March 2009

Why is it important to know the things that are important to you?  I have been thinking about this a bit lately and trying to figure out what is important to me.  I think it is crucial to know what is important to you because if you know what is important you will have a better focus on what you should be doing with your life.  What you do every day will relflect what is important to you and will dictate where you spend your resources (time, money, abilities, thoughts, etc.) and if you know what is important it can help you figure out why you do what you do on a daily basis.

Now obviously this isn’t a complete list and it changes from time to time but here are 10 of the things that I think are important in my life.  Other than #1 they aren’t really in any particular order and I am sure I am leaving something off this list that should be there but here it goes:

1.  God – When I say God I am talking about the God of the Bible. I believe that God created the heavens and earth, believe that God loves us and sent his Son Jesus Christ to save us and wash away our sins through his sacrifice on the cross, and believe that the only way to heaven is through Christ.   As the bible says in Psalm 16:11 “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” and I believe that God guides us and desires us to have a full, joyful life that can only come from knowing Him and that joy will continue for eternity as those He has saved worship Him forever.  I also believe that God punishes sin and those who rebel against Him and His perfect plan.  I was once a rebel who was directly opposed to God but in His grace and mercy He saved me.

Why is this important?  Without God I would be living a meaningless, worthless life that would just be selfishly focused on myself.  You can take everything else on this list away and I would still have God and that would be more than enough.

2.  Church – I attend Faith Bible Church here in Spokane, WA and have been there since it started back in September of 1992.  The body of Christ at FBC is amazing and has had a definite impact on my life.  I currently serve in the High School and Jr. High ministry there and have been working with that age group for 18 years now.  In the past I have also helped lead worship in that group, been on several overseas mission trips, and have served in many other ways as well.  The unity, love, joy, and friendship I have from my church is one of the greatest things in my life and I couldn’t imagine life without them.  Our elders, pastors, and leadership are committed to teaching the bible and shepherding this church according to what is taught in the bible. 

3.  Family – I am lucky to be able to work with my dad, brother, and sister-in-law.  Most people will advise against getting into business with family but I wouldn’t really have it any other way.  My mom is also awesome so I can’t forget about her.  My sister, brother in law and their 4 children (3 boys and 1 girl) are always fun to be around and it has been awesome to see my nephews and niece grow up over the past 11 years.  I wouldn’t say we are the closest family in the world but we all love each other and would do anything for any of the other members of the family.  We also are all Christians and all attend the same church so the unity we have through that is amazing as well.

4.  Friends – I thought about listing them here but when I started thinking about it I would have well over 100 names and I am sure I would accidently leave someone out.  But friends are a very important part of my life.  I know most of them through either church or work.  My church friends are a great encouragement to me and some of the people in my life that are closest to me. They know me better than I know myself in many ways and are always there to punch me in the face when I am being an idiot, give me a hug when I am sad, help me when I am struggling and rejoice when I rejoice.  My work friends are always in inspiration to me work wise and I rarely come away from a conversation with them without some new ideas on how I can grow my business and are also great to hang out with a few times a year.

5.  My Band – My band, Modern Dissent has been togehter for about 2 years. Over that time we have recorded an album, played numerous gigs around town, and have had a blast whenever we get together.  We usually get together once a week to practice, work on new songs, record some songs, and just hang out.  These 4 guys (Bob, Paul, Corey, and Seth) are some of my closest friends and some of the most awesome people I know.  We are currently working on lining up a bunch of gigs for the spring and summer and have 3 confirmed right now that we are preparing for.  We have no idea what the future holds for us.  Our main goal as a band is this:  “Modern Dissent purposes to use musical expression to encourage people from all background to think hard about Jesus Christ with the hope that they would follow and worship Him.” We don’t really know what that will look like in the future but we are trusting God to guide us and lead us where He wants us to go.  And a big thanks to Dawn and Hannah (Paul and Seth’s wife, mother, daughter and sister) for letting us invade their house once a week and cooking us awesome dinners and Jeannie, Emmett, Ellie and Ephraim (Bob’s wife and kids) for letting us steal Bob away so often.

6.  Work – Since work takes much of my time (probably not as much as it should) it has to be on the list.  I love my job.  I couldn’t really see myself doing anything else right now and I am very thankful to have a job where I don’t have to punch a timeclock, wear a tie, sit in a cubicle, answer to a boss, or do something I don’t want to do.  The work is great, the money is good, the lifestyle is awesome, and the people in this industry (most of them anyhow) are excellent.  And my job allows me plenty of time and money to focus on the rest of the items on this list. 

7.  Seattle Seahawks – OK, this is a bit different from the rest of the items on this list but I love the Seahawks.  They have been my favorite team for as long as I can really remember.  I have been a season ticket holder for 10 years now, have 10 different jerseys (and 4 more I will be buying this year), dozens of hats, shirts, sweatshirts, etc, and regularly make the 540 mile round trip to watch the games in the fall.  I sit in the Hawks Nest at Qwest Field which is where all the rowdy, loud fans sit and I rarely come away from a game with any sort of voice. I am always reading about the Seahawks and love it when they sign or draft a good player.  When the Seahawks win I am happy and when they lose I am very disappointed (just ask the hole I punched in my bedroom door how I react when they lose). 

8.  Food – I love food.  There are few things on this earth that make me happier than when I have a big steak in front of me.  In general I like nearly every kind of meat.  Beef, pork, chicken, lamb, seafood… they are all awesome.  But simple things like a PB&J sandwich or Reese’s Peanut Butter cups make me happy as well.  There are a few foods I really hate and avoid eating if at all possible (onions and green peppers top the list) but I will eat most anything from a good bowl of cereal (Capt’n Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, and Rasin Bran are among my favorites) to some Hot Pockets to catfish to pizza to a good burger… I could go on and on but I think you get the idea.  I love food!!!

9.  Sports – From watching to playing I am a big sports fan.  For the most part I am a pretty athletic guy and I am above average in most of the sports I play.  I am currently on a volleyball team and have 2 softball teams I will be playing on starting in a month or so.  I also love to play basketball, football, tennis, and nearly every other sport.  Badminton, table tennis, takraw, rock climbing… they are all awesome.  As far as watching if it is on TV I probably love it (except for women’s basketball and figure skating). I love watching college and NFL football, college and pro basketball, baseball, NASCAR, hockey, and most anything else.  I even caught myself watching and enjoying curling at 3 AM a couple weeks ago.  I am an ESPN junkie and love keeping up on the latest sports news online and on SportsCenter. 

10:  Golf – I figured this needed an entry all by itself.  There isn’t much better than being out on the golf course on a beautiful summer day.  But I also love golfing in the rain, cold, wind, and pretty much any time in general.  If the snow is off the course I will be out there.  I try to play about once a week and there are about 8 different courses around town I play regularly.  I am not all that good yet (usually shoot around 90 or so) but I still have fun even though it can be amazingly frustrating at times.  I like playing with friends but also like playing alone or just walking on with some complete strangers. 

So there you go.  10 things that are important to me.  What does your list look like?  Leave a comment below and let me know.

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So what’s the deal with sales letters?  Most of you have probably seen them.  I am talking about the standard long form sales letters that usually follow a general basic layout with a big headline at the top, pages and pages of sales copy you have to scroll through, testimonials, some big claims about the product, and are usually promoted as the newest, latest, greatest way to make money online.

I was trying to figure out how to explain them and share my thoughts in a nice linear way but I couldn’t (or didn’t want to take the time) to lay that out.  So I am gonna just lay out some thoughts on them and explain them.  I will be making a lot of blanket statements and painting with a huge broad brush so keep in mind that with nearly all these points there are some huge exceptions.

1.  I hate sales letters – Personally I am not a fan of the sales letter approach.  I think it can be very manipulative and entice people to make their buying decisions based on emotions rather than facts.  But that is the goal of most of these sales letters.  They want to stir up your emotions and coerece you into buying something you probably don’t want or need. It is kind of the same philosophy behind informercials. They will show you all the great things the product can do, make you think you are crazy for not owning it but when you sit down and practically think about it you don’t really need what they are selling. 

I also think for the most part they are pretty ugly.  Over the past couple years the sales letters have been doing a better job graphically and there are some pretty good looking pages out there now but the standard format that has been around for years is pretty low on the design scale.

2.  Sales letters work – Why do people use sales letters?  Because they work and can work very, very well for the right product and the right target audience.  This method of long sales copy has been around for years and if you look through some old magazines you will see a lot of ads that utilize long sales copy similar to most of these pages.  If this sales method didn’t work people would stop doing it but every day many marketers are putting up more and more sales letter pages and making millions doing it. 

Example 1:  There was recently a product launch of a new system put together by a guy that basically explains his method for selling and it did over $4 million in sales in the first day or two. The product is a decent product (not the best I have see but not the worst by far) but the sales copy was very good and he sold a ton.

Example 2:  Another recent launch had the sales copy written by a friend of mine and it converted at over 18% the first day.  I think they are up to around 8,000 sales so far and that will keep growing.

3.  90% of the money making systems touted by these sales letters are crap – OK, I am not sure if the number is acutally 90% but I have looked through many of these products over the past few years, read the ebooks, looked at some of the software tools, and even tried a few of them out and most of them are pretty worthless.  Lots of them contain outdated techniques that might have worked great a couple years ago but are no longer effective (If someone was really making $50K a day or whatever the claims are why would they share the “secret”?  When it stops being effective that is when they sell it), worked once but might not work again, have lots of other outside factors that aren’t explained in the course, or might contain 1 or 2 helpful tidbits of info buried within a 200 page ebook or a 10 DVD set or something.  I don’t doubt most of the claims made by these people but I don’t think more than a couple of the people who spend the money on these courses will ever achieve any success with them.

4.  Some of the products are good – There are some systems out there being sold by these sales letters that are actually very good.  They contain easy, step by step plans to follow, contain some valuable information you don’t find anywhere else, have great support, and will actually help you with your business. 

We interupt this post for a brief commercial announcement and disclaimer:  Yes, my company acutally uses sales letters for some of our products we have developed.  The most recent is Traffic Geyser.  What does Traffic Geyser do?  In a nutshell it will take your video and submit it to about 90 different sites including video sites, blog sites, and social bookmarking sites.  We regularly see user submitted videos achieve top 10 rankings in Google within a few minutes.  Of course that doesn’t always happen depending on what keywords the videos are targeting but it is a great time saving tool if you do much in the way of video marketing. 

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

5.  Sales letters aren’t always sales letters – Over the past year or two many sales letters have morphed into more of a “squeeze page” approach.  The page will be much shorter and ask you to enter your name and email to for more information, a free report, a trial, etc. Once you do that you will receive follow up info pushing for the sale.

6.  Your name means a lot – There are some people in the sales letter industry that could put pretty much anything out there and people will buy it.  They have built a reputation for having some good products and have built a big following that like them and trust them.  Of course if they put out a garbage product their reputation will take a hit but they will still sell a ton of it. 

7.  If someone buys once they will buy again – If you can get a customer to buy from you once you have a live one.  I know dozens and dozens of people who have purchased 10, 20 or more of these systems expecting it to be the magic bullet (which doesn’t exist).  Nearly all of them will just sit on a shelf or in their computer and never even be read.  Since the sales copy got them so excited they must have been expecting something where you can just push a button and make money but all of these systems require work.  Even if they do listen to all the CDs, read all the ebooks, watch all the videos, and use all the tools there is still a very, very good chance they will never make any money but you can be sure when the next great sales page is put in front of them they will whip out the credit card and drop another $1997 hoping it will finally be what they are looking for.

8.  Huge affiliate payouts – The standard affiliate payout for most of these products being pushed by sales letters is around 50%.  Some of them are around 33% and some are as much as 100% but the standard is around 50%.  That is pretty signifigant when you are tallking about a $2000 training system.  Sell a couple dozen and you can take the rest of the month off.  There are a lot of people who make their living just pushing other people’s products.  Generally these people have built up big mailing lists and just push everything that comes out to their list.  I think the more effective people are much more selective in what they push.  If they only promote quality products they will end up with a much more responsive mailing list.  If they are just pushing all the crap out there people will start to ignore them pretty quickly. 

9.  Beware of the marketing funnel – What is the marketing funnel?  Quick rundown of a standard progression: 

1. You buy a $47 ebook or report
2. When done with that you are hit with a more complete report for $297
3. Next up is a 10 hour DVD training course for $1997
4. Live seminar or conference for $2997 is next
5. One on one coaching from the guru:  $5997

So you think you are getting all the info you need for just $47 but by the time you are done you have spent a few grand. 

I have some more thoughts but isn’t 1,500 words enough?  Maybe I will hit some more in a future post. But here are some quick hits:

• There are good guys and not so good guys in this industry. I have my opinions I will share in private but not here. Most of them are very uninformed opinions.  hehe
• If it sounds too good to be true it is.  Don’t get sucked in to the hype.  Be realistic.
• Don’t automatically dismiss all sales letters.  There are some gems out there.
• Totally different world from standard “affiliate marketing”. I would think there would be more overlap between the two but there isn’t much. I regularly talk with a couple of the top copywriters in the business and they think what I do is total voodoo.  But they are expert copywriters.
• There are no magic systems that will make money automatically.  They will all take some work so don’t expect miracles without putting in the effort.

Any questions?  Agree or disagree with any of these points?  Leave me a comment and let me know.

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