I’m changing my domain name for this blog. You can find new posts here: http://www.copywritingdean.com

I decided Stephensblog.com wasn’t the best domain for my business. My name (Stephen) is kind of hard to spell. Many people spell it wrong. And it’s spelled differently than it sounds.

Continue reading…

A few days back I told you how to increase traffic to your website using my blog.

The 4 point plan was to exchange links with me, comment on my posts, link from a post of yours to mine and to follow me on Twitter.

Many of you did these things and I greatly appreciate it. I’m also glad to see you’re being proactive.

But I am disappointed with 2 things.

One, no one has exchanged links with me. I know, cry me a river. But I’m really trying to make this Wordpress Link Directory work. My next post will be on how to set it up on your blog just in case you’re unsure how to do it. And then hopefully you’ll exchange links.

Two, some of the comments that have appeared since I invited you to comment for SEO reasons have been, I guess predictably, skeptical. There were a couple that forced me to make a decision on whether or not they were spam or legitimate comments by a reader.

I want people to get some link love back to their sites, but I also want comments that constructively add to the conversation.

So here’s what we’re going to do.

I’ve changed the “DoFollow” plugin I’m using. It’s now Lucia’s Linky Love and it only changes your links from “nofollow” to “dofollow” after you’ve made 5 comments. This will protect the blog from drive by commenters.

At some point, I may raise the barrier to 10 comments before you receive link love from me. But for now it’s 5.

Now I don’t want you to leave a bunch of “junk” comments in order to hit the 5 comment barrier. So if you don’t have 5 comments yet, don’t worry! You can still get some link love from me by exchanging links in the link directory It’s here: http://www.stephensblog.com/dir

And if you want to start boosting your comment count now, why not let me know what you think about this policy? Leave a comment

Hi guys and gals. I’ve been quietly piecing together a new wordpress theme in between copy projects this week. It’s based on Versatility Lite.

What does everyone think? Please leave a comment.

Some of my favorite posts in the past have been Q&A sessions. And it’s been a long, long time since we’ve done that.

Let’s do it.

Leave a comment with your question(s). 2 at the most please. They can be on any topic, but my specialty is copywriting and if I don’t know the answer to your question, I’ll tell you that.

Suggested topics might include writing headlines, writing bullets, creating a great offer, testing your copy with split tests or multivariate testing, etc…

The best question, picked subjectively by me, will get a free gift.

I’ll answer the questions on Monday and post them.

Zazzu. The random number generator chose the number 6, which happened to be Zazzu.

Congrats! Will you leave a comment to this post with your mailing address and I’ll get it shipped out to you next week? (I won’t approve the comment so no one will see it but me.)

I’m wondering how many of my readers have a blog. If you’re reading this and you do have a blog, will you leave a comment?

If you don’t have a blog, consider starting one. Blogs are a great way to start a business or generate traffic.

A great way to establish yourself as an authority is to have dozens and dozens of blog posts published to the web for visitors to read.

Plus Google loves content, so they love blogs. The more content you have the more search engine traffic you’ll get.

Whenever I start a new hobby, I start a blog with it. That way I can track my progress with the hobby, and I have a ton of content if I ever get to the point where I want to monetize that hobby.

Right now, in addition to this blog, I have a music blog and a wine blog. I keep both of them secret and don’t talk about them too much.

And I haven’t posted to either one in quite a while. But that’s OK, the content is there waiting for me when I come back. One day all that content I’ve compiled will be very useful. And if not, I’ll still have a personal record of the hobby if I ever want to go back and look.

I think I have some DVD’s that show how to set up a blog. Maybe I’ll give one away next week. In the meantime, it’s not hard. Buy a domain name, get a web host that uses cPanel, point the domain at the webhost and use cPanel’s auto-install to install Wordpress. Done!

So recently I noticed that I purchased the same book twice. WHOOPS!

The book was Dan Kennedy’s “The Ultimate Marketing Plan” and it’s an older edition. I’d like to send it to someone who wants it.

If you’d like to be considered for the free gift, leave a comment to this post. I’ll use a random number generator to pick the winner.

What’s the best way to get a hold of me?

Two ways…

If you want to talk to me about a copywriting project, fill out an application at http://www.copyproductions.com. I’ll respond ASAP by email.

Otherwise, just comment on a post here at the blog. That’s the most appropriate way to chit chat with me.

An email will be sent to my inbox with your message. If it’s appropriate I’ll publish the comment and respond back.

Otherwise, I may respond by email.

This method is a lot better for me than handing out my email address. I don’t have to deal with spambots, stalkers or mean people. (OK, maybe still mean people.)

Another way to keep in contact with me is through Twitter. My page is http://www.twitter.com/stephenPdean

Notice the P in the URL above! Stop by, I’d love to have you as a follower.

I stepped away from the computer for the last month and change.  Needed a break.  And just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

The credit card I had on file had expired and wasn’t rebilling.  I lost a pretty important domain in my business.  I’d been planning on ditching the domain soon, but it would have been nice to use it to redirect!

I also lost three blogs, including this one.  It was obvious that my website, not just my blog had been “hacked” to some degree.  A ton of spam links started showing up on my pages.  And after talking to my host they informed me the database where all my blog posts are kept… was corrupted.

I lost around 400 posts and a lot of google love.  This also happened to my sister’s blog and a hobby blog that was pretty important to me on a personal level.

Aye carumba.

In any case, it’s time to start again.  I just finished uploading as many useful posts to this blog that I could find in Google’s cache, so this will be the 60th post.

More posts will follow.  It’s good to be back.

(And thanks Jim Sansi for welcoming me back to the blogosphere.)

Whenever I get a new client I send out a questionnaire to find out more about the product, the offer and the market. And one of the questions asks how the client wants to limit the offer… Scarcity of time, quantity or the offer.

You should see the excuses I sometimes see for not limiting the offer. My favorite, or should I say least favorite, is…

“I’m not limiting the offer because it’s a digital product and I can sell an unlimited amount. Plus I want to sell as many as possible.”

B.S.! You’re not going to sell as many as possible if you don’t give the reader a reason to act immediately. The reader WILL procrastinate, which often means they won’t buy at all. In fact, Michel Fortin says procrastination is the biggest killer of sales.

So you MUST add Scarcity. Even if you have to manufacture it.

That DOESN’T mean using the stupid date script to warn of a price increase “tomorrow.” But it could mean working a deal with a JV partner to give the next 25 customers a free copy of his digital product. Now suddenly you’ve added value AND given the reader a reason to ACT NOW.

My next product will share more ways to add Scarcity to your letter. In the mean time, can you come up with more ways to add Scarcity to your copy? Leave a comment…