Archives for 2011
October 2011 Goals
Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take — it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.
Now let’s take another ship — just like the first — only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm.
Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go.
I think you’ll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up onsome deserted beach — a derelict. It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance. No goal.
–Earl Nightingale
Lately I’ve been knocking out my monthly goals pretty well……now I just have to keep the ball rolling.
Got YOUR goals for the month yet?
The Book is Done!
Remember that Writing A Book In Two Weeks Experiment I did?
Well I got the first copies of the physical book from the printers! Check it out!
Hahahahaha….I couldn’t stop laughing that this book actually exists :-)
The front cover is actually a subtle ode to my favorite copywriter: Gary Halbert….you can see his book was clearly the inspiration *COUGH*exact copy*COUGH* for my book:
The image I used on the cover was a cheeky nod to the show Family Guy….where Brian Griffin’s novel has this cheesy oil painting of him looking very profound:
You can see the similarities here:
I printed out 3 copies of the book through Lulu.com just to see how the formatting would come out, and it came out better than expected!
There ARE a bunch of very small changes I want to make (like page breaks and spelling errors). That’s to be expected since this was written in two weeks.
If you really want this you can buy it here…
…..and I will laugh my ASS off if someone actually buys it! I priced it at $14.92…
….because that’s when “Columbus sailed the ocean blue” :-)
But this kind of concluded my totally-useless-goal of “Having a book with my name and picture on it”!
CHECK!
————————————–
UPDATE 9-22-2011
————————————–
Someone actually bought the book! That means my book sold ONE more copy that Brian Griffin’s novel :-)
KopyKourse Results
If you’re not a fan of exorbitant bragging, you may want to stop reading NOW:
Remember I mentioned this KopyWritingKourse I did on AppSumo that was meant to teach people to write better?
Wellllll turns out it was the best-selling deal on AppSumo ever. (woot woot)!
In the last two months I already planned the Kourse out…..but about 70% of it was created about 8 days before it was released.
I’m proud it did so well because it took up alllll my time for that 8 days. Twice I stayed up 2 days in a row working on the Kourse (plus I still had a full load of other work going on at the exact same time).
I had one objective for this KopyKourse:
Make absolutely damn sure people LOVE IT and LEARN FROM IT!
I didn’t really care about the pricing or how many copies were sold (well….I did, but it was a secondary thought).
A combination of listening to Earl Nightingale over the years and realizing this, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of making TOP quality stuff first….and worrying about selling a bunch later. So I’m VERY pleased to see all this feedback :-)
These are just from Twitter alone:
———————————————————————-
And here’s the bad reviews….although it’s all just copywriting people criticizing the headlines for the advertising. Fortunately there has not been ONE ever remotely-bad review of the Kourse Kontent yet :-)
And just to end on a sweet note, here’s some more good reviews from Twitter!
Here’s some other random compliments I got from emails:
————————————————————–
Hey Neville,
Just wanted to say – amazeballs kourse!!!
I’ve always loved the AppSumo emails, and now I know why :)
Keep up the great work!
Kim – @kgardnr
————————————————————–
Hello Neville,
DUDE this wacky kopy stuff works. I watched the videos yesterday morning
and I used what I learned in my ad copy. I normally get one or two leads per
day from my ads, yesterday from 1-5 pm I got 3 leads and closed one deal
already plus my CTR gone up 18%.
PS. Feel free to use my full name and testimonial in public.
Fadi Andraus
————————————————————–
Or this comment by a longtime reader who took the course!
————————————————————–
I’m going through your Kopywriting Kourse right now.
I’m an Austin-based copywriter too. I’m fascinated by your story
in general, and I’m not ashamed to admit that even after years
of copywriting, I’m learning some stuff from you.
Rich M.
————————————————————–
Neville, you rocked on this course!!
Im on section 2 after watching section 1 twice!
You should take it down before my competitors get a
hold of it…Im watching the ticker anxiously.
Isaac Hill
————————————————————–
*This is a chat forwarded to me by Noah Kagan*
[9/20/11 4:56:03 PM] isaac: Just wanted to say thanks for the deal from Neville. Closed a client by changing my Kopy.
[9/20/11 4:57:01 PM] noah kagan: :)
[9/20/11 4:57:02 PM] noah kagan: now way
[9/20/11 4:57:04 PM] noah kagan: whats the story
[9/20/11 4:58:36 PM] isaac: I place ads all the time on classifieds. They are normally titled: Do you need a Logo Design? blah blah….then I changed the title to “Your Logo Sucks – Here Is Why!”
[9/20/11 4:58:48 PM] isaac: Massive click throughs.
[9/20/11 5:00:09 PM] isaac: Then I changed the boring copy about how great we are and replaced it with how a business normally waste hundreds/thousands on crappy design firms…then said: See how our clients get er’ done
KOPY KOURSE IS OUT!
The KopywritingKourse is finally out!
WOOT WOOT WOOT!
It’s not for sale anywhere else just yet….so literally TODAY ONLY is when you can get this.
I’ll add a Buy Now button to the Kourse after the AppSumo deal finishes on Thursday at midnight (9-15-2011 at midnight Central Time)….but it’ll be way more expensive.
I actually hate the fact that it’s selling for under $100.
Considering the effect it has on someone’s selling ability.
Hopefully it provides as much information to people as the Behind The Scenes of a Muse course I did (people freakin LOVED that course)….
ANYWHOOZLE…..
Check it out…
Send me feedback (nevmed@gmail.com)….
If you don’t like it there’s a 100% money-back guarantee (didn’t think you learned anything? You can refund anytime before you die).
For now checkout this video….
It was was originally supposed to be a “short” intro to the KopyKourse with Noah Kagan (founder of AppSumo, #30 at Facebook and a bunch of other stuff….) but it turned into a long chat. It was actually pretty fun, and we might do it more often if people like it :-)
P.S. Click here to get the Kourse.
Mont Blanc Pen Refill Trick
Randomly browsing StumbleUpon one day I saw this little video:
“Make a $200 pen for $6”
…..I thought this was soooo cool!
As a kid who used to collect mechanical pencils in middle school…..naturally I HAD to try this.
I immediately bought some Pilot G2 Pens
Fast forward one week for delivery time and it was time to do some pen-surgery:
Notice how the Mont Blanc refill is eeeveerrr sssooo slligghttlly longer than the G2 refill. This is actually long enough to make them not compatible:
–
–
This means you get out some scissors and do a small little snip-snip. The end piece is just soft plastic, so even cheap-o scissors will be fine:
–
–
DONE! Now just insert the freshly-operated-on Mont Blanc pen refill into the G2 pen and it works perfectly!
–
–
You can even see which Mont Blanc-enstein pens you’ve modified through the casing:
–
–
I actually waited a few weeks to post this….just to make sure the pens were actually really good….
and I gotta say……..
-Neville
:-)
Book Two weeks thingy
Well the book in two weeks is pretty much done.
“But Nevilleeee it’s been more than two weeks!!”
1.) Screw off!
2.) Lemme explain….
The book is done with the exception of some minor picture editing. I still have to upload it which is generally the easiest part of this equation.
However other projects are taking up a bit of time. As you may (or may not) know, I’ve become a semi-famous copywriter in the last 4 1/2 months….so I’m being approached by all these cool people to do stuff for them.
Also I’m releasing this KopywritingKourse soon…and a lot of people have been getting anxious to see it (that makes me smile) :-)
Anywhoozle, it’ll be coming out on AppSumo on September 15th most likely…..so I’m busy making it the best I probably can. I’m 100% convinced whoever watches this video course will have their lives changed in the way they communicate (it starts with their writing first, but then permeates into regular speech after a while).
They already ran a test on how well the course would sell….
….and it tested through the god damn moon!
So ::cross-fingers:: it’ll do well :-)
————–
Alright alright….enough about ME ME ME. Here’s something for you:
It’s Boo The Dog!!
Friend him on Facebook!
I’m slightly obsessed. He’s my most checked page on Facebook!
September 2011 Goals
New month, new goals!
Here’s mine….where are YOURS?
1.) KopywritingKourse.com finish and sale.
I’m about a week or two way from finishing this course about copywriting. I’m proud that it’s turning out REALLLLLY good :-)
2.) It’s a secret ::shhhhhhhh::
3.) Re-do finance structure for personal and biz stuff.
I’m going to find a good accountant to make sure everything I’m doing now is structured correctly. I also want this person to do my taxes because I hate doing them plus I don’t know as much as a good acct would.
P.S. Speaking of the KopyKourse, look at the feedback I got today on my previous Behind The Scenes of a Muse course thingy I did:
……I mostly bought it because it said Tim Ferris and I was curious that he was releasing paid content online. I almost returned it when you guys sent out that email, and I never watched it until yesterday.
It is some of the best quality content I’ve seen. My cofounder for P——- is going to implement a product page on our site where we’ll sell and drop ship the products that’ve been included in our sampler box. I think it’s going to really help the business along, and it is being guided by Neville’s videos entirely.
Just wanted to say thanks, and I hope everything is going well.
Alex M—–
That comment made me smile :-)
…and he actually bolded that “best quality I’ve seen” part on his own!
How things get exaggerated in media
This headline just made me laugh so hard….(and don’t you DARE question why I even clicked on this link)!
This article in CNN claims something dramatic:
The popstar Justin Bieber Crashes His Ferrari! OH NO!
But read the article and it shows how retardedly-exaggerated the headline is:
It reminds me of when I used to stock day-trade in college. I’d wake up early every morning to watch the stock market open on CNBC…..and EVERYDAY it would flip-flop between either:
‘OOOMMMGGGG THE STOCK MARKET IS CRASSSSHIIINGGG!!!!”
-or-
“AMERICA IS SO GREAT WE HAVE THE BEST ECONOMY EVERRR STOCKS GOING UP UP UP!!!”
“Think before you believe”
Book In Two Weeks – Day Whatever
Alright…..so sometime last night I finally finished all 7 chapters of the Book in Two Weeks!
You can see all chapters collected on my desktop:
Honestly it wasn’t THHAAAT hard, it’s just that I have lots of other stuff going on at the same time (who doesn’t), so I think I’m a day or two behind.
Who cares.
Time to move on.
The next agenda-item is to write the Index for the book. This shouldn’t be too hard since it’s ONLY SEVEN CHAPTERS :-)
The next step might take a bit of extra work though. I noticed a lot of the pictures in the book are weird sizes…and I might have to go back and re-edit a lot of them so they’re visible to the readers.
I’m also not entirely sure about how the pictures will affect the page spacing (I think Lulu.com has some cool tools to fix that problem).
Anywhozit….we’re a few days behind schedule, but it’s been two weeks and I HAVE indeed written a book (even though it’s just on my computer for now)!