The next David Ogilvy cleary lives in India, checkout this solid copywriting 😂😂

What do you think is a better pricing structure?
• Monthly payments?
-or-
• Yearly payments?

There’s clearly pro’s and con’s to each one:

My personal thought is that both of them work together. We often see people “dip their toe in the water” with a monthly payment, then upgrade to yearly payment to save money. 

What’s been YOUR experience with monthly vs yearly pricing?

I love different ways of “showing data” and I’ve never seen this style before. 

It shows the movement in size of different economies over 20 years. It displays less information than a traditional line graph, but DOES show information easier and more attractively.

Our friend built a cold plunge and sauna setup....and she was out of town for a few weeks, so me and a buddy have been jumping the fence to use it all the time. 

She sent us footage of us breaking in...it's like the Burglar Olympics 😂

Who do you think won??

• I jumped the fence slower, but opened the gate faster.
• Sam jumped over faster, but opened the gate slower.

Tough decision 🤔

Using images to display info is often much better than trying to explain with words!

The best combo is using an image to convey the initial concept, then using copy to back it up or tell stories. 

For example this image of "inflation" visualized:

Explain "unbundling" is easily conveyed in this graphic showing the unbundling of Excel Spreadsheets:

Or what about this classic image of unbundling Craigslist:

Imagery works especially well in health. Checkout this image which educates you on calories in one glance. A chart like this is what made me realize how bad some foods were compared to others:

This image visually shows how people who take notes move faster towards wisdom than someone who reads-and-forgets:

And ultimately if you can't use a good visual, then use an analogy like this!

Moral of the story: I think good copywriters should also know how to make images!

This wild looking metal ball embossed with letters was the innovation behind the IBM Selectric Typewriter (13m+ sold).

Normally people don’t care how something works, but this mechanism was so unique and interesting looking it because the main highlight of this print ad:

You can see a slow-mo gif of it where in milliseconds it: Recognizes the letter you hit → Moves the ball to the correct letter → Punches the page

When I wrote this post, I IMMEDIATELY WANTED ONE OF THESE FOR OFFICE DECORATION! 

So I went on eBay and bought 4:

Here's the funny thing....I didn't know they were so tiny! I thought these things were heavy and the size of billiard balls. 

In reality each one is like an inch long and super lightweight 😂
It looks big here:

But it's actually crazy small:

Anyways...lesson learned....and they're still kinda neat 🙂

Do you know what a "Brand Board" is? 

It's a simple guide for your website that contains all the common colors, fonts, layouts, and imagery to keep your brand consistent. 

Here's the typical structure of a brand board:

Here's a couple of examples of filled out brand boards. You can see the "mood" of each board created by the different colors and fonts:

I'm personally going to get a Brand Board designed for Copywriting Course and Swipe File and implement a similar brand/look across them:

If anyone does this professionally, I'd be interested in engaging with you! Email me back.

**BONUS POINTS if we can mock up the styles directly in Chrome DevTools with CSS to see it live.
 

The goal of great copywriting is to take what’s in your brain, and transfer it to someone else's brain in the most efficient & sticky way:

This is a really high-converting email signup pop-up on Copywriting Course to get people to the weekly newsletter. It’s a pretty simple structure: 

• [Headline] 
• [Fun GIF] 
• [3 Bullet Points Why To Sign Up] 
• [Email Enter]

Email pop-ups don't *always* need to be complex!

I like how this one image represents a complete style-guide for a 1920’s era man with this simple chart. 

A bunch of information is easily displayed through this chart!

A few years back I hired a stylist who bought be a whole “men's basic wardrobe.” 

It was clear I had no idea how to put together an outfit, so she made me a visual style guide:

Checkout this trend chart for these different terms:

🟦 = “Conversion Rate Optimization”
🟥 = “Copywriting”
🟨 = “Digital Marketing”

It's surprising how much larger the term “Digital Marketing” is over the others!

This is because "Digital Marketing" is a general term describing any marketing that happens on the internet. 

If we were to break it down it'd probably look something like:

Generally the way to "break into" a big industry like digital marketing is to get pretty good at 1-to-3 of the skills that make it up. 
 

Maybe like:
• Be 75% good at copywriting.
• Be 55% good at social media.
• Be 80% good at making a Shopify store.

Daisy-chaining several skills together is an extremely powerful way to be "good" at an industry.
 

Want a piece of copy reviewed by myself and other professional writers?

We have an intake form here:

The form creates a thread where myself, the writers, and the community give you feedback on what to improve, and re-do whole sections if needed. 

It's like a factory for getting specific pieces of your digital marketing re-done:

HA! Saw this sign while walking down the street:

As a purveyor of funny sidewalk signs, I realized I've seen this similar sign before. Googled it and found MANY versions of it!

The title "Husband Daycare Center" is enough of a pattern interrupt for people to stop and read the sign.

If it works, it works!

Basically everything that’s heavily government regulated has gone up in price, and everything competing in the free market gets cheaper:

The free market works. Some regulation for safety is good, but out of control regulation makes things worse.

This graphic taught me a lot….I didn’t realize what young men the Founding Fathers of the United States were. Kind of mind blowing!

I added a TV to my home garage gym setup a few months ago and it's been amazing! 

Sometimes I just hang out there and stretch while watching cool YouTube videos or MasterClass.

Also Peloton just added native NetFlix support, which has been super cool for getting movement in while otherwise vegging out:

A lot of my friends like using their Peloton like this, but the only way to do it before was using an iPad holder like this:

...how it's a shame to waste that gig giant screen behind it 😬

Glad they added support for watching TV while biking, makes a lot of sense.

Inflation is a hard concept to explain….but this simple picture really “shows” it perfectly!

It’s easy to see how much the buying power of the dollar has decreased in ~100 years by seeing the giant stack of money -vs- a few bucks in 1933.

Here's a standard graph showing it :

And here's another way to visualize it by showing how much $20 used to be just a few years back....this one isn't super accurate, but it conveys the concept of "inflation" as well:

Maria Popova runs a huge blog called The Marginalian (3m+ visitors/mo) and it's interestingly supported through donations only.

She doesn't give extra content for the donations, it's just done out of the goodness of readers hearts.

This is the simple pitch for donations at the bottom of each article that keep the entire site alive:

A podcast I like called 99% Invisible prided themselves on only taking donations, and eventually caved to taking sponsors. I've seen it happen over and over again with donation-based orgs.

Have you ever seen a site based on donations?

This is a great home page from software company Synthesia. It has an easy headline, 3 key features and benefits, and an explainer video which demo’s the product.

I highlighted all the key parts of this image here:

A great quote from Neil Gaiman (writer) about collecting a “compost heap” of ideas and inspirations. I personally call my compost heap a Swipe File and post all my ideas, inspirations, quotes, and swipes on it.

This bar Lazarus Brewing offers a “free beer for life” if you buy this chalice. They initially did it during the pandemic to raise funds for the bar, and it worked so well they continued it!

I have a few friends who bought it for $1,200 and they ALWAYS suggest we go to Lazarus where the who group orders food and drinks:

It seems like such a smart move, because you turn customers into ambassadors of the bar!

If you build a custom jump-in cold plunge and hot tub combo in Austin when it’s 100+ degrees like @cathrynlavery, everyone always wants to come over! 

Cathryn wanted a full jump-in cold plunge (not like the bathtub-style) so she created her own with a tank made for farms and custom rigged the plumbing.

There's also a sauna right next to it.

We spent 4+ hours in the heat and felt totally fine. Anytime you feel hot you just jump in for a bit, and you don't even feel the heat after!

MasterClass has a super interesting sales sequence on their homepage which gets you to purchase in 6 steps.

But they don't just show you pricing right away, they make you do "6 little yes's" before showing you pricing!

Step 1.) They give you quick survey for what you want to learn. Answering this gets you “invested” in the product a bit more:

Step 2.) It shows you some key information about MasterClass in the form of slides.

So instead of sending you straight to a payment page, they are making sure you understand the value of your membership:

Step 3.) They give you another quick “survey” which asks your dedication level.

Each step of this sequence gets users more investing in purchasing:

Step 4.) Based off your answer it shows how long it will take to complete a class, giving a little “customization” to this sales sequence:

Step 5.) It then gives the amount of classes you’d be interested in based off your Step 1 survey answers:

Step 6.) Finally it shows you 3 different membership options. 

At this point you are a bit more “invested” in buying the membership rather than just sticking a pricing sheet in your face. Very clever!

Year ago before releasing this book, I split test the title & cover with my audience:

• 842 people responded 
• 21% voted: "The Ten Commandments of Copywriting"
• 79% voted: "This Book Will Teach You How To Write Better"

While this A/B split test wasn't the most scientific, when ~80% of people vote one way, it probably tells you something. 

Looking back, the "B" cover was the right choice!
 

This “Ours -vs- Others” visual on Amazon shows why you should pick THIS product instead of their competitors.

A simple image like this could be the final decision that convinces someone to end their Amazon search and just buy:

I don't know if there’s real data on this, but my theory is that 85% of the decision to buy a product on Amazon is 4/5 Star Review + Pictures.

I think the “copy” on a product listing plays a supporting role, but not a staring role.

The Chevy Cruise autonomous driving project took out this full page in the New York Times to show how many lives could be saved by letting computers do all the driving:

Interestingly right before this print ad came out, there were some gripes about these driverless cars blocking traffic for hours in San Francisco:

It seems like ad was to get the public back on their side (showing that you can potentially save 40,000+ lives a year is pretty compelling)!

Each dish pictured here is just 200 calories….but look at the volume difference of the left column vs right column!

I learned what a calorie was in 2010, and made my own pictures to show myself the difference in calories between a Snickers bar and fruit.

I could eat one Snickers bar….or TWELVE CLEMENTINES 😬

As much as I loved Snicker's bars (I probably ate 5 a week), I slowly started giving them up after realizing what a bad bang-for-your-calorie it was.

This week I did a little morning co-working with @heydannymiranda and @Patticus.

I'm still amazed at how many of my friends I originally meet over Twitter (come say hi)!

This is an interesting chart about the hidden rules between income classes.

This could be used to speak clearer to your target audience:

This is a more fleshed out version of the same chart:

This is a cool graphic showing how the classic Excel Spreadsheet has been un-bundled by many companies:

I love these types of graphics. Here's another one about The Unbundling of Craigslist:

One of the most commonly asked questions we get asked right now is about building out email newsletters. 

In this training video I go over how you can build a weekly newsletter yourself, including how to:

- Come up with a name for your newsletter.
- How to find content for your newsletter.
- How often to send your newsletter.
- How to structure your newsletter.

You can read more in depth about creating your own newsletter here.

We did a fun experiment with selling through email:

In 1 hour, write 2 emails (one short, one long), and send it out to 100,000 people. Turns out it made $10,878.77 Revenue.

Watch what we did, and try implementing this on your own business or product.

You can see the full emails here.

We sit down to interview Sam Parr, who sold his email list The Hustle to HubSpot. 

We dig in to see how he built the email list with it's humble beginnings as an email list to notify people of his live conference events. Eventually they realized the email list itself was more valuable than the live events!

Peter Keller of Fringe Sport sells millions of dollars of gym equipment through his brand, and much of it is over email. 

"Every email we send out generates sales."

Peter says 30% of the company revenue comes from when they send out an email blast. 

He describes how they "think" about emails before they send them, so they send emails people love reading.

Ayman took AppSumo from $3m in revenue to well over $80m in revenue, and it's built off the back of email. 

50% or more of that $80m in revenue came from email 🤯

Sujan Patel knows emails are incredibly powerful, so much that he started MailShake to automate sending sales email sequences.

Noah Kagan talks about how email and YouTube are the only two channels he pays attention to.

Since I help clients with email all the time, I use almost all email softwares out there. For my personal use, I choose ConvertKit because it does everything the easiest.

Here's why I like it so much compared to other software.

I go through all the things I look for in an email software. I personally use ConvertKit for my own businesses, but a lot of these others can work as well. 

I've used 10+ different systems, and here's how I would think about finding the correct email service. 

Some rapid-fire email tips!

You can follow along these short tips by following here:

• Instagram
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• TikTok

Whose hot dog would you want in your mouth? 
 Joe’s 
 -or- 
 Max’s?

I love how adding "Foot Long" just makes it more enticing or that you get more value!

This is an awesome axis-graph which let’s you see where you are on the smart/ugly/hot/dumb scale! 

This would be awesome to recreate for your industry:

Craigslist was basically THE main platform for individual-to-individual transactions during the early stages of the web.

It will be interesting to see which other mega platforms get unbundled over time:

In Texas there's this famous gas station called Buc-ee's...and each one is absolutely gigantic, almost like a small Wal-Mart:

It's got like 100+ gas pumps, 100+ restrooms, a gigantic carwash, and it's like a mall inside with food and chachkies. 

I saw this sign out front a few days ago, and was kind surprised by how high some of the salaries were!

If I were a teenager or on summer break, this would be an awesome place to work!

Platforms change, but good content and interesting people always rise to the top. For example....

It used to be MySpace
It used to be Friendster
It used to be LinkedIn
It used to be LinkedIn Posts
It used to be Orkut
It used to be Facebook
It used to be Facebook Pages
It used to be Bebo
It used to be YouTube
It used to be YouTube Shorts
It used to be Xanga
It used to be Twitter
It used to be Flickr
It used to be Tumblr
It used to be Pinterest
It used to be Podcasts
It used to be Instagram
It used to be Instagram Stories
It used to be Google
It used to be Google+
It used to be Google Video
It used to be Snapchat
It used to be Vine
It used to be TikTok
It used to be Periscope
It used to be Twitch
It used to be Reddit
It used to be Discord
It used to be Quora
It used to be Medium
It used to be SubStack
It used to be ClubHouse
It used to be Threads
....the list goes on.

There's sooooo many ways to spread your message, focus is becoming a problem:

Here's 3 questions to figure out which platform to focus on:
1. What social network do I have a natural advantage?
2. Will I enjoy spending 1-3 years of time on this platform?
3. Which one helps me create “Cascading Content”?

That last one to me is big.

Which social network do you create content on, that can be used as content elsewhere?

That's what I call "Cascading Content"

This cool graphic shows that if you take notes you can retain the wisdom of books you read:

I personally take all my notes in Apple Notes now, not directly in books anymore because I can recall/view them from any device.

Where do YOU keep your notes? I'm always interested in hearing how people keep these. Reply and lemme know!

If you want people to take action, give them an analogy they can relate to. This sign pulls it off perfectly 😂

This sign I saw at a CB2 store stepped up their copy from “Now Hiring” to “Dream Job Alert” which is far more compelling. Also checkout the 3 bullet points at the end giving more reasons to be interested!

A+ copywriting!

Before the internet, the way a “lead magnet” worked was getting someone to send you a physical piece of mail expressing interest in a product, then you mailed them back a brochure.

The bottom part of this ad is the CTA:

The lead magnet transaction process used to take 2 to 6 weeks...now it's instant 😬

I like taking pictures of signs/billboards/advertising and collecting them in my personal Swipe File. I saw “Reptile Expo” sign placed on a construction fence a few days ago.

I snapped a picture while at a red light...and later pondered:

"Did they place the Reptile Expo sign at this intersection because it was a high traffic intersection....or because of that big dinosaur in the background?" 😂

A "One Pager" is meant to be a high-level-overview on a topic, generally printed on ONE side of paper.

These are frequently used in government when an agency is trying to pass a bill or convince others on department policy, like this:

Here's a One Pager that tries to convey different thinking errors:

Here's a One Pager used in AltMBA for potential students to give to their employer:

I'm a big fan of One Pagers myself, as they can now be used for social media images, website assets, and used in all your marketing materials!

Currently reading this book….about halfway through and it’s a great read so far!

A Russian immigrant comes to America, finds out you can eat a banana even when it has some spots, and creates a huge empire. He buys ships, creates huge plantations, and controls entire countries.

It's called "The fish that ate the whale, America's Banana King"

Over the course of 120 years you can see a design macro-trend happen with the Burberry logo: They go from complex design style, to simple, back to complex.

I think in the last 10-20 years I've seen the "simplification" style of design, and now I think it'll start to swing the other way with bolder and more complex designs. 

This image is a cool demonstration why it’s better to take smaller steps. 
Instead of “I want to make $1,000,000 right now” try “I’m going to make $100 this week.”

Then expand goal, and move to the next step.

Originally listed out by Joe Sugarman in his book The AdWeek Copywriting Handbook, he identified 24 “Triggers” that can cause people to purchase something.

I have referred to this list countless times when building campaigns!

I'm trying to spruce up my home office video setup, so @theKevinShen and team helped me first design this rendering for the backdrop: 

I bought all the stuff required, and this is how it looks in real life (I don't know anything about lighting, so forgive the picture). 

Kevin will be helping shuffle things around soon, and I'll update how that goes. Some constraints I had for this backdrop:

#1.) Make it a cool vibe for working.
#2.) Don't clutter it up with tons of studio equipment.
#3.) I didn't want to rip out the grasscloth wallpaper.
#4.) The room must also doubles as extra guest bedroom when I've got a full house of people (that couch turns into a queen bed).

Currently the setup looks like this with me in the shot.

The next step is to get the lighting setup correctly. 

I'm trying to keep my desk as un-touched by equipment as possible which is difficult. 

I also like having all the cameras and lights be sit-stand with my desk...another hurdle. 

This is the desk against the wall I usually work at:

Anyways, I'll update more as progress continues! Hope you liked this little desk tour 🙂

Sometimes in marketing, math formulas are used, but they are often too boring or dry....and people glaze over them. Like this:

Instead I like to make these into “Visual Math Formulas” which makes them easier to understand. 

Here’s 4 examples: 
- Churn Rate 
- Average Order Value 
- Conversion Rate 
- Customer Acquisition Cost

Churn Rate:

Average Order Value:

Conversion Rate:

Customer Acquisition Cost:

When you add easy visuals to something, it reduces the number of "Brain Cycles" people need to comprehend it.

Should you answer this call??

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