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Reviews of Services, Courses and more for Copywriters and Web Content Writers...
NEW... Nick Usborne's Million Dollar Secrets to Online Copywriting
A professional-grade course on writing for the web. This 75,000-word course is ideal for freelance copywriters, entrepreneurs, webmasters and web writers who work as part of an in-house writing team. This course covers the full complexity of writing for the web.
Learn more about Nick Usborne's Million Dollar Secrets to Online Copywriting course...
Nick Usborne's Million Dollar Secrets to Online Copywriting
A professional-grade course on writing for the web. This 75,000-word course is ideal for freelance copywriters, entrepreneurs, webmasters and web writers who work as part of an in-house writing team. This course covers the full complexity of writing for the web.
Learn more about Nick Usborne's Million Dollar Secrets to Online Copywriting course...
The NEW Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008
This is an industrial strength guide to search engine marketing, including hundreds of charts and tables, eyetracking heatmaps and feedback from over 3,000 search marketing professionals.
Read my review of the Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008...
The NEW, 2008 Landing Page Handbook from MarketingSherpa
Whether you purchased the first edition of this handbook or not, you should be running to get a copy of this latest edition. It reveals the latest best practices for optimizing a broad range of landing pages, with data drawn from over 3,000 online marketers.
Read my review of the Landing Page Handbook...
This is an outstanding course for any freelancer who wants to increase his or her revenues by offering both writing AND design services to small business. There is a huge demand for single-source marketing services, and this course will show you how to succeed.
Read my review of Desktop Marketing here...
Productivity Engineering - A hypnosis program to help you improve your performance at work.
If you don't get enough work done, if you procrastinate, if you struggle to maintain an optimal, impressive level or performance with your work, read this review. I tried this program and it has helped a lot.
Read my review of Productivity Engineering
FreeIQ - an online marketplace for PDF, audio and video content
If you want to either give away or sell information products, FreeIQ is the perfect marketplace for you. It's a great place to showcase and sell your ebooks and audio and video presentations. Free or for a fee.
Read my full review of FreeIQ here...
Marketing Experiments Certification Courses
These certification courses will bring you up to industry expert status in Online Testing, Email Marketing, Landing Page Optimization, Paid Search and more.
Read my full review of the Marketing Experiments Certification Courses here ...
The MarketingSherpa Ecommerce Benchmark Guide 2007
While other companies and organizations also publish ecommerce metrics, I don’t think anyone does it with the breadth and scope achieved by MarketingSherpa. This 2007 guide is truly a benchmark, and packed with charts, tables and heatmaps which all provide us with clues and insights on how to improve our own sites.
Read my full review...
Michael Masterson's Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting
Two things.
First, for a long time I have been looking for a copywriting course I could enthusiastically recommend.
Second, I had my doubts about Michael Masterson's course because of all the hype I had been exposed to.
I was pleasantly surprised. I was sent a review copy of the entire course and read through it from cover to cover. It is very good. Yes, it is written for those who wish to learn or improve on their direct marketing copywriting skills. But as I have mentioned before, I think all online writers could benefit from a strong foundation in direct response copywriting.
For the full review, click here
Self Publishing – Your complete business plan for creating a life without borders. By Gary Scott.
A remarkable program for anyone who is serious about building a self-publishing business. If you just want to write a flash-in-the-pan ebook, this isn't for you.
But if you want to build a self-publishing business, based on a process that has been refined and proven over a span of 30 years, get a copy today.
Find out more...
MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007
What kind of open rate should you expect from your email campaigns? What’s a typical clickthrough rate? Should you worry about corporate email filters? Does the design of emails impact results? What kind of response can you expect from rented lists?
These are just a few of the questions answered in the 2007 MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Guide.
If email marketing is part of your business, you should find a way to get a copy of this guide. It will give you the benchmark figures you need, and insights into some important upcoming trends, like the growth in mobile messaging.
Read my full review of the MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007 here...
The Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007
If your online business depends on strong conversions from either organic search listings, Pay Per Click, or both, you’ll want to find out more about this 262-page guide from MarketingSherpa.
Read my review of the Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007...
This is a short but essential guide to writing product descriptions for product catalogs, web pages or sales brochures. If you have ever struggled over writing short product descriptions, you will find solid advice and inspiration in this guide by Marcia Yudkin.
Read my review of 73 Ways to Describe a Widget...
Robert Middleton's InfoGuru Marketing Manual
If you are a freelancer or solopreneur, you may fall into the large group who do a great job at what they do - but are not so gifted whe it comes to promoting and marketing their own services. if this sounds like you, be sure to read this review.
MarketingSherpa's Ecommerce Benchmark Guide 2006
The core purpose of all 300-plus pages is to help you optimize your online marketing efforts and increase conversion rates and revenues.
As always with MarketingSherpa, this report is not a collection of expert opinions, but a compendium of results -- including 311 charts, 23 heatmaps (eyetracking) and data from 1,101 companies which have been tracking their own performance online.
Keyword Discovery - a keyword research and analytics tool for search engine optimization
Filled with advanced search features, Keyword Discovery draws on search results from over 200 search engines. If you are serious about attracting organic search engine traffic, or optimizing PPC campaigns, you'll want to check this out.
Read my review of Keyword Discovery...
Secrets of Writing for the Business to Business Market
There are 8 million business-to-business companies out there. And they all need good sales copy. The opportunity in B2B copywriting is huge, and this 350+ page course tells you everything you need to know about getting your own slice of the market.
Read my review and find out how...
Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006, from MarketingSherpa
This guide comes out once a year, and at 150 pages this year's guide is more comprehensive than ever. If you are involved in email marketing, you'll find figures and tactics here to help you make significant improvements to the performance of your email campaigns.
The 2005 Freelance Copywriter Fee & Compensation Survey
Finally. Now you'll know how much to charge for that next freelance copywriting job - without having to worry about estimating too high or too low.
Inspired! How to be More Original, Insightful and Productive in Your Work.
This 188-page e-book by Marcia Yudkin is wonderful. In short, it’s inspiring. It really is.
I have read a lot of books, paper and virtual, which address the issues of creativity, intuition and productivity. But this one gets my top vote. It belongs on the best-seller table at your local book store.
Michael Katz’s Do-It-Yourself E-Newsletter System
This is a big, comprehensive package for small business and freelancers who want to publish an e-newsletter as a means to promote their services. Michael knows exactly what he's talking about and shares all you need to know in order to create great content, format it correctly and get it delivered reliably.
Read my full review of this excellent e-newsletter system...
Weighing in at a little over 100 pages, this report looks at the results of using eye tracking technology to determine how visitors see Google results pages, and where they click. Whether your focus is on organic listing, Google Adword ads, or both, you’ll find this report both fascinating and useful.
Read my review of the Google Eye Tracking Report...
Best Practices in Marketing with Email Newsletters
This 194-page from MarketingSherpa is a step-by-step guide to creating, writing, designing and delivering email newsletters that give you the best results. Essential for marketers looking to increase the ROI of their email newsletter campaigns.
Read my review of this email newsletters report...
Write and Sell e-Books for Profit
If you have basic writing skills, and an area of interest or expertise, you have the necessary ingredients to write an e-book. But before you get started, make sure you are writing on a topic for which there is strong demand. And make sure you write and design your e-book so it will SELL.
How to make money with e-books...
Secrets of Writing for The Financial Market
If you are looking for the perfect niche as a copywriter - and you should be - the financial market could be the exact right place for you. The industry is hungry for copywriting talent and willing to pay well for it. This course will show you how to get started, how to find your first client and a great deal more.
Read my review this financial copywriting course...
Secrets of Writing for the Internet
This course is for copywriters, marketers and entrepreneurs who want to learn how to apply the proven principles of direct marketing to the web, email and newsletters. Hundreds of pages of invaluable information.
Read my review of Secrets of Writing for the Internet
This is a 500+ page course on direct marketing design. Perfect for designers and non-designers who want to create high-impact direct response sales letters, flyers, ads and more.
Read my review of Graphic Design Success
Start a Part-Time Resume Writing Business
If you are a writer or a copywriter, you can make some excellent additional money by starting your own part-time resume writing busines.
Read my review of this resume writing course...
This is the second hypnosis program I have reviewed. I like it because I believe it addresses an issue that is important to writers and copywriters, whether working freelance or employed. Ours is a solitary profession and sometimes we could do with a little more core strength to keep us working at our best.
Read my review of Core Inner Strength
Selling Yourself as a Copywriter: How to Earn $100,000 a Year
This course is for ambitious freelance copywriters who recognize they could make a lot more money if they worked harder at promoting their business and finding better-paying clients.
Read my review of 'Selling Yourself'...
This e-book by Ken Evoy covers a lot of ground, but is essentially about writing great content. And it's excellent. Ken is one of the very, very few people I know who sees the process of writing online within the broader context and demands of the online user experience, design, site navigation, SEO and more.
Read my full review of Make Your Content PRE Sell
Secrets of Mouthwatering Marketing Copy, by Marcia Yudkin
This report by Marcia Yudkin is one of those documents I wish I had found before. And now I have it, I'll use it as a reference for a long time to come.
I find the title a little misleading. It's not about 'mouthwatering copy'. Well, that's not my take on it anyway. But it is an amazing detailed resource for learning how to write and improve your Bullet Points, Offers and Testimonials.
And when you get those three areas right, you're on the path to much higher conversion rates, online and offline.
For the full review, click here
Tweaking Your Site's Copy to Get More Search Engine Traffic.
This is a 'How To' kit from Marketing Sherpa - on how to optimize your site pages with the best keywords and phrases. It comprises two reports and one interview transcript. It's great stuff. A report each from Jill Whalen and Karon Thackston. And the transcript of an interview with Jill Whalen. Plenty of examples and screenshots. Lots to learn.
For the full review, click here
Every time you send an email newsletter or marketing campaign, on average, one out of every six people who asked to be on your list won't get your mailing because a spam filter blocks it by mistake. Learn 10 specific tactics to avoid filters through proper list building and hygiene, using the right email service to send mail, best practices in creative and copy, how to get whitelisted, and how to get off blacklists.
Click here for the full review
Site Build It!: Small business Web hosting, Web design and SEO
This is a service I have enthusiastically recommended to friends and my own family. If you want to create a small business site for yourself, there simply isn't a better choice. You get all the elements included - domain name registration, Web site hosting, Web design, search engine optimization, search engine submission, email, newsletter creation and delivery...and more...at a very, very reasonable price.
And if you are a Webmaster, it's a great tool for creating sites for your clients.
Click here for the full review...
WordTracker: Find the Most Profitable Keywords for Your Site
Here's a tool I use on an almost daily basis. Working from a database of over 350 million terms, it helps me identify the most profitable key words and phrases for Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Overture and a host of other search engines and directories. Using WordTracker has had a huge impact on the ranking of my sites across a number of engines.
Click here for the full review...
What I like about MarketingSherpa Reports is that they are packed with details and specifics. No hype, no magic formulas. Just proven tactics, solid statistics and plenty of case histories. And I particularly like this report as I am a strong believer in the power of a good newsletter, for any company or organization.
Whether you are an expert, or just starting out, you'll find plenty of useful, actionable information here.
Click here for the full review...
Brainbench Training and Certification
In a world where knowledge is perishable, and more and more companies demand certification as proof of ability, Brainbench leads the way in training and certification.
Click here for Brainbench review...
(NOTE: If a site, product or service I review has an affiliate program, I join it. That way I have the potential to earn a few dollars towards the maintenance of this site and newsletter. But here is my promise: I will never review anything unless 1) I have direct experience of it and would recommend it to a friend for nothing or 2) It comes to me through a recommendation from someone I know very, very well and trust completely.)
