The Answer:

While its true that lemon enhances the flavour of fish, that’s not the REAL reason why they’re served together…

More than 600 years ago, lemon was actually served with fish as a ’safety precaution’!

It’s true…

People believed that if someone swallowed a fish bone accidentally, drinking a mouth full of lemon juice would dissolve it and quite possibly save their life. We know this wouldn’t actually work, but the reason they believed it was that sucking on a lemon causes the throat muscles to contort, helping to dislodge any stuck bone.

So there you have it.  ;-)

Until next time… make it a breakthrough day!

Kathy

Source: "Now You Know" by Doug Lennox

You have probably heard before that people make their buying decisions based on emotion, and justify their decisions with logic - and this is absolutely true. Just think back to the reason why you made your last purchase - especially a big-ticket one.

To make your online marketing more effective, you have to ensure you are pushing what we call your prospect’s emotional ‘Hot Buttons’, or your ads just won’t have the magnetism to compel your prospect to take action!

How do you do that?

This is where targeted market research and knowing what matters most to your prospect comes into play, because in order to push someone’s emotional ‘hot buttons’, you first have to know what they are.

What most male grooming product manufacturers and beer companies know very well is that by showing images of what most men have a deep-rooted desire for (lets be honest, in most categories its generally sex and being desired by beautiful women) in their ads, they can effectively link the fulfillment of these powerful emotional desires to their product. By doing so, their ads achieve better response rates and ultimately sell more razors, hair colour and beer.

How can you use this tactic yourself?

Does this mean that in order to sell more of your product or service you need to use images of beautiful women in your ads? Not necessarily. But it does mean that you need to pay very close attention to who your target audience is, and what emotionally drives them to look at products like yours in the market - what emotions they naturally associate with theses specific products or services.

For example, if you’re selling infant car seats you might appeal to a mother’s need for her child’s safety by describing the material as “protective and crash resistant”. If you’re selling a sports car to a young man, one of his emotional triggers might be a need for admiration from his peers so you might use words like “the envy of every road warrior…”

But the other thing you have to consider if you want to use emotional hot buttons as part of your online marketing strategy is ‘logic’.

Although people are driven to their buying decisions by the emotional attachment they have to certain products, if your prospect can’t find any logical ‘common sense’ reasons to justify their desire to buy, you could easily loose the sale.

Why?  Because although everyone loves to buy, nobody likes to be sold!

That’s why giving your prospects logical reasons why its ‘ok’ to make the emotional decision to buy your product or service is the other critical piece of the puzzle - it helps alleviate guilt and ward off evil ‘buyer’s remorse’.

So when writing just about any type of online marketing copy - website copy, online sales letters, print ads, pay-per-click ads - remember these two proven copywriting tips:

1. To make your ads more effective, push your prospect’s emotional hot buttons by highlighting specific benefits of your product and positioning them in a way that emotionally links your buyer’s desires directly to your product. And then…

2. Back up the emotional decision your prospect is coming to with a healthy dose of logical reasons why they should buy.

Until next time, to your online success!

Kathy

PS: Have a specific question about online marketing or creating an online passive income stream? Click the “Ask Kathy” tab above and send me your question. I’ll answer it personally by email or in my next blog post here!

These days, hiring a freelance tech person like a web designer or programmer is becoming more and more the norm, because its a way to get jobs done cheaply - especially if you’re not skilled enough, or have the time required, to do them yourself. 

Although it can be tough to find good, reliable freelancers to work with, there are a few companies that are making the process a little easier. These sites offer services that work a bit like Match.com or eBay for potential employers giving potential employers (you) access to thousands of programmers, designers and techies of all types from around the world. Their profiles usually include things like their rankings, client comments and feedback, their work history, skill level, portfolio and hourly rates.

Here are some of the best places to start your search for a freelancer. All the sites on this list are free for employers to use - they get paid by keeping a percentage of the freelancer’s agreed upon wage):

1. Elance

2. Guru

3. RentACoder

4. oDesk

Stay tuned for more on this subject in coming posts…

To your online success,

Kathy

PS: If you have a specific question about online marketing or creating an online passive income stream… Just click the “Ask Kathy” tab above and send me your question. I’ll answer it personally by email or in my next blog post here!

If you’re an internet marketer considering hiring a freelance programmer or web designer for the first time, you’ve probably heard a horror story or two about a freelance job turned disaster. There’s a lot to know when hiring a freelancer and the process can be very  intimidating.

How do you know they have the skills they say they do? How can you know if they will be reliable? What if you don’t know a thing about programming or how to build a website – how can you reduce your risk?

To kick this series off, below is an outline of what we’ll be discussing in future posts. Its more of a bird’s-eye-view of how to hire the best freelancers, and in case it doesn’t answer all your questions rest assured we’ll be diving into more detail in upcoming posts.

If there is something else you’d like to know about how to hire the best freelancers, just let me know by making a comment and I’ll add it as an upcoming post on this topic!

Here are a few things to look for when hiring freelance programmers and web designers or developers that should help you find quality freelancers that won’t break the bank. And with any luck, you might just find your freelance match made in heaven.

1. Be clear and UBER specific with your instructions
2. Insist they be tested — no, not for illegal stimulants
3. Keep them ‘on their toes’ with questions that require more than 1 word answers
4. Use milestones to divide your project into several manageable parts
5.  Only outsource what you know

Stay tuned for more on each of these 5 tips to avoiding disaster when shopping for a freelancer. There’s a lot to it, but its not impossible to find the good ones if you’re smart about it.

To your online success!

Kathy

PS: If you have a specific question about online marketing or creating an online passive income stream… Just click the “Ask Kathy” tab above and send me your question. I’ll answer it personally by email or in my next blog post here!

The fact is that flat advertising copy just doesn’t sell.

So to make your advertising copy more compelling, and ultimately more effective, tweaking your copy to talk about the benefits of your product or service instead of the features is a great place to start. Today we’ll explain the difference between ‘features’ and ‘benefits’ and show you how to turn a lifeless list of features into advertising copy that really sells:

What are ‘features’?  Features are simply the qualities a product, service or even a company possesses.

For example, one of the features of a new cross country bike might be the fact that its made from steel alloy.

What are ‘benefits’?  The benefit of a product or service is the real value a particular feature gives your prospect. Using the example above, the benefit of the steel alloy frame is that it is lightweight and durable.

What’s wrong with simply using the features of your product or service in your copy? It just results in less than engaging advertising. The sentence below is how a sentence in your ad copy might sound if you only used features to describe it to your audience:

“Our bike’s frame is made from steel alloy.”

Pretty flat. Not because steel alloy isn’t an amazing material, but because the advantage of steel alloy isn’t immediately obvious just from stating it this way.

A better way to sell this feature to your prospect, in a way they can emotionally identify with and immediately see the benefit in, might be something like this:

“Say goodbye to backaches and lugging around heavy, awkward bikes of the past. Our bike’s steel alloy frame makes it so lightweight, you can lift the entire bike with just one hand making it easy to load and unload from the car. And because steel alloy is so durable, it may be the last bike you ever have to buy!”

Its all about identifying what matters most to your prospect and what they desire most. The more your customer can see them self enjoying the benefit your product delivers, the more sales you will get. So make sure you emphasize the benefits, not the features in your advertising copy and you’ll be on your way to more effective ads immediately.

Until next time, to your marketing success!

Kathy

PS: Have a specific question about online marketing or creating an online passive income stream? Click the “Ask Kathy” tab above and send me your question. I’ll answer it personally by email or in my next blog post here!

I receive questions regularly about how to get better results for your online ads. In an article I wrote recently, I explained how effective ‘improving your baseline’ can be on your online ads, and especially your bottom line. We’ll talk about this subject in today’s post…

It doesn’t matter if you run a multi-million dollar enterprise or if you’re embarking on your very first internet start-up, getting better results from your advertising is a critical skill to develop if you want to grow your business. And it’s not necessarily hard to do.

But it all comes down to constantly improving your ‘baseline’, or the average performance your ad has been achieving up to this point. 

To do this, there are 3 main steps involved:

1. Identify Your Baseline - find out what your ad’s current average performance is.

2. Determine Your Variance - what is the baseline of each of the variables (things you could do differently) of your ad?

3. Test for constant improvement - once you know your baseline and the variance for every nuance of that ad you can begin an ongoing process of constant improvement which will ultimately translate into more money in your pocket.

For more on how to get better ad results by improving your baseline, including an example of how to apply this 3-step formula to your own ads, click here to read the full article…

In an article I published recently, I explained how to instantly increase the effectiveness of the ads you’re currently running. The advice I gave applies to both online and offline advertising, and is also good information to keep in mind if you’re about to write your very first ad. And it starts with the very first words you say to your prospect.

When you’re trying to increase the results of your ads, remember this one simple rule: Don’t try to fix everything at once - not only is that a lot harder, but it is probably the most inefficient thing you could do. Instead, when you’re trying to improve an existing ad, I recommend always starting with your headline first, then working your way down to make any improvements.

Your headline, especially in online advertising, is the single most powerful part of your ad. It can be responsible for as much as 95% of your response rate. While your subhead or body copy does count for something, it’s your headline that grab’s your prospect’s attention FIRST. And much like print and TV ads, you only have a second or two to do it.

So what makes a good headline?

People buy ‘results’ and ‘benefits’ and nothing else. They don’t care why you got into business or how much you believe in your product. They simply want to know what benefit it will provide them with, which is the answer to that age old question: “What’s in it for me?”

The job of your headline is to capture attention immediately, by clearly telling your prospect what your product or service is going to do for them in the most compelling, customer-oriented way possible. In other words, show them the benefit in as self-centred a way as possible.

If you haven’t looked at your product or service this way before, start by asking yourself this question: “What is it about my business that gives my customers a better advantage, a greater benefit, and a greater end result than my competition.”

Once you have answered this question, you can pull your headline from the very words that come out of the notes you make. And the rest of your body copy can ultimately be built based on these very same discoveries.

 For one of the articles I recently published on how to get better ad results for your business, you can follow this link: http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Get-Better-Ad-Results—Start-With-Your-Headline-Or-Opening-Statement&id=2449865 

Or, if you have a specific online marketing question send it to me here I will answer it for you directly: http://www.AskKathyNow.com

Until next time, to your Online Success…

Kathy ~

I’m not going to beat around the bush here.

If you can apply yourself every day and follow the advice I share with my readers and listeners about what I’ve learned first hand from top achievers in business and in life… by this time next year you won’t be whining about a job you hate, or a start-up that has you working yourself to the bone with little to show for it. And you will no longer be  sabotaging yourself and stressing yourself out by taking on too much work - work that can be done by someone or something else - or by missing important deadlines, or letting another goal go unreached, or failing to seize the life-changing opportunities that come your way, or by ignoring those key relationships at home and in business that can fulfill your core needs.

No, in just one year or less you can literally transform the most critical parts of your life into things that bring you nothing but joy and satisfaction - personally, professionally and financially.

But that can only happen if you don’t just read or listen to the things I share and continue to recommend. None of this will happen if you don’t actually put these recommendations into action.

If you do, you will likely end up with your own rewarding business one day soon - a part-time or full-time venture  - and you’ll be asking yourself what took you so long. Now, I know this may not be the course of choice for everyone, but it will be the one I recommend. Because I know from first hand experience that being your own boss gives you benefits that no job could ever provide for you:

> Your financial future will be in your control, not someone else’s.
> You’ll have the potential to surpass your Employment income easily.
> You’ll have the freedom and peace of mind of not having to answer to anyone else but yourself.

I could go on and on, but these three alone are a lot.

My own road wasn’t always easy, in fact, it was often down right hard. But I always learned something from every business venture I started, and made sure I applied everything I learned to each new venture I entered into. And experience is often the very best teacher!

Through a multitude of different media I share what I’ve learned over the past decade and continue to learn every day with readers,viewers and listeners from around the globe just like you. My mission is to help shorten your learning curve and help catapult you into the lives you thought would remain ‘lofty dreams’ forever.

I look forward to meeting you and sharing this exciting new journey with you every step of the way.

Wishing you passion, clarity and abundance… and to your success!

Sincerely,

Kathy