Let me tell you about my place.<\/p>\n
It’s newer house that sits atop a tall hill overlooking a pretty\u00a0crappy neighborhood (on my podcast I once said\u00a0how I could\u00a0literally see a meth house from my office window — I wish I was\u00a0joking…) Even though I dig my place and my 3 neighbors on top of\u00a0this hill (for the most part), I feel kinda like the grinch\u00a0overlooking Whoville when I look out the window.<\/p>\n
All the dam Who’s in the ‘hood.<\/p>\n
Making noise.<\/p>\n
Cluttering up the street.<\/p>\n
(People park on BOTH sides of the street, even though it’s narrow\u00a0and a sign clearly says “no parking on this side of the street” on\u00a0one side).<\/p>\n
And full of so many stray dogs, I daren’t walk my dog here.<\/p>\n
Anyway, that said:<\/p>\n
I do dig my place.<\/p>\n
(The hill is too steep for the dregs to want to climb up here —\u00a0hellz, I don’t even like walking up and down it to get my mail at\u00a0the mailbox…)<\/p>\n
Anyway, to the point:<\/p>\n
One thing I don’t like about my place is all the earwigs.<\/strong><\/p>\n Whenever the exterminator comes, he sprays around and, within\u00a0hours, I got earwigs sneaking in through a crack in the front door\u00a0dying on my kitchen floor.<\/p>\n It’s like the earwig apocalypse.<\/p>\n And, it’s kinda gross.<\/p>\n Anyway, why am I telling you this?<\/p>\n How does this help you?<\/p>\n Well, for the first year here, I just ignored it. Since I had a\u00a0person cleaning my place, I simply didn’t worry about it.\u00a0Especially since I spend 99% of my time upstairs either sleeping or\u00a0in my office.<\/p>\n But eventually, it got to me.<\/p>\n All the friggin\u00a0dead earwigs.<\/p>\n Now, if I was foolish I would’ve blamed the exterminators.<\/p>\n (I’ve gone through three.)<\/p>\n But, it’s not their fault.<\/p>\n It’s mine.<\/p>\n I didn’t seal the small opening in the door.<\/p>\n And no matter how skilled they were… no matter how precisely they\u00a0sprayed… no matter how great their knowledge… until I sealed\u00a0that hole, the bugs were coming in.<\/p>\n And, it’s the same online.<\/p>\n I’ve seen time after time and after time people complaining about\u00a0their “copy” not working, when all the dead sales lying around had\u00a0nothing to do with their copy.<\/p>\n Example:<\/p>\n One of my friends told me about a client he had.<\/p>\n His opt ins were abysmally low.<\/p>\n At first, the client blamed the copywriter. But it wasn’t the copy.\u00a0It was a glitch in the code that was screwing something up and only\u00a0a small fraction of people *could* opt in.<\/p>\n And until they fixed that, the copy didn’t matter<\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n They had to fix the crack in the door, first.<\/p>\n Only then, could sales flow.<\/p>\n Anyway, something to think about.<\/p>\n There’s a lot of profit in dropping the “ninja” mindset always\u00a0looking for ways to tweak and geek your ads… and just look for\u00a0obvious bottlenecks in your sites.<\/p>\n Enter the book “Obvious Adams”<\/p>\n I first heard of it when the great Gary Bencivenga sent it to me.<\/p>\n (He’s universally considered the world’s greatest living copywriter.)<\/p>\n And, he said he reads it once or twice per year.<\/p>\n And, that his mentor the late (great) ad man David Ogilvy insisted\u00a0all his people read it — since it instills a certain, very rare\u00a0mindset in you where you can see the obvious solutions to problems\u00a0that plague the average, common marketer.<\/p>\n What about you?<\/p>\n Would you like to see this book?<\/p>\n (Actually, it’s a booklet — only about 20 pages or so.)<\/p>\n It’s on Kindle here:<\/p>\n