Marlon's 12 Step Formula to Sales Letters that Work

Sales Letters -- How And Why I Created The 12-Step Formula Everyone Uses To Teach Sales Letter Writing By Marlon Sanders
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When I started as a copywriter back in 1983, there wasprecious little to learn from. A few John Caples books. "The Robert Collier Letter Book."Dan Kennedy's book. Victor Schwab. A few others. Greatbooks in their own rights. But lacking in terms of astep-by-step, actionable formula in my opinion.


And my perspective is as one who ONLY had those books tolearn how to write sales letters from. It took me a long time to learn what you can grasp in afew dedicated months of study today. If you read muchabout how to write sales letters on the Net, you'll see over and over a 12-step formula for writing sales letters.


This is my formula. I created it. It's spread without attribution. But I want people to know the truth. That's all. I'm the ONLY person who can tell you where this formula came from and how it was developed. I can ALSO tell you that prior to this formula, the only things that existed as sales letter formulas were grossly lacking.


How about this barn burner: Attention, interest, desire,action. That's one that I had to learn from. No wonder it took me so long to learn. I dare you to take that formula and try to write a sales letter from it. It's what copywriters taught to make the process sound mystical and complicated, thus generating clients and jobs.


Or here's another one: Problem, agitate, solve. Alright. Nice formula. Totally lacking. There were other formulas. All lacking. Now, to be fair, the person who REALLY solved the puzzlewas NOT me. It was Bob Serling.


See, back in the day, I was a copywriter at a company called National Response Corporation. And they sold Bob Serling's products. Bob had a coursethat taught an intricate but solid 16-step formula forwriting sales letters. He was to my knowledge the first to TRULY codify a sales letter into practical, actionablesteps you could follow step-by-step.


The thing is, I felt a formula was needed that expressed how I had learned to write sales letters through the school of hard knocks. I created a 12-step formula and later codified it in "The Amazing Formula" as as chapter. And broke it out into a separate product. Actually, I first sold it in an ebook called WSOTM, Web Site Order Taking System. But that's going way back.


As proof, I might site the fact that I OWN salesletters.com. And I HAVE owned it a long freakin'time. That's for all the skeptics who think I take credit for things that don't deserve it. Anyway, I taught this formula at a lot of seminars. The old Boulder seminars with Jonathan Mizel and Declan Dunn.The Carl Galletti seminars.


Before long, everybody and their dog grasped onto the 12-step formula. Wrote it up in free ebooks. Wrote it up in articles and posted it on the Net. All fine. All well and good. Would have been NICE to give attribution. I guess they argue they changed SOMETHING. What? I'm not sure. But something.


Anyway, to make a long story longer, I found out at some point that even though I was teaching the 12-step formula,people were NOT following. That is how I created a whole entire category of software and products referred to as "sales letter generators." I created a product called "Push Button Letters" that forced people to follow the 12-step formula.


It was a blockbuster hit so many people created their ownsales letter software programs. More power to them. As long as it helps people. There are so many things that have been invented on the Internet, you could never keep track of who invented what. Or it would sure be tough. I don't even know that it's important that I get any credit.


I can tell you that Bob Serling deserves a lot for figuring out what he did. Corey, when he was living, bought the rights to Bob's outstanding sales lettercourse. The point of this article really isn't to pat myself onthe back, although I reckon I've done that a little too much. It's really about you, your sales letters and your sales.


Here are a few take aways I hope you find valuable.

1. You can now learn to write basic sales letters in a month or two, versus the 20 years it took me.

2. There are formulas you can learn that greatly speed your progress.

3. If you struggle, there are software programs that canhelp you follow proven formulas.

Marlon Sanders For more free tips, articles and resources on how to promote with blogs,podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, and all kinds of other stuff, visit: http://www.marlonsnews.com
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Marlon's Marketing Minute is copyright 2008, Higher Response Marketing Inc. All rights reserved.

How to Really Get Top Ten Rankings In Google

Google Top Ten Rankings:
How to Really Get Top Ten Rankings In Google In 37 Minutes, Really, For Real!

Why Everyone Is Choosing The Keywords For Their Articles, Blogs Web 2.0 Sites, and Videos In The Wrong Way And The Only Way That Makes Sense.

Eleven easy steps to those top ten Google rankings By Marlon Sanders


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I'm not a big seo person. But, I'm working on a new product, so I have to get my ducksin a row. I have a shocking SEO secret to share here I betyou haven't heard before. I'm gonna break this down for you really easy. The first thing people do in search engine optimization, thatis creating pages to get ranked in the search engines is tofind key words to target with their pages. This is the link to the easiest free tool I've found:http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/index.php


So you type in your topic and hit submit. What most peoplethen do is look for keywords that have a smaller number ofdaily searches. So, for example, if you type in the keyword "dog training" you might select "dog training collars"instead of dog training. The wrong way to do it is to choose keywords by a low numberof daily or monthly searches, assuming that means lowcompetition.


Let me show you this: You can have a word in Google that LOOKS like it has two MILLION pages to compete against. Yet, in reality, there are almost none.


Type this in Google: sales letters cold calls


When you type it without quotes, I use the pay per clickter minology and call it the "broad phrase." If you look at the number of search results Google returns, it's in the range of 1,790,000. The ebooks you read will tell you to choose keywords with under 1,000,000 results. But that is WRONG. Check it out.


Type this in: "Sales Letters Cold Calls" In other words, do it in quotation marks. That searches ONLYsites with the exact phrase. Now look at the results: SEVEN! There are ONLY 7 basic sites to compete against. Let me prove this works. Look at this: sales letter cold calls That's singular instead of plural "letter". 239,000 results.


Now type it in in quotes -- "sales letter cold calls".I call that the exact phrase. There are FOUR results! And the first two are mine. I amlisted in page two. And I only submitted the page onApr 25, 2008 03:30:17 GMT Here's another: greatest direct mail sales letters 368,000 results. The exact phrase in quotes? Only 1,760.


And look at numberfour: hubpages.com/tag/worlds+greatest+direct+mail+sales+letters/hot That would be MY page. And I only submitted it on Apr 25, 2008 03:30:41 GMT. Literally a few of these rankings I got in 30 minutes to onehour! See, when you're really only competing against 4 sitesor 2,000 sites, it's NOT so hard! NOTICE: Since I've publicly posted these results, I'm sure they'll get zapped.


That almost always happens when you make something like thispublic. The sites you post publicly are sacrificial lambs to demonstrateyour point. Here is how to get YOUR top ten rankings TODAY! Like in onehour from now if you're lucky.


Step one: Go to: http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/index.php I usually just go to seobook.com and type my term in the box at the right.You can also use nichebotclassic.com or ANY other keyword tool.


Step two: Search your topic


Step three: Start selecting keyword phrases and type them into Google with the exact phrase in quotes.


Step four: Find a phrase that has only a few search results. Preferably under 10. But under 2,000 is good. Let's say you bought the private label rights to an ebook on dog training.You type in: training dog choke collars. You see 1,850,000 results. YUK. But in quotes "training dog choke collars" you find only THREE stupidcompetitors! This is taking top ten Google rankings like taking candy from a baby!


Step five: Build several web 2.0 sites on the exact phrase as the title. Post an article to the site with the phrase in the titleand in in the article once in bold. For example, a squidoo lens on "training dog choke collars"would be http://www.squidoo.com/training-dog-choke-collars Blogger would be:http://www.training-dog-choke-collars.blogspot.com/ Write quality content that is unique and original if possible. Try these properties: squidoo.comwordpress.comblogger.comhubpages.comzimbio.com


Step six: Digg your new site at digg.com


Step seven: Submit a story on it to propeller.com(Just a few paragraphs with your URL.) If it's a blog, you can submit the URL withpingoat.com or pingomatic.com.


Step eight: Put the URL in a Twitter.(Sign up at twitter.com.) This one I'm not sure works. I'veread it does.


Step nine: After one hour, paste the URL of the site intoGoogle and search for it. For example, if this was your blog,you'd paste the whole URL into Google search: http://sales-business-letter.blogspot.com/ Now, as you can SEE, it ain't in there. I don't know why!I'm still learning nuances. I've only been at this fourdays!

Step ten: Add new posts to your site, new articles,videos or content daily.


Step eleven: Every time you add new content, posts, videos or articles to your site, bookmark it with a couple of the bookmarking services like simpy, del.icio.us or furl. You "might" use onlywire.com for this. I'm not sure on that one.


On most ALL the sites, there's a way to "insert video"and you simply put in your youtube URL and BOOM! You have avideo on the site. At the end of the day, you need content humans WANT to read. You create sites for humans, NOT GOOGLE!


At the end of theday, you gotta have sites people want to read and that helpand benefit them. Otherwise, your site won't be evergreen. Oh, updating your site frequently is how you keep the Googlebot coming there and how you stay IN the rankings withoutsliding down. Now, if you're lucky, Google will spider and list the site inunder an hour. I got mine in there in 37 minutes.


Thus, the title of this article. On the other hand, I have some Squidoo pages, a Blogger blog and a Wordpress blog that I can't even get Google to spider yet. I'm trying to figure THAT one out! If any of you are seo gurus and can tell me WHY these sites get NO Google love, post on my blog: http://saleslettersoftware.wordpress.com/It doesn't show up in Google at all. https://sales-letter-software.pbwiki.com/Sales-Letter-SoftwareDitto.


OK. So you have to create sites in multiple web 2.0 properties. Some will stick. Some won't. What Melvin Perry, an seo guru I like told me is with different niches, different things workbetter. In some niches a Blogger blog or Wordpress blog does great.In some, it's Squidoo. It depends on the niche.

If you do more than one of these sites a week, go to:www.apple.com/safari Download the Safari browser and do ALL your work in it vs.Firefox or IE. Why? If you select "Edit, private browsing" itturns off cookies and history. If you're checking your sites all the time, I have a feeling(but no proof) Google then thinks you're an seo king and they penalize you.


But don't quote me on that. I think that is why several of my sites above aren't spidered.I searched them too many times using Firefox and Google figuredI must be up to no good! So, I'm NOT saying it's all gonna work 100% of the time. Atleast, not until I figure some more things out.


Back to work. Marlon For free podcasts, free videos, free articles, go to:http://www.marlonsnews.com/. You can hit me with your comments and feedback on this issue.


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"Marlon's Marketing Minute is copyright 2008, Higher ResponseMarketing Inc. All rights reserved.

Cool Widget for Video makers by Blinx

This video wall by Blinx is a neat gizmo to show your video's on your website - in this example I've used my youtube username:







They also give you the option to add adverts like adsense do:



Example I'll put on my website (I'm going to be adding adsense versions too on other pages and I'll share the results here on which appears to generate more clicks.

New Licence will go here when reliable source found

looking for a new source of private label articles - that aren't nicked.