It should be no surprise to you that the best way to learn about internet marketing is to watch and learn from what others do… this is where the swipe file comes in.  A swipe file is simply a file or collection of marketing messages, headlines, techniques, etc. Essentially, whenever you see an example of great marketing you add it to your marketing collection.

Before The Internet

Before the internet, a swipe file would contain a bunch of direct mail marketing pieces, newspaper ads, postcards, etc. all kept in a box or file folder.

Today you can still have a file folder full of those kinds of things, but you should also consider starting a digital collection where you can put great examples of email marketing, ezine ads, headlines, digital sales letters, etc.

You can even put an expert’s entire profit funnel in your swipe file if you watch them long enough.

Some of the best marketing messages that I’ve seen were only presented in an online format… especially sales letters!

I have my own digital swipe file where I save email messages, article resource boxes, sales letters, great headlines, and other promotional materials that I think are really good.

I keep my digital swipe files on thumb drives.

Remember, a great marketing piece doesn’t have to relate directly to your chosen market to be useful to you… so save any marketing piece that works, regardless of the product.

No Copying!

A Swipe File IS NOT For Copying.

Before you get the wrong idea here… keep in mind that a swipe file is not intended to be a file where you store materials that you are going to copy later.   That would be a HUGE no no.

You should think of a swipe file as a place to store materials that you can use later to generate your own marketing ideas and strategies.

Thumbing through a collection of marketing materials will likely bring on a flood of ideas for how you can position, write about, or promote your own product… and that’s why you should create your own collection! Remember, you’re just looking for inspiration.

Don’t just save the materials from the big companies either… some of them use terrible promotional materials!

In fact, you’ll find some of the best marketing and promotional materials are written by little known people who have really taken their time on each and every piece.

You’ll also find a lot of great marketing fodder by watching what the ‘gurus’ do.  Some of them are very, very good at what they do… that’s why we think of them as ‘gurus!’

By The Way…

If you’re really interested in simply copying other people’s campaigns and using them, you really should check out CopyNProfit.  I haven’t tried it myself yet (although I plan to review it in the near future), but it seems to be getting really good reviews.

If you’ve already tried it, I hope you’ll take the time to post your comments about the program so others can benefit.

Copywriting for short attention spans is always going to be a consideration… no matter what you happen to be writing.

I’m guilty of it and I bet you are too.

I regularly scan through sales letters, website copy, articles, etc. so I can quickly get to the meat of the matter and move on.

That’s why it’s important to keep that in mind in all your writing.  Sherice Jacob wrote an interesting article on the subject for Copyblogger called, “How to Write Copy for Short Attention Spans” that addresses the things you need to do to get your reader’s attention when you are writing your own sales material.

Your headline is a critical component of any marketing piece you create, whether it’s a sales letter, brochure, article, or anything else you use to promote your business.  That’s why it worth spending some time working out the perfect headline for your promotion.  After all:

• A headline must capture the attention of your prospect.
• A headline must tell your prospect what’s in it for him.
• A headline must deliver a complete, immediately understandable message.
• A headline must pull the prospect into the copy… compelling him to keep reading.

In essence, a headline should motivate your prospect to respond.

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Complete hype.  You now that, but that’s what got my attention in the first place when I was browsing the Warrior Forum yesterday.

So of course I clicked on the forum post and found out that the post was meant to be sarcastic.  Then I started reading the responses from other Warriors and was completely appalled with the lack of integrity of some of the posters.  The video below is my rant on the subject: Read the rest of this entry

As content stealing becomes easier and easier with the help of technology, there are very few of us who produce original content for the web that haven’t fallen victim to content thieves and scrapers.

It’s annoying. It’s disheartening. It stinks.

For the most part, it’s a time-consuming process to try to prevent others from out and out stealing your content. Personally, I really don’t mind most of the time… as long as I’m credited as the author and there’s a link back to the article on my site.

Unfortunately, most of the people who steal content really do STEAL the content.

In other words, they take the content (your original article) and put it on their own website without any mention of who actually wrote the article or where it came from.

Fortunately, there are a few things that you can do to make it a little more difficult for people to steal from you. The folks over at ProBlogger put together a great article that outlines some of the things that you can do to Fight Scrapers.

In addition, Lynn Terry had a very different way to fight content thieves and scrapers in her article called, “I’m a scum-sucking content thief.”

A very entertaining way of handling the situation!

We’ve talked a lot recently about how to identify your target market, so I thought it was time to work on how to actually reach your target. So that’s the cover story in the latest edition of Answers eMagazine.

If you want to get the rest of the story, you’ll have to subscribe to Answers eMagazine and read the January 2009 Edition.

If you’re already selling anything online, this article is going to show you how to add extra revenue you didn’t even know you had “hiding” in your site without getting any more visitors.

Overlooked Way #1 – An Upsell:

If you’ve been in marketing for any time, you’ve probably heard of “upsells” or “bumps.” Car dealers are excellent at using this technique. Once you have agreed to buy a car you then go into the finance office. This finance guy is really another place where they try to extract as much money as possible from you; dealer financing, extended warranties, rust coating, a low-jack security system, etc. These additions will normally add as much, or more, profit to the dealer as the original sale.

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