Sydney - The owners of a cat in Sydney's western suburbs have discovered that over the last twelve months their little precious has eaten 747 mice.

"Fatso", the cat, "seems to think of them as chocolate bars", said the pet's owners.

Do Gooder groups are outraged. They've taken a petition up on behalf of the mice to have Fatso put to sleep.

"It's just not right" says Do Gooder Smith. "Who's going to look after those poor defensless church mice? If someone doesn't do something then Fatso could cause an environmental imbalance. And besides, what if a child saw the dead mouse. We can't have our children seeing dead rodents. It will effect them and they'll all turn into rampaging homocidal maniacs later in life"

Richard,

All the rules of writing sales letters are wrong, Wrong, WRONG!

AIDA, ACIBASWAN, USP-IN-YOUR-FACE, etc., etc., are all wrong.

I mean, really, look at AIDA.

Attention. Grab your reader's attention. Oh gee how do I do that? I know, I'll use an attention grabbing headline. And what is an attention grabbing headline? Oh... it's words, just words. Any words. But BIG and BOLD>. Nothing more.

It could say anything at all and someone will read it. You'll have their attention for a split second. Mission Accomplished. Next.

Interest. Generate interest.

Desire.

Yawn.

If you want to go through all that, fine. Be my guest. But it'll all amounts to ZIP unless you send it to the right person first.

Oh... you're going to send it to them? Then they're already interested, aren't they? They already have desire, don't they?

Send it to the right person and it'd have to be pretty bad for them not to read it.

But then all the hype isn't needed, is it?

Nope. All that's needed then is info. Provide enough info. and the reader will fill in all the blanks for you.

Succeed In Life.

Pretty non-specific. Succeeding means different things to different people. They fill in the needed blanks.

Get What You Want In Life.

Same here.

I Ate My Neighbors Dog And He Thanked Me For It.

Wow. That's interesting. I might read a bit more of that one. Even if I never have the intention of eating my neighbors dog.

Eyes on text is what it's all about. How you do that is,

NIKE STYLE.

Just do it. WHATEVER works. Nothing more, nothing less.

Confused?

So am I. But I've found something to help me when I am confused. It's called the Confuse-o-matic. With it I can...

Who cares?

Not me.

The BEST sales letters are not sales letters.

I believe people are like cats. Push them and they push back. Pull them and they pull away.

Time to name names.

Bill Myers wrote two letters. One sold a Watch Video and Book package. The other sold subscription to a video newsletter. BOTH of those sales letters are brilliant.

Both make an offer on the last page. All the previous pages are full of info. only. Info. about the market and not the product.

In the watch package he talks about watches and finding them and making money from them and what others pay for them.

In the video letter he talks about the industry as a whole.

By then end of both you have SOLD YOURSELF.

He recently stopped writing his online newsletter. A newsletter which was, in essence, a never-ending sales letter.

He talks about Newsletters in his newsletter. Then bingo-boingo, he releases a "How to start your own newsletter" product.

He talks about webcams. Bingo-boingo. Webcam product.

And so on and so forth.

All the while just talking about something and letting YOU get yourself excited about it. So much so, that in the end all he does is mention that he's made a product about the thing he's been talking about for the last few months and people lap it up.

No hype. No headlines.

Just what works.

He came to Australia and did an internet seminar in the north. A seminar or an education process that allowed you to talk yourself into how wonderful the net was so you'd be eager to invest in the thing he just happened to have (webpages) that would allow you to get your online business going?

What was this thread about again?

Whatever. I've gone off track if there was one. :o)

Headlines... Sales letters... Ads... the only thing that matters is what works, for you.

No rules.

Some Will Say I'm Wrong For Writing This. I Say...

I've covered all bases. WHATEVER WORKS is what matters.

Letters that are more education then hype, hype, benefit headlines, curiosity headlines, non of it matters. All that matters is,

does it work?

If yes, then keep doing it. If no, then stop and do something else.

So that's three rules.

1: Whatever works.
2: If is works keep doing it.
3: If it doesn't work, stop and do something else.

Well, go to get back to the All Knowing Eye... the Olympics are on you know. :o)

Michael Ross.