excess voice: nick usborne's blog

The Freelance Copywriter’s Guide to Finding a Profitable Niche

This post if for freelance copywriters.

I have just finished producing a 50-minute audio program on how to pick the right niche for your freelance copywriting business.

This is the first audio product I have created and I chose this topic because finding the right niche is so fundamental to the success of any freelancer’s business.

Pick the wrong niche, and you might be limiting your income potential dramatically. Beyond that, you could end up doing the kind of work that makes you miserable.

During the course of 50 minutes I talk about what a “niche” is exactly, and how to define it...and I go through six points to address that will help you determine whether any given niche is a good fit for your own strengths, writing style and lifestyle goals.

You can read and hear more about this audio presentation  here...

The perfect e-newsletter – from Gerry McGovern

If Gerry gets to read this, he will probably be surprised. We haven’t seen each other or corresponded for some time now.

But while preparing my report, The 6 Elements of a content-rich, money-making e-newsletter, I was trying to remember which e-newsletter I had subscribed to for the longest time.

And the answer is: NEW THINKING by Gerry McGovern.

How has he held my attention for the last five years or so?

By sending me useful, relevant content, once a week. 

The format has stayed the same all along. He writes a short article. He announces the dates of his upcoming Masterclass training days.

And that’s it.

Job one is the delivery of valuable content in the form of an article.

Job two is promoting the dates and locations of his Masterclasses.

He holds his readers’ attention with his articles.

He monetizes that attention with his Masterclasses.

Best of all...he doesn’t add any clutter.

Perfect.

The 6 Elements of a content-rich, money-making e-newsletter

I have written another one of my Conversion Rate Checklist Reports.

This report is about e-newsletters, and how a really good, content-rich e-newsletter can hold the attention of tens of thousands of subscribers week after week, and year after year.

You build attention with great content, and then monetize that attention with relevant offers.

E-newsletter may not be in the news as much as video and podcasts right now. But I can’t think of a better way to get in front of a loyal, attentive group of readers week in and week out.

Yes, I’m a big fan of e-newsletters.

Learn more and buy: The 6 Elements of a content-rich, money-making e-newsletter

Check out CopyBlogger

Now that I have spent some time on the site, I feel almost embarrassed to admit that until last week I have never even heard of CopyBlogger.

It’s a great place. There are a variety of copywriters contributing with posts, and a large number of people adding comments.

As a blog, it is succeeding where many forums fail – that is to say, it has created a vibrant community of copywriters, many of whom seem to contribute on a regular basis.

Well worth adding to your favorites list of RSS feed list.

Trouble buying one of my Conversion Rate Checklist Reports?

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I recently uploaded the first two of a series of Conversion Rate Checklist Reports to FreeIQ.

6 Questions to ask yourself when writing Subject Lines for your emails

and...

7 Ways to Optimize the Performance of Your Home Page

However, over the last week a number of people emailed me saying they had tried to purchase one or both reports, but had problems with the checkout pages.

I spoke with the folks at FreeIQ and it seems they have had some teething problems with their shopping cart.

If you have tried to purchase a report, but hit a glitch in the cart, email me and we’ll figure something out through PayPal.

You can find a full list of all my “non-article” content at ConversionInsights.com

Is it just me, or are the “best emails” simply awful?

I am trying to write an article about email and need to find three “kick ass” emails, as the editor describes them.

This is a tough task.

One email I looked at is an award-winning welcome email from Dell.

Here is the first paragraph:

“We're thrilled that you're interested in receiving the Dell Small Business E-mail Updates! With exceptional value, online shopping convenience and a huge product selection, Dell is the smart choice for all your business technology. We don't make technology for just anyone. We make it for only one. You.”

Well. Maybe it’s just me, but as far as I’m concerned this is just self-serving garbage.

They are writing a welcome message, and the best they can do is start by telling me how great they are?

As for those last couple of lines...

“We don't make technology for just anyone. We make it for only one. You.”

This is the truly horrible.

First, the message is not true. They DO make technology for just anyone. They don’t make it just for me. It’s a lie, and a ridiculous one at that.

It’s copywriting at its most self indulgent. Trying to be clever. And, I guess, hoping I will believe the message.

Good luck. The day I believe that Dell makes stuff only for me is the day I’ll believe that Ford really cares.

(Yes, I know that Dell will customize my order. But that's not what they are saying here. They say thay make technology just for me. If you have a strong value proposition, use it...but be specific and accurate.)

The thing is, when someone trusts you enough and is interested enough to sign up for your emails or e-newsletters...show them a little respect.

Welcome letters can be powerful things. But not if you use them to stand on a soap box and use overblown ad-speak to tell people how wonderful you are.

Job one for this email should have been to confirm that the reader was right to trust Dell with his or her email address.

Job two should have been to deliver useful and helpful information to the reader.

Job seven thousand, three hundred and fifty seven should have been to say what a great company Dell is.

Do experts always get the basics right?

My first instinct is to say no. And I think I’m right.

This morning I had a brief email chat with the always excellent Mark Brownlow of Email Marketing Reports.

He had purchased a copy of my short report, 6 Questions to ask yourself when writing Subject Lines for your emails.

In his blog he described it as being good advice for those with little experience.

And he’s right. The report talks about six fundamental points one should address when writing a subject line.

But I have to admit I was disappointed when he said that. Not that his point wasn’t accurate, but because I felt it sounded like the report was light-weight and not worth reading if you had some real experience with email.

The thing is, I didn’t write it just with beginners in mind. I wrote it after years of experience had taught me that sophisticated marketers often rush their subject lines, and rarely consider all six points I covered.

But Mark’s observation was helpful in an important way. It made me think of the problem I face when trying to create short, simple content for an experienced audience.

How does one remind experts of the fundamentals, without appearing that you are talking to beginners?

I’m not sure. But I’m going to give it a lot of thought.

If I have learned one thing after the last ten years of writing and consulting for businesses large and small online, it’s that experienced marketers often get too tied up in what they have learned recently, and fail to address the simple fundamentals they learned when they got started.

Adding audio and video to Wordpress, and elsewhere.

Yesterday I watched a webinar in which Mike Stewart went through the steps of how to create audio and video clips and then add them to Wordpress.

I must admit, I had never heard of Mike before. But he is a great communicator and his explanation of how to create, edit and upload audio and video to your blog or web site was dead simple.

He has a course that goes into more detail. Based on how he handled his topic in the webinar, I imagine his course would be great either for people with limited online skills or experience...or for people like me, who just like to be shown the simplest way to try something new.

As with everything new online, the process of adding audio and video to your blog or web site isn’t very hard...but the thought of scaling yet another learning curve can be off-putting.

As for the benefits of using your own audio and video, I think those have quickly become self-evident. More attention, high conversion rates, more sales.

Mike has an information and sales page for his "Audio Video In Wordpress" Home Study Course here...

7 Ways to Optimize the Performance of Your Home Page

In my last post I talked about how FreeIQ makes it easy for me to upload and present “non-article” content like PDFs, audio, video, webinars and more.

They made it easy, so I’m getting started.

One of the first things I am doing is creating a series of short “Conversion Rate Checklist Reports”.

These are short reports, just 10 to 20 pages long, some with screenshot illustrations.

The idea is to focus in on a single aspect of online marketing, and then present a number of ways in which one can make improvements and increase conversion rates.

These are pretty much the same checklists I use myself when optimizing pages and emails for my own clients.

More often than not, I have either been involved in testing, or found another source of test data that supports each recommendation.

You can find out more about 7 Ways to Optimize the Performance of Your Home Page here...

And at any time, you can check out the growing list of Conversion Rate Checklist Reports here at CoversionInsights.com.

Make it easy, and I'll try it.

In my last post I talked about a new site, FreeIQ. I’m quite enjoying it. It doesn’t enable me to do anything I couldn’t have done before. But it does make it easy.

Over the last few weeks I have created a few audio presentations, plus a couple of PDF guides...all of which I have uploaded to my page at FreeIQ.

I have also created a new site, devoted to what I plan to be a growing list of downloadable audio and video content...ConversionInsights.com.

It’s strange how these things work. I find it incredibly simple to create a short audio “article”. But I had never done it before, simply because nobody had made it “easy enough” for me.

And “making it easy” probably lies at the success of many online ventures.

YouTube didn’t invent any new technologies. They simply made it easy to upload and share videos.

LinkedIn didn’t invent anything particularly remarkable either. They simply made it easy to network with one’s peers.

And so on. People love ease of use. They love convenience.

There are plenty more opportunities out for making things easy.