It's time to work a little magic here! I challenge thee...

Stick with me, or not.

I was a high school chem teacher for 14 years. I love magic tricks and I used a lot of them to get and keep kid's attention. But more than fun, they can teach logic and problem solving--even a bit of reverse engineering.

Example related to Internet marketing.

I would walk into class with a styrofoam cup of coffee. I had an envelope on my lecture table in plain view. I would open the envelope, remove three index card sized pieces of paper--one red, one blue, and one yellow. Next I would ask for a student to volunteer to pick a volunteer--to keep it honest.

So I get a student to come up and hold my coffee cup which is nearly full of coffee. I ask them to move it slowly over the three sheets of colored paper and gently place it on one of them. Let's say they put it on the red one, just for an example. I then ask them to pour my coffee down the sink and look inside of the cup.

They would alway be amazed. Inside the cup they would see the words, "YOU WILL PICK RED" written with a sharpie marker inside the bottom of the cup. And the trick always worked--without fail, no matter what color they picked. (Only one coffee cup is used.)

So I used this as a problem solving exercise. I talked about reverse engineering the trick. You know the end result, what must have happened in advance of that result to achieve that outcome. The obvious is always overlooked--that's what makes good magic.

So now, in terms of Internet marketing (Oh, I'll give you the solution to the trick in a minute) how can this be of help?

Talk about product development. Too many people think, "I want to write a book about SEO," and they start writing. That may work. But think of product development as a great magic trick. Look at the end result you want. Maybe it's getting a front page Google ranking. That is the end goal you want readers of your ebook to achieve.

Now work backwards--reverse engineer the thing. If you're end goal it to achieve top Google rankings, what must happen before that, and before that, and before that? Start at your end result and work back to the starting point.

I know a lot of you do this, but product development even goes back even further than that. I strongly recommend that one writes a sales letter for their product before they even create the product. Doing this gives a blueprint for your product development process. You simply dump the stuff into your product that makes your sales letter true.

The term reverse engineering is used a lot today, but it really is a powerful tool to end up with products that achieve a certain goal.
~~~~~~~

Oh yeah, the magic trick. You would hate me if I told you how I did that. I'ts better if I make you think and toil over the solution first. Yeah, you'll probably hate me more for doing this, but think on it for a day. I'll post the way it's done Friday at noon. Have any ideas? Post 'em, I'd be curious. Have fun !