The Power Of Your Ego In Writing Online Copy

I obey one main rule when writing copy for the online world: Getout of my ego and into my reader’s ego. It’s a basic marketingtruth that shouldn’t be violated anywhere. Yet it’s violatedevery day online. Let me explain. One day I received the following email: Dear Mr. Vitale, Your name was mentioned on a site that I came upon while I was looking for informational material to market on the Internet. Can you PLEASE, give me some feedback on this. The site is WWW.Internetpowertools.com/d.cgi?ebookprofits-pw10031 Thank you for you time. I took a quick peak at his site. If you did, too, you saw thathis site is a sales letter. There is nothing in that headline toappeal to your ego in a way that is acceptable online. Off-line that sort of hard-sell headline might work. On-line itwon’t. Why? Because it is too sales oriented. It looks and readstoo much like an ad. If you think of your reader’s ego, youwouldn’t post something so heavy-handed online. Instead, youwould give them information they want. Information they can use. Think of it this way: Write your website copy as if you arewriting a how-to booklet or a news release. Give facts. Givedetails. Give specifics. I might rather write this fellow’swebsite as a special report on the rise of e-books in the newmillennium. I might even give pointers on how to write your owne-books. In short, get out of your ego and into your visitor’sego. Appeal to their interests and they will eventually showinterest in yours. Let’s look at another example. Hello Mr. Fire, I am not a copy writer but I am trying to write a copy that sells my information product. Can you please check out my website and tell me whats wrong with the copy I have now. www.inetstart.com Thank you for your time. Did you take a look at his site? Same problem as the one beforeit. It’s written by a person trying to make a sale. That meansthe copywriter was writing to his own ego, not to mine or yours.Again, to transform this or any other website, think of whatyour READER wants to see, not what you want to sell. Think aboutit. Don’t you care more about what interests you, than whatinterests me? I might rewrite this fellow’s website by writing a news releaseor a special report on “The Top 10 New Ways to Make MoneyOnline.” I’d research the top ways, too, list them, explainthem, and make what he wants to sell just one of the new ways tomake money online. It’s the traditional way to sell anythingwith a news release: Simply plug your product or service withina story of genuine news. Are there any examples of websites using this basic copywritingprinciple? Of course. But they aren’t easy to find. Obviousexamples are www.ebay.com and www.amazon.com. Both focus on YOU.When you look at ebay or amazon, for example, you don’t detectan ego behind the sites. Instead, you can easily look around forwhat interests YOU. Again, get out of your ego and into yourreader’s ego. I just took a moment from writing this article to browse somerandom sites. I went to www.etour.com and let it bring websitesto me based on what I told it I was interested in. It’s amarvelous tool. Sites I saw were one on new music releases. Noego here. This had a search engine for me to type in my favoriteartist or style of music. Another site was on how to give CPR.Never know when it may be needed. Yet another site taught me howthings operated. Type in anything, like engine or website, andan article at the site revealed how an engine, or website,works. Again, all useful information. No ego. No selling. Which leads to the question: How does anyone make any moneyonline when they have to create ego-less websites that focus onthe visitor and do little or no selling? The answer is this: It’s called Hidden Selling. It’s what allgood publicity people or “cause public relations” people do.They engage you in something you want to know about and sell youafter the fact. It’s the soft sell. It’s what Hallmark Cardsdoes when they fund a movie. You don’t tune in to watch theircommercials. You tune in to watch the movie they sponsored. Asyou do, you are also fed the commercials. Good websites do thesame. They offer you want you want, and sell you quietly, byfocusing on serving you, not selling you. This whole topic may need more space than what I have here tofully explain. The bottomline for me is this: You’ll createbetter copy on your websites if you focus on your visitor’s ego,not yours. Think of serving them, not selling them, andironically, you will end up selling them.