Direct marketing’s a tough way to make a living, but if
you can master certain skills it can be extremely
lucrative. It takes on many different forms, some of which
are easily translatable to the web.

Although the term may bring to mind door to door salesmen
pushing their wares to housewives in robes and curlers, it
also has roots in print ads such as classifieds and space
ads and direct mail.

The internet has created a massive opportunity for the
skilled direct marketer to thrive without doing the
customary legwork and engaging in personal contact with
their prospects, basically expanding on the concept of
direct mail.

So what skills do you need to hone in order to succeed at
direct marketing?

The top priority of anyone interested in making money on
the internet should be their copywriting skills. This is
simply putting your sales message into words.

Since the face to face encounter has been eliminated you
need to be able to convey your pitch through the words on
the pages that your prospects are reading.

A great way to polish your copywriting skills, even if
you’ve never written a single word of ad copy before, is to
create a swipe file. This is just a file of already
successful ad campaigns.

Swipe files are incredibly useful tools. Every major
player in direct marketing keeps a swipe file and for good
reason. Everybody gets stuck for words and ideas at some
point. When this happens it’s good to have an example of
past successes to go to and freshen your creative juices
and get the words flowing again.

What should your file consist of?

You should gather any material that has spurred you to
action, whether its purpose was to get you to buy something
or just leave your name and email address. Copy the good
stuff and study it. Realize what was in the ad that made
you act on the offer.

Look for layout designs (bulleted lists are a big direct
marketing tactic), action words, headlines and sub heads.
You’ll notice certain words popping up along with questions
and statements that are all fairly alike but are tailored
to specific products and services.

That’s the key to a good swipe file. Gather a wide array
of different styles and mold the message to your particular
target audience. Study the material and write out many
different versions of the same ad. Practice your art and
perfect it.

A word of caution though. Never copy an ad word for word.
That’s plagiarism and it’s illegal. Use your swipe file as
an aid only, to sharpen your copywriting skills and make
you better at direct marketing

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Here’s another freebie PDF report I found recently. If you
haven’t read it before I suggest you do read it. There are
a few concepts in the report that are very important if you
are interested in accumulating huge wealth fast.

Grasping a few of the “new” wealth concepts discussed in
the report will benefit you immensely in the months to come.

You can download your freebie here…

http://www.XoneMarketing.com/vault/speedwealth.pdf

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For your enjoyment (and information), here is this week’s
quick trivia question…

Why is a Coca-Cola can red?

As usual the answer can be found later in the newsletter.

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Featured Article
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How Blogs and RSS Can Boost Your Website’s Page Rank!

A few months into Internet marketing and you’ll get to
realize the importance of search engine optimization for
your online business. Search engine optimization, or SEO,
is a vital approach to have your website figure prominently
in search engine result pages for relevant queries.

In fact, 80% of the traffic you will be able to generate
for your website would come from search engines, hence the
value of tapping into the market that the said search
engines would provide.

A few months into search engine optimization and you’ll
get to realize the value of having your link appear in as
many places as possible in the World Wide Web. Your
website’s link would be a convenient way of directing web
users to your pages.

The number of links you have displaced all over the
virtual world is reflected through a statistic called your
link popularity. The higher your link popularity is, the
better chances you’ll have of driving more traffic for your
website and succeeding with your online business.

There are a lot of ways by which you could boost your link
popularity. A lot!

But one of the most potent strategies is the use of blogs
and RSS.

Blogs, or web logs as they are formally called, were
originally meant to serve as online journals for people to
share the events of their days and their thoughts about
different matters.

But with the powerful features attributed to blogs, it was
only a matter of time before Internet marketers discovered
their marketing potentials.

Today, blogs are powerful weapons used by online
businessmen to promote their commercial websites. Let’s
take a look at the reason behind this.

* Search engines love blogs. Try to run a search about any
subject, and chances are, you’ll find blogs dominating good
position in the result pages.

If you apply for a free blog account like www.blogger.com
which is owned by Google, undoubtedly the largest search
engine in the world with a 67.4% market share, you’ll
immediately see an undeniable connection that would favor
your needs if you do decide to avail of this service of
theirs.

* Blogs are accessible for a lot of people. Blogs are easy
to set up and use. Additionally, updating your blog would
be a simple task as well. All you have to do is to type
what you want to share and click on a button to publish.

And search engines love regularly updated content. With
blogs, you could achieve this without having to change your
source code.

* Blogs are free. Whether you decide to use a web account,
like the aforementioned www.blogger.com , or a movable type
program which you could upload on your own server under
your own domain name, like www.wordpress.com, blogs won’t
require any financial burden.

* Blogs have their own network. This interconnectivity
would allow you to reach a new audience which would get to
receive your business message.

The trick is to include your main website’s link in your
blog entries. These entries can be in the form of reviews,
news items, opinions and the likes. Instantly, you’d have a
high ranking website promoting a link to your main website,
and this would provide a big boost on the volume of traffic
for the latter.

Additionally, blogs can also generate RSS feeds from the
entries therein.

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. It’s slowly
becoming the industry standard for message conveyance. By
2010, it is expected that 90% of Internet users would be
relying on RSS for their online communication needs.

Currently, RSS 2.0 technology is being used to deliver
highly compressed audio and video files. This means that
you could include the same for your website without
alienating users with slower connections.

RSS is a great marketing tool. When your visitors would
subscribe to your mailing list, you could send them RSS
feeds instead. Such would be delivered straight to their
desktop, in real time, hence eliminating the possibility of
your message being filtered as spam.

Also, RSS feeds can be displayed on your website, or
websites, in real time as well. This means that your
website, or websites, would be fed with ever-changing
content, hence, increasing their page rank for every
relevant search engine query.

With all these facts, it’s no wonder why blogs and RSS are
hailed as the greatest innovations in Internet marketing,
the recent years considered.

They are two of the most efficient ways of catapulting
your online business to the next level, as they could most
certainly boost the number of visitors that grace your
website, and consequently, the number of sales you’ll be
able to close.

About the Author…

David Isaacs is the co-founder an amazing site that gives
you an in’credible collection of products, services and
training programs that shows you how you can achieve and
live your dreams… Infinite Revenue

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This Week’s Trivia Answer
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H’ere’s the answer to the trivia question I asked earlier…

Why is a Coca-Cola can red?

Answer: The following is from The Coca-Cola Company:

Almost from the beginning, the colors red and white have
been used in visual advertising for Coca-Cola to dramatize
the trademark. The earliest use of red in our advertising
was by Atlanta drug stores selling Coca-Cola.

They would hang a white oil cloth sign on the store front
or awning with slogans printed in red that stated “Drink
Coca-Cola, Delicious and Refreshing 5 cents” or “Coca-Cola
Sold Here 5 cents.”

In 1890, the trademark “Coca-Cola” began to appear in red
in newspapers. During the late 1920s, the trademark “Coca-
Cola” was used in white on a “Standard Red” background.

The color arrangement of red on white and white on red has
been used alternately over the years. In 1970, the Dynamic
Ribbon Device was introduced, and the “Standard Red” became
brighter.

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Healthy Body… Healthy Mind
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10-Minute Exercises with Big Results!

Many busy professionals feel that working out isn’t worth
the time unless they can exercise for forty minutes or
longer and it’s true that many healthcare workers and
government agencies used to recommend that all adults get
thirty consecutive minutes of aerobic exercise per day.

But this is the twenty-first century and the fact of the
matter is that you don’t have to do all your exercise at
once to reap the health benefits.

Research has shown that short, intense exercise segments
throughout the day are just as effective as longer workouts
at burning calories, increasing cardio endurance and
lowering blood pressure and cholesterol.

Even as little as five minutes can go a long way towards
balancing hormones in the body and making you a happier
person - is that great or what? You no longer have to worry
about finding a large block of free time to work out; just
take a coffee break and in five minutes you can feel
totally rejuvenated.

One of the greatest things about shorter workouts is that
they have tremendous potential to reshape your body with a
minimum time commitment. Incorporating strength training
exercises into your daily schedule is a powerful tool for
both heart health and muscle strength.

Spend five minutes doing lower body exercises and after
several weeks you can tell a difference. Spend ten minutes
on a power workout and results will show up in three weeks
or less.

Use the following ten-minute express workout on a regular
basis for a month and you will see remarkable changes in
your body’s strength. You can do these workouts in your
office with the door closed or, if your office is a
cubicle, in the restroom or some other private area. Do
whatever is

Express Workout 1 - Abdominal Muscles

Having strong core muscles is crucial to protecting the
spine and maintaining good posture. When your body is
supported by strong central muscles it’s easier to perform
everyday tasks as well as exercise. Abdominal workouts
won’t flatten the stomach - that requires aerobic exercise -
but they will strengthen and tone the muscles.

Basic Curls: Perform the basic curl by lying on your back
with knees bents. Place your fingertips at your ears and
use your stomach muscles to pull yourself about five or six
inches. Slowly lower back down. Avoid using momentum to
perform the exercises.

Cross-Curls: Begin in basic curl position. Contract
stomach muscles and lift to the right as you bring your
right elbow to your left knee. Switch and bring left elbow
to right knee.

Bicycle: Begin in basic curl position but prop your upper
body up on your elbows. Straighten your legs and then raise
both legs several inches off the floor. Pull your right leg
in to your body; then extend it as you pull in your left
leg. Continue doing so; thus “bicycling.”

Rope Climb: Begin in basic curl position. Raise your legs
straight up into the air while keeping your upper body flat
on the floor. Using your abdominals to lift your upper back
off the floor, use your hands and arms to pretend you are
climbing a rope. Grasp the “rope” with your right hand as
you bring your right side off the floor; then switch and
use your left hand.

Stretches: Lie on your stomach with hands at about
shoulder-height. Slowly use your hands to lift your upper
body off the floor and stretch your abdominals.

0:01 - 2:00 - Perform as many well-done basic curls as
possible within two minutes.

2:01 - 2:30 - Rest for thirty seconds.

2:31 - 4:30 - Complete as many accurate cross-curls as
possible within two minutes.

4:31 - 5:00 - Rest for thirty seconds.

5:01 - 7:00 - “Bicycle” for two minutes.

7:01 - 7:30 - Rest for thirty seconds.

7:31 - 9:30 - “Climb” the “rope” for two minutes.

9:31 - 10:00 - Stretch the abdominal muscles.

Next week I will continue on this theme of quick but
beneficial workouts for people “on the go” and providing
another 2 Express Workouts for you to try

About the Author:

Kerry Isaacs is the owner of the “Weight Loss Tips and
Resource Centre” where you get instant access to weight loss
tips, diets, exercises tips & treatments -
http://www.wltrc.com

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Have You Got Any Comments?
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This is your chance to speak out.

Comment on articles I’ve run in the newsletter, give me
your thoughts on changes or your ad testing results or
questions relating to your business, etc.

In other words, just talk to me about what you think I
need to do to improve the newsletter.

Be sure to include your website address too, because if
I use your comments in a future issue of the newsletter,
I’ll thank you by posting your address so that you can get
additional free traffic to your site!

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That’s a Wrap for this Week
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That wraps up another week’s newsletter and I hope you
enjoyed this issue.

Don’t forget to send me any comments or questions you
may have to the Feedback Loop. I would be only too happy to
help you in any way that I can.

From time to time I’ll send you important updates
that will provide information that has the potential to
greatly improve your online business… and of course
your profits!

However, you can rest assured that I will only ever
recommend products that are considered to be of HIGH value
and will provide indisputably benefits to help you grow
your business… that’s my guarantee!

Your friend,

Gilles Rais

Categories: Newsletter Issues