If you want your headlines to stop readers in their tracks, pay attention to every word of your copy, and click that “Add to Cart” button without a second thought, you need to master the “headline reading psychology” of your soon-to-be customers.

Once you understand why magnetic headlines pull readers in, you’ll know how to do it for your own sales pages, every time. Follow along with me for the next ninety seconds and I’ll show you exactly how you can turn a casual browser of your sales page into an avid reader, curious to drink in your copy until ultimately hitting the “Buy” button.

First, get relevant: Tell your readers’ they’re in the right place

So many people create clever turns of phrase hoping to pull people into their sales copy and wonder why their catchy headlines just don’t work. The answer is simple: Readers are busy people, and they don’t have time to study your sales letter to see if it’s relevant to them. Instead, they rely on you to do that work for them.

But how do you do that? The answer to that is simple as well: You ensure your headline is clear, not clever, telling the reader exactly what your sales copy is poised to deliver.

Use specific keywords that show without a doubt that your page is relevant to people with a specific need or a specific problem – and don’t over-think it. If you’re a blogger, you probably already do this with your post titles, so apply that same thinking to your headlines.

For example, look at the title for this post – it’s about “how to write headlines.” (Ever wonder why you always hear such high praise for “How to” headlines? It’s because they’re extremely relevant by nature. Keep in mind, however, that a “how to” headline might not be the most powerful choice for your particular sales page.

When it’s time to write your headline, think of the primary, top-of-mind problem or result your readers are after and make that the foundation of your headline. Do this right, and your readers will automatically know that they’re in the right place – and save your cleverness for later.

Next, add the carrot: Attach a powerful result to your headline

After you establish relevance to your readers’ immediate needs, you need to help your readers connect to a mouth-watering result that comes from addressing that need. The often quoted “How to ____ so you can ____” is a great example of bridging relevance to result.

Never forget that your readers aren’t looking for products or services – they’re looking for beneficial outcomes, and the relevant keywords you write into your headline are often the means to that outcome. So ask yourself why your readers want to take that relevant action, and you’ll be guided to a promise or two that you can make in your headline.

I’ll use this post as an example again – you’re reading this far because you want to know how to write headlines, but what you’re really after is getting people to buy from your sales page. Look at your browser title bar and you’ll see I worked that into this post’s headline as well.

Finally, dress it up: Add emotionally stirring and action words to your headline

Once you’ve married relevance to outcome, it’s time to add a little flavor to your headline by hand-picking compelling words to make those two features “pop.”

In this post I modified “headlines” with the adjective “eye-catching” to add some life to the text. I’ve also used the powerful transitive verb “transform” to suggest actionable change, which intensifies the promise of desired results.

Pick words that make the relevant keywords or the desired results seem more powerful and attainable – or simply add a third component to the headline like a timeframe or a variation of “easy” or “simple” (if it applies).

I could go into additional examples here, but you’ll find all that you need in the Magnetic Headlines series. Take a few moments to read through the posts there with a more educated eye, looking for how each example uses relevance, results, and powerful modifiers to make you want to read each post to the very end.

Which, now that you think about it, you’ve just done with this post.

Sharpen your skills – how can you improve your own headlines?

If you want to get better at writing sales page headlines today, take another ninety seconds right now and use these three tips on a recent headline you’ve created. In the comments below, show us your original – and improved version – and get those headline writing muscles working!

About the Author: Dave Navarro is a product launch manager who can’t wait for you to join the 7,000+ people using his free workbooks in the Launch Coach Library (a crowd favorite in the Third Tribe forums).

Henry Charles Bukowski, Jr. was arguably the greatest American fiction writer of the last half of the 20th century.

Fortunately for his book sales, most think of him as the archetypal drunk, misanthropic male pig.

Don’t let the hype fool you, though. Bukowski possessed the secret to something nearly every blogger wants: what makes truly immortal writing.

As I’ve only spent a few minutes with his now 16-year-old corpse lying in San Pedro (see photo above), I can’t speak to his personal life. But the words, the lines, the books, they are evidence of a generous, staggeringly imperfect, stoic genius and lover of life. Sure, a stack of tangled contradictions, who isn’t?

Before (and after) his relatively minor fame hit, Bukowski spent decades mailing his poems and stories to small press magazines, mimeographed booklet makers and the like. Thousands of pages, hundreds of thousands of words. Usually these would go out as originals, no carbon copies.

He once estimated that he’d lost hundreds of poems this way, the publisher usually wouldn’t return the rejected work, and it was gone forever.

It forced him to move on, to work deliberately, to punch through again and again and again without sentiment.

The poetry business, in my opinion, is largely an inbred, favor-driven, audience-less racket. Most folks don’t think about poetry until Terry Gross drags some poor, expressive soul into her studio for a literary interview. And when he or she begins to talk, most folks switch the channel.

Bukowski eventually acquired a raving audience despite this reality. An audience that continues to grow exponentially 16 years after his death. An audience that begs, borrows and steals to get his stuff. An audience that he famously never chased down. An audience that he, in fact, largely pushed away.

How did he do it? How did he go on to sell endless books of poetry and finally lay down in the dirt making an almost six-figure literary income? Several reasons of course, but try this one on for size …

The secret is in the line.

~ Charles Bukowski

Yeah, I know. Don’t dismiss that. Read it again.

The secret is in the line.

~ Charles Bukowski

No 10 point PR plan.

No elaborate structure.

No budget.

No reader polls.

No blog.

The secret is in the line.

~ Charles Bukowski

Sure, Twitter wasn’t around in 1980. And he eventually had John Martin at Black Sparrow Press backing him. But Bukowski himself attributed so much weight to the single line that it eclipsed all else in his philosophy of writing. If the single line was magnificent, the rest would take care of itself.

In a 60,000 word novel, the working focus was on the single line.

In the dirty stories sold to skin mags for money, the working focus was on the single line.

In a small poem that maybe 50 people would read, the working focus was on the single line.

Not easy. Not fast. But this must certainly be the path to immortal (and powerfully influential) writing.

If you can stomach it.

If not, there’s always a place for you in the pedestrian lane.

About the Author: Robert Bruce is an American writer. And day job man. And beer drinker. And Presbyterian. All from the rain and fog of Portland, Ore. Get him on Twitter.

The problem with doing what I do online is that I have no idea how to describe what it is that I do. You may think that’s dumb fodder for a Wrap-Up intro, but since I’ve established that gloomy 80’s guitarists and product placement tattoos are fair game, an identity crisis should fit right in.

Telling folks that I build blogs and websites is accurate but doesn’t give the whole picture, since I also do consulting and create courses and other stuff.

If I tell them I’m a blogger, they get all confused and think it’s slang for “unemployed.”

So if anyone else has the same quandary and has solved it, let me know what you tell people when they ask. Until then, my temporary solution is to tell people I sell drugs and smuggle black market cattle.

While I sort out who exactly I am, feel free to check out what happened this week on Copyblogger:

Monday:

It’s the Simplicity, Stupid

The way Hugh McLeod gives us good lessons while also blatantly insulting us is really near and dear to my heart, since it’s something I’ve done occasionally in the past. So you’ll want to focus your ugly self on this one.

Although he’s gotten a lot of mass media exposure over the last decade, Hugh’s own popularity has ultimately come from one person telling another who tells another. The bottom line is that if you’re not doing one specific, simple thing in your marketing, you’re missing the boat.

I’m not going to tell you what that thing is, so you’ll have to read the post. It’s a clever copywriting technique much like blatantly insulting you is, dummy.

Read the full post here.

Tuesday:

How to Boost Your Sales with a Strong Guarantee

I actually don’t like guarantees at all, but I’m going to faithfully write this up anyway so that Dean Rieck won’t end up outside my house with a tire iron. Again.

But actually, my dislike of guarantees is one of those instances where my personal feelings are dead wrong, much like my appreciation of The Smurfs. The truth is that you can have great stuff, but there’s still a huge barrier to buying that great stuff in the minds of an increasingly skeptical breed of customers a lot of the time. Overcoming that mental hurdle and getting more people to buy is where the guarantee comes in.

Read the full post here.

Wednesday:

How to Make More Sales With the Help of ELO

So I’d never realized that the Electric Light Orchestra’s signature spaceship thing is essentially a giant Simon Says. When one of those little scout ships wanted to dock on it, I’ll bet the pilot would have to hit an annoying long series of colored buttons and if he got it wrong, it’d give him this “EEEEEEEH” fail sound and then the Simon Says would shoot him out of the sky.

After this realization, imagine my consternation when I realized that Chris Garrett wasn’t actually writing about Electric Light Orchestra at all in this post. He is instead coining an acronym of the three things to remember to connect better with your list subscribers so that you can get more sales and generally not irritate them.

And, I suppose, allow them to hold on tight to their dreams. Yes kids, that’s an ELO song reference.

Read the full post here.

Thursday:

Four Steps to Finding Your Ideal Writing Voice

This post by Joy Tanksley is all about developing your blog’s “voice,” a hard-to-define concept referring to how you sound and seem in the minds of your readers — kind of like your “style,” but with a bit more to it. Voice is pretty important, because the same basic concepts can be discussed in two different voices on two different blogs, and one of those voices will resonate with readers while the other will clank and nobody will want to keep listening.

Personally, on my blog, I’ve taken the voice concept almost literally and am trying for an “in your head” audio quality that combines Orson Wells with High-Pitch Erik from the Howard Stern show. I know it works, too, because I get emails constantly saying things like, “When I read your site, it’s like I’m listening to a dramatic radio play that makes me feel like an obese, mentally slow giant who is afraid of fish.”

Read the full post here.

Friday:

5 Reasons Why Trying to be Successful Will Keep You Poor

I don’t want to put words (or anything else, really) in Steve Errey’s mouth, but I think this post is one of those “a-ha!” things where at the end, you realize he’s not trying to steer you away from success so much as redefine what success means. Then, by doing that, you might discover that you’ve accidentally found success along the way. It’s similar in concept to a heartwarming story about a boy who believed in magic, then stopped believing, then discovered that the magic was inside of himself.

(At this point, I’m going to resist my impulse to make a reference to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” Wait. Too late.)

So if you’re aiming for success, your compass should be adjusted. I don’t want to blow the post for you, but think confidence.

P.S: Speaking of confidence, I don’t recommend engaging in this “confidence game” I once played with a nice young fellow. It was fun, but somehow I ended giving him my house and life savings.

Read the full post here.

About the Author: Johnny B. Truant is a writer or something, which means he kind of makes words, but also builds blogs and websites for people. Johnny also builds popular business courses and is somehow involved in internet marketing and various other wholesome activities.

You may think you only need to learn about conversion strategies if you are creating & selling products. Or if you’re a super affiliate, or an aggressive email marketer.

But that’s not the case.

ANYone who is working online needs to be able to convert. Like a blogger who wants to build a strong personal brand, with an active readership and community. Yes, even if you are not directly selling anything to your readers…

Your conversion rate is something you always want to improve. From the opt-in conversion rate, to the conversion rate on a sales letter or affiliate promotion, higher conversions equal more profit. Period.

Getting people to take action – such as clicking a link in your tweet, subscribing to your list, or buying a product – is something you must master to make money online. So today I’m going to give you the 32 most powerful “conversion triggers” of all time. And I’m going to give it to you completely free, with no catch…

Download The 32 Most Powerful Conversion Triggers Of All Time

Before you dive in, let me back up and tell you how this brand new free resource came to life.

3 months ago I met a really cool and interesting marketer. We met at Yanik’s UG6 Seminar in Washington, DC and decided then and there that we would be working together. We weren’t sure on what exactly, just that we definitely would.

His name is Oliver Olsen and we simply hit it off. We spent hours brainstorming ideas and discussing our business models and long term goals. We have continued brainstorming via email & Skype since that weekend in DC, and my opinion has not changed. In fact, my gut feeling has been confirmed accurate – the man is brilliant.

This exclusive free report that teaches you how to increase your conversion rates, improve your influence with your target market, and shows you how to create loyalty and trust… is just the beginning of what you’ll be seeing from us.

You won’t find this report anywhere else online…

And we are giving it to you free!

I just read through the final draft myself, and I got a lot of creative ideas from each of the 32 “conversion triggers”. Everything from increasing the number of subscribers to my mailing lists, to (much) better ways to close a blog post (even when I’m not selling anything at all).

That was my biggest take-away from the report: the fact that conversion strategies are something I can use in more than just sales messages – they are something I can use to build or grow anything I am working on. Whether that be a podcast, a blog, a product, a following on Facebook or Twitter – you name it!

Converting visitors into buyers is the topic of a lot of questions I receive. A lot of people struggle with “asking for the sale”, or the best way to present a “call-to-action”.

Some worry that their marketing message will annoy readers. And done wrong, it often will. But done right, they will actually appreciate you and your offer.

There’s so much more I could say, but this report is free – and it’s a quick & easy read. So I’ll close now and let you get straight to it so you can read over it yourself.

Direct Download Link

After you read The 32 Most Powerful Conversion Triggers Of All Time leave a comment below and share your thoughts with us. I look forward to hearing your biggest take-away from the report.

Feel free to share this exclusive free report with your groups & friends!

Best,

p.s. Grab this free report now while you can, and then stay tuned – Oliver and I will be bringing you even more cool stuff in the near future!

If you have a blog, you tell stories.

You may have dealt with the frustration of not having very many people see your stories, of not having enough subscribers or readers.

Nevertheless, you keep on documenting your story in your blog posts, your Facebook status updates, your Twitter feed.

You tell your stories and hope people will hear you.

You’re lucky.

The majority of people in Burma — a country that is brutally ruled by a military dictatorship — have no electricity, let alone access to the Internet. Which means it’s difficult to widely share stories about what they experience there.

Right now, there are thousands of blogs detailing the difficulties of life as a single parent, but there aren’t many blogs describing what it’s like to live your entire life in a refugee camp or to survive a disaster like Cyclone Nargis, which killed more than 138,000 people in Burma.

Those who manage to blog can suffer dire consequences for daring to do so. A 30-year-old blogger from Burma was sentenced to 20 years in prison for posting political satire.

Weaving narratives about our lives is one of the things that makes us human

The stories we tell are undeniably powerful. Stories allow us to connect with one another, to know each other as individuals rather than statistics.

Yet those who are living through human rights crises have their stories written from a distance, in news blurbs and legal briefs. These stories rarely become as compelling as the ones you tell on your own blog, simply because they often lack the intimacy of a much fuller first-person narrative.

Until now.

Putting the human back into human rights

My strategy to survive was to appease the soldiers and to make friends with them. I thought, if only we could make friends with these soldiers, then we would survive.

But porters can die at any time. For example, if a soldier got angry and just shot me with his gun, nothing would happen to him. I would just die, like a chicken or a rat. To Tanintharyi Division, they send 500 porters every year. Of the 500, only 72 porters make it back to the prison. If you survive, you survive.

I was a porter for nearly six months.

~ Lai Pa, 34-year-old man from Burma

Perhaps you’ve read about the severe crackdown on monks protesting in the Saffron Revolution, or the destruction wrought by Cyclone Nargis. Although Burma is a hotbed of human rights abuses and repression, it is also home to 50 million individuals and exponentially more stories.

This fall, Voice of Witness will release Nowhere to Be Home: Narratives from Survivors of Burma’s Military Regime. The book will delve into the diverse lives of people who have lived under Burma’s military junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).

Voice of Witness is a nonprofit book series that empowers the men and women who have lived through human rights crises by letting them tell their stories in their own words.

In Nowhere to Be Home, dozens of stories are told publically for the first time.

• Lai Pa was studying to become a preacher when he was imprisoned and forced to work as a porter for the military.
• Tang Mai, an LGBT rights activist talks about his strained relationship with his father, a famous ethnic Kachin rebel leader.
• Ye Myint Win was a former army general who fought against those very same rebels; his story is told alongside Tang Mai’s.

You can read the short descriptions we’ve put here for you, but as you can see, they only scratch the surface as an introduction to the narrators.

(All of those names, as you can imagine, have been changed to protect these people.)

The book brings to light the voices of refugees, former political prisoners, migrant workers, farmers, artists, students, and activists. These vivid portraits do something that human rights reports don’t: they allow you to experience Burma through entire life stories of its people in their own words.

Calling all bloggers: how can we share these stories?

Bloggers are storytellers, and your stories give you power.

We’re asking you to share some of what you’ve learned from your own experiences of telling your story publically, to help us imagine ways this book can extend beyond the reach of print.

Tell us. How can we use the Internet to amplify the narratives in this book?

How can we make their words echo as far and as wide as any post here on Copyblogger?

We want to hear your thoughts about sharing stories, about how storytelling can change the world, and about how you would use social media to share these incredible stories collected from Burma. Please let us know in the comments!

About the Authors: Maggie Lemere and Zoë West are the editors of Nowhere to Be Home: Narratives from Survivors of Burma’s Military Regime, the latest in the Voice of Witness book series. Voice of Witness was founded by author Dave Eggers and physician/human rights scholar Lola Vollen, and is the nonprofit division of McSweeney’s Books.

If you’re inspired by the storytelling work done by the nonprofit book series Voice of Witness, you can make a donation here to support their work.

How long should an article or a blog post be?

How about a sales letter?

The answer is, of course:

“As long as necessary. And no longer.”

Obvious, right?

Most writers know that brevity is crucial. In writing, like many things in life, “less is more.”

But in writing and in Texas BBQ, we tend to over-indulge. We don’t need the extra words any more than we need those surplus calories, delicious though they are.

Why does brevity matter?

In your content marketing, you might want to inform or you might want to entertain.

If your audience is mentally screaming “Get to the point!” you’ve done neither.

And no one will share your work if they don’t understand it, or if it bores them into a coma.

For sales copy, brevity is even more important. Yes, long copy sells. But “long” means you cover all of the important facts your prospect needs to know. It does not mean you indulge your desire to natter.

If you have ever silently waited, cash in hand, while a windbag salesperson droned on, you will recognize the issue here.

It actually takes more work to write a short post. You may find you spend twice as much time editing as you do writing.

But you owe it to your readers to cut the fat from your content.

Bottom line: If you want your words to have impact, get to the point — then get out of the way!

About the Author: Chris Garrett is a professional blogger and co-author of ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. He is a man of few words, and many of those words can be found on his blog, chrisg.com.

If you haven’t experienced it, you’ve seen it.

Whether you’re a blogger or a marketer — or both — you’ve seen an audience rise up in revolt the moment someone tries to make a buck.

You’ve sold out! You didn’t disclose!

Whatever the contention, one thing is clear. Something backfired and backfired hard.

Nobody likes having to tip-toe around the fact that you’re in this to make money. Many bloggers end up groveling to their readers by low-balling prices for any product they release.

It is a real shame, too, because there are so many bloggers out there with very large audiences who find themselves incapable or unwilling to monetize by launching a product.

So, this raises a few questions:

• How do you avoid this issue altogether?
• How do you prepare your audience for your prices?
• How can you charge higher prices for your products?

Reciprocity — with a cap

All experienced marketers know about the power of reciprocity. Give a bunch of stuff away and the prospect feels more obliged to give back. Sounds great.

You can, however, take it too far.

As a young father, I’ve learned that you lead by example. If I go around cursing in front of my little girl, all of a sudden she’s going to think that’s normal. Then other parents look at me weird and that’s not much fun.

The same goes for our blog audience.

It’s about establishing a pattern. If your pattern is nothing but free-free-free, then the minute you try to make a buck, it’s like a rock thrown into a cool, calm pond. It disrupts the pattern.

On the flip side, no content marketer can pull off a steady diet of sell-sell-sell. We members of the Third Tribe know that we need to do both. We’re always looking for that perfect balance. We play in the middle ground.

With your blog audience, it is important to show that you’re here to sell as well as to provide valuable free content. That means getting out in front of your audience with an offer of some kind.

Establish a pattern of free-free-free-sell, free-free-free-sell.

Many bloggers have asked me when the right time to monetize is. I always tell them: early.

It doesn’t matter if your audience is small. You want to establish a pattern and you want to do it early in the game.

The Starbucks lesson

If all you ever offer are $7 e-books, you position yourself as a person with low-end products.

In other words, you’re Wal-Mart. And high-end stuff doesn’t usually do well in a Wal-Mart aisle.

So, should you just increase your prices?

Well, yeah! However, you’ll be able to give a powerful “reason why” if you get out in front of the objection and provide a point of positioning.

How does Starbucks get away with charging $3 for a cup of coffee? They did it by re-defining the coffee experience. Instead of walking into a fast-food joint, they’ve provided a nice communal atmosphere with music.

They don’t even have small, medium and large sizes. That’s too similar to fast-food chains and would defeat their positioning. So they borrowed words from the Italian language, and now we routinely ask for “venti” coffees, even at other coffee shops.

How can you change your positioning on your blog? Good design and professional graphics will help provide the right atmosphere. But you can do more.

Offer consulting. Almost anybody in any niche can offer some kind of consulting option on their blog. Even if you’re into underwater basketweaving, you can offer 1-on-1 help to pick just the right pond to dive into for your next basket.

Set your price a bit on the high side. Right now, you’re not really interested if anybody takes you up on it. You just want that offer out there so that (a) it shows people that not all of your expertise is free, and (b) it gives a point of comparison for determining prices for your other offers.

If you charge $100/hour for consulting, then offering a product for $97 starts to look like a bargain. After all, the buyer gets all that information for less than the cost of an hour of time. And the value is real.

Blogging with a strategy in mind

If you want to make money, you need to establish your value.

Many bloggers are great at building up traffic, but establishing their own value seems to fall by the wayside.

So do all the good social media stuff. Provide seriously awesome content. Help people like crazy. Connect with them. Interact.

But . . .

While you’re making all those connections, establish your value. Let them know you’re there to do business, and that you aren’t cheap. Do it with confidence and without apology.

When you do that, you set the stage for them to know, like, and trust you. And then the game is yours to win.

Looking for that balance between connection and doing business? That’s what the Third Tribe is all about. If the idea intrigues you, check it out today, because the price goes up on June 1.

About the Author: David Risley is a full-time blogger who confesses regularly on his blog, Confessions of a Six-Figure Blogger. Tech blogger turned blog marketer, David now shows other bloggers have to turn their blogs into real businesses.

I don’t go to the gym.

I could. There’s a gym right here in my town. I’d like to be stronger, faster, and more badass. But I don’t go to the gym, and the reason has nothing to do with my not wanting to get all of the benefits of a good workout.

It has to do with the fact that when I want results, I want them now.

I want to go to the gym just one time and walk out with muscles I didn’t have when I went in.

Now, everyone knows you don’t achieve your physical peak in just one gym session. Yet I keep noticing bloggers out there who seem to believe that they can achieve writing prowess in just one blog post.

That’s just as silly as me expecting to be able to do 50 pull-ups on my first trip to the gym.

Your brain is like a muscle

Your brain is not actually a muscle, so don’t put any bets down on your trivia skills at the local bar. But your brain acts like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets.

This is how you learn a language, for example. The first time you learn that “Bonjour” means “Hello” in French, you have to think about it pretty hard whenever someone asks you the question. But if you move to Quebec and hang out with me awhile, you’ll find yourself soon saying “bonjour” automatically when you walk into stores.

Your brain doesn’t have to think about it anymore. It’s walked down that neural pathway often enough that saying “bonjour” becomes an automatic response.

When you write a blog post, your first posts might take a lot of effort. You’re going to work hard to remember how to craft a good story, or pause to wonder whether you just made a common grammatical error, or remind yourself to break things up and use bullet points so people can read more easily.

After a few years of blogging, you don’t think about that stuff anymore. It happens naturally. That part of your brain becomes so strong that it doesn’t feel like work.

How to make your blogging muscles stronger

If you want to be stronger, faster, or in better physical shape, you go to the gym often. Maybe every day.

If you want to be a stronger blogger, a faster writer, or in better shape to whip up posts that people want to read, write a blog post every day.

Even if you only post once a week on your blog, put in the time to write every day. Otherwise, you’ll never make your blogging muscles any stronger. If you only lifted weights once a week, how long do you think it would take you to turn yourself into an Ironman?

The more frequently you write, the faster you’ll improve, and the stronger you’ll get.

Here are a few tips to get stronger in even less time.

• Switch it up. Trainers and fitness magazines say to work different muscles on different days, because muscles need to rest. The same goes for blogging. Try writing about a different topic every other day, or testing new approaches three times a week. You don’t have to post those topics — you just have to write them. You’ll still be working your writing muscles, but you won’t exhaust yourself writing the same type of content every day.
• Make every repetition count. A lot of people go to the gym and sort of sleepwalk through their routine. They’re doing each motion, but they’re not working that hard. They don’t notice when they could move up a weight bracket to get more results. When you blog, don’t just toss off a post in 20 minutes without thinking about it. Make every single post count. You’ll write faster when you’re stronger, but right now, slow down and make sure the post you’re working on is the best it can be.
• Increase your difficulty. Speaking of moving up a weight bracket, don’t stick to posts about simple topics. If you feel like you’ve exhausted your current knowledge about your favorite topic, go out and do some research on more complex areas of that topic. Work to make your writing even better and more compelling. Push yourself. Don’t stick around lifting 5-pound weights when you could be lifting 50s. You’re never going to get stronger if you stay in your comfort zone.

Above all else, put in the work. Plenty of people think they can run a marathon. They sign up, they undertrain, and when the big day rolls around, they can’t do even a fraction of the run.

The blogging equivalent of that is when a blogger pitches a big blog for a guest post, but can’t deliver anything like the caliber of writing that blog demands.

So put in the training. You’ll get stronger, faster, and better — and before you know it, you’ll be at the front of the pack with the big shots.

About the Author: If you’re looking for more training advice on your blogging, head on over to Men with Pens, where James Chartrand gives you a writing gym packed with equipment to work those muscles.

I recently put out the word that I wanted to interview small business owners for an upcoming project, the Empire Building Kit.

These were the criteria: you had to net at least $50,000 a year with two or fewer employees, you had to be willing to talk about money in specific terms, you had to share your biggest mistakes as well as your greatest successes, and you couldn’t be a professional blogger.

(Obviously there’s nothing wrong with professional blogging — I just figure that bloggers get enough attention already. Besides, if you want to create a business, there are much easier models.)

I heard back from 300 people with all kinds of different backgrounds, but Lisa’s email stood out from the rest.

I have a dog-walking business in Minnesota. Can I contribute my story?

I’ll be honest: I didn’t think much of it at first. A dog-walker? Shouldn’t we be talking about affiliate marketing, information products, and Facebook ads?

Walking dogs around the park for cash isn’t really my thing, so I assumed I’d say no.

But then Lisa told me how much money she makes: $88,342 in 2009, and now on track for $105,000 in 2010.

That got my attention. She makes six figures as a dog-walker? Wow. Now that’s a story.

And in marketing, of course, story is everything. If you can build a real business around something you’re passionate about — in this case, Lisa loves dogs — I think that’s worth some attention.

Follow your passion? Yes . . . sort of

The thing about following your passion to the bank isn’t so much overrated as it is incomplete.

Finding a way to get paid for doing what you love is both feasible and sustainable. The trick is to construct a lifestyle business around something you’re passionate about that other people are willing to spend money on.

The difference is crucial: I can be passionate about eating pizza and playing video games, but so far I haven’t found anyone willing to pay me for it. Therefore, I have to orient my business not only around my own interests, but also around what other people are willing to pay for.

I built the rest of the Empire Building Kit around conversations and insights from people like Lisa. The photographer, the triathlon coach, the translator, the guy who makes baseball art, the murder mystery host, and so on.

You’ve probably never heard of most of them, but they’re doing very well doing something they love.

Last month I released the product on board a 44-hour Empire Builder train from Chicago to Portland. It was a huge success, with rave reviews from our inaugural group of emperors — and a freaked out merchant account that wanted to know why so many sales were rolling in.

Long story short, today I’m doing it again. It’s for 24-hours only, before I get on a plane and head overseas as part of my quest to visit every country in the world. If you’re interested in joining the inaugural group of new emperors, I’d love to have you on board.

All the details

The goal of the Empire Building Kit is to help people build a business in one year by doing one thing every day.

To that end, I’ve compiled a truckload of resources and hand-holding to make sure that happens. The Kit includes:

15+ Case Studies. From 300 initial respondents, I narrowed it down to more than 15 thriving emperors from at least as many different backgrounds. I asked for their stories, their secrets, what they wish they had known before they started.

The case studies come in a variety of formats: video interviews, MP3 files, PDFs, with complete transcripts. So you can get the most out of them no matter what your learning style.

365-step Email Series. You get one mini-lesson today, one tomorrow, and 363 more over the rest of the next year.

According to the folks at Aweber, it’s officially the longest follow-up series in their history. The key is: if you do one thing a day, it will be much easier than trying to do everything at once. But you also have to make sure you’re doing the right things, so we help with that too.

A 52-step Product Launch checklist. Even if you’re not launching from the “bloggers’ lounge” onboard an Amtrak train, something always goes wrong with a product launch.

Use this checklist to avoid big mistakes, and dramatically increase revenue. One step produces an average revenue increase of 30% every launch, no matter the price of the product. Another step ensures you can sleep at night by not screwing up the confirmation emails. And so on.

“Show Me the Money” module. All the details from behind the scenes of my own Unconventional Guides business. You’ll learn how much money each product brings in, where I’ve screwed up, where I hit it big, and so on.

Ok, so I could go on about all of that for a while. But what you really get is insight and context from people who have successfully cracked the code of following your passion. They all talk about money, they are all extremely candid, and they’re all real people doing fun things while getting paid.

Care to join Lisa and the rest of us? You can find out all about it right here, but it’s only available for 24 hours, ending Wednesday morning at 9am Pacific Time.

And if it’s not a good fit for you, of course, that’s fine too. Most importantly, I hope your business is as enjoyable as Lisa’s — and as enjoyable as mine.

About the Author: Chris Guillebeau travels the world and writes for a small army of remarkable people at chrisguillebeau.com. Follow his live updates from every country in the world at twitter.com/chrisguillebeau.

You need to get the attention of a powerful internet marketer, A-list blogger, or busy CEO.

Maybe you’ve got a brilliant idea for a joint venture that would make you both scads of money.

Or maybe you just wrote a brilliant guest post that a certain top blogger’s audience will love.

Whoever it is, you’re convinced you’ve got a win for this person.

Unfortunately, the big shot you’re pitching won’t answer your emails.

It’s not because she’s evil, honest. She’s just got a lot of other pitches in her mailbox, and there’s no way to give all of them her full attention.

Your mission is to get yours to the top of her list. Here’s how.

So how do you get prominent people to pay attention to you?

Obviously, the most sure-fire way is to know the hotshot personally. If you didn’t happen to go to grade school with your famous person of choice, you can still make a connection.

You can go a long way just by being consistently sincere and helpful to her and her friends. Social media tools come in handy here.

That takes time, though. When you don’t have time, follow these six steps instead.

1. Open with compelling subject line

Your reader likely gets hundreds of emails each day. Make yours stand out — not with all caps or lots of exclamation points, but by condensing the best points of your offer to create a sense of urgency.

WEAK:

An invitation for you

STRONG:

Paid speaking opportunity, no travel required (deadline approaching)

2. Introduce yourself in one sentence

Your reader doesn’t care about you (yet). Don’t blather on and on about your accomplishments or your history.

Introduce yourself in one sentence. Include a link to your site, so if your hotshot wants to know more, she can investigate.

3. Do your homework

What sorts of offers has this person accepted in the past? What kinds of propositions is she interested in, and what sorts of incentives does she need to say yes?

If you find that your big shot agreed to a $6000 fee for a three-day conference, offering $2000 for 90 minutes of her time on the phone makes for an irresistable offer.

4. Keep it short

State your offer clearly in one paragraph.

Not a long run-on paragraph either. Six sentences, tops.

5. Be bold, not precise

Your goal for this email is to get this person interested. Too much detail at this point wastes your reader’s time and attention. (But do include the one or two details that will capture that attention.)

You’ll get 51% of the registration fees from the people who click on your affiliate link, unless they click on someone else’s affiliate link after they click on yours, or unless they clear their cookies or buy from a different computer or switch browsers. Or unless the cookie volcano erupts.

Way too complicated. Instead, stick with:

You’ll get 51% of the profits from everyone you refer ($212 per sale).

Keep it bold and simple.

6. Don’t squee all over your shoes.

Acting like a rabid fan won’t win you any points; it will get your proposal taken a lot less seriously.

Don’t go on and on about how you’ve read all this person’s books and that you stood in line for hours at a convention once to meet her and does she by any chance remember the woman with the mauve hair carrying a bunch of asparagus because that was you.

Act like a peer with a good proposal, and you’ll find you’ll get replied to like one.

It’s fine to mention that you like the person’s work. But too much gushing and your email is going to wind up with all the other fan mail — not in the “A” folder of messages that need a quick response.

No one can guarantee you’ll capture that busy big shot’s attention. But follow these six steps and you’ll stack the odds in your favor.

About the Author: Pace Smith is the co-leader of the Freak Revolution, a bunch of weirdos who do awesome stuff. Her latest project is the World-Changing Writing Workshop, featuring six famous writers who replied to her email.