NevBlog

Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

Archives for 2012

A masterful piece of storytelling

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One of the most masterful pieces of storytelling I’ve ever seen came from randomly wasting time on YouTube.

…as a Kopywriter I keep note of good stuff like this.

It was around the time Britney Spears was going through some wild times with drugs, alcohol and just appearing insane in the media.

Craig Ferguson (the talk show host) came to her defense and told his own story about being an alcoholic.

He tells an intensely serious story….mixed with just the right balance of humor.

Notice he’s telling a story about how we was trying to kill himself…..yet it’s still humorous!
Not all of it. But some.

He still gets a tear-jerking response out of the speech without being a bummer…or a stogy old coot. Just a real dude.

Real stories are sometimes serious, and sometimes funny.
Sometimes the two blend perfectly like this:

 

Public Speaking Dojo

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Here’s a little Sumo Dojo we did about Public Speaking.  Some do’s, don’t, tips, tricks:

 

SPEAKING of public speaking…..I spoke on Thursday about validating business ideas, and I wanted to warm up the crowd a bit.  I decided to make everyone sing “We Will Rock You”, and wasn’t sure if a whole crowd could keep up the beat AND sing at the same time.  See for yourself how it turned out :-)

That was fun!

A lesson in kopy (sellin’ vs. story tellin’)

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(This is an email I originally sent to the email subscribers of the KopywritingKourse):
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We’re trying to shift the copy on our AppSumo deals to be more “real”….and it was a struggle for me personally.

When Noah was co-working at my place a few years ago…..I got the idea to start writing the sales copy for his new project “AppSumo” as this jovial/hilarious/fat/racist/sexist Sumo.

The name “AppSumo” was perfect, and the logo was perfect too:

….this fat bastard made it easy to get away with saying ANYTHING!

Fat jokes.
Butt jokes.
Jewish Jokes.
Woman jokes.

….it was all fair game and VERY few people complained out of 100’000’s of people (if you’re not pissing SOME people off, you’re doing it wrong).

People would constantly ask “Who the hell wrote that copy!?” and try to hire me for their own copy.  It’s HUGE compliment when people are willing to spend thousands of bill$ just from reading our sales pitches (to boot, they’d usually end up buying a bunch of stuff from AppSumo too)!

The copy was mainly educational.  And it would SHOW EXACTLY what the product would do for a group of people, and even how to use it.

It also had humor….but that was secondary.  Educating people was priority #1.

After pawning off most of the writing to other copywriters, the quality went down.

The copy turned into regular bullshit sales copy…..but with a bunch of cheesy Sumo jokes thrown in.

“Yes!  Everyone should buy this!”

“This is a TOTALLY KILLER VALUE!”

“If you want to live the dream of making millions, buy this!”

….barf.

Over the course of about 8 months the whole Sumo-voice thing seemed “played” to everyone at the office.

A change was wanted.

Everyone wanted to put out “stories” rather than “sales pitches”.

I fought this so damn hard.  Even pissing off some people at the office who never get mad at anything (sorry guys)!

Then I thought “Ok….lemme swallow some pride and give this a shot.” 

I started poking around the internet and noticed that EVERY big blog, EVERY big news outlet…..featured STORIES!

People share stories. 
People don’t share sales-pitches as much.
People don’t share “How-To’s” as much (unless it’s about their specific interest).

(Think about it, how often do you see a non-marketing person share a sales-pitch on Facebook)?

The 1st piece of copy I wrote in this “Story” format was for Prey.  You can see it here:
https://www.appsumo.com/prey/

…..I originally wrote a how-to article on using Prey to protect your computers, but the team wanted a story.  Eventually that’s what was put out…..mainly against my will.

Three things happened:

  1. The post went viral.
  2. Even offline, people started telling family & friends about Prey.
  3. It sold like crazy (a record high for the past few months of sales).

Even Ramit Sethi and Derek Halpern both personally told me “It was some of the best copy I’ve seen in a long time, anywhere. Really terrific job.”

WHOA.  

Lots of sales.
Lots of sharing.
Lots of compliments.
….maybe this “story thing” was a good move.

We’ve since replicated the results with the story format.

NOW….this doesn’t mean I think everything has to be a damn story, but it’s certainly one way you can breathe some new life into what you’re writing.

If you want to test out a “Sales Story” of your own…..you can try following this rough outline I used:

  1. Problem you (or someone else) had.
  2. Something you tried that didn’t work.
  3. You discovered a certain product/service.
  4. The positive results you got from it.

You can even go to AppSumo.com and click the “Back” button on the banner image to see all our previous deal copy.

Checkout the number of shares and comments to spy on which deals did well or not.

….and lemme know if you have any success (or failure) with a “Sales Story”!

Keep being a student. 
Sincerely,
Neville Medhora

P.S.  If you used to read the old AppSumo emails, which do you like better?  Meaning which did you actually look forward to and open the most?  Vote please (I’m a constant student myself, so I love learning from your answers)!

Alternate view: How Can I Have FUN Doing This

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It’s happened over and over again…..

Anytime we try to make something all about money, it’s usually kinda boring and not as profitable.

Whenever we try to just make something FUN, it’s a great time AND the money somehow follows:

Next time you’re doing something boring or just for money, try asking the questions, “How can I make this fun for ME?”

….it often opens up a lot of creativity.

Weird YouTube Video Counts

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I’ve always been skeptical about the YouTube view counter.

I’m trynna become a famous youtuber here, so I got to watch the stats!

Every time I post a video it’ll get something like 300 views…..but I KNOW that it’s getting more.  I’ll refresh in a few hours later and the count will still be the same.

Even with this recent email the same thing happened.

An email was sent to about 750,000 people on AppSumo today, a percentage of which either saw this on a page or an email:

When I snapped this screenshot, there were:

  • 225 Tweets
  • Tons of Facebook shares
  • 99 YouTube comments
  • Almost 100 comments on the post.

……yet look at this video counter:


Only 305 views??

Yea right.  The numbers don’t add up.  I can even see people adding new comments all the time, but the views don’t go up.

So what’s up then?  I Googled around and found this fascinating video about this YouTube number count phenomenon.  Hope you nerds out there enjoy this as much as I did!  Enjoy!

 

Cool huh!?
-Nev

To-Do List How To

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I’ve always been obsessive about the way I keep simple to-do lists for the day…..and my to-do lists have morphed many times through experimentation.

But for about 4 years now I’ve used the same method which seems to work really well for me.

It’s simply a pen and paper……and I’ll shuttup now and you can see it live:

 

BY THE WAY: I only plan my tasks THE DAY BEFORE.  I rarely ever add on work for the same day (it’s how I stay sane).

It’s Sunday now…….and maybe if you’re dreading Monday a bit, you can plan out your day the same way I do.  It might work for you, it might not.  Give it a try and see if it boosts your productivity :-)

Working from home – Pros and Cons

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If you’ve ever worked from home before…..or WANT to work from him, this might interest you.

There’s some really cool things about working from home, and really sucky things.

I’ve always liked working from home or coffee shops.

Even till this day, I only go into our office whenever I start slowing down at home. This is simply because I get a lot of GREAT WORK done at home…..but then after few hours I get distracted and unproductive.

Here’s some of the pros, cons, tips & tricks we’ve all learned from working at home:

October 2012 Goals

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New month.  New Goals. Here they are:

 

1.) I’ve been a little complacent in my eating habits for the last few months…..and I don’t really care from a physical point of view, but from a MENTAL point of view.  I can tell my stamina for work is lower because I’m eating crappy stuff.

Two years ago my “Getting A Six Pack Experiment” taught me that eating “clean” had a massive impact on my ability to do great work for long periods of time.  I want to make sure I’m cleaning up my diet (the simple act of adding smoothies and fruit helps immensely).

 

2.) “Getting in writing mode” is kind of related to the above.  But this also means waking up early on a consistent basis and getting writing done in the mornings.

I’ll be taking on A LOT more writing than I usually do (with added AppSumo deals and book stuff this month)……so I’ve got to get back in this groove of “lotsa writing output.”

You know how they say, “To become world-class at something you gotta put in 10,000 hours?”

I feel like this is part of my 10,000 hours :-)

 

 

…….have you made YOUR monthly goals yet?

How we’re un-sucking AppSumo emails

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When AppSumo first started (around this time), we used to send out these long, hilarious, and foremost…. EDUCATIONAL emails about every product we got a deal for.

Usually it was me writing these emails.

Then there was a point where two full-times sales guys were adding deals at pretty ridiculous rate.

Deals needed to be tested and written…..and we were testing 2 to 3 a day.

Naturally I couldn’t write amazing copy for EVERY DAMN DEAL at that pace.

So we hired a couple of copywriters.

 

After a while, the format of AppSumo emails changed…..and the deal quality was just average.  There were good deals, but our batting ratio was a bit down (although I’m proud that we were still miles ahead of any remote competition).

This left us with:

  • Very “average” quality deals.
  • Very mediocre copy (it was becoming typical SELL SELL SELL bullshit copy).
  • Customers still loved us, but not with even remotely the same fervor they USED to.

 

So recently we’ve been TOSSING OUT SHITTY DEALS.

If we can’t recommend the deal to our friends and family, it shouldn’t make the site.

This is a heartfelt video that explains if we’re not having fun doing this, YOU sure as hell won’t have a fun experience either.

We talk about it here:

 

P.S.  If you ever see a shitty deal on AppSumo….please yell at me.  We’re not saying every deal will be perfect for YOU, but we don’t wanna become the same-old sleazy sales bullshit internet marketing you see everywhere.