Ever seen one of those television commercials for an electronics store, where someone named Crazy George (or any similar name) is sitting in a crane high above the store parking lot, throwing electronics on the ground, smashing them to bits, all the while screaming loudly about the great prices to be found at his store? Or maybe you can better relate to the used car television ads where Crazy George yells loudly about all the great used car deals he’s got going?

Whichever type of ad you can envision, you know I’m talking about the loud, “in your face” sales pitch. The concept is that if I scream loud enough, often enough, and look crazy enough, I’ll get your attention. And once I get your attention, you might hear the sales pitch I’m giving you.

The same kind of “in your face” sales pitch has long been used online via the Long Copy Sales Letter. You know the type. You land on a web page looking for information, and you end up seeing a seemingly never-ending page filled with testimonial after testimonial, product benefits listed as bullet points, and lots of “But Wait, There’s More!” type sales pitches. It’s like an online infomercial.

There is no doubt that these in-your-face sales tactics work. Studies have been done over and over again, and the data backs it up. I don’t doubt that the Crazy George television ads work as well.

If you want to increase your sales via the Crazy George In-Your-Face Sales Techniques, I won’t stop you. I won’t even judge you. But I also won’t be the right person to teach you how to use it. Why? Because I hate the Crazy George / In-Your-Face / Long Copy Sales Letter techniques, and I refuse to force them on my sites’ visitors.

I would rather make less money than subject my users to such blatant, hard-sell tactics. Seriously. I will not throw that kind of attention-grabbing loud, garish sales copy at anyone who comes to any of my sites. If that means I make less money, so be it. What do I get instead? I get visitors who don’t hate me. Those visitors may very well come back because they don’t hate me. Those visitors may very well tell others about my site because they don’t hate me. I’d much rather make less money in the short-term, but have a more favorable overall impact than to make a few more immediate sales, but never seen those visitors again.

If you prefer the Crazy George sales methods, I wish you well. If you’d rather work through the DazzlinDonna method of treating users like intelligent, thoughtful consumers who are perfectly capable of making decisions without the hype, then stick around. I’ll be focusing on intelligent sales copy and persuasion without insulting your users or slapping them in the face with hard-sale tactics.

I firmly believe that you can educate your readers, show them the benefits of purchasing whatever it is you are selling, and give them reasons for buying in a thoughtful, intelligent manner - without the long scrolling hype. I also firmly believe that while you may make a few less sales this way, in the short term, you will gain more in the long term. And even if you don’t…even if you continually earn less…I still believe it is the better way to make a living. That’s just my preference though. If you’d prefer the Crazy George way of making a living, there are plenty of Internet Marketing materials you can purchase to show you how that works. You just won’t find that info here. Sorry.

(from Smash Mouth. "AllStar" Astro Lounge. Interscope Records, 1999.)

Posted on October 3rd, 2007 by DazzlinDonna
Filed under: Making Money Online