Everyone knows that sales letters are a necessary evil in the business world but now everyone knows how to write them properly. Here are some tips on how to write a sales letter:

1. Make sure that your sales letter is being printed on company letterhead—that uses your nameplate.

2. Start with a headline. Some people choose to use images with their headlines, but images are not required. The headline should be a short sentence that sums up the reason for your sales letter and gets the reader’s attention.

3. After the headline you are basically writing a form letter. Include your usual address block (name, title, business address of the reader) and the rest of your sales letter should follow like this: greeting, attention grabbing paragraph, body of letter and closing.

4. The typical letter follows the old high school essay format: tell them what you are going to say, say it and then tell them what you’ve said.

5. The introductory paragraph should drum up excitement for the product or service that you are selling. Make sure to emphasize how beneficial it will be to the person you are trying to sell it to.

6. The body of the letter should explain the details of the product or the service—how it works and why it is better than competitive products or services. It is here that statistics and quotes from other satisfied customers are helpful.

7. The closing paragraph consists of a few sentences that sum up the product (or service) that you are offering and why the client should jump on the chance to have (or use) it.

8. Never forget that your sales letter is intended to drive sales. Keep the tone upbeat and emphasize the benefits of a product.

Good luck!

Everybody wants to know how to be more successful. Here are some tips to keep in mind as you build your business!

1. Get used to hard work. Your success is going to be directly proportionate to how much work you are willing to put in. Sure, there are a few lucky breaks to be had, but to maintain a steady level of success and business growth, you need to be willing to work.

2. Organize your Office/Work Habits. If you find that you are constantly losing client information or missing deadlines because you forgot to write a project on your calendar, it is time to get organized. Disorganization will cost you clients, money and reputation. A successful person is someone who is organized.

3. Learn to be Patient and Flexible. Sometimes a schedule needs to be changed at the last minute. Other times, your client will decide that they want to take a project in an entirely new direction. Even if you are frustrated on the inside, on the outside you need to be the person who is flexible and ready to meet clients’ needs. Not only will this make you golden to your current clients, but they will be more likely to recommend your services to others.

4. Learn some basic marketing skills. No business has ever become successful by simply unlocking its front door. You will need to market your business or website. Visit your local library and pick up some books on marketing. Marketing is what will drive your sales and help your business succeed.

5. Put your “game face” on. You need to get used to the idea of communicating directly with people in some form. Networking is more about finding business referrals than new clients. These are the people who can send work to you (and to whom you can send work when you are overloaded).

One of the largest clichés in business is that sex sells. Many people are tempted to implement sex (or sexy-ness) into their websites or businesses in an effort to drum up more business and to increase their revenue. Why is the idea of sex selling so popular? Is it because it is true? Or is it just something that most people assume.

Here are four reasons that sex sells:

1. There is a little bit of a voyeur in all of us. We all like to look at attractive people and we all like to look at images that are “sexy.”

2. Fantasies increase profit. When you use sex or something that is considered sexy to promote your business, you are really trying to sell people a fantasy. Lots of people like to fantasize about being in certain situations or being perceived in certain ways. Fantasies sell.

3. Imitation. When presented with a sexy image, the idea is to try to get the viewer to want to emulate the person in the ad. People want to be looked at in the same way that they are looking at the ads, so they are more likely to buy the product.

4. Testosterone. The idea that sex sells is largely based on the idea that when presented with a sexy female (or even just certain parts of her), a man’s testosterone level will rise and this will make him more susceptible to the idea that the advertising is trying to put across. This is because he isn’t using logic to make his decisions, he’s using an, um, “gut instinct.”

However, using sex to sell your products or your businesses is risky. Studies have shown that most women do not respond to ads of a sexual nature and in fact are less likely to buy the product being offered in the ads. Make sure you know who your target audience is and that you are not offending them!

If you make your living by owning your own business (whatever market the business is in), you have probably said to yourself at some time or another “I need better time management skills!” Here are five steps to help you master time management:

1. Make friends with the list. The list is going to be your best friend. Every day, before you leave work (or put work away for the day) make a list of everything that you want to accomplish the next day.

2. Make a habit of writing everything down in a central location. We all love post-its, but think about investing in an inexpensive notebook. Keeping everything in one place will save you a lot of time later. If you prefer to categorize things, you can easily copy notes from this notebook into other places (a message center, a calendar, etc). Writing it down again will only reinforce it in your memory.

3. Develop a “two seconds now or two hours later” attitude with mundane tasks like filing. Do the tiny tasks (putting a file away, crossing items off of a list, etc) as soon as they arise. This will keep them from piling up.

4. Piles are the enemy. Whether it is a stack of information for a project you want to work on, a pile of messages you need to read, etc. Don’t get into the habit of letting the piles build up. Create a space for everything.

5. Label everything. The piles we talked about in step four? Create files or boxes for them and label the boxes. Labels will save you a ton of time later on when you are trying to find something. Why open three filing drawers and six boxes when you can simply stand back and scan a list of labels?

As you work, you will develop your own time management tricks, but these steps should help you get started.

Believe it or not but the blogging community used to be very small. Only a handful of people kept blogs and they all knew each other—perhaps not in person but they made their own little online family. Now, of course, the blogosphere has exploded and there are literally millions of bloggers. It is easy to think that you could become a blogger and gain an audience and not have to worry about your relationships with other bloggers…and if you only want a readership of your relatives then this is certainly true.

The best way to build your reputation as a blogger is to forge relationships with other bloggers, particularly the bloggers in your own niche. While there will always be competition, the truth is that a blogging relationship can easily be a symbiotic relationship (one in which both partners benefit).

Here are three tips to help you improve (or build) your relationships with other bloggers

1. Link to other blogs that you find respectable—without emailing to ask them for a reciprocal link. Write a post that features their site as one you admire and why your readers might enjoy reading that blog as well. Philanthropic linking goes a long way to forge friendships in the blogosphere and it helps you build links to your own site as well!

2. Comment regularly—blogging is about the interaction between the blogger and the commenter. Become a regular commenter as well as a regular visitor. When you become a “regular” on a blog, that blog’s readers will naturally gravitate to learning more about you.

3. Befriend other bloggers outside of the blogosphere—forge friendships in forums or other social websites. Even if you don’t link to each other, you can form blog-based friendships! In fact, a friendship forged outside of the blogosphere might even fare better than a friendship forged in the comments section of your blogs.

Every web page has been assigned a Google “Page Rank” and, when it comes to blogs, this number is very important. Your blog’s page rank is a reflection of how many “quality” back links there are to your blog. Yes, the overall ranking also figures in things like keyword density and original content, but what most people recognize are the links.

The higher your page rank, obviously, the more quality links there are to your blog. This is a big selling point when it comes time to find independent advertisers for your blog or website. Not many advertisers will place as much importance upon the number of RSS subscribers you have or even on your foot traffic. They want to know how many ways there are for people to find your site. The higher the page rank number, the more ways there are to find you!

So how do you increase your page rank?

The best way to increase your page rank is the best way to do just about anything in the blog world: create quality content on a regular basis and be an active participant in the blogging community. Leave comments on other people’s blogs, put up your own outgoing links and make sure that what you contribute is useful to other people.

Sure, you can submit your site to link directories and purchase links on other pages, but Google is getting smarter every day and already they rank links differently. A link from a link directory will not figure as prominently into your page rank as, say, a link from a high profile blogger with a page rank of 8.

Your page rank will tell your visitors and potential advertisers how you rank overall on the internet. It goes a long way to determining your place in search engines and it is important that you keep your page rank in mind while you build your blog or website.

Through internet marketing you can increase revenues for your company and if you use an advertising revenue model like pay per click then it can further give you benefit. If you do not have skilled IT professionals then go for web site hosting. Through this service you can outsource website design as well as you can get free domain names registration.

You might not have known that one of the secrets to blogging success is marketing your blog. In fact, you might not even be sure what blog marketing is, exactly. Here are 5 tips for improving your blog marketing (and helping you decipher just what blog marketing is)

1. Comment on well respected blogs and make sure that you leave a link back to your own site. The best way to do this is to enter your site’s url in the comment ID section. Make sure that your comments are relevant to the post topics though or you will get labelled a spammer!

2. Make sure that your site has trackbacks enabled. This will send pings to other sites when you link to them as well as letting you know when somebody has linked to you! One of the best “guerrilla marketing” techniques when it comes to blogs is to write about a post you read on someone else’s blog, link to it and then, when the post is live, click on the link!

3. Distribute your blog. Make sure that your blog has its own RSS feed and that you upload that feed to as many directory sites as possible.

4. Update often. Blogs that are updated frequently—especially blogs that build a reputation as being authoritave—have the potential to be listed in the Google News index. We all know how popular the Google News index is!

5. Your blog must be listed in Technorati. In fact, as soon as you get your blog up and running make sure you claim it in Technorati. Having your blog make one of Technorati’s “most popular” lists is traffic/advertising gold.

These are just five tips for improving your blog marketing. If you put your mind to it, you could probably come up with plenty of your own blog marketing ideas

In our line of work, creativity is arguably the most critical trait.

With that being said, it’s unfortunate that the current job market makes our industry seem as if we’re lucky to work for them. In hindsight, I think should be the other way around. There are thousands of freelancers. Unfortunately there aren’t many good ones, which ironically is also the cause for the dramatic decrease in our services, especially with the growing popularity of uniformed theme purchases (premium Wordpress anyone?). This means that every now and then an employer is lucky enough to “catch” the perfect freelancer. One who is consistent, punctual, and affordable.

But these freelancers are the ones who are the ones who are really fishing. They are looking for ads with creative employers who they feel will bring a positive working environment that’ll help push the project forward towards completion. Without an equally passionate or creative employer, it’s difficult to really convince yourself to work there.

So, my plea to employers - if you want a dependable, conssitent quality freelancer, it’s in your ads. Write good ones, and they will come.

Here are some examples for my fellow freelancers to apply for, and to serve as examples for employers.

Julian is looking for a Web Designer to “Help our company catch up to our growth and communicate our thought leadership.” on Smashing Jobs - check it out here.

The Authors Channel is looking for a Marketer to drive “3 million visitors per month, and we need someone who knows how to effectively use all media in order to get that traffic.” on FreelanceSwitch Boards - check it out here.

SEOmoz is looking for a Designer to “come to a place where your talents are appreciated, your voice is heard, and your code has an impact.”” on 37Signals Board - check it out here.

Woot.com is looking for a Designer to work with “the world’s first, best, and handsomest deal-a-day website, [that] drops mad bargainz every night at midnight, alongw ith near-lethal doses of irreverence and snot.” on 37Signals Board - check it out here.

“Large Business Consulting Firm” is looking for a Designer to “deliver the visual design and strategy for a few key pages” on 37Signals Gigs - check it out here.

So freelancers - it is equally important to pick out creative clients that’ll help put you in the mood when you design. You’ll find that you do your best work when it’s for important clients, or for people who you know can push you to be creative and allow you the space and time to work.

And in turn, you’ll see that the most creative individuals apply for the job ads that seem the most creative and will allow them to have the best opportunity to work efficiently.

I had linked to TypeInShirts Blog’s post about Nike marketing the new Jordan XX3 sneakers. This was supposed to be one of the biggest sneaker launches in recent history since this is the 23rd Jordan shoe. Now if anyone knows anything about sneakers, they’ll agree that each year, the new Jordan’s are always the hottest kicks on the street. This year, the only difference is that it is the 23rd pair and they are launching in style.

Here’s a break down of the launch:

• January 25th - 23 pairs of the 23rd Jordan will be available at only 23 stores at $230.
• February 16th - Other colors are released at $185 at selected stores
• February 23rd - Full launch. $185 per pair.

The staggered launch technique works perfect with the famous Jordan shoes. And to top it off, they got really creative and tried to reinforce the brand and identity to 23 - the shoe’s mark/brand. We’re nearing the end of January and coming into the early days of February and already these shoes are being buzzed about all over. This may be the cause for Nike’s stock rising nearly 6% over the last couple of days.

If you check on Ebay, the shoes are easily going for over $1,200 a piece. Here are couple interesting auctions that feature the new shoe:

• This auction is going for $1,225.00 so far.
• This auction has a whopping $3,000 BIN price.

One of the demographics that Nike is targeting are their loyal shoe fanatics. They secured great exposure in the popular Entourage show where Turtle looks for the best shoes in town with some cameos of the Jordan XX3.

And that’s not all - these pairs are the 3rd Generation(?) of Nike’s new effort to make “green” shoes. They are environmentally friendly and the process which the shoes are made cut down on hazardous materials. However, Nike didn’t make this their strong marketing point as they preferred the “limited edition” marketing hook.

The Jordan sneakers have come a long way. They really spawned a new market of basketball shoes and after the initial success of Jordan, contractors all over went on a hunting frenzy to capitalize on popular basketball players to land shoe contracts. An interesting tid-bit is that Jordan’s shoes were initially banned from the NBA. However, he continued to wear them and was fined $5,000 every time he did. However, he didn’t have to pay a cent. Nike, determined to give their shoe the best exposure possible, paid for every single fine until finally the NBA relinquished the rule.

Kudos to Nike for pulling off such a massive and successful (so far) launch of their flagship shoe brand. Each auction is well over $1,200 and each auction has about 10-30 bids. This reminds me of the Wii when it first came out…

What do you guys think of this? Why do you think Nike went with the Limited Edition hook, rather then coming out with “regular” and “limited editions”? Why do you think they didn’t push how “green” the sneakers are? And finally, would you buy a pair of these?

I keep getting more requests for more “blog-style” updates. I guess you guys are getting tired of the whole “article” schmojo everyday. Anyways, I had my first day of class today and really enjoyed it. There was one thing that stuck out from my Government and Politics class that I thought would be relevant to share with all of you.

My professor told us a very interesting story that is supposed folklore from Berkley(?). It’s a basic economics rule of thumb, but I thought it’d be very important to share it with those who have never heard the story before. I believe its from Berkley Universeity in California from an Economics class, but I could be wrong.

There are two professors who walk the same route home everyday after teaching. Each day, they always encounter the same homeless man. From the very beginning, the professor had offered him (as a joke) the choice between $0.50 and $1.00.

As easy as the choice may seem, the homeless man continuously takes the $0.50 over the dollar.

After about a month of doing this, the other professor who wasn’t handing him the money asked him, “why do you take $0.50 over a $1.00? You do know the dollar is worth twice as much right?”. The homeless man looked at him and smiled and explain, “well, if I had taken the dollar the first day, he would’ve never given me another.”.

What does this economic story teach us? Simple - price point is critical to the survival of your product or service. Besides seeing how much money you could get away with charging people, price point is used to build trust and loyalty between the customer and business. This turns into long-term loyal customers who will continue to strengthen your brand by buying more of it.

By taking only the $0.50, the homeless man was able to build a relationship with the professor and maximize his potential revenue.

The moral can apply to anything. The core customer base of your product will be repeat customers (or at least that’s what you should always aim for), and the only way you can continue to build relationships is by offering your product at a price that is competitive enough to your competitors.

A company like Flickr is a great example. Flickr charges a measly $24.95 for an annual membership. They could easily get away with charging upwards of $30.00 year, or even a low monthly fee of $4/$5.00 (which even I’d pay). But yet, they keep it low and affordable and people continue to buy pro accounts.

Just today’s thought.
Bryan