Copywriting--Cracked up as it's made out to be?
Of trains, toilets and meeting people (no, not in the toilet, silly! :)
I just got back from a wonderful weekend in San Francisco "hosted" by internet marketer Ken Giddens. "Hosted" in quotes, because I did pay a big chunk of change for this privilege. OTOH, Ken paid out quite a bit of money, taking care of 3 nights' stay at the Hyatt Regency on the Embarcadero, a no-host "cocktail" party Friday night, and breakfast, lunch and dinner on both Saturday and Sunday. And these weren't shlock meals, either. Saturday night was an astonishing 9 course chinese dinner which included, among other things, Peking Duck (no, Chinese restaurants haven't seemed to change the name to "Beijing Duck".) If I recall correctly, Peking Duck is a dish for which you have to give at least 24 hours notice. Of course, if you are having a banquet for 50+ people--that probably requires quite a bit more than 24 hours notice. There was a bit of a sad note, too, as we found out that the restaurant had lost their lease and the next day would be their last day in business.
Staying at the Hyatt Regency is, in a word, spectacular.
They have an interior atrium architecture such that you have to wonder, "How did they do that?" The Hyatt Regency's (at least the two I *know* I've seen, and maybe there's been more) tend to like to create their hotels with HUGE atriums in the center of the building. They are breath-takingly beautiful. At the one we stayed at, the hotel room doors (all of them, AFAIK) faced the atrium. The rooms along one side seemed to be stacked in a sort of "reverse balcony"--the lower the floor, the less it's open hallway stuck out into the atrium. So, unlike a balcony, where your view is interfered with by the row below you, floor 5 rooms were along an hallway from which you could not see the floor 4 rooms directly below.
One of the great things I enjoyed about this trip was the fact that I was able to get from my house to the hotel entirely on public transportation. Bus to downtown San Jose, downtown SJ to the Diridon, SJ Caltrain station, Caltrain to 4th and King in Sa n Francisco, the muni from the Cal Train station to the Embarcadero. One of the things I love about public transportation is the chance to sit by, and talk with, people I might not otherwise run into. On the way up, I talked with a young woman who had been hired by Apple Computer 6 months previously to be the "feature programmer" (think music programming, not software programming) for the Apple Music Store. She had previously been a secretary at a law firm--but is an avid, very avid, lover of music. It's a good example of taking what you love, finding your passion, and you'll find the work.
The gentleman I talked with on the way back home (well, actually to Sunnyvale, since I had to stop off for my acupuncture appointment) is a software manager in the search engines area of yahoo. We had a little bit to talk about, since I had worked for Ariba, which is just a bit down the street from Yahoo. He indicated that jobs in the valley were beginning to increase; that it is now a seller's market (meaning, the job hunter has the power)--and gettinng harder to find the people they want. Unlike, he said, a few years ago, where there were 5 qualified applicants for every position. It will be interesting to see what happens...
I also discussed, but not by name, search engine optimizers. He said that most people are pretty poor at it. But even more interesting was he talked about these folks as "attacking" them. I even tried to clarify, that I wasn't asking about people trying to break in to Yahoo--and his response made it clear to me that those people he considered to be "attacking" yahoo were the SEO folks.
I asked him what were the major differences between Yahoo and Google search strategies, and he said (not sounding coy or secretive at all) that they are pretty much the same. That even the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for the same search terms are pretty similar (a bit surprising to me, since that hadn't been my, admittedly limited, experience comparing the two.).
I asked him about whether Yahoo had something like Google Adsense. Now, you have to take on your best "Rodney Dangerfield" "I don't get no respect" perspective...because that's how he presented it to me: "Of course! We own the firm (Overture) that started pay-per-click!" Needless to say, I was appropriately, um, humbled (?).
Have you gotten this far? Is it because of the toilets?
. When I got into San Francisco...San Francisco which has had trouble getting conventions to come because of the (aggressive) homeless population...and there, on the wide sidewalk was a green very wide oval building. The serif lettering along it's forest green walls said "TOILET". Cool, I thought. What a good idea...public restrooms...in more public areas. Who'dda thunk? Now, this is an exercise in how blind we become to our home surroundings. For sure enough, when I was taking the "free downtown SJ shuttle" from the train station to the downtown public transportation "hub" on 1st and 2nd streets, surely there, right in front of my nose, was the same building: same shape, same color, same lettering. Maybe it's an epidemic??
Well, I need to get back to things. We'll talk again soon.
The last few Thursdays I've found myself with my ear glued to the phone.
I think Thursday must have secretly been voted internet-marketer's teleseminar night, with Tuesday a close second. The previous two weeks I listened to calls from premiere copywriter
Harlan Kilstein--and then signed up for his coaching club. I've also listened to free calls from Mike Filsaime that he is having to promote his
"Internet Marketing Main Event" in Phoenix in the middle of September. It sounds like a great seminar--but I'm feeling a bit "seminared out" now--having gone to Las Vegas twice in less than a month.
So, tonight I was on three teleseminars:
with Mike Fortin, as part of being a deluxe member of his site. Pretty heady stuff for a fairly new internet marketer--talking to Mike directly. Another high-profile marketer was on the call, too. I'm going to have to get busy, to get my money's worth out of my membership! I didn't have a lot to contribute. (Doesn't mean I had nothing to say...but that's another story...) Interestingly, I was the only female on the call. If you are interested in what Michel Fortin has to offer, here
with Mike Filsaime and Nate Anderson, of Metawebs fame. Although Metawebs is only taking sign-ups for their waiting list now, Nate promised to tell folks at Mike F's "Main Event" seminar how to do the same thing as the folks who are members of Metaweb are doing--only for much cheaper (although far less automated, I would assume!) I think I saw on their website that the next memberships will be $1497/month. Yikes! If you want to get in on some of Mike Filsaime's free calls and get some great markeing information, you can find the schedule of calls here here
with Perry Marshall and guests, who came to soothe the souls of folks who suddenly found their Google Adwords deactivated or raised in price, or other tragedies--as Google, once again, changes their strategy. If he sells the audio and/or the transcripts for this call, by all means get it. There was as much meat in there as I've heard in any other 60 minute call I've been on. You will hear great strategies for how to reduce the amount you pay on Google Adwords with Google's new price implementations. You can look here
Now--I don't get paid one cent for the above plugs. So feel free to click. They don't cost anyone anything, either. But I will put a plug in for my new software and ebook store--which can be found here . Check it out. There's some interesting software there that you just may find worthwhile. When you get there--after reading about DeadEasy--go up to the main page and look for the information on SuperLinker. For the next week, if you buy SuperLinker, I will give you a bonus! (Shhhhh....I'm not even sure if it's allowed.) Just send me a copy of the paypal receipt to zapseo@yahoo.com, and I'll send you back something I'm sure you'll appreciate!
On a personal note, I've got so many things going on so many burners that I may have to delay my return to Nursing School. Ohhhhhh. I'm very torn. I've really been enjoying being in Nursing School! But it is tough, and the next quarter I'm in is particularly tough. One of the reasons I want to finish Nursing School (and the reason I'm doing some internet marketing) is so I can go overseas (or maybe in poverty areas of the U.S.--except the U.S. is So-o-o-o-o litigous.) and provide care in needy areas. One of my Nursing instructors goes to foreign countries for six week stints to help surgeons repair cleft palates. Some of the pictures she has are quite amazing. It makes a HUGE difference in these (mostly childrens') lives. They must think they've won the lottery...
Stay Lively,
NextDay-Copy
PS -- great accomplishment today--I walked 2 miles!!
By the way, I initially set up this blog to follow the creation of a website, with the challenge of doing it within 10 days. I didn't manage that, for a variety of reasons. However, I'm impressed with the number of tools out there to make this sooooo much easier.
We will talk about that in another post.
Other things we will be talking about is--whether it makes sense for Microsoft and other software folks to widely publish security holes--because of what just happened. I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft go to an "early warning" system that large corporations pay big bucks to sign up with so they can secure their sites before Microsoft makes the security hole public. It only makes sense.
I thought there was something else I wanted to discuss...but, alas, that thought has taken flight...
Have you ever wondered how well do people do in apprenticeship and coaching programs? Well, I am about to find out. I just signed up for a coaching program with a couple of outstanding copywriters. Both have hit the copywriting scene just within the last couple of years and have done very, very well.
At least well enough to keep you adequately housed, clothed, fed and deal with the ravages of $3 gas (especially since some copywriters have short commutes...from their bedroom to the office in their home.)
Now, I have a couple of assignments I am a bit behind on. Ooops. And they have emphasized the importance of putting in the work, keeping on top of it...so I fear a bit for my reputation here...as being slow.
So, why am I being so slow?
Let me go back 18 years ago. I was a software engineer working at Apple in their Quality Assurance Department, working for a 21 year old Manager who subsequently has become somewhat legendary in QA circles, Jim Bach. I should tell you that I'm not your typical programmer--I specialized in an area most programmers shudder to think about--assembly language. This is about as close to "hardware" as a programmer can get--and, in fact, I used to watch and debug electrical signal on modems...before Hayes came up with their famous AT command set--and changing modem operation by setting various switches...by hand.
The computer, as you probably have heard, only understands 1's and 0's--something called binary. The programmer writes code in text files, something which has to be translated, or for higher level languages like C, compiled, into binary. It was that piece of code, called an assembler (assembly code, get it?), that I was testing.
I had something like 65000 instructions to test, for the processor that was the brains of the Apple IIGS, the 65816 (big brother to the processor which ran the early Apple computers, the 6502). Now...how was I going to test them? By hand? Whew.
I came up with a plan: I would write a program which would generate assembly language programs which would test all the combinations. Oh, I forgot one wrinkle. This assembler had the ability to "assemble" the languages of 5 different, but very closely related, processors. So that made this task even more daunting. I discussed it with my boss, Jim. As he remembers it, he forbid me to do it. I don't remember that. I had a plan. With the help of someone to help me out with the C programming, I struggled and finally wrote the program.
The point of this story? I like to build "infrastructure". It took me longer to produce results, but the results I produced were a far higher quality. Any programmer who knows that there is code out there to automate what they do will strive to do that. In fact, they will get very, very frustrated at doing tedious tasks which could easily be accomplished, and accomplished more completely and effectively, with a few pages of code.
I just got my hands on some code which analyzes sales pages. It looks like it might have been written with Carl Galletti's input, but I'm not sure. Now, unfortunately, I can't take this code and create a program...yet. But once I do, I'll have something much more powerful to help me with understanding killer sales pages.
Live Life Fully,
zapseo
Well, I think it's time to change my title.
No, I didn't get an SBI site setup.
Little things tripped me up. Like printing OUT, and then READING a 600 page MANUAL.
In the meantime, I started nursing school (let me tell you, in the US anyway, nursing is a profession on the rise. Unfortunately, being a physician, as a profession, is on the decline. It takes an ungodly amount of time and money for someone to train as a physician.)
Looking at the server logs, I discovered a few people have made their way to my "home" website from this site. So, I figured if people are going to come, then I should have something more recent for them to read.
Oh. And as these things go...I'm no longer 53, but 55.
I'm now studying copywriting as my "avocational"/vocational interest outside of nursing school. The idea of passive income has a certain appeal :). Speaking of which, writing in a blog is not on my to-do list--so I better get back to my to-do list.
Hope you have an awesome day!
