Category: Internet Marketing

Details for the Violin Giveaway Sweepstakes have been updated and moved to http://celtic-fiddler.com/violin-give-away-sweepstakes/

I digress a bit from my usual topics, but I have a long-standing interest in internet marketing, and I have been reading a lot about it.

A few weeks back, I got an email from some internet marketer — I’ve forgotten who it was — with a link to a video of a presentation done by Joe Sugarman. I’m not much of a fan of video, but something stirred in my memory about Joe Sugarman, and I clicked on the link. To my dismay, the video was nearly an hour long, but I decided to watch the first ten minutes or so. After a brief introduction, I remembered where I’d seen the name before. He’s the guy who did all of those long-winded full-page ads for JS&A that ran for years. I even bought a multimeter through one of those ads a couple of decades ago. After a while, I found myself thinking, “This guy is pretty good.” And I ended up watching the whole thing! The presentation was terrific, despite one of his jokes falling flat (I would have expected at least a groan from the audience). I decided to get one of his books to take with me on vacation (yes, I read on vacation). The title I selected was Advertising Secrets of the Written Word.

The book arrived in time for me to take it with me. At $39.95 and just under 300 pages, I hoped it would be worth reading.

It was.

The book is based on a five-day seminar that he did for over a decade, for which he charged $2000/person, making it the most expensive seminar in the direct marketing business at the time. Joe doesn’t just dwell on his successes, but analyzes his many failures, which, according to him, far outnumbered his successes. He wrote about the ways that he minimized the cost of his failures and used them to learn how to succeed. He told many delightful and engaging stories that kept me virtually glued to the book for several evenings. My wife enjoyed that — I rub her feet in the evenings, and when I’m reading, I tend to lose track of the time, and she gets a lot more than she would otherwise.

When I turned to read “appendix B,” I had cause to think, “This guy is REALLY good!” Yes, he used a lot of the same techniques that he taught in the book to hold the attention of the reader, thereby reinforcing each lesson. This book is worth every penny of the $40 it costs (it’s in hardback only), not only for the information, but for the layout and the high-quality paper used to print it. You wouldn’t think that the quality of the paper would make much difference in the enjoyment experience of a book, but it does, and in a surprisingly big way. You’ll have to get the book and experience it yourself to see what I mean.

This is a book that has too much information to absorb in one reading, so I plan to re-read it, possibly several times. Meanwhile, I will be getting some of Joe Sugarman’s other books. The one that he recommends to read next is Television Secrets for Marketing Success, which is also $40.

Meanwhile, I will be practicing the various techniques that Joe teaches in Advertising Secrets of the Written Word.

P.S. Joe listed a bunch of other books that he recommends (including three of his own, of course). I was delighted to learn that I had already read several of them. I was also dismayed to find that some of the ones I have not yet read are very expensive.

• How to Sell Anything to Anybody, Joe Girard
• Sales Magic, Steve Bryant
• My First 65 Years in Advertising, Maxwell Sackheim
• Ice to the Eskimos, Jon Spoelstra
• Commonsense Direct Marketing, Brayton Bird
• Elephants in Your Mailbox, Roger Horchow
• To Catch a Mouse, Lewis Kornfeld
• Selling the Invisible, Harry Beckwith
• Breakthrough Advertising, Eugene M. Schwartz
• Direct Marketing, Edward L. Nash
• The Golden Mailbox, Ted Nicholas
• Direct Mail Copy That Sells! Herschell Gordon Lewis
• Tested Advertising Methods, John Caples
• My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising, Claude C. Hopkins
• The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches, Richard Gilly Nixon (based on the book by Joe Karbo)
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D
• Confessions of an Advertising Man, David Ogilvy
• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout
• Magic Words That Bring You Riches, Ted Nicholas
• Marketing Secrets of a Mail Order Maverick, Joseph Sugarman
• Television Secrets for Marketing Success, Joseph Sugarman
• Success Forces, Joseph Sugarman