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The Purposed Writer & the Valuable Reader
By Robert Skrob | April 29, 2010
For 6 years, select information marketers have been “by-invitation-only” subscribers to Dan Kennedy’s Information Marketing Special Reports and Info-Marketing Letters. Now, for a limited time, Dan has opened his vault to make these available to you.
If you’d like to find out more about the archives, visit www.DKArchive.com. Here is an excerpt from Special Report #25 of the archives. I’m sure you’ll find it valuable and enlightening.
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The Secret Behind the Most Durable Information-Marketing Businesses
“Any man who writes but for money is a blockhead.” —Mark Twain
Unlike many info-marketers, I am actually a writer. By that I mean, I write every day, I write non-stop, I write for publication. When you write books you are, to some extent, at the mercy of your publisher regarding schedules.
The RUTHLESS MANAGEMENT book I did was moved up to an earlier than anticipated release date, requiring hurried scurrying to edit and approve its final version and get the magazine ads and other promotional materials for it done.
The MARKETING TO THE AFFLUENT book has also been fast-tracked, so its galleys were arriving for approval work as the others were leaving. While I do work quickly in order to be prolific, I also take pains to be sure the books serve my promotional purposes as well as providing good content, so each of the steps between actually writing one and getting it to the shelf sucks up hours. So, Houdini must wait. Even he isn’t going anywhere.
To the subject of writing, I’m afraid many info-marketers give this such low priority that it severely hurts their business. Many work hard at becoming proficient advertising/direct-response copywriters but invest comparatively little time, study, and effort in becoming influential writers and in actually writing to their customers as part of a continuing relationship.
One info-marketer making over $2 million a year, who you would all know so I won’t name, delegated his daily e-mails, weekly letters and monthly newsletter. It took him four months to see the adverse results surfacing, four more to correlate them to his mistake, and another six months to get things back on track—costing him almost a million dollars and some irreparable damage. There are corporate/institutional info-businesses not dependent on strong personal connection between guru and followers, and there are sound reasons—sometimes chosen, sometimes compelled—to build such businesses, but that task isn’t easy, profits lower, longevity harder to achieve, vulnerability to recession and knock-offs and easterly breezes much greater. For most info-marketers, realization needs to set in, that they are not in the products or seminars or coaching businesses. Those may be deliverables. But they are in the on-going personal connection business. With thousands of readers, pen pals and followers. Thus, they need to be writers.
That fact may mean you’ve unwittingly chosen a career you are ill suited or ill prepared for. A very famous writer lamented his lack of talent and dislike for the work, but said he’d become too famous an author to quit. Writing is thought of by outsiders as creative activity. People who cling to this illusion when becoming writers are called ‘starving writers’ and ‘unpublished writers.’ Writing is actually a product of enormous self-imposed discipline. Ill prepared or ill suited does not matter unless you accept it as permanent. It’s up to you to make yourself into a powerful, persuasive and interesting writer and up to you to make yourself write. And make no mistake: what distinguishes writers from others is that writers write. Every day, constantly, continuously.
Our type of writing is more difficult than most others. Fiction authors need only spin a swell story populated by interesting characters. Most non-fiction authors need only compile and present useful information in an interesting way. We need to do both those things, but also, predominately achieve strategic business purposes. Our writing is not the end game. It is purposed. It is part of a process.
There are many purposes to serve. The big, broad one is establishing yourself as an expert, authority, influential and leading voice, personality, celebrity in a given genre or field. Napoleon Hill took ten years to get the first book done, written as a disguised brochure for himself and the ‘philosophy’ that would be his business; then wrote a book nearly every year thereafter, plus newsletters, magazines and courses in order to sustain that position. Dr. Maltz, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Rev. Robert Schuller are other examples of this overriding purpose for writing, thus writing one book after another tied to their original idea.
Long before online media, they were connecting with their loyal readers at least monthly if not more frequently through their own magazines and newsletters, as well as never being absent from the bookseller’s shelf, and never far from release and promotion of their next book. Their lecture tours’ dual purpose: acquiring new readers, offering another connection for present fans. As you know, I have followed this model myself. People have taken to tagging me ‘the Napoleon Hill of the 21st century.’ It is overly flattering. I did not create it, though; it came about organically and spontaneously and seems to be sticking. But it is more because I have replicated the old boy’s writing model than due to similarity in stature; I’m confident his legacy will outlast mine.
The recently departed William F. Buckley, founder of The National Review, said that a magazine or newsletter should be “the welcomed arrival of a trusted old friend—in the mail.” I’ve worked at that, and feel that work has been consistently and generously rewarded. It seems to me that the overwhelming majority of information-marketing businesses with decades of longevity and profit are driven by this. I wonder how your readers feel about your arrival? Is it eagerly anticipated?
Misunderstood by many—the answers to such questions may have as much to do with who your readers are and where they are sourced from as with you.
And, by the way, I use ‘readers’ deliberately. Having customers who aren’t readers isn’t very valuable and ought to be avoided. There is a move afoot, spurred by—ironically—a very popular, much hyped New York Times bestselling book to advocate and teach people to respond to the dizzying variety and quantity of information thrust at them by stopping reading books, magazines and newsletters, stopping listening to information CDs as well; to relax and de-stress by not trying to keep up. And I’ve been told a former client of mine is planning a huge new seminar with this bestselling author (who claims not to work—while hustling around the country, while doing endless radio interviews and seeking more, while writing and promoting books) where they will liberate people from these onerous responsibilities and literally tell them to stop reading. It’s laughable on many levels. It may very well be saleable—it’s just a different way of offering the fool’s gold promise of reward without investment, gain without work, a free lunch.
In any case, customers easily seduced by such silliness are not the ones you want in your herd. I’m told that Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach® described the ideal customer as a “slow learner with plenty of money”—surprisingly, I’m less cynical; I prefer highly intelligent, highly curious fast learners who come, get, implement, come back for more—and therefore have escalating sums to reinvest. Such people are, with so rare an exception you might as well try spotting turquoise unicorns in Omaha—voracious readers. In fact, they do not view reading as a chore but as a joy. If they are not that when you get them, it’s your job to convert them if you want them to have lasting, high value to you.
Furthermore, your best customers are library builders. They own a lot of books and want more and like the tactile, sensory experience of holding a book, of choosing one from a shelf full; of going through newsletters and magazines with colored hi-liter pens and Post-It® Notes at the ready. Maybe the customer with none of this familial friendship for the products of the written word, who prefer it all digitally delivered and stored, in the pithiest of e-mails, to be hastily scanned on a computer screen … maybe those customers can be just as valuable to somebody, but no one has yet demonstrated that to me.
I’ve been at this now for 30 years. It’s a long time. Maybe too long. I have, of course, observed a lot of changes, most superficial. The core truths about the valuable customer have not changed. They are seekers, readers, library builders, listeners, students and great gatherers and processors of information. They are hoarders, reluctant to discard the books and tapes and resources acquired. The basic principle Joel Weldon told me about selling audio programs office-to-office, door-to-door in 1978 applies yet today: if you walk in and see filled shelves of books and tapes, piles of books and tapes—stay and talk as long as you can. If you see none, leave as fast as you can.
Info-marketers with large, bloated herds of low value non-readers are going to suffer most in the evolving recession. The costs of servicing them keep going up but their value slumps.
The two golden keys to an info-business of lasting value, of strength, of influence are: a herd of readers insatiably hungry for information; and an influential and prolific writer fulfilling but at the same time stimulating their appetites. (As a bonus with this Report, I’ve attached an online article downloaded and faxed to me by a Member, written by someone advising artists and musicians on making a living and creating income security through direct relationship with fans. It’s interesting because it is by somebody that, as far as I know, does not know me, but has arrived independently at the exact same approach I’ve used for myself. I think you’ll find it interesting and provocative.)
If you are not going to be the prolific and influential writer in your business, then your only other option is to own one. The partnership of Lloyd Conant and Earl Nightingale comes to mind. Lloyd’s mastery of direct mail pretty much useless without an Earl. Earl’s disciplined study and output not monetized without Lloyd. But I think it is best to be your own bard. Conversely, if you are the writer, then finding and partnering with your own Lloyd Conant can be immensely profitable. The point is, one way or another, it’s the writing that makes everything else profitable.
Anyway, this month I have some great examples of certain kinds of purposed writing to show you. Each has its own merits. Each especially TIMELY in its own way. I should also tell you that I have an Enormous Stack of Important Stuff accumulating for next month’s issue of The No B.S. INFO-Marketing Letter. I don’t think I’ve ever had as much to talk about, to try and squeeze into a single issue. It is not to be missed!
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If you enjoyed this excerpt, you may want to review the entire Dan Kennedy archive. It is available for a limited time at www.DKArchive.com. Every one of the 72 issues is packed with advanced, specialized, experience-tested insights into what it takes to succeed within the info-marketing business. Visit www.DKArchive.com to reserve your copy.
Topics: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
April 29th, 2010 at 9:04 PM
interesting
Marshall