Well-written promotional email of the day

[sender removed because I have no association with him; I'm only posting this as a conversation starter about skillful copywriting. Great use of a unique personal story, told in a picturesque way showing the writer's personality and attitude. Headline promises a controversial challenge to a popular theme, and the body delivers.]

Subject: think and go broke

Hi [name],

Over the weekend I went to the County Fair.

It wasn't very crowded this year. Between the lingering
impact of the recession and the fact that the temperature
was lower than usual here on the Gulf in Florida, buyers
were scarce.

I particularly like going through the indoor part of the
fair, because you get to see all the unusual nicknacks and
odds and ends people are selling. It also always offers
you a great lesson in salesmanship.

For instance, of the hundred or so displays people had set
up, roughly 40% of them were selling home made arts and
crafts and home-business types of ideas. There were signs
you hang up on your living room or outside on your deck (I
bought one that said "The Man Cave," to hang on the wall in
my office)... decorative license plates... things you put on
display in your living room... candles you can buy and then
re-sell... and things like dips and chips and all kinds of
snacks you could order.

Most of these booths weren't very busy. They had a steady
stream of one or two customers, but that's about it.

Then you had larger items like wild-looking shower stalls...
big flag poles to mount outside in front of your home...
furniture and chairs that vibrate... and hand-painted bar
stools.

They even had loads of jewelry dealers there selling
everything from costume stuff, to fancy belt-buckles, and
gold and silver, too.

These booths were all virtually empty.

But by FAR, the two most crowded booths were, the booth
offering remedies for relaxation (I cover this in detail
inside my [offer link here] ), and the two different
booths selling teeth-whitening.

The teeth-whitening sections had twelve to fifteen dental
chairs all laid out in a circle, and for $35 bucks you
could sit in one and get your teeth whitened, right there
on the spot.

None of these chairs were empty very long. In fact, people
were pretty much rushing into these two stations as if they
were wet, and getting inside gave them shelter from the
rain or something.

I'm sure this is a lot cheaper than you can do this for at a
dentist, but there again, I doubt one treatment would last
very long.

But the point is, and this is something most entrepreneurs
don't think about often enough... people spend money on the
things they WANT to buy, and not necessarily the things
they "need" to buy. Or the things you think they need to
buy or the things you think they should buy.

And if you go back as far as 1937, to Napoleon Hill's "Think
And Grow Rich," Hill talked about the "seven major positive
emotions." The emotion of "desire" is listed in there.
The desire to be wanted by others has always been a huge
emotional trigger, and selling into this desire is almost a
no-lose proposition.

So it's not surprising that selling something that makes you
more attractive, is going to be such a hit with the crowds.
Which is exactly what happened with these dental whitening
treatments.

Remember, just because you make something, or just because
you think it's cute... doesn't mean someone's going to buy
it. And this is the problem so many businesses have --
they just aren't selling things that are in high demand.

And in this situation, no matter HOW good your marketing is,
you are pretty much doomed.

If you want to make a lot of money, the formula's easy. You
just need to sell things people want to buy.

Makes sense if you think about it, right?

But omit the "thinking" part and, well... you know where this
ends up going, don't you?

[P.S.'s have more info about the offer]

///

Your opinions?

[P.S. sorry about the double post. I got a WF database error response on the first try, and when I clicked again, apparently both posts went through.]