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Do vicious tactics work? You tell me. Are you still reading?

“Go For the Throat Sales Tactics”  emits a more vivid scene than “effective copy techniques” don’t you think?  And that’s what it’s all about.

I’ve been browsing Jakob Nielsen’s  Alertbox - it’s hands down the best stuff out there on how to get and keep your reader’s attention. Jakob is a researcher not a copywriter, not another internet marketer, not a sales guy at all. He focuses on observing how people act and modifying web pages to accommodate.

So what can you learn from him?

People only read 18% of what you write on average.

Text ads far outsell banner ads - they actively seek out text ads

Active text blows away passive text

And so much more. He’s been doing this for over 10 years and  I have yet to get a “sales email” from him. Does he ever sell stuff? Oh yeah. Jakob has some books you can buy and he also holds conferences all over the world. I haven’t checked but I bet attending one would set you back  a bundle.

The bottom line you should pay attention to guys like him. He’ll put more money in your pocket than a circus full of “gurus”.

By the way - most everything Nielsen reveals applies to copywriting as well as it does to content marketing as it does to web design.

You can find a list of his articles here.  Sign up for his newsletter too. Just like my blog  alerts - you won’t get a bunch of hyped up ads from him. Actually, your more likely to get a “salesy email” from me than from Nielsen - and I don’t do that very often at all… as most of  you know.

God bless,

Andy

P.S. Notice how his site isn’t what you might call “pretty”?

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I’m moving into Article Marketing big time these days. But what exactly IS article marketing?

Article Marketing is really two, count ‘em, TWO concepts in one!

 First: “Article Marketing” means driving traffic to one or more web pages using articles. Since you can post articles, blog entries, web pages, and and a bunch of other places - the term “Content Marketing” maybe more accurate. For now I’ll stick with using the term “Article Marketing”. Though you may check back as I expand this concept into full-blown “Content Marketing”.

It wasn’t long ago when you could post an article or two on a few article directories with an affiliate link and rake in some - sometimes a lot of - cash.  This is not so true anymore… which leads to the second phase of Article Marketing…

Secondly: Article Marketing refers to promoting your articles - think if it as writing a book. First you write the book and get it published but if you fail to promote the book - do interviews, get your book reviewed, hold signing events and so forth then your book is doomed to end up in the bargain pile in short order.  So…

You get busy and get promoting. This second phase of article marketing is much like this except you use tools techniques more geared to the Internet such as blog commenting, forum posting, and social bookmarking. The idea is to get the article in front as many people as possible so they will click on your link and drive traffic to the pages of your choice.

I’ll post more on this in the  weeks to come and you are welcome to follow my progress - nicks and cuts and all - as I proceed. Feel free to jump in with your own comments and observations.

God bless,

Andy

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