When Will There Be Nothing Left?

Today it was Frank Kern's "bad news".

As time goes by, everybody and their grandmother, of the herd mentality,
will jump all over this and eventually, it won't be effective anymore, or at
least not as effective.

So the next "thing" will have to come out.

At what point in time will we have reached critical mass where this is simply
nothing left to say that people aren't going to say, "Oh, that."

The answer?

Never.

And here is why.

If you sift through the sands of time, you will find that there really is
nothing that is "new". Somewhere, something that we look at as "new"
today has been used by somebody in a slight variation.

Add to that the fact that new people come online all the time and you
have a formula for never running out of things to say and do.

The key is recognizing trends and knowing when to back off on certain
things, especially when they're in the spotlight, and concentrate on other
methods of "getting the message out."

A great way to do this (and you should have started doing this from the
first day of your IM career) is build a swipe file. The really great
copywriters do this constantly. That way you have a wealth of information
to tap into. You'll never run out of ideas.

This is one of the first things I did when I first started writing my own
copy for sales letters, email followups and even message board ads. I
have a swipe file of "gimmicks" that would knock your eyeballs out of your
head. My biggest problem is cataloging all the stuff because there is just
too much of it. So occasionally, I'll just go through one of my files and see
what I haven't used in a while, but more importantly, what other marketers
haven't used in a while.

I also make notes as to how effective the "tactic" was when I used it. If
I use something several times and it bombs out each time, I will most likely
not use it again. Personally, I'm a 3 strikes and you're out kind of guy.
This is how I have built up a collection of ads that I can almost guarantee
will make me sales.

Does it take some work? Yeah, and it's just one more thing in my day that
sucks up some time, when I let it. But it's time worth spending.

So keep your eyes open for the "tactic" of the day. Log it into your swipe
file and then after a few months, when things have died down, pull it out
from your bag of tricks and give it a whirl.

You might be surprised at the results.