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Aristotle’s Ancient Guide to Compelling Copy

by Amy Harrison on March 3, 2011

image of a statue of Aristotle

A long long time ago, around the 5th century BC in Ancient Greece, there were a bunch of hip kids called the Sophists who loved to talk.

Actually, not just talk. They loved teaching people how to debate and come up with persuasive arguments to influence the opinions and beliefs of others through the use of rhetoric.

Rhetoric is the art of using language for persuasive ends. Not unlike copywriting.

So, the Sophists would travel around from town to town, staying in the finest 4-star mud-brick homes, eating the best roast boar sandwiches, and wearing the hottest tunics and sandals around. They were very popular, well-paid professionals who knew how to impress and persuade an audience.

If these guys were around today, they could probably convince you to buy an info-product you didn’t know you needed in a heartbeat …

Despite their popularity, one guy was concerned that their methods of persuasion were a little too emotional, a little too flowery, a little too lacking in, well … proof.

Enter Aristotle

Aristotle was also well-versed in rhetoric and persuasion, and he thought some of the Sophists might be using rhetoric to manipulate by focusing too much on emotion, and rather handily washing over “fact” with large brush strokes.

It’s not that he was against persuasion. When you’ve got an important message that can inspire, educate or help people, you need to be able to communicate that.

He believed there was a better way of persuading people without using bloated testimonials, yellow highlighter, false scarcity, too much poetry and fanciful language.

So Aristotle came up with his own rules of persuasion.

And despite these rules being more than 2300 years old, when you apply them to your copywriting, you’ve got something that persuades as well as being authentic and having integrity.

Grab a coffee and take a listen to our man of the moment, Aristotle. When you write your sales page, web copy, or a letter to your Congressperson, include his wisdom:

Ethos (show off those lovely morals of yours)

Aristotle pretty much said that having good morals and an above-board character wasn’t enough; you had to establish this to your audience. In other words, it doesn’t matter how wonderful and ethical a person you are if you don’t communicate that.

This is not about putting on a front, but revealing your character in ways such as:

  • Sharing personal experience, (prove you know what your audience is going through)
  • Avoiding inaccessible language (no jargon, or fancy speak, just plain talk please)
  • Showing you have a genuine desire to help (such as a generous money-back guarantee if you can’t)
  • Showing you have the expertise and knowledge for what you say you can do (give testimonials, and list any credentials you may have)
  • Showing that you are personally experienced in what you say you can do. (been where your readers are now and found the success they want? Let them know your story)

Ethos is a powerful persuasive force — don’t ignore it.

Logos (give them proof, not piffle!)

Aristotle was pretty hot on the use of Logos. (Not the brightly-colored corporate image kind, but the Greek word for “word” or “reason,” and connected to our own word logic.)

To put it simply, logos means if you want to make a point, you’d better back it up with proof. You can’t just go out there making pie-in-the sky promises.

It was what really set him apart from the Sophists, and it can set your copywriting apart if you:

  • Avoid ambiguity (trade in your “things” and “stuff” for specific language, and swap out superlatives for rock-solid benefits and results)
  • Don’t use hyperbole (don’t tell them their life will be awesome after reading your eBook, inform them what they will actually learn from it, and what they will be able to do with the knowledge)
  • Follow every point you’re making with proof (watch out for phrases like “we all know that…” or “ it’s important to…” research it, prove it and win them over)

Pathos (get them feeling something)

Pathos is the part the Sophists were very good at because it means whipping up emotions.

Aristotle was all for moving people emotionally to aid persuasion, as long as it was based on sound Ethos, and backed up by staunch Logos.

To trigger those emotional points in your persuasive and authentic copy, you’ll want to:

  • Use stories to enhance visualization (be descriptive about your readers’ pain or problem and use vivid examples of what their life could be like)
  • Ask questions to engage (particularly when a response proves your argument or gets them to articulate their problem)
  • Make your writing flow naturally (write in your own voice, build suspense, and pull your reader’s attention along)
  • Save the end of your argument for a big push of pathos — of emotional drive — that moves your audience (to take action!)

I’m betting Aristotle would have been a persuasive force to be reckoned with were he a copywriter today. I’m also pretty confident that he would use his persuasion with integrity — to reveal value to those who needed to know it — and not to manipulate in order to make a sale.

So if you fancy following in Aristotle’s footsteps (beard and tunic optional) double-check your copy to make sure it displays your robust character, is backed up with plenty of proof, and stirs your audience’s emotions enough to take action.

About the Author: Amy Harrison is a copywriter for entrepreneurs. In addition to writing for her clients, she also coaches business owners to smash up their sales copy obstacles and get their offers out there. She recently released an eBook called How To Get Your Sales Page DONE!, and till March 7th, Copyblogger readers can still get a copy at the introductory price of £47 with the discount code: tunic

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Why Getting Attention Won’t Make You Rich

by Sonia Simone on October 1, 2010

image of woman in Renaissance costume

Be remarkable. Be the purple cow. Get yourself noticed. Just be your own beautiful and unique snowflake self, and your allotment of raving fans will come find you and buy everything you make.

Ever heard that advice?

It’s a social media truism that as long as you’re authentic, you can’t go wrong. Fame, fortune, and the latest Apple products will all be yours.

Let’s face it — authenticity can be a great way to draw a crowd. Especially if you have an over-the-top personality. And because we live in the age of attention scarcity, many people think that getting attention is the hard part.

If only I could get noticed. If only I could get someone to read my stuff.

But attention isn’t actually the rarest commodity in the 21st century.

Trust is.

It’s true that the first letter in every sales formula is “A”

All marketing has to start with attention.

If you can’t attract attention in the first place, nothing else you do has a chance to work. This is why headlines matter more than anything else you do.

And that’s been the case as long as selling has existed. If you’ve ever been to a Renaissance Faire, think about the way the food vendors let you know what they’ve got to offer.

When the pretty girl in the tight bodice shouts Hot Turkey Legs! and Cold Beer Here!, those are headlines. They attract your attention and let you know the most important details of the offer.

But you need to remember that the work of the headline is not only to attract attention.

The true job of the headline is to get the first line of your copy (whether it’s a blog post, email message, sales letter, video, or podcast) read, watched, or listened to.

In other words, if you gaze happily at the pretty girl but you never approach her for a beer, the headline (and the bodice) have failed.

Copywriting formulas have more than one letter

(If the whole idea of copywriting formulas is new to you, you can find 15 of them here.)

Conversion is the copywriting term for all the stuff that happens between that initial “A” and the sale.

  • You craft an offer that people will actually want to buy.
  • You build trust.
  • You answer questions and counter objections.
  • You describe appealing benefits to spark interest and fan it into desire.
  • You make it easy for the prospect to see herself as a customer.
  • You increase desire with appealing bonuses.
  • You deliver a clear, compelling call to action.
  • You build in urgency elements to get the prospect to act today.
  • You state your call to action again.

Being a jerk is bad for business

Lots of us will reward a jerk with attention. But not many will reward a jerk with business.

Jerks can’t be depended on. They play head games. They don’t respect their audience. They amuse themselves at the expense of other people.

Prospects are already fearful enough. If your prospects don’t trust you, they’re not likely to spend any money with you.

You don’t have to be a wimp

You’ll notice that some very successful businesspeople have strong, tough personas.

They may well make themselves unlikeable to most of the population. That’s ok – they’re filtering out the customers who aren’t right for their business.

The message they send to their right customers, though, is always that they can be trusted. That they’ll tell the truth, even when it’s not pretty. That they’re consistent, whether you like them or not.

The dad from Sh*t My Dad Says would make a good marketer. Let’s face it, if you bought a car from that guy, you know that you’d have a completely accurate picture of what was good and bad about the car. He may be offensive at times, but he’s trustworthy.

(At least, the real dad and not the one who will be played by William Shatner.)

The dad from “Family Guy” would make a lousy marketer. He’s capricious, he goes for the cheap laugh every time, and he has no integrity. There are no customers gullible enough to buy a car from that guy. You may find him hilarious, but no sane person would find him trustworthy.

It takes more than being remarkable

Hey, I’m a big fan of remarkable. I built a blog and a lovely business around it.

But “remarkable” doesn’t mean “remarkably annoying,” “remarkably mean,” or “remarkably useless.”

You have my permission to swear on your blog, to fearlessly embrace controversy, or just to make yourself a likeable jackass.

But never, ever do it at the expense of the trust of your readers.

There is no effective copywriting formula that leads directly from getting Attention to creating a Scandal to making a Sale.

That’s just a formula for making an A-S-S of yourself.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is CMO of Copyblogger Media and founder of Remarkable Communication. Follow her on twitter.

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7 Strategies for Escaping “Me Too” Product Launches

by Jordan Cooper on June 23, 2010

image of rocket

Are you noticing an awful lot of launches nowadays?

Well, it’s not just you.

As many bloggers jump off the Adsense bandwagon, they’re getting into the launch game, with a neverending stream of premium eBooks, white papers, audio interview series, video courses, membership sites, networking events, webinars, conferences, consultation packages, private coaching groups, print books, physical items, and anything else that could be wrangled together into a marketable asset.

And because bloggers are good at creating content, they don’t just release these products without any buildup. They’re conducting multi-stage launches with tons of strong content.

So if you’ve got something to bring to market, is there any point? Is there any way to cut through all this noise?

Believe it or not, there is a way to break out from the pack. You truly can back up your unique product with an equally remarkable launch — a launch that, in and of itself, will be talked about.

You probably already know that selling is about eliciting emotional triggers, not about making a logical case. So why leave those triggers to the sales page, when you can expand them to encompass your entire launch?

Don’t just create a launch. Create a remarkable launch, using these seven core elements of psychological attachment:

1. Limited time frame

I’m not talking here about using scarcity and imposing deadlines for purchase. That technique brings out a strong emotional response (fear of loss), and it’s already a defining characteristic of launches.

Not enough marketers, though, use scarcity in their pre-launch buzz-building period.

Release valuable free content that has a small window for consumption. Create the “want” for people to devour it, absorb it, embrace it before it goes away forever. Live events or webinars definitely fit the mold more so than anything else — if you make sure it’s “must see TV.”

If your content is as remarkable as you make it out to be, people will be clamoring with anticipation. They’ll mark the date on their calendars and even start asking around if others are as eager to get their hands on it as they are. This is real buzz.

Here’s the important kicker — you have to be fully committed to this ploy. If you’re holding a webinar, don’t post a recording afterwards. Let people know that if they miss out, it’s gone. Network television relied on this concept for decades to boost ratings, until the VCR (followed by the DVR) was developed and “must-see TV” turned into “will-probably-see-it-when-I’m-in-the-mood TV.”

Use scarcity to your advantage and significantly improve your conversion rates on the pre-launch content you create.

2. A unique movement

Think of your pre-launch material not so much as a series of independent events and more as a story with a single compelling theme.

Beginning, middle, end, and everything in-between, take your readers on an emotional roller coaster. Make them feel as if they’re getting a jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece. Let them construct the final picture by the completion of your launch cycle.

Cult culture doesn’t just appear overnight. But a compelling story that unfolds over time is one of the most effective techniques there is to turn your audience into radical brand evangelists.

3. The joy of sharing

Bloggers are often perplexed at what actually makes a piece of content “go viral.”

It’s more than a powerful headline. It’s more than offering a high-quality pillar resource. And it’s definitely not pure luck.

Content goes viral simply because it’s as fun (or even more fun) to share than it was to originally consume.

Humor often fulfills this requirement better than any other type of content. A joke is one of the few constructs in which the person delivering it gets as much satisfaction making others laugh as the one receiving this pleasure.

Any semblance or perception of “insider” information also does the trick. How hard do you find it to keep a juicy nugget of a secret? If you’re like most of us, you just can’t resist the temptation to pass it along.

Releasing highly informative pre-launch material isn’t, by itself, “worth talking about.” It’s often the case that a light-hearted video of virtual “fluff” gets spread much, much more than anything else. How else could you explain this YouTube video getting nearly 47 million views?

4. Audience participation

Improvisational comedy groups form the basis of their art on this single concept. By focusing solely on the input of their audience, they’re creating a once-in-a-lifetime unique moment.

The performance is not about them. It’s about us. The quality of our experience rests upon our shoulders. We directly affect the outcome — and we know it.

Creating this effect in your launch has to go beyond comments or contests.

Find creative ways to shape your pre-launch content based on prospective customer input. Invite a small segment of your audience as guests on a webinar. Interview a random reader on your blog.

Find any way you can to showcase other people in your own product’s launch cycle. Let your audience be creators as much as customers.

5. Extreme consistency

Let’s conduct a simple test. Answer these two questions:

  1. What is the exact date of Christmas next year?
  2. What is the exact date of Easter next year?

I’m figuring you easily responded “December 25th, silly” to the first one. But were you able to state the second one without checking a calendar?

The date for Christmas is memorable because it’s consistent.

Product launches often build anticipation by drilling a set date into a prospect’s head. That specific time and place become part of the prospect’s future plans, a mark on their calendar.

Why not use this technique for your pre-launch content as well?

Create a routine — a release schedule that can be relied on like clockwork. Instead of just one specific date and time to place in people’s minds, let people anticipate high-quality content on a predictable schedule.

Make your pre-launch content into an addictive habit that ends with the purchase of your product.

6. The bandwagon effect

Everyone wants to hang out at the hippest nightclub, even if the wait is two hours to get through the door.

If there’s something everyone is clamoring about, it hard to fight the urge to experience for yourself — even if it’s just so you can be part of the conversation.

The flip side of that coin is that no one wants to be the only person who signs up. Most of us are afraid of the potential ridicule in making a poor decision or supporting an unpopular position.

Build the sense of popularity in your target audience by strategically stacking your content. A themed series of posts is a great way to accomplish this. Leverage your audience from the first piece to create buzz for the second, and so forth.

As more and more prospective customers climb on board, it increases your “buzz” exponentially, day after day, as the appearance of a hot new trend comes heavily to the forefront. Nothing attracts more people than … more people!

7. Lasting addiction

Why don’t people quit their bad habits? Usually, it’s because withdrawal is extremely uncomfortable.

They don’t call it “buzz” marketing for nothing. You’re creating a nice little high for your audience, by deploying innovative, participatory content on a consistent schedule. That develops you as an addictive habit.

At some point, this ends abruptly. The whole point of a launch is that the valuable pre-launch goodies come to an end and you offer a product for sale.

Your product becomes the after-hours speakeasy when all the bars have closed for the night. It’s the only solution to cure those painful withdrawal effects.

Nefarious? Maybe a little. But creating this irresistible urge for more is at the core of good viral marketing.

The inoculation for launch fatigue

Yes, more bloggers are coming out with really great new products and services. Yes, the market clutter and noise are becoming hard to cut through.

But don’t let that be an excuse for why your own launch doesn’t live up to expectations. The responsibility lies squarely on your shoulders.

Who says your launch has to be a me-too clone? Interrupt the pattern in your niche.

Embrace and implement the psychological ploys of viral marketing to make not only your product, but your launch process itself, be something worth talking about.

(And I’ll put my money where my mouth is. Check out the current Beyond Blogging Project launch. Can you point out examples of all the seven tactics I discussed in this post?)

I’ll see you in the comments.

About the Author: Jordan Cooper is professional stand-up comedian who rants about blogging, social media, and marketing at Not A Pro Blog. He is currently the community manager at the Beyond Blogging Project.

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5 Lessons Learned from a List to Santa (All of Them Can Make You Money)

by Sean Platt on December 23, 2009

image of Santa looking at Christmas list

In the eight Christmases since life changed my name to Dad, Santa’s list has never been more important.

In our house, the tradition is that each child requests a single gift from the big guy. The problem is, this year both kids asked for something a little beyond Santa’s typical reach.

Fortunately, my wife and I have learned enough about persuasion and selling to turn our trip to the store into an opportunity to keep the magic alive a little longer.

It’s important to me that Santa deliver what they ask for. My kids are five and seven, and still believe. I’d like to preserve that bit of childhood magic as long as I am able.

What do you want? No, what do you really want?

My daughter originally wanted to ask Santa for “Biscuit,” a battery-operated dog that does tricks on command and is roughly the size of a Shetland pony. I’m not positive, but I think Biscuit may require a car battery to start barking.

My son planned to ask Santa for the Lego Star Wars Imperial Cruiser. This thing has roughly the same number of pieces as a glass garbage truck driven from a rooftop, and a sticker price equivalent to my winter electricity bill.

Our mission: steer our daughter toward a Fur-Real Panda Bear which is just a fraction of Biscuit‘s price tag, and get our son drooling for Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter, which is smaller and more within our budget.

Entering the toy department armed with our strategy, here are five basic selling principles which we used to get our children to not only alter their wish lists, but want their new gifts even more than they did the old ones:

1. Scarcity

This one was awesome because I didn’t even have to try. There it sat, all the way at the top of a shelf so high not even my 6 ‘ 3’’ frame could tickle the Fur-Real Panda Bear. The rest of the selection lay littered along the bottom shelves.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “We’re going to have to ask someone to help us get the panda bear down.”

My daughter asked why the panda was up so high away from all the others. I told her it must be because everybody wanted him and there were only a few left.

“Oh,” she whispered. My daughter rarely whispers. Other people’s desires amplified her own. My daughter’s not greedy, but she is human, and humans tend to want something all the more the second it seems out of reach.

2. Storytelling

My son and I struck out on our own, leaving my wife and daughter to think about the panda.

I slipped into a story about Darth Vader and his planet-blasting Death Star. My voice rose in pitch, my hands in the air. I quieted to a whisper. I was an actor reciting Shakespeare and my son’s mouth was an open O.

“Hey, have you ever thought about asking Santa for Darth Vader’s TIE fighter?” I asked. “I bet he would get it for you.”

I pulled the box from the shelf and placed it in my son’s hands. His eyes lit up and he turned it this way and that through the air, the sounds of laser blasts spraying from his lips.

Information is important, but people connect to stories. If you want someone to both relate to your information and remember it later, deliver it in a “once upon a time.”

3. Address objections

My son was fondling the box. I figured he was about a third of the way to wondering why in the Hoth he had ever wanted a starship when he could’ve been asking for Darth Vader’s TIE fighter all along.

But we weren’t quite there yet.

“The TIE fighter’s a lot smaller,” I explained, pointing to Darth Vader’s home away from home. “The starship is like five times bigger.”

He asked how many pieces are in the starship. I smiled. It was like he was doing half the work for me. “It’s five times the size because it has five times as many pieces.”

Now even though my son LOVES pieces, this was an easy objection to get past.

“Hmmm.” At this point, I was actually stroking my chin like some cartoon character. “If you ask Santa for Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter, then we’ll be able to put it together and take it apart a lot more times.” I smiled wide and dropped to my knees so my eyes met my son’s. “We’ll get to play with it more because it will be put together more often.”

My son’s smile is always bright, but this one was even brighter than usual. You can’t ignore objections, but you can identify and address what the other person really wants. And in this case, it was to spend more time with his daddy playing.

Once you know what your buyers are really looking for, you can rob objections of their power.

4. Clearly state the benefits

When we rejoined the girls, my daughter asked how I would decide between the two toys. She’s a practical girl and, like her father, loves to linger on several sides of an argument.

“Well, at first I thought it was close,” I said, nose wrinkled, “but then I started thinking about it. Now I’d have to say the panda is the clear winner.”

She wanted to know why.

“Well, his size for starters,” I said. “Biscuit is so big, you’d never want to take him up and down the stairs.”

We live in a hundred-year-old Victorian, and there are times when going upstairs feels like it should come with the help of a Sherpa.

I also explained that because of its size, the panda could keep her company and sit next to her while she’s doing her homework or is at the computer.

I let that sink in, then added, “The panda could even sleep with you, I bet. Biscuit would probably just sit in one place most of the time.”

When you’re writing to persuade, don’t forget to articulate what’s great about the experience. Give them the wind in their hair and let them clearly feel the smile on their face.

5. Know your audience

I’m lucky enough to be around my children for most of the minutes they aren’t in school. Getting them to change Santa’s list was made simple by first knowing them inside out and then communicating as effectively as possible.

Working out a communication plan with my partner ahead of time, using the same principles that make a sales letter work, made it a paint-by-numbers process.

While it’s highly unlikely you’ll get prospects that you can know as well as your children, you can get to know them. Pay attention to the details, ask the right questions, and uncover not just what they want, but why they want it. Do that, and you’ll be able to meet their needs.

There is a laser-thin line between many of the principles of friendly, honest selling and highly effective parenting.

With both, you must allow the learner or buyer to stumble onto your solution as though it was their idea all along. Sure, you use the authority you’ve built, but you also let your audience come to their own conclusions.

Trust is the key

Of course none of these tactics would have worked if our children didn’t believe in us.

And trust is an integral part of these strategies. I’ve never lied to my kids (you and I both know Santa doesn’t count) and have never let them down. I have never done anything to damage our bond and so they trust me entirely.

I would never have sold them on the panda or the TIE Fighter if I didn’t believe they would love their choices. If your actions are based on integrity and you do what is right for your audience or clients, they will do what is right for you in return.

About the Author: Sean Platt is a direct response copywriter and independent publisher. Follow him on Twitter.

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How Your DIY Attitude Is Keeping You Poor

by Johnny B. Truant on December 17, 2009

image of hammer and nail

The way people talk, you’d think there are like four customers in the world. Maaaaybe five if you look around really hard — but that’s about it.

So whatever you do, if you’re lucky enough to have one of those customers, you’d better not do anything that minimizes the income you receive from them.

You’d certainly better not share them. You’d better cut your expenses to the bone on the back end, and hey . . . if you know that a competitor is courting one of the other three or four customers? Well, then you’d better get over there and work on stealing them away.

Right now, you’re rolling your eyes at this dumb picture I’m painting. But just for fun — just to see if I’m totally off base — ask yourself the following:

  • Are you willing to partner with someone if it means that you’ll make less profit per customer, but have access to more customers?
  • Are you willing to pay handsomely for referrals — 50% or more in some cases?
  • Would you be willing to share your business with a competitor who does the same basic thing as you do?

If the answer to any of the above is no, then you’re suffering from a scarcity mindset.

You don’t really believe there are a lot of fish in the sea. You believe there are only a few fish. Or, maybe there are more fish way out deep, but in order to get to them, you’ll need to charter a boat, which means trusting some skeevy boat captain. And what happens when you get into a boat with someone who you can’t trust? You get whacked while baiting your hook, like Fredo in The Godfather.

I’m going to suggest getting over that perception.

There are a LOT of fish in the sea. And the sooner you learn to work with other people to help you get them, the faster you’re going to get ahead.

Anatomy of a successful partnership

One of the things I do in my business is set up WordPress blogs for clients. Just a few months ago, I met Genuine Chris Johnson of Flat Rate Web Jobs. Now, Chris does something interesting in his business. He sets up WordPress blogs for clients.

So what did Chris and I do with this apparent conflict of interests? We teamed up, of course.

See, if you do business in the way I tell readers and consulting clients alike, you’ll soon realize that there are “your people” and there are “not your people.” And once you figure that out, you’ll see that most of your seeming competitors really aren’t competitors after all. Even if your services are the same, your people probably are not.

Yes, Chris and I both set up blogs, but our audiences are very different. Chris’s customers come mainly from the offline world and are learning the power of blogging for the first time. My customers usually already understand the internet and the blogosphere.

The way he finds and contacts clients (often including a phone call) is very different than the way I do (social networking and blogging, never using the phone). The questions and pain points that he addresses for clients (”What’s a blog, and how will it help my business?”) are different than the ones I address (”How quickly can I get my blog off of Blogger?”). His packages include a ton of training material. My customers don’t usually need much training, at least in the basics. Accordingly, our prices are fairly disparate.

Lastly, our personal strengths are different, and complementary. Chris is very good at sales and would rather that someone else handle customer service and implementation. Conversely, I don’t want to sell. I’d rather implement and do customer service.

We could pretty easily have decided that we were competitors. Chris could have kept selling his packages, and been bogged down each time with building sites, answering emails, and so on. I could have stuck solely with “my people,” and worked to sell each job I did.

But instead, the partnership has allowed each of us to make thousands of extra dollars a month.

Now, that’s a dramatic example (side note: it gets more dramatic when you realize that Chris dated my wife before I met her, a fact that caught both of us by surprise), but there are a few ways that you can increase your business through strategic partnerships that don’t necessitate seeking out apparent competitors.

Here are a few ways to start small:

1. Get a team

Or at least get an assistant. You can only do so much as one person, and insisting on holding all of the reins yourself ensures that not only will your business not grow past a certain point, but also that you’ll be stressed out and unable to take time off.

2. Start paying for referrals

A lot of people are reluctant to pay for referrals (or to start an affiliate program) because it means shrinking your profit margin.

That’s short-sighted thinking. If you offer commissions to people who send you business, those people send you more down the road.

Remember, a referral is business you would otherwise not have gotten. So be cool and kick a thank-you to the person who sent it your way. For services and tangible products, 10-20% is a good commission rate. For digital products, it should be 50% — or even more.

3. Bundle your products with other people’s products

If you sell your Widget Buster Extraordinaire for $50 and another person sells Widget Smashing Secrets for $50, consider making a deal to sell both products together for $80 and split the profits.

Yes, you’ll make $10 less each time you sell a Widget Buster. But the new Buster + Secrets offer is so much more attractive to customers that you’re almost certain to sell enough more to make up for it.

Don’t be short-sighted. Assuming your margins still support it, 50 sales at $40 is better than 25 sales at $50.

Getting beyond doing it yourself

There’s a certain romance in “going it alone,” especially for bloggers. But taking the DIY (do-it-yourself) mindset too literally just ensures that your business will never be able to grow beyond the capabilities of one person.

Trust me, other people are cool. Partnering with them is fun. And doing so is absolutely the way to accelerate your progress. So have a little faith and try it already.

About the Author: Johnny B. Truant is a website builder and consultant extraordinaire who wants everyone to know that he’s raising his rates on January 1st — so if you’d like to work with him, now’s the time. (Contact him now and he’ll even build you a free blog.) You can also follow him on Twitter, where he’s moderately amusing.

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