Here’s part II of my interview with Joseph Ratliff. What is the biggest mistake you’ve ever made in your copywriting business? That is an excellent question Stephen, and I’ve made only one (LOL, kidding). My biggest mistake was in my early days, I was an “order taker” for my clients. They had a project, and ...
Local marketing is all the rage lately. Strangely enough, I’ve never written copy for someone in my city. The closest was across the river in Portland, OR a handful of times. So when I got the chance to interview Joseph Ratliff I seized it. I know he has experience working both local and global. And ...
If you want to bust out great copywriting every time you stare at the blank page, you’ve gotta learn the 3 B’s of copywriting. Unfortunately, learning the 3 B’s takes time. I can tell you once, I can tell you twice – but until you practice APPLYING the 3 B’s in your copy… the science-slash-art ...
Last night I showed up at Gary Vaynerchuk’s book signing at Powell’s for the third time in three years – one for each book, starting with “101 Wines.” And I can tell you, Gary is hitting full stride! My girlfriend felt I conned her when she realized the focus wasn’t on wine this time, but ...
I’m a big fan of all things entertainment: books, movies, music, sports games. And for years I threw money at these things. I bought every movie that looked interesting, every book that looked interesting… and while I didn’t go too crazy on boardgames, I soon realized I had more than I had people to play ...
Several years back I created Easy Split Test for marketers who want to improve their sales copy. A split test is where you send one page’s traffic to two pieces of copy and calculate which page converts best. Afterwards you stop showing the loser and begin a new test with the winner and a new ...
Just six weeks ago the idea of posting to my blog every day seemed like a daunting task. I wondered where on earth I’d get all the ideas needed to come up with a new post every day. In true Ready Spaghetti form, however, I didn’t let that stop me from just getting started. That’s ...
“The Most Important Letter You’ll Ever Read.” Ya right. Ever read that line in a sales letter? I think it has it’s place. And this isn’t it… “If you’ve ever wanted to go birdwatching in your backyard, then this is the most important letter you’ll ever read.” Could anyone possibly believe that birdwatching is the ...
For those of you who remember James Brausch, he reemerged last year for a bit and wrote some interesting blog posts before disappearing again. One in particular was titled “Interesting Data Comparing Income To Stickiness.” In the post he describes an exclusive joint venture he could only offer to one person at a time, and ...
Recently in the midst of some brief Twitter reading and scanning blog posts, I read that a buying crowd is a polarized crowd. Or something like that. It’s similar to what we discussed inside Grizzly’s post on being a guru. Grizzly quickly went over the formulaic way to brand yourself a guru – track down ...