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*I’ll never forget the first time I peeked under the hood of a search engine…*

It was 7 years ago at the very first System Seminar. Jon Keel showed us the Overture keyword inventory research tool.

Suddenly you knew that 163,000 people searched for “paint ball” last month. It was a revelation.

It was like seeing the transmission and whirring gears of the Internet; suddenly understanding that machinery with great clarity as people searched for things online.

and…

*I’ll never forget the first time I peeked under the hood of a website – LIVE…*

Over 50 years ago Robert Collier said: The secret to copywriting is “Entering the conversation inside the customer’s head.” If you can crack the code on that, you are well on your way.

Anybody who’s experienced the exhilaration of changing 2 words in a Google ad and doubling the response knows what I’m talking abut.

GETTING TRAFFIC is “Entering.”

GETTING PEOPLE INTERESTED is about “the conversation.”

GETTING PEOPLE TO BUY is about moving the conversation FORWARD to completion.

A customer wrote me last week:

“We had a small fire in our house recently, and all the notebooks where I kept all my Internet Marketing notes were a complete loss. Being an Internet Marketing person, and having been gathering this info for years, you can imagine how devastated I am.

“So my question to you is… could you possibly furnish me with a list of all the Internet Marketers from various forms of Internet Marketing whom you would consider to be gurus in their respective fields…?”

Recently, I consulted with a student who had invested heavily in a business which was now making money but involved dealing with seedy individuals. He was very conflicted about this. He’d put quite a bit into this venture. It was profitable, thus doubly hard to walk away from. But he didn’t feel good about what he was selling or who … Read More

We really don’t do anything the “normal” way around here. Everything always has an odd little twist, doesn’t it? Like scouting for talent – in December I announced I was looking for an Affiliate Manager and Content Czar…

Claude Hopkins in writing his classic ‘Scientific Advertising’ spoke optimistically back in 1918 of a new day soon to come where old image- and brand-only corporate fluff would give way to sharp, crisp, lean, results-tested advertising.

That new day never came to the world at large.

The current economic mess happened because the motto in the financial industry was, “Screw the truth. Just get to the sale.”

I got this email today:

Hi Perry,

I am wrapping up my MBA, at {large state university} and cant help but think its completely wasting my time. Fortunately one on my professors has enrolled us into the “Google Challenge” – where Google gives $200 in ad words and we focus an actual marketing campaign on a live business. My question is this…