, ‘cause the more I think about this stuff – it’s funny.  I’ve been a black belt for eight, nine years or something like that and when I first started teaching it was kind of like I was like oh, I don’t wanna teach.

I have no desire to teach people, but one of my instructors was like, ‘Yeah; but when you teach it you really have to think through everything and you really learn it a lot better.’  So it is kind of cool.

So I discovered Dan Kennedy I guess.  I stumbled onto him ‘cause I was starting to read more about sales and the marketing stuff and that whole group of people was kind of connected.  I made the connection that I had seen direct response marketing and stuff in action before when I was younger with Matt Fury.  He’s this guy that teaches people body weight exercises and wrestling and martial arts, conditioning information and stuff like that.

So I was like oh yeah, I kind of get this and this whole idea of copyrighting and marketing and everything started to come together.  I was like oh, that’s cool.

So I was 17 and I had just graduated.  This is all happening really fast like during about a year.  Then I turned 18 and I moved out of the house.  I was trying to get this business going.  I was still working as a salesman.

I also self-published a book on some Christianity stuff that I had also been reading and everything.  I was like, oh cool, I’ll use this direct response stuff to sell the book.  So I put up my first sales letter and Google ads and things like that and was driving a little bit of traffic to it and had some modest success.

But I didn’t really understand a lot about the whole – there’s more to it than just copyrighting when it comes to running your own direct response business like cash flow and how to manage it and how to reinvest profits and things like that.

So I was young and kind of dumb and all that stuff.  So I was still learning as I was going.  I guess about that time, so I was 18-ish.  So this went on around the same time.  I had just started working at another sales job and I was going through training.  That’s when I saw the advertisement for Gary’s – I guess it was his last seminar, wasn’t it Dan?

Doberman Dan:    I believe it was.  If it wasn’t it was pretty darn close.  He may have done one after the Root Canal seminar.  Yeah; it was one of the last.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; you’re right.  I think he did one in California that was the same one.  It was called the Root Canal seminar I think –

Doberman Dan:    Yeah; that’s right.  He did.  He did those two weekends back-to-back, which I thought he was insane for, but that’s right.  I forgot about the California one.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; so it was I guess one of his very last ones.  So I went down there and along with writin’ the sales letter for my Christian book and everything that I self-published, I wrote one for the web hosting business ‘cause I was still thinking that was gonna be my main job that I was doing.

I went to that seminar and met some fine people like yourself, Dan.  Then kind of interesting.  The pitch of the seminar was you could bring a direct response project and if Gary thought it had legs, he said he knew lots of investors and he would help you market it.  So I was like oh cool.

So I was just bound and determined that I was gonna get Gary’s attention and that he was gonna back my product and all this.  So I wrote that letter.  I think I even did a dollar bill letter in the FedEx envelope and sent it to Gary’s office trying to get his attention before this seminar because – I don’t know if I ever told you this ‘cause his secretary, the one that used to work for him – I believe her name was Teresa – yeah; Teresa.

Teresa e-mailed me back personally and gave me some advice on how to make myself stand out at the seminar to Gary.

Doberman Dan:    Yeah; Teresa rocked.  I was really disappointed when she left her employment with Gary.  That’s cool.  I had no idea.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; I almost forgot about that, but I guess I can tell it now ‘cause she’s no longer working there.  But yeah; so she just gave me a couple of hints.  I think she told me to get a – she did – she told me to get a baseball cap.  She said that that way I’d stand out from the crowd a little bit and to approach Gary not when everybody else swarms around him.  Just some nice stuff for her to do.

I got the baseball cap.  That was when Caleb O’Dowd was being mentored by Gary.  So I put Caleb II on the cap.  I did it through one of the screen printing places on the internet and I got all that ready.

I went down there bound and determined to get him to back my project.  I even put it all in its own envelope and everything ‘cause it was a direct mail letter.  So it’d look just like a direct mail letter, put a live stamp on it, just like Gary had written in all his newsletters and everything.

Really up until that point ______________ mention, I never took any of the big home study courses on how to write copy or anything.  It was just put together from all the free resources like Gary’s newsletter.  Really it was just Gary’s newsletter at that point and anything I could pick up from Dan Kennedy or anybody and just from what I had seen by seeing these sales letters on the internet.

I was like oh yeah, I get it.  It made sense with what I knew about selling to people face-to-face.  There’s a process and this step does this and this step does that.

So basically, yeah, I put together the sales letter just like Gary had written his newsletters and everything and the best I thought it could be.  I think I brought four or five copies so I could give it to whoever was gonna be there and all the investors that I was expecting to be there.

So I went to this seminar and I guess we handed in our sales letters.  I don’t know, the second day there or something like that after Gary came back from lunch he called me up to the front of the room and told everybody, ‘Hey, this is a good sales letter.  Everybody should have it in their swipe file.’

I remember thinking later.  I was like, ya’ know the reason why he liked it so much is it was just pretty much a swipe of a Gary Halbert letter.

Doberman Dan:    That’s awesome.

Caleb Osborne:    Ya’ know what I mean?  ‘Cause I think I even used it was just a classic Gary Halbert, ‘If you want this benefit, then this’ and then the regular story that Gary would have it.  Just taking all his advice and everything ‘cause he was pretty much my main source of education up until that point.  So I think that’s why he liked it so much.

Not expecting it after I went up there and I was still dead set on having this business.  Then one guy approached me and he asked me if I was a copywriter or wrote copy for people.  Then I was like, ‘No.’  Then I thought about it and I remembered how much all the income claims I heard Gary and John Carlton and those guys make.  I was like, well maybe I should say yes.

So then the next person that asked me I said, ‘Sure.’  I picked up my first client there at the seminar and I followed up with him through e-mail later.  It was one of the guys actually that did a hot seat with Gary.  I thought I had a couple ideas of how he could improve his web site and I talked to him.  Then we exchanged e-mails and then later on I ended up doing a project for him.

So that’s pretty much it, man.  That’s how I got started.  I got my first and second client at that seminar.  The second client that was there turned in to be a real big repeat business for me for I guess the first couple years.  I still do a little bit of work for him now.  Not as much though ‘cause I’ve increased my prices.

Doberman Dan:    You priced yourself out of his budget, huh?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; exactly.  I think he knew what he was dealing with.  He knew I was kind of wet behind the ears.  So he was like hey.  He caught me in the low budget price range I guess, the entry price.

Doberman Dan:    First I remember this specifically ‘cause at that seminar there was three people, three panelists or whatever.  I don’t know what you wanna call it; three speakers.  It was Gary, Caleb O’Dowd and me and when Gary reads something or when Gary used to read something it was pretty – Gary would immerse himself in some – he wouldn’t just skim.

Gary would immerse himself when he read something.  If it was good I should say.  If he was reading something that was crappy he would skim it and it wouldn’t keep his attention.

So your sales letter made it up there to the front where we were.  I remember Caleb O’Dowd was talking at that point and Gary started reading that.  I’m thinkin’, he’s not gonna read this right here while we’re up front speaking.

I could tell – he used to get that look in his eye.  I could tell he was drawn in by it ‘cause he was completely oblivious to whatever was going on.  Me and Caleb had to carry that part of the seminar for awhile while he was just immersed in your letter.

That’s when he said – he held it up.  He goes, ‘Who wrote this?’  Remember that?  He’s like, ‘Who wrote this?’  He’s like, ‘This is a really good letter.  Everybody should have a copy of this for their swipe file.’  Which I think I still got.  I think I still got a copy of your letter in my swipe file.

But a couple things I was thinking about when you were talking about how you got started.  First of all, I’m really encouraged to hear that you did have some crappy jobs like the rest of us.  I think a lot of people would hate you if you graduated from high school and then all of a sudden just jumped into freelance copyrighting and had this great style making a lot of money.  I’d hate you if that were the case.  I’m glad –

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; you gotta pay your dues at least a little bit.

Doberman Dan:    I’m glad to hear you had some crappy jobs, but I find it interesting.  You said you had several sales jobs and it was all face-to-face stuff.  I find it interesting how many copywriters in some way or another had a sales background.  That really helps you hone your chops I think.  You don’t really have to be a good writer to make it as a copywriter.  You gotta be a good salesman.  Would you agree with that?

Caleb Osborne:    Oh yeah; definitely.  Heck, I’d say 80 percent of it is what you’re saying; not how you’re saying it.

Doberman Dan:    Yep; exactly.  I didn’t know that.  I didn’t know that about your sales background and stuff.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; it was kind of cool ‘cause I think Gary used to give that advice in his newsletters, too.  If you actually want to get better at copyrighting, don’t study copyrighting; go sell something door-to-door for a month or whatever.

It’s true.  You immediately get a sense of what works and what doesn’t.  I guess it just gives you that logical framework in your mind to hang stuff on.

Doberman Dan:    Right.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; I guess that’s how it works.

Doberman Dan:    So 19 years old basically anointed by Gary Halbert and all of a sudden that weekend after people were hitting you up to write copy for them is when you figured out like holy smokes, I guess I can make money at this, right?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; exactly.  So I think I got enamored with it.  I’m still trying to turn this over in my head ‘cause I got enamored with the whole idea of just being a copywriter because every time you hear it talked about by Gary and by Carlton and Dan Kennedy and all this stuff, you think oh man, that’s a great life.  They get paid all this money just to write these letters and you get all this fame and recognition.

I’ve kind of always been somewhat competitive I guess.  I used to compete in the martial arts tournaments and everything and just always somewhat competitive.  So you want to throw your hat in the ring and get recognized and beat other copywriters and all this.

So I know of just let the whole web hosting idea business just go down the tubes.  I never really did anything with it.  I guess what I’m saying now is in retrospect I kind of – maybe not necessarily the same business, but I don’t know.  I think I should have started promoting my own products a little sooner, too.

But at the same time, all those years were so great and so much fun.  You can’t beat the lifestyle.  Even though you’re required to work to make money, it’s a pretty highly leveraged form of work.  You can’t beat the lifestyle.  You set your own hours.  You can do it from anywhere.  It’s pretty awesome.

Doberman Dan:    There’s a bunch of times when I’ve called you in the morning and it hasn’t been all that early.  Kind of like ________ early, but it has been like 9 or 10 a.m. and you’re still in bed.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; I’ll admit up until this past year really I was just totally against the idea of getting up early.  I’ve always been kind of a night owl and I was just like ya’ know what?  I’m working for myself.  There’s no reason for me to get up.

So, I felt really like a slob if I slept in too much past 10 so I’d always get up, but it was never less than double digits.  I used to tell people don’t call me unless it’s double digits.

Doberman Dan:    Double digits – that’s good.  I’m gonna steal that and use that by the way.  Don’t call me unless it’s double digits.

Who was the guy from Clayton Makepeace’s office that called you one morning like it wasn’t all that early, but it was maybe 8 or 9 and you were still in bed and he got all pissed off ‘cause you were still sleepin’ and he had to be in the office at 7 or something.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; that was John Newsome.  He called me and I picked up the phone and I was all groggy, trying to act like I wasn’t sleeping.  He was like, ‘Are you just wakin’ up?’  He’s like, ‘Damn freelancers.’  He was all upset.

I had talked to Clayton later and Clayton gets up early, but he said he couldn’t make it into the office before John.  I guess John was working really hard and getting in there early.

Doberman Dan:    Speaking of Clayton Makepeace, I know I’m not going in order here, but after Gary’s seminar, correct?  You went to Clayton Makepeace’s big seminar, right?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; that’s chronological actually.  I think it was the very next year, 2006, I believe.

Doberman Dan:    Okay; that’s what I thought.  I knew it was shortly after Gary’s seminar.  It was shortly after you basically got started in copyrighting.  Then at Clayton’s seminar, which I didn’t make it to, which I’m still kicking myself about, he had a challenge.  There were a lot of people at that seminar by the way.  He put out a challenge to write a promotion for a supplement and you were recognized as one of the best writers at that seminar, right?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; it was the same type of deal.  There was just a real good reason to go.  So I guess after Gary’s thing I had really set my mind on yeah, I’m gonna become a copywriter.  Then Clayton had just started his newsletter.  Everybody was just Clayton’s the man.

This is how green I was.  Yeah; so he put out that challenge.  I guess the pitch was he had like a first, second, third or something like that and the first, second and third people got to work directly with him and were guaranteed a certain amount of fees.  So the price was like $5,000.00 for the seminar.  I guess the grand prize was guaranteed $20,000.00 in fees or something like – over time working with Clayton.

So I was like well yeah, that’s a heck of a return on investment.  I just gotta win this thing.  Of course I didn’t have $5,000.00.  I’ll tell that story ______________.  So I wrote a sales letter to my mom who had just got married to her new husband.  So I wrote a sales letter to my mom to get to borrow the $5,000.00.  I actually had to go in person and close that one ‘cause it was my mom.

Doberman Dan:    You’re kidding.  I never knew that.  This is all news to me.  Did you really?  Did you really write a sales letter to your mom?

Caleb Osborne:    I really did.  It’s funny.  Some of this stuff I don’t really want to tell or I feel weird about telling ‘cause it’s almost embarrassing.  So I was still struggling ‘cause I had clients and everything, but like I said I was living by myself and I was just hard headed about not getting roommates or anything like that.  So I was spending a lot every month.  So I wasn’t doing really good at all, but I was learning and I was doing what I wanted to do so I was like pretty much independent I guess.

But then the seminar came along.  I’m like man, I need $5,000.00; I don’t have $5,000.00.  So yeah, I wrote this sales letter.  I can’t even remember the headline.  I bet I’ve got it on my other computer.  I could probably find it, but it was pretty funny.

Of course the pitch was ‘Give me $5,000.00 and I’ll pay it back to you over time.’  Or something like that, ‘with these guaranteed fees that I know I’m gonna win.  Even if I do really poorly I’ll get third place and you’re still covered.’  So it was a pretty good sales job for a sales letter.

I went in person and her new husband actually loaned me the money to go.  So I got to go to Clayton’s event.  So I went there and I was all set on winning first place and knew I was gonna win.  The same type of just determination I had when I went to Gary’s seminar I guess and willing to go out on a limb.

I don’t know.  There’s a lot of points in my copyrighting career or business career or anything where I’m not afraid to – I don’t know.  I guess when you’ve been pretty down towards the bottom you really know that it’s nothing to really be scared of ‘cause you’re like ah, so I got no money.  Ya’ know what I mean?

Doberman Dan:    Yeah; I know exactly what you’re saying.  Yeah; when you got no money and you’re broke what’s the worst that can happen.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; what’s the down side.  When you get to a certain point and you can see the very next step is off the cliff, you’re like oh, it’s not so far down.  So you’re willing to kind of risk everything.

If you really want something too, that’s the other thing.  It’s like if you’re really driven and you know exactly what you want then that’s what you go for.

Doberman Dan:    Now there were at Clayton’s seminar there was a bunch of people there.  That was a big seminar, wasn’t it?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; that was.  All the top direct response guys were there.

Doberman Dan:    All the top guys.  Guys going to learn about direct marketing and copyrighting from Clayton Makepeace, the guys in the audience attending are guys like John Carlton, Gary Halbert.  I’m probably missing a few.  David Deutsch I imagine.  Wasn’t he there?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; Deutsch was there along with Carlton and I had just –

Doberman Dan:    Carline Anglade Cole. right?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; Carline was there.  Kent Komae was there.  Let’s see.  What’s her name?  Chris – I’m pronouncing her name wrong.  Chris Schwalm?

Doberman Dan:    Schwalm; yeah Schwalm is the last name.  I’m blanking out on –

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; ______ had just written the $10 million letter for Agora.  He was one of the marketing directors or copy chiefs or something for that.  He was about to go out on his own, but he’d just put together this letter that brought in $10 million for Agora.  Greg –

Doberman Dan:    So guys at this seminar, the A list guys, the top of the top at this seminar and still in spite of that, after you’d only been doing that a little over a year or so or couple years, you still wrote one of the best letters there of all the attendees at the seminar.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; I’ll qualify that by just saying that I kind of highly doubt that guys like David Deutsch or Carlton or any of those guys entered that contest ‘cause it was an optional contest.  I don’t know that they didn’t for a fact, but I doubt it just because I don’t know why they would want to ‘cause they already knew Clayton I guess.

Doberman Dan:    But just to have Clayton Makepeace – if Clayton Makepeace just patted me on the back and said, ‘Hey, that was a fairly decent letter you wrote.’  I’d be like, oh my God, Clayton Makepeace thinks I’m semi- — I’d be freakin’ out to be anointed by a guy like that, and you were after just writing copy professionally for really only a year.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; I don’t even think it was a whole year.  If I’m correct and it was in 2006 it wasn’t a whole year.  I’ll say two things about that.  One was I was so green that I didn’t even know what a magalog was ‘cause the only sales letters I’d seen were Gary Halbert’s and stuff like that.

So when we got this assignment for that supplement I wrote it just like a regular punch in the face sales letter.  Then I saw the guy that won first place and the guy that won second place it was more of a magalog thing.  I remember the first time I saw a magalog it was – ‘cause I’d been hearing about Clayton.  I was reading his newsletters.  I was like man, this guy’s good and I finally got a hold of one of his promotions.  I was like what the heck is this thing.  This isn’t a sales letter.  I didn’t know what it was.

Oh, the other thing I wanna do is I wanna give a shout out to Caleb O’Dowd though because he helped me out.  I sent him that letter to critique before I sent it in ‘cause I’d stayed in touch with him after Gary’s seminar when I met him down there ‘cause he had written I guess a supplement.  He had his own supplement business so he was pretty familiar with that market, but he definitely gave me some hard hitting advice and sent me on the right path.  So he was a big help.

But yeah; I wrote the letter and got it out there and really wanted to win first place, but through that the guys that won first and second place became good friends with and Clayton encouraged all the copywriters there, the best thing you could do is to create your own little what he called a crit circle where you just critique each other’s copy that you’re working on.  Then that way you’re constantly learning from each other and seeing what everybody else is doing and you basically get twice as good twice as fast and all that.  I thought that was a great idea.

So of course I buddied up with the two guys that won first and second place and we formed our little critique circle.  Along with Tony Flores who was there.  I guess he had just started working with Clayton at that point.  So we kept in touch through e-mail that way.

Doberman Dan:    Did you wind up meeting anybody that turned into a client down the road from Clayton’s seminar?

Caleb Osborne:    Ya’ know, no.  There was a lot of big direct response companies there.  Agora was there, Health Resources, all those guys.  I followed up with pretty much all of them through e-mail and direct mail to a couple of them.  Those companies are so big they do a lot of newer copywriters.

I actually got – I forget which company it was, but it was one of the big ones.  I had sent them a sample package and followed up a couple times.  I finally got them on the phone and he was looking over my samples.  He was like, ‘Oh, this is good and what not, but let me just tell you how it works.’

He’s like, ‘A customer acquisition piece costs so much money to mail that pretty much the only people that work on the customer acquisition pieces are guys that have been in the industry for 10-20 years at least.  You’d start basically writing newsletter inserts and even that you don’t do until — you’re usually a copy cub for a couple years.’

So none of those really did turn into jobs I don’t think.  Ah, no.  I take that back.  Ralph Charlton was there; Ralph Charlton from Target Focus Training or he was working with Target Focus Training primarily as this company.  We ended up doing some work together later on down the road.

So yeah; I don’t know the kind of questions people were asking before this call, but if people are wondering about things that build your business I would definitely recommend seminars and just go and network your butt off and meet people ‘cause if someone’s searching for a copywriter, or if someone’s searching for any professional business, if you know somebody personally it’s always a huge jump ahead in line.

Doberman Dan:    Yeah; I agree.  A few years ago, I forget what seminar it was, but I was talking with Scott Haines, Mongo.  Gary always called him Mongo.  Another copywriter who mentored under Gary.  We were talking about this about seminars and both he and I did not want to travel to the seminar.  It’s just inconvenient to travel, but then he kind of gave me a slap in the head, slaps me back to reality ‘cause back then I still was taking clients.

He’s like, ‘Dan’ he goes, he starts asking me about seminars I went to and I told him.  I was listing some of the ones I’ve been to and he goes, ‘Has there been any seminar that you’ve ever gone to that somehow or another you didn’t make money from it.  It was either by making contacts with people there that turned into copy jobs or consulting jobs or you picked up some tip that you could use to make more money, has there been even one of all the seminars where you went to where you didn’t make money from it?’

I thought about it.  I thought no, not a one.  Every single seminar I’ve been to, even the crappy ones.  I’ve been to some crappy seminars which were these low priced things for like $500.00, $600.00, $800.00 that were nothin’ but pitch fests the entire weekend; hardly any content, but I still made money from them because of the contacts I made there.

So I think incredibly that’s a really valuable point you bring up is going to seminars.  You can probably send out packets or portfolios.  You can probably send out hundreds and still have more success actually goin’ to these seminars and meeting people in person.  Meeting them in person is I don’t know.  It’s always turned out to me to be the best way to go and that sounds like how it’s worked out for you, too.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; definitely.  No doubt.  Like you said, if it isn’t a direct job maybe it turns into a job in the future or just you meet somebody and it’s like our relationship.  Even if you had never hired me to do anything I’ve learned so much from you and hopefully I’ve helped you out a lot of times.  You always meet somebody that turns out to be really important later on down the road.

I’ll say that’s a good motivation to go to seminars.  Just networking in general.  I gotta say networking is probably one of the bigger keys to my success, but don’t be the guy that’s always trying to get stuff from somebody.

I’ll share this.  This is kind of embarrassing, but I got home from Clayton’s seminar and actually it was up in D.C. and I live in Virginia.  So I’d get up in the morning at like 5 or whatever I had to do to get up there, try to beat the traffic and get up there before the seminar started ‘cause I couldn’t afford the money to stay at the hotel.  It was at a really nice hotel.  The Renaissance Hotel here in D.C.

I was so broke and I was spending my money on all this stuff and my electric went out during the seminar.  So I came home and the electric was out for the two nights of the seminar.

Oh, what was I saying that for?  Yeah; because even though I was in I guess you could call a desperate situation, I definitely needed work and I was definitely driven to meet people and everything and get jobs and things like that.

Actually caring about the people you meet and just being a genuinely nice person, I don’t know, I guess maybe it came natural to me just because I’d done a lot of sales stuff and you schmooze with people, but really I think it’s just ‘cause I like to think I’m kind of a nice guy.  Normally if you something nice for somebody it normally just feels good anyways and its’ nice to help people out and everything, but I think that’s a big part of it.

People can sense when you’re not being real and if you’re just a real person and a nice person and cool about sharing whatever knowledge you have or whatever help you have, not so much just looking out for number one, looking out for yourself, then that goes a long way.

Doberman Dan:    Good advice.  There’s actually a couple lessons I think people really need to learn from how you tracked me down.  First of all, fill in the gaps.  I’ll tell the story.  You fill in the gaps, but shortly after we met at Gary’s Root Canal seminar I get an e-mail from you.  Of course I remembered you.

But I get an e-mail from you.  I was gonna say I may have saved it, but this was back before G-Mail so it wasn’t so easy to save e-mails then, but you basically e-mailed me a really complete plan of starting a membership site in one of the niches that I work in.

It was really thorough, man.  It was basically the whole business plan.  Here’s how you start.  Here’s how you can build the content.  Here’s some other businesses or sites that are doing the same.  I suggest you charge this.  You could start by promoting it to your list this way and basically gave me a complete idea to make some more money in a niche I was already in.

Then on top of that, you offered to work with me on that idea.  I blew you off for a long time, didn’t I?

Caleb Osborne:    We’ve known each other for so long it seems like that I kind of forget how it all – you’re right.  Pretty much that’s exactly how it went.

You were nice about it.  You didn’t really blow me off so much, but I think – I think it finally turned out.  You knew the type of people in your market and that was the type of product that those type of people were readily consuming.  I think you had done something like it before so we kind of scrapped the idea eventually.  I know I must have followed up with you at times.

Doberman Dan:    You did.  If I would have known you were gonna be so successful I should have saved those e-mails so I could show those to people like here.  I’d like to show you these e-mails when Caleb Osborne was a nobody.

Yeah; actually you were really persis – I did blow you off for a long time in a nice way, but I never really hired you for anything or we didn’t do any joint ventures together.  It’s just every so often I got a real nice e-mail from you, never hounding me for JVing with me or having me hire you, but every so often I’d get an e-mail or you’d forward me a web site.  ‘Hey, check out what these guys are doin’.  They’re also in your niche.’

Persistence breaks down resistance, man. After a time, I just was thinking man oh man, this guy is just not gonna give up until we do something together and I don’t remember – I honestly don’t remember the first project we worked on, but I’m assuming that’s one of your success secrets for getting clients from people you meet at the seminar.  Just maintaining contact with them and actually giving them information to help them, right?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; I’ve never really thought through it, but I guess that’s kind of how it is.  I think my mindset at the time was like well, I guess we’re not really gonna work on anything, but I’ll stay in contact with him.  Just whenever I came across anything, like you said, that I thought could help you ‘cause I remember that.  I remember a couple times I’d see something that I thought might help you out and I forwarded it over.

I know I’ve done that with some other people, too.  Yeah; it was just be nice to people, even if it doesn’t turn out to be something.  I’m pretty spiritual so I always think that everything happens for a reason.  I don’t want to say that the wrong way.  I don’t want it to seem like you’re doing good things to try to get good things, but you never know who knows somebody or how people are going to connect in your life or throughout your life.

Doberman Dan:    Exactly ______________ there.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; we could have never done anything together, but you may have off hand mentioned it to somebody, like ‘Oh, you’re looking for a copywriter?  Well there’s this new kid that keeps hounding me.  Why don’t you go talk to him.’  Then that could have turned into something ya’ know what I mean?

Doberman Dan:    And that’s exactly what’s happened, too, as a result of you keeping in touch with me and being persistent, but not bugging me; just constantly maintaining contact.  You’ve gotten work from other people that are also in my network, too, right?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; definitely.  The way to think about it I guess is ya’ know how everybody tells you to build an e-mail list and send out good content and then don’t really pitch your stuff too much and build a relationship with people?

Doberman Dan:    Exactly.

Caleb Osborne:    I think that’s what it is and it’s that process gets multiplied times like a thousand when you actually personally have met somebody and talked with them.  Once you’re over 21 and you have beers with them at the bar and everything at seminars.  I think that process just gets kind of multiplied and just being nice to people and when you think of something nice for somebody ‘cause really it takes nothing to –

Once you talk to somebody and like, oh, you’re in that niche or this is what you’re doing, this is what you’re working with, if you stumble across something on the internet – I don’t know about other people, but at least for most of us copywriters and marketing minded people, you’re always looking at things in a marketing mindset.

So when you stumble across something in that niche and you’re like oh, that was that person’s niche and then like oh, well that would probably help them; oh, I’ll give them that idea.  So you just send it off then.  It’s like oh, maybe they can do something with it

So you’re just generally, whenever the idea strikes you and take that couple seconds to help somebody out and you never know really what’s going to happen with it.

Doberman Dan:    So what really basically launched your career and got you your first clients was goin’ to seminars and then just keeping in touch with those people and following up to maintain relationships.

Caleb Osborne:    Yes, sir.  Pretty much networking both through live seminars and that was back when Michel Fortin had his copywriter’s board.  I don’t think I participated a whole lot on there, but I kind of PMd some people, some guys that were already established copywriters and talked to them and eventually developed relationships with them in the same way.

Even though never meeting those people face-to-face, just trying to be a generally nice guy.  Like we had Ben Settle on the call the other day.  He reminded me, but I had sent him a bunch of stuff back when I was first starting out.  Yeah; I can still remember.  I sent him a couple things, like I remember him talking about audio for his web site.  Then I came across some free flash audio software or something and I was like oh yeah, I bet Ben could use this.  I’d send him stuff.  It was all cool.

You be nice to people and network and you never know where that stuff’s gonna go.

Doberman Dan:    That’s cool.  There’s one other thing I want to ask you about and then I’d like to get into some of these questions.  We’ve got a bunch of questions from people on the call or they’re listening in on the web cast I guess.

I’m still jealous about this.  You got featured in an article in Clayton Makepeace’s web site, the Makepeace Total Package, didn’t ya’?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; I sure did.

Doberman Dan:    How did that come about?

Caleb Osborne:    The same way.  John Newsome was the guy that won first place, but he was working directly with Clayton.  He moved down there to their offices and everything.  At that time I was really still gung-ho about being a copywriter and working with those guys in any way that I could.  John just was like what’s good for me is good for you ‘cause we had stayed in contact with the crit circle and everything.

So he’s like, ‘Don’t worry.  This’ll help you out, too.’  When the time came he had a column I guess in that e-zine.  He interviewed me for it.  So that’s how that happened.

Doberman Dan:    Yeah; that’s credibility out the wazoo, man.  If I were you I’d be using that all the time.  I’d be e-mailing the link to everybody on my list to that interview that you did for Clayton Makepeace’s site.

Caleb Osborne:    No doubt.  Yeah; I put it up – once I finally put up a web site for myself and my services, I put it just on the about page.  I was like, I’m lazy one.  I don’t really want to write an about page.  Two, this is pretty much the best – ‘cause it had pretty much everything we talked about here; just not as in detail.  So there was plenty of about stuff.

Doberman Dan:    I want to talk with you in a minute about getting started in copyrighting.  I especially want to talk with you about what to charge ‘cause that’s a question I get a lot, but let’s get into some of these reader questions if you don’t mind and we can talk about other stuff after that.

John in Macon, Georgia is asking, ‘What is the quickest way to ramp up your skills?  What is the quickest way to ramp up your self-confidence in your abilities and what is the quickest way to move into making a good living as a copywriter?’

Let’s take the first one there.  What’s the quickest way to ramp up your skills?

Caleb Osborne:    Skills, definitely the quickest way would probably be to learn how to sell.  Go get a sales job part-time or something like that and just get into that visceral process of selling stuff face-to-face to people.

In addition to that, I’d say the other thing that really helped when I was first starting out, read everything that you come across; all the sales letters, study all the techniques.

Like I said, I never took a how-to copy course.  I just read a lot of sales letters, read all the free information on Gary Halbert’s site and on Clayton Makepeace’s site when his stuff started coming out, but more importantly I actually did what Gary said and that was to handwrite out some sales letters.  I did that with a couple of – I think it was a couple of Gary’s letters and I think it was one of Caleb O’Dowd’s letters that he first put out ‘cause Gary was just raving about it in his newsletter.  I was like oh, let’s get his name to start with.

So I actually hand wrote out a lot of sales letters.  I think that really helps getting that process into your memory.  So that’s one of the best ways to quickly ramp up your skills –

Doberman Dan:    I agree.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; to make it easier for people, just read a lot and do it a lot, write a lot.  You gotta be writing –

Doberman Dan:    Writers write.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; exactly.  Writers write.  If you’re not writing you’re just joking.  You’re kidding yourself.  Get started doing something.  Write fake sales letters for fake projects or like a dream project that you would want to start if you had a business or something like that or Clayton recommends that when you get a mailing in the mail how would you knock it off and try to beat it, make it better.

Find a product that really gets you fired up and write a sales letter for it.  I don’t think I did that ‘cause I had my own little projects going on so I was already writing sales letters.  So that’s the thing.  I did something.  I started writing.  I just started writing sales letters as soon as I understood halfway the concept.

You’re never gonna be good the first time you step up to the plate, ya’ know what I mean?  I’m reading a book right now.  It’s called Talent is Overrated.  Basically they’ve discovered in the last couple years that they can’t really find any scientific evidence for talent.  Most people that are considered geniuses are born geniuses.  They just have this divine spark of inspiration and stuff.

When you put it together all these people have just trained for years and then by the time they get noticed people just think it’s an overnight success and it’s really not.  They actually point out like a ten-year rule, for even like the – it’s crazy – like the Beatles.  I guess Paul McCartney and the other dude had been working together in that band for ten years before they had their really big album that was a success.

Mozart most people think was like a child genius when it came to playing music, but his father was actually like a really famous musician that specialized in teaching children, had just written a book on how to teach children music and pretty much put Mozart through intensive training since he was like three years old.

Tiger Woods was trained since he was like three years old.  So all these people that see success early in life have actually still been training.

So my point is just that if you’re not doing something you’re never gonna get better.  You gotta put to work what you’re learning as you’re learning it.

Doberman Dan:    That’s true and the serendipity of that is if you want to get started as a copywriter and you’re writing everyday – let’s say you get a direct mail promotion in the mail and you decide ya’ know what, I think I could do better than this.

So you write that promotion.  Even though it’s not a real thing, well, ya’ know what?  You’re starting a portfolio.  At least you’ve got samples of your work now, too.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; since the rest of this question is how to make money with it, I’ll put it altogether.  What I wish I had done is I wish I had started a blog as soon as I got involved in copyrighting and it’s just starting writing post after post.  Write one article a day.

If you get up in the morning, Monday through Friday, write one article a day.  If you’re a real bad ass you can do it seven days a week, but I like to take the weekends off.  Write one article a day Monday through Friday and put it up on your blog about the stuff you’re reading about.

Like as you’re learning about headlines write a blog post about what makes for a good headline.  Then when you get these promotions and you want to tear them apart or you think you could do better, you could just do a post about that.  Be like okay, I got this promotion in the mail.  Here’s what I think they did wrong, here’s why, here’s the principle that I think they could have done better on and here’s how I would have rewrote it.

If you stuff like that, number one, you’re writing.  So you’re getting better at the skill of writing.  Number two, you’re displaying your authority and like expert status to everybody in the world, anybody that might hire you.

Number three, there’s really not that many great copyrighting blogs out there that have a lot of good content, especially not updated a lot.

Number four, you could really easily within a couple months have your own book if you plan it out right.  If you make an outline about a simple book of how to write copy that sells or how to make more sales from your web site, whatever you’re specializing in or you want to specialize.  Most of the work I think now a days in online.

So you step up to the higher ranks if you choose to do that and do it with some direct mail companies and you write a post for each of the chapters.  You do a couple posts for each chapter and just kind of outline it on a piece of paper.  Then go ahead and write it in a daily format piecemeal.

Then you got a book and then you give that book away when people come to your web site in exchange for their e-mail address.  Then you follow-up with them.  Just your basic direct marketing principles and action, but if you do it this way then you’re accomplishing a ton of things.

You’re getting good at the skill that you want to get good at fast, you’re practicing, you’re displaying your expert status, you’re creating a product.  You could create a product you could sell.  That same process can work.

Then through that blog the networking principle we were talking about now, I just e-mailed people before ‘cause there was the copywriter’s board, it was a forum where a lot of the copywriters hung out on, but that’s not there anymore.  I think there’s one that got replaced.

There’s other internet marketing forums, but even if you go and participate in those forums, if you put a link back to your blog there and then you comment on other copywriters and marketers’ blog posts and things like that, you’ll pretty quickly get known around the internet.

Dan, since you converted your site over to a blog you’ve seen more traffic, right?

Doberman Dan:    Oh yeah; quite a bit more.  Google likes it a whole lot better now.

Caleb Osborne:    And you really haven’t done any cross linking or gone and commenting on people’s blog and really tried to get people back to your site either, have you?

Doberman Dan:    I’ve done none of that.  I should, but I’ve done none of it.  All I’ve done is just put – well, recently now that I’ve gotten more involved with it is start putting more content up regularly.

Caleb Osborne:    Right; so imagine if you’re just getting started and you really want to set yourself apart, just do that.  Be the guy that works harder than everybody else.  That’s what I would recommend.  You’re gonna make yourself better in the process.

Doberman Dan:    Good advice.  Another question from Bernardo in Denver.  ‘How do you get new clients that have never heard of your name before?  Do you start with a direct mail campaign?  How does your portfolio fit in and when would you show it to them?’

So, how do you get new clients, we pretty much talked about the best way to get new clients.

How does your portfolio fit in?  When do you show it?  Yeah; how important would you say is it to have a portfolio of work to present to a potential client?

Caleb Osborne:    I’d say that’s pretty important.  It’s really cool if you can get some actual results.  Once that happens it makes it a lot easier, but even still just having, like we talked about, your own little portfolio of even ‘fake sales letters’.  It would still be good.

Definitely if you do the blog route that I was telling you, your whole blog is a portfolio.  You’ve demonstrated your expert status.  Nobody’s really gonna question it at that point.

But for now and I forget to do this sometimes ‘cause I’ll get introductions made from people I’ve worked with or whatever and I just kind of forget to sell myself or whatever, but yeah, definitely before you get into any discussions about really working together – this is just part of the stuff I learned from face-to-face selling – if you’re gonna be selling your services to somebody you don’t want the objection when you’re ready to close to be, ‘Oh, do you have any work I can see that you’ve done?’

So just like in a sales letter before you ask for the order you’re gonna share some testimonials, right.  So, definitely once if someone talks to you or you call somebody or e-mailed them or whatever, from a cold approach I guess, if you talk to them and they’re like, ‘Hey, actually yeah, I have been looking for a copywriter.’  ‘Oh cool.  Well I’m available this time next week to chat, but here’s the samples that are posted here on my blog.  You can go check it out.  This is a sample page.’

I have a web site now, a ‘blog’ but I got one post on there, one article that I felt squirrely one day and I put up, but other than that I got one article and I got that about page with the interview I did for the total package and I have an opt in form.  Once you opt in there’s my samples and that’s it.

I’m not recommending that to people.  I’m just saying that’s pretty much all I do is when I talk to people I’m like, ‘Yeah, well we’ll chat about that a little bit.  Here’s my free – call me.’  Get them to call you.  That usually positions you better.  That’s just a small thing.  It’s not really that important.

Then just be like, ‘Check out my samples page before we talk and that way you get an idea of what I do or what you’re working with.’

If they’re people that understand what a copywriter is then they’re most likely gonna be able to recognize good copy from bad copy.  So that’s always good if you have some good samples.

Doberman Dan:    That’s true.  A question from Scott in Newfoundland.  Wow.  I have subscribers from all over the world that I didn’t even know about.  We kind of already covered this, but let me ask it anyway.  See if it provokes any new thoughts.  ‘What’s your best tip or two for a starting copywriter to begin making the big bucks?’

Caleb Osborne:    One, okay; I’ll give you two good tips and these are mistakes I see that I made.  One is don’t be afraid to work.  I’ve always been really kind of protective of my lifestyle.  So there’s a lot of things I could have done like for instance, the whole blog thing that I was telling you to do that I didn’t do in the beginning because I saw it as just a lot of work and extra work.  To get up every day, write an article just was something I was like aw, that’ll take awhile, but daily actions really add up quick.  It’s pretty amazing.

Gary Bencivenga wrote an article one time about that how if you just try to improve yourself one percent each week.  That’s a really easy thing to do; one percent each week.  Most people fail when they try to improve themselves because they try to get better overnight and it’s really hard to do that if at all, but if you can improve one percent a week you’re almost 100 percent better by the end of the year.  You’re 50 percent better.  So you’ve almost doubled your skills in just a year.

So the same thing goes for the working stuff.  Don’t be afraid to work.  The little things really add up like that.  One person I admire who did do this is Ben Settle really did a good job.  We’ve talked to him a couple times and he was like ‘Yeah, when I had no work I’d write like three or four articles a day and post them up on web sites and put them on my site.’  It’s like yeah, that’s what I should have done.

So that’s number one.  Don’t be afraid to work.  And what goes along with that is say yes to more opportunities than you think you can deal with.

What I mean by that is I kind of strayed away from anything where I thought I’d have a lot of commitment to do or I thought I’d be committing myself to too many different things ‘cause what happens is a lot of stuff  — Tim Ferris wrote about this in his book The Four Hour Work Week.  Your work expands to fill the time you allot for it, right.

So if you’re really super busy and you have a lot of things on your plate you’re gonna get things done before deadlines and you’re gonna pretty much easily make your deadlines and things like that.

But what I did a lot of times was I didn’t hustle and didn’t – part of me not promoting myself as much as I should have ‘cause I was like, well I’m workin’ on this right now.  I can’t really take on anything else or somebody’d be like hey, I’m not really lookin’ for a one-time shot, but can we work on a long-term basis; I’m kinda lookin’ for someone like that.  I’d be like, ‘No.’

Really those long-term contracts can be really good for you and really valuable if you embrace them.  Even though I was super committed to working with Clayton Makepeace when I first started that journey and went to his conference and everything, about a year later after that whole thing, right before they opened up in their newsletter to advertise for new writers to come down there and be a copy cub in Clayton’s crew down there, I got offered the job through e-mail through the people I knew there.  I turned it down because I was like well, it’s a salary position.  I was kind of looking for that overnight success thing still.

I was like it’s a salary position, I’d have to move and I’d really be workin’ a lot.  I wouldn’t be gettin’ up at 10 in the morning anymore.  I don’t regret that now because there’s amazing things that happened in my life around that same time so I know it was definitely the right choice that I stayed, but I know that that type of mindset of being kind of afraid of work and you kinda’ get sold – I guess I’m just bein’ honest here – a lot of people get sold on this whole idea of what’s the AWAI letter?  Like retire this year and make more money than doctors or somethin’.

Doberman Dan:    Yeah; exactly.

Caleb Osborne:    So everybody gets sold on this idea of well, you’re just gonna work a few hours a day and everything and really, the best hustle and they work hard and they’re smart about what they do.  Guys that really did well when they first started out and really hustled and worked it like it was a real business, like Ben Settle and ray Edwards did a real good job building a list and things like that and establishing themselves as experts.  That’s what I recommend to anybody.  Not to do what I did.

Doberman Dan:    No; that’s good advice.  You’ve already navigated the mine field so to speak so you can lead the way and help people avoid the same mistakes you did.

I wanna talk real quick about something kind of related to Scott’s question.  He asked what’s the best tip for starting copywriters to begin making the big bucks.

I wanna talk about fee schedules.  Your fees are a lot more than when you first started, but when you first started you weren’t commanding the big fees at all were ya’?

Caleb Osborne:    No; not at all.

Doberman Dan:    Were you doing like John Carlton said?  Just the shameless whore, just taking any work just to get the experience?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; basically, shameless whore; yeah, exactly.  And I should have been even more shameless is what I’m saying ‘cause I guess when I started out I think my first client $2,000.00 and then the second client was only $1,500.00 a letter or something like that.  I’m saying only now and I don’t know if that seems like a lot to people or it seems like very little.

But compared to I had this big concept of what a copywriter makes and how much I should charge.  So it seemed a little at the time, but again if I had hustled and really gone out of my way to get a bunch of those, even if you just whore the heck out of yourself and there’s work out there for you if you go looking for it.

At those prices, you don’t have to really worry about the whole oh, I wanna position myself as this copywriter whose got tons of work and is in demand and everything.  At those prices you can cold approach most businesses that would work with you for those prices I think are pretty reasonable.  There’s different ways you could maybe work out the fee schedule.

I would definitely say I never really wrote anything for free.  Some people talk about doing I guess spec work, but yeah, I definitely don’t agree with writing anything for free.

I’ll tell you what I did do.  The first ______ I had, how I got that $2,000.00 was he had already spent $6,000.00 on another copywriter and the copy just was horrible and it bombed and it just wasn’t good at all.  So he was really weary about hiring another writer.

What I really wanted was the $5,000.00, $10,000.00 whatever that other copywriters charge.  So I made him an offer.  It’s funny how – I forget the saying, but it’s like inexperience is – I don’t know – something to do with cockiness and inexperience, but I was like, ‘Yeah, ya’ know what?  I’ll tell ya’ what.  You pay me this amount, $2,000.00 for this letter and if it doesn’t convert it at 1 percent then I’ll pay you the money back.’  We talked about – what’s that?

Doberman Dan:    I’m sorry.  That’s pretty gutsy.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; it was really gutsy, kinda’ ballsy, but I was really confident that I could – I definitely knew I could do better than the letter he already had and I was just really confident that – he’d done a lot of research so he had a ton of research on this and knew the market really well.  I was like, ‘Yeah man, I could knock this out of the park.’

I guess we worked it out.  I think in the actual contract I would pay him back on a monthly fee if it didn’t work for so many months.  So it would be something I could actually do and it was a viable thing.  I wasn’t just talking.

If you ever make a deal like that, don’t promise specific percentage points.  Promise like profitability or something like that because that letter I wrote for him, actually it pulled, through Google Ad Words, he had like a basic and deluxe version and the copy was good enough to sell – if people read it, it sold the deluxe version which was like 100 and some bucks.  It sold enough of those that it was actually profitable.  I think it was only like half a percent or something like that.

So the actual conversion rate wasn’t where it was, but it was profitable.  It was making this guy money.  We both were really stuck on this mindset of oh, like a letter should convert at a certain percent when really I guess you can correct me if I’m wrong, Dan, but I think profitability is a more important metric than the percent of something converts that.

Doberman Dan:    I wholeheartedly agree.  I couldn’t care if it was .000000001 percent.  If I’m making money I really don’t care about percentage.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; it’s kind of embarrassing sometimes.  You’re like, ‘Oh, I’m a professional copywriter, but hey, that’s making me money, that product.’

Yeah; so if you ever do a deal like that do it on some other factor other than percentage points ‘cause that gets kind of screwy depending on sources of traffic and all that stuff.  There’s a lot of factors with that.

But anyway, so yeah, you can do a lot of things if you’re gusty and you think you can really just knock the pants off something.  You could make a risk free offer like that.

I think you can probably start at that fee schedule.  I know a lot of copywriters that start at that fee schedule.  I wouldn’t go much below that.  To really do a good job and you wanna do a great job with your first client because I’d say 80 percent of my work has been repeat clients.  If you do a good job people are gonna come back and plus, you’re gonna have results in your portfolio now.

So you definitely wanna knock it out of the park and if you’re only getting paid 500 bucks or somethin’, I don’t know about you, but it’s hard to put a lot of time into something if I’m only getting paid a couple hundred bucks for it.

So get enough for the job to where you can actually – it’s gonna make you work for it, it’s gonna make you focused and hopefully when you’re just starting out you got that really burning desire anyways where you’re really excited about your first job and all that.  So it should take care of itself, but yeah, that’s my advice for that I guess.  Did I answer that question or go off on a tangent?

Doberman Dan:    No, that’s good.  Let me ask you.  We’re a little bit over time.  Can you stick around like maybe 15-20 more minutes ‘cause a bunch of questions have come in.

Caleb Osborne:    Okay; yeah, sure.  Let’s do it.

Doberman Dan:    If anybody needs to jump off the call I understand.  We said, I believe, or maybe I didn’t.  I thought I said it’d be an hour call or maybe I didn’t put a time limit on it, but there’s so many questions that came in I’d like to cover those and I got some questions for ya’ too.  So if you don’t mind stickin’ around a little while longer.

Caleb Osborne:    Alright.

Doberman Dan:    What was I gonna say?  Oh yeah.  A lot of guys hear about Gary Halbert would charge 15 grand for a sales letter to write copy, the big guys, Clayton Makepeace, Bencivenga would charge 25, 30 grand or more plus a piece of the action.  So I think a lot of young guys think they’re gonna start in this business and start commanding those high fees, but like you said, take any work you can get at first.  Price it so it’s enough that it’s gonna make you work.

If you under price yourself, I’ve found this out too, the hard way, you almost resent the client and you resent the work and I don’t think you do your best either.  Subconsciously maybe.  It may be subconscious, but it’s like hey, this blows.

When it’s all said and done I’m only gonna make five, six bucks an hour because I charged too little.  I think subconsciously you don’t do the best job that you could, but in all honesty a guy starting out is not gonna be getting 10 or 15 grand for a sales letter.

Caleb Osborne:    No.  And I’ll tell you something about that that might help people is a lot of people think that maybe – Makepeace and Ben Zavenga, they probably got paid 25 grand or whatever to do a package, but those are still – okay; here’s the thing.

You hear about this and they’re charging all these fees and everything.  A lot of that’s for packages, like in direct mail world it’s a full package, which is the sales letters, I guess a brochure normally and an order form and the copy that goes on the outer envelope.  So it’s still a package.  So it’s more than one piece of copy.

I don’t know if people already know this or I was dumb and didn’t realize it.  And on the online world, too, when you hear about these gurus and they’re charging all this money, the way you can get your prices up is okay, so you do a package meal, right.

So the letter’s gonna cost the client a thousand bucks, plus, well let me write you a squeeze page, too.  So that’ll be another 500 bucks and then, oh, I don’t know.  Auto responder e-mails; that’s another 25 dollars an e-mail and you need at least 7 of those ‘cause studies prove you need at least 7 contacts, preferably more before somebody makes a purchase decision, right.

So you put together this package for the client and then you can present higher fees even when you’re just starting out.  Also, gives you some leveraging, too, ‘cause if you’ve ever been in sales and you’re at the close and you’re dropping the price, you don’t drop the price for no reason, right.

One of the things we used to do is you’d be like, ‘Well, we really can’t do much better than this, but I’ll tell you what.  If you let us put the sign in your yard that advertises to your neighbors that we’re doing this job for you, then we can give you our advertising discount, which is this.’

So you always take away something in order to drop price to close the deal or whatever.  So that way they can be like, ‘No, that’s too high.’  You’ll be like, ‘Okay, well I’ll tell ya’ what.  We can take away the e-mails.  If I could do this would you be willing to go ahead and get this started or would that work out for you’ whatever.  That’s another way to do it.

If you’re even hoping to see any bigger fees and if those first fees I was telling you about are really, you’re discouraged about starting out, that’s something I’ve learned is doing packages, especially now – this just came to me.

A lot of stuff I’ve done lately is like product launch stuff, right.  So Jeff Walker has this great product launch formula.  Just like sales copyrighting and sales, if you’ve seen it done to you enough times you should viscerally understand the process and how to do it.

It’s good to get a $2,000.00 course, but you don’t even need it if you’ve seen it enough times and we’ve all been through enough product launches.  You could put together a product launch with your copyrighting skills.

If you really wanna get your fees up, I’ve never done it, but you could offer to write the reports that go out with it and everything.  I know some copywriters do that as well.  Like the free giveaways they give out and then the scripts for the videos.  I’ve written a few video scripts and things like that, but that’s definitely more stuff you can put on your plate.

That goes along with the not being afraid to work type thing.  If you really hustle you can definitely make some money in this business right away right when you’re starting out.

Doberman Dan:    That’s excellent advice about bundling out the other services.  Okay, you’ll get the sales copy, but I can do the squeeze page, I can do the auto responder.  That’s excellent advice for a new copywriter.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; I’ll say this too.  You and me both know when you’re running your own projects, the sales letter is what?  Like I don’t know.  I’m not gonna say.  It’s a very small percentage of the overall success of your marketing campaign, right.

So if the click starts at a Google Ad Words ad, why don’t you write the Google Ad Words ad for the client, too, because he’s gonna be judging your copy on whether it works, right, but you don’t know if he landed on one of those web sites that says 29.99 and we’ll send a million visitors to your web site by tomorrow.

Those __________ already clicked through the web site.  It’s like, ‘Oh man, your sales letter didn’t convert for nothin’.  I sent a million clicks to this web site.’   This is a way of helping somebody out while also putting more work on your plate and getting to make more money and be like, ‘I’ll do the Google Ad Words ad for ya’, I’ll do the squeeze page, auto responder, sales letter and I’ll do the follow-up e-mails, maybe even the customer e-mails for up sells or something like that.

If you study marketing then you know all the ways that you could add money to a business and profit to a business so you can offer all the different ways.  Your clients will appreciate it.  Don’t be afraid to bring it up because you’re showing them how to make more money.

You get two types of clients.  You get the guys that have no clue what they’re doing and they’re just starting out and you’ve gotta kind of lead them through everything.

Then you get the guys that are already running like million dollars businesses or couple hundred grand a year or whatever and they come to you like, ‘Alright, I know I need to be doing this, I know I need to be doing this, but my problem is time.  So can you do this for me.’  Both of those people are gonna love it when you bring up extra stuff.

Doberman Dan:    That advice is worth a lot of money to copywriters right there.  That’s extremely valuable advice.  Plus you said you’re basically kind of taking all the steps you can to ensure the success of your copy.

If you’re writing the whole process from the guy’s Google Ad Words, you’re writing everything for the whole process from them coming in the top of the funnel there at the Google Ad Words, the sales landing page, all the follow-up stuff.  That’s really good advice.

I never thought of it that way ‘cause if you just get hired to write the letter, well maybe the letter could possibly just knock it out of the ballpark, but his Google Ad Words suck and they’re bringing in crappy unqualified traffic.  So excellent advice.

Not only excellent advice for helping copywriters make more money, but also to ensure your success and maybe you can present it to the client in that exact way that ‘Look, I want this to be successful.  If I just write your landing page I can’t really 100 percent guarantee this is gonna succeed, but if I do this from the Google Ad Words to all the follow-up auto responders, we found that we get an X percent better conversion.

So yes, Mr. Prospect, I understand that it’s more than you wanted to budget for just your sales letter or your landing page, but by doing it this way and having me write all these services for you, we’re guaranteeing the success of the project.’

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; exactly.  If it’s a guy that’s already got a successful business and he’s looking for you to help make it better, then it can become an ongoing relationship, too.  You’re gonna be like, ‘Okay, well just get back to me.  We’re tracking everything.  Let’s figure out what’s breaking down in the process.’

Then at that point it’s just ‘So we’re getting people to buy it, but we’re not getting enough traffic.  Okay; maybe we need to tweak the Ad Words ad to open up the funnel a little more, get more people in there’ or ‘We’re getting so much traffic it’s converting poorly now and it’s not as profit – okay, let’s tighten up the Ad Words ad.’

So it’s different parts of the process that you could work on after the initial sale with him and he’ll appreciate it too because you care about the success of the project.

If you’re just honest about all this stuff ‘cause this is truth, like a big part of the process is everything that happens before the sale, before they land on your landing page.  So if you’re honest about all this and you’re honest about ‘Oh, I could quote you a really low price, but it’s not really gonna be worth my time and I don’t think it’s gonna give you the best measure of success or chance of success.’  They’ll be like, ‘Well that sounds pretty logical.’

Then you can just help each other out and make good money.

Doberman Dan:    That’s great advice.  That tip right there is worth a lot of money to any copywriter.  Hey, let’s go through a few more of these questions.

Byron in the UK is really late.  I think they’re like five hours ahead of us or six hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.  It’s 9:21 Eastern Standard Time in the U.S.  I think he’s staying up really late.  So that’s for being on the call, Byron.

He asks, ‘Is video script about to be the new copy standard for the web?’  I know you write for a lot of really big online marketers so what’s your take on that?  You’ve written some video scripts so what’s your take on that?  Is that an up and coming thing for copywriters?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; I think it’s one of those things you should get good at.  It’s never gonna replace text on the web I don’t think, at least not in the foreseeable future, like close future.  There’s a lot of reasons why, but I just don’t see it replacing text at any point soon.

I haven’t done extensive testing on it, but one time I remember I put a video on one of my landing pages and I was driving traffic to it and I was split testing it against a landing page without the video and the one without the video pulled the same.

So, sometimes it doesn’t even help.  I think it’s definitely something to get good at.  Actually I think I stumbled on a dude’s site the other day.  He presented himself solely as a video sales letter writer.  He had a little video sales letter on his home page.  Actually, no, I think he had a sales letter underneath his video.

But yeah, I think it’s important.  A lot of the gurus are using it because there’s a lot of things like with the product launch process.  A lot of times the prospects are so sold they’re not even reading the whole sales letter.  They’re going straight to the order form, but there’s many different personality types of people and certain people will read every word of a sales letter twice and print it out and think about the decision and this and that.

Then there’s other people that skim through the headline.  They’re like, ‘Okay, this is one of them sales letter things.  Let me scroll – oh, okay, there’s a price, okay.’  Then they click the button.  Or someone will just look for an order button, click it, go look at the price and like, ‘Okay, I think I’ll skim through the sales letter now.’

So you’ve got all types of different people so I think video’s good in that respect because kinesthetic people that respond to touch more and we can’t touch people through the internet yet, but we got visuals and auditories and things like that.  So it’s definitely a good component.  I don’t think it’s a cure all for anything yet, but it’s definitely something to become skilled at and add it to your repertoire.

If you’re not just another copywriter, but you’re a copywriter who also does product launches, who specializes in video scripts and things like that, then you’re gonna do better.  You have more to offer a client, just like we were talking about before, than someone that just writes sales letters.

Doberman Dan:    Yep; good point.  Just one more thing to add to your repertoire.  Somebody wants to know – Nick in Lakeville wants to know ‘Do you write in Microsoft Word or what program do you write in?’

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; I do Word and then I copy everything over to Dream Weaver and design all the sales letters in there.

Doberman Dan:    When you’re submitting copy to a client is Microsoft Word pretty much the standard that everybody wants the file sent as?

Caleb Osborne:    Oh; yeah.  There’s another good question.  That’s another thing as like an additional service.  I almost always layout the sales letters in html format and upload them on my web site so that – David Ogleby talked about this or at least I heard a quote that he talked about this.  I didn’t read any of his books yet.  Although I’m gonna get to it.  I swear.  That whenever he presented an ad to the client, he didn’t just give them an ad.  He’d put it in a mock-up of the newspaper or whatever so they get the full impact of it.

So if it’s gonna be an online sales letter and you have the skills and they’re gonna lay it out on the web, in addition that’s something else you’re adding value to the sales letter so you can tack that onto the price.  Then if you’re having to sell the job or if they’re kind of iffy-washy, like ‘Okay, well I’ll take away the web design and that’ll knock such and such off your price and I can just deliver it to you in Microsoft Word format and you can get a guy off e-lance to design it or whatever.’

But Mr. Client, I do specialize in direct response design and impactful layout and this and that, if you have that skill, which isn’t hard to learn.  Sales letters are very basic html.  If you just poke around the web and see what people are doing you’ll pick it up pretty quickly.

Doberman Dan:    That’s good advice.  If you don’t have that skill you could always find somebody who does.  When you include that in your price, just price that extra service of delivering the copy formatted as a web page.  Just figure in the price of what you know you’re gonna have to pay somebody to do it and add that on.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; there’s e-lance.  There’s a lot of people there.  Other than e-lance there’s people in the Philippines you can hire for – well you can hire full-time for really cheap, like under $1,000.00 a month, like 600 bucks or even like $200.00 if you do it directly with those people if you can find them.

But yeah, you could always just be like, ‘Okay, it’s $600.00 for the actual web design, but you’re paying 200 to a guy on e-lance so you profit 400.  So it’s almost like just having another product.

Doberman Dan:    Exactly.  Darrell in Spokane, Washington wants to know, ‘Where can we get a copy of Caleb’s first letter, the one Halbert said we should swipe?’  Do you still have that/

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; I think it’s still up on my samples page.

Doberman Dan:    What’s your web site?

Caleb Osborne:    Calebosborneconsulting.com.  Then go ahead and opt in and then that’ll bring you to the samples page.  Don’t worry.  I think I have one auto responder message to tell you the truth ‘cause that’s the one that points to the samples, but right after you confirm it’ll send you to the samples page.  It’s the one – what the heck is it.  Dollar bill letter or something like that is the title of it, but I think I put in parentheses, ‘This is the one Gary Halbert said was really good.’

When you look at it you’ll see why Gary liked it.  It was totally his type of letter.  Like just totally swiped from Gary.

Doberman Dan:    Calebosborneconsulting.com and Osborne is spelled O-S-B-O-R-N-E, right?

Caleb Osborne:    Correct; yeah, there’s no U.  Me and Ozzie Osbourne differ in that respect.

Doberman Dan:    We got a bunch of questions.  We covered the main ones ‘cause a lot of them are duplicates.  One, I’ve gotten a bunch – I know this is gonna be hard to answer, but Andrew in Los Angeles.  ‘I’m just starting out.  How much should I charge for various types of copy, i.e. sales letter, brochure, web page?’  Do you have any kind of guidelines you can share with us about that?

Caleb Osborne:    I really don’t.  A sales letter is pretty in-depth so even when I was starting out I don’t think I would have done it for less than 1,000, if you’re really timid about pricing stuff.

Brochures, I don’t know.  I guess in the hundreds.  I don’t really do a lot of brochures or anything like that.  Yeah; but I mean it’s kind of just seeing what you can get I guess.  In talking to a client you can find out where they are, but don’t get timid, too.  State your price ‘cause you can always negotiate, but state what you’d like to get out of it.

That’s probably just a good guideline.  Just be confident and state what you wanna get out of it, why it’s worth that amount and then have a back-up plan about like we were talking about, ‘Okay, I can take away this or that.  Well if you can refer me to five of your friends’ or something like that.  I don’t know.  ‘Then I could give you a discount’ something like that.  I’m not sure.

Doberman Dan:    That advice would have saved me a lot of heartache when I first started taking clients that don’t just present the price of writing the sales letter.  Present all the other services, too and it gives you points to negotiate on.  ‘Well, okay, this total package price is out of your budget.  I can appreciate that.  So we’ll take off the Google Ad Word.  We’ll take off the auto responder series.’  Blah, blah, blah.

‘We’re down to this and that and now we’re within your budget, Mr. Prospect.’  I wish I would have known that when I was doing client work.

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; no doubt, right.  I just discovered it the last couple years or so, but yeah, it’s definitely good.

That goes the other way, too.  If you’ve already gotten work from somebody or you’re about to get work or maybe they’re already sold on doing a sales letter, then you can always up sell them, too.  Just like in a department store.  If you go in to buy $100.00 suit, it’s nothin’ to pick up the $20.00 pair of socks and the $50.00 tie because it seems small in comparison to the big item.  So you can always offer additional things.

Doberman Dan:    That’s right.  Hey, we’ve gone over time.  There’s just one more thing I wanna ask you about.

Caleb Osborne:    Sure.

Doberman Dan:    You aren’t just solely a freelance copywriter for clients.  You’ve taken what you’ve learned and you do your own projects, too.  Do you have any advice about that or any guidelines?

Caleb Osborne:    Yeah; let’s see.  Do it as soon as possible.  Find a niche you like or you think you could do well in or if you’re really set on being a copywriter, maybe the internet marketing education type niche, even if you’re just writing books about yourself and you sell them for like nine bucks or something like that about how to write copy and things like that.  That’s still positioning you as somebody who’s written some books and you can sell them and maybe you’ll make a couple bucks here and there.

But yeah, get started doing something, some of your own products.  It’ll help you appreciate from both sides of the equation, what you would look for if you were gonna hire a copywriter.  It’ll help you appreciate the whole process.

Maybe some of the things you read in books really doesn’t test out in the real world.  You can offer additional experiences to your client that you wouldn’t have ever known if you never were selling your own products.

I just believe overall it’s a better model.  Here’s the thing.  Okay.  Say you charge 2,000, $3,000.00 to a client and you write this letter and you put weeks into it and hours into it and so much skull sweat and it’s absolutely the best thing you got and you give it to ‘em and he’s like, ‘Oh yeah, this is awesome.’

He turns around the next week and he makes six figures with it.  You only gotta do that a couple times before you start questioning you’re making good money, but you question what side of the equation you should be on.  Ya’ know what I mean?  So it’s definitely better to be on that other side of the equation and be making yourself wealthy as well.

It’s one of the things too that copyrighting is highly leveraged out, like you’re making good money, but you still have to work.  You’re still trading dollars for hours.  So anything you can do to put yourself in a position where the work you do once pays you forever is a good thing to do.

Doberman Dan:    Excellent advice.  Hey, I really appreciate you being on the call tonight.  Got a lot of questions and a lot of positive feedback from people listening in on the webcast.  So thanks a lot.  There’s still a lot of stuff we didn’t get to cover so hopefully you’ll be up to doing another one sometime soon.

Caleb Osborne:    Okay; yeah.  Anything for you buddy.

Doberman Dan:    Appreciate it.  Give out your web site again if people wanna get more information about you or if they’re interested in hiring a copywriter.

Caleb Osborne:    Okay.  It’s Caleb, C-A-L-E-B, and Osborne, O-S-B-O-R-N-E and that’s consulting, C-O-N-S-U-L-T-I-N-G. com.  Calebosborneconsulting.com. Yeah; you can get all the scoop there and sign up through the little opt in form and get access to the samples.

I probably will not hit you up with the next product launch, but no problems.

Doberman Dan:    Alright.  Hey, thanks a lot.  There’s some ideas, like I said, in my promotion for the teleseminar, you’re one of my few go-to guys and somebody I always bounce ideas off of.  There’s actually an idea I do wanna bounce off of ya’, but we went a little longer than I said we would tonight so I’ll give you a ring tomorrow and we can catch up about that.

Caleb Osborne:    Okay; sounds good, man.

Doberman Dan:    Thanks again Caleb, I appreciate it.

Caleb Osborne:    You’re welcome Dan.  Goodnight everybody.

Doberman Dan:    Good night.

Caleb Osborne:    Bye.

[End of Audio]