One of the cornerstones of powerful writing is the use of concrete details that can tell your story for you. I don’t care if you’re writing a sales letter, a blog post or a short story for The New Yorker, you need details.
They have to be vivid.
They have to be compelling.
And they have to matter to your reader.
I couldn’t believe it was actually happening. I was boarding a flight from cold and rainy JFK Airport to warm and sunny West Palm Beach.
In just a few hours, I’d be having a no-holds-barred business lunch with the one and only Michael Masterson. (In case you don’t know, Michael consults for some of the biggest direct marketing companies in the world and has personally made millions online and off. He’s also the lead instructor of the AWAI Copywriting Course.)
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it. ~Alfred North Whitehead
A great quotation is gold to a perceptive writer. You can instantly boost reader engagement with the right bit of wisdom or wit. And when writing to persuade, you can bolster your arguments by pointing to the words of the well regarded.
Absolutely. In fact, I know a freelance writer who makes over $300,000 a year from writing white papers alone.
And I can tell you from personal experience that I launched an entire real estate brokerage firm with a white paper that revealed the inner workings of the MLS. I’ve seen countless other small businesses go from struggling to successful with educational marketing content that not only goes viral… it persuades people to buy.
Mike Stelzner has just released a great free video that reveals how he went from desperate to knee-deep in lucrative new business… all thanks to a single white paper.
This is my generation, baby. ~The Who
The right words on your website gets you what you want: better sales, more readers or increased credibility. You can achieve all kinds of goals by tweaking to target your online market audience. Be like Robin Hood in an archery contest – think, research, test and hit it dead on, baby.
Here are some good ways to get a head start: Engage in two-way conversational marketing. Tweak your tagline and make it benefit-rich and catchy. Test for the right words that resonate with your buyers and convey emotion.
Is it enough?
What’s the secret to effective affiliate marketing?
It all boils down to engagement.
If you have a page with an affiliate offer that ranks well for searchers in buying mode, that’s pretty high engagement. You need a trusted, authoritative site to pull that off, which means strong content and plenty of links.
But don’t forget that the very same content creates engagement with regular readers first. If you’re building authority sites that attract subscribers, you get more than one shot at affiliate revenue. You profit first with your direct readers who trust you, and then continue to generate revenue over time thanks to strategically-placed cross-links and search traffic.
