nick usborne's blog

Should you work as a direct mail copywriter or an online copywriter?

To help you make the right decision, consider this:

The Washington Post reported recently that “In the past year alone, the Postal Service has seen the single largest drop-off in mail volume in its 234-year history…. That downward trend is only accelerating. The Postal Service projects a decline of about 10 billion pieces of mail in each of the next two years, going from a high of 213 billion pieces of mail in 2006 to 170 billion projected for 2010.”

Get the picture? Direct mail is dying. Many people will tell you this isn’t the case, but it is. The numbers don’t lie.

Combine the figures above with the news that $65 BILLION in marketing dollars have moved online this year alone and you should get a pretty clear picture of where you should focus your energies and attention.

Of course, becoming a sought-after online copywriter means you need to get some training. You need to know what you are doing and deliver impressive results for your clients.

That’s why I wrote my course, Nick Usborne’s Million Dollar Secrets to Online Copywriting.

This course will take you precisely to where the money is. Companies large and small are desperate to find qualified copywriters who can help them improve the performance of their websites.

This course gives you all the knowledge you need when approaching your prospects.

If you missed my teleseminar on writing money-making websites, you can get a copy of the recording now.

Last week I spoke for an hour to an audience of over 1,500 people about the process I follow to make a 5-figure passive income each month simply by writing my own websites.

If you couldn’t make it and would like to listen to the recording of the call, you’ll find it here.

There is no charge.

And if you decide you would like a copy of my Money-Making Websites program, you’ll find we are offering some very special bonuses, which are good until July 3oth.

“I would like to build a money-making website, but have zero site-building skills. What can I do?”

Good question. Tons of people have great ideas for websites and a lot of passion about their topic, but have no idea how to go about creating the site itself.

There are various options you can take. You can do what I did and learn to use a program like Adobe Dreamweaver to build and create your site and its pages. You then set up a hosting account and FTP your pages as you create them.

Yes, there is a learning curve. And the software is not cheap.

If you are looking for a low-tech alternative, consider SiteBuildIt (SBI). This is the platform I used to create CoffeeDetective.com. There are various ways to use it, but if you have no technical skills, then use the “block builder” approach, which is super-simple and allows you to cut and paste your content into boxes and build pages that way.

You can learn more about how I used SBI from a case history site I created called SiteBuildItSuccess.com.

On the subject of SBI, which I like a lot, some people have asked whether it is necessary to buy both my Money Making Websites program AND SBI. After all, SBI does come with its own instruction manuals, videos etc.

I think you would do best to use both. Why? Here are some views taken from the Money Making Websites forums.

"I have an SBI site already and found Nick’s program to be the perfect companion. I don’t know if he’s just a better teacher or if it just clicks because I’ve slogged through SBI’s tutorials but I wish I had his program when I started out because my site would be better."

"Then this spring, I saw Nick's course, and I thought that would be a good addition to my learning--I already have his writing for web sites course. So I bought it, and it really meshes well with SBI!

I like that he covers how to find your passion and how to decide if your idea will make money. They writing area is also excellent.”

"The two (SBI and Nick's course) are totally complementary. What SBI does is take all the frustration out of building a web business by supplying all of the software you need all through a web interface so you do not need to learn (and purchase) add-ons (I am not a web geek and do not want to become one). They also teach you how to do that with a great Action Guide.

Nick - because he comes from an AWAI approach - puts the emphasis on how you research and choose your niche as well as how you should write (very important). He also takes you through all the potential problems and how to avoid them. He does not teach the web details, and in fact recommends you use SBI for that."

Resources:

How to Write Your Own Money-Making Websites

SiteBuildItSuccess

SiteBuildIt

Adobe Dreamweaver

U.S. Companies are moving $65 Billion advertising dollars online.

Not Millions, but Billions.

To put that into context, listen to what Anthea Stratigos of Outsell Inc. said in a recent interview in Forbes Magazine. "To scale that, compare the total U.S. TV and cable advertising revenue for 2009, which is about $66 billion. The marketing dollars companies now spend on their own sites is equivalent to all TV ad revenue for the year."

Pause and think about that. $65 BILLION  that is no longer going to be spent on traditional media, but is going to be spent on online advertising and company websites.

How will that money be used? Anthea predicts, “Page content, Web analytics, search engine optimization and site design. Most of them have invested in social networking platforms to create direct dialogues with their consumers.”

So here is my question for you.

Do you plan to invest your career as a copywriter on writing for traditional media, or for online media?

Do you plan to build your future as a traditional copywriter or an online copywriter?

Keep in mind that the figure of $65 Billion is not a projection for the next five or ten years. It’s the amount of marketing and advertising money moving from TV and print to the web THIS year.

For some time I have been advocating that copywriters urgently need to upgrade their skills and get into the business of being an online copywriter.

For those who haven’t believed me, maybe you’ll believe all those billions of dollars.

If you are ready to take the plunge and take your share of that $65 Billion shift, be sure to check out my online copywriting course.

The real magic of coaching isn’t about learning tips and tricks from your from your coach.

On my coaching site for freelancer writers and copywriters  I talk about some of the specific ways in which a coach can help grow your business.

But, in reality, the items I list are there simply because I know that people like to see specific ways in which I can help them. They want to see “five ways” in which coaching can help them.

But the biggest benefit isn’t in those lists.

The real magic of coaching isn’t about what I can “teach’ for my clients, it’s about how I can help them overcome internal constraints of their own.

When I think back to when I used a coach myself, I remember he asked me whether I would like to double my income. Without thinking about it, I simply laughed and said, “I don’t want to double it, I want to increase it by ten times.”

By asking the question, he allowed me to open something inside of myself that had been invisible and closed up until that moment. My ambition was larger than I thought. That was a transformational moment for me.

There were other times during our coaching that he managed to open other doors that I hadn’t even realized were closed.

I don’t think he ever told me anything I didn’t know before. He didn’t offer me five “killer” ways to grow my business. He just helped peel back the internal constraints that were holding me back.

That’s the true magic of coaching.

How do I find the best keywords when I write new pages for my money-making websites?

I get a lot of questions from people who want to know how to find the keywords that have the best demand/supply ratio. The idea being, of course, to choose words and phrases which are in high demand, but for which there is relatively little quality supply.

Getting this right is a key component in the revenue model underlying my money-making websites program.

I use a few different tools.

The first tool, which is free, is the Google AdWords Tool. Designed for use by marketers writing PPC ads, it is freely accessible to everyone and enables you to “eyeball” the demand/supply ratio on keywords. With this tool you want a high search volume and low advertiser competition. This isn’t the most precise or flexible way to find good keywords, but it is a very good guide and it’s free.

When I absolutely want to be sure I’m finding the keywords with the best potential, I use one of three tools which I have to pay for.

One of my favourites is Wordtracker. It feels like they have been online for as long as I have. You can take a free trial, but after that there is a fee to pay. With Wordtracker you can really drill down and get very precise details on the potential of both your primary and long tail keywords.

Another good tool, although I don’t use it as often, is KeywordDiscovery. They slice and dice things a little differently than Wordtracker, but still give you invaluable data on the words that will work best for you.

Finally, if you use SiteBuildIt as the platform on which you create your website, there is an excellent keyword analysis tool included within the service. You can’t access it unless you buy the entire service. But, interestingly, buying the entire service costs less than the annual fees for the other major keyword search services I use. Is their tool in some way “junior” to the other keyword tools I use? Perhaps surprisingly, it’s isn’t. It’s excellent.

These are tools with which I have personal experience, although there are plenty of others out there.

Do you have to pay for one of these last three, or can you get by with the free Google tool?  You can get by with the Google tool, if you have to. But in all honesty, I would try to bite the bullet and find the money for one of the paid services. They give you much more accurate and in-depth results, and will ensure that you build your money-making website on a firm foundation.