The Six-Figure Second Income: How to Start and Grow a Successful Online Business Without Quitting Your Day Job (29 page)

chapter.

The second clue is the e-mail subject line, or the first line in a Google AdWords ad, or

a headline in a printed piece. If it’s relevant to the reader’s passion then it instantly is

saved and maybe opened on the spot. If I’m a Harley motorcycle nut and that first line is

about Harleys, wel , that’s a keeper.

If you haven’t yet established a relationship with someone, then the best way of

answering Money Question One is to make it clear your message is about your info

product topic. Because you’re not using the scattershot approach but have focused your

efforts on people that care about your topic, then it wil resonate with them.

Just don’t do the Buy Me! approach with it. Instead, engage the reader in the topic,

along the lines of: Final y: A Way to Groom Your Schnauzer without Grief, or it might be

Organic Heirloom Tomato Tips.

You might not get the best headline from the get-go but it’s worth experimenting. The

goal is not to get readers to buy your stuff. The goal is to get them to stop and give you

not a split-second of attention but now 10 seconds of further attention. That brings us to

the next Money Question.

Money Question Two: “Why Should I Read the Whole Thing?”

As I said, you now maybe have 10 seconds to sel the reader not on your product but on

reading the rest of the letter, postcard, or web page.

Once again, I’m going to suggest something that wil total y separate you from the

pack, and that is to load up your sales message with good, solid, usable information.

Think about what happens when you stop, open a letter, and read it over: Within seconds

you get a sense either that it’s merely a sales pitch or that it’s something more.

Most people like to buy stuff but they hate to be sold. They want to approach a product

on their own terms because they want it. The pure sales letter that talks only about the

promoter, then the product, and the price—wel , that’s a pure act of being sold.

That won’t be you. Instead, the beginning of your sales letter can honestly say

something like, “By the time you’re done reading this letter, you’l know three specific

techniques I’ve found to accelerate the composting process that’s so vital when growing

organic heirloom tomatoes.”

What have you just done? Right up front, in the space of that 10 seconds of attention,

you just sold those readers on going through the rest of your letter.

At this point, you proceed to give them three solid tips they can immediately use.

When they read those, they’l think, ″Hey, that was some good stuff! I knew one of the tips

already but the other two were interesting. I wonder what else this person has.″

There’s a way to amplify their interest in your product, and that’s by showing that you

are one of them. You do this by entering the conversation already going on in their

heads. For instance, if you did an info product on bikers you would know that many of

them detest the government dictating that bikers wear helmets. To them the government

is the enemy, so your text might say, “Are you sick and tired of being treated like a baby

by a government that can’t even balance its own budget?” With a statement like that, a

whole lot of bikers wil know you’re one of them.

Here are some great ways to show you’re in tune with your readers. It’s al information

you should have gathered in your product-research stage.

• Describe the common enemy—as in the biker example.

• Graphical y outline what keeps the readers up at night. It might be insurance

company paperwork, or grubs attacking their lawns, or the skyrocketing price of

something.

• Al ude to what frustrates them the most. Is it employees? Is it having to reset the

Acme Mark VI Widget every time it cycles?

• On a positive note, describe what they desire the most with this passion of

theirs. Is it to win the Westminster Dog Show? Could it be to show up the neighbor

down the street with a much bigger and better tomato?

• Use their jargon. Most groups instantly know outsiders because they don’t

speak the insiders’ language. In the world of competitive shotgunning, for example,

the term to go straight has nothing to do with sexual preference. It refers to breaking

25 targets out of 25. If you said, “. . . and when you successful y shoot at 25 clay

targets . . . ,” you would have instantly tipped off readers that you’re an outsider. If you

said, “. . . and when you go straight . . . ,″now you’re one of them.

When you talk about their deep concerns they’l be in much more of a buying mood

because you weren’t jamming your product down their throats. In addition, your helpful

information had the effect of automatical y proving that you’re different from the rest, and

your readers wil relax—you seem to be an authority on their favorite topic and not just

some huckster.

Money Question Three: “What Else DoYou Have and How Will It Help Me?

With al the preparation you’ve done in the preceding steps you real y now have their

attention—that is, unless you prematurely blow it with overt sales talk.

At this point, you should introduce al the other solutions you have. It can be as easy as

saying, “If you found those three tips helpful then you’l be happy to know that there’s

much more where they came from. In fact, I’ve col ected more than two dozen tips from

four top professional groomers. . . .″

This is the stage where you should get highly specific about the what and not the how.

In other words, you want to amplify their desire for the rest of your information by

explaining al the good things they’l discover in your product.

An example of giving them the what—which is what you want to do—is: “I’ve devoted

an entire chapter on how to restore your Brother CS-6000i to factory-new condition.

You’l be able to fol ow my 14 steps in under a half hour, and you wil be pleasantly

surprised at how easy it was.”

An example of giving them the how—which is NOT what you should do—is: “In

Chapter 4 I’l explain that you must first take out the spindle before removing the three

pins, or else you’l never get those pins back in properly.”

Why is it bad to give them that detail? Because you’ve already established your

expertise with the free and useful information you gave them. Now you’re cannibalizing

some of the meat in your info product and loading more of it into the sales letter. You run

the risk that they’l either be disappointed after they buy your product because you

already told them half the goodies in it, or they’l not buy the product because now you’ve

answered al their questions.

By al means get detailed on the results they’l enjoy after getting your product. For

instance, you can describe how they’l never have to worry about taking harsh and

sometimes dangerous medicines for kidney stones again. Then you can explain how

they’l have three easy diet tweaks that are likely to prevent kidney stones from ever

appearing again.

Remember that simply listing features is not good enough. People don’t go to the

hardware store to buy quarter-inch dril bits—they go to the hardware store to buy quarter

inch holes. They don’t care about the dril bits but recognize that the bit wil get them the

holes.

Therefore, real y focus on those results. A handy way to do that is to continual y ask

yourself,
″So what?″
If I’m sel ing the Brother sewing machine info product, my thinking

would be:

“You’l get my complete guide to the CS-6000i . . . (so what?) . . . which means that

you’l spend less time fiddling with the controls . . . (so what?) . . . and you can use that

time to make even more great clothes . . . (so what?) . . . which can not only save you

money but wil mean that you can wear the latest fashions long before they’re in stores. . .

.″

Do you see how repeatedly asking yourself that question results in digging deeper

into the core emotions people have? It’s this level of communication that makes people

decide,
″I need
this
product.″

Money Question Four: “Why IsYour Solution Better than Any Other?”

You certainly don’t want to get your readers this far, only to have them think,
″This
is al

good information, but it sounds pretty much like what Acme Industries sent me just last

week, and everyone seems to buy from Acme, so maybe I do need the product but I’l

play it safe and buy from
Acme.″

That’s the worst of both worlds for you! You did a great job of sel ing your prospect on

your competitor’s product. What you must do to counteract that risk is to craft what’s

known as your unique sel ing proposition, or USP. If you craft your USP correctly then

there is no direct competition.

• You don’t want to be just another tomato book—your guide is the first one to

apply 100 percent organic methods to the growing of heirloom tomatoes.

• You’re not just another dog-grooming guide—yours is the only one to focus on

Schnauzers exclusively, and it includes more than two dozen ways to get knots, burrs,

grease, and other nasty substances out of their fur.

• Sure the Brother CS-6000i ships with an owner’s manual—your guide is the

only one to combine large, clear diagrams with a video that starts with unpacking the

box, al the way through sewing a dozen different stitches.

When you achieve this uniqueness, then it wil be impossible to regard your product as

just another commodity for which price is the only distinguishing factor. You’l stand alone.