The Magic Place I flew to Tampa last Saturday to edit the final cut of my movie. (It has a new name: The Uh-Oh Show!) I was afraid I'd be less than useless. I've had no experience and there were going to be two professional film editors in the room. For the first 10 minutes (in which we covered one minute of the movie), I was, indeed, useless. I said nothing. I just listened to Tony and Chris talk about what needed to be cut or framed differently or stretched out or whatever. Their suggestions made sense to me. And then, in a flash, I "got" it. I felt I understood what they were doing, and so began contributing my own suggestions. Twenty minutes later, they were letting me do most of the talking. And it was working. I could see that my ideas were making the movie better. "This is fun!" I said. You're doing a great job," Tony said. "You're a natural." What I discovered was that editing a movie is very much like editing advertising copy. You have to be extremely sensitive to keeping your viewer's attention and make changes when you think it will wander off. Is this scene tight or flaccid? And if it's flaccid, where, exactly, does it go wrong? You are looking for constant tension in the action. Not extreme tension. Just enough to keep the viewer's consciousness within the movie's plot. You don't want him to start to think outside thoughts. Put differently, you want to control the viewer's emotions while he is watching the movie. You want to control what he's feeling and limit what he's thinking so he can enjoy the ride. This is exactly my objective when I edit advertising copy. I want to put and keep the reader in a "magic place" where I can set the scene and direct the action. If at any point I feel that the story line gets flaccid, I cut it. I want the promotion to feel like a great movie -- emotionally powerful from beginning to end. Something to think about the next time you edit -- or read -- advertising copy. In today's issue, Brian Edmondson reveals why originality is overrated. And I talk about: - Wealthy: Why we messed with your ETR
- Healthy: Stop pulling all-nighters
- Wise: Big ideas can only get you so far
---------------------------------------------- Highly Recommended ---------------------------------------------------- World's Highest Paid "Bad Boy" Copywriter Discloses the Key to Boosting Income by 1000% in One Month. This "bad boy" has a secret. One that has pulled in as much as $3.6 million in sales over a weekend... $5 million in a few weeks... and $16 MILLION in a single month! He almost never speaks at events – he's just too busy. But ETR has him for 3 days this November. But you better get in now – the price is going up soon... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude." Thomas Jefferson "So far, my website is pretty much identical to the Early to Rise site," PG told me. PG is one of my coaching students. I had just asked him to tell me about the progress he was making. He had a sign-up box on the top right-hand corner of every page of his website. It offered a free newsletter in exchange for a site visitor's first name and e-mail address. He had a lot of quality content. And the site navigation was clean and easy to follow. He even had a search box and "refer a friend" option. Was I upset by the striking similarity between his website and ours? Absolutely not. I was happy to see that he had copied so much. In fact, as his coach, that's what I told him to do. You see, it wasn't our "intellectual property" that he was using. It was the structure of the website and the business model. When you're starting an online business, one of the smartest things you can do is follow a proven model instead of trying to figure it all out on your own. And if you have a coach or mentor to help you, so much the better. It will really speed up your learning curve. Now you may be thinking that "following" another business and having someone "hold your hand" doesn't sound fun, exciting, or original. But the fact is, most fledgling entrepreneurs who try to reinvent the wheel end up frustrated and disappointed. (There is nothing fun or exciting about spending a lot of time and money on a business and not turning a profit.) I should know. I used to be one of those guys. But after a couple of years of trial and error, I decided to attend an Early to Rise Bootcamp. It was there that I learned about the Agora Model and met the mentors who helped me apply it. In a nutshell, the Agora Model uses direct-response advertising to drive traffic to your website. On the website, you offer valuable information -- say, a free newsletter or special report. In return, you ask your visitors for their e-mail address. Once you have a visitor's e-mail address, you follow up by sending them additional free information, as well as offers for your products and services. This simple model is underutilized by online entrepreneurs. But make no mistake about how powerful it is. It is the model that Agora used to grow into a $300 million a year company. The same model that turned Early to Rise into a $25 million a year powerhouse. I used the Agora Model to build my own six-figure online business. It worked for me. And it can work for you, too. Sure, I look at other online businesses and adapt some of what they are doing successfully to my ventures. It could be a copy approach, a type of offer, or a hot new product. And I'm always on the lookout for coaches and mentors who can help me learn new strategies and techniques. But the Agora Model is the core of my business. And, of course, I continue to learn from my original mentors at Early to Rise. It's tempting to be a renegade and try to do it "your way." But the days of the Wild Wild Web are over. And the Agora Model has been proven to work time and time again. I learned the Agora Model directly from the team at Early to Rise. And that really accelerated my progress. As I said, the quickest way to build an online business is to have a mentor or coach guide you through the process. As an Early to Rise reader, you've already been getting great advice from top online entrepreneurs who have "been there, done that." You can learn a lot from them. But I think you'll find that direct coaching by an expert -- someone who has achieved a high level of success doing what you want to do -- is infinitely better. P.S. With my Internet Power Coaching program, I walk you through the process of growing your profitable online business using the Agora Model. I show you exactly what I did to grow my six-figure business. The official deadline to get in on the "charter class" of IPC was last Wednesday. But after some arm-twisting, the marketing team agreed to let me show make this offer again -- but it expires on Saturday, Sept. 19, at midnight. To find out more about Internet Power Coaching, go here. ----------------------------------------------Highly Recommended --------------------------------------------------- The "Hidden" Niche That Turned $6,300 into $167,460 "I've never seen a market like this in my 33-year career," says industry expert Jeremy Charles. Big players are snapping up massive chunks of this much-overlooked sector every day... (Names include Paulson & Company... Greenlight Capital... and the central banks of Russia, Ecuador, and China.) Says Financial Times, investors are making "unprecedented" demands in this "Windfall Sector." Experts expect the situation to lead to panic buying... And unimaginable prices. For nearly 20 years, Russell McDougal has been poring over the investment markets. Now, he has pinpointed a unique niche set to piggyback off the coming mania in this "Windfall Sector." In the past Dr. McDougal has turned $6,300 into $167,460. The "hidden" niche he's uncovered could produce similar gains. You don't have to be a big player to get involved. Get in on this little-known corner of the "Windfall Sector" before the masses catch on... And you stand to create vast riches for yourself. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- More wealth, health, and wisdom from Masterson ... There are two elements in highly successful information products: big ideas and big thinkers. I've talked about big ideas many times in past issues. A big idea is something that is instantly ascertainable, instantly compelling, and easy to explain. It is also something that seems to carry a strong benefit. To have a successful information publishing business, you need to have a big idea that will bring in new buyers and keep them interested for months or even years. Just as important is a big thinker. This insight was shared with me by Bill Bonner, the founding father of Agora. He called it a "big personality," because he was thinking of Agora's most successful franchise builders. They are usually people with healthy egos and a contrarian approach who think "big" all the time. They are never "sensible" or "correct," but always a bit outlandish and provocative. Meanwhile, I work with several gurus who don't have huge egos or personalities. Still, they come up with big ideas like a dog comes up with new fleas. You can start a business with a single big idea. But if you don't have a big thinker behind it, the business will peter out. And you'll have no one to come up with another big idea to revitalize it. That brings me to an interesting question from one of our readers about the recent changes we've made to ETR. He wanted to know how we arrived at our current format. One thing I never liked about the previous formats of all our daily e-services (not just ETR but Investor's Daily Edge and Total Health Breakthroughs) was that they were leaderless. We had plenty of interesting contributors, but there was nobody to help readers understand how the various essays formed part of a unifying whole. I've been in information publishing for 30 years, and this is something you can take to the bank: It's always easier to sell a service if it has a guru at the top. So that's the first change we made. We brought in Bob Irish as Investment Director of Investor's Daily Edge, promoted Melanie Segala to Editor of Total Health Breakthroughs, and I took the leading role in ETR. The next thing we were concerned with was the topicality of our information. Countless tests have proven to me that readers want to know what is hot right now. They want practical, current advice. So we introduced more news into ETR. And we made it a mandate for all the advice we give to make sense in today's world. The next thing we did was give priority to one really useful idea a day. Rather than give you two or three pretty good ideas, we made the decision to have one main essay. This created a stir when we dropped some features from ETR that readers really liked. So we put them back. But we put them in after the main essay. We want you to pay most attention to the big essay because we believe it will have the greatest long-term impact on your life. Finally, we eliminated the ads that ran on the edges of the editorial copy. We put them in shaded boxes so it would be easier for you to look at them if and when you wanted to. That's the story. We're still fine-tuning. But we've been flooded with thank-yous and compliments from readers (see the one from Peter Wright, below) ... so we know we are on the right track. Falling asleep -- and staying asleep -- gets tough as you age. At 65, you have less melatonin than a newborn. Your body's production of the sleep hormone just dries up. I usually sleep fine. Regular exercise helps. But when I'm having trouble, I follow Dr. Sears's advice. He says to take a melatonin supplement. But not a pill. You get only about 1 percent of the dose on the label because your stomach acid destroys the rest. Instead, you should take liquid melatonin in spray form. This way, it can be absorbed by your mouth's blood vessels. Never take prescription or over-the-counter sleep aids. Aside from the risk of addiction and serious side effects, they don't even work. A recent National Institutes of Health study found that sleeping pills only give you an average of 11 more minutes of sleep a night. And do you really want to feel "foggy" the whole next day? For more ways to get good sleep the natural way, go here. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "ETR survived the cut." "In the interests of better time utilization, I have just completed another of my regular purges of my e-mail subscriptions. ETR survived the cut. "My opinion is that you have now achieved a good product with, for me, just the right balance of varied and useful articles. "Thank you for a great newsletter." Peter Wright
Woodstock, Ontario, Canada ---------------------------------------------- Highly Recommended --------------------------------------------------- Your Website Is the Crossroads of the World - Imagine if you could open up a store in the "Times Square of the Internet." But instead of the 26 million people a year who pass through Times Square every year, you got 91 million "passersby" - every day! It's very easy (and cheap) to do. And with Bob Bly's help you could see income in just a few weeks. Read more... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Many readers told us they missed "The Language Perfectionist," which was on hiatus during ETR's format change. This weekly column, which previously ran on Saturday, is back and will appear in ETR every Friday. Just as before, Don Hauptman will grapple with thorny issues of English grammar, usage, and style; sort out conflicting rules of right and wrong; and introduce you to unusual and fascinating words and expressions. The Language Perfectionist: A Gaggle of Gaffes By Don Hauptman Mistakes can be a good thing. They teach us what to avoid. The trick, though, is to learn by observing others make them. With that goal in mind, here's another roundup of misspellings, misunderstandings, and other misuses -- all found via Internet search, but equally frequent in print: - "I just find it as ridiculous as any other hair-brained conspiracy theory."
Whether hair-brained or hairbrained, it's wrong. The correct word is harebrained -- that is, the brain of a rabbit. It's true that hare was once spelled hair, but that was 400 years ago. Don't be harebrained; spell it correctly! - "I do have a photo of his name on the marquis of the theater where he gave his last performance."
The canopy of a theater is a marquee (mar-KEE). A French nobleman is a marquis (mar-KEE or, in the anglicized pronunciation, MAR-qwis). - "The people who do not have money or marketable skills -- the poor, the elderly, the frail, the uneducated -- fall between the cracks with no place, no role, and no money to buy what they need."
This is a commonly garbled metaphor. Something that is forgotten or overlooked falls into or through the cracks, not between them. - "This is unchartered territory for ... presidential candidates, given the fact that the whole primary season starts ... three days after New Year's ...."
An organization that lacks a document outlining its principles and functions is unchartered. The word wanted here is uncharted. - "Juliana, I enjoy this new newsletter format so much better than the daily newsletter which I felt obliged to peruse quickly so as to have time to do research."
The word peruse means to read carefully, and that takes time. It's often misinterpreted, as in the above example, as meaning the opposite: to read rapidly, to scan to get the gist. Incidentally, it's considered pretentious to use peruse when read will suffice. [Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book published by AWAI that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into speaking, consulting, training, and critiquing.] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We want your feedback! Let us know your thoughts on today's issue. Email us at: AskETR@ETRFeedback.com | 
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