I’ve been noticing a trend lately that’s starting to aggravate me a little. And I hope you can bear with me throughout this rant, as I do expose a few inside tips for you in the process.

This trend is one that speaks not only to the state of business (and online marketing), but also to the character of some of the people running them.

Warning! This article is not sugarcoated. It’s a lament of sorts, and uses language that is a little stronger than the norm. The lesson might even disappoint a few people. So if you’re looking for some kind of feelgood Pollyanna or rose-colored criticism, back away now. You’ve been warned.

So, what’s this trend? It’s…

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Yup, that’s right. We had a baby. (In our arms, that is.) We just came back from the Big Seminar, and we were, er, quite busy. (It’s not what you think, too… well, sorta. This is not a new product or a promotion, either. We’re talking about a real, living, breathing bundle of joy.)

In fact, we were so tempted to do something that would have been outright illegal and could have gotten us in jail.

Click here for details and pictures of the baby…

Gary: Your wife has triplets. Now somebody comes up to you and explains, tells you your wife has triplets. Is there any way that that piece of information could be transmitted to you in a way that wouldn’t be of interest to you? I mean, if they use broken English, bad grammar, if they use sign language.

However it was, if it was, if your wife had unexpectedly had triplets I think you’d be interested in the message. And, and, and that, that’s a point, uh, I think it’s really important ****.

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Gary: When a 2 for 1 be. Well if you are talking about two letters in the same envelope like these two it’s, it is actually you are going to be very disappointed as a result of that.

Should we even attempt that the answer is yes but you, you should attempt, do I, do I know of a case where it has been attempted successfully. Ah, no I don’t but I bet it has and yes I think you should attempt it, but the way you should attempt it I believe is you should try and sell them the bone density testing first, and with the markup and then go from there to the high price thing.

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Gary: Then you go out to a library or a bookstore and get ten books on golf and outline a product based on the ideas you got from those books. I remember one book I really liked had a simple title said, “The Secrets of Perfect Putting”, but anyway you outline your book then you write a direct mail letter as though your product actually existed.

Then you mail 1000 letters out of that, you have to rent 5,000, but I often rent 5,000 and test only 1,000, and if you get enough money back that the arithmetic says that you have made a profit doing this and you did it with your own money then you are entitled to call yourself a copywriter.

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Michel Fortin: Well, let’s just do a little quick check here. Um, Gary, are you on the line?

Gary Halbert: Listen, if you people would stop slurring my reputation.

Michel: Oh, there we go. Let me just mute this phone right now. We are in presentation mode and…

Gary: Just one second.

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Michel: The second law will never believe anything at first. And the third law is people will never do anything at first. So the three steps, I call it the three P’s. Pull them in, prove your case, push them back. And copy, when you should pull them in, the headline, people will scroll down a web page.

So you’ve got tons of things that you can do to pull them in. Headers throughout the copy, the story. Prove your case is of course credibility and proof and all that stuff, and your offer and value buildup and guarantees and testimonials. And push them to act is of course asking for the order, making the offer.

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