DISQUS

Yep - TalkBiz is probably the only newsletter still 99% about giving good content. One I'd never leave.

You shouldn't need advice this important after learning it once before, but I sure did need to read this post! I've strayed away from this important rule lately - badly. Thanks Michel for bringing me back to the light! :)

Excellent post man! This post should be responsible for millions of new visitors for all of your readers in the next month. All they have to do is implement!

If they are losers or morons, isn't it a good thing that they aren't following you anymore? lol

Robert,

I take back everything I ever said about you. I have to take back everything because it was all bad. This rocks. And it totally makes up for all the stuff you said to me in Warriors years ago. :)

Really - this rocks!

After I read the thing I wanted to rip into it with vigor. But Ken defeated me ultimately because there was so damn much spin in that thing to sell SBI it was like watching FOX News.

Just thinking about taking the 20-30 points that were so clearly set up to sell an old school system on the new web and explaining why Ken has completely lost his mind was exhausting.

So I waited for people like you to respond, Andy, and then you were far too diplomatic in your response.

So I'm still waiting for someone with more time than Ken (and who has that kind of time?) to write so much about a topic that you lose interest in life itself by the time you are halfway through.

Michel,

Awesome post man. Now that you've done the heavy lifting, I have a place to point FTR readers for this info.

Here's another thing you can do to get their attention: Send them traffic! If they have a blog, submit some of their posts with StumbleUpon, Digg, etc. and get them ready to hear from you.

You will be able to tell when they've registered the extra traffic and where it came from because they are likely to come check out YOUR blog and even comment. Great time to contact them and ask how they liked the extra traffic.

We do that to get JVs and it works like gangbusters. We use our product on their sites and then tell them what we did. Once they "feel" it in action, they're hooked. Never had anyone turn us down after that.

I just switched completely over to Feedblitz. I have to still move my AWEBER people over, but I'm tired of waiting for the old school to catch up.

I don't need to personalize every damn email that goes out and I'm not in a niche where anyone is even impressed by that feature, which to me, is the only thing I am giving up.

They should have reported their numbers to Feedburner a long time ago. Too little too late.

My subscriber count went up by 3000 this week. Wonder if that's my AWEBER subs. Think I will leave them there :)

Awesome post Michel.

I think some people assume many copywriters and consultants charge less because they are trying to undersell and compete. When in reality I think many of them don't know the market, the value of their service, and are scared to charge too much based on what they THINK the customer THINKS would be too much.

Busy thread here - good job Andy. :)

Couple clarifications needed:

1. I mentioned blogging is in decline because people who don't want to take the time to build a quality site, whether its a blog or not, quit. Blogging just happens to be the easiest way to create a website these days and people are glomming on to it by the millions, finding out success takes work, and go back to their day jobs considering what we do a scam - or worse - they blame an inanimate object like the code that runs a site (blog software) for their failure.

Notice how Andy said "blogging sucks." Knowing the value of a good title doesn't mean he truly thinks that the way he publishes online sucks because he'd be gone already. Why wouldn't this be his farewell post if he thought software was to blame?

Would you write differently or interact differently with your market simply because you were using Dreamweaver to publish instead of your blog?

You still have to connect with readers. The information still has to get out there on SOME platform.

2. People making comments about how social sites only have other bloggers on them, so why spend time on social marketing, are missing the point entirely. Being on the social sites gets you into the engines. The traffic you get from the ENGINES is largely outside the social networks where the heavy-duty geeks live. These are people looking for information you have and they have nothing to do with blogging, blogs, or social networks.

Whatever traffic you do skim off the network itself that produces for you, great. But don't discount the fact that your main site plus several of your satellite blogs and profiles from social sites should also be getting into the SERPS and bolstering your link popularity and traffic.

3. I wanted to support Andy's position here, but I think it's important to point out that a lot of comments here are tending toward the gloom and doom side and can be seen as very short sighted when it comes to the power of blogging.

So my position is: Blogging as a traffic generation and sales tool doesn't suck. Blogs are a way of communicating on the web like any other website platform. If you suck at communicating, testing your conversation and driving traffic in a profitable direction from your content, then switching to another publishing platform isn't going to help at all.

I have been reading that blogging is already on the decline.

I read a lot. Never read that before. Blogging, like Andy said, is a content management system choice.

If blogging is on the decline it is mots certainly with the people another commentator wrote about who jumped into it looking at it like a biz opp and that it would be easy.

If blogging is on the decline, it is a good decline, like the housing market coming into line. There are still realtors making a killing out there and the housing industry isn't dead. It's just that the easy money people are leaving (bad mortgage brokers for instance) and the market is coming back in line with true demand and value and not the over-hyped, inflated values before the bubble burst.

Never thought blogging and the US housing market could be so closely related, lol.

On a final note - A-list bloggers were not chosen to be such by some governing internet blogging agency. They made themselves.

A successful blog is created with blood, sweat, and Red Bull. If you want to be an A-lister - do it if you have it in you. But never make the mistake that these guys had anything handed to them. That's precisely why they are on the list and you are not.

Andy,

You are beating me in Google for my own product man! Good Job!

I will try to figure out a digital delivery for this. I understand your hesitation and frankly, I hate shipping things for many of the same reasons you don't like ordering "shipables!"

It's just that these files are so huge, I know I'd get a lot of complaints from people on download times and problems too. There's around 27 videos on the disks along with a lot of other stuff, and the audios.

It's a tough call either way but I will talk to my partners about it and try to come up with a solution. Yours isn't the only reservation I have heard on this point thus far.

Thanks for being #1 in Google for "social power linking!"

Jack

Thanks Andy - you can clarify for me anytime!

I like your linking policy too. People who use "no follow" or worse, turn off their trackbacks and comments, are giving in to the biggest failed effort in history to stop comment spam.

If people only realized how they are killing their own business by turning off user interaction with their sites, they'd stop doing it in a second!

ASKIMET kills all my comment spam - no idea why people are so worked up over it!

I would hate this blog if all Michel did was come up with content to sell products, which is every magazine's #1 goal whether the products are good, bad, needed, or wanted.

That is what the blogosphere is defiantly opposed to and so few marketers actually understand.

Sure Michel could come up with a ton of content every single day without repeating himself exactly. They have spam bots that do this. You can churn out 5 pieces of content and have the bot mix it up 100 different ways so nothing is technically the same - except the message.

I lose readers all the time - and customers - because I have chosed to focus on things they aren't interested in and I don't always talk about what they want.

This happens to every blogger in the world.

Chosing to leave Michel's 'sphere over something like this is a detriment only to you. Michel will be quite fine and doesn't need saving.

Everything major Michel has to say about copywriting he has said. Is that a bad thing? No. Human nature doesn't change, so tapping into it via myriad techniques stays basically the same.

Will Michel run out of things to say about copy writing? I hope not. Will he bring new ways to train people the solid, immovable principles of copywriting? I'm sure he will.

Can he do something fun, off topic with his own blog? You bet.

Talking about the same thing all the time (I know first hand) gets really old sometimes and you need a break.

All we as educators do is come up with new ways to explain and train about things that never change, along with keeping up with our industry and reporting on new trends.

If it weren't for the new trends, there'd be precious little new things anyone would have to talk about in their professional on a daily basis.

Also - you have to market your site. This is a great Power Linking tactic Michel is taking part in, and, counter to Adam's reaction lots of people like getting to know a bit about the people who's blogs they read everyday.

About Michel having said everything about copywriting: If you took just 10% of his best material on this bog and in his membership site and applied it you'd be doing very well right now.

I have, so I know I don't need to hear about copywriting in every single post he makes.

He's a great guy and we all had bad hair in the 80's.

I am off to my blog to confess (but not brave enough to put pics of my parachute pants up from '84.)

Thanks for the break Michel and Happy Holidays to you and Sylvie!

Jack Humphrey

Thanks for this Michel. This is a killer tracking tool. I love the heat map feature. Remember when someone was trying to charge massive amounts to generate what Crazy Egg is charging peanuts for?

Always pays to wait. Someone is bound to come up with a product that is better and cheaper after the newness of the technology normalizes.