I got a royalty check from a client in my mailbox. That always makes me smile.

And as I was looking at that check, it made me think about how much fun this particular client is to work with — and I was reminded that I had an audio interview with this guy somewhere in my archives.

I found the interview, listened to it, and realized it’s just as relevant as it was the day we recorded it. So I’m giving it to you today.

This interview is a case study from one of my clients. I present it for inspiration and education only, and there is nothing for sale (not that there’s anything wrong with sellin’ stuff, mind you).

I worked on this Product Launch with Real Estate teacher Jack Bosch back in 2008. That was almost two years ago. Jack remains a client of mine (he’s still paying his royalties, like clockwork). This interview was recorded the day after we closed the cart on the launch.

It’s worth noting that, on day two of our launch…it seemed luck was not with us.

On the second day of the launch, a massive US Financial Collapse began.

The largest bank failure in US History was in the headlines. And yet…

We brought in over $1.12 million in 7 days. (Please note: I’m not claiming you can do the same. Most launches don’t do these kinds of numbers – this is definitely atypical… which is what makes it worth studying.)

Click Here To Listen To The $1.12 Million Launch Case Study With Ray Edwards

Listen to this case study interview and learn…

• How a penniless immigrant with no money and no English made $1.12 million in just a single week.
• The secrets that allowed Jack to create a massive info-product… assemble a team… and do a $1.12 million dollar launch in less than 3 months.
• If you think you have no experience, no expertise, and no chance of success… once you hear Jack’s story you will NEVER let those excuses hold you back again.
• How Jack learned the secret of rapid product creation, and how it changed his life (his first ebook took him 5 months… while his massive 26-CD course and 400 page manual only took 8 weeks!).
• The simple, easy-to-duplicate tactic that allowed Jack to create a 400 page workbook… without writing a word!
• What gets people “stuck” in creating their own product, and the magic that dissolves those mental blocks and makes things happen.
• Why Jack was shocked at my $30,000 retainer… and why he’s now GLAD he paid that amount (and more).
• Why copy is so important to JV partners — and it has NOTHING to do with the sales letter!
• The power of having an organized approach to doing a product launch… and which pieces are critical to your success.
• The “unexpected benefit” that brought in new JV partners like bees being drawn to honey… and it happened totally by accident (but from now on, Jack will be doing it on purpose).
• How to develop content for your videos and other marketing pieces using the power of persuasion in print to make your VIDEOS and AUDIOS more profitable.
• Why Jack was able to pull off a seven-figure launch even though disaster struck on Day 2… the largest bank failure in US History! (The secret tactic that allowed us to bring in 60% of our sales AFTER the bad news about the economy…and how you can apply this same secret in your own marketing).
• The one critical element that accounted for $400,000 in sales that would not have happened otherwise (how much money are you leaving on the table right now because you’re not doing this?).
  
• The deadly pitfalls that can stop your launch (or your business) in its tracks… and the simple steps you can take to avoid them every time (the secrets of how Jack picked a launch date 3 months in advance and actually launched on that day!).
• Why it’s okay to start even before you “know what you’re doing” — and why it might even be crucial that you do in fact “start before you’re ready”.

Click Here To Listen To The $1.12 Million Launch Case Study With Ray Edwards

Funny story.

Back in my radio days, one of the shows I was in charge of was a morning radio team.

And this particular morning team had a regular feature where a couple of psychotherapists woud come on each week.

When I say a “couple”, I mean it. They were actually a COUPLE, and they were both actually THERAPISTS (can you imagine the dinner table conversations?).

Anyhow, I knew this couple only as characters on this particular morning show. “Judith and Jim” was how I knew them. And I knew only their voices.

Fast forward a few years later.

I had left the radio business, and was at an Internet Marketing seminar.

During one of the presentations, I noticed this couple sitting near the front, and I noticed  they were asking lots of questions. And their voices sounded familiar. And their names were… Judith and Jim.

We connected for the first time in person, and we’ve been friends ever since. (Okay, so it was “funny” as in “coincidence” and not funny as in “LOL”).

To continue my story…

I discovered that Jim and Judith ventured into online marketing just four years ago. Along the way, they had to overcome their technical deficiencies and learn to make friends with their computer. Even more so, they had to, in their own words, “open our minds to an entirely new way of being in the world, a whole new and very different mindset-a marketing/business mindset”.

But there was a problem. As they attended lots of marketing conferences, they felt something was wrong.

According to Judith and Jim, “We always felt a sense of displacement, a feeling of not belonging, of somehow being outsiders.”

As they connected with people at those same  conferences they learned that others had the same complaint. And they noticed a pattern: All those who voiced this kind of discomfort were service providers, care-givers, change agents of some kind, men and women who had dedicated their lives to helping others-heart-to-heart.

“It became clear that there was a segment of the Internet marketplace that was not being served,” says Judith.

Jim chimes in, “That segment is peopled by soft sell marketers-all of us who are care-givers and life-change artists as distinct from accumulation artists whose focus is money first and foremost.”

And now these two friends of mine have written a book on the subject of soft sell marketing for service providers… and for people who don’t like hard-sell approaches. I recommend you get a copy of The Heart of Marketing.

Lately, Internet marketers have been telling me, “Ray, people don’t opt-in to squeeze pages nowadays. They just don’t opt-in like they used to”. Do remarks like this have you nodding in agreement?

Fear and paranoia, with a healthy dose of spam, has made it harder to get people to opt-in. At one time, it was so easy. All you had to do was add a form that said, “Sign up here to get e-mails”, and the world would flock to your site.

People would opt-in like crazy! E-mails, e-newsletters — everything was so new and exciting. My, how things have changed. Today, we are deluged with e-mails. People are constantly changing e-mail addresses. People have multiple e-mail addresses – heck, some people even have a fake e-mail address that they never check, just to deal with all the spam.

Cutting through the clutter is a challenge. How can you make sure you are getting real opt-ins from people who will actually read the e-mails you send out?

Well, yes. There are ways to increase your opt-in conversions. These simple tactics don’t take a lot of work, but they are very effective.

Try these three tactics to boost your opt-ins:

Make a stronger offer. We all know you have to give an ethical bribe to get people to opt-in – a special report, an audio, a video, a piece of software. If you just say, “Sign up to get my newsletter”, to the average reader that means, “Sign up so I can spam you.” You need to be more creative. Work harder to create a better premium to offer your subscribers. If you’re offering a special report, it better be a killer special report, and not the same old crap that everybody else is offering. You need to come up with a unique angle, it needs to be well-written. Same is true of audio, video or software – it needs to be well-done, it needs to be unique – something obtainable only through you, and it needs to address a need that is in line with the desires of your readers.

Use a bigger, “responsive” HTML button. Go to my website: www.RayEdwardsCopy.com and look at the button on the subscription form on my squeeze page. Notice that it’s larger than most buttons you see on subscription forms. Notice also, that when you hover your cursor over the button, the background changes color from red to green. That is a subtle, psychological hint that takes people from “Stop” to “Go!” Yeah, that’s a little sillybut, in my experience, it increases conversions. I can verify this through some colleagues of mine: Michel Fortin, Eric Graham – The Conversion Doctor and Armand Morin, as well. My recommendation is that you try this kind of button, too.

Keep distractions off your opt-in pages. Take another look at my opt-in page. Do you see how clean it looks? There are no distractions to take attention away from the opt-in option. Of course, there are legal disclaimers at the bottom (right where I need them), but they are very subtle. And when you click on them, those legal notices open in small pop-up windows – after all, I want them on this page, not heading off in another direction.

While these suggestions seem very simplistic, they really work. Try them for yourself, and watch your opt-in rates soar!

Should you use a “squeeze page” on your website, or have these pages lost their effectiveness?

A “squeeze page” is one that forces your site visitors to give you their name and email address in exchange for some kind of bribe… an audio training, a special report, or piece of software.

Making a free offer to your site visitors in exchange for their name and e-mail address is a great way to grow your e-mail list, but it has to be done carefully so that you don’t also drive away potential customers.

Here are some things to think about…

You know it’s important to grow your e-mail list. The bigger the list, the more people will see your offers, and the more money you will make.

The challenge in today’s internet marketing world is it’s harder than ever to convince people to opt in. A squeeze page is probably the best list building tool available, but you must be careful. Using a squeeze page the wrong way can hurt your business more than it helps.

It’s best to use a squeeze page on a site that is built to sell one product. For example, if you have a site that features a sales letter selling a particular product or service, placing a squeeze page in front of the information about that product or service is a good idea. This keeps readers from being distracted; it sifts and sorts potential buyers by level of seriousness; and it gives you a list of interested parties that you can go back and market to repeatedly.

One of the biggest mistakes I see being made online is putting a squeeze page in front of the wrong kinds of sites.

Don’t put a squeeze page in front of your portal site, your branding site, or your blog. Putting a squeeze page in front of those kinds of sites does not make sense. Those sites have a very different purpose than sites that are intended to sell one targeted product or promotion.

Remember that your squeeze page is a gate.

It keeps people out of your website and it can potentially scare off your customers.

If you have a strong enough offer, a video, an audio, or special report, you may be able to get people to opt in and build a very targeted list using a squeeze page.

The growing problems of spam, viruses and spyware have made people more reluctant than ever to give up their name and e-mail address.

Squeeze pages can definitely build your list fast. These pages are a powerful tool that I recommend to all of my clients; just be sure to use them in the appropriate situation.

What do you think? Are squeeze pages more or less effective than they once were? Post your comments below.

One of the biggest challenges in building your online business is to build a large e-mail list.

A list of prospects and buyers that you can use as a foundation for your online business.

It’s harder than ever to build e-mail lists online, as customers are more reluctant to opt in for free e-zines (or other mailing lists) than ever before.

What’s the best way to build an e-mail list? Rest assured, e-mail marketing is just as important now as it ever has been, and perhaps even moreso. So what do you do? My advice is to use offline marketing to build your online e-mail list. This is a tactic that is seldom employed by online marketers, and yet it is the most powerful way to build an e-mail list I know of. Why is this? Because people who move from an offline promotion to an online mailing list make up the most responsive e-mail list you will ever have.

Here are three ways you can use offline media to build your online mailing list.:

Radio

Radio is an overlooked but inexpensive and effective medium for building an online e-mail list. If you’re going to use radio, make sure your radio ad is a direct response style. The key to this kind of ad is that it simply directs people to a landing page (or squeeze page) that offers them something for free in return for their name and e-mail address. Even though the squeeze page technique is harder to implement in today’s online marketing world, with the people who move offline to online response rates are stellar.

Direct Mail

Using postcards, you can build an e-mail list very quickly using inexpensive direct mail promotions. Make sure that you buy quality, targeted lists to mail to. Also make sure that the copy you used in your direct mail is targeted, effective, and powerful.

Outdoor Advertising

If you can squeeze your opt in message into seven words or less, including the domain name, consider using outdoor advertising. Billboard companies frequently make killer, bargain-basement deals to fill up unused billboard space each month. Negotiate your deal toward the end of the month, and let them know that they are competing with other media for your business, and you should be able to get the best available rate.

Use these offline methods to build your online list and watch response rates rise.

Want to create a big surge in profits?

Create instant cash flow?

Sometimes the big answers are the obvious ones.

The ones that sit right in front of our faces.

Take for instance the time-honored retail practice of: having a sale.

I’ve written copy for (probably) thousands of sales, most of it while I was in the radio business.

I’ve seen many sales that worked very well… and many that failed miserably.

And I have identified some of the key common elements of successful sales. Successful sales:

1.    Have a reason for being. “After Thanksgiving Sale” works as a reason.. but telling the story of why you’re so thankful for your customers and how to you want to give them a substantial discount works better. And stories that are not tied to “traditional” sale days (Christmas, New Year’s Day, Back to School) work best.

2.    Offer true value. Either the price is enticing enough to motivate your customers to act..or you’ll need to add something that will motivate them (additional bonuses, etc.)

3.    Are time-bound. They have a definitive start and end date. The shorter and more immediate the better.

Coming up with a reason for your sale shouldn’t be tough. Just think about what your actual reasons are (beyond “I want to make more money”) and build on that story.

The best way to get your sale done – and putting money in your bank account – is to set a date in the immediate future and commit to it. Put a stake in the ground.

Let’s say you have an online business, and your sale is going to be a 3-day sale. You’ll want to send an email the day before (to grab a little attention and “get on the radar” of your customers), one each day of the sale (to drive mores sales), and one “thanks for your business” email the day after (provides a proof element and teaches your customers that when you say it will be over… it will be over).

If you do this, it will be like strapping a rocket to your profits. So… go have a sale!

Our next Profit Booster: Use This Power To Get Anyone To Do Anything

Lately, Internet marketers have been telling me, “Ray, people don’t opt-in to squeeze pages nowadays. They just don’t opt-in like they used to”. Do remarks like this have you nodding in agreement?

Fear and paranoia, with a healthy dose of spam, has made it harder to get people to opt-in. At one time, it was so easy. All you had to do was add a form that said, “Sign up here to get e-mails”, and the world would flock to your site.

People would opt-in like crazy! E-mails, e-newsletters — everything was so new and exciting. My, how things have changed. Today, we are deluged with e-mails. People are constantly changing e-mail addresses. People have multiple e-mail addresses – heck, some people even have a fake e-mail address that they never check, just to deal with all the spam.

Cutting through the clutter is a challenge. How can you make sure you are getting real opt-ins from people who will actually read the e-mails you send out?

Well, yes. There are ways to increase your opt-in conversions. These simple tactics don’t take a lot of work, but they are very effective.

Try these three tactics to boost your opt-ins:

Make a stronger offer. We all know you have to give an ethical bribe to get people to opt-in – a special report, an audio, a video, a piece of software. If you just say, “Sign up to get my newsletter”, to the average reader that means, “Sign up so I can spam you.” You need to be more creative. Work harder to create a better premium to offer your subscribers. If you’re offering a special report, it better be a killer special report, and not the same old crap that everybody else is offering. You need to come up with a unique angle, it needs to be well-written. Same is true of audio, video or software – it needs to be well-done, it needs to be unique – something obtainable only through you, and it needs to address a need that is in line with the desires of your readers.

Use a bigger, “responsive” HTML button. Go to my website: www.RayEdwardsCopy.com and look at the button on the subscription form on my squeeze page. Notice that it’s larger than most buttons you see on subscription forms. Notice also, that when you hover your cursor over the button, the background changes color from red to green. That is a subtle, psychological hint that takes people from “Stop” to “Go!” Yeah, that’s a little sillybut, in my experience, it increases conversions. I can verify this through some colleagues of mine: Michel Fortin, Eric Graham – The Conversion Doctor and Armand Morin, as well. My recommendation is that you try this kind of button, too.

Keep distractions off your opt-in pages. Take another look at my opt-in page. Do you see how clean it looks? There are no distractions to take attention away from the opt-in option. Of course, there are legal disclaimers at the bottom (right where I need them), but they are very subtle. And when you click on them, those legal notices open in small pop-up windows – after all, I want them on this page, not heading off in another direction.

While these suggestions seem very simplistic, they really work. Try them for yourself, and watch your opt-in rates soar!

Many people say email marketing is dead. It’s easy to agree with this idea.

Spam and the spam filters it has given rise to make it harder than ever to get your email delivered.

It’s even hard to receive email we want. How many times have you been frustrated because a friend, co-worker, or relative was supposed to send you an email that never arrived… only to discover that email in your “junk mail” or “spam” folder?

Here’s the good news: the death of email marketing has been greatly exaggerated.

Even though deliverability rates are lower than ever, email marketing still works, and is still responsible for many millions of dollars worth of sales. It can work for you as well.

3 Keys to Successful Email Marketing

First of all, keep a clean double opt-in email list. What this means: if someone signs up to receive email from you, you need to get them to confirm that they actually want to receive the email. Most email marketing providers, (like aweber and 1ShoppingCart) automatically require people to double opt-in to any email list. In some cases the “double opt-in” feature is optional… but I think it’s the best way to manage your email list. Single opt-in (no confirmation required) may yield bigger subscriber numbers (it does), but that list will be less responsive to your offers.

Secondly, educate your customers on how to white-list or authorize your emails to get through to their inbox. Usually this is just a case of having them put your email address into their address book; if they use a service like Spam Arrest they’ll have to go to the actual website and authorize your email address. Teach them how to do that, either using text and illustrations or with screen capture video.

The third key to successful email marketing is about boosting response rates to your messages. How do you do this? Make sure you send relevant and expected content to your list. Emailing your list frequently will get your emails through more readily and get you a lot fewer spam complaints. Why? Because if you send frequently people are going to do one of two things: they’re either going to read your email or unsubscribe. If you email them less frequently, you run the risk that they will forget who you are or even forget that they subscribed to your list… and that will generate spam complaints.

Use these keys to successful email marketing and watch your list numbers and response rates grow. Long live email marketing!