Just plug your headlines into google AdWords. That’ll give you a pretty good indication as to how good your headlines are — directly from your market. Also, google has a free split testing program you an plug in your headlines to and you can split test them against each other.

Ben

Maybe next time you’ll save some of those headlines and post them after it’s safe for you to do so.

I think even the real junk you come up with would be useful to other people. They might see how the junk helps you come up with the brilliant.

It must be hard to pick through all of those headlines and decide which ones you think are the top. Then when you pick one it may not even be the best. You have to test a number of them.

Writing headlines is certainly an art and a science.

Thanks, Roger

I’m so glad you’re getting value from the book.

I don’t keep all the headlines I write (most are garbage anyway — just random thoughts to keep things constantly moving). So it would be impossible for me to show a progression or list or anything like that.

By the way, if you haven’t seen Doug D’Anna’s report on email subject lines (it’s a bonus for signing up for his “A List” ezine) it has some great tips on how to write them.

Ben

I just got your new book the other day. I’m really enjoying it. I find it hard to put down. You’ve got some great headlines for your chapters BTW.

Speaking of headlines. In your book on page 109 you describe that you sometimes write 500 or more headlines for a sales letter project.

I was just wondering if you wouldn’t mind making a blog post in which you include all of the headline versions you came up with for a past project?

I absolutely love coming up with lots of headlines or email subject lines for that matter. But I think seeing the hundreds of headline variations you come up with could be highly instructive to your blog readers.

Maybe you’d be embarrassed at showing your worst ones. If that’s the case then you could simply include the top 100 out of the 500 and write a little bit about your process for generating these headlines.

Unfortunately it often takes me 10 times longer to come up with a good email subject line than the article itself. I can write some articles in 15 minutes or less and yet sometimes it takes me over 2 hours to come up with a good subject line. And yet I still feel I should have come up with some more ideas.

And forgive me if you’ve already written such a post in the past. Now back to reading your book. And by the way, with very little reading I believe I’ll be increasing my income by following just a few of your ideas.

I wish I had concrete evidence. But I haven’t put them to use yet. However when I saw what you wrote it made common sense and I know it will work.

Cheers, Roger