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Sample groups include any forums, newsgroups, and egroups you may subscribe to, and the visitors to your favorite special-interest website.) Now, consider this group of people. What are they like? What are their fears, desires, hopes? In short, what do they want? Next, even if you don't need an ad, write an ad for it.

     "An ad about what?!" Telling them what they want.     "They already know what they want!" Well, then, this is going to be easy, isn't it: All you have to do is tell them that you've got it!     "Got what? Where did I get it? I'm not even sure exactly     what it IS!" Precisely: You only discover exactly what it is while you're writing.     "Are you drunk?" Now you're being forward!     "Well, I guess I didn't mean to be." But I want you to try being BACKWARD. And you do that by starting to write about what will excite your audience, about what will ease their fears or fulfill their needs. Make them salivate. Forget the grammer, ignore the spelling; just write from enthusiasm. Not much more than a first draft, mind you; but keep writing until the idea is so specific that you're *certain* you don't have it.  

    "You're obviously GIVEN medication -- you're just not      SWALLOWING." And make sure your copy is so exciting that even *you* want it. Because then you're motivated enough to go out and find it, buy it, join it, invent it, write it, make it, hire someone to do that, ... or discover that you really had it all along, Toto. (So, I'm not necessarily talking about you getting a different product or service than you already have; but, at this point, you may want to reevaluate your ability to successfully promote it.) If none of that is possible, then start over again on another idea about a different subject. Hence, "not much more than a   first draft." So, now you have an 'it' -- your Ultra-Web-Widget 9000, an Employment-Opportunities-For-Hamsters Site, "Nuclear Arms Negotiating For Dummies," or whatever. And you have the first draft of your copy about it.NOW you can maximize your copy's impact using power phrases, benefit translation, branding, and all the rest. But, as long as you began your idea "backwards," it will actually be hard for you to not make some money from it. (I know that it's made me a millionaire twice, and it's proving itself again, now on the web.) © Dale Armin Miller [Part of the Creating Value section of the Internet Marketing Success Arsenal! (sm), www.SuccessArsenal.com Feel free to pass this along or post it anywhere -- as long as it is the entire strategy, including this bracketed comment.]


            ================== Success Strategy #2 ===================                    How You Can Make A Killing                  Online By Knowing The Future!                            Mystery I've got an idea: Let's all get on the Internet -- the money'll just roll in, and we'll all get rich. So I did. (Apparently you did too.) I even got an email account. But nobody sent me their orders. Then one day I got the idea, "Why don't *I* send an email message to someone?"     So I wrote to my brother. (I think it went, "Can you see     this?") Still nothing ... not even from my brother. Then some guy came up with web pages. BIG print. Colors. Some use for pictures other than in newsgroups. I knew this was the answer. I made my first web page. And this time I didn't wait: I wrote my brother immediately. (I think it went, "Can you see this? http://dip.stick.awol.com/Dale943567792/look@me/sendme$.htm") I'm not sure my brother really likes me. I thought, "Just to be safe, maybe I need to tell somebody else about my brilliant web page." Eventually I got around to trying free online classified ads. And ya know what? They worked. People came to my web page. Except for my brother ... or maybe he's still waiting for it to finish downloading.     More importantly, people gave me money at my web page! (Well, not at my first page ... but that's another story. Yes, Virginia, there *is* a point to this story.) So I posted more classified ads. And more people came. More classified ad sites sprang up. Then more and more. So many that I found it worth the $20 to send off for Mr. E's "Top 50 Free Classified Ad Sites" list. And that worked so well that I finally contacted Mr. E --not his real name-- about buying the rights to his list. At this point, in 1998, there are 12 zillion classified sites [Zillion's Notta Word e-zine, Oct. '98]. So I thought I'd have a field day selling Mr. E's list. But ...     A Funny Thing Happened On      The Way To The Cash Hose I had taken several months off from posting, to refine --and sell!-- an approach to another kind of lead source. Because I had stopped paying attention to classified sites, another test of Mr. E's list was in order; I wanted to advertise up-to-date results. But the response rate was off. Down. Way down. I did another test with a valuable freebie, and compared the results to other advertising. The Top 50 Free Classified Ad Sites, my next big money-making project ... sucked. No way could I ask people to pay money for that.     What had happened? (And how can you profit from this?) I'd done something I vow to never repeat. This is *Internet* marketing. With so many people coming online for the first time every day, old patterns quickly break down. And I, "I had stopped paying attention" to an online marketing method. Still, all I had to do was remember what was going on just before I stopped paying attention: "More classified ad sites sprang up. Then more and more." Now that I was thinking about it, what would happen next was obvious: Software that helps people post ads faster will be invented and/ or become popular. More and more people will use it. Competition will spring up, forcing the price down, which will increase the numbers using it... I didn't need to look to see if that was going to happen, I only needed to see if it happened *yet.* (And my test results already told me it had.)        How To See The Future          For Fun And Profit This is especially simple while the Internet's growth rate stays high: Whenever you notice more and more people doing something online, you can be sure there will soon be software to make that easier. So just imagine what things will be like when large numbers of people are using that software. Now you can see the future. Next, look around in that future for marketing opportunities. Now you know what's going to happen and you can be ready to take advantage of it! (Isn't that what you've always wanted?) Got it?     Give you an example? Funny you should ask. I just happen to be finishing up a story that does exactly that. To recap: People in my target market --online entrepreneurs-- used to go to classified sites to post their ads, where they would see my ad. But now fewer and fewer of them were even seeing the classified sites. So I needed to change that strategy. Question: Is there something that more and more of them *are* doing? Yes, posting to classified sites automatically. Is there a way to take advantage of that? How can I advertise to them as a result of their automated posting? (What do they want more and more of?) One answer is to have a free-classified site of my own. (Why stop at one?) And when someone posts an ad to it, my auto- responder sends them an email confirmation ... along with my order-pulling, power-word-packed killer ad copy: "Can you see this?" Now, I've been talking about free classifieds. I needn't have been, though. If you go back and replace "classifieds" with "links page," or "search engine," for instance, everything still holds. But those are just examples; don't get lost in the details. Get it? Let's see:  TAKE-HOME QUIZ (that can make you money!) 

1) [5 points] More and more people are now getting their own free-classifieds site. Come up with at least one marketing opportunity that will result from the existence of software that makes it even easier for them to do that.

 2) [95 points] Notice something else that more and more people are doing online. Come up with at least one marketing opportunity that will result from the existence (and falling price) of software that makes it easier for them to do that.

 3) [extra credit] Send me the resulting profits. © Dale Armin Miller [Part of the Creating Value section of the Internet Marketing Success Arsenal! (sm), www.SuccessArsenal.com Feel free to pass this along or post it anywhere -- as long as it is the entire strategy, including this bracketed comment.]