Here you are trying to earn more income.  You are trying to do something that is not average.  You are investing your time… energy… money and resources towards starting or running your own business.  There are ups and there are downs… there are frustrations, obstacles, challenges, adversities, set-backs and anxiety along the journey.  You sacrifice television watching… your favorite shows… sports games… and more!  Here you are trying to do something special, something above average, something challenging… and then here comes all the minions!

What’s a minion?

Well, I call minions all those people we come across in our lives who are naysayers… who tell you, “you are wasting your time”. These are the folks who chastise you for chasing your dreams… who complain, moan and cut-you-down.  These are the negative, toxic, complainers… who ‘long-ago’ gave up on their dreams and God forbid you continue chasing yours.

These minions are the dream killers, the buzz killers, the antagonists in our lives who knock us down, laugh at us and call us names.  These are the people who are NOT ambitious at all.  These minions will rub salt on your wounds… plant seeds of doubt in your brain… wreck havoc on your goals and severely weaken your confidence!  Minions will destroy your “action-taking-abilities” and they will frustrate the daylights out of you.

Now, they may love you… might be friends or family… co-workers or associates… and they might think to themselves they are doing you some good, but they are usually causing more damage than good… and they are bringing their own shortcomings front-and-center into your world.  It’s hard to battle these minions because they outpopulate the ambitious people on this planet.  There’s like 1,271 minions to every 1 ambitious go-getter. (not a fact, I made that stat up).

Minions… love them or hate them, they are everywhere… in every nook and cranny… under every rock, around every corner and even on your cell phone contact list.  They are abundant… an army… and they are here to squash your dreams and keep you down to Earth (average).  They certainly do NOT want you to go-off getting all successful on them… because that will just make them feel even worse about themselves.

[minion]

Minion speaking to another minion:  “Hey, did you hear about Danny Boy?  He went on and made a hundred thousand dollars on the Interwebs, can you believe that?”

Minion response:  “Is that right?  Well, Danny Boy is probably doing something illegal and will end up in jail by the end of the year.  He aint’ to smart ya know and I’m sure he’ll blow all that money in a week.” [/minion]

So, here’s to all those snapper-heads who said we’d never get back up!  To all those naysayers who said we better stop setting ourselves up for disappointment.  To all the negative-spitting, pessimistic-vomiting, dream-stabbing, toxic-aura-wearing and stink-infested-goal-squashing-know-it-all’s… to all the countless people who have zero faith in YOU!  I’d like to say here’s my goal for 2012:

By the end of 2012, I want to be earning ONE MILLION DOLLARS PER MONTH!  I believe my partners and I can do it!  We will do it!

How you like them apples minions?

Let that goal be an INSPIRATION for you ambitious folks.  Let that resonate with you because I’m an average guy.  Let that sink in because ANYONE with a dream and a goal and the courage to attack those goals can do it too.  Let that stand as a measuring stick for “anything is possible for someone with a goal, a dream and an idea”.

Let that be a beacon for those who want more life… more freedom… abundance… wealth and more.  Let that goal be an empowerment for those who strive for a unique lifestyle.  Let it be encouragement for those who’ve seen me go from newbie to millions in a blink of an eye.  Let it be positivity for you — in a world jam-loaded with negativity.

Because listen my friend, all millionaires have insecurities too.  They have challenges, personal problems and adversities too.  We all do!  All millionaires have minions around them too.  Millionaires are normal people too.  Heck, I can’t even spell right or even design a website!  I can barely put together the bench-furniture my wife bought today.  Successful people have problems and challenges too… they have that little voice in the back of their head that says, “Hmm… maybe I am not good enough for that”… or “maybe that’s not going to work”. It’s no different.

Millionaires struggled to figure their businesses out… they bounced checks and had negative bank balances… they worry too.  They get frustrated too.  They are insecure about the same sorts of things as the rest are.  Millionaires are human.  Some cannot write… some cannot add… some cannot even talk.  There are blind millionaires, death millionaires… millionaires who cannot speak English… millionaires who suffer from depression or panic attacks… millionaires who have ADD, bad addictions, bad health habits, inferiority complexes, diseases, handicaps and major-major problems.  They are human too!!

There are teenagers who make six and seven figures now.  There are folks who were homeless and now rich!  There are senior citizens who have just now finally made it!  There are people from all walks of life who have made it too.  You can.  Anyone can.  The only difference between the millionaires and the rest of the ambitious people here is the millionaires kept getting back up!  They kept taking action despite all those fears and challenges and insecurities.  They kept faith even with personal problems.  They kept on with their dreams and kept believing in themselves despite the minions, nor the problems in their lives.  They just did it anyway!

That’s it my friend.  That’s the difference.  So, when minions or even your own personal challenges present themselves to you… keep faith.  Hold strong.  Be tough.  Be bold.  Get back up and try again, and again, and again.  And when you have given it your everything, do it again.  Then, when you have finally-finally reached a point of giving up, do it again.  And even after all that time, energy and frustration, when enough is enough, do it again.

Never, ever, ever, ever quit.  Do not let the minions win.  Get back up.  Keep trucking along with faith.  Keep pushing yourself out of the comfort zones.  Keep increasing your knowledge and skills.  Keep gaining experience.  Keep getting back up!  Keep learning, learning and learning.  Keep failing.  Keep getting back up.  Keep educating yourself, keep trying, keep learning, keep your faith.  Your faith is everything and do not let anyone, especially minions kill your faith.  Be strong, be honest, tell the truth, even to yourself, keep learning, keep getting back up!  Keep freaking trying!  Keep loving everyone, even minions.  Keep getting back up!  Keep believing in yourself.  Grow!

And when the money comes… and I mean when it comes by the truckload… when you achieve those goals… celebrate!  Then set new ones.

Happy New Year!

Eric Louviere

When it comes to copywriting, one of the most important pieces of the puzzle is your “headline”.  This is the main headline found at the top of your sales letter.  You see, people are busy.  They are busy jumping around from one thing to the next.  Visitors have multiple tabs open on their browsers.  Visitors have “Internet ADD” and they are going a million miles a second.  They switch from one thought to the next thought, to the next — FAST!

You have just a “quick moment” to capture them.  If your headline does it’s job right, the visitors “commit” to reading more.  They subconsiously “commit/invest” in reading the rest of your salesletter, or at least commit to checking it out further.  The headline is critical… paramount… crucial… and the headline is often the one part that most newer marketers screw up.

You see, most newer marketers write the headline first, then carry on writing the rest of their sales copy.  Once they get in the flow of writing, their writing gets better down the salesletter and they actually start writing better headlines further down the salespage.  When I critique copy, I spend most of the time looking at the headline and sub-headline.  I also spend a great deal of time looking at the “main offer”.

The main offer (or main hook) of the sales page is THE MOST IMPORTANT part to making a sale. If your stuff is not converting, then it’s likely the copywriting is bad… or if you have done a lot of hard work on the copy and it’s still not converting, likely your offer is just not compelling and people dont want to buy that thing.  An offer is critical and often times, all you have to do is tweak your “offer/hook/USP” and the thing will start selling.

Back to headlines…

I think most newer marketers screw-up their headlines.  I’ve seen the worst headlines on Earth and I often think those headlines were written in less than 5 minutes… never to be looked at or tweaked again.  I think it’s somewhat human nature to think once you’ve done something, it’s done.  It’s over with, not to be worked on again.  Well, in marketing that’s a big mistake.  HUGE mistake.  The name of the game in marketing is to “convert” and that requires tweaking and testing… it requires putting in a lot of time, effort, energy and even money to get your stuff to convert.  Because once it converts, you can drive traffic from all over the Internet!

Back to headlines…

One of the best ways I’ve ever heard “headlines” explained was from Tony Blake.  He told me years ago that a headline should “disrupt their flow”.  That’s an amazing way to explain “headlines” and it’s dead-spot-on!  Your headline should disrupt your visitors “flow”.  They are looking for answers, looking around, dancing around with “Internet ADD” and when they read your headline, it should disrupt that flow and get them to STOP that flow and read more!  Brilliant

When I write headlines, I write a bunch of them… tweak them… keep tweaking them… keep playing with them…. keep analyzing them… etc.  I’ll write a headline for an hour!  Then, leave it alone for a day, come back and tweak it again.  I’ve written headlines, only to come back a month later and think to myself, “That’s a crappy-ass headline!”  Then, redo it yet AGAIN!  Sometimes changing just one word of a headline can make a huge difference too!

Never.

Stop.

Testing.

And.

Tweaking!

Therefore, here are some of my favorite templates for writing headlines:

(1)   How To _____ Even If You Are _____ And ______.

For example:  How To Write Powerful Headlines Even If You Are Broke And Dumb!

(2)   How I Took A Bunch Of ______ and Showed Them How To ____ And How You Can Do The Exact Same Thing!

Example:  How I took a bunch of clueless newbies and showed them how to write powerful headlines… and how you can do the exact same thing right here and right now!

(4)   What If You Could ______!?!

(5)   Imagine If You Could _____!

Example:  What if you could make money without spending money!?!
this example is a question but I like to use two exclamation points and one question mark like so:  !?!
this is a great sub-headline template to use lower on your salesletter (in the body copy)
I also like using this one on sales videos!

(6)   Who Else ______

Example:  Who Else Wants To Convert Like A Super-Guru And Double Their Income Overnight!?!
Example:  Who Else Wants To Double Their Income Virtually Overnight Using Amazon Kindle!?!

(7)  Here’s A Formula That Is Helping People To _______

Example:  Here’s a formula that is helping newbies earn their first $1000 online the first week!

(8)   If You ________, then _______

Example:  If you want to earn money by this weekend, then this formula works even if you’ve never made squat!

(9)   Now You Can ____ even if you _____

Example: Now you can write converting sales copy, even if you cant spell or have never written a salesletter in your life!

(10)  Revealed!  A ____ Way To _____ Quickly And Easily!

Example:  REVEALED!  A Masterful Way To Earn Passive Income With Social Media, EASILY!

Now, of course there are many other headline templates beyond these listed above.  These just happen to be some of my favorites.  If you have more ideas for templates you like, post them in the comments and I might add them to this main post for you.  I’d also bookmark this post and use it as a reference.  Or you know what to do.

BONUS ADVANCED TIP:

One little known technique I love to use is making your salesletters more like an advertorial.  This is where your salesletter does not start out looking like a salesletter at all.  It looks more like an article you wrote.  These work!  You see, I learned from a great guy (Blair Warren) a little secret on persuasion that is HUGELY powerful!  Blair explains it like this:

“People are resistant to sales attempts”

“People are not resistant to sales attempts they do not detect”

Therefore, if you start out your advertorial or salesletter to seem more like an article (where it educates the reader) and then transitions into a sales pitch… that sales pitch will not seem like a “knock them over the head sales attempt” and seem more like a “recommendation”.  This works beautifully in your auto-responder emails too!  Here’s a little more on how to pull this off and an example:

“How To Write Compelling Headlines And Double Your Conversions Instantly!”
By Eric Louviere

By putting “By Eric Louviere” right under the headline, it already looks more like an article than a sales letter.  From there I’d start off by educating the reader and teaching stuff in my writing.  I’d take them by the hand and steward them through my “article” only to transition into a sales pitch (subtle sales pitch).  I’d use a transition word like “in fact”… like this here:

And that’s how you go about writing compelling headlines and increasing your conversions.  But it does not stop there at either.  There’s other tricks and techniques to increasing your conversions and the more tricks of the trade you know for persuasion, the more money you are going to make, period!  you should spend a great deal of your time learning copywriting, sales and persuasion because it will impact your bank account more than just about anything else you can do as a marketer!

In fact, I have an entire report based on copywriting and it has been a catalyst for thousands of marketers already!  This report covers all sorts of persuasion tricks and copywriting lessons.  Some have said it’s changed their markeketing lives and this report has received so many testimonials I’ve lost track.  you can get it here:

Ad Influence!

(now, that report is free but make believe it was for sale).

that technique of teaching (educating) and then transitioning into a sales pitch can sometimes out-convert the best “knock them over the head” sales pitches around!

All in all, even if you plan on never writing a lick of sales copy yourself, studying sales, copywriting and persuasion is one of the best things you could ever do to increase your income.  Most marketers who enter this industry probably spend less than 10% of their time, resources and energy on studying copywriting, sales, etc. and it should probably be the other way around… where 90% of their time, energy and focus is put on copywriting, persuasion and sales.  And, then, they wonder where all the money is hiding at.

Respectfully,

Eric Louviere

PS - Blair Warren has a book called “Forbidden Keys To Persuasion” and that is one of the best, if not the best book I have ever read on persuasion.  It’s deep… it’s pervocative… but it’s truly facinating and has changed my persuasion/copywriting forever!   In fact, here’s the testimonial I left him for the book and is found on his salesletter:

“This is the most intelligent and articulate book I have ever read on persuasion. It is truly masterful and in the right hands can transform not only your business and marketing, but you!

I give this book my five star endorsement, two thumbs way up and would recommend it to anyone and everyone who is actually ready to discover why people do the things they do, including buying or not buying your products. Just get it and read the living heck out of it.”

Eric Louviere – EricLouviere.com

PPS – You can get that book here (not an affiliate link either):

PERSUASION!

If you’d like to earn a lot more money, then what you need is a new, shiny, valuable, skill set or expertise.  For example, if you are an ambitious Internet Marketer and you want to start earning a real income, all you need to do is acquire a new skill set… or a new valuable expertise in one specific thing.  More specifically, you could focus on becoming real good at “social media” (Facebook and all that)… and then you would be WORTH more.  You could focus on getting good at writing, creating and shooting “sales videos” and become WORTH more very quickly.  You could focus on becoming good at writing, distributing and utilizing “Press Releases” and you’d be WORTH more quite quickly.

You could focus on becoming good at “YouTube and video marketing” and become WORTH more quite quickly.  You could focus on becoming good at CPA offers and CPA (cost per action) marketing and be WORTH more quite quickly.  You could focus on becoming good at driving traffic with PPC with Bing and become WORTH more quite quickly.  You could focus on becoming good at WordPress Blogs and Plugins and become WORTH more quite quickly.

Or, if you have a day job, you can focus on becoming good at something (like graphic art for example) and become WORTH more quite quickly (or bookkeeping, sales, spreadsheets, whatever).  You could add one specific skill set or expertise and quickly be worth more than YOUR BOSS!  You can add one skill or expertise and price yourself out of that job and into a higher paying (more demand) job.

If you own a small business, and want to earn more profits, you could be one skill or expertise away from doing just that — very quickly.  For example, any time or energy you put into YOURSELF can pay huge dividends.  Imagine you own a small business and you have 5 sales people who work for you.  You take my recommendation and purchase “How to master the art of selling anything” by Tom Hopkins.  You go through that program, study what is taught and poof!  Your salespeople will not know what hit them.  Their sales skyrocket, your income skyrockets and you send me Christmas cards every year from that point forward.

Anyone can get good at something worthy.  Anyone can get good at a new skill set, or expertise.  There is an abundance of information everywhere.  I mean, there’s that Internet thing that exists now (Information Super Highway anyone?)… and there’s a bookstore on every corner.  This is the information revolution… the information boom… the information bubble… and there’s no excuses for NOT increasing your skills, knowledge and expertise.  Anyone with a pulse can do so.  quickly too

But, the truth is… most people are “receivers” in life.  They just take and accept what life gives them.  They coast through life and take the path of least resistance.  Most are lazy… too lazy to focus.  The number one challenge I’ve listened to over the past 5 years… or excuse… from thousands of ambitious wanna-be Internet Marketers is a lack of “focus”.  By FAR, the number one challenge people have in this market is a “lack of focus”.  They say things like:

• I have information overload
• I am paralyzed with analysis
• I dont have enough time
• I dont have enough money
• I dont have the skills
• I dont know how to get started
• I’m lost
• I dont know how to do ____(blank) yet
• and so on

All are excuses.  Here’s what is really being said:

• I’m lazy
• I dont apply myself
• I dont try
• I dont put in effort
• I dont like to think
• I dont like to think for myself
• I dont want to have to figure anything out by myself
• I dont want to learn or educate myself
• I’m full of fears
• I’m just bored and this Internet Marketing thing is kinda entertaining
• I want someone to do it for me.
• I want someone to show me everything, then do it for me too.  yeah
• I dont WANT to invest the money, I’d rather buy pizza and video games
• Take care of me

But, really, although I’m being hardcore here, it’s on purpose… because it opens the eyes to the possibilities of creating new thoughts… new beliefs… and then new habits.  If you want to make more money, make yourself more valuable.  More money is first found on the inside with a new skill set or new expertise in something that is in DEMAND.  Many small businesses and business people MUST recreate themselves every two years or so just to stay on top.  this is a must in a fast moving, ever changing world we live in.  If you do not recreate yourself ongoing… with new skills or expertise… then everything starts to die… shrivel up… and rot away.

Even gurus must recreate themselves.  I mean, when Adsense does not work as well as it did, and you were the Adsense King, then guess what?  Time to become the Facebook King or Google Plus King!  All a guru or maven must do is master a new skill set or expertise.  For example, if I immersed myself into “Social Media”… it would not take long before I had a full blown course on Social Media.  If I mastered “How To Earn Quick Money With Amazon Kindle”… it would not be long before I had an Amazon Kindle Club Membership for $47 per month!

As the world turns, so should you.

You are one new skill set or expertise away from a windfall of new income!  But can you focus?

~Eric Louviere